Tempt the Devil Read online

  He collapsed on his back and ground his teeth as he strove to master his need. He didn’t touch her. If he touched her, he thought he’d explode. He wanted her with ferocious ardor. And he wanted her now. Hell, hunger was a raging fire that threatened to immolate him to a pile of smoking ash.

  Lord save him, he’d have to stay hungry.

  “You don’t have to pretend,” he said with difficulty, staring upward through unseeing eyes. His heart battered at his chest as if it fought to escape. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides in time with each rasping breath.

  “Pretend?” She sounded bewildered, lost. As though his behavior made no sense.

  “Christ Jesus, Olivia!”

  She stifled a gasp and flinched back against the bed head. Good God, he didn’t intend to frighten her. He fisted his hands so hard, his arms ached. He sucked in a deep breath to beat back his unraveling temper.

  So she could be in no doubt of his meaning, he turned to look at her and spoke slowly and clearly. “I’m awake to your game. You don’t have to lie anymore.”

  The blood seeped from her face, leaving her pale as milk. The pretty little mole beside her mouth stood out like a black dot painted on a white canvas. “If I give you pleasure, that covers our contract.”

  Bitterness frayed his voice. “I paid for a lover, Olivia. Not a skilled actress with no real interest in the role.”

  He hadn’t meant to be cruel but she winced nonetheless. Her chin lifted in quick resentment. “Surely I’m not the first woman who doesn’t melt into the great Earl of Erith’s arms,” she said acidly.

  “You’re the first woman I’ve slept with who keeps a jar of ointment by the bed to ease a man’s passage.” He ignored her dismayed gasp and continued ruthlessly, “That’s what the unguent is for, isn’t it? It supplies the moisture your body doesn’t.”

  As swiftly as a snake uncoiling, she straightened and dived for the edge of the mattress. He grabbed her arm, rolling so he loomed over her. “I haven’t finished.”

  She arched her eyebrows and her damnably knowledgeable eyes dropped to where his staff rose so emphatically. “I can see that.”

  “Do you like women? Is that the problem?”

  A scornful laugh escaped her. “It’s simpler than that. I don’t like you.”

  Her bluntness didn’t anger him, just made him insatiably curious. Perhaps she didn’t like him, but something told him the difficulty was more serious than antipathy for an uncongenial keeper. “Are you frigid?”

  He felt her tiny start. “Does your conceit know no bounds?”

  “I’m trying to understand.”

  “You’re making this too complicated. Now, release me, if you please. I’ll dress and return to Perry’s.”

  “Don’t go, Olivia,” he said softly. “The game has just started.”

  Under his fingers, she trembled. Anger? Or fear? Her voice was brittle with sarcasm. “You haven’t had your money’s worth? My apologies. All isn’t lost. At least some other woman you purchase can move into the house.”

  “I don’t want another woman,” he said calmly, disregarding her jibes. “I want you.”

  “Well, I don’t want you.”

  “For now.”

  “The arrogance of the upper-class English male never fails to amaze me.” She surveyed him with cold eyes. When she spoke, her voice was steady, almost prosaic. “You can have me before I go if you like.”

  His mind shattered into a thousand shards of excitement. All moisture evaporated from his mouth.

  She was his for the taking. His.

  “No, Olivia.” His response was husky with sorrow. “I’m a large man and you’re not ready. I’ll hurt you.”

  She shrugged. He began to recognize it as a characteristic gesture. A slight hardness entered her face and her voice was expressionless. For a moment he’d touched the real woman inside the ravishing shell. Now she looked like the self-possessed courtesan he’d met in Montjoy’s salon. “Then we’ll have to see what else we can do for you.”

  She shook free but only because he let her go. He could tell that for the moment she wasn’t going anywhere.

  Departure would look too much like defeat, and if he’d learned anything about her, it was that his mistress had a pride to equal his own. He guessed at the effort and style and sheer courage she’d needed over the years to create the legend of irresistible, invincible Olivia Raines. She wouldn’t sacrifice that hard-won reputation easily, no matter how much she wanted to flee his bed.

  “Lie back,” she said coolly.

  He obeyed without question. His eyes didn’t waver from her as he stretched out, itchy with a tormenting mixture of curiosity and lust. Breathlessly, he waited to see what she’d do next.

  What she did next made his heart slam to a screaming halt.

  She crawled between his legs and reached out. He jerked as her cool hand circled his burning flesh. His vision faded, every drop of blood in his body drained to his throbbing genitals.

  She began a rhythmic stroking, tightening and releasing the pressure until he closed his eyes and saw exploding stars. She played his flesh like a great musician played an instrument. Racing scale passages. Thundering chords. Wild cadenzas. Thrilling trills. The world shrank to pure sensation. A choked groan emerged from his throat and he flung his head back. If she stopped touching him, he honestly thought he’d die.

  Something silky and warm brushed his groin. A cloud of hair. The added sensation flung him closer to release. He barely stopped himself spurting into her hand. He opened dazed eyes to watch her tawny head lower with teasing hesitation.

  A smile lifted the corner of her mouth. Mocking. Provoking. Triumphant. As though she knew that in this she had the advantage.

  Of course she did. He wanted her and couldn’t hide it.

  Her expression became almost gloating as she leaned the final few inches. Then she paused. Every scraping breath he snatched seemed to catch in his lungs forever.

  She waited.

  Knowing each second’s delay lasted a cruel hour. And each prolonged second drove him closer to insanity.

  The gorgeous witch.

  She bent so close, her breath glanced across the tip. His hungry, tumescent flesh yearned toward her lips.

  She smiled again and inched back with deliberate slowness.

  Oh, yes, she meant to torture him.

  Her hand continued to squeeze and stroke, building his need to ragged desperation. Every touch blasted through him like a direct hit from a cannonade. But her hand alone was no longer enough.

  Still she remained out of reach.

  Dear God, Olivia, take me soon or I’ll lose my damned mind.

  “Hell,” he grated, struggling against the urge to grab her head and press her down. Some last shred of intuition told him he’d never force her. That she intended his pleasure. But she also intended his torment.

  And what measure of either pleasure or torment he experienced was completely in her power.

  “No, not hell, my lord,” she murmured, the words a taunting whisper across his searing heat. “Heaven.”

  Her head lowered the last fraction of an inch. If she teased him now, he’d lose himself. She’d driven him to the brink and he trembled as though in the grip of a fever.

  She encircled the head of his cock with her lush, full-lipped mouth.

  Glorious heat.

  Moisture.

  He closed his eyes and ceded himself to her seduction. It didn’t matter anymore that she did this to prove a point.

  Her hand and mouth set up a rapturous counterpoint. The breath jammed in his throat and his heart threatened to burst. “Olivia, you’re killing me.”

  Blindly, he tangled his hands in her thick hair. The slippery silkiness perfectly complemented the hot, wet suction. He fell into velvety darkness where there was only her damnably skillful mouth and the soft sounds emerging from her throat.

  His hands fisted in the tangled mane as she increased the pressure. He’d i
magined her mouth on him like this since the first moment he saw her. But the actuality of those lips sucking him was beyond anything he’d ever known. He jerked toward her, wanting more.

  Her fingers stilled. With a blazing slide, she moved upward. Surely she wasn’t leaving him like this, shaking and frantic.

  God, God, God. He couldn’t endure it…

  Cool air brushed unbearably over his swollen, oversensitized flesh. A deep groan forced its way out of a throat too tight for words.

  Delicately, she licked the head. He shuddered at the calculated flick of her tongue. He was so close to coming. So close…

  “Take me in your mouth.” He didn’t recognize the guttural voice as his.

  She licked across the tip again. He surged up, fisting his hands in the sheets so he didn’t grab her and make her do what he wanted. He couldn’t risk stopping her now. It would destroy him.

  “Take me, Olivia,” he begged, and didn’t care that his pride was dust. He only cared that she pushed this pleasure to its limit before she finished.

  One last teasing foray with her tongue. Then abruptly she relented and surrounded him again with her sublime dark heat. He lost his last connection to any reality but her mouth and his blazing need.

  With a broken cry he bowed up and gave himself to her.

  For a long time he knew nothing but fiery release. She had him so desperate, so heavy, so ready, he flooded her mouth in an endless river.

  On and on and on. Forever.

  By the time he finished, he felt wrung out, empty, exhausted. She’d leeched away his last drop of vitality. Only a husk remained. He’d never had such a climax from a woman using her mouth.

  He’d never had such a climax.

  Inch by tormenting inch, she slid her lips off him, making him feel every clinging moment of withdrawal.

  He sank back onto the mattress, gasping for air. Each tattered breath seemed more than his exhausted body could manage. His brain had ceased to function. There was only animal satiation.

  Somewhere in those extraordinary seconds, he’d left the world far behind. He’d flown to a heaven of a thousand suns. He’d heard angels sing hallelujahs of unearthly praise.

  No, perhaps not angels. There was too much of the Devil in her seduction. But the sin was glorious. He’d gladly face hellfire itself if she’d do it again.

  When she looked up at him, a slow, victorious smile curved a mouth red and swollen from what she’d just done. She licked her lips as if savoring the last trace of his seed. A fierce need to have her take him again settled low in Erith’s gut. An even fiercer need to possess her with his body.

  She was his. From her tawny hair to her clever, hot mouth to her pale, elegant toes. He wasn’t letting her go tonight. Or any time soon, damn it.

  She shook her hair behind her shoulders in a movement that wordlessly conveyed her triumph.

  Yes, she’d won the encounter.

  So had he. She was still here.

  The room was silent apart from the rattle of his breath. Outside a horse neighed as a carriage passed. Strange to think the real world continued on its way yet his life had totally changed.

  New knowledge swam in the topaz eyes that studied him. As if having tasted him so completely, she’d claimed his soul.

  For God’s sake, Erith, stop this. Souls have no place in this transaction. And even if they have, you lost yours years ago.

  “All right, you’ve impressed me,” he drawled, although it nearly killed him to pretend nonchalance. Good Lord, it nearly killed him to find energy to speak.

  “I’ve convinced you to allow me my sway?” With a grace that made his heart stutter, she crossed her legs and settled at the base of the mattress. She was brazen. Or would have been if her easy nakedness hadn’t seemed so natural.

  With a muttered curse, he lunged off the bed and picked up his shirt. “Here, put this on,” he snapped, flinging it at her.

  She caught the shirt then stared at him as if he were mad. He probably was. He’d certainly never started a liaison like this. He had a sudden nostalgia for sweet, uncomplicated Gretchen. Except he’d been bored with Gretchen long before he finished with her.

  “Will you put on the bloody shirt?” His voice was strangled.

  Her mouth quirked, drawing his attention to the mole near its corner. He resisted the urge to tell her to put that mouth on him again. Unbelievably, in spite of that titanic climax, his arousal stirred anew.

  “You seem on edge, my lord.”

  She pulled the shirt over her head. His tempestuous state should calm now that she concealed her remarkable body. But something about the thoughtless grace with which she tugged the mass of hair away from the collar and shook it free to tumble down her back jolted him with electric awareness.

  The movement wasn’t designed to seduce. Yet seduced he was. Just as the flowery scent of her skin seduced him and the sound of her voice—even arguing, damn it—seduced him.

  Her wide, sensual mouth glistened with moisture. With a complete lack of self-consciousness, she raised her hand and wiped it across her lips.

  That mouth had clasped him tighter than a new glove. He burned to discover how it felt to penetrate her body. Would her grip on him be as tight? Tighter? He swallowed to relieve the sudden constriction in his throat as he imagined thrusting into her.

  “I don’t want the game to end yet, if that’s what you mean.” His voice sounded rusty. He snatched up his trousers and tugged them carelessly over his long legs and hardening prick.

  She looked troubled, and when she spoke, her tone was somber. The faintly teasing edge had gone. “My good sense tells me it’s better to part, my lord.”

  His heart gave a great thud of denial. No. He couldn’t let her go. Not now. Not after a glimpse of the pleasure she could give him. After what she’d just done, how could he endure the prospect of losing her?

  His instincts homed in on something he’d already guessed. He kept his voice steady even as his heart broke into a panicked race that he might be wrong. “What will the world say if I toss you into the street after one night? The reputation of irresistible Olivia Raines will suffer a blow, perhaps a fatal one.”

  The voluptuous mouth flattened. “Perhaps the world will consider you inadequate.”

  “I’m renowned as a great lover, Miss Raines. I suspect gossip will favor me.”

  A frown creased her brow. “I don’t care about gossip.”

  “Liar. Every male in the ton is at your feet and you love it.”

  She didn’t bother denying his assertion. Her complete lack of coyness was one of many things he admired. “My charms don’t bewitch you.”

  “Take me in your mouth again and you’ll see how bewitched I am.”

  She gave a choked giggle. It made her seem suddenly younger, more real. She sat in radiant dishevelment, like an Arabian boy in front of a carpet stall. Except no Arabian street urchin had that luxuriant mass of tawny hair or those remarkable topaz eyes. No Arabian boy wore an expensive man’s shirt, crumpled and open at the neck.

  The hard points of her nipples pressed impudently against the fine white linen. He had to stop himself from leaning down and tasting her there even as hot blood began to pound in his ears.

  He and Olivia played a subtle game of push and pull for sovereignty. He’d fallen prey to her dominion once tonight. Next time he planned to be the leader.

  Surprisingly, a streak of color marked her slanted cheekbones. “What I did was a farewell gesture, Lord Erith.”

  He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had walked away from him. Perhaps never. No wonder Olivia accused him of conceit.

  He floundered for something to make her stay. Anything. Money wasn’t the answer. A strange revelation when it came to a whore.

  What did the witch want? His soul? She was welcome to it. It had never done him any good. Although surely such a canny jade wouldn’t want anything as useless.

  Not money. Not luxury. Not, blast her, sexual pleasure.
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  A shame. He could give her all three without a blink.

  Ah, she was a complicated wench, his Olivia.

  Well, he was the Earl of Erith, and he always held the whip hand. But she didn’t have to know that. Instinct still told him her pride, and only her pride, would lead to her downfall. Her fall into his waiting arms, in any case.

  His plan was sly. Manipulative. Marvelous. He almost laughed aloud in jubilation.

  “Lord Erith?” Her tone was suspicious. “What are you up to?”

  “I notice you like to ape the males of the ton.”

  “I sometimes find men’s clothes convenient. How far I ‘ape’ my friends is open to argument.”

  “So you’re up for a gentleman’s wager?” He kept his voice casual and his expression merely interested. Thank God he’d always been a killer card player. If she knew just how desperate he was to keep her, she’d run a hundred miles.

  Her eyes sharpened on his face and he almost heard her mind buzzing with questions. “Occasionally.” A spark lit the topaz depths. “I work too hard to throw my money away.”

  He ignored the insult implicit in the hard work description. “Could I interest you in a small bet?”

  She still sounded mistrustful. “I can’t imagine I have anything you want.”

  He arched a disbelieving eyebrow and gave a scornful grunt. “You can’t be that naive.”

  She snapped back, “What could you give me if I win?”

  “You’d like my surrender,” he said brusquely.

  At last their jockeying for the upper hand emerged into the open. Olivia Raines liked to be in charge. Well, so did he. And he always won.

  She didn’t retreat. He knew she wouldn’t. He was right. Pride was the key to her character. “You’d like mine.”

  He smiled with triumph. “Let’s wager on who gives in first.”

  As she sucked in a lungful of air, he tried to ignore how her breasts slid against the fragile barrier of his shirt. Only the strongest exercise of willpower kept him from tumbling her back against the sheets. If he took her while he was so needy, victory would be irrefutably and eternally hers.