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A tremor ran through her body at his touch, but she held firm. “It’s not true,” she said, though her words held little conviction. “I never loved you.” She squeezed her eyes closed. But when she opened them again, anger fired their glittering depths. “Why don’t you just enjoy what we have? Why do you have to confuse it with emotions that no longer apply?”
Why did he need an admission from her that they’d been more than casual lovers once? What did it matter now—so many months after? She’d made it clear that she’d not make the same mistake again. Her heart remained closed as an oyster, only her body willing to renew their relationship. And God knew he didn’t look for another wife.
The space between them quivered as if the very room held its breath.
“Let it be enough, Cam. Please.” A hitch in her voice as heartbreaking as a child’s plea.
A part of him wanted to punish—to send her away from his bed and out of his room. Show her how little she meant to him. But desire raged too, his body no longer restrained by subtle diplomacy or blatant mind games.
He pulled her into his embrace and back into his bed so that he lay between her legs, the sweet friction almost enough to end things before they even began. Her hair lay fanned against the pillow, her breasts upthrust, the dusky nipples puckered tight and completely suckable. The heat in her eyes matching the inferno boiling through him.
He could fool himself and call it love. Or he could take it for what it was—pure lust.
Right now, lust suited him fine.
Morgan opened her eyes to a spill of moonlight washing across the floor. Up the walls. For a split second, she was home. Surrounded by childhood mementos, the discarded pieces of an awkward adolescence.
A breeze curled over her bare skin, bringing with it the city smells of coal smoke, wet brick, and humanity. Church bells rang the hour of one. Awareness seeped through her dreams, and she knew where she was. Whose bed she slept in. Her hand reached for him, but came up empty. Again.
She sat up, pushing her hair off her shoulders, wonderfully sore, the languor of lovemaking still causing every muscle to tingle with satisfaction.
Cam sat by the window, the shutters thrown wide, the casement open. A blanket lay draped over his shoulders, but in every other way, he remained nude as a Greek god. The stern perfection of his profile edged in silver from a moon, round as a coin.
She’d known men with that kind of self-contained confidence her whole life, but in Cam, somehow the polished elegance overlaid with the coiled animal intensity touched a chord deep within her. Taunted her with every girlish fantasy she’d ever harbored and had dashed.
Could Scathach be wrong? Could Cam accept her—proverbial warts and all? The idea hung before her like a prize on a string. All she had to do was reach for it.
If she dared.
“Did it rain?” she asked, pushing the temptation away with the merest of commonplaces.
His gaze never left the window, his eyes trained on the darkness beyond. “Aye. But the wind should blow it off by dawn.” He dragged the blanket farther up around his neck. “We’ll go back to Wapping in the morning. Try and pick up Doran’s trail from there. I want to end this. I need to end this. Soon.”
Before she thought about it, she opened her mouth. “Which this are you referring to?”
He turned, his face tangled in shadow and light, the gleam of his blinding blue gaze burying itself deep within the hard nugget of her heart. “Doran. You. Take your pick, Morgan.” His hands curled to fists. “I don’t know how much longer I can hang on. I don’t how much longer I want to.”
Chapter 20
Doran watched the man with the cool appraising eyes of a serpent. Ironic since the weasly little corporal confessed to being a member of that infamous brigade.
Rumors of their exploits had reached even the weathered climes of northern Scotland. Touched the ears of the Amhas-draoi and been dismissed as the stuff of Duinedon spleen. But if this man, Rastus, were to be believed, they not only existed, but the annoying thorn in his side, Sinclair, had been a member as well. An assassin with a ruthless efficiency rivaling Doran’s own.
Rastus sat across from him, anxious under Doran’s stare. He shifted on his seat, cracking his knuckles, his hands shaking. Waiting on Doran’s reaction to the explosive shell dropped in his lap.
Doran took the last sip of ale. Placed the cup on the table. Signaled for another before turning back to his guest. “You say he lives?”
“Aye, him and the woman both.”
Bligh had tricked him. Somehow she’d faked her death and tracked him as far as London. Impressive, if annoying. “How do you come to know this?”
“He hired me to follow you before you left Devonshire. And he found me again at Mrs. Cabot’s. Wanted to know where you were. What you’d been up to.”
“And I imagine you told him, of course.”
“Enough to keep him satisfied.”
Doran’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forward. “So why tell me this now? If, as you say, you’re in Sinclair’s pay, revealing yourself to me would seem an imprudent move.”
