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“Never. But you’re not a helpless female.” He must have left one of the French doors ajar, because a moment later they were inside, and he was starting for the stairs.
“I could scream,” she warned him. She wasn’t sure if he really would hit her back but she wasn’t going to take any chances.
“You could. But the sound doesn’t carry to the servants’ quarters from here.”
“Your stepmother would hear.”
“True. She’d love to catch me despoiling a virgin. Should I invite her to join us?”
“You’re disgusting.”
He set her down on the stairs. “That is a rather foul thought, isn’t it?” he said in a deceptively amiable voice. “Where do you want to go? There’s my room, of course. It’s not fancy but it’s quite comfortable. Or I can take you back to your bedroom next to the kitchens.”
“And leave me there?”
“Of course not. There’s also a pretty little house I had chosen for you. I believe it used to belong to someone’s maiden aunt until she died. I had it freshened up, and we can do anything we want there. You can scream as loud as you like and not bother anyone.”
Aunt Tillie’s cottage, Sophie thought with a pang. “Why would I want to scream?”
“Oh, I do promise I can make you scream, precious,” he purred.
She stared at him. “You already make me want to scream, sir. In frustration.”
“I’ll take care of that too. Where are we going?”
“I’m going to my bedroom and my very narrow bed, alone, thank you. You are going straight to hell.”
“Ah, princess,” he said, “I think it’s going to be more like heaven.” His mouth came down on hers.
Oh, God, the other kisses had been disturbing enough. Each time he kissed her she seemed to go a little farther on the road to inescapable madness. This one was a little rough, a demand rather than a question, his hands hard on her, but, instead of freezing, her heart leapt in immediate response. She didn’t even want to think about what she was doing—she pulled at her hands that were locked between their bodies, and slid them around his waist, holding on as he ravished her mouth.
It was hypnotizing, it was heartbreaking, it was everything she wanted and nothing she could ever have, and she deserved it. Just this once she deserved at least a taste of him, of the man she’d watched for so long, the man she’d dreamed about. She wanted, needed, his mouth, his skin, his touch. Surely she could risk that much. She softened her mouth beneath his, and then opened it as his tongue brushed across the seam of her lips, opened it for his tongue.
The shocking pleasure swept over her, and she wanted to melt into his skin. She wanted to kiss him back, but she didn’t know how. All she could do was stand in his arms and let him ravish her mouth, closing her eyes so she could revel in it.
He suddenly broke the kiss, looking down at her, his breath coming in quick rasps. “Who the hell are you?” he whispered, looking shaken. Her wicked Dark Viscount, shaken by a kiss she had barely managed to respond to.
For a moment she could think of nothing to say. She’d tried to tell him the truth but he hadn’t believed her. In the end, what did it matter? Tomorrow she’d be gone. “Sophie,” she whispered. “I’m Sophie.”
A faint smile curved his mouth, one of almost relief. “So you are,” he said, and picked her up in his arms once more, moving up the stairs quickly. She realized then that his white shirt was open, baring a triangle of burnished skin, and she imagined his shock if she moved her head downward and put her mouth against him.
Action followed thought immediately, and she pressed her face against his bared throat, breathing in the delicious scent of him. And then, because she couldn’t help it, she tasted him, her tongue tracing a small path.
It was a good thing they’d reached the top of the stairs, because with a strangled sound he dropped her, pushed her up against the nearest wall, and pressed the lower part of his body against hers. She should have been frozen in disgust, knowing what that hard ridge of flesh was, but instead it made her burn. Her thin, damp chemise was made of such fine silk that its touch on her flesh was one more arousal, brushing against her aching breasts, rubbing between her legs with the thrust of his hips, and she cried out, as something shook her, some strange, terrible need that she couldn’t fight.
“Do that again,” he growled in her ear, “and I’ll take you right here, right now, and I don’t give a damn who walks by and sees it.”
She felt drugged, dazed, but she tried to focus on him. It was hard, because he was pushing against her lower body in a slow, insistent rhythm; that hard, clothed part of him against her soft, silk-covered flesh. “You didn’t like it?” she asked dazedly.
“You know damned well, my sham innocent, that I liked it far too much. I wanted your tongue everywhere on my body, and if you tease me like that I’m not going to wait. If your game includes taking me in your mouth the first time, then you have my blessing, but I’m taking more than that. I’m taking everything.”
“Everything?” she echoed dazedly. She ought to run. This was the disaster that had been looming, that she’d known was coming. Not Alexander Griffiths. But her own, totally demented need for him. It was what she should have run from. It was what she was staying still for.
Her sisters hadn’t told her about this. No one had. She’d been advised on the technical details of mating, which was far more warning than most girls received, but she had two older sisters to fill her in, though to her knowledge neither of them had firsthand experience. And they’d talked about love, and shared interests, and companionship, and comfort.
But no one had said anything about a fire in your blood that burns away any common sense you might have once possessed. No one said you could want a man’s touch so much that your body was in an uproar, parts that you didn’t even name seemed to be aching with longing. No one had said you would throw everything away for a man who mocked you and teased you and then spoke to you in clipped tones like you were a servant, and yet all he had to do was touch you . . .
She no longer knew where she was in the house where she’d spent almost her entire life. He was moving her now, his body still clamped to hers, moving her backwards, and she lost all sense of direction, caught up with the feel of him pressed against her, the sight of his chest, that warm, exotic color that should taste like the sun. They came up against a door, and it opened behind her, and they were in darkness, the curtains pulled against the bright moonlight.
