as if it had never existed. She read unequivocal rejection of whatever he saw in her face. She must gawk at him like an adoring puppy. What price denials now? Leaden shame crushed her.
She shrank back. His arm tightened before she escaped. At the same time, he swiftly slid sideways so the bed hangings shadowed the face he turned away. The dawn light no longer illuminated his scars. His sudden movement was violent enough to shake the bed.
Lord above …
Her confusion dissipated. Usually Merrick flaunted his scars, daring the world to pity his disfigurement. This morning he hadn’t had time to don his usual armor against curiosity or disgust. With a sickening twist of her stomach, she realized that for all his defiance, he hated his scars. Hated them to the depths of his being.
He’d despise pity so she lowered her eyes. Still tears prickled. Stupid, stupid girl. She couldn’t stifle the longing to take him in her arms and comfort him against a lifetime of grief. An insane, dangerous longing.
“I must be losing my touch. If I polluted the purity of your bed, I was sure you’d howl your lungs out,” he said with familiar derision, at last looking at her directly. But after that revealing moment when he’d withdrawn so abruptly, she knew his careless manner was a defense mechanism.
The beautiful waking smile developed a mocking edge. She was a thousand times a fool, but she couldn’t help mourning the change even as she went rigid against him. “You’ll never make me scream,” she said repressively, although her heart wasn’t in it.
His face lit with amusement she didn’t understand. “Don’t be too sure, bella.”
He talked wickedness again. At least his jibes reminded her of what she hazarded in this bed. When she’d agreed to save Roberta, she’d imagined a hundred perils. Violence. Ravishment. Cruelty. She’d never imagined that the riskiest element of her ordeal would be the wounded soul of Castle Craven’s master.
“What are you doing here?” She fought to keep her voice steady.
“Not enough, obviously.”
With those three words, the sweet morning turned dark and threatening. This time she made a more convincing attempt to withdraw, but Merrick pushed her onto her back with insulting ease.
“Let me go,” she said through frozen lips. Her heart beat a wayward tarantella of panic and anger, largely with herself. Why hadn’t she left before he stirred?
Keeping one arm firmly around her waist, he rose and slid his free hand behind her head to restrain her for a relentless survey. “Not in this lifetime.”
Curse him. How she wished he wouldn’t say harebrained things like that. If she’d been one whit less selfaware, she might take him seriously. Then where would she be? Fear wedged in her throat. It would be the outside of enough to leave Castle Craven not only disgraced, but burdened with a broken heart. Except she intended to leave heart-whole and scandal-free, she reminded herself stalwartly. And despairingly wished she believed that.
“This wasn’t part of our bargain.” She wished she could summon the will to tell him to release her in a way he’d believe. If she insisted, he’d let her be. She should be fuming at these games—she was, blast him—but still that damnable, reluctant tenderness lingered. Nothing erased the memory of his appalled reaction when he woke to find her studying him. She suspected that he tormented her now to prevent her dwelling on that stark instant.
His masculine scent assailing her, he leaned closer. She prayed for control, for common sense, for, God help the impossible wish, rescue. “There must be another bedroom.”
He smiled in a way that made her wonder if he guessed how she struggled against her weaker self. “This is the only one fit for habitation. I wasn’t preparing to host a house party, tesoro. I planned to entertain a mistress to a week of carnal bliss. Or rather I planned for that mistress to entertain me.”
She stiffened as his hand slid languidly through her hair and fell to massage her nape. Sensation spread like circles on a pond. “You slept somewhere else the first night.”
“The cot in the dressing room isn’t designed for a man over six feet tall. I’ll be damned before I let you exile me there again.”
“Perhaps I could sleep there,” she said with false sweetness.
To her surprise, his lips twitched. “Why do you challenge me, when you know I can’t resist a challenge?”
“I hardly know you at all,” she said, to remind herself as much as to put him in his place. She stifled the reckless urge to lean into his caresses.
“So why do I feel that you count every beat of my heart?”
She couldn’t tell whether he was serious. If only she was so awake to his every thought as he accused. What she knew frightened as much as fascinated. What she didn’t know left her floundering in an ocean of reluctant desire. “Stop playing with me, Merrick.”
“You no longer want to extend the preliminaries?” He leaned over her, his big body pressing her into the mattress.
She wriggled without shifting him. “I want you to let me go.”
“No, you don’t,” he whispered.
The problem was she didn’t, not at her deepest level, but she wasn’t so lost to enchantment that she forgot what was at stake. She raised one hand to his chest to prevent him coming nearer. “Stop it, Merrick.”
“Jonas.”
She struggled to maintain her grip on reality. “Wicked, lying, licentious, scheming, manipulative, underhanded, wanton scoundrel.”
“Say it as though you mean it.” He leaned into her hand and slanted his mouth across hers. This time, surprise didn’t paralyze her. Nor was she the innocent he’d kissed to daunt into incoherence. She knew the pleasure his merest touch sparked.
His hand relaxed to cradle her skull. The arm around her waist embraced rather than constrained. For one forbidden moment, she folded against him like a flower drifting across his breast. Then she broke the kiss and squirmed away until one foot touched the floor.
He caught her arm. “Don’t go, Sidonie. You’re safe enough. I only want to kiss you.”
She cast him a skeptical look as she stood, shivering in the early morning cold. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“Because you’re sadly untrusting.” He paused. “And because you’re a clever woman.”
He caressed the sensitive skin of her wrist. The leisurely stroking made her belly clench with longing, even as she recognized he sought to manipulate her back into his arms. “If I was clever, I’d have fled as soon as I saw you’d weaseled between the sheets.”
He sat up, his shirt sagging to reveal the curve of one powerful shoulder. The sight of smooth tanned skin dried every drop of moisture from her mouth. Such a contrast to his marred face. She hadn’t considered him handsome at first, even disregarding the scars. With every hour, his physical allure grew. Right now, she’d scorn a handsome man as banal. Idiot that she was, she’d discovered a taste for dark and dangerous and damaged.
Troubled, stirred beyond experience—and he’d hardly touched her—she wondered what had happened to the determined woman who’d arrived at Castle Craven to confront a monster. Only two days later and that woman hovered out of reach.
“Just one kiss, Sidonie. That’s the price of freedom.” He sounded sincere, not like the flirtatious devil whose bright silver eyes dared her.
Shock paralyzed her. It seemed too good to be true. She could depart with Roberta’s vowels, almost as innocent as she’d arrived. Except that along with astonishment and relief, she experienced a twinge of invidious, unacceptable, undeniable disappointment. “You’ll let me go back to Barstowe Hall?”
He scowled as he released her hand. “Are you mad? That wasn’t