A Regency Rebel's Seduction. Elizabeth Beacon

his fists against the urge to pound the old walls in a roaring frenzy because she’d used him for her own ends and he’d almost trusted her, until she proved him an idiot all over again.

      ‘The first one to come into your head will do,’ he said cynically, wondering exactly how many lovers she’d managed to draw in under the very noses of the ton.

      ‘Oh, well, that would be you.’

      ‘I’m not your lover,’ he said starkly.

      ‘Only because I chose a disguise that held you back, Captain Darke, you being a pirate of such peculiar honour as to never take his employer’s moll, however much he might long to. If I hadn’t hit on that particular alias, we would have been lovers by now and you know it. Imagine it—us two being lovebirds, liars, then sworn enemies together all in one day.’

      ‘This is not a joke, madam.’

      ‘No, you’re right, it’s not,’ Louisa said desolately, stiffening her backbone and forcing herself to meet the hostility in his starkly austere gaze. There was no point defending herself against such revulsion, no reason to believe he’d ever change his bigoted, second-hand opinion of her. ‘But it’s more of a comedy than a tragedy.’

      ‘And if only you knew how close one can be to the other, you might stop wilfully creating havoc wherever you go,’ he muttered furiously, seeming to retreat into himself, to brood on something apparently even worse than wicked young ladies like herself.

      ‘Which is rich, coming from you,’ she accused and suddenly had all his attention as he glared at her with acute grey-blue eyes.

      ‘What else do you know?’ he demanded. As she flinched away from the steely purpose in his gaze and he stopped her retreat with a rough hand about her wrist, she doubted he knew it was tight as a trap on her soft skin.

      ‘What else could I know, Captain?’ she asked, doing her best to ice over her own eyes as efficiently as he had to stare at her as if he’d somehow scare everything she knew about him out of her by sheer force of will.

      It was his gaze that fell and not hers, although she felt a sting of something she refused to analyse and blinked it back as she watched his eyes take in the tightness of his grip on her, before he unclenched his hand from her, then stepped back as if she’d stung him.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he claimed hoarsely. ‘I never meant to hurt you,’

      ‘I expect you say that to all your women,’ she responded bitterly, suddenly transported back to her childhood with a violent drunkard.

      ‘Never,’ he husked and despair and bitterness and something that might even be grief haunted his silver-shot eyes and that hard, dare-not-be tender mouth of his.

      ‘Whatever have they done to you?’ she whispered as she watched him fight back something terrible and felt helpless in the face of such horror and pain, despite all he’d just said and accused her of being.

      ‘Nothing you would understand,’ he scorned, protecting himself against any hint of pity. Perhaps it was his ordinary defence against shallow sympathy and spurious curiosity, rather than the deeply personal slight it felt like for a moment.

      ‘Oh, of course not,’ she forced herself to say as carelessly as if they were discussing an obscure subject outside the selfish remit of such a vain young lady.

      ‘Does it still hurt?’ he asked huskily.

      ‘You should know by now that Miss Alstone, the Ice Diamond, is untouched by feelings of any kind, Captain,’ she lied lightly and silently dared him to take a step nearer and breach that fragile distance between them.

      Ignoring her, he took that step and cradled her wrist in his large hand, the hardness and occasional roughness of his palm pulling her deeper under his sensual spell, if he did but know it, and she silently despaired of herself.

      ‘Yet you’re not as unbreakable as you pretend,’ he muttered as if the words were forced from that sensual, cynical mouth, before he sank his head and kissed her slightly reddened wrist and made her knees wobble with a rush of stubborn need.

      Stiffening them against the too-potent appeal of a man who hated her one moment, then soothed and seduced the next, while probably still hating her, she resisted the silly urge to raise her other hand and smooth the over-long and distinctly shaggy dark locks he wore so well into some kind of order.

      ‘No, I’m not yet quite unbreakable, I’m sorry,’ she answered with a wry smile meant to defuse the sensual tension suddenly so alive in the growing darkness scented with old cargoes and coffee beans.

      ‘Don’t be,’ he counselled as if he couldn’t help himself.

      ‘It’s easier,’ she replied as if she understood, when all she could currently think about was the jags of heat and longing for more that were afflicting her, even as he probably despised her more deeply than ever.

      ‘I know, but not necessarily better,’ he told her with a look of untold wanting and infinite sadness, before he abandoned her hand and kissed her full on the mouth once again instead, as if he couldn’t resist the temptation of it.

      It was a fantasy, she told herself; cynical Louisa Alstone who didn’t believe in love or marriage, or any of the comforting illusions that got her fellow young ladies through life, and angry, disillusioned Captain Hugh Darke, who didn’t believe in anything much at all. It was impossible and they would tear each other to pieces. Yet it was such a sensuous, irresistible seduction of her senses that she stopped thinking and blindly took whatever he had left to give. It was so luxurious, so heated and all engrossing that it felt infinitely better than anything else she’d been offered. Moaning her agreement, she opened her mouth as demandingly as he’d already taken hers and let her tongue tangle with his, so they could take up where they left off last night. At least tonight he knew she was nobody’s but his, just for now.

      Acknowledging the transitory nature of anything they could be to each other, she strove to make her agreement to it even more emphatic, by letting her hands explore his strong neck muscles and up to muss his already unruly hair and run her fingers through the sensual silkiness of it. His groan of whatever it was—agreement, encouragement, or just downright approval—made her breath come short and her mouth even more desperate as he cupped her face in his strong hands and drew her closer. He shifted and the threat of losing even this harsh magic between them made her keen a protest, then ghost her hands down his neck and soothe along his throat as she silently acknowledged he’d made himself vulnerable to her in this much at least. And it was enough for her, would have to be enough.

Chapter Six

      Louisa felt the mighty muscles in her ungallant captain’s broad shoulders shift under her touch and it made her feel sensually powerful. To spark such an instantaneous reaction from this guarded soul made her seem very special to herself tonight. She revelled in the sense of being outside time and normal spaces, locked inside this cocoon of darkness as the spring evening closed in all round them. Then she felt the full force of the fire he’d lit in her last night streak through her and settle burning almost as bright as the sun at the centre of her being until she shook with need. Lost for words to communicate what she wanted, even if he allowed her mouth the freedom to do it, she made an incoherent sound—half-moan and half-imperious demand—and sighed her relief into his kiss as his hands sank to knead her neat derrière and draw her closer to his mightily aroused manhood. She did her best not to give away her awe and that furtive heat it sparked inside her at the very feel of what she did to him, but it was hard not to just sink into his arms and beg.

      Typical, she managed to spare the time to think, as far as she could think with his mouth on hers and her body so fascinated by the proximity of his. Typical that he is as deep in thrall to whatever it is driving us together, apparently against our wills, yet he still manages to hang on to his essential apartness while I must melt all over him like heated sealing wax.