Rogue for a Night (6 page)

But then, she didn’t really understand the man who had just strode out of the study with not so much as a backwards glance at her. There was really only one thing clear to her from this situation: she
wanted
to know more. And she wasn’t quite ready to give up yet.

~~~

Rage wanted to punch someone. Hard. He wanted to vent his frustration on another person and feel a little blood, pain and sweat in return just to forget. But he was trapped in “civilized” society and there was no way he could obtain what he desired. In more ways than one.

Music permeated the air around him, but the pianoforte and other instruments sounded harsh and loud to his ears. When he looked across the ballroom and his gaze found Jane and Stone, standing close together, whispering some kind of loving things to each other, he did not feel happiness for his friend, but jealousy.

And when he gazed onto the dance floor and saw Lucinda spinning in the arms of some other man… well, the jealousy boiled to something much harder and more dangerous. He stared without checking himself, memorizing the sway of Lucinda’s gown. Tonight it was blue and matched the darkness of her eyes. He burned into his brain the picture of her smile as she spoke to her partner.

Then the man, whoever he was, Rage didn’t even know, turned her slightly and her gaze slammed into his from across the room. She stared at him, even as she continued the intricate steps. Watching him, focused on him.

He turned away and started toward the terrace doors as the music ended. He didn’t want to see Lucinda take up with her next waiting partner. It was a bit like torture as he wondered which one she might one day take as her next husband. Had she already met him? Was she already plotting the course of some kind of great romance with a man who knew which fork to use at supper or which gentleman was member of which party in parliament?

He shoved the door shut behind him and drew in a harsh breath of the soft summer air. He strode to the terrace wall and leaned against the stone, staring out across the estate in the moonlight. This was ridiculous. He hadn’t ever
had
Lucinda. She wasn’t his, she had simply allowed his kiss in a moment of weakness. So to be so upset at her “loss” was ridiculous to say the least.

He heard the door to the terrace open behind him and flinched. He didn’t want company, or to be bothered. Without looking back, he started away from the doors and toward the dark corners of the terrace. There were stairs back there, ones that led down to the gardens where he could slip back inside through the back and go up to his chamber. Or perhaps just take a long, hard run by moonlight in the hopes that it would clear his mind.

“Wait, Ronan!”

He froze at the use of his given name. Only one person in the world called him that. Lucinda, and only since he’d kissed her. He’d always hated that name, but when she said it…

“Please,” she said, softer.

He slowly turned to face her. She was standing at the terrace door, which she had closed behind herself, her hands folded in front of her and her gaze locked on him.

“My lady,” he murmured with a proper bow of his head.

In the combined light from inside and from the moon high above, he saw her brow wrinkle in displeasure. “What happened to Lucinda?” she asked softly.

He stood very still and didn’t respond. Honestly, what was there to say? Calling her by her given name was highly inappropriate unless they shared a far more intimate acquaintance than just two people who knew Stone. And apparently that intimate relationship was destined not to be.

His silence, which normally intimidated people of her station, and especially women, seemed to hold no meaning to her. She stepped forward. “I wish to speak to you about what happened between us before you left the shire.”

Rage closed his eyes briefly. This was not the conversation he wished to have. But Lucinda was a lady and he could find no polite reason to refuse her direct request.

“Very well,” he sighed.

She moved closer, close enough that the warm smell of fresh lilacs and summer breeze floated over the night air from her hair and skin. He couldn’t help but take a long breath of her scent… and know that her taste was just as sweet.

“May we walk together?” she asked, hesitation and uncertainty lacing her words. “I don’t want to talk of something so private where so many ears could overhear.”

He stared back at the terrace entrance to the ballroom. She was right that they could, and most likely would, be interrupted if they stayed here. And since she was going to be telling him she regretted their kiss, or that it had set her off on a path to find a respectable man, he didn’t want witnesses to that conversation.

“Yes,” he said. “We can walk down to the garden if you’d like.”

She nodded, but before he could turn away, she reached out and slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow. Rage almost rocked back at the electric desire that shot from her hand through his whole body. Suddenly his every nerve fired and all his blood settled quite uncomfortably in his cock. What this woman could do… and yet seemed completely unaware of her power over him.

He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, hoped his erection would not become even more obvious than it already felt and guided her toward the staircase that would take them to the garden. She was quiet as they walked down together, apparently in no hurry to crush his desires with a few pointed words.

And to be honest, even though he knew that crushing blow was just on the horizon, he was enjoying their time together. Lucinda didn’t feel it necessary to fill every moment with endless chatter, as did so many women of her rank. She clearly knew the value of silence, and that made her all the more attractive to Rage, who preferred silence to pointless prattle.

But the silence couldn’t last forever. As they wove their way into the garden grounds, Lucinda glanced up at him. “I-I feel you are upset with me. Angry.”

Rage slowed his stride and shut his eyes briefly. “No, not angry. But I told you after our kiss that we could ignore that it happened.”

She stopped in the path and turned on him. Her face was suddenly unreadable beyond a brief flash of hurt. “Is that what you want?”

Rage pursed his lips. Why did she turn the tables on him? Would it somehow make her feel less…
accountable
if he were the rejecter? She had nothing to be remorseful about. Whether he liked it or not, her decision to forgo an affair for a more appropriate future was perfectly understandable.

But he wasn’t about to play some kind of game to assuage her misplaced guilt.

He held her gaze. “Lucinda, I know the truth.”

She shook her head. “The truth? What truth?”

Now he pursed his lips. He had not expected this dodging of the facts, this pretending. Not from her.

“You needn’t lie for my benefit,” he said, his tone harsher than perhaps he had intended it to be. “I know that you are interested in finding a new husband from the
ton
.”

Chapter Six

     It took every ounce of control in Lucinda for her not to step away from Ronan in shock at his statement. She wasn’t certain what mystified her most, that he thought she was looking to marry, or that he said such a thing as if it were proven fact.

“Who told you this?” she asked when she could find her voice.

He shrugged and though the action was meant to be nonchalant, she could see, yet again, the anger he was barely controlling. He believed this to be true, and was far from happy about it. A situation that would have to be dealt with in a moment, but first…

“I have a right to know,” she said softly. “Since that person was speaking about me.”

Ronan pursed his lips. “Stone,” he finally said, his tone clipped and lacking all the warmth she normally liked about his voice.

“I never said that,” she insisted with a shake of her head.

“No?” His eyes went wide, though Lucinda wasn’t sure if that was because he was surprised at her denial in general, or that it was Nicholas’s words she denied. She didn’t normally go around calling someone a liar. Especially her brother-in-law.

“No,” she insisted and reached out to touch his arm. There was a shock of awareness that came with that touch, but she needed him to know she wasn’t lying. To connect with him physically, as if that would somehow confirm everything she said.

He stared down at her fingers, clenched on his arm. The tension in his muscles, his tendons almost pulsed beneath her touch, beneath his coat. He was warm, so warm.

“Then where did Stone get such an idea?” Ronan asked after a moment, his voice quiet and nonjudgmental.

She sighed. When she told him the truth, she would be utterly exposed and at his mercy. She wasn’t certain if she was ready for that or not. But she had little choice.

 “I did speak to Nicholas,” she admitted. “But I only asked how he would feel if I developed an interest in a new man.”

Both Ronan’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

“I never said marriage,” she whispered. “He did.”

He stared down at her, utterly still and so damned unreadable. But he said nothing. He only looked at her with those bright blue eyes that seemed to see to her very soul. In the moonlight they were even more pale and piercing.

In that moment, a fissure of intense desire rocked her body. She wanted this man so much that it was dizzying. Terrifying. And undeniable.

She eased a little closer. They were out in the garden, in the open where anyone could see how close she was if they came looking for them. But so far away from the house, where she couldn’t see prying eyes, where she couldn’t hear their whispers, she felt protected by the night.

“Ronan,” she whispered. “You told me before you left that I could have anything I desired.”

He caught his breath and then nodded once. “I did. And what do you want?”

His voice was so low, so gravelly and seductive. She felt it drag along her spine, draw heat from her entire being and pool it between her legs. Her knees shook with it and she could barely breathe, couldn’t speak.

So instead, she reached up and gently cupped the back of his neck. She drew him down toward her and pressed her lips to his in the kiss she had been aching for since he left three days before.

If Ronan had been holding back during their walk or while she made her confession, his hesitation was wiped away in an instant. He crushed his arms around her, dragging her body flush to his as his mouth parted over hers. Lucinda parted her lips and allowed him access with a deep, low moan that she hardly recognized as her own, it was so wanton. But she couldn’t help it. This felt so right, so utterly, wickedly, completely right.

She dug her fingers into the lapel of his coat, lifting herself closer, flattening her body to his to be as near to him as possible. In fact, there was only one way they could be closer.

As if he sensed her thought, he drew back and stared down at her. Without a word, he took her hand and guided her backward, further from the house, away from all the light but the moon. He didn’t stop until they had reached a gazebo far at the edge of the garden path.

He backed inside, drawing her with him.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” he murmured. “And I’ll stop.”

She shook her head. “Don’t stop.”

He moved with the crouched power and speed of a jungle cat and suddenly she was in his arms a second time. But this time, there was a desperation to the way he held her, a wild desire-fueled need that she recognized could only be quenched in one way.

And she couldn’t wait.

Desperate, she grabbed for his cravat. The sloppy knot slipped loose with little urging and she tossed it away and worked next on the buttons of his shirt. One by one, she tore them free, revealing more and more tight, muscle rippled, tanned skin. Skin she wanted to feel against her own. Skin she wanted to taste in the most shocking ways.

“Slow down,” he urged as he caught her fingers in his.

She shook her head. “Everything in my life has been slow,” she whispered. “For two years, I’ve been walking through water, wanting to move and being held back by expectation and pain and grief. I don’t want to be slow now.” She blinked, for she had never said these things to anyone else. She had hardly allowed herself to feel them. “I want to be free. I want to be alive.”

She pushed his jacket off his shoulders and it hit the ground with a soft crumple of heavy fabric. “Make me alive.”

He growled low in his throat and then his mouth was on hers, hard and heavy. He pushed her back further into the gazebo until her backside hit the low wall. He lifted her onto the narrow expanse of wood and cradled her back with one hand as he cupped her neck with the other. He wasn’t wearing gloves and she realized, through her fog, that this was the first time she had been touched so intimately, a man’s bare skin on her bare skin, in a very long time.

She arched into the touch with a keening moan of pleasure that turned to a cry as he dragged that same hand lower, over her bare collarbone, down to the sloping neckline of her silken ballgown. She thought he might stop there, but he didn’t. His fingers dipped under the hem of the fine fabric and he found one rigid nipple with his rough knuckles.

Lucinda shivered, her knees shaking as he pinched and plucked the nub of sensitive flesh. And held her gaze with every wicked touch, almost daring her to be as bold as he was. All propriety told her to look away from him as he did these things to her, but she tossed that propriety aside and held his gaze, lost in the intensity of his stare and his hot, skilled touch.

“I want to see you,” he whispered. “In the moonlight.”

She swallowed. She had born two children and while Anthony had always complimented her body, she wasn’t sure a stranger, one without the feelings that had blinded her husband to her faults, would look at her with the same eyes. But she had moved onto this path. There was no going back.

She stepped away and turned her back to him. “Will you unbutton me?” she whispered, her voice shaking with the question.

He leaned forward, his body curving around hers from behind until his hot breath tickled her ear and she lifted herself into him without even thinking of the action. She felt the hard ridge of his erection against her bottom and shivered at the feel of it. He groaned against her skin and then his fingers came up to the tiny, pearl buttons that ran along the back of her delicate gown. One by one, he freed them, taking his time, pressing the fabric aside with each button… and finally leaning down to press a hot, wet kiss along the skin he revealed there.