Fiona blinked. And considered an unexpected prospect.
Despite the fact she’d stopped listening, she was aware that the tone of the evening’s entertainment had turned overtly salacious. Bordering on the shocking. Then again, none of the guests knew who she was. And Dyan was here, holding her in his lap, holding everyone else at bay.
The unlooked-for prospect teased and tantalized. Dyan hadn’t married; the county grapevine had already spread that news. Was she game to seize opportunity and, even if only for one night, take what she’d always felt should be hers?
She took precisely one minute to make up her mind.
Lips firming, Fiona sat up and twisted about to face Dyan. Halfway through the maneuver, punctuated by a sotto voce curse from him, a familiar shriek made her glance up.
She froze.
With shock.
“My God! Just look at Harriet!” Fiona’s eyes flew wide. “Great heavens! How can she? And where’s—”
Dyan kissed her—much as he’d kissed her fifteen years before. His lips closed over hers—more confident, perhaps, more assured; Fiona felt a funny lick of heat unfurl and flick in her belly.
Then he drew back.
“—Henry got to?” Fiona frowned at Dyan. “Why did you do that?” Had her thoughts somehow shown in her face?
His expression studiously innocent, his eyes veiled by his long lashes, Dyan answered truthfully. “To see if you tasted the same.” Did sweet innocence have a taste? He rather thought it did.
Fiona frowned harder. “And did I?”
Dyan smiled. “Yes, and no. Just as fresh, but…” His lids lifted; he trapped her gaze with his. “Sweeter.” He leaned closer, his gaze dropping to her lips. “Riper.”
When his lips closed over hers again, Fiona fought down a shivery sigh. It was surprisingly easy to sink into his arms, into his kiss—then again, she’d long ago given up physically fighting Dyan. He was too strong; right now, she reveled in that strength, discovered a whole new aspect of the characteristic as he drew her deeper. Deeper into his arms, until they locked, steel bands, about her; deeper into his kiss, so that she forgot where she was, forgot who she was, forgot everything beyond the subtle pressure of his lips, the artful caress of his tongue as it swept her lower lip.
She had no idea why she parted her lips; it simply seemed the right thing to do. When he surged within, she stilled, then quivered as excitement gripped her. He slowed, but his languid possession never faltered; deep inside her, embers glowed. Caught in the game, she tentatively returned the caress—and felt, unmistakably, the rush of desire that surged through him.
Muscles that were already hard became harder; he shifted, turning and drawing her down beside him so they were locked together in the chair, breast to chest, his hips to her thighs. Fiona wasn’t about to protest. This time, she wasn’t going to ask him if he loved her. This time, she wriggled her arms free, twined them about his neck, and kissed him back with a fervor no wanton scullery maid could possibly command.
Dyan took all she had to give, drank it in—wallowed in the heady taste of her. Her flagrant encouragement prompted him to deepen the kiss; a minute later, he swept one hand up her side, then closed it gently over her breast. And felt the jolt of passion that rocked her, heard her soft moan. Her nipple hardened to a pebble against his palm; he felt confident in interpreting that, too, as incitement.
So he stroked and fondled.
She responded with an ardency that nearly stole his mind.
His fingers were drifting to the closures of her gown, eager to release her abundant charms to all his senses, before he recalled exactly where they were. Although he’d swung her around so she was shielded from the room by his body—and the room was shielded from her—Harriet’s drawing room was no place for a seduction.
At least, not this seduction.
Intent on removing to a place of greater privacy, he drew back.
At precisely that instant, Harriet’s unrestrained shriek lanced through the room.
It startled them both. He, however, recognizing the tone, knew better than to look. Unfortunately, before he could stop her, Fiona, eyes wide, peeked over his shoulder.
Her jaw dropped; her eyes grew even wider—then wider still. Transfixed by the spectacle, she tried to speak—but no words came out.
Reluctantly, Dyan glanced over his shoulder; the tableau was, if anything, even worse than he’d expected. With a not-so-muffled curse, he shoved the ottoman aside, stood, then scooped Fiona up into his arms.
She clung to him readily, twining her arms about his neck. She was still too shocked to speak, her face blank, as if she hadn’t yet decided on her expression. Dyan didn’t wait for her decision; he strode to the French doors to the terrace, which were mercifully ajar. Shouldering them fully open, he swung Fiona through and headed around the house to the library.
As he’d expected, that room had been prepared for the use of guests; its French doors stood wide. Fiona’s breasts swelled mightily as he pushed into the room. “Did you see...?” Her expression was horrified.
“Unfortunately, yes.” He set his jaw. “Just forget it.” He crossed the candlelit room swiftly, pausing in the shadows of the open main door to scan the front hall. It was empty.
“Forget? How can I possibly forget seeing Harriet like that?”
An unanswerable question. “Sssh.” His eyes on the drawing-room door, through which the sounds of the orgy they’d just escaped clearly permeated, Dyan strode, as silently as his boot heels allowed, across the tiled hall. To his relief, Fiona held her fire until he’d climbed the stairs.
“And where the devil was Henry?” she demanded.
Up the redhead. Thankfully, engrossed with Harriet’s misdemeanors, Fiona had missed seeing that.
“How could they?” she asked—and looked at him as if he ought to know.
Dyan narrowed his eyes. “Strange to tell,” he said, as he swung down the long corridor leading to their rooms, “there’s a certain code of behavior us rakes-of-the-first-order abide by.” The scene he’d glimpsed before they’d left the drawing room replayed in his mind; jaw firming, he shot Fiona an affronted glare. “If you’re harboring any notion that I ever behave like that, forget it. I may have indulged in my share of wild antics, but my standards preclude public performances.”
She humphed, but seemed to accept his reassurance, just as she’d accepted him carrying her all this way. Knowing Fiona, it had been safer to carry her—that way, she could only argue, not try to elude him and mount any action on her own. He couldn’t see any reason to put her down. Yet.
“They’re married,” she stated, as they neared their rooms. Her tone rang with matriarchal disapprobation—it would have done credit to his great-aunt Augusta. “They have two beautiful children asleep in the nursery.” A gesture indicated the floor above. “How can they behave like that—consorting with others openly? Don’t they have any pride?”
When he made no answer, she humphed, and tightened her hold about his neck. “I can’t understand it.”
Dyan decided she was right—he couldn’t understand it either. But he was no longer concerned with Henry, or Harriet, or what they were getting up to in the drawing room. His predator’s soul had finally sighted his ultimate target—and he was about to seize it.
Fiona was the solution to all his problems—his relatives, his great-aunt Augusta—and, even more importantly, the wild restlessness in his soul. She’d filled that need before—provided an anchor, a focus for his passions. She would do so again.
It was time—past time—he melted Lady Arctic.
“Hypothetically speaking,” he said, “if we married, would you be faithful?”
The wary frown Fiona slanted him was not what he’d expected. “I’d consider it,” she eventually replied.
Stopping outside her door, Dyan frowned back. “What’s to consider?”
“If,” Fiona said, sticking her nose in the air, “you would reciprocate in like vein.”
>
“And if I would?”
She smiled and lightly shrugged. “What’s to consider?”
Dyan grinned. Wolfishly. “So will you?”
Fiona’s frown returned. “Will I what?”
“Marry me.”
Her heart leapt; Fiona fought to calm it. He was teasing—he couldn’t possibly be serious. Not here. Not now. Not like this. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Dyan, I am not going to marry you just so you can get your great-aunt Augusta out of your house.”
He sighed. Deeply. She felt it all the way to her toes. “All right.” He juggled her in his arms. “But you will remember I asked, won’t you?”
With that, he walked on—to the door next to hers. His. Fiona’s frown dissolved into blank astonishment. “What are you doing?”
Dyan opened the door, walked in, then kicked it shut behind them. He looked down at her. “Seducing you.”
Chapter 3
“Dyan—” Beyond that, Fiona couldn’t think what to say. Her earlier thoughts of claiming her due returned with a vengeance, but she'd intended to direct the enterprise, not the other way about. She’d run in his harness too often not to know how dangerous that could be. She tried a frown. “Stop funning.”
His brows rose. “Funning?” He held her gaze for an instant, then hefted her in his arms and strode forward. “The fun, Lady Arctic, has not yet begun.”
Lady Arctic? “What—?” Alerted by the glint in his dark eyes, Fiona looked ahead. The room was lit by a single candle, helpfully left on the bedside table. Its flickering flame only partially illuminated the quilted expanse of satin coverlet spread over the massive bed. With said bed drawing rapidly nearer, she didn’t look further. “Dyan—this is silly. You don’t want to seduce me.”
“I’ve wanted to seduce you for fifteen years.”
Fiona stared at him. “Rubbish! You went to India, remember?”
Fleetingly, his eyes met hers. “I left on the day your engagement to Tony was supposed to be announced.”
Fiona blinked. “You left...” She studied the harsh, tanned planes of his face. “But I didn’t accept Tony.”
Dyan stopped by the side of the bed. His heavy lids lifted; the expression in his eyes stole her breath. “When I think of the tortures I endured, imagining you in his arms, in his bed ... swollen with his child.”
The planes of his face shifted as he grimaced. “I should have known better.”
He tossed her on the bed.
Fiona shrieked. Dyan followed her down, landing half beside her, half over her. Fiona struggled, totally ineffectually, to hold him back. He ignored her efforts; one hard thigh trapped hers. Deliberately, he leaned into her, his weight pressing her into the bed, anchoring her beneath him. He didn’t bother with her hands but instead framed her face.
And kissed her.
No gently savoring kiss, but a commanding, demanding incitement—a ravishing challenge—tempting in the fire it offered, tantalizing in its sensual promise. His lips were hard, hungry, ruthlessly insistent. It took no more than two heartbeats for Fiona to react. Winding her arms about his neck, she kissed him back.
Fervently. With all the long-denied ardor in her soul.
She wanted him—she could hardly miss the fact that he wanted her. For now—for tonight—that was enough. He’d spoken already of marriage; she wasn’t so innocent she didn’t know they hadn’t reached the end of that discussion. But such matters—and all others—could be left until the morrow.
Tonight, she would be what she’d always longed to be.
His.
Dyan didn’t wait for any further encouragement. Drawing his hands from her face, he deepened the kiss, locking her lips apart so he could plunder unrestricted. His weight held her immobile; he had no intention of doing the gentlemanly thing and easing back. Instead, he set his hands skimming over the smooth skin of her upper arms to her delicately molded shoulders, partially covered by the tiny silk sleeves of her dress. The interference registered, but he wasn’t yet ready to deal with that; his first priority was to fully appreciate the sensation of her silk-clad body, all soft womanly curves, trapped and yielding beneath him.
Sensual gratification was a wondrous thing.
He let his mind absorb the impact of her lush breasts, soft stomach, rounded hips, and delightfully firm thighs, as well as the length of her long, slender legs. Only then did he set his hands moving again, deliberately tracing those selfsame curves.
Her breasts filled his hands—and more. Their softness firmed at his touch. He kneaded, then went searching, capturing each nipple, rolling them to tight, aching buds.
Her breath hitched; she pressed her head back into the bed, breaking their kiss. Dyan shifted his attention to the long curve of her throat, exposed like an offering. Her breathing stuttered as his roving tongue found one pounding pulse point; he laved it, then sucked lightly and felt her melt—just slightly—beneath him.
Inwardly, he grinned devilishly. She was going to melt a great deal more. He released her breasts and let his hands quest further, fingers widespread, tracing her ribs, then the sides of her waist, his thumbs following her midline. When his thumbs reached her navel, she arched lightly beneath him, her hips lifting wantonly against him.
Dyan grinned in earnest; he let his lips drift lower, to pay homage to the ripe swell of her breasts exposed above her low neckline. Simultaneously, he slid both hands lower—and lower—tracing her body all the way to her knees. Then he reversed direction.
His thumbs came to rest in the hollow between her thighs; he rotated them, one just above the other.
Fiona’s startled gasp filled the room. Driven by the sound, Dyan caught the fine silk of her neckline with his teeth and tugged it down; one tightly pearled nipple slipped free of the confining bodice. He fell on it—hotly— swirling his tongue about the ruched peak, then drawing it into his mouth to taste, to suckle, to torment.
The muted scream Fiona gave was music to his ears. Her fingers, on his shoulders, flexed, then sank deep. She arched, offering herself to him in flagrant invitation.
Dyan tormented her some more.
Long before he dragged the silk from her other breast, and tortured that nipple as he had its mate, Fiona was convinced she would soon lose her mind. Surely women didn’t normally have to withstand this—this heated torture—not every time they mated. How could they?
Her wits were whirling, her mind awash with sensations—from the hardness of his hands locked about the tops of her thighs, to the heavy weight of him—so peculiarly welcome—to the heat that welled within her, washing through her in response to the heat of his lips, his mouth, his tongue. He was hot, too—she could feel the heat of him wherever they touched. His clothes muted the sensation; if they were removed, his skin would scald her.
The thought made her shiver; his rotating thumbs pressed deeper and she shuddered, then gasped. Of its own volition, her body arched, offering. One thumb slid still deeper and pressed, then caressed—her breathing stopped, then started on a fractured, shuddering, almost silent moan.
His hands left her, his weight anchoring her completely once more as he lifted his head and recaptured her lips.
His fingers busy with the closures of her gown, Dyan spared a moment to consider the next phase. Still kissing her, he opened his eyes and checked the light—it wasn’t good. When he bared her, he wanted to see her clearly. Half shadows would not suffice. Evocatively plundering her soft mouth, tempting her to match him and meet him, he skated through his recent memories; there were candlesticks on the mantelpiece.
Accepting the inevitable—given he was not about to accept anything less than the ultimate experience tonight— he drew back from their kiss.
He looked down at her—she was panting only slightly. When he saw her eyes gleam beneath her lashes, he trapped her gaze in his. “I’m going to get up for a moment. Don’t move.”
Enforcing his edict with a warning look, he levered away from her, then sat up and got to his fee
t.
There was another single candlestick and a three-armed candelabra on the mantelpiece. Dyan lit the candles, then quickly positioned furniture about the bed. One single candle on either side and the candelabra at the end threw an acceptable amount of light upon the coverlet. Upon Fiona, still lying as he’d left her, a dazed expression in her hazel eyes, her lips swollen from his kisses.
The sight sent a surge of sheer lust through him; Dyan shackled it, trapped it—he’d let it loose later. First, he was going to sate his senses—all his senses—in enjoyment, in the sheer pleasure of enjoying her.
Shrugging off his coat, he flung it on a chair and returned to the bed.
Sitting on its edge, he removed his boots and stripped off his stockings. Turning his head, he caught Fiona frowning at the candelabra. Inwardly grinning, he clambered back on the bed.
As he settled beside her, one hand going to her waist, then sliding around to the laces along her side, Fiona transferred her frown to him. “Is this to be some kind of exhibition?”
Dyan toyed with various replies while his fingers loosened her laces; he finally settled for, “More like a demonstration.” Flicking the last knot undone, he trapped her gaze. “Consider it a learning experience.”
He was going to learn her—all there was to know of her. Tonight he’d know her on every possible plane.
Fiona studied the dark blue of his eyes and could see nothing beyond brutal candor. He might be teasing her, just a little, but... Then he shifted, his weight trapping her again, his hands rising to tug down the tiny puffed sleeves of her gown—and she saw the reason for the light. “Dyan, I don’t think the candles are such a good idea.”
She tried to catch the sleeves, but her dress, which she’d surreptitiously hiked back up, was steadily moving down.
“First lesson,” he said, his gaze fastening on her freed breasts, concealed only by her tissue-thin chemise. “You don’t think. That’s my role—you stick to yours and we’ll get on just fine.”