Night in Eden (15 page)

He was sitting on his horse at the edge of the trees, his hand resting on his hip beside his knife. He had the brim of his dark hat pulled so low that all she could see was the hard slant of his mouth. He was just sitting there, watching her. She straightened up, pushing the hair off her damp brow and feeling herself grow hot from the inside out. He wheeled his horse and rode away.

Louisa cast her a knowing look. "Have you lain with him yet?"

"What?"
gasped Bryony. She bent over her washboard, scrubbing furiously in an attempt to hide the hot color that flooded into her cheeks.

Louisa showed her missing teeth in a broad grin. "I seen the way he looks at you."

"He... he hasn't forced me," said Bryony, reaching for another shirt.

"I didn't think he had. Not the Cap'n." Louisa pushed her dollie through the boiling sheets. "But I seen you lookin' at him, too."

Bryony's hand clenched around the linen shirt she still held. It was his shirt. She breathed deeply, and her senses filled with the smell of horses and tobacco and... and him. She glanced up at Louisa. She wanted to deny it, but somehow she couldn't.

It was that evening, after she'd laid Simon in his cradle and was sitting up in bed studying Laura's garden plans, that Bryony found the drawing of him.

She was flipping through the various garden plans in the sketchbook when a loose sheet that evidently had been pulled out and then stuck back in among the blank pages of the book fell out and fluttered to the floor. Bryony bent over to pick it up.

And almost gasped. It was a picture of Hayden St. John. Laura had drawn him as if he stood, naked and threatening, beside a hot fire. Bryony could see the lean, taut muscles of his buttocks, the long, corded line of his thighs. Firelight gleamed over the sweat-slicked, bulging muscles of his broad back and strong arms. She knew the way his body would feel if she could touch him—the hard and unyielding strength of muscle beneath the softness of skin.

His back was turned to her, but he had his head swiveled around, as if he were looking at her over his
shoulder. Dark hair curled at the nape of his neck. There was a hint of shadows on his half-hidden chest. His lips were set in a hard, almost cruel line. And his eyes...

His eyes glowed with a fierce, hungry, frightening heat.

It was an intense picture, a disturbing picture. And Bryony knew instinctively that the woman who had drawn it had been both intimidated and troubled by the raw masculinity of this man. By the potent masculinity that drew Bryony so inexorably.

She reached out, tentatively, and touched that hard mouth, and a low moan escaped her own lips.

Have you lain with him yet?

She felt something clench tight, deep within her, something that burned and spread its slow heat through her body. She rolled over, clutching her pillow to her chest, to her aching breasts, then brought it down until it was pressed between her legs.

She wanted him. He hadn't forced her and according to Louisa, he wasn't the kind of man who would. But she found she almost wished he would. She wanted to feel his man's body covering her. She wanted to run her hands over his hard, sweat-slicked shoulders. She wanted to thread her fingers through the dark curls at the base of his neck and draw his mouth down to hers. She wanted to see his eyes glow with a heat that was hungry for her.

Not for Laura.

Sometime later she was still awake when he came back to the house. She heard his long-legged stride pass down the hall, heard his door open and close behind him.

She could imagine him standing beside the hearth in his room, peeling off his clothes. She knew he must sleep naked, because there were never any nightshirts with his washing. She could picture what his naked body must look like as he rolled, alone, across that big, exotic bed carved with entwined birds and flowers.

And as she stared up at the pink silk hangings of

Laura's bed, imagining it all, she found herself wondering about the woman who used to sleep in this bed.

The woman who had drawn such an aggressive, frighteningly sensual picture of her husband and insisted that she sleep every night in her own bed, in her own room.

Two days later, he asked Bryony to become his mistress.

He came upon her in the middle of the afternoon. She had dragged one of the mahogany, balloon-backed chairs from the dining room into her bedroom and was standing on it, trying to take down the box of materials she had shoved up onto the top of the wardrobe. She was reaching over her head, the box half in her arms, when she felt a frisson of excitement, a heating of her blood, that told her he was there.

She glanced sideways and saw him standing in the doorway of her bedroom, one shoulder propped against the jamb as he watched her, just watched her. She gave a small mew of surprise and lost her balance.

The box of materials slipped sideways and crashed toward the floor. She tried to grab the top of the wardrobe, to steady herself, but she was already falling.

"Bloody hell," he swore, springing forward to catch her.

She came down on top of him, knocking him off his feet. He locked his arms around her, so that they fell together. He held her tight to his chest, twisting his body so that he took the brunt of the fall. She heard him grunt as his shoulder and hip slammed into the floor. She landed on top of him, but he rolled with her in his arms, and somehow she ended up sprawled beneath him.

She went utterly still. The breath left her body in a rush as she gazed up into his face, just inches above her own. She saw his pupils dilate, the blue of his irises disappearing beneath a sea of black that seemed to glow with a
primitive, exotic heat. A sexual heat that sharpened the angles of his cheekbones and parted his lips.

She lay beneath him in the age-old position for penetration, and they were both intensely aware of it. He already had her pinned down. She could feel the long, iron-hard proof of his arousal wedged against the cleft of her legs. All he'd have to do was free himself from the confines of his breeches, shove up her skirts, and enter her.

Tension shimmied in the air between them as they stared at each other. She waited, not daring to move, scarcely breathing. She could feel every inch of him, pressing her down onto the wooden floor. Feel his heat, smell his musky, male scent. Her entire world seemed to have reduced itself to this man, to her awareness of his big, strong body, hard and ready to take her.... And to her awareness of her own body, beneath his.

Unbidden and unwanted, her desire for him uncurled from the depths of her being, swelling her breasts, making them ache, until it was an agony not to arch beneath him, not to rub her nipples against his broad chest, not to press the center of her need against the hardness above her. She had clutched his shoulders as they fell, and she realized she still held him, her fingers curling into the muscles of his back. She willed herself to let go, but she could not. It was all she could do to keep her hands still, when they wanted to explore, to caress. She was afraid of him; afraid of what he wanted of her, afraid of what he might do to her. And yet, still, her body reacted to his.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his warm breath washing intimately over her face.

"Yes." She sounded breathless. He shifted against her, raising himself up on his elbows to let her breathe easier. But as he raised his shoulders, he lowered his head, so that his lips still hovered over hers.

She saw him breathe in, felt his chest expand against
hers. A tremor ran through him. His head dipped lower. He speared his fingers through her hair, cradling her skull between his hands, holding her steady. Holding her steady for his kiss.

She saw his lashes droop, saw his head tilt, his lips part. Her entire being yearned for his kiss, yearned to join her mouth to his, to feel the texture of his lips, to taste him. Only she knew that if it happened now, with her already beneath him like this, it wouldn't end with a kiss. It wouldn't end until he buried himself, shuddering and satiated, between her legs.

Desperate, she shifted her hands until they lay flat against his chest, and pushed. "No."

It was only a whisper, but it was enough to stop him, or at least deflect him. Instead of descending on her mouth, his lips skimmed enticingly over her cheek, nuzzled her ear, laid a trail of fire down her throat.

"Hush," he murmured. "I'm not going to hurt you, Bryony. I won't do anything to hurt you. I won't do anything you don't want me to."

His lips moved against her neck, warm and soft, and suddenly her control broke. She made a low, keening sound in her throat, her fingers clutching at his chest, her back arching up off the floor, straining toward him. At her unwilled response, she heard him growl, an animal sound of triumph that rumbled in his chest. His hand slid down her neck, closed over her breast, just as his mouth closed over hers.

It was as if every nerve ending in her body exploded. She gasped into his mouth, twining her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her as she opened her mouth to him. He was hot and wet and demanding. His tongue curled around hers, penetrating her, taking her, while his hands coursed over her body, searing her with his heat, inflaming her desire for him. She squirmed beneath him, wanting him, burning for him.

"I want you," he whispered, his breath hot against her ear. "Tell me you want me."

She wanted him. She was aching and trembling with her want. But she felt his hand at her thigh, fisting in her skirt, bunching it up, and, somehow, in the grip of that intoxicating swirl of sensual innervation, she found the strength to lunge up against him, her hand closing over his, stopping him.

She tore her lips from his. "No. Oh, God. Please, no."

She felt him shudder, felt his fingers dig, cruelly, into the flesh of her thigh. And she thought,
he's not going to stop. Dear God, he's not going to stop.

But he did stop. He let his breath out in a harsh, ragged sound, and bowed his head until his forehead pressed against hers. He didn't relax his hold on her leg; if anything, he gripped her harder, but she gritted her teeth against the pain because she knew it wasn't so much her that he was holding on to, as his own self-control.

She lay still beneath him, tense and frightened, while his raging savage male instincts warred against his gentleman's code. Gradually she felt the tension within him begin to ease. He lifted his head and stared down at her.

It was the moment she'd been dreading. She expected him to be angry, to pour out his rage and frustration on her, for encouraging him and then turning him down. Instead he brushed her lips with his, just once, gently, in a brief kiss.

"Listen to me," he said, his voice as gentle as his kiss. "You don't need to be afraid of me. I said I won't do anything you don't want me to, and I meant it. But that doesn't change what I want. I want you, Bryony. And I know that you want me."

She wanted to deny it. Yesterday she could have denied it. But not now. Not after the way her body had betrayed her when she found herself so unexpectedly in his arms. She stared up at him, too engulfed by shame and guilt and fear to say anything.

When the silence stretched out and she still didn't say anything, he lowered his head and nuzzled her neck, his
warm breath teasing her ear. "I want you, Bryony. I want you to become my mistress." She stiffened.

"I'll take good care of you, sweetheart." He flicked the sensitive skin at the base of her ear with his tongue, nipped at her earlobe with his teeth. "I'll get another woman from the Factory to help you with the work, so you won't have so much to do. I'll buy you nice clothes, and—"

"Don't!" With an angry sob, she pushed against him, catching him so unawares that he drew back, and she seized the opportunity to roll out from beneath him. "Don't!" She sat up and scooted backward on her hands and bottom until she felt her back slam against the smooth side of the wardrobe. "I told you I'm not a whore, but you didn't believe me, did you? You think that because I'm a convict, I'm any man's for the taking. Well, I'm
not."

His eyes narrowed as he, too, sat up. "If I wanted to
take
you, damn it, I'd have taken you weeks ago, and you know it. But I don't want to just take you. I want you to come to me willingly, as my mistress."

"I'm not a whore."

She saw a muscle jump along the side of his jaw, and she knew he was fighting to keep his temper under control. "I know you're not a whore, Bryony."

"Do you?" She shook her head, angrily, from side to side. "I don't think so. Not when you think you can pay me for sharing your bed with pretty clothes and an easier work schedule."

He leaned forward, coming up into a kind of crouch. "I wasn't talking about doing those things as payment," he said, enunciating each word carefully. "I was telling you what I'd like to do for you."

"If I become your mistress."

He reached out and caught her chin in his hand. She didn't try to wrench away from his grasp. "You can't deny what happens between us every time we're around
each other. I've tried fighting it, but it doesn't work. You're scared of it, but that doesn't seem to make any difference, either. So why don't we just acknowledge it and let it happen?"