Читать книгу The Midnight Man - Charlotte Mede - Страница 9

She stood a pale ghost, eyes wide with fury. And for a moment, Nicholas Ramsay believed everything he’d heard about her.

That she was wild, reckless, mad.

He let the heavy fabric of the curtain fall back against the window.

“You sick, sick bastard,” she repeated as though in a trance. She moved slowly toward him amid the carnage of the room, oblivious to the gun that never wavered in his hand. A small part of his brain told him that she was more than he had expected, more beautiful, more willful. And more dangerous.

“Only a monster, a diabolical fiend, could wreak such destruction.” She breathed fire, continuing her walk toward him. “Shoot me, I don’t care, because if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to exact my revenge on your black soul.” She glanced scornfully at the pistol; then he saw her eyes alight briefly on one of the palette knives balanced perilously on a small end table. Her right hand convulsed at her side as she clutched at the handle. The angle she would have to swing it toward him was wide as a canyon. But it didn’t stop her.

In a seamless movement, he closed the gap between them, knocking the knife from her grip. He could feel her heart hammering against him as the muzzle of his pistol cut into her side. The dark gloss of her hair was silk against his chin, her slenderness hiding a tensile strength that was surprising. She was vibrating, from anger, exhaustion, and shock.

“Get it over with,” she spat, her violet eyes clouded with pain. “I would rather die than tolerate this heinous destruction. Or rot in some asylum with vengeance eating away at my sanity. What are you waiting for?”

He was reluctant to release her, time decelerating to align with the ebb and flow of her breathing, the pulse point beneath the translucent skin of her throat, the plushness of her lips. She’d stopped struggling and he felt an immediate, gut-clenching need.

He hadn’t liked it at Congais’s last night, and he didn’t like it now. Women had come and gone like common currency in the past two decades of his life, assuaging his desires from London and Paris to Buenos Aires and Jakarta. Making it doubly hard for him to account for his groin tightening like a fist. It didn’t help him feel any kindlier toward her.

“I’m waiting for you to stop acting like an hysterical she-cat.”

She jerked against him, brushing up against his hardness. His jaw clenched.

“What do you expect? Coming in here, laying waste to everything I value.” She glared at the discarded palette knife lying at her feet. “I would kill you if I could.”

“I’m not easy to dispatch and a few have tried. Although you’re the first woman, as far as I can tell.”

“Let me go.”

“If I do, it looks like I’ll have to kill you.” Which would defeat the purpose of it all. He pulled her closer to make his point, the slender roundness of her buttocks against his hardness an agony more exquisite than the most evil torturer could devise.

Her shoulders slumped and some of the fight went out of her. He felt sorry for her. Almost. But then sentiment was not in his nature, and if it ever was, it had been driven out of him long ago.

As though she had pulled a switch, her body became sinuous, the lines and curves melting into his hands. “Let go of me and we can discuss this,” she said softly, deceptively.

“You’ll behave?” he asked into the silkiness of her hair.

Immediately, she stiffened. “Behave? Bloody hell—I’m not a child,” she bit out through clenched teeth. “Women are not children and needn’t be addressed as such.”

“I fail to see the distinction,” he murmured conversationally. In his experience, women, whether high born or low, were after much the same thing—to be taken care of, pure and simple. And class divisions made little difference.

“Sod you!”

“Watch your language,” he mocked, but he loosened his hold, still keeping an arm around her waist. “Are you ready to have a civil discussion?”

Her silence was not convincing. He slid the pistol into his waistband and eyed the still-open door of the atelier. The room looked as though it had been on the receiving end of a monsoon, and he’d seen a few in his time in the farthest reaches of the globe. To his experienced eye, the chaos didn’t look to be the handiwork of London’s street runners. He took in the savaged canvases, the broken glass. More like someone nursing a malevolent, savage hatred.

Someone like him.

He began backing her toward the iron stairs leading to what he already knew was the rooftop, stopping when the motion of his body sent her ankle against the bottom step. He pushed her down until she was sitting. Oil from a broken flacon coated the step and seeped into the hem of her skirt.

“Don’t even think of moving.”

She glared up at him with molten disgust. “What is it you want? Other than to wantonly destroy something you can’t even begin to understand.”

With a hand on the banister, he leaned over her. “You believe I’m responsible for all this.” He deliberately crushed a piece of glass under his booted foot.

The deep blue of her violet eyes darkened. “I don’t know how you’re involved with Sissinghurst, but trust me, I will make you pay.” Despite her brave words, she had the appearance of a brilliant butterfly pinned under glass. Exactly the way he wanted her.

He knew that she still wore the same plain blouse and skirt, with its paint-flecked apron, beneath her serviceable cloak. The fact that she didn’t look or act like the spoiled heiress she undoubtedly was made no difference to him.

“I take that to mean that you didn’t believe me last night when I said that I can help you, Helena.” He reached out to run a finger down the side of her face. He expected her to flinch, but she held still.

“So it’s merely coincidence that you’re here amid this outrage.” Her voice escalated from shock to betrayal. “And at Madame Congais’s earlier?”

“I didn’t say that.” His fingers followed the line of her jaw to the point of her chin. Her skin was petal soft in contrast to the glitter in her eyes. “As I recall, you didn’t hear me out, given your rather hasty departure.” The finger made a slow descent along her throat.

She licked her lips, in fear or desire, he couldn’t say. She had a beautiful mouth, wide and full, and damned sensual. He watched objectively as his fingertip met the small inch of skin exposed by the opening of her cloak.

On a quick, indrawn breath, she said, “And I’m supposed to take you at your word?”

“It would make things so much easier for you.”

“Ah, yes, the pistol.”

“I was expecting the possibility of company.” He dropped to one knee between her feet so his face was inches from hers. She pressed her body back against the stair to get away from him, an impossibility. The pupils of her fine eyes dilated, those same violet eyes, heavy with opium and longing, that had snared him at Madame Congais’s.

She was warm. In the closed space of the atelier, her body gave off an elusive scent winding around him, a tourniquet cutting off his reason.

“I wish you’d stop touching me.” She stiffened, her low voice close to pleading.

“Like this, you mean?” He sank his hands into her hair with enough force to loosen the pins. She started to shake her head, but he held fast, allowing a small measure of pent-up anger and burgeoning lust to rise to a surface he generally preferred to keep glacially smooth. One by one, the pins dropped to the floor.

He brought his other knee down until they were face-to-face. Her lips parted. “Did you mean what you said last evening?”

She was obvious in her desperation to assume a modicum of control. He smiled, quickly understanding what she was referring to. “About your work?”

She nodded.

“You’re wondering if I lied, if I’m lying, when I said your work is magnificent.”

It seemed as though she were holding her breath. Her hair beneath his hands was the heaviest silk. “What does it matter how I answer? You clearly believe I’m the mastermind behind this evening’s events.”

Helena met his hard stare. A fierce intensity, which he couldn’t begin to identify, slashed through him. Her eyes were wary, her cheeks flushed, and he knew she had picked up on his monumental rage. Good. He threaded his fingers through the hair at the back of her nape, the lustrous strands loosening around them. The scent of lavender and musk drifted from the chestnut waves as they fell across her shoulder and breasts. His blood coursed and his erection pounded painfully.

“Please, I don’t like this…this sort of thing.” The words were unexpected. Coming from Lady Helena Hartford.

He decided to be deliberately crude. “This sort of thing? Sex?” he asked brutally. For a moment, he wondered what her relations with her husband and many lovers had been like. But then again, why should he care. “I find that difficult to believe. Because judging by your response last evening, I’d wager the Bank of England that you’re a hot little piece.” With the heels of his hands, he trapped the sides of her face, his fingers making tight circles on her temples. “Tell me.” He brushed his mouth lightly across hers. “Tell me—do you like this?”

She expelled a small breath. He twisted his hand in her hair and pulled her lips to his, tasting the cushioned softness, deliberately playing her, his tongue a sensual invasion, slow and inexorable, his gentleness in inverse proportion to what he was feeling. His hands roamed, feeling the long line of her legs and the curve of her back. She swayed toward him, her eyes drifting closed. He knew that her skin would be hot to the touch and soft as satin against his hands. His mouth, when it opened hers, seared, hard and driving.

Pressing her against the sharp edges of the stairs, he cradled her head on his forearm. He tasted her, penetrated her, pushing his tongue deeper to draw on her breath. The smell, the feel made his blood pound as years of fury blended with the need to punish, to avenge.

Between gasps, she didn’t pull away, but arched toward him, her mouth opening to the force of his tongue. Her hands, which had been clutching the railing moments before, now slid through his hair. A soft moan escaped from her mouth to his, her muscles relaxing beneath his body.

His mouth trailed to her neck where he tasted her tender skin and felt the rapid beat of her pulse against his tongue. With his free hand, he pushed her legs apart, bunching her skirts about her hips. Unresisting, the long legs fell open, encased in crisp, cotton petticoats. It always amazed him, the layers of fabric Western women devised to hide their sex. More erotic than the hundreds of naked tribeswomen he had seen over the years, Helena Hartford’s legs in their virginal white tempted him with subtle eroticism. He stroked inside the fabric, from calf, under the sensitive knee, to aching thigh until he neared the opening of her pantalets.

He’d never been so hard, each brush of her against his body reminding him of the prison built by his past. The more he fed upon her, the more the hot pressure in his chest built. Her hands were touching him, slipping into the open neck of his shirt. He twisted her hair and pulled her lips close for a kiss, drawing deeply until they were both breathless and gasping.

But he wasn’t about to let her get away so easily. She would have no choice, not with his large hand cupping her face, not with his impassive gaze giving her no place to hide. “You don’t like sex,” he repeated, his teeth tugging erotically on her lower lip. She suppressed a groan. “Then I wonder what it is that you do with your army of lovers.”

Her hands stilled on his chest and her eyes flashed open, and he didn’t like what he saw. Her expression was closed, as though her essence were hidden away, as far from his touch as she could get. “Lovers…” She expelled a small breath, yet tightened her hold on him. “Please.” She bit her swollen lower lip. “I’m not sure about any of this.”

He made sure his smile was predatory. “Then tell me to stop right now and I will.” Sliding his hands underneath her cloak, he molded his palms to the shape of her. Her head turned away from him, but her breathing quickened to the rhythm of his hands.

“Open your legs for me.” The command was deliberate.

Her voice shook. “I can’t.”

“But you already are.” He kept his voice low, seductive. “You’re spreading your legs for me.” He watched as she squeezed her eyes shut, a flush beginning to stain the soft skin of her neck. Unerringly, he sensed she was close to climaxing, helpless against the demands of her body. He reached for the puddle of oil on the step next to them. He wanted to push her, drive her to the edge, expiate the rawness in his gut, cut it out like a growing cancer.

He dropped his mouth to hers, brushing her lips subtly, following with his tongue, just touching, tasting, and then deeper, harder as he began massaging the liquid into her thighs, stroking higher, the skin beneath his palms firm and slick. She threw back her head, exposing the long line of her neck. Her face was rigid with need, exactly the way he wanted her. Senseless, mindless, and trapped.

His hands continued their relentless journey, every movement accompanied by her sharp little breaths. He found himself riveted by the opening of her pantalets, the breach welcoming his fingers, the curls of her sex beckoning. He parted her flesh, exposing her.

He stopped breathing, a hot surge of blood pumping his erection. Sweat broke out on his brow. She was beautiful and he hated her for it. His fingers, coated with oil, slid between her already wet folds and she moaned, tightening around him. He slid in another and he felt a trickle of her moisture ease from her body. He pressed his thumb against the core that pulsed like a tiny heartbeat. Her hips began moving in a rhythm as old as time, and he continued to slide in and out of her, shaping her desire.

Her hips arched into his hand; then, trembling with need, she struggled to sit back on her elbows, her clothing bunched around her waist. Her hair was a wild tumble about her shoulders, her eyes glazed, lost to the world. Her mouth, with its full upper lip, tried to form the words. “Enough,” she rasped, “I can’t take anymore.”

Ramsay’s breathing shortened. “Is that so?” He stilled, waiting patiently for his reward. “But I think you can and you will, Helena. Sit up, bring your hands down, and hold yourself open for me.”

The silence was thunderous. She shook her head, more at herself than him. “Why are you doing this to me?” Her fists were clenched in frustration.

Ramsay grit his teeth, her stare like heat from a fire. He would answer her question in time, but in his own time. Right now, he was grateful for the lust drowning out the tortured thoughts he’d kept buried for the last two decades. He concentrated on that mouth, her long legs sprawled beneath him, and then just as he believed he was going to throw her up against the wall and shove into her, he heard the sound.

Coming from below, it was like the roll of a ship’s masts on a windy day. Except it wasn’t. Those were footsteps thundering up the narrow stairs to the top floor of A.R. Burrows Shipping.

He knew what was coming. And felt his blood run cold. In a few economical movements he’d pulled Helena’s skirts and cloak back over her body. She looked up at him, her eyes clouding first with confusion and then fear as she quickly assessed the situation. Bundling her hair into a knot, she grabbed at a few pins scattered on the floor.

Seizing her by the arm, he hoisted her to her feet. “They’re coming. For you, in case you haven’t already guessed. There’s no time for argument—you’re going to have to trust me.”