4. Chapter 4
Aaron froze when the madwoman’s mouth touched his. Her lips were so damned soft. Her mouth tasted like cherries. Her hands softened on his face when he went still, and her fingertips eased experimentally into the hair behind his ears.
Soft … sweet … tender …
It had been so damned long.
His breath escaped him on a short gust that parted his lips. She parted hers in response. She ran her tongue across her own lips to wet them, and wet his as well. She must have liked the taste of him, because the tip of her tongue came back again and again, slipping just past the boundary of his parted, hungry lips. Sweet, bold little tongue.
Lost in her taste, he sucked that tongue into his mouth and stroked his own over it. Then he dipped his own into her parted mouth, tasting cherries and sweet, hot innocence. She didn’t know how to kiss, some distant part of his mind realized. She didn’t even realize that open mouths were carnal and wicked and oh, dear God, her mouth was so damned delicious.
He pressed forward, kissing her as hard as he could in his restraints. She responded with a surprised little noise that went straight to his groin, leaching the last bit of sense and blood from his brain in the process. Her fingers slid around to the back of his head, fisting in his hair as she pressed hard into him.
Wild tongues, darting and dueling in the secret hot confines of their kiss. Soft, succulent breasts flattening against his hard chest, small, relentless hands tugging at his hair. God, if only he weren’t tied up —
Bound.
Kidnapped.
Cold sense dashed onto the fiery kindling of a decade of abstinence, dousing the flames ignited by her hot, untutored kiss.
Aaron pulled back sharply, whipping his head away, pulling his hair from her grasp, leaving a few strands behind in the process.
Her dazed eyes and flushed features — damn, she was pretty! — hung only inches away. “What’s wrong?” Her fair brows drew together. “Is it the way I’m dressed? I know I don’t currently look my best, but believe me when I say I clean up very well. I shall not embarrass your house or your name.”
Aaron fervently hoped he never saw her at her best. He might not survive the event. Then he fought back his instinctive male appreciation to glare at her in dark fury. His countess, she’d called herself. Title by seduction — or worse! What sort of creature was she to arrange her own ruination?
Oh, God. Ruined.
Everything he’d worked for over the past decade, ruined. His grandfather would never award him the rest of his inheritance if he believed him capable of defiling a young lady! Not after what had happened before!
Curse his damned fatal luck. How had this come to happen? He’d been driving along, minding his own business, a man with a future and real possibilities at last. Then this unbelievable little maniac simply reached out her dainty hand and, with the flick of one finger, completely destroyed his life!
Well, not if he could bloody well help it! He’d not spoken a word yet in her hearing. Good. She’d best listen carefully now. He gazed into her blinking, green-blue eyes and gave her Hastings’s finest sneer.
“Nice try, ducky, but I ain’t ‘is lordship. Ye’ve gone and wriggled on the wrong bloke’s lap!”
“Ha!” Elektra folded her arms. “Good shot, Lord Aaron, but servants don’t ride inside the carriage.” She was off the man’s lap now, pacing before the mossy hearth.
He twisted against his bonds. “They do if the master be too bunged up to travel and an urgent message is to be carried on!”
Elektra examined the man before her. The unconscious lord in the rain had been long-limbed and lean. This man was just so formed, although she’d not noticed such a breadth of shoulder in the limp fellow in the yard.
The too-large coat might have misled her, of course.
Yet the man who had been too ill to walk into the inn under his own power should not be now struggling so mightily against his bonds. The ropes creaked, and she worried for the structural integrity of the old chair. Her own knots worried her not at all, for she’d learned how to tie up her brothers years ago. It was often the only way to get half an hour of peace.
If only she’d allowed herself a peek at the fellow when he’d been brought indoors! Her worry over appearing unsuitably curious now seemed ludicrous. She’d been too demure to poke her nose from her quarters, but not too ladylike to kidnap a man at the point of a pistol!
Her eyes narrowed. “I saw you being toted out of your carriage myself!”
His handsome face regained the scornful sneer. “Does I seem like I ‘ad to be carried out o’ me carriage a day ago? I saw you, too, you know, up there in that window, lookin’ down on us all — and you saw me.” His gray — no, blue — eyes bore meaningfully into hers.
Elektra’s stomach jumped at the memory of the dark figure of the driver in the rain and the way he’d gazed so boldly at her.
And the way that had made her feel.
She lifted her chin. No, it couldn’t be so. Look at him! He was handsome and lean and … handsome.
You don’t want it to be true. You don’t want this man to be a common servant.
You don’t want him to be forbidden to you.
That thought shocked her enough to make her wonder if it was not the truth. Never let it be said that inner voices weren’t annoyingly blunt.
And usually, right.
Oh, shut it!
His suit. She clung to one last hope. It was a good one, if a bit worn, which could be the garb of a gentleman a bit down on his luck!
Except that Lord Aaron Arbogast was supposed to be wealthy.
A good suit could also be the garb of a good servant, who sometimes received an employer’s castoffs. Worthingtons did not toss away perfectly good clothing in such a way, for there was nearly always another Worthington coming up who could wear it — but Elektra knew some people did.
“I tell you, for the last time, you li’l lunatic! — I be not ‘is lordship!”
Elektra swallowed hard. Oh, heavens. She could not have gotten it wrong, could she? Did her quarry lay feverish and quaking back in the Green Donkey Inn, his wealthy, titled, eminently eligible brow even now being mopped by some comely housemaid instead of by herself? Had she thrown away her best advantage on the desperate pilfering and imprisonment of a valet?
Her breath left her abruptly.
What have I done?
She sat down again on her crate and dropped her head into her hands, one fist still wrapped about the pistol. I suppose I am just another mad Worthington after all.
Inhale. Exhale. She lifted her head to eye the man still bound to the chair. “Well,” she said wearily. “This is a pickle, isn’t it?”
He stared at her for a moment, then offered her a short, amused snort. “That’s puttin’ it mildly, I’ll agree.” He watched her, no longer fighting his bonds, clearly sensing that she’d begun to believe him.
Elektra stood and set down the pistol. His gaze followed it to the floor. She flapped her hand to release the tension of holding the heavy thing. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t set it off.”
He shot her a wary glare. “It ain’t even loaded, is it?”
Elektra blinked. “Well, of course it’s loaded! Goodness, only an idiot would play highwayman with an unloaded pistol!” Shaking her head at the very notion, she bent to tug at her very good knots.
He was silent, so she glanced up at him. Only a foot away, his eyes were locked on her in abject horror. “Ye held a loaded pistol on me all these hours? What if ye’d fallen asleep with that thing pointed my way?”
Elektra gave him her loveliest smile. “I imagine you would have woken me up.”
His brows rose. “Aye, with me dyin’ scream, ye mad thing!”
“Oh, be still. You’ve pulled the knots so tight I cannot budge them!”
“Cut ‘em, then!”
She frowned. “That’s ten yards of very good rope! Besides, it’s not mine. It belongs to the Green Donkey. I’d rather not ruin it, thank you.” She put her hands on her hips. “And I forgot to bring a knife.”
“You — you —!”
It was difficult to tell but she rather thought his features were turning an alarming shade of purple.
Aaron was furious. He had been back in England for all of twenty-four hours and here he was, hip-deep in another scandal!
And in Shropshire, of all bloody places. The quietest corner of the land, bucolic, boring Shropshire — and he’d managed to run smack into the only insane female within fifty miles!
Her single irresponsible action would undo all his years of hard work to convince his grandfather that he wasn’t that man any longer. No, the last thing he needed was to have his plans thwarted by a headstrong beauty who was willing to shred his reputation along with her own!
For a moment, he contemplated telling her so. He would see how she liked the fact that she’d locked herself into marriage to a destitute blackguard!
Then again, the notion of being a countess, even a destitute, publicly scorned countess, might still appeal to her. She was mad, after all. At last, he felt the ropes around his hands part.
His fury boiled over. Without planning to do anything but deliver a sound scolding, he reached up and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her face close to his and —
He kissed her. Again. Hard.
Well, it appeared she liked it quite a bit. After a first stiffening protest, her lips parted under his and her arms came about his neck. She relaxed into his lap as if it had been made for her, sinking her body into his.
The soft weight of her bottom and the heat of her on his groin, not to mention the billowy press of her breasts against his chest, made Aaron lose his train of thought. What had he been thinking? Oh, that’s right. He’d been thinking that he ought not kill this person, because she was female, and because she was weaker than him, and because killing women was frowned upon in England, and God, she felt good!
No. He would not allow himself to be distracted. Distraction was death.
If anything, this disruption in his schedule ought to make him realize just how important his mission was. He had to get to his grandfather as soon as possible. To lose his last chance to see himself redeemed in the old man’s eyes would be more than he could bear.
No matter how soft or voluptuous or inviting or tantalizing his captor was, he would not allow himself to think about her as anything but a threat and a nuisance.
Until she kissed him back.
Her mouth was so soft, so warm. As warm and soft as his life had been hard for a decade. He’d allowed himself no softness, no release, no temptations for so long that he was afraid he’d forgotten what it was a man did with a woman pressed to his body. Then his cock surged against her. Oh, yes, that’s right. He remembered now.
She wrapped her slim arms more tightly around his neck and kissed him with hard, untutored pressure. Something in his remaining consciousness twanged a warning at him. Part of him would’ve liked to ignore it, especially the part of him that was now wedged against her rounded hip, growing harder by the minute. And it wasn’t as if he could move away at all. His lower body was still bound. He was trapped, wasn’t he? A victim. None of this was his fault.
He kissed her back, just as hard as she was kissing him.
The kiss evolved, changed, growing into something pure and white-hot between them. It became more than mouth meeting mouth, more than body pressed to body. Something inside him rang out, a bell unsounded ever before. He felt it resonate within him, within her, silvery and strong and mysterious, tangling them deep in their souls.
To hell with his mission. To hell with his grandfather. To hell with anyone or anything that was going to keep him from her, keep him from drinking from this well, from driving himself hard into the sweet liquid softness of this softly panting, willing …
… Virgin.
He could tell by the way she kissed him. Saucy and strong-willed and convincing as she might be as a kidnapper, this girl was as innocent as a day-old chick.
Damn it.
Noticing that he was no longer kissing her, she pressed herself tighter to his body and opened her lips against his, just as he had done a moment ago. She tasted of honey and woman and hot, glowing moments of mind-blowing ecstasy that he would remember for the rest of his life … except that they had never happened, and never would.
Damn it!
Mustering willpower such as he’d never needed before, he twisted his neck to pull his lips away from hers. Gasping, he pressed his cheek to the back of the chair and closed his eyes. He would not allow it to go on. He would not …
He felt her soft lips on his ear warm against his chill flesh. Her warm breath gusted in sensitive places. Dear God, she was without mercy!
“Stop!” He’d intended an authoritative bark. Instead, he practically whimpered it. “Please … Stop!” And now he was begging. His day just got better and better.
He felt her weight shift, and the heat of her upper body left his cold and alone. Once he was convinced she had truly pulled back, he dared open his eyes and turn his head to face her once more. She sat sidesaddle on his lap, seeming to find him quite comfortable. Her arms were crossed in front of her delicious bosom, and her perfect brow held a wrinkle of perplexity.
“Well, you started it.”
The expression of mild irritation on her face left him breathless with disbelief. She looked as though she’d snagged a nail, while he felt as though he’d been struck by a runaway ale cart.
She showed no sign of revelatory epiphanies. No ache for silvery perfect completion shone in her eyes.
I must have imagined it. Of course, I imagined it.
He shouldn’t have felt so disappointed. This young woman was his worst nightmare on wheels, certain death to his hopes and ambitions. His soul wanted nothing to do with hers.
Too bloody right, it doesn’t!
Wildly, he cast about for some way to get her sweet bottom off his pinned but very eager lap. With a groan he pulled his aching arms between their bodies and rubbed at his raw wrists. “Damn!”
“Let me see.” Cool fingers removed his numb ones from the abraded skin. “Oh, look what you’ve done, you foolish man!”
He gaped at her. “What I’ve done?”
She left him — thank you, God! — to stride across the room to a small bucket of water that he recognized as coming from his carriage. After moistening her handkerchief, which had been hidden in her bodice, she came back to bend over him while dabbing the cool cloth to his skin.
He hissed at the sting, and at the returning sensation in his fingers.
“Oh, don’t be such an infant. You wouldn’t have hurt yourself if you hadn’t struggled so! I didn’t bind you tightly enough to do you damage.”
“Know that for a fact, do ye? You tie men up often, then?”
“Weekly,” she assured him absently as she tended him with practiced care. “I have five brothers, which is four too many on most days.” She stood and returned to the bucket, rinsing her handkerchief and wringing it out again over the open windowsill. He wondered why she didn’t just spill the water on the ruined floor.
She returned to him and deftly rolled up his sleeves to examine the burns across his biceps he’d given himself in his struggles.
“Brothers.” Now that some of his blood supply was returning to his brain, he recalled a dark fellow lunging into the carriage. The struggle had been fierce but brief, for Aaron had been distracted by the sight of the back of his not-quite-hired coward of a driver disappearing from the circle of light cast by the carriage lanterns, fleeing into the dusky blue evening. “Was that one of them, what knocked me out on t’road? Feels like I got meself kicked in the ‘ead by an ‘orse!”
She drew back to gaze at him warily. “You mustn’t blame him for that. I ought not to have involved him at all. He’s — well, he isn’t completely well, since the war. It was very selfish of me to put him in that situation. I ought to have realized —” She pressed her lips together. “All blame falls on my head, you understand? Swear to me that you’ll not pursue charges against him, or I won’t finish untying you until you do!”
Since Aaron had no intention of ever telling a single soul that he’d been assaulted, kidnapped, and held at pistol point by a girl — even one assisted by a madman! He’d have no difficulty keeping quiet about it. He would take this mortifying incident to his grave, although it would probably take him the rest of his life to forget the humiliation. However, something she’d said distracted his attention for the moment. He tilted his head as he watched her. “What ‘bout you, then?”
“What about me?”
“Don’t ye mean to make me promise not to call the magistrate on ye?”
“I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you did,” she said absently. “But I’d really rather you didn’t. My family needs me far more than I need punishment. After all, I’m hardly likely to repeat this particular offense.” She sighed. “I do believe I am an utter failure as a kidnapper.”
She’d begun cleaning the graze on his forehead, leaning close to see better in the dimness. He could feel the heat from her skin on his face and neck, but it was the sweet, wild scent of oil of jasmine, grown in the tropics, shipped across the seas, and warmed by living girl that made his throat close tight. She must have stroked it over her wrists and behind her ears after her last bath.
He closed his eyes and pictured the moment, allowing himself to imagine the damp, steamy chamber and hear the slosh of soapy water as she stepped out of the copper tub, her skin glowing from the heat of it. The candlelight would shimmer over the swell of her wet hips, highlighting the roundness of her dripping breasts, catching the glint of water droplets as they hung, quivering, from her pink, erect n —
“Ow!”