The Wedding Escape (22 page)

“You're not afraid, are you, my sheltered little American?” He raised his bottle and took another swig before finishing darkly, “You should be.”

“Why?” she asked, unable to comprehend what had aroused the resentment he seemed to suddenly have toward her. “What have I done to make you so angry with me, Jack?”

He looked at her a long moment, weighing her question. She seemed different to him somehow, like the beautiful young heiress who had scrambled into his carriage, and yet not like her at all. It was not her dour-looking outfit that accounted for her change, for he had seen her in everything from the most lavish of wedding gowns to the simplest of his own wrinkled shirts. Mere clothes could not begin to diminish her uncommon beauty. No, something more had been done to her. He frowned as he raked her with his gaze, taking in her darkened hair and brows, the matronly spectacles obscuring her eyes, the deftly painted shadows that accentuated the faint wrinkles of her forehead and bruised the skin beneath her lower lashes. Oliver's makeup, he realized, unaccountably annoyed by how effective it was. The old thief and his sisters had said they would transform her so that no one would recognize her. They had taken her and turned her into someone else.

And they had stolen her from Jack in the process.

“Go to bed, Amelia,” he snapped. “You'll need your rest for packing in the morning.” He turned and staggered back into his study.

Amelia stared after him, stunned. She had defied him by going out and getting work, and he was punishing her by severing the ties of their friendship and casting her out. While she had initially accepted Annabelle's invitation to stay with her and her family, Amelia had discovered that deep down she didn't want to leave Jack and Oliver, Eunice and Doreen. She had intended to graciously thank Annabelle for her kindness the next day, and tell her that she preferred to stay where she was. But now Jack was throwing her out.

You can trust me,
he had told her. How eagerly she had grasped those words. She had thought he was her friend. She had believed he was the first man who appreciated her for what she was and what she could become, instead of all that had marked her as a means for gain to every other man she had ever known. But mired within his appreciation of her was the untenable condition that she remain helplessly dependent upon him, like some little lost bird that could never learn to fend for itself. It was more than unacceptable. It was vile and controlling. In his own way, Jack Kent was every bit as dominating as her family, and Percy and Lord Whitcliffe. At one time she would have reluctantly accepted this, would have found a way to silently tolerate it, the way she had tolerated so much else in her life. But she was not the same Amelia Belford who had allowed herself to be used and manipulated by others for so many years. She was changing, and she would be bloody damned if she wouldn't let him know it.

“You lied to me,” she hissed, tearing off her spectacles and hurling them down as she marched into the study after him. “You told me I could trust you—that you were my friend. Then the minute I do something of which you don't approve, you throw me onto the street. What did I do that was so wrong, Jack?” Her voice was shaking with fury. “All I did was go out and get a job, so for the first time in my life I could have some degree of independence, instead of always relying on the generosity of others—including you. Why is that so terrible?”

“I don't give a damn about the blasted job,” Jack snarled. “Go out and get ten jobs if you want—each one under a different bloody disguise, if it pleases you.”

“If you don't care about the job, then why are you so angry?”

“I'm not goddamn angry!”

She stared at him, bewildered. His body was rigid as he glared at her, a terrible mixture of rage and resentment churning through him.

“You
are
angry,” she insisted. “Why?”

What could he tell her? he wondered helplessly. That he was angry because she was leaving him? That nothing had been the same since she came into his life, and now he was loathe to be without her? It was as pathetic as it was ridiculous. She couldn't stay with him. He had no right to her, and no hope of ever having any right to her. No matter how faded and dull Oliver and his sisters tried to make her, no matter whether she was gilded with her father's wealth or stripped down to the essential, glorious core of her being, she was as unattainable to him as the moon. Amelia had been reared in a world of overwhelming privilege and protection, and with or without her money she remained what she had always been: hopelessly fine and rare and pure. She was as magnificent as a glittering star, as shimmering and lovely and beyond his reach as the sunlight that played in silvery sparkles upon the ocean.

Such a precious treasure was not meant for him.

Despite all that Haydon and Genevieve had done for him, despite all the hateful lessons and expensive clothes and determined attempts to refine him, he could never escape what he was. The bastard result of some filthy, disease-ridden coupling, a lad who lacked the common birthright of even a proper name or home. If he closed his eyes and tried very hard a faded image of his mother came to mind, all round and soft and ripe with the smell of unwashed wool and cheap perfume and whiskey. But he had not known then that she was cheap and dirty, had not understood that her rouged cheeks and caked powder were the marks of a woman who lifted her skirts for any man who opened his wallet. He had thought her pretty then, had looked forward to the painfully brief visits that she had made to the filthy shack he lived in with that old prick and his wife. His mother had promised to take him away, had promised that it would only be a little longer before she had saved enough to buy a cottage that the two of them could live in. And stupidly, pathetically, he had believed her. He had clung to her tightly corseted form and breathed in the familiar scent of her and listened to her talk as she ruffled her fingers through his hair, pleading with her to stay, begging her not to leave him. But she always did. She left him again and again, almost killing him with despair each time he watched her disappear down the path that led her back to wherever it was from which she came. Until finally she didn't come anymore.

At the time he believed she had merely been delayed, for months and months and ultimately, over a year. And on that day he fought back, when he finally killed that old bastard and ran away, he had felt absolutely certain he would find her. That he would simply go to the nearest village and she would be there, with her rouged lips and her gentle hands, ready to take him in her arms and protect him. At the age of nine, he had no inkling of how very big the world was, and how extraordinarily unimportant and despised his place within it.

He struggled to stifle the sob rising from his chest.

“Jack?”

He stared in confusion at Amelia, wondering how long she had been watching him. Her eyes were wide with concern. It was as if she had seen something, had pierced the layers of his carefully cultivated indifference and caught a glimpse of the pain and loss that lay festering there. He didn't want her pity and concern. He was supposed to be looking after her, not the other way around. He struggled to adopt a cool derision that he hoped cut through whatever she imagined she saw and left her with the impression that he was merely a rude and unfeeling bastard.

“Leave me if you want to,” he snarled. “I don't give a shit.”

Amelia winced as if he had slapped her.

But something kept her there, kept her from wheeling about and storming from Jack's study, from shouting for Oliver to come down at once so that he could drive her over to Annabelle's house immediately. It was obscured by the shadows of Jack's gaze, but Amelia could see it nonetheless. An emotion so deep and desperate that once she had unveiled it from the rest of his profoundly boorish performance, she was amazed that she had not recognized it earlier. Everything in his manner and stance and words was telling her that she meant nothing to him, and that she should go.

Yet within the smoky gray of his anguished eyes, he was pleading with her to stay.

She moved toward him with steady purpose, her gaze never leaving his. And when she stood so close to him that she could almost feel the powerful beating of his heart against her breast, she raised her hand and laid her palm upon the ragged white scar on his cheek, holding him fast.

“I will not leave you, Jack,” she told him simply, “unless you truly wish it.”

Jack stared at her, mesmerized by her words, her scent, her touch. She was promising to stay with him. But why? In that brief, frozen moment, it scarcely seemed to matter. He had thought he was losing her, and suddenly he wasn't. His mind was too distorted by rage and need to analyze it further. Wanting to seal her pledge, to bind her to him so that she could not change her mind, he dropped his bottle and wrapped his arms around her, imprisoning her against him.

And then, with a haunting despair that he felt surely was going to destroy him, he sobbed and captured her lips with his.

Amelia released her hold upon Jack's scarred cheek to wrap her arms around his neck, pulling him down as she opened her mouth to him. Her body crushed against his with a frantic cry, feeling the heat and strength and power of him closing around her in an impenetrable shield. Desire pounded through her, heating her blood and setting fire to her flesh until she could think of nothing but the whiskey-sweet taste of his mouth, the rough scrape of his jaw against her cheek, the hard press of his manhood against the melting triangle between her thighs. Somewhere in the faraway reaches of her mind she knew that it was wrong, but a staggering need had obscured all reason, until she was aware of nothing but the hunger to hold him, and touch him, and kiss him, to reach into his soul and make him understand that she would not abandon him, regardless of what others had done in the past. And so she plunged her hands into the dark tangle of his hair and delved his mouth with her tongue, tasting him deeply, passionately, offering herself to him as she made him hers, not caring if it was right or not, not caring about anything except the fact that she wanted him with a desperation that obliterated everything. Nothing was clear except the granite heat of his body as it molded itself to hers, the ravishing caress of his hands as they roamed across her breasts and back and hips, the rigid length of his arousal as it stroked against her, filling her with aching need. She wanted to wash away the pain of whatever was tormenting him so, to cleanse his mind and ease his heart until he no longer needed to lose himself to the hollow respite of alcohol and rage. And so she did not stop him as he fumbled with the buttons on her jacket, did not so much as whimper a feeble protest when he finally growled in frustration and tore the offending garment open. The linen of her blouse disintegrated next, but all she could do was tilt her head back as he buried his face against the soft swell of her breasts, a low, feline cry rippling from her throat as his hands gripped the cool silk of her corset.

Jack dragged his tongue over Amelia's breasts, his senses drowning in heat and taste and touch. A claret nipple blossomed from the lacy edge of her corset and he hungrily closed his mouth over it, sucking upon it long and hard, swirling his tongue over the tender peak until the pressure of Amelia's fingers biting into his shoulders told him she could bear no more. And so he moved to the other, drawing it from its fabric and whalebone nest and suckling it between his lips and teeth until it sprang sweetly ardent against his tongue. He ran impatient fingers down the intricate webbing at her back and found the clasp of her skirt, which he released with a practiced hand. Her hooped petticoats fell next, an elaborate confection of lace and bands of silk-covered steel, which pooled round her ankles in an ivory puddle. All that remained beyond her corset now were her stockings and drawers, a flimsy affair of frills and rosettes that he found maddeningly arousing. He slipped one hand inside the fabric opening between her legs and fondled the satiny mound beneath, holding her fast with one arm as he kissed her deeply, assaulting her with a storm of caresses and sensations as he drew her to him, feeling the brief tension of her resistance erode as he slipped his fingers into the slick petals of her. Sweet, wet heat poured over his hand and he growled with satisfaction, arrogantly pleased that he could arouse her so.

He eased his fingers into her, exploring the intimate folds and pleats, stroking her and stretching her as his mouth tasted the delectable ripeness of her lips. He placed his knee between her legs and pushed her thighs wider, opening her to his gentle touch as he began to rain starving kisses upon her naked shoulders, her slender arms, down the flat plane of her corseted belly, until finally he was kneeling before her. She gasped with shock but it was too late, for he grasped her wrists and pinned them hard against the wall as he flicked his tongue into her hot coral cleft. Her thighs clamped together and she mewled a desperate protest, but he only tasted her more, his tongue slipping in sensual circles across the delicate sleek flesh. He alternated his caresses, first light and teasing, then harder and more demanding, patiently stoking the flames of her until she released the breath she had been holding and the iron clasp of her thighs relaxed.

Amelia leaned against the wall and fought for the strength to stand, overwhelmed by the exquisitely forbidden sensations tearing through her. The sight of Jack on his knees lapping at the dark wet pool of her womanhood sent shivers of excitement through her. She was most certainly wanton and depraved, she realized, to take pleasure in such a decadently indecent assault. And yet she could not stop herself from enduring his glorious torture, no, instead she stood frozen and breathless, appalled by what he was doing, but even more terrified that he would stop. She could have moved away if she wanted to, for he had released one hand to probe her innermost passage with his finger, thrusting in and out of her as his mouth tasted her with an insistent, steady rhythm. Instead she pulled him closer as she opened herself, shifting and arching against him as he continued to ravish her with his mouth. Sheer, undiluted pleasure was building within her in ever intensifying waves, stretching and rippling, while her breath was reduced to tiny, desperate sips. It was excruciating to be tormented so, to be hovering on the threshold of ecstasy and yet unable to leap over it, excruciating and agonizing and exquisite. A hollow ache was blooming inside her, making her feel restless and desperate, and so she reached for more, suddenly rigid except for the ragged flutter of her chest as she fought to fill her lungs and somehow withstand the unbearable torment of Jack's caresses. Reached and gasped and reached, until finally there was no more breath to be had, nothing except the tiny sob that spilled from the back of her throat as she arched suddenly against him.