Seducing an Angel

"Blow out the candle," she said.

She could not bear to look at him any longer, with the knowledge that she was in /some sort of relationship/ with him – mistress and protector.

That was all, as she had pla

She would hold images of Mary and Belinda and Alice in her mind's eye, and even Roger. Poor Roger, who had once tried to protect her…

She was Lord Merton's /mistress/, nothing else.

He came down beside her after putting out the candle, and she turned to him and reached for him, intent upon taking control of the encounter as she had pla

His mouth left her breast and moved down to her stomach. She felt his tongue dart into her navel, and all her i

His free hand was smoothing over her i

She could have freed her hands. His grip on her wrists was not tight.

She did not do so. She lay passive beneath his onslaught, though that was not at all an appropriate word to describe what he was doing. She had thought him an i

This was /not/ as she imagined a man would use a mistress. She had expected all brute strength, orchestrated by her own seductive wiles.

Though not with him once she had chosen him. With him she had expected an i

As though she were an experienced courtesan.

How foolish had been her expectations.

His fingers feathered her breast and closed lightly over her swollen nipple. She almost cried out with the pain of it – the pain that was not pain.

His body came over hers then, and his weight came down on her as he released her wrists and slid his hands beneath her buttocks. He lifted his head and she knew he was looking into her face, though she could scarcely see him in the darkness.

"There is a kind of love," he said, his voice very low, "that a man feels for his lover, Cass. It is more than lust."

And he came into her even as his words undid her and made it impossible for her to brace herself against the invasion.

He was big and long and hard, as she remembered from last night. She clenched her muscles about him, as she had done then, and slid her feet up the bed and hugged his strongly muscled legs with her own.

He smelled clean, she thought. His subtle, expensive cologne did not mask less pleasant odors. It merely enhanced cleanliness. His hair was soft and faintly fragrant. She slid the fingers of one hand into it as he rested his head on the pillow beside hers, his face turned away from her. She wrapped the other arm about his waist.

And he began the rhythmic thrust and withdrawal of intimacy, always the part that had required the greatest effort of endurance from her during most of her marriage.

He had more control over himself tonight. She soon knew that. It was not going to be over in a very few minutes. His movements were steady and measured. Deep and shallow, deep and shallow.

She could feel the wet slide of him inside her, hardness against softness, heat against heat. She could hear the suck and pull of their coupling.

It was a curiously enticing sound.

And a sort of yearning began there, where he worked toward his own pleasure, and spread to her bowels, her breasts, her throat. A yearning that was an ache, a pain that was not pain. She wanted to weep. She wanted to twine her legs tightly about his, raise them to his waist, wrap her arms tightly about him, press her face to his shoulder, cry out with the strange longing for she knew not what.

She wanted to abandon herself to that longing. To lose herself. For one blessed moment in her life to /give in/.

It was what she /ought/ to do, she realized with an effort of conscious thought. She was his mistress. He was paying her handsomely to pleasure him, to flatter him by taking pleasure.

But if she feigned pleasure, she might be snared by her own game.

She felt helpless and frightened.

And aching with longing.

His hands slid beneath her again. His face was above hers once more.

"Cass," he whispered. "Cass."

And as the rhythm ended and he pressed deep and held there while she felt the hot rush of his release, she knew that it was the very worst thing he could have said.

She wanted to be woman and mistress to him. She wanted to keep herself for herself. She wanted her two lives – her private life and her working life – to be kept strictly separate. But he had looked into her face in the darkness and called her by that name no one else had ever used, and told her with that one use of it that he knew who she was and that she was somehow precious to him.

Except that he did not, and she was not.

It was just /sex/.

She was suddenly alarmed by the realization that two hot tears were trickling diagonally across her cheeks and dripping through her hair to the pillow beneath. She hoped fervently that his eyes had not become accustomed enough to the darkness that he would notice.

All the aches and the yearnings subsided to be replaced by regret, though regret for /what/ she did not know.

He drew out of her and moved to lie beside her. He turned her half away from him and snuggled in behind her before drawing her back to lean against his body, her head on his shoulder, his arm beneath her head and stretched along hers to the wrist, about which his fingers closed as her hand rested against her ribs.

She could hear his heart thudding steadily.

He smoothed back her hair with his free hand and set his lips against her forehead, just above the temple. The place one would kiss out of affection.

She could suddenly hear his words again. /There is a kind of love that a man feels for his lover/.

She did not want his love, not any kind of love. She wanted his money in exchange for what she gave him here.

She repeated the thought over and over in her mind lest she forget what this was all about.

"Tell me about the child," he murmured against her ear.

"The child?" she said, startled.

"At the door this afternoon," he said. "She was peeping about the skirts of your maid. Is she yours?"

"Oh," she said. "No. You mean Belinda. She is Mary's."

"Mary is the maid?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "I brought them with me to London. I could not leave them behind. They had nowhere else to go. Mary was dismissed when Bruce – the new Lord Paget – finally came to live at Carmel. Besides, she is my friend. And I love Belinda. We all need some touch of i

"Mary has no husband?" he asked.

"No," she said. "But that does not make her a pariah."

"Did you have no children?" he asked.

"No." She closed her eyes. "/Yes/. I had a daughter who died at birth.

She was perfect, but she was born two months too soon, and she would not breathe."