Unclaimed (Turner, #2)

Stay away.

“I’m not a lady, down on her luck. I’m a courtesan. A whore. George Weston offered a bounty to any woman who seduced you, and I put myself forward for the task. I planned to announce the particulars to the ton, and to destroy your reputation.” She swallowed her tears. Love was angry, furious that he could make her feel such dreadful hope again and rip it from her in the same breath. She turned to face him, her hands in fists. “I thought you’d come today to hand me my victory.”

He had gone pale. Worse than pale; his eyes glittered, freezing, losing all the kindness she’d grown accustomed to seeing. “George Weston?” he repeated. “You kissed me because George Weston paid you to do it? What the devil does Weston have to do with any of this?”

“What does it matter? If you’d come here to take me to bed,” she told him, “I would have betrayed you. I would have let you tumble me any way you wanted, every way you wanted, as much as you wanted. And then I would have written an account and sent it in to the papers.”

“Ah.” His voice was arctic. “I see. But—but didn’t you— Surely you—” He swallowed. “No. I can’t believe that you’ve been telling me lies this whole time.”

It had been hard to tell him the truth. It was harder still to force her lips into the semblance of a smile, to let her eyes reflect nothing but smug satisfaction. She turned back to him. “Yes,” she said, “I was very believable, wasn’t I? I can’t believe you ate up every word.”

And, oh, how she wanted him to protest again.

Foolish, foolish hope. He looked at her with the tiniest curl to his lip, as if she were a snake polluting his garden and he was about to cast her out. “And here I thought that you’d overcome your initial distaste of me. Apparently I was wrong. You must have been laughing at me dreadfully, then, behind my back—mocking my lovesick ways—”

“Lovesick?” Her temper flared. “You don’t know what love means. If you think you have been sick with love, you must never have had the influenza. You’ve held yourself back at every turn. Every time I provoked a passionate response from you, you drew away. And why did you do it, Sir Mark? Because you’re not that kind of man. Because you wouldn’t stoop to letting yourself want. Do not pretend that I have done anything other than hurt your pride, substantial as that is.”

He stared at her grimly, his hand contracting at his side. “I would have forgiven almost anything—”

“Yes,” she said. “And how lovely that would have been for me, ten years down the road. To know that my husband had condescended to forgive me. To know that he always thought himself above me, that my sins were always a blot on my record, one that I could never make up. That every day he woke up knowing that he was my superior. I wager it made you feel quite proud of yourself, knowing that you were good enough to stoop to my level.”

His jaw set. But he didn’t deny what she’d said.

“You know,” she said, “I had some moral qualms about my role in this piece. It didn’t seem right to me to use you so. But truly, Sir Mark, you could stand to be knocked into the dust once or twice. Then you might think twice about how magnanimous you are in forgiving me my sins.”

“You have no idea.” His voice was low. “You have no bloody idea where I’ve been. And you have no idea what I want—wanted of you.”

Jessica raised her chin in the air. “I know enough to know that whatever it is you wanted, deep inside your skin, you’d never have let it out. Just as I know that as much as you’d like to smack me at this moment, you never will. No, Sir Mark. I do believe that whatever you might be feeling right now, you’ll bottle it up with the rest of your sentiment. You’ve kept yourself in too much of a cage to let a whore like me truly overset you.”

He took one step toward her. “By God. If you knew—”

She waved one hand in the air. “But I won’t know, will I? You’ll forget this all soon enough.”

He stepped toward her, his eyes darkening from furious to murderous. “Don’t. Tell. Me.” His hands landed on her shoulders. “Don’t tell me what I’ll forget.” His grip tightened. Had he been any other man, she would have been frightened. But this was Mark; even now, his body gave the lie to the harshness of his tone. Her breath cycled in tune with the heave of his chest. His grip was firm, not hard.

“You,” he said, “have absolutely no idea.” And then his lips were on hers, pressing into her. Not just a kiss; nor even an embrace. His body pressed into hers. His skin was heated with passion; the hard ridge of his member pressed into her belly.