He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You see? You were not frightened of me. You know I didn’t hurt you. Let us say I were the sort of person who would hit a woman over the head in order to get her out of my house. It would still be a most roundabout way to do it. However much the duchess likes you, don’t you think she would let you go if I wanted her to? All I would have to do is reveal the fraud you have been committing against our family, and you would be out the door immediately.”
“Then why haven’t you?” Megan retorted, with a little stab of hurt at his words. “Clearly you despise me. You want me gone.”
“Want you gone?” Theo let out a short laugh, raking one hand back through his hair. “Are you that blind?”
He crossed over to her in two long strides, his hands coming out to grasp her shoulders. Megan set her jaw mutinously and looked up at him, determined not to let him see how he affected her.
It made her blood pound in her veins to be this close to him. She could feel the heat of his body, and memories of the other times he had been this close flooded her mind. She could not keep out the images of him wrapping his arms around her and crushing her against him. She remembered the feel of his long, muscled body, his heart thudding so fiercely in his chest that she could feel it through her own flesh. She remembered the taste of him on her mouth, the soft insistence of his lips, the passion pulsing and burgeoning inside her until she thought she would explode.
She saw the desire darken his eyes now, and he lowered his head, resting his forehead against hers, his shoulders moving as though to draw himself around her, enclose her. Megan trembled, her breath coming hard and fast. She wanted to lean into him, to melt against him and feel his arms tighten around her. She closed her eyes, trying to will away her treacherous feelings.
“I don’t want you out of this house,” he said quietly. “Why do you think I have protected your secret—at a risk to my own family? All I can think about, all I want, is to have you here…to have you in my bed. Good God, Megan, you fill my head…my senses…everything inside me.”
His words, uttered in that husky, passion-thickened voice, resonated all through her. Her body yearned for him, her breasts full and aching, her loins melting. Desire for him was a need within her, a desperate hunger.
“Megan…” he murmured, his lips brushing her forehead, her cheek, trailing down across the soft skin, as he whispered her name over and over, in plea or incantation.
Her skin tingled wherever his lips touched it, anticipation building, throbbing within her. She knew the feel of his lips on hers, and she wanted it again, with a deep ache, until it seemed as if the world hung motionless, waiting…yearning…
And then his mouth was on hers, and their lips were melding together. Megan made a low, moaning noise deep in her throat as she moved the last few remaining inches closer. His arms wrapped around her tightly, and he lifted her up into him, their mouths locked. She wound her arms around his neck, clinging to him, uncaring that her feet dangled inches off the floor or that she was crushed so hard against him she could scarcely breathe.
She was dizzy with the taste, the scent, the feel of him, her senses exploding in a paroxysm of delight. Her fingers dug into the cloth of his coat, wanting to feel his flesh, his heat. Heat throbbed between her legs, and she was aware of a wild urge to wrap them around him, to press herself against him and ease the ache within her.
He tore his mouth from hers, kissing his way down the side of her neck, nibbling at the cord and sending heat spearing down through her to explode in her abdomen. Letting her slide back down his body to the ground, he allowed his hands to roam over her, cupping her buttocks and pressing her into the hard evidence of his desire.
“Megan…” he panted. “Let me help you. Tell me. Trust me. Please.”
His words pierced the haze of her desire. Megan stiffened, appalled at what she was doing, what she was allowing him to do.
With a low cry, she wrenched herself away from him. “Trust you? Is that what you are doing? Is that what this is about?”
He blinked, stunned by the sudden change in her. “What?”
“You think that you can get around me like this?” Megan shook with her anger, all the more incensed because she was aware of how easily he could sway her, make her forget everything except the feel of his lips on hers. “That you can make me throw everything away? Give it all up for the sake of your kisses?”
He let out a low groan. “Dammit, Megan, what are you talking about? I am not trying to get around you. I want you. I can help you. Whatever you are involved in, I can—”
“No! No!” She turned away, raising shaking hands to her head. “It’s not that easy. I’m not that easy.” She turned to face him, her hands clenched at her sides, her whole body quivering under the force of her emotions. “You cannot turn me away from this. I know what you are. What you have done!”
Theo stared at her, bewildered. “What I have done? What are you talking about? I’ve done nothing except offer you my protection—”
“I don’t want your protection!” Megan shot back, indignation stiffening her resolve. She knew very well what it meant when a gentleman offered to take a woman of common background, a woman he could not marry, under his “protection.” “What gall you have! You think that you can make me your mistress and I will keep quiet?”
Theo’s eyes widened, and he started toward her. “Megan! No! I did not—”
Megan backed up a step, holding out her hand as if to stop him, the words rushing out of her in a torrent of guilt and anger. “It makes me ill to think that I let you touch me! I hate you!”
He came to a quick halt, and his face paled, the hand he had been reaching toward her dropping to his side. “You made a damn good pretense of feeling otherwise, then,” he said in a tight voice.
Pain pierced Megan at the look on his face, and she wanted suddenly to cry.
“I could not feel anything else,” she said, her voice cracking on the words, “for the man who murdered my brother.”
CHAPTER 15
There was a moment of profound silence. Theo gazed at her as blankly as if she had spoken in a foreign language. He started to speak, then stopped, and finally said, “What?”
There was no calling it back now, Megan knew. She straightened and said, “You were right. Henderson is not my real name. My name is Mulcahey, Megan Mulcahey.”
“All right,” he said slowly. “But who—”
“Do you not even remember his name?” Megan snapped. “My brother was Dennis Mulcahey.”
“Dennis!” He stared at her. “You are Dennis’s sister?” Suddenly, incredibly, a faint smile touched his lips. “Yes, I can see it now. Your eyes…So that was why you came—” He stopped abruptly, and his face changed from astonishment to outrage. “Wait! What the devil are you talking about, murdered your brother? You think I murdered Dennis?”
“I know it.”
“That’s impossible,” he declared. “Since it didn’t happen. Where in the name of all that’s holy did you get that idea?”
“From a reliable source.”