The Scandals Of An Innocent

improperly.”

He caught both her ankles and tossed her over onto her stomach. Alice lay sprawling, tangled in her hair and the blankets, the breath knocked from her, the shock pounding through her. It was so sudden that for a moment she lay still, completely stunned, and then she felt one of Miles’s hands easing the nightgown up the backs of her bare thighs. She struggled to raise her head and tried to whip herself over, but Miles’s free hand was in the small of her back, holding her still, pressed down on the bed.

“No,” he said. “Don’t move.”

“Miles,” Alice wailed.

“Darling Alice,” Miles said, the intimacy of his tone making her completely weak, “I have to see.”

Alice made a sound that was mingled appeal and surrender. She turned her head away, allowing her hair to fall forward to cloak her face. She felt hot and hopelessly aroused and at the same time breathless with nerves. Since her formal betrothal to Miles she had managed to ignore the little pinpricks of anxiety that had reminded her that she was a former servant girl and as such no suitable wife for a marquis. She had told herself she was good enough for anyone and she had almost believed it. But here was proof that she was utterly unsuitable, for what other marchioness in the entire country would have a tattoo? She could imagine the Duchess of Cole’s horrified tones if ever she heard this scandalous piece of news: “My dear Miss Lister, only circus freaks and sailors have tattoos…”

She felt Miles pull up the linen of her night rail so that it skimmed the tops of her thighs and stopped just below of the curve of her buttocks. Alice’s heart was almost bursting in her chest. There was a silence. She turned her head against the bedcovers and stole a look at Miles from beneath her lashes. His hand had stilled on the back of her leg and he was staring fixedly at the little flower that was pricked out in ink on the soft skin of her upper thigh.

She heard his breath catch hard and then his fingers, lighter than the graze of a butterfly’s wing, brushed the curve of her leg and slid across her inner thigh. Alice’s body clenched.

“A tattoo,” he said, and his voice barely sounded like his own. “Well, well, Miss Lister, what a surprise you are turning out to be!”

Alice squirmed. “I only had it done as a prank,” she said. “The fair was on the stray in Harrogate one summer and a number of us went from my employer’s one night.” She knew she was gabbling and could not seem to stop. “I thought it would be fun but I was young and foolish and didn’t realize that it would not wash off. I scrubbed and scrubbed at it until my skin was sore and then I covered it up and pretended it was not really there!”

Miles laughed but the hot, heavy look in his eyes did not ease, nor did the pressure of his hand in her back, holding her still. She lay prone and unmoving, very aware of her exposure to his hungry gaze.

“Did it hurt?” he asked.

“Yes,” Alice said. “The tattooist was an old woman who laughed at me when I screamed.” She hesitated. “You like it, then. The old witch who did it said that my lover would like it, and I did not understand her at the time.”

“And now you do,” Miles said roughly. The look of concentrated desire in his eyes made her feel faint.

“I was afraid you might think it quite inappropriate for a lady,” Alice said.

“Oh, it is,” Miles said. He gave a ragged laugh. “That is why I like it so much.” He sighed, shaking his head. “What an odd mixture of innocence and impropriety you are, sweetheart. You confound me. Fascinate me.”

He touched the tattoo again, with a fingertip, in a caress that made Alice give a little sound that was halfway between a sigh and a groan.

“I am no proper lady,” she whispered. “I know that. No lady would visit a tattooist’s tent at a fairground.”

“I do not want a proper lady in my bed,” Miles said. He bent his head, and Alice felt his tongue flicker across the tiny flower, and her body caught alight and burned. She was aware of every sensitive inch of her skin against the yielding bed, of the way that the friction of the covers rubbed her nipples and pressed against her belly. She was even more acutely aware of her bare legs and the slide of her nightgown over the curve of her buttocks. The cold air ravished her naked skin and the hot flick of Miles’s tongue made her squirm, and then he sucked on the tattoo, hard enough for her to feel a bite of pain that mixed exquisitely with the pleasure, and his hand slipped between her thighs and they fell apart irresistibly to allow him to touch her intimately.

His fingers were at the very core of her. Alice’s mind reeled with shock and disbelief at the sensation.

“Miles, what-”

“Trust me. Do you like that?”

Did she like it? She thought she was melting into bliss, except that her belly was coiling tighter and tighter with the sweetest, most desperate ache of need.

His fingers shifted their pressure. She was moist and hopelessly aroused and it took only one sly stroke, and then another, and her body exploded in a cascade of pleasure and her mind filled with light and she would have screamed aloud except that Miles tumbled her over onto her back and covered her mouth with his, smothering her cries. He held her with her wrists bracketed above her head and kissed her. She was dizzy and panting and breathless and he sucked on her lower lip and darted his tongue into her mouth and demanded a response from her even as her mind and body still trembled with the enormity of what had happened to her. And this time she did not refuse him. She opened her lips to him so that he could do devastating things to her mouth and he plundered it without reservation, kissing her deeply and with a fierce need. Though her body still clenched with the pleasure he had given her, Alice wanted more. She knew that her nightgown was up around her waist and her legs spread and Miles was lying between them, hugely aroused, and that in a second he would take her, and she wanted to feel him inside her more than she had ever wanted anything in the entire world.

And then, unbelievably, he stopped and eased back from her. His gaze rested on the curve of her bare stomach and dropped, dark and primitive, to the juncture of her thighs. Then she felt his hand clench in the material of her nightdress and he smoothed it carefully down over her nakedness in a gesture that was so intimate and tender that she felt shaken. His expression was harsh and set, and a muscle worked in his cheek.

“Miles?” she whispered.

His eyes met hers, torment in their depths.

“If I take you now I will break every rule,” he said. “I am sworn to protect you and…” He shook his head, biting off whatever it was he was about to say.

“I thought that breaking the rules was what you did,” Alice said. Her voice came out as only a thread of sound. He looked angry and she felt cold and confused to see it. A moment ago he had held her with tenderness and desire. Now he was looking at her as though he did not even like her very much.

“I thought so, too,” he ground out. “Unfortunately, I appear to be plagued by an honor I did not know I possessed.”

Miles wrenched himself away from her. The door slammed after him and Alice was left stunned and breathless on the bed. Her body felt soft and boneless with the bliss it had already sampled and yet cheated and unsatisfied, longing for more.

What had Miles meant when he had said that he was plagued by an honor he did not know he possessed? She could only assume that he had intended to seduce her there and then-that he had planned it ruthlessly in order to circumvent the conditions of their betrothal and force her to marry him at once. She had suspected from the start that he might plan to do such a thing. But at the last moment it appeared he had not been able to go through with it. Yet he must have known that she had no will, no desire to resist. His discovery of the tattoo had aroused them both beyond bearing, and she had longed for him with a hunger that had matched his own.

Alice rolled off the bed and walked slowly over to the dresser, splashing water from the ewer into a bowl and from there onto her face. She knew that she had to take a measure of responsibility for what happened now. She was done resisting Miles. If he were to make love to her, then she would be a willing participant in her own seduction, and nothing, not even her anger and frustration at his blackmail was powerful enough to stop the desire she had for him. Oh, she was very willing, against all sense and against all propriety…

She shivered a little, wrapping her arms about herself. The siren voice of temptation whispered in her mind. What was to prevent them? They were betrothed, and Miles had every intention of making her his bride. She would have the protection of his name. Even if there were a child she would be safe from censure, or as safe from scandal as a housemaid turned heiress could ever be. She stared at her flushed reflection in the pier glass. She wanted