Beauty Tempts the Beast Read online

  “Come join me.”

  The muscles in his chest and arms rippled as he stood from the chair. Her gaze lowered to his flat stomach and the trail of hair that led to his arousal. It poked through the undone buttons of his trousers, magnificent and breathtaking.

  Charles pushed the remainder of his clothing off and stood naked before her. The flames glistened along the fine hair covering his skin. Long, powerful legs lowered to the blanket. Then he was beside her. It took every degree of willpower she possessed not to caress him.

  “Why are we here?” He asked the question as if he truly didn’t know the answer.

  “I want you to take me. Here, by the fire. But first…” She rose up on one elbow, forcing a lusty gaze away from desire’s salvation. “First, we will exchange secrets.”

  A mighty war raged within his blood.

  Ashworth wanted nothing more than to enfold this naked woman against his skin, sink his swollen flesh inside her willing heat. An explosion waited impatiently.

  And yet foreboding seized every nerve ending. The screams, the blood, the nightmare that possessed him each time he grew aroused. Was he a murderer? Would he kill another lover?

  “Well?” Vivian raised her eyebrows.

  Her dark hair curled around a breast, encircling it like a moat surrounding a mighty castle. He resisted the urge to brush it away.

  “Shall I go first?”

  First? Hadn’t she already brought him to release with her succulent mouth on his body?

  “I’ll tell you my secret, then you tell me yours.”

  Ashworth swallowed. The fire heated his back, made him thirst for drink. Brandy would do especially well about now.

  “Why?” the word came out as a croak. “Why must we talk about secrets now?”

  Vivian grinned. “I realize you may have other things upon your mind.” A quick glance at his erection made her blush. “But I also do not want these moments to be destroyed by your actions, by whatever it is that comes over you when we touch.”

  He tensed. “You think by me telling you about it, that it will disappear?”

  “It’s possible.”

  No. He’d not tell her of the horror he remembered, of what he feared he did not remember. Perhaps this was his punishment for such heinous crimes, to be forever restricted from a woman’s love.

  Ashworth rolled over onto his stomach, his arousal pressing painfully against the blanketed floor. He stared across the room to the long curtains fluttering with the evening drafts.

  “I may have done something monstrous, something too horrible to detail. That’s all I will tell you on it.”

  Vivian sighed. “Very well. I have many of my own secrets to share, ones that are too painful to speak of and bring into the daylight.”

  Throat suddenly tight, he glanced over at her. “You mentioned punishment for your birth. You could explain that.”

  “I could, but I will save that for another time. A time when you will be willing to give me more of yourself.”

  More of himself. What did she want of him? To give his heart? He was felled by love once. But that woman did not believe in him enough to trust him. She did not love him enough to see past the physical imperfections.

  Nay, he was given Harry to raise as a son because God knew he would never have his own. Love, marriage, blood heirs—none were a part of his future. Vivian must understand this.

  “What we may do here tonight will not change anything. I still will not marry you.”

  She blinked and for the briefest moment he thought he saw a shadow of sadness, but it may have only been the reflection of the fire. “I understand that.”

  She lifted her chin. “The secret I will tell you is why I originally came into your bedchamber tonight.”

  Ashworth turned back to the curtains again. There were small holes in the fabric and the bottom edges were frayed. Threads swirled about as if they were knotted strands of hair gusting in the wind.

  Vivian scooted closer to him where her warm breath fanned over his arm. “I’ve met Harry.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  His heart stopped. He must not have heard her correctly.

  Ashworth sucked in a deep breath, forcing calm through his bloodstream. He went to great lengths to keep Harry hidden, to protect him from outside influences and prying eyes. Even the boy’s clothes came in packages all the way from London.

  Vivian’s fingers brushed his shoulder. “Did you hear me? I have met your son.”

  His throat closed in, stomach pitched. He tried to fight it, but he could not keep the rage from rising up and exploding.

  “He was to stay from you!”

  “Yes, he told me that.” Her voice was soft. Steady. Damn her.

  Ashworth turned to glare at her. A dark curtain of hair fell across her face, covering one of her eyes. “Then why did he not obey?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Curiosity?”

  His heart pounded, mouth dried. “He knew what could happen if he spoke to a stranger. He would not have come to you on his own.”

  “What, my lord? What would happen? What do you fear? Why is the poor boy forced to endure his life within these walls?”

  “He would be outside if you had not come here!”

  Vivian blinked. Her face paled. The firelight caught a shimmer in her eyes, but no tears fell. “I am glad to hear that he does have the opportunity to be in the sunshine. However, that does not explain what you fear will happen if a stranger meets him.”

  He could lose his son. And he couldn’t allow that.

  Someone out in that outside world might know the identity of Harry’s real father, someone could believe Ashworth murdered the boy’s mother. They might take him away. A new wife may not accept Harry as her own son. He must keep him hidden.

  Ashworth swallowed, but his throat burned. It was as if a blow had been delivered to his gut. “I have my reasons, Miss Suttley.”

  She sighed. “Well, he is delightful, intelligent and desperate for a mother.”

  He sprang up to his feet, blood churning in an angry frenzy. “I know my son.”

  “The egg I brought from the lake has hatched. Harry named the duckling Mary, after his mother.”

  His mother, Mary.

  Would this misery ever end? How much worse could the night get? Oh God, Catherine. She had mentioned something earlier in the evening about rumors and secrets of the manor. Did she too know of Harry?

  He leaned forward, his hands gripping the back of a chair. The fire blazed before him. It heated his skin, intensified his pain. Harry was the only thing he had in this world. He would do anything—anything—to keep him safe.

  “Go, Miss Suttley. This night is over.”

  “No.”

  His jaw tightened. “No? I’ve asked you to leave my room. Return to your bedchamber.”

  “I’ll not let you push me away again.”

  Ashworth swung around and found her standing on the blankets, hands on her hips. Naked.

  He gulped. Nay, he could not let her beauty, his desperate need for fulfillment, sway his purpose. He must banish her. From his room. From the house. From his life. She was ruining him, unraveling him. Everything had been perfect, safe, secure, until she came into his life, demanding he marry her.

  “How did you know of me? Why did you come here?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I told you I came here to hide myself.”

  “You ran from one marriage to another with a stranger?”

  Her lips twitched. “I have my reasons.”

  He crossed his arms. “You’ll not tell me.”

  “I revealed one of my secrets already. You have not shared one of yours.”

  His laugh was cold, short-lived. “Why bother? You find out my secrets on your own. Now, go on. The night has ended between us.”

  Vivian lifted her dimpled chin. The firelight danced across the pink tips of her nipples, the smooth plane of her stomach, down her long legs. “I will not go. You must force me from your p
resence.”

  His pulse jumped. The stubborn wench. He would not let her rule him.

  Ashworth strode to the blankets, swept her into his arms and started for the adjoining door. But something happened in those few paces. Her warm skin melted against his. Her soft hair swept over his arm, tickled his ribs. Her tantalizing breasts pressed upon him, her smooth bottom brushed atop his limp flesh.

  A ribbon of honeysuckle slipped over his skin. She licked circles on his shoulder blade. Swirls and warm moisture, just like her mouth on his shaft.

  Suddenly, he was rampant.

  He bowed and took possession of her mouth, sucked her tongue with ferocious power. She wrapped her arms about his neck, holding onto him as if he were her life-force.

  His flesh awoke, her bottom swayed across the tip. Liquid leaked out the top. He must have release. Now.

  “Vivian, I…” His voice trailed off as he stared into her bottomless gaze. No hesitation, no doubt, nothing forbidden clouded her eyes.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “Oh, yes, please.”

  He didn’t want to do it this way the first time. The first time in nearly eight years. But he could not control the wild urges in his blood. Head buzzing, pulse frantic, he could only think of his hardness deep inside her warm channel.

  Ashworth released one arm from under Vivian and pulled her legs around his waist. No foreplay, no affection, no worshipping. Only the primal need to be as one.

  “Now. Oh, God, now.” Her voice broke.

  Leaning her back against the tapestry, Ashworth thrust her hips downward and impaled her on his desperate arousal. Glorious, tight moisture welcomed his plunge. Vivian gasped.

  He closed eyes, afraid to see visions, afraid to see disappointment in her gaze.

  Lust, nearly a decade in the making, swelled, expanded. He thrust her down on him again. And again. Nerves prickled under his skin, sweat dripped down his face.

  “Vivian…”

  “Don’t stop. No, not yet.”

  But he couldn’t stop the mounting ecstasy. It soared like a monstrous wave. Cresting…

  He grabbed the smooth cheeks of her ass, lifted her high on his arousal and slammed her down again.

  Knees weakened, legs trembled.

  She moaned in his ear. “I—I never knew…yes, more…”

  Then a splintered cry and Vivian’s sheath convulsed around his flesh. Her spasms shattered any restraint he had left.

  Years of denial and wild desperation exploded. He drove himself into her again and again, then shouted into the still room. At once, he was numb and euphoric, satiated and delirious.

  Ashworth gulped in mouthfuls of air. Then, the reality of what just happened slammed through his chaotic brain.

  He dreaded opening his eyes. He could not stomach seeing a terrifying vision of Vivian covered in blood. Even more, he could not witness the discontent in her eyes. Vivian had told him of what occurred the last time a man was intimate with her. She spoke of how the act lacked gentleness, tenderness. He had not sought to her needs or tried to please her. He used her body for his own purposes.

  Ashworth had just done the very same thing. He had not cradled her in affection, or revered her body with gentle caresses. He was selfish, thoughtless. Not much better than the man she’d run from.

  Looking past her to the tapestry, he slid her off of him and set her on the floor.

  “My lord?” Vivian’s fingers swept across his jaw. “Why won’t you look at me?”

  Ashworth turned away. His knees still shook from the intense climax, but he held himself steady and crossed the room. He scooped up his nightly potion and swallowed it in a gulp. “Go,” he said over his shoulder and prayed she would not refuse or argue as she had done before.

  “You still will not let me in.”

  Why did she want to be let in? What was there to see but a man who could not control his impulses? A man who lacked the ability to show tenderness and vulnerability. A man who hid himself away for fear the rumors and nightmares may be true.

  “I’ll not ask you again.” Still naked, Ashworth climbed into his bed and covered himself with a thin blanket she had left behind.

  He heard Vivian gather her clothes and pad over to the door. “You cannot know the truth unless you seek it.”

  Then she vanished into her room and left him to suffer in the haunted silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Martin did not know where else to search for Vivian, but he did know how to relieve the raw lust prowling in his groin.

  Despite being away for so many years, the dirty streets of St. Giles had not changed in his absence. He walked through the smells of waste, emotion surged into his blood. Fury, desperation, anguish. All merged into a hard knot at the base of his throat.

  The deeper he walked through the alleys, the dimmer the light became. People shuffled by him, some giving him odd looks, others ignoring him completely.

  He knew these people. Knew what it was like to live like this, to not know when the next meal would come.

  Martin turned the corner and a group of ragged children raced past as they chased an animal. A rat perhaps? Those predatory rodents grew as large as dogs around here.

  He stopped. There it was.

  On the corner, beside a twisted dying tree, stood the home of the only woman he ever loved. His gut pitched.

  He lifted his chin and crossed the street, stepped over garbage. He had to see it. The room, the memories of Mary, something must be left behind.

  “Evenin’, sir. Somethin’ I can offer ye?”

  Martin stared as a woman emerged from the shadows. The evening light cast her hair in red, her lips in rosy plumpness.

  His heart skipped a beat. “You look just like her.”

  She stepped forward. “Like who?”

  “Mary.” He nodded toward the door. “She had red hair and lips begging to be kissed.”

  The woman, probably not yet twenty, still had enough innocence to blush. “I remember her. ’Twas just a girl then.”

  Martin looked from the whore to the tiny window, as if he expected Mary to glance out it. “She’s been gone a long time.”

  “Aye. Can’t forget the night she died.”

  Rage and grief rose up to choke him.

  As much as he loved Mary, he could not make her his bride. She had lived here too long, never gaining the proper education or the acceptance of society. She could never become the wife he needed.

  A small hand settled on his arm. Martin glanced down to see the whore smile up at him. “I have a room just down the row.”

  He nodded at her. The restless urgency of his encounter with Miss Blake hadn’t dimmed. Neither had his gnawing rage over Vivian.

  “They say it’s haunted.” The girl pointed to Mary’s door as they passed. “Her spirit lingers there, looking for her killer.”

  “So they never found who murdered her then.”

  She shrugged. “Never found the baby neither.”

  Martin stopped walking, his lungs tight.

  The baby.

  Heat flushed up his neck.

  Again, the mention of Mary with a baby. But it couldn’t be possible. No.

  If Mary had a baby, it must have been another lover’s and it was no wonder she didn’t want him to know. Perhaps the one who was with her that night. That man—his supposed friend—lied to him about lack of experience. He must have been seeing Mary for months, a year at least, to get her with child.

  His hands fisted. Black spots swam before Martin’s eyes. He should have killed Ashworth that night while he had the chance.

  The whore stepped around a sleeping drunk and opened her door. “Ye comin’?”

  Martin glanced back up the row to Mary’s door. That bitch. That stupid bitch. She shouldn’t have crossed him.

  He clenched his jaw, wiped the sweat from his brow. Fury seethed in his blood, swirled through his heart, and plummeted to his groin.

  He turned back to the girl, and stared her down until
she had to look away. Mary paid for her indiscretion. Vivian would be next. Then he’d deal with Ashworth once and for all.

  Catherine adjusted the neckline of her evening dress as she spotted the rear stairs. Charles was in another of his moods tonight, barely speaking at dinner and then drowning himself in brandy. He took no notice of her attributes, despite how often she tried to catch his eye.

  Damn it, he did love her once. He whispered his desires in her ear as they danced, trembled as they kissed. Now he was nothing more than a shell of a man, a self-pitying eccentric, who pretended to have an engagement with a baron’s daughter.

  She swallowed the anger rising in her throat and climbed the stairwell to the servants’ quarters. For two days she had failed to catch a glimpse of the yellow-haired gentleman Martha mentioned. Tonight she would seek him out.

  The wind swept against the house at this late hour with its unyielding intensity. She hoped to find most servants abed, other than the one she needed.

  The hall was dark, save for the flickering candelabras along the walls. All doors were shut. How would she determine which room belonged to her quarry?

  Catherine slipped past an alcove with stuffed chairs and tested the first door. She knocked gently, not even certain what she’d say when someone opened the door.

  But there was no answer.

  With a small twist, she opened the door, peering into the shadowed darkness. The partial moon cast splintered light upon tables, chairs, bookshelves, and desks. This was not a bedchamber.

  She entered the room and quickly shut the door behind her.

  She found writing tablets and novels. A globe and several maps. This was a schoolroom!

  But for whom? Was there a child here? Could it possibly be the Harry the servants spoke of?

  Her stomach tingled with excitement. If Charles had a son, and had gone to such great lengths to hide him, he would be willing to do anything to protect that secret.

  Catherine had had enough of this manor, of his indifference. Despite his unspent wealth, her patience was running low. As a widow, she may not have the best pick of the eligible peers, but she would not suffer at Silverstone for much longer. She would find his secrets, she would blackmail him with them, and then she would return to London as his wife. In name only.