Claiming His Defiant Miss Read online

  His free hand cupped her cheek and stroked the column of her neck, sending a delicious shiver down her spine. ‘Do you know what seduce means, May? Have you ever looked it up in a dictionary? It means to “lead astray, to entice, to lure”. Is that what you’ve come up here to do?’

  May scooted back on the bed, taking a large swallow of brandy. ‘I didn’t want you here in the first place. Why would I suddenly want to entice you? Especially when you’ve pointed out that I have no need to play “nice” any more.’ This was not going as well as she’d hoped. She’d hoped Liam would be a little less discerning than this and a lot more malleable. She took another sip. She was starting to feel warm and daring.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve decided you don’t hate me after all. You gave a pretty good impression of liking me in the barn the other night. Although, I take it we’re not supposed to talk about that.’ He gave her a cocky grin, the one that had always made her melt, even when they quarrelled. He swirled his brandy in the glass, holding it up to the light of the lamp thoughtfully.

  ‘It might be that you’re just after another tumble, in a bed this time, for old time’s sake. Or, you might be after something much more important, important enough you’d be willing to seduce me for it.’ His eyes glittered, sapphires in the dark. ‘Since you’ve brought the good glasses, May, I’m inclined to think it’s the latter. You think you can seduce me into letting you have your way about Edinburgh.’ He got off the bed and paced the small room, careful to stay away from the sloping eaves where he couldn’t stand upright. ‘Tell me I’m wrong?’

  When she said nothing, he laughed. ‘You’re a terrible liar.’

  ‘You must be celibate,’ May said coolly, ‘if you talk to all the girls like this.’ She’d rather not think of other girls, girls who’d replaced her in his bed.

  ‘Only you, May,’ he growled. ‘Most women aren’t as dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous, am I?’ She wasn’t ready to give up. She rose from the bed, joining him in the tiny space. She laid a hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat hard and strong. She gave him a tiny, teasing smile and looked up at him from under her lashes. ‘Why?’ She ran a nail down his chest, her gaze lifting to his. ‘Is it because I make your heart beat faster?’ Her hand dropped lower to boldly trace the rising length of him through his trousers, her voice a sultry whisper. ‘Is it because you rouse to my touch?’ Oh, how he did rouse! She loved the feel of him coming to life against her hand. She never tired of it, or of knowing she could coax such a response from him, this rugged, virile man who could charm any woman.

  May circled him now, her hand trailing low to cup the firm round of his buttocks. She dropped a kiss on his shoulder. ‘This would be so much better without your clothes on and mine.’ She faced him again, keeping a little distance between them as she worked the laces of her dress. She wanted him to look at her, wanted him to see her undress, to become naked for him. ‘Watch me, Liam.’

  He did, those hot blue eyes of his riveted on her, making it a far more intense experience for both of them. She was supposed to be seducing him, but she felt as if he was seducing her, without a touch, without a word, with only his eyes. Her bodice went first, dropping to the floor. She felt need mingle with want, wetness gathering at her core as she let her skirt fall and she stood before him in her shift, the thin fabric catching the lamplight.

  She took down her hair, unplaiting it with deft fingers, tossing him a coy glance, aware she had all of his attention now. She could see the attention in the glitter of his gaze, in the darkness of his eyes, nearly midnight with his desire. She slid her shift off one shoulder, her own hand trembling slightly at the gesture. She should have drunk more brandy for courage, but it was too late now. It had been a long time since she’d been nude with Liam. The barn had been a hurried interlude of clothes and coupling. But this, here in his loft, this was naked premeditation.

  ‘May...’ he stepped towards her, his hand staying hers, his voice harsh ‘...do not whore yourself for me. Do not dare to presume you can trade sex for anything with me, ever.’

  ‘You want me.’ She ploughed over his words, moving forward with her argument, her hand on him, closing over testament of that want. She was losing him, but not yet. His body wanted her, his body didn’t make distinctions on what had caused the desire. For that matter, neither did her body. What had started as a predetermined ploy to seduce was rapidly becoming something else.

  Apparently, Liam’s mind was going to play hard to get. He pushed her hand away. ‘Not like that I don’t, May.’ His voice was gruff now and not with desire alone. Losing him now was not an option. She could not go to bed with her desire unsatisfied.

  She set her jaw. ‘How do you want me, then?’ She moved her hips against him, her arms coming around his neck, drawing his head to her, taking his mouth in a kiss, her own desire rising. She wanted him with or without artifice. How did she convince him of that at this point after she’d already taken him down one road?

  ‘The only way I’ve ever wanted you. Truthfully, honestly, fully.’

  ‘All right, then we’ll do it your way.’ Her voice softened as she took his hand and drew it to her, placing it on the core of her heat, letting him feel the warm dampness beneath her shift, her evidence that this was not a ruse, no longer an item to be bartered between them.

  ‘Good God, May!’ he muttered the three-word surrender and she knew she’d won, for both of them. She stripped him in haste then, her desire starting to be more insistent than a pleasant warmth. She pulled his shirt over his head, she pushed trousers down past lean hips until his body was gloriously revealed. ‘A warrior’s body,’ she whispered, trailing kisses down his breastbone. ‘With a warrior’s scars.’ His was not a perfect chest, the smooth muscled planes and ridges she’d once known were marked with the occasional thin white line, remnants of a past she’d known nothing about until he’d told Beatrice.

  She kissed each scar, kneeling as she went down his body. Her lips lingered over the last one, a long narrow strip at his left hip. ‘This one is the worst, I think.’ She feathered her words against his skin, her fingertips feeling the little rise of tiny goose bumps of desire at her touch. ‘Serbia?’ she whispered a guess. Or had he acquired it on one of his protective missions for the government? An injury he’d been paid to sustain so another might be safe?

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it now, May.’ But she did. A part of her hungered for it. She wanted to know everything. She would wait and choose her moment. It would have to be soon. The gap between them had never seemed as real to her as it did tonight when they were so physically close.

  He lifted her to her feet, pulling her shift over her head. ‘Shame on you, you started first and you’re the last to finish,’ he scolded, tossing the shift away, his eyes never leaving her, not even to track where her clothes had landed. ‘Come, lie down for me.’

  He came to the bed with her, stretching his frame out alongside her. She was aware he was saying words, ‘beautiful...exquisite...mine’, but it was his touch that captured her, the feel of his hand at her breast, of his thumb running over her nipple until it ached, of his palm, warm and flat against her stomach.

  Liam was not a rough lover necessarily, barn walls withstanding, but he was an earthy one, he loved with all his senses, shying away from nothing and his boldness made her brave, too, so when he slipped between her legs, his head at her core, her legs parted for him, welcomed him without hesitation or prudish thought for what he intended.

  This was new, this was something they had not done before, but it felt right. Then his tongue moved against her and it felt more than right. It felt exquisite, and decadent, when he parted her folds and his tongue flicked across the tiny, secret nub within; the sensation was beyond pleasure, beyond description. May gasped, her body arching to accommodate this new pleasure. Her hands anchored in his hair, but an anchor for whom? For May to steady h
erself against these rising waves, or for him, so that he could not leave her in this sea of passion alone? When the final wave broke, she was ready for it, more than ready. The pleasure had become too much, like a swollen river that needed the release of a dam. She cried out once, twice, three times before the release was complete.

  ‘Like that, did you?’ Liam raised himself up with a smile, but she could see there’d been pleasure for him as well in the giving. To be sure, a different kind of pleasure than her experience. He’d need release, too, and she began to understand this had been a prelude. Her body quickened at the thought: more to come. Soon.

  ‘Very much.’ She gave him a come-hither smile and drew him to her, letting his body slide up the length of hers, letting his body cover hers until they were face-to-face, hip to hip, breast to chest, and he was nestled between her thighs. ‘It’s a fine opening course, to be sure.’

  ‘This is why you’re so dangerous, May.’ Liam’s eyes glittered with laughter. ‘You’ll use a man’s body until he’s drained.’

  She answered him with a coy smile, ‘Tell me when to stop.’

  But it was he who bit her lightly on the neck with a possessive growl before sliding home. ‘Never, never stop, May.’

  Those became her words, her litany, moments later as her body picked up the rhythm of his, stretching, adjusting, conforming to the thrust and slide of his. This was honest lovemaking at its finest: fierce and open, without artifice. Liam was entirely hers in these intimate moments, there was no past, no agendas, no separation between duty and desire, nothing between them in this bed but pleasure mutually given and unabashedly shared. He strained above her, she felt the muscles of his body tense, felt his thrusts grow shorter, harder, quicker, felt her own body quicken in response, her fingers digging into his back, he locking her tight against him, as the pleasure took them, sweeping them away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Swept away didn’t even begin to cover it. His mind and body were full of contradictions. He was exhausted and exhilarated, careless and careful. He should have known. Loving May had always been like this. He wanted to protect her and yet he wanted to take great risks, many of them at her expense. He understood now as he hadn’t fully understood before: she had more to lose than he.

  Come away with me, let us go somewhere new and make a new beginning, let’s remake ourselves, be whoever we want.

  Those words had been his doom once before. He should know better than to repeat that mistake, but holding her in the dark, feeling the slow rise and fall of her body breathing against his, those were the very thoughts running through his mind. Only now, they were accompanied by another dangerous thread of argument: This time it would be different. They were older and wiser. He had something to offer May: a government job, savings, enough to get them a decent home.

  This time would be different and in many ways it might even be worse. There was his position to consider now. Like anyone who was successful in their job, he had acquired enemies. Like anyone who had dedicated himself, immersed himself fully in his career, he carried the burden of that on his soul. He knew he was not unmarked. Constant vigilance on behalf of others had left him more cynical than he was already. The elimination of men who wished to harm the Crown had left him hardened, finishing the process the doctor had started so many years ago in his youth.

  Perhaps all things happened for a reason. Even his abhorrent childhood. Without the harshness of his youth he might not have had the fortitude for his current position. As it was, he clung doggedly to the philosophies of Kant, that the ends justified the means. There was a tattered copy of the Critique of Judgment in his travelling bag to prove just how doggedly he held to those ideas, how hard he fought to justify his existence. May would have to share that existence. His enemies would become her enemies. Cabot Roan was just a taste of what that would be like. Could he wish that on her? In the case of May, would Kant’s means justify the glorious end of loving her, having her? Would she agree?

  May stirred beside him, looking up into his face with a sleepy gaze. ‘You’re awake and you’re thinking,’ she murmured. ‘Should I ask?’

  ‘Not thinking, I’m dreaming.’ And, no, she shouldn’t ask because he just might tell her and wreck everything. Maybe he didn’t want to hear her answer. The old fear started to tug at its chains—that she’d merely used those arguments years ago to avoid telling him the truth; that he’d never be good enough for her in the long term. It was a fear he didn’t visit too often and yet that fear had driven him for five years—driven him to read, to educate himself, to study anything Preston wanted to teach him, driven him to rise in his position, all in an attempt to prove himself to May whenever the time came, if ever it came. Even if it did, his efforts might not be enough. All of his efforts to ‘improve’ himself might push her away. She might run from the danger that loving him posed.

  ‘Dreaming with your eyes open?’ She gave him a low laugh and a smile. ‘Those are the most dangerous sorts of dreams.’

  Everything was dangerous with May. Being with her meant risking it all. He had to tell her. Not telling her was akin to deliberately misleading her, creating false hope. If not now, when? his conscience prompted. Perhaps now was the time, when she was sated and calm beside him. He combed a hand through her long hair, gently working some of the tangles. ‘Shall I tell you, then?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm. Tell me what goes on in that head of yours, Liam Casek, after you’ve made earth-shattering love to a woman.’

  ‘Made earth-shattering love to you, May, not to any woman.’ Heaven forbid any woman would provoke such hopes and fears. He’d be a wreck of a man if he was willing to forgo all he knew for any woman. She snuggled closer, liking the compliment. Her index finger drew idle circles on his chest.

  He drew a deep breath. ‘Cabot Roan gave me that scar on my hip, in Serbia.’ The thin white line she’d caressed with her hand, kissed with her lips, would be the place he would start this conversation.

  May looked up and there was no going back. ‘Roan has more than one reason to come after you. We almost had him back in ’17. He’d left Britain and I was sent to follow him, not officially. My job was to watch him, gather evidence and make a report to my superiors. To do that, I had to blend in. Like other mercenary soldiers for hire, I signed on to fight alongside Milos Obrenovic at Pozarevac and Dubjle when the Serbs drove the Ottomans from Belgrade. By the time Obrenovic negotiated his peace with Marashali Ali and it was clear the Ottomans wouldn’t accept this defeat graciously, it also became obvious Cabot Roan was considering an arms deal with Marashali Ali. More arms would help the Pasha defeat Obrenovic.’ He sighed. ‘The Ottomans don’t want to let Serbia go. I swear, May, that country is a powder keg and someday it’s going to go off, maybe start something we can’t contain.’

  ‘It’s not your job to save the world,’ May murmured softly.

  ‘Isn’t it? What did Edmund Burke write? All it takes for evil to prevail...’

  ‘Is for good men to do nothing.’ May finished the sentence for him. ‘My, you have become well read. I’m impressed.’

  ‘It’s more than an education, May. It’s my armour. It’s what keeps my soul together when I have to do things that might otherwise be...unthinkable.’ How did he explain? How did he make her understand the way he justified some of his work? ‘While I was in Serbia, Milos Obrenovic was named leader of the country. He brought back Karadorde, the leader of the first uprising. He’d fled to Russia after its failure,’ Liam supplied, pausing thoughtfully.

  How to say the next? He chose his words carefully. ‘Karadorde was assassinated after his return. I am sure Roan had a hand in it. The bastard would have loved nothing more than inciting an internal Serbian conflict that would have weakened the new state and opened the door for the return of the Ottomans. War is good for his business. He might not have fired the shot, but he used his connections to supply the wea
pon and the opportunity. But because of my position, my orders at the time, I couldn’t do anything about it.’ He let out a sigh of regret. After all this time, he still wished that could have turned out differently.

  ‘Do you think you could have stopped it?’ May’s question was quiet in the dark.

  ‘Yes.’ There was no doubt in his mind he could have saved Karadorde. ‘Obrenovic and the Ottomans both feared him. Karadorde was vastly popular. But he had no ambitions for the new throne. Obrenovic didn’t believe him, perhaps because of the poison Roan whispered in his ear about rebellions. Roan whispered that same poison to the Ottomans. It formed an odd alliance: the victor Obrenovic and the defeated Ottomans. Together, they sent men to kill Karadorde in the forest of Radovanjski Lug.’ He and his men had been killed gruesomely, their heads sent to the Ottoman ruler to prove they were dead. He would not tell May that.

  ‘I was too late to stop it. Roan delayed me quite deliberately on the road to Radovanjski. We fought, with blades, and I came out the worse for it. I wasn’t nearly as skilled then as I am now.’ A sword was a gentleman’s weapon and he’d only had battlefield training where stabbing was more important than finesse. ‘I swore that day I’d never be late again.’

  ‘And so you became a bodyguard.’ May brought the story full circle. ‘So no one else would needlessly die.’

  ‘Yes. And no one under my protection has.’ He smiled in the dark, proud of that even if he wasn’t always proud of the methods required to ensure that protection. Sometimes protection meant death to others, Kant’s ends justifying the means, Burke’s one good man preventing evil through his singular action.