The Wicked House of Rohan Read Online Free Page B

It’s perfectly natural. It’s just surprising it’s so powerful between us. You’re hardly my type.”
    Her heart was thudding against her breast, so hard she thought he might hear it. The touch of his mouth had been devastating, and he was right, she wanted more.
    â€œLet. Go. Of. Me.”
    He smiled ruefully. “Of course,” he said, and released her, stepping back. “There are clothes waiting in the other room, though I have to admit I’d rather you didn’t put them on.”
    â€œWhore’s clothes?”
    â€œOn the contrary. You’re missing the point. They want you because you’re innocent. For all I know they’ll dress you up like a nun.”
    She slammed the door behind her, then looked for a key. Of course there wasn’t one, but he didn’t seem to be interested in following her. The clothes that lay across the bed were pristine and lovely—fresh white batiste undergarments, modest and understated, with nothing to cover them. She dressed quickly in what they’d left her—shift, drawers, petticoat and light corset. She laced it loosely, then climbed up onto the bed. She wasn’t going to think about it, wasn’t going to think about anything. She was going to fall asleep, immediately.
    Which she did. But as she drifted off she remembered his mouth on hers, his hand brushing against her neck, and she wanted to weep.
    Â 
    Alistair Rohan stared at the closed door for a long moment. This was quite the most interesting day he’d had in a long time, perhaps years. It wasn’t the birth of the Heavenly Host after months of drunken planning, it wasn’t the incipient erotic events coming up. It was his own reactions that astonished him.
    He wanted her. That pathetic little dab of a thing—who wanted anyone but him—and he was more aroused by her than by the most experienced, beautiful women in Venice, Paris or London. She was too thin, she was absolutely ignorant of any kind of pleasure, and, while her eyes brought back some hazy sense of a long-lost happiness, they weren’t enough to account for this powerful attraction.
    He’d like to believe it was her animosity, but there were any number of women were wise enough not to want to have anything to do with him. His reputation was widespread—most women with sense would keep their distance.
    Perhaps it was because he felt her strong attraction to him, the attraction she was too innocent to recognize. She was so untutored that she had no idea that it was sexual longing raging in her pure veins.
    He could have her later. After Marblethorpe or whoever had finished with her, he could soothe the hurt and show her what love was like. He was sick of this city—he could take her back to England himself. Or even Ireland, to the crumbling old castle that was hardly as bad as this crumbling city.
    He was out of his mind. Yes, he wanted to have her. He wanted to stretch her out on the bed and taste every bit of her; he wanted to push inside her, so deeply; he wanted to hear her cry out her release in his ear. He wanted her mouth on him, he wanted to…
    Damn, he was hard just thinking about her. It was absurd. She’d sold herself to the Heavenly Host for a pittance and a ticket home, and the sooner he stopped thinking about her the better.
    Except he’d put her in his bed. Her skin was warm and pink from the bath, smelling like roses. His sheets would smell like roses.
    Marcello was waiting outside the door, the ring of heavy keys in his hand. Despite the munificent sum he paid him, Alistair was perfectly aware that Marblethorpe paid him more. “Don’t lock her in,” he said.
    â€œNo, sir,” Marcello said. And Alistair no more believed him than he would have believed Sir Wesley Marblethorpe.
    He held out longer than he would have thought. It was late afternoon, and she’d slept at least four hours, while Alistair tried to distract