impossible. You don’t know.” Her voice broke. “You can’t know.”
His gaze hooded, he watched the emotional struggle reflected in her eyes. As if he had all the time in the world to bend her to his will. It was worse than any threat, hearing that velvet voice saying the words she so desperately needed to hear.
“It’s your father, Devon. You want to discover who murdered him and why, don’t you?”
Chapter 6
With her body inches from his own, Blackburn could feel waves of shock pulse through Devon. It would be so easy to take advantage of her vulnerability, but he let his arms drop to his sides.
She sat stiffly with straight back, her hands clenching into fists. “I shouldn’t be at all surprised that you would be involved in such a dirty business as murder.”
Blackburn shoved his hands in his pockets, smiling congenially. “I thought you might say that.”
She wrapped herself more securely in her pelisse, closing the opening at the slim column of her neck protectively. “What do you know about my father’s death?”
“We’ll get to that in a moment.”
“Don’t play with me, Blackburn.”
“I’m not playing at anything, Mademoiselle. You just don’t like it when you’re not in control, do you?”
He could tell that she was beginning to detest it when he called her Mademoiselle—with all its unsavory implications.
“Isn’t it the other way around,” she taunted recklessly. “The idea of a woman in control is clearly not to your liking, is it?”
“I believe that’s a moot question given the present circumstances,” he pointed out in measured tones, still looming over her, ready to intimidate if necessary. The crackling of the burning logs did nothing to edge out the tangible and mounting tension between them, a volatile mixture of high-stakes emotion and guardedness. Blackburn watched Devon carefully as if everything about this woman affected him immoderately, the feel of her in his arms, the pliancy of her soft mouth and lush body.
No, it did not bode well, his intensifying fixation with de Maupassant’s young mistress. He was breathing hard at just the thought of having her all to himself, here deep in the country. Where he could do anything he wanted with her.
He always knew that he would bed her. But he couldn’t let this get out of hand.
Unless he used it to his advantage.
How very tidy, the concept of self-indulgence not entirely foreign to his nature.
She was waiting. Her hair was in disarray, pins lost somewhere between London and Armathwaite; her body, that slender yet voluptuous form, still enveloped in her voluminous pelisse. His response was immediate and undeniable, an erection that could kill and that managed to mock his well-ordered strategy.
“A moot point?” she asked with false bravado, her own dread fascination with their currently intimate situation clear in the unsteadiness of her voice. Blackburn sensed that she was unaccustomed to operating on instinct, that she hated the conflicting emotions he aroused in her.
He sauntered toward her slowly, his smile wolfish, his voice low as he leaned over her, his lips a fraction from hers. “All those revolutionary values, where are they now, Devon? You’re not out to save the world, to defuse what could be the worst weapon the world has ever seen. You’re just worried about your own beautiful hide.” She shrank into the settee, his dark blue eyes imprisoning her as powerfully as his arms ever could. “Find out who murdered your father, why don’t you, and you may have a chance of clearing your name. While the rest of the world goes to hell, for all you care.”
Devon glared at him. “As though your motives are so pure, sir.”
“You never thought to ask, did you?”
She ignored his question with one of her own. “And why would I?”
Blackburn smiled cynically. “What I can’t quite understand is your seeming reluctance to crawl into bed with Le Comte and do what’s necessary. Your own neck is at stake, Mademoiselle, lest you forget.”
A fire ignited in her eyes. In her anger she leaned forward and clutched the front of his shirt. “I decide when and with whom I crawl into bed, Blackburn. Don’t ever forget that!”
He covered her hand with his own, holding it tightly against him. “I love these moral dilemmas, Devon, I truly do. So the question must be asked—what would you do to gain the information you want concerning your father’s murder?”
His patience was at an end. He entangled his free hand in her hair, fire that rivaled the flames crackling on the hearth. The gesture was entirely his, practiced and assured, a deferral of everything but the face and body he suddenly needed to possess. He knew how to get what he wanted, how to cajole, persuade, and please a woman.
He drew Devon to her feet until he could feel every rapid breath she took against his chest. She jerked once in his arms and gasped at the same time, giving him the opportunity to delve into her open mouth, his tongue slow, latent and abandoned. He traced her upper lip leisurely, getting to know her mouth’s contours and susceptibilities.
“I don’t want to do this,” she managed to whisper, a slender hand in the sleekness of his hair. She breathed him in as his scent detonated a chain of small explosions, right before all reason and logic fled.
Blackburn brushed her jaw lightly with the back of his hand. “Don’t think so much.”
And then plans momentarily forgotten, schemes abandoned, Blackburn concentrated on plundering Devon’s mouth. He lingered tasting the fullness of a lower lip, tempting, teasing until her breathing quickened and he felt her small tongue dance over his, asking for more.
His hands moved slowly over her back, pushing away her cape and tugging loose the satin belt of her dressing gown. His fingers ran up the hollow of her spine, the shoulder blades drawing together and thrusting her breasts outward through the delicate Valenciennes lace of her night rail. Blackburn felt her stiffen slightly, as though she should stop the madness, a whisper of doubt quickly extinguished by his persuasive hands caressing soft skin.
He pulled her toward him to the Aubusson carpet until they were kneeling in front of the fire. Drawing down the neckline of her shift, he left a trail of soft kisses along her neck to the satiny crevice of her shoulder. Full and round, her breasts, erotically revealed to the firelight, begged for his mouth. He tested the skin, finding it as pure as taut silk to his touch, the cresting tips of large peach-tinted nipples made for his lips. He could feel her let go, her muscles beneath his hands relaxing. She murmured her pleasure, her arms languidly lacing around his neck, eyes closed in sensual intemperance.
His chest expanded on a sharp breath. Her breasts were exquisite and his hands came up roughly to cradle them. She immediately arched into him, and his control nearly snapped, his need rock hard. He felt her feverish hands at his neck, burrowing beneath the crisp cambric of his shirt as she impatiently tore at the ivory fastening to find bare skin and muscle.
Blackburn’s lingering fingertips hovered at her narrow waist, coaxing material over her hips as his lips left her breasts reluctantly and traced a path along her jutting hipbones and smooth
