in his eyes intensify.
“I came back to find you,” he said, “two years later.”
Susanna almost dropped her fan. Two years. She had never known. She felt a mixture of bitterness and regret. It would have made no difference. Two years was far too late. It had been too late from the moment she had run away from him. She could see that now, with the benefit of hindsight. She could see all the mistakes she had made—see, too, how pointless it was to regret them almost a decade later.
“I only wished to ensure that our annulment had been granted.” Dev shot her a look, contemptuous, cold. “But when I called on your aunt and uncle they told me that you were dead.” He spoke through his teeth. “An overstatement of the facts, it would seem.”
Susanna was so shocked that she almost fell. For one long, terrifying moment the ballroom spun before her eyes, the music and voices fading, everything slipping away from her. She put out a hand and realized with blessed relief that they had reached the corner of the room and were standing beside one of the long, arched windows that opened onto the terrace. The cool pane of the glass was against her fingers and a breath of air stole into the overheated room.
She raised her eyes to Dev’s face. His expression was hard, his mouth a tight line. She could sense the elemental fury in him.
“Dead?” she whispered. It was true that her aunt and uncle had cast her out when she had fallen pregnant and refused to give up her child. She had been disowned, disinherited, dismissed. They had said she was dead to them. Evidently that was exactly what they had told everyone else, too.
The cold crept into her heart. Her family’s callous cruelty had almost destroyed her nine years before. Now she felt their malice touch her again. She had not thought they could hurt her anymore. She had been wrong.
Dev was still speaking. “Was it really necessary to go so far?” he was saying with biting anger. “It was not as though I wished for a reconciliation.”
He stopped. Susanna knew he was waiting for her reply but for a moment she could not find the words. There was so much to absorb, and so quickly; that he had come to find her, that her family had lied to him. It hurt much more than she would ever have anticipated.
“I …” Her chest was tight. She tried to breathe. She knew that she had to stop this now, before Dev realized that she had known nothing of her family’s shocking lies to him. Already he was getting too close. An instant’s slip on her part and she would give herself away. If he suspected the truth he would have endless questions for her; questions about the past, questions about what had happened to her and, more dangerous still, questions about her life now and why she was in London. She could tell him none of those things. She had to protect herself and her secrets at all costs or she would lose everything. Suddenly she was fiercely glad that she had never told him that their marriage had not been annulled. It could prove to be a useful weapon should she need to defend herself against him.
Susanna straightened, steadying herself. She drew in a deep breath, searching for the right words to drive Dev away from her. He forestalled her. His voice was thick and heavy with emotion, an emotion that even after the passage of nine years cut straight to the core of her and made her feel with an intensity she had not experienced in years.
“Hell and the devil, Susanna,” he burst out, “you were my wife, not some strumpet I had tumbled in a ditch! Don’t you owe me more than this? You walk out on me and then you ask your family to lie to me! Why would you do such a thing?”
There was such passion and honesty in his eyes. Susanna hated herself for what she was about to do, what she had to do in order to protect herself.
“I asked them to lie because I had to be sure to be rid of you,” she said. She made her voice light and uncaring. The words seemed to stick in her throat but she forced them out. She knew she had to finish this and make sure that Dev would hate her so much that he would never question her again. There was no other way.
“I wed you because I wanted you to rid me of the burden of my virginity,” she said. She dragged out a smile, made it vivid, convincing. She knew she was a good actress. She had had enough practice in those lean and bitter years after her family had disowned her, when her skill at dissembling was all that had stood between her and starvation.
“After one night of marriage I had everything I needed from you, Devlin,” she said. “I wanted to know about sex. You taught me.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. He was stony-faced, his jaw set hard as he listened to her cheapen the love they had shared. “It was delightful—” she gave a little shrug, matching the gesture to the dismissive tone of her voice “—but after I had seduced you I had no further use for you.”
That, she thought, should be enough to make him despise her. No man would accept such a blow to his pride. She turned to walk away.
Dev prevented her escape by the simple expedient of catching her wrist and drawing her close to him. Her body stirred to his touch, every fiber of her being waking to him as though they had never been apart. The color flooded her cheeks, heating her skin so that every inch of her felt alive and responsive as never before. She saw Dev’s gaze move over her slowly in precise and insolent appreciation of her state of arousal. His gaze dropped to the neckline of her gown. It had been chosen to ensnare Fitz, and for the first time that evening Susanna wished it was a little more demure. It felt as though the sweep of Dev’s eyes across the curves of her breasts was a sensual caress.
“A moment,” Dev said, and his voice was very soft amidst the hubbub of the ballroom, the tinkle of the music and the clamor of voices, soft but with an edge of steel. “This time you don’t walk away from me until I am ready, Susanna. This time you stay at my pleasure.”
CHAPTER THREE
DEV LOOKED AT HIS FORMER wife’s exquisite, defiant face and felt his temper soar dangerously again. She was damnably beautiful and his body reacted to the temptation she presented even as his mind dismissed her as the most conniving, duplicitous little harlot that had ever lived. He wanted to kiss her; to take that wide, sensuous mouth with his own, to bite down on the full lower lip and slide his tongue into her mouth and taste her again with all the explosive passion they had known before. He wanted to prove her indifference to him to be a sham. He wanted to strip the silver gown from her pale limbs and plunder her body ruthlessly until she was utterly quiescent in his arms.
It was hell being a reformed rake. He had given up other women when he had become betrothed to Emma but Dev knew that he was not really reformed at all. He might as well admit it. This dangerous attraction he had to Susanna was proof enough. Given half a chance, a quarter of a chance, he would like to ravish Susanna, to take her with merciless abandon and revel in the experience. Never had chastity seemed so unappealing an option. Never had his betrothal seemed so dull and colorless in contrast to the appeal of his treacherous former wife.
He could feel Susanna’s pulse hammering beneath his fingers. The silk of her glove gave her no protection from him. He knew that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
And yet he was also ready to strangle her. Disloyal, deceitful Susanna Burney, who had seemed so radiantly innocent, had taken him royally for a fool. He had thought that he had seduced and wed a naive young girl. Instead she had been using him to gain a little worldly experience.
Dev exerted absolute self-discipline to keep himself under control. He felt a raw edge of anger as cutting as a blade. A moment before, when he had challenged Susanna about her family’s duplicity, he had felt a fleeting uncertainty. He had seen the shock in her eyes and thought that she must have
