A hand covered Anne Williams’s mouth and arched her neck back. She’d been sleeping in her small room next to Princess Desirée’s dressing room. She awoke bathed in sweat, her body sodden inside her cotton night rail.
Her scream was only in her head.
Breathing. Harsh, excited breathing fanned her cheek.
She managed to open her mouth and bite his fingers. Her reward was a hard knee driven into her buttocks, against the tip of her spine, and the deep pain that shot to her belly.
Dusk came early in January. With the drapes closed, the room was so black that no hint of a shape showed no matter in which direction she rolled her eyes. Her heart smote at her breast, lodged in her throat.
Behind her in the narrow cot, one arm pushed beneath and around her, the other clamped over her mouth while the elbow trapped her arm to her side, lay a man, a naked man. She knew he had taken his clothes off because she could feel him swelling hard against her bottom, feel the hair on his heavy thigh where it rested over her hip. The night rail had twisted about her body and his hot, pulsing flesh prodded her bare skin.
Just like the other time. She screamed in her head again, and prayed to be saved.
“Don’t struggle.” A hoarse whisper against her ear. He nibbled at the lobe. “You want this. You like it—we both know that. I know everything about you. If you struggle, you’ll get hurt, then it won’t be so much fun—for you.”
She forced her head from side to side, bucked with all her might.
“I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth. If you make a sound, I’ll kill you. I’ll break your neck so fast you’ll hardly know you’re dying. That’ll shut you up. Will you be quiet?”
If she could reason with him, perhaps it wouldn’t go so badly for her. Anne nodded. Bit by bit he eased the pressure on her face until she lay panting, and trying to pull her soaked gown over her body. He didn’t make a sound, but he pulled the night rail over her head and threw it to the floor before falling on her neck. He kissed her long and slow while he left not an inch of her untouched. He caressed her, then covered her mouth once more and plunged the fingers of his other hand between her thighs.
First he stroked her tender flesh with unexpected finesse, isolated the center where she burned and, even as she tried to press her legs together and deny her response, an aching fire began to burn. Then Anne forgot to hold her legs together. He abandoned her mouth to weigh her breasts and lightly pinch her nipples. She turned her face into the pillow and jerked against his delving fingers, silently urged him to finish what he’d started.
He smelled of leather and, faintly, of fresh sweat and his hard body curved around hers, a strong, very masculine body. She wanted to see his face.
“You like this,” he said. “Good, because I like it, too, and I shall come to you again, only next time I will expect answers from you.”
His fingers moved faster and faster, and she strained to reach back and find his rod. As her fingers closed, she convulsed, tried to trap the exquisite awakening that blossomed out of control and keep it alive.
“Now you want something else, don’t you.” His rasping, anonymous voice frightened her even as it excited her. “Curl over your knees.”
She shot her legs straight down and crossed her ankles.
“Don’t fight me,” he said and his fingers closed hard on her upper arm. “Do as you’re told. It will bring us both pleasure.”
With her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she willed herself to turn into stone.
“Very well. This will remind you who is master here.” While he crushed her face into the pillow, he started to rake the nails of his other hand down her back, but stopped. He said nothing, but settled a hand lightly on the area instead.
They lay still like that until at last he said, “Your skin is soft, I didn’t want to mar it. But you will remember this night. You will remember how I excited you, and you will do as I ask. If you don’t, I will have to make sure you lose your place here. I know what happened in Mont Nuages.”
Gritty tears forced themselves from the corners of her eyes. Only three other people were supposed to know what had really happened to her in that dreadful place and this could not be one of them—yet he also knew her past. Who could she turn to when she didn’t know her enemies?
“This is what you will find out.” He spoke for only moments before sliding from the mattress and covering her with the bedding. “Don’t attempt to move until I am gone. If anyone needed proof of what a passionate creature you are, they’d only have to see you as you were a few minutes ago. Pleading for it. Urging me to satisfy you.”
She wanted to cry out that her body had only done what was to be expected, but if she spoke he might become angry again.
“I’ll return soon and if you have defied me, the Count shall discover that his sister’s companion is a whore.”
Anne pushed her face into the pillows and pounded the soft bedding with her fists. What she had done, she had done, but her sentence had been too harsh.
The man covered both of her hands on the pillows. The mattress sank as he sat beside her hips and he leaned to settle his cheek on the back of her head.
Anne lay still, but her heart thundered while she waited for him to force himself on her again.
When he spoke it was even more insistent. “It is not my way to hurt women. This has sickened me as much as it has sickened you, but it seems I have no choice if I am to survive. Perhaps you will come to welcome my attentions and miss me when I am not with you.”
She shook her head.
“Don’t be so sure.” He slid a hand beneath the covers and played his fingers over the side of her naked breast, and Anne felt again the dart of hot pleasure. “I feel you react to me,” he said. “You will not be the first woman to crave a man who has power over her.”