On the stage, Prario launched into an aria. The crowd hung on every note. Ainsley’s hand slid down Cameron’s immense and burning hardness and squeezed.

He hid a groan. The music swelled, and the noise released from Cameron’s throat was drowned in Giorgio’s notes.

Cameron leaned his forehead in his hand as Ainsley worked him. Ainsley, the minx, kept her gaze on the stage, even plied her fan languidly, all the while her left hand squeezed, pulled, stroked, twisted.

When her fingers touched his tight balls, Cameron almost left the chair. He made himself still, his hand clenched on his thigh while her hand tightened on him.

What she did drove him wild. He wanted to pull Ainsley onto the chair with him and burrow under her skirts until he was satisfied. He wanted to drag her to him for a long kiss; he wanted to rip the buttons from her bodice and feast on the package inside.

“Damn you,” he whispered.

Ainsley smiled. She glided her hand up and down him in fine, hot strokes. God, he was coming apart. He clenched his jaw to stifle his groans, but he wanted to shout to the world what his sweet little lover was doing to him in the dark of the box.

Below them, Prario wound to the top of the aria, his voice clear and true as he scaled the notes. He reached the top one and held it, and Cameron broke.

Cam snatched a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it over himself, Ainsley moving her hand away just in time. Cameron’s seed spilled in an ecstasy of feeling and music, joy in the heat of Ainsley pressed against him.

“I want to be doing this inside you,” he said savagely into her ear. “I want to feel you taking me, knowing that you’re mine.”

“I’d like that too,” she whispered.

Cameron rode out his climax as Prario’s voice slid downward in glissando. At the end, Prario threw out his arms and bellowed his last, loud note.

The crowd roared its appreciation, and Phyllida leaned to Ainsley, eyes shining. “Didn’t I say he was wonderful?”

“Indeed,” Ainsley said calmly as Phyllida sprang to her feet. Ainsley pulled on her gloves and rose to join the ovation, leaving Cameron to hastily refasten his trousers in the dark.

As soon as the door closed behind them in the townhouse, Cameron said to the footman, “Leave us.”

Well trained, the footman turned down the last gaslight and discreetly faded away. Ainsley’s heart fluttered in excitement. Cameron had refused Phyllida’s invitation to a grand soiree after the performance and had nearly shoved Ainsley into his town coach, telling the coachman to get them quickly home.

Now Cameron pressed Ainsley into the paneled wall in the dark, pinning her wrists above her head. He kissed her without a word, not letting her speak or ask questions. He was taking, lifting Ainsley up the wall until their faces were level.

His kisses were brutal, burning. Cameron might have kept his wanting dammed after she’d played with him in the theatre, but now he let the dam burst.

“Vixen,” he whispered. “Unmanning me in public.”

Ainsley licked across his mouth. “I enjoyed it. I believe you did as well.”

His voice went soft but savage as he used words that should offend her but instead excited her beyond measure. He told her what he wanted to do to her, and what pet names he’d call her. No lady should listen to such things, but, as Cameron had pointed out weeks ago, Ainsley wasn’t quite a lady.

He kissed her bosom, diamonds catching in his teeth. His hands went to the clasps on the back of her bodice, and he made a grunt of frustration as he tugged.

“Tear it open,” she whispered. “I don’t care.”

She didn’t. Why stop this sensation when a simple needle and thread would repair the damage?

Cameron smiled a feral smile, and he ceased being gentle. He yanked wide her bodice, kissing and licking her flesh as the fabric came away. The cool of the panel pressed into her back, the hot hardness of Cameron into her front. Ainsley felt dizzy, decadent, wicked.

He disrobed her, a layer at a time, right there in hall beneath the curve of the spiral stairs. So many layers a lady had to wear, and Cameron kissed her and touched her as each one came off.

Ainsley didn’t protest until he tugged open his trousers, not even bothering to remove his coat.

“We’re in the front hall,” she said.

“We were in a box in the theatre. You didn’t worry about propriety then.”

“It was dark.”

“It’s dark here, and my servants know damn well better than to disturb me.”

While Cameron spoke, he lifted Ainsley against the wall, cushioning its hard surface with his arms. He supported her hips, and by now she knew how to wrap her legs around him as Cameron entered her in one smooth stroke.

The erotic feeling of him awakened her, excited her. His words died to whispered breaths, and his strength kept Ainsley from falling.

Nothing existed at that moment but herself and him. The raw sensuality of Cameron, the smooth lip of the paneling, the sounds in his throat as he loved her.

Hot, hard, sensation. Ainsley arched against her lover, the feel of his coat exciting against her bare skin. Cameron caught the sounds of her aching need in his mouth.

They rocked into the paneling, and then his eyes went dark, his pupils spreading, and she felt him release inside her. Cameron kept thrusting, his kisses hotter but more relaxed, the frenzy dying into warmth.

Cameron carried Ainsley upstairs, where the coal fire heated her bedchamber, and laid her on the chaise while he quickly got out of his clothes. Ainsley’s clothes they’d left all over the hall. She started to protest that they should retrieve them, but he silenced her with a kiss. That’s what he’d hired the damn servants for, he growled.

Cameron wanted loving, not talking. The armless chaise was perfect for having Ainsley on top of him, and soon, Cameron was buried inside her again, Ainsley sighing in pleasure.

Damn, but she was beautiful. Ainsley’s breasts moved while she rode him, nipples dusky pink against her Scots- pale skin. Her hair was still piled on top of her head, some of the little curls dripping down her neck.

When Ainsley gave him a little smile, her eyes half closed, Cameron knew that no woman would ever be more beautiful than Ainsley. The softness of her body, even the fading, snaking scars on her belly, made her so, so lovely. She belonged to him, always, forever.

He’d loved her squeezing him with her hand, but being inside her was ten times better. She was tight, damned tight. He loved it. He loved her.

The last thought made Cameron lose all control. He rocked against her, hands on her thighs, her hands splayed on his chest as she swayed. She made sweet noises in her climax, but Cameron’s coming was raw. He held on to her, tight, tight, and his Oh, fuck! rang through the room.

Never go, never. I need this. I need you.

He pulled Ainsley down to him and they drowsed in afterglow, warm by the fire. He pressed his cheek to Ainsley’s hair as she skimmed her fingers across his chest, both of them exhausted by passion.

He didn’t let himself think much as they cuddled together. This moment was too important for stray thoughts. There was only Ainsley, and himself, and now.

Cameron rested with her until the window lightened to gray. Ainsley slept against his chest as he held her, her breath on his skin.

Finally, he rose and carried her to the bed, Ainsley still sleeping. He laid her down and covered her as tenderly as he’d used to with Daniel, when the lad had been a boy in a cot.

Ainsley’s eyes fluttered open. “Stay with me,” she whispered. “Please, Cam.”


Chapter 21


She hadn’t asked him that in a while. Cameron was already hard and hot for her again, but something dark twisted inside him, tendrils wrapping him so tightly he couldn’t breathe.

Ainsley’s eyes held longing, but Cameron was already moving from the bed, shaking his head.

“Eleanor Ramsay explained to me what your wife did to you,” Ainsley said behind him. “I understand why you don’t let yourself sleep in the same room with a woman.”

Cameron turned around. Ainsley was sitting up, the sheet pulled to her chin, watching him.

“With anyone,” Cameron said. “And Eleanor didn’t tell you all of it.”

No one knew but Cam. Cameron hadn’t been able to confess every truth, even to Hart, and he didn’t want to tell beautiful, unmarred Ainsley that his wife had not only beaten him with that poker, but on two occasions had tried to rape him with it.

He remembered the incidents with clarity, even though so much time had passed. The wash of pain that had jerked him out of deep slumber, Elizabeth’s laughter, more pain, blood, his own screams. He’d flung Elizabeth away, and still she’d laughed.

He’d started allowing himself to sleep only when he was alone, behind a locked door. But damned if Elizabeth hadn’t tricked a servant into letting her into Cameron’s chamber late one night so she could go at Cameron again. The only thing that had worked after that was posting a guard, both on his own door and Elizabeth’s. She’d railed about that too.

The darkness cleared a little to let him see Ainsley’s gray eyes, shining in the equally gray dawn.

“It’s not just what she did to me,” Cameron said with difficulty. “It’s what I might do to you. If you woke me suddenly, I might strike out and hurt you.”

He could tell she didn’t understand. Cameron went back to the bed and leaned down to her, resting his fists on the mattress.

“Daniel woke me up once, when he was about ten years old,” he said. “I threw him across the room. My own son. I could have killed him.”

The horror of that moment had never gone away. Daniel had lain still on the floor, unconscious, while Cameron had rushed to him, lifted his limp body in his arms. Resilient, Daniel hadn’t been badly hurt, thank God. Daniel had later said, cheerfully, that it had been his own fault. He’d forgotten that his dad was a little crazy.

Daniel taking the blame for the incident had kicked Cameron in the gut. Then Angelo had tried to blame himself for not realizing that Daniel had crept upstairs to his father’s bedroom. Cameron had wanted to shout at both of them, and ended up moving to a hotel, no longer trusting himself around those he cared about.

“Was Daniel all right?” Ainsley asked.

“Aye, but that’s not the point, is it?” Cameron’s fists tightened. “He was only a little boy. I could have hurt him. Do ye think I want to wake up and see I’ve done the same to you?”

Ainsley stared up at him, eyes unreadable. Cameron would never understand her. Just when he thought he knew Ainsley, the lively young woman who picked locks and ran about Paris in pursuit of cake, she decided to bring him off him in public, then tried to pry out the secrets of his soul.

“Perhaps if you grew used to it,” she began.

“Damn it, have ye heard nothing? There’s something wrong with me, understand? I can’t even think about settling down to sleep with you without the world going black. That’s why I wake up tossing people about. The blackness doesn’t let me go until it’s too late.”

Ainsley listened in silence. She was supposed to be afraid of him, of the terrifying, raging thing inside him. Some women enjoyed being afraid of Cameron, liking the danger, but they didn’t truly understand what Cameron was capable of. Cameron had never let them know.

He swung away and snatched up his clothes.

“I positively hate this woman,” Ainsley said behind him. “Your wife, I mean.”

Cameron gave a bitter laugh as he pulled on his trousers. “I’m glad you do. She wrecked me. She wanted her revenge, and now she has it.”

“Cam . . .”

Cameron shook his head. “No more talking. Go to sleep.”

He turned his back on the beautiful woman he’d do anything in the world for, shrugged on his shirt, and banged out.

Behind him, Ainsley hugged her knees, wiping tears on the sheet. “I do hope it is hot where you are, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish,” she whispered. “Very, very hot.”

Ainsley walked into Cameron’s bedroom the next evening while his Parisian valet readied him for another night of restaurants and cabarets. Cam glanced at the afternoon dress Ainsley still wore and frowned.

“Aren’t you coming out with me?”

“I’ll get dressed in a moment. Felipe, will you leave us?”

The valet didn’t even look to Cameron for confirmation. The servants, both Scottish and French, now obeyed Ainsley without question. Felipe simply left the room.