Page 33 of Her Beautiful Bastard
“Don’t!” she hissed, trying to keep her voice low lest they be heard through the door.
She whirled away from him and moved toward the stairs as swiftly as she dared. One hand gripped the railing while the other gathered her skirts to keep her from tripping over them. Her slippers fell silently on the steps, his boots thudding lightly on the carpet as he gave chase. Her heart jumped into her throat and stayed there, choking off her breath until her chest began to burn.
They reached the third floor, and she broke into a run, making a mad dash for her bedchamber door. It was just ahead … if she could only outrun him. However, that proved impossible with his long strides helping him to catch up with her easily. He took her arm and spun her around, pressing her back against the wall.
“Lydia,” he said, more firmly this time, both hands holding tight to her upper arms. “What did she say to you? Tell me right now, so that I might—”
“There is nothing to be done,” she interjected, attempting to twist out of his hold and failing.
He was too strong, too determined, and she was so, so weak, wanting to be in his arms, even after the things his wife had just accused him off.
“There is if she upset you,” he insisted. “Drucilla detests me, and I’ve come to accept that. But I will not allow her to treat you poorly.”
“And you will treat me so much better?” she countered, trying once again to shrug his hands off her shoulders.
He parted his lips to reply, but quickly snapped them shut as the sound of two feminine voices coming up the nearby servants’ stairwell rang out at them. His eyes grew wide as he glanced over his shoulder at the opening of the staircase, just a few steps away from them.
Before Lydia knew what was happening, he had snatched open the nearest door and propelled them inside a dark space. She gasped as she found herself pushed against something both hard and soft while Sinclair’s body caged her in, blotting out the meager light coming from the corridor. The door clicked shut behind them, just as the maids who had been on the stairs burst into the passage, their voices muffled through the door, but still far too close.
Her every nerve ending came alive, the surface of her skin prickling as Sinclair’s masculine body fit against hers, pressing her against what she realized were shelves stocked with clean linen. He’d pushed her into the nearest closet to keep from being discovered with her. It had been a close call; the maids coming up that stairwell just as he’d stood a stone’s throw from her bedroom door, holding her as if … as if …
Her face grew hot as she realized they’d almost been caught in a compromising position. It did not matter that Henry’s chambers were just down this corridor, or that the schoolroom stood nearby, as well. Without the boy’s presence, the two of them had no business skulking about in empty corridors alone.
“Shh,” Sinclair whispered, his breath tickling her ear as he adjusted his stance, legs parting a bit until his feet were planted just on the outside of hers, his arms braced against the shelves and caging her between them.
She sucked in a sharp breath, and with it, inhaled his scent, mingled with that of the open air outdoors. Even in her anger, she could not cease responding to him, becoming all too aware of the hard ridges of his body mashed against hers, his chest against her breasts, his thighs sturdy against hers, his breath tickling the loose hairs at her temple.
When the voices of the maids continued, still sounding far too close for comfort, he muttered an oath under his breath.
“They are dusting, I think,” he whispered, his voice at once soft and deep in her ear. “We will have to wait them out.”
Damn it all, this was the worst possible situation Lydia could have found herself in. How could she look Lady Clayton in the eye after having been trapped in a closet with the woman’s husband, her nipples pebbling against his chest and her thighs clenching in reaction to his proximity? And that most male part of him … God, it was thickening, hardening, pressing against her body with an insistence that could not be ignored. His breaths grew harsher, his inhales deeper, as if he took in her scent, as if being so close affected him the same way it did her.
Closing her eyes, she swallowed past the sensation in her throat making her feel as if she were being strangled. Slowing her breaths, she tried to relax until the maids had finished their work. It had to only have been minutes that they stood there in silence before the maids’ voices grew thinner, and then the corridor beyond grew silent altogether. Yet, it felt like hours.
The moment she felt it might be safe, she pressed her hands against his chest and pushed, attempting to put some distance between them. “They are gone … let me out.”
He wrestled with her, taking her wrists in a firm but gentle grip, trapping them between their bodies. “Not until you speak to me. Tell me what was said in that room.”
She squirmed and writhed, but soon realized this only made matters worse, creating a friction between their bodies that made her nipples stiffen even more and liquid heat pool between her legs. Biting her lip, she went still and closed her eyes once more, wrestling her impulses under control. As it was, she wanted nothing more than to surrender to the need, the torrent of desire ripping through her; the urge to kiss him, let him have his way with her inside this cramped closet. If the stiff organ attempting to batter its way through the layers of their clothes were any indication, he’d take whatever she offered. That thought only made her angry again as she recalled Lady Clayton’s claims of his preference for blondes.
“I will not be your next conquest,” she spat, still keeping her voice low in case someone else happened by. “I do not know or understand what sort of marriage you and Lady Clayton have, but I will not be party to cuckolding an innocent woman in her own home!”
For a long moment, Sinclair was silent, his gaze searching her out in the dark. Her eyes had adjusted a bit, so she could see his shadowy outline, as well as the flash of his teeth when he chuckled.
“Innocent,” he muttered with a shake of his head. “There’s a word I have not heard applied to Drucilla in quite some time.”
“It could hardly be applied to you,” she argued. “Though it is none of my affair if you wish to go about tupping every blonde that crosses your path. Just know that I do not intend to be next, so you may turn your attention elsewhere, if that is what you are after.”
Sinclair heaved a heavy sigh, his hands tightening a bit on her wrists. “Is that what she told you? That I am a rake who goes about sticking my prick in every blonde in England other than her?”
“It’s true, is it not?” she accused glaring at his outline in the dark. “Everyone in this house claims you rarely visit, the maids gossip that you keep to separate beds, and then there was the night we met—”
“The first and only time in my ten years of marriage to Drucilla that I’ve touched another woman,” he declared.
A shocked gasp burned in her throat, but she could not release it, could hardly breathe as his words sank in. Could that be true? No … it made no sense. A man as virile as Sinclair could not go for years living like a monk. No man she’d ever known had such willpower. Why else would whores and mistresses be able to make a living sating such desires, with bachelors and married men alike?
“For six years, I went about thinking my marriage was like any other,” he went on, releasing her wrists, but making no attempt to let her out of the closet. “For six years, I was faithful to Dru, and I believed she returned the courtesy. Even when her affections for me began to dwindle … even when we bickered and argued more than we made love … even when I began to see that she no longer loved me, may never have loved me at all.”
