LadyClarissasSeduction Read Online Free PDF Page B

against his neck.
    * * * * *
    Pierce was furious with himself. He cut a path through the
smoke and laughter-filled den of gamblers and sharps that had once been his
home. Biting back a curse, he sat in on a game of vingt-et-un ,
determined to distract himself. One hundred pounds later, he rose from the
table, shrugging off the well-meaning ribaldry of the viscounts and earls he’d
once enjoyed. Everything had changed. He felt restless. Anger coiled inside
him, tightly wound, ready to be released. He resented Clarissa. Because he
loved her.
    Damn it. Somehow, in the span of one bloody fortnight, he’d
allowed her to find a place within his black heart. She had given herself to
him so freely, so wonderfully, and he had used her as if she were no better
than a dockside doxy. He had used her. The knowledge of it ate at him.
    She had told him she loved him. Him, Pierce Foster, son of a
whore, a nobody, a nothing. Clarissa had been born to wealth and privilege only
to lose both to her wastrel father’s ineptitude. She’d done nothing to deserve
his ill treatment of her. He wasn’t fit to tie the laces on her shoes. But she
treated him as an equal, loved him, listened to him, did not ask a thing of him
in return.
    Pierce Foster had done many bad deeds in his lifetime. He’d
been a pickpocket as a lad, he’d ruined men because he could. He’d gambled and
drank and pleasured himself with more women than he cared to count. But hurting
Lady Clarissa Darlington was one bad deed too many. He couldn’t bear it. But he
couldn’t bear losing her, either. And in telling her the truth, surely she
would slip from his grasp.
    * * * * *
    “C.?”
    Clarissa blinked her eyes open to find Pierce standing over
her, a candle in his hand, his lithe body haloed in the gentle, flickering
glow. She’d waited up for him to come to her as he did every evening after
completing his duties belowstairs. Tonight, he had not come, and she’d grown
tired waiting. She’d curled up into his pillow and fallen asleep.
    “Pierce?” She stretched and gave a tiny yawn. “Where have
you been?”
    “Working.” His jaw tightened.
    “Of course.” She extended her arm to him in welcome. “Won’t
you come to bed? I’ve missed you.”
    She sensed a palpable difference in him tonight. He was not
his usual, carefree self. Gone was the grinning, winking lover she had come to
know. Worry stirred within her. “Won’t you come to bed?” she asked again.
    He deposited the candle on a nearby table. With one hand, he
pulled the buttons of his shirt free of their moorings with such force more
than one could be heard skittering along the wooden planks of the floor.
    She caught a glimpse of his muscled chest in the flickering
light. His face bore a haunted expression. There was an animal magnetism about
him tonight that tantalized and startled her at the same time.
    “Is something amiss?”
    He dropped his shirt first, then his breeches. “Everything
is bloody well amiss.”
    She tried not to admire the beauty of his naked body and
failed utterly. His cock rose proud and hard at the juncture of his strong
thighs. “Won’t you tell me what is wrong?”
    “What’s wrong is you naked in bed without me.”
    Somehow, she didn’t quite believe him. But given his dark
mood, she was reluctant to press him. She threw the bedclothes to the side,
exposing her body. Her pulse quickened at the wicked glint in his gaze.
    He joined her on the bed, running his hands over her breasts
and lower, to her pussy. “I want to fuck a different way tonight.”
    His crude language gave her pause for a moment. “There is
more than one way?”
    He laughed but the sound held little mirth. “God yes,
darling. Let me show you.”
    With a gentleness that belied the storm clearly roiling
within him, he lifted her into a sitting position. He caught her face in his
palms. “Kiss me, princess.”
    She pressed her body into his, feeling his cock hard against
her belly and threw her arms