An Unexpected Pleasure (The Mad Morelands #4)(39)

Theo raised his head and for an instant looked down into her eyes. Then, with a little groan, he kissed her again. His arm tightened around her, pulling her up and into his hard body. His other hand slipped down her side, his thumb caressing the curve of her breast. Megan started at the unexpected touch, the heat between her legs expanding.

His hand was slow upon her body, moving downward and curving around to her back, gliding over her buttocks and onto her leg. Megan trembled under his fingertips, amazed and aroused. His hand slipped back up the side of her leg, caressing her, and he closed his fist in her skirts.

Megan swallowed a moan. She felt as if she might melt into him. She wanted to have his hands all over her body, stroking her as he had stroked her back and leg. Her breasts were full and aching, the nipples taut, and she was aware of a shameless desire to rub her body against him.

He pulled his mouth away from hers and buried his face in her neck. “Sweet heaven! Ah, Megan…”

His breath was harsh and panting. The brush of it against the tender flesh of her neck sent another twisting thread of heat through her loins.

“I—I’m sorry,” he said haltingly.

He held her tightly for another instant, then let go abruptly and took a step back. Megan felt the loss of his heat and strength almost like a pain through her, and she tightened her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms, to keep herself from reaching out to draw him back.

She struggled to bring her thoughts together, to pull herself back to reality. Whatever was she doing? She had been standing here in Theo Moreland’s arms, kissing him like a wanton!

Megan’s hand went up to her mouth in dismay. Her lips felt tender and moist, kiss-bruised. Heat flooded her cheeks. She looked at Theo. His face was soft and slack with desire, his eyes bright.

“I—” he began.

Megan threw up her hand in a halting gesture. “No! No, please! Don’t speak of it. I am—oh, this is awful!”

She was appalled at what she had done. This man had killed her brother; she had hated him for years. He was the last person in the world she would ever have thought she would kiss. Yet she had just fallen into his arms as if she had no morals. And even less sense!

“I can’t—you must not—” she began. “This can’t have happened!”

Megan whirled and ran from the room.

Theo stood looking after her, his chest still rising and falling rapidly. He felt dazed and shattered, as if he’d just been picked up by a whirlwind. Desire choked him, lying heavy and hard in his loins. He hadn’t expected their kiss to shake him like this.

With a sigh, he opened his hand and looked down at the key that lay nestled in his palm.

Now what the devil was the twins’ tutor doing trying to steal the key to his father’s collection room? And what the bloody hell was he going to do about it?



*

MEGAN RAN DOWN THE HALL and up the main stairs, heedless of the noise she might make. She rushed into her room and closed the door behind her, leaning back against it as though to hold it against all intruders.

What in the name of all that was holy had she done? She could not understand how she could have been so lost to sense, so disloyal to her brother and family. Her heart twisted as she thought of how she had betrayed him, kissing the man who had killed him, and not just kissing him, but thoroughly enjoying it—indeed, not wanting it to end. A few more minutes, she thought miserably, and she would have been loosening her clothes to the man!

With a groan, Megan threw herself onto her bed, burying her face in the cool sheets. She lay there, berating herself, wishing she could cry…wishing she could stop the heat that still coursed through her veins and throbbed in her loins.

He had caught her by surprise, she told herself. And he was so devilishly handsome!

Megan had never considered herself weak. No other man’s blandishments had ever turned her head. Why, Timothy Doyle, who had the face of an angel and owned half the girls’ hearts in St. Anthony’s parish, had kissed her once when they were alone in her parlor, and she had felt little more than a pleasant tingling. She would have said that she was immune to seducers, and she had always held a certain contempt for women who were so weak they gave in to such men.

And then tonight, the man she hated most in the world had turned her into a trembling, quivering, helpless female, exactly the sort of woman she despised.

Megan knew that she had had no control over herself or the situation. Indeed, she had not even been the one who had called a halt to their kisses. It was Theo who had stopped!

With a sigh, she flopped over onto her back and stared up at the tester above her bed. As if the fact that she had kissed Theo Moreland was not bad enough, she had to face the fact that she had failed to do what she had set out to do. She had not gotten inside the duke’s collection room.

It was then that she remembered she still had the key to the room. With a little cry, she sat up. Her thoughts raced. She could still get into the room—she just had to find another time to do it. However, there was a definite risk in keeping the key. The duke was bound to want to get into the room sometime soon, and when he went to his desk, he would find the key gone.

She did not think that Theo would say anything to his father about finding Megan in his study. He didn’t know why she was there; she felt sure he had not seen her take the key from the desk, because he had said nothing about it. And he wouldn’t want to say anything to his mother or the kindly duke that would lead to their finding out that their son was in the habit of kissing the servants. But if Broughton told him that his key was missing from his desk, then Theo was likely to guess why she had been in his father’s study, and he would tell the duke. And she would very soon find herself out on the street, without having exposed Dennis’s killer.