There was no holding back, no waiting. His world turned into a frenzy of pleasure, rising uncontrollably. His veins sang, swelled, his body slid against hers. Dimitri was vaguely aware of her nails scoring into his back, her head twisting and rolling on the pillow as he drank, as he thrust in and out, driving closer and longer until he could no longer think.

The explosion, when it came, was white-hot and red, draining him of awareness. He barely remembered to pull free of that hot, sleek place just before his seed spilled, twisting his hips away as he released her neck. Heavy, warm blood still in his mouth, he gave a soft groan of release as he pulsed and throbbed, damp and warm. He swallowed the last bit and closed his eyes.

Maia gave a soft whimper next to him, bringing him back from the easy slide into darkness, and he rose up to look over her. Her eyes were dark in a pale face, her lips parted, her breathing unsteady. She didn’t seem frightened or overset by his roughness. She beckoned.

Dimitri bent to her shoulder and tasted the leaking blood with his lips and tongue, gently licking it away, swirling the last bit into his mouth to stop the bleeding. At the same time, he reached down between them to slide over her quim, full and damp and still ready for him.

With a little nibble of apology along the tendon in her neck, he found the tiny core and as he shifted to cover her mouth, he slipped and stroked, luring her over into the same vortex of pleasure he’d recently enjoyed. His mouth stifled her soft cry of release and he felt her shudder against him.

Dimitri finished the kiss with a soft little nibble on that top, full lip, then collapsed onto his back, still wrapped in sheets and legs and her long hair.

He didn’t know how long they lay there, tangled and close, for he slipped into something between sleep and wakefulness, comforted by the slight, warm figure next to him, the sensuous smells of their coupling and her.

Something distant must have awakened Dimitri, for it drew him from that half slumber and into the wakefulness of reality. The first thing he saw was a blood streak on the sheets, and then the small marks on her slender, ivory neck. The scent of coitus stained his fingers and the bedcoverings, the little flutter behind her eyelids told him she was dreaming.

Maia was curled up amid white sheets and his dark body, her hair cascading over the bedsheets and pillows. A soft, delicate snore was coming from her parted lips. Something started to turn inside him, rolling and opening, and he stopped it.

He stopped it cold, pulling that brick wall back around to bar those soft feelings.

Oh, what he’d done. Dimitri closed his eyes as uncertainty and anger flooded him. After so many years of denial, he’d succumbed easily and thoroughly in the past weeks. Bitterness tinged his mouth as his heart thumped an erratic, accusatory beat. He’d warned her, yes, he’d told her to leave, but he knew better.

It was never that easy with a woman. Never that simple. And the tender, unfurling feelings in his belly were guilt and pleasure wrapped into one. Emotions that he must learn to do without.

He heard rapid footfalls coming down the corridor, and then there was an urgent knocking at the chamber door.

“My lord!” The knock became more urgent.

“One minute,” he growled at the door.

“Please, my lord, it’s an urgent matter!”

Dimitri glanced down at Maia, who was now stirring. He clapped a hand over her mouth just as her eyes bolted open in shock and dismay.

He put a finger to his lips and then yanked the bedclothes up to cover her. “What is it?” he bellowed. “Come in.”

“It’s the elder Miss Woodmore,” said Crewston, poking his head around the open door. A single shaft of daylight spilled into the dark chamber from behind him. “She’s gone missing!”

Dimitri felt her go rigid beneath the sheets. He pressed his hand down on top of her to keep her still, glad that Crewston was mortal and unable to scent the strong essence of coitus that lingered in the chamber. “Nonsense. She’s likely gone for a walk or shopping this early in the day.”

“I don’t know about that, my lord, but her Mr. Bradington is below, claiming she agreed to walk with him this morning. Surely she wouldn’t have left before he arrived.”

“Tell Bradington—” Dimitri barely managed to keep a snarl from his voice “—that she had an emergency with her wedding frock and had to visit the seamstress this morning, and that she will return shortly. And send him on his way, if you please.”

“But my—”

“Crewston.”

“Very well, my lord. But the younger Miss Woodmore is beside herself with fear that Miss Woodmore has been abducted again.”

“Advise Angelica that I am confident her elder sister will return shortly. And I don’t wish to be bothered for any reason until she returns, or until after dinner. Whichever occurs first.”

“Yes, my lord.” Crewston withdrew, his disbelief and annoyance barely masked.

No sooner had the door clicked closed than Maia erupted from beneath the sheets, holding them to the front of her torso. She opened her mouth, likely to begin barraging him with questions or recriminations, and Dimitri decided to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and launch his own attack first.

“Are you aware that you snore, Miss Woodmore?” he asked in a mild voice.

She drew back, a glint of fierceness in her eyes, and closed her mouth. The sheets were a bunch against her chest, revealing only the barest curve of one shoulder. “Why, I—”

“It didn’t bother me, but if you decide to share a bedchamber with Bradington, it might become a concern.”

Her lips tightened and she replied in a low-pitched voice, “Don’t be a fool, Corvindale. Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing? Trying to divert me, trying to anger me? Or hurt me so that I go running off to Alexander?”

He closed his mouth and blinked. Her intelligence and foresight never failed to surprise him.

“I know better than that, Corvindale. I know you better than you realize,” she said, lowering her voice still further, watching him steadily. “And you’ve lost the power to hurt me like you might wish to, because I know why you do it.”

He’d become very still. “Is that so?” was all he trusted himself to say.

“You’re just like the beast from that fairy tale, locked away, cold and angry and afraid to allow anyone close to you, or to divert you from your research. But you’ve missed everything that’s important. And this,” she said, spreading her hand to encompass the events of the last night, “is…was…a bit too close for you. I’m sorry for that.”

“Miss Woodmore,” he said, barely holding on to the fury he managed to dredge up, just able to keep the truth of her words from penetrating, “you have no idea of what you speak. The only thing I care about,” he said, his lips and jaw tight, “is freeing myself of this.”

He turned sharply so that she could see the back of his left shoulder.

Maia’s sudden intake of breath was audible and he felt her body still next to him. “My God.”

Dimitri knew what she saw: the horrible Marking of the devil spreading down like black roots over his shoulder. When he’d first awakened to find himself signed thus, the lines had been narrow, like fine cracks in shattered glass. But over the years of his abstinence, his disregard for Lucifer’s will, the lines had grown thicker and darker as they welled with pain. Now they rose from his skin like slender black-red veins, writhing and twisting with agony, pounding and pulsing with his every defiance of the devil.

“This is the Mark of my covenant with Lucifer,” he said, keeping his voice steely. “I’m damned, Maia, damned and tied to him, and because of that, I cannot—I don’t want—anything or anyone in my life. I want to be left alone. I want to be free.”

She hadn’t taken her eyes from his shoulder, and when she reached to touch him, Dimitri moved away.

“Now,” he said, taking control of his voice, changing it from the desperate tones of a moment ago to one matter-of-fact and calm, “this is what will happen. You’re going to leave here, Maia, you’re going to go to your chamber and dress and pretend you were on a walk and forgot your appointment with Bradington. And you’re going to marry him as planned. And you’re going to forget about all of this.”

“I can’t do that, my lord,” she said, surprising him with the formal use of address.

“You must. There is nothing I can do for you, nor that I want to do. I’ve allowed you to invade my house, my den and now my bedchamber—” she tensed at that comment, and, gratified that it had hit the mark, he went on “—but I’m finished now. Lerina’s visit last night has me concerned that she has some other plans. And I’ve done everything I can to ensure that you wed Bradington without a hint of scandal. That is all I can do for you.”

Her mouth had tightened. “I cannot do that, Corvindale. Did you not hear me?”

“Yes, you—”

“I cannot, Corvindale,” she interrupted in a stiff voice, “because, much as I desire to leave your vile presence, I cannot walk from one end of your house to my chamber in the other dressed like this.” She flung the bedcoverings away from her naked torso.

Lord. He caught his breath before he realized it, then looked away. But the image was burned into his brain, the delicate shape of her body, the shadow of her collarbones, the high handfuls of breasts tipped with tight pink nipples, the hollow of her waist and curve of hips, and the peek of a slender white thigh. Remember it.

“Very well,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’ll arrange it for you, Miss Woodmore.”

She was shaking her head, her full lips flat and mutinous. “I will return to my chamber, but I don’t see how I can marry Alexander when I’m in love with you.”

He stilled as something sharp darted through his gut. “You’re even more foolish than I thought if you believe that, Miss Woodmore.”

“That is one thing I believe we must agree on, my lord. I am foolish.”