The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke Page 18

  Devon started to laugh. “She knows.”

  “Precisely what does she know that I have not been apprised of?” Grayson inquired with a dark look around the room.

  “Sit down,” Heath said. “And I shall tell you the facts as I understand them. It started less than a fortnight ago at a wedding…”

  Grayson frowned. “It always starts at a wedding.”

  Heath paused. “On second thought, I would feel better if one of you walked around the house to investigate the noise we just heard. I’m willing to stake my name that it was not a door slamming.”

  Harriet stood in vigil in the garden beneath Lady Lyons’s bedchamber as she had countless times for her brothers during the course of one of their Mayfair robberies. This was an easier lay, though, even if less exciting. She couldn’t see a bleeding thing from her hiding place and while she wouldn’t go to gaol if she got caught, she wouldn’t win a purse of sparklers, either.

  Nothing had happened.

  Not a glimpse of his nibs playing at rantum scantum with Lady L, an event that, by Harriet’s estimation, should be under way at this moment.

  She sank down on the summerhouse steps. She’d been half hoping to hear her ladyship screaming off her garret, her with her grand manners and all.

  “Her silence tells the true story, don’t it?” Harriet whispered to the skinny gray cat who’d wandered up to sniff at her shoes. “You and I have our share of secrets, eh, Puss?”

  Harriet had seen enough of life in Seven Dials to gather that men and women took an inordinate pleasure in joining giblets. But while Harriet might be a liar and a thief, she cherished her own virtue. Not that it mattered much to a girl destined for Newgate. Still, Harriet—

  The cat turned its head. Harriet blinked, hearing footsteps from the direction of the kitchen. Someone muttering in annoyance about the bench she’d dragged across the door in the event a busybody decided to snoop about the garden. Lord Wolf hadn’t paid her for that particular act of precaution.

  She’d collect it from him later, with interest, if he had a good night.

  The door rattled harder. A disembodied voice from an upstairs window called down to her.

  “Psst. Harriet.” That Butterfield pipsqueak’s reedy voice wafted down. “Miss Boscastle is looking for you.”

  She shot to her feet. “Hell’s bloody bells.”

  There was nothing to do for it. She had to hide Romeo’s ladder from yon idiot banging at the door, not to mention hiding her own sorrowful self from Charlotte Boscastle’s patrol.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d hefted a ladder over her scrawny little back in the name of impropriety; it probably wouldn’t be the last. Still, at this rate she could go into retirement on what his lordship owed her for doing her duty.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sir Gabriel Boscastle swore to himself and vaulted over the bench he’d dislodged from the doorway. God knew it was a crude tactic to delay one from entering the garden. Still, it was effective. He hadn’t wanted to break down the door. And if he’d known the lay of the house a little better, he would have found another point of exit. Well, he was the one who’d wanted to be included in all the London Boscastle family intrigues. It was time to prove he could connive with the best of his cousins. His own family had given him more heartbreak than happiness. Who’d have thought, as bad as he’d been, that he would be embraced by the London fold?

  The garden looked innocent and undisturbed in the moonlight. For all he knew two of the servants had been stealing a few moments alone and he’d ruined their plans. He almost felt guilty.

  He strolled about a few moments, spotted a gray cat sitting on the wall. Nothing to arouse suspicion until—

  He narrowed his eyes, came to a standstill. A pale-haired figure had just emerged from the house, her movements denoting some furtive purpose. What the devil—

  “Charlotte?” Disbelieving, he stepped toward her, laughing at the tiny shriek she emitted. “What are you doing out in the cold?”

  She took a startled breath. “I should ask you the same thing.”

  “I came out to smoke a cigar,” he replied, then patted his vest pocket as if to verify the fib.

  “Well, I was looking for…for Harriet.” She sniffed the air. “Odd. I don’t smell any smoke.”

  He glanced around. “I don’t see Harriet, either—”

  But he did, all of a sudden, spy the ladder that lay precariously balanced against the side of the summerhouse. And almost at the same moment as did Charlotte, judging by her audible intake of breath.

  Neither of them said a word. Gabriel had no idea what Charlotte made of the discovery. Or exactly what a ladder against the wall meant, although he had a good idea that this was something Heath would want to know. It was not Gabriel’s job to judge, only to report back to the Boscastle brothers as soon as possible.

  He could not imagine Wolf eloping with Emma. Or anyone being brave enough to elope with her for that matter. He did think it was rather a shame she was such a prude. With that apricot gold hair and creamy alabaster complexion, she was a beautiful woman and would make some poor man absolutely besotted and miserable one day, he was sure.

  Was that man Wolf?

  “Well, I suppose we should go back inside before we’re missed,” he said casually.

  Charlotte practically pushed him in her hurry to reach the door first. “Splendid idea. Now—”

  A thin voice floated down to them from the dormer window. Her white face overshadowed by a frilly nightcap, Harriet sat perched across the sill. “Would the pair of you mind taking the chitchat inside?”

  Gabriel scowled up at her. “You wouldn’t be talking to me, would you, Miss Sauce-Box?”

  “Yeah. What if I am?” Harriet peered down at him for several moments. “Hey, I know that ’and-some face, don’t I?”

  Gabriel snorted. “If you’re referring to me, I doubt it.”

  “I’ve seen you in the slums,” Harriet insisted. “Sneakin’ about, you were.”

  “Not me,” Gabriel said in annoyance. At least not in recent years.

  “Maybe you have an evil twin,” Charlotte whispered amusedly.

  “Maybe I’m evil enough to be triplets,” he retorted. “Which reminds me. How are those brothers of yours?”

  “I don’t ask.” She gave him a suspicious look. “How are yours?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Ah.”

  Harriet pounded her fist on the sill. “Some of us do need our beauty sleep, you know. If you keep that blether up, you’ll wake up the whole house in a minute.”

  Gabriel raised his brow. He had a hunch the whole house, if not all of Mayfair, would be in an uproar before morning.

  Emma moaned, sinking into the mattress. “Please draw the bedcurtains,” she whispered. As if darkness could veil their indecent desire for each other.

  He loomed over her, his shirt hanging halfway off his shoulders. He looked raw, sexual, and he acted it, too. “What if it pleases me to look at you?”

  “You shouldn’t—”

  “Ssh, love,” he said, unfastening his trousers.

  “My head is swimming,” she said in a quiet voice. “I think I’m going to faint.”

  Her eyes fluttered shut as he lowered himself onto the bed. His large hands glided in gentle possession across her face, her throat, then her breasts. His erection pressed hard against her bare hip. His clean scent, mint and male spice, stole enticingly into her senses.

  “You’re not going to faint.” He kissed the engorged tips of her breasts, his voice a seductive whisper on her skin. “At least not until after I’ve f—”

  “Adrian,” she gasped, opening her eyes. “Not that word.”

  He laughed, locking his leg over hers. “Fine,” he murmured. “I won’t say it, but I’m going to do it to you good, Lady Emma. Shall I suck on your breasts first? Or may I stroke your lovely quim?”

  She caught her upper lip in her teeth. “Must you describe e
very detail of the acts we are to experience?”

  His sharp white teeth closed around a delicate nipple. Her spine bowed in pleasure. “It’s all in the details, isn’t it?” he murmured, echoing the words she had spoken to him at the wedding. “The little touches.”

  Her breath caught on a broken laugh. “I shall take you to task…later.”

  His thumb spread through the dewy curls that crowned her cleft. He inhaled raggedly, then began to rotate the stiff pearl of her sex. “You’re silky wet,” he said, his voice deepening to a soft growl. “Temptress.”

  Temptress. Her. Of all the names used to describe her, this was the most unlikely, the most lovely—Oh, heaven. He wedged another finger into her secret place until she could feel herself stretching, weeping against his hand in supplication.

  “Not yet,” he whispered.

  She thrashed her head, lifted her hand to his thigh. Her body trembled with irrepressible need. His thumb teased her clitoris, light flicks that drew a deep moan of frustration from her throat. She felt his heavy shaft thicken against her thigh. She moistened her lower lip with her tongue, imagining his organ in her mouth, between her legs.

  “You feel like cream, Emma,” he said, his face intense. “I’d like to taste you—”

  She was dying, lost, desperate. So desperate. “Don’t say—”

  “I’d like to rub my face in you. All that cream.”

  Her hips bucked. She spread her legs shamelessly, riding his knuckles when what she really wanted, needed, was his thick member inside her, assuaging her hunger. “I can’t—”

  “May I have a lick, please?”

  “—breathe. I can’t think or breathe.”

  He withdrew his hand, waited a heartbeat before plunging his fingers back inside her snug passage. Her back stiffened; her quim gripped him so tightly that he groaned, then worked her faster. Her sensitive muscles shivered.

  “That’s it, love,” he whispered, low and wicked. “That’s how a proper lady shows her lord what she wants.”

  She sobbed as her body convulsed. Then, as if the pleasure, the relief, did not completely undo her, he bent his head without warning and burrowed his face between her thighs. Warmth burst through her veins as his tongue replaced his fingers and thrust into her swollen folds.

  A proper lady.

  Oh, yes. Yes. She was squeezing his shoulders with her legs, hugging his hard body. And he seemed to like it, even when she undulated against his mouth. He made a growling sound, and his big hands clasped the cheeks of her bottom to draw her closer.

  The pulsations were still echoing all over her body when he pulled himself off her. He slid off the bed, his face carnal and beautiful in the grainy shadows. He stood studying her bare form, undressed with hurried grace as if he guessed how she ached to behold his nude body. Indeed, Emma could not take her eyes from him.

  Lustful, that’s what she was. As badly behaved as Hermia pursuing male aristocrats to sketch for art. But Adrian was a masterpiece of nature. His bare chest might have been sculpted from marble, the striated muscle and faint scars bearing witness to strength tested.

  In fact, she was so impressed by what she beheld that her appreciative gaze drifted downward over his hard belly to the heavy organ that stood like polished steel between his thighs. A sigh of unadulterated desire escaped her. He was a man to make any woman weep.

  She closed her eyes to mask her thoughts. And heard him laugh as he lowered his beautiful body to the bed. “It’s all right to look at me, you know,” he said, walking his fingers across her breasts, giving each nipple a pinch before he parted her juicy pink folds.

  “I want to look at you,” she whispered. “You’re ever so lovely.”

  “You’re better than cream and cherries, yourself. You liked what I did, didn’t you?”

  She writhed against his gentle stroking, still unbearably sensitive. “I would think my present position speaks for itself.”

  He slipped his free hand under her bottom and moved her onto her side. “Then let’s try another position.”

  He lifted his hand from the throbbing flesh he had recently stimulated, inhaling deeply. And then, as if she were a delicacy, he licked the essence of her from his fingers. She was too shocked, too aroused to react. She had never—the satiny knob of his penis pressed between the cheeks of her bottom and slowly penetrated her cleft. The sensation, the silken pleasure of his huge shaft as it pressed toward her feminine core, stole her breath.

  She arched her shoulders in anticipation. He brought his large hand up to her breasts and tugged her tender nipples between his glistening fingers.

  “Now,” he whispered, biting the back of her neck, “I want you to forget everything you know about being a lady.”

  He chuckled at her outraged gasp, but a moment later, after she’d wound up on her stomach, he was too engrossed in sinking his cock inside her to even think, let alone speak. The damp walls of her sheath squeezed him in welcome. He drew a breath between his teeth and teased the head of his erection into her passage. With every inch of him she drew inside, he could feel her flesh resist, then moistly stretch, making a home for his pulsing shaft.

  He felt the shiver that quivered down her spine. And sent him over the edge. His proper Emma had the graceful back, the sexual allure, and shapely arse of a courtesan. His. He was almost all the way inside her. His teeth ached.

  His alone.

  He lifted his arms above his head, releasing a soft growl of sexual possession, and surged. She bucked, groaning into her pillow, and lifted herself onto her knees.

  He turned his head, afraid that if he watched her delicious body taking him inside her he would spill his seed upon her thigh.

  “Does it hurt?” he whispered in a raw voice, not certain he could stop at this point, anyway.

  She gave a small shake of her head. “Only a little.”

  He thrust. She arched her pelvis and rotated her hips with exquisite slowness, gloving him to the hilt. He withdrew, struggling for breath. His spine flexed, he pumped into her, harder now. A little faster until his cock felt ready to burst in its skin. She moaned softly; her body tautened, and he kept telling himself she was no virgin, but a woman experienced. A woman who had not made love in years; yet she’d aroused him to the point he could not even speak.

  For a moment he was afraid. His phallus was exceptionally thick, and he was on the verge of losing complete control. He heard her breath quicken, felt her soft hands grip his arse. Then she swiveled her rosy bottom against him, bouncing, encouraging him to continue. “Don’t stop,” she whispered in a low voice that excited him. “Whatever you do…”

  She need say nothing else to unleash his instincts.

  He threw his head back and gave her what her body had begged for. Mindless, he drove in and out, his stones tight, cradled in the crevasse below her slit. Her sheath absorbed every hot, aching inch of him. A growl of pleasure rose in his throat.

  “Too good,” he muttered. She undid him, gave the meaning of desire a depth that frightened him. He had to possess her. He was consumed with need.

  His voice broke. His chest heaved. He jerked his hips, and lifted her against him, his body straining in spasms of the most potent release he had ever known. He moved until he could not breathe, gave himself to her and took even as his senses fragmented and his heart thundered in his chest and head.

  She shook beneath him as if she, too, would shatter, secured by his strong arms around her waist. He held her. Pray God, he would hold and love her every night for the rest of his life, anchored, at peace, with the only woman who understood him and beckoned him back into the light.

  At length she twisted against his arm, kissing his neck. In reluctance he withdrew from the warmth of her body to lie beside her. Her fine gold hair caught between their flesh like a veil. He regretted again his brash attempt at seducing her that first time. He wished he had waited to give her the attention she deserved.

  He was a man who’d learned to mark the passage
of time only by monumental events. The death of his mother. The first Christmas his father admitted that he did not believe Adrian was his son. The October day he’d left home with the caw of ravens rising in the distant woodsmoke.

  The day he’d met Emma.

  It was a blessing he hadn’t lost her, that her brothers had not sent him away. And since he could not find the words to express what he felt, he rolled onto his side and kissed her, hoping that somehow she would understand.

  She twined her arms around his neck and pressed her fragrantly damp body against his. A surge of desire swept through his noble intentions. He would have happily continued debauching her had his own conscience not stopped him. “Emma.” He slid his hand down the seam of her backside. “I have to tell your brother. Your brothers.”

  “Now?”

  Her delicate body slipped out from his grasp. Before he knew it, they were both sitting up in bed with a coverlet pulled over their legs. She looked so disheveled, so desirable that he wished he’d had the sense to keep his mouth shut.

  But the time had come. This was not a little indiscretion to be laughed off in a few months. What he’d done, broken into her room and ravished her, had incurred a debt of honor. Happily he was more than willing to pay it, even if he might have gone about his courtship with more finesse.

  “Surely you don’t mean to go downstairs and announce your intentions at this hour?” she asked in a voice that not only made him straighten his shoulders but reach for a sheet to cover his privates. “After what we’ve just done?”

  “It’s better than having them find us here, isn’t it?”

  She regarded him in horror. “I would sooner drown myself in the Thames.”

  He grimaced. Her anxiety was infectious. “I will take on your entire family—the Prince Regent and every power in Europe—to claim you as mine.”

  She stared at him, then started to giggle.

  He raised his brow. “Is that meant to be helpful?”