Bronwyn Scott (3 page)

Chapter 5

Lucia lit the lamp and turned slowly to face him, this glorious naked man she’d tied to the chair. Reciprocity would be the naughtiest of games: part retribution, part seduction. Ronan St. Simon was a man with an imagination. It served him well as a spymaster, always able to see the various angles of plans and plots, connections a lesser mind would overlook, and it served him well in sex. Her body trembled in wicked expectation, her core dampening again with anticipation of what would come.

For all the unknowns the game posited, it was a safe game, one they both played with consent. She did not feel forced to take his deal, to whore herself for his information. She’d not made a practice of that and she wasn’t about to start tonight for him. In the past, she’d cajoled men, certainly, used her tools and wiles to persuade, but never to whore. Such a thing would make her a slave to men, would strip away the control she relished. She did nothing that it did not please her to do, although the motivations were not always for pleasure.

“Your first question?” Ronan prompted, his eyes following her as she set the lamp down on the table beside him.

She asked the most obvious. “Why are you really here? We both know it’s more than Jonathon’s watch.”

Ronan nodded. “It’s not a lie, though. He would have wanted you to have it. Besides, you already know why I’ve come.” He paused.

“The envelope,” she said succinctly. “I can’t give it to you. If the game is still on, you can’t ask for it and you know very well I can’t give it. It’s the most cardinal of rules. But if the game is off, there’s no need to even ask.” It was this double bind his request raised that garnered most of her suspicions. Should she trust him? He had been her superior. Was there even anything left to guard? She’d trusted him in the past; why should now be any different?
Because he is seducing you
,
something he’d not dared before.
It’s different now because something has changed.

“Take off your dress, Lucia.”

“I beg your pardon?” Lost in her thoughts, she’d forgotten the game.

“I said take off your dress.” A wolfish smile lit his mouth. He’d followed her thoughts precisely and knew he’d taken her unawares. “You had your question. Now I’ll have my favor.”

She made a production of it, working the laces at her back loose and giving a slow shrug of her shoulders as she slipped the sleeves down her arms and slid the dress over her hips until it pooled at her feet, leaving her in a decidedly innocent-looking petticoat of summer cotton and lace, embroidered with small blue flowers around the hem and neck and tied with a matching ribbon.

The decadent juxtaposition was not lost on Ronan. His topaz eyes darkened in appreciation and she knew she’d placed the lamp well to catch the shadow of her through the fabric of her undergarments. He was not the only one who could build anticipation with the promise of more to come.

“Why do you want it so badly when it makes no sense for you to possess it now?”

“I promised Jonathon’s family to affirm he did not die in vain, that he died protecting the true dispatch.” Ronan’s voice bore signs of desired-infused hoarseness when he spoke. “It seemed to matter greatly to them, and so it mattered to me.”

Lucia nodded. There’d been six envelopes, five containing false material about the then-upcoming Convention of Kutahya, where the treaty would be negotiated, and one with three different pieces of reliable information about those negotiations. The false material was to be passed to Marcus Troy, a recognized figure in the espionage world, to act as a decoy. The other one would be passed to the English diplomat stationed in Istanbul for the convention. No one among them had known which of the six had the three pieces of information.

Wordlessly, she cupped her breasts through the thin chemise, knowing what he wanted before he breathed it. She ran her thumbs over her nipples, arching her neck in a show of pleasure, a little moan delight escaping her.

Ronan inhaled sharply, eyelids dropping to sensual half lids, looking at her from beneath long dark lashes. His manhood was a jutting pole straining north toward his stomach. “Show a little pity, Lucia, or I won’t last long enough to play.”

“You’ll last.” She gave him a smile worthy of Eve, her next question following the logic of the last. “Do you know the content of the other envelopes?” The other five—his and the remaining four.

“Yes, I know.” He paused and for a moment she thought he was going to make her work for the knowledge of how. “After I contacted Jonathon’s family to pay my respects and they made their request, it took me over a year to retrace everyone’s last steps. But I found the envelopes, all except Jonathon’s. It’s buried with him or lost.” A tic jumped in his cheek and Lucia was instantly alert. He’d found more than the envelopes.

Silently, she lifted a leg onto the seat of his chair in the space between his legs, placing her toe tantalizingly close to his groin, and rolled down a white stocking of the sheerest fabric, giving him a glimpse of a curved calf and trim thigh and the dark shadow of hair at her core. He rewarded her with a shudder. She leaned forward with a throaty whisper, lips hovering inches from his. “Tell me what else you found, Ronan.”

He swallowed hard. “The remaining envelopes had been hidden.”

“Oh, God, no.” She breathed. She knew what that meant. The envelopes had not been
on
any of them. They’d
known
they were hunted, but not soon enough. They’d had time only to hide the envelopes, time to separate themselves from the incriminating information before...before there’d been nowhere else to run. The choice to hide rather than burn them had been telling too. Uncertain of who had the real information, no one could burn his envelope and risk destroying the information the mission had centered on retrieving and passing on. The others had died knowing they were betrayed.

It meant something else too. If Ronan knew the other envelopes had not contained the information, then it meant the vital information resided with her or with Jonathon. Her envelope would confirm it. Did she dare?

The old doubts surfaced. Perhaps the story of Jonathon’s family was a sentimental ruse. Perhaps Ronan had come to woo that envelope from her for himself, playing on their untested passion. If so, for what purpose? Perhaps he played a dangerous multilayered game and that information was still as vital as it had been five years ago. Lucia suppressed a sigh. It wouldn’t do to let him see her mounting frustration. She was getting nowhere near the heart of the matter: What was he really doing here and could she trust him? It would be much simpler if he’d only wanted to sleep with her.

Lucia switched legs and rolled down the other stocking, letting her petticoat rest high on her thigh, temptation just inches from his mouth. She didn’t want that to be the case. She wanted Ronan to be free of any duplicity. She’d always thought of him as high-minded, driven by the purest motives of patriotism. “Who betrayed us?” It would have to have been someone close to them, someone who would have known who all six carriers were, something impossible to know unless the betrayer had been one of them.

Ronan’s gaze was dark, grimness mixing with his desire. “Marcus Troy.” He swallowed hard. “Jonathon trusted him too much.”

Betrayed by their ally!
Lucia went to her knees, stunned. She’d nearly gone to Troy when she’d fled the ballroom; only at the last moment had she heeded a niggling of intuition and veered away from that course, going instead to the river and trading her pearls for a small boat she’d rowed down the Danube until her arms had ached and she could row no further.

“No.” She shook her head. She didn’t want to believe it because it meant that before Marcus Troy could betray them, there’d been another betrayer, Jonathon, and that was nearly an unthinkable possibility. Words failed her. “How could Jonathon...Jonathon would never...” Jonathon had been a risk taker, but he knew his job and that was to protect them.
Protect each other
had been their motto. They’d all sworn to it. That he would have given them away to Marcus Troy, inadvertently or deliberately, was unthinkable. He might have been reckless, but Jonathon knew how to guard a secret.

“It’s true, Lucia. I wish it wasn’t.” The look on Ronan’s face was terrible and she knew in his mind he was reliving awful moments of discovery she knew nothing about, things that had happened in the ballroom that night after she’d fled. Whatever lies he might have spun for her this evening, this was not one of them.

“How do you know?” she whispered, forgetting the game. But she knew before Ronan answered.

“Because I was with him when he died.” Ronan’s own voice was quiet, solemn.

It was what she’d expected. She’d seen doom and she’d run from it with all the precipitous speed she could manage. But Ronan had seen doom that night and he’d run toward it. Mentally, she could reconstruct the events in the ballroom: Ronan shoving his dance partner into the safety of the crowd before running to Jonathon’s side, sliding to his knees beside his fallen comrade even though to do so meant exposing himself to those who hunted them. She could see him leaning down, a calming hand on Jonathon’s brow, his ear close to Jonathon’s lips to catch his last words even while he murmured comforts to his dying friend, perhaps searching discreetly for the envelope before it was too late, knowing that every second he delayed in that ballroom meant his own chances for escape narrowed.

“I was a coward that night.” Lucia looked up at him. “And you were so very brave.” A thousand other questions swirled in her mind: Why did Jonathon do it? What did he tell Ronan at the end? What had happened to Ronan after that? But all those questions could be encompassed in a single word if she dared to breathe it. “Why?”

Ronan looked down at her. “I doubt you’d believe me if I told you the real reason.” A small smile curved on his lips. “Has anyone told you that you can’t look up at a man like that from between his legs and expect to get away with it? It seems you’ve forgotten the game.”

“What would you like? My mouth on you again?” She would give him anything to ease the pain of his memories.

“Your hands, Lucia,” he rasped, something akin to desperation flickered in his eyes. “Put your hands on me and help me keep the devils at bay.”

“And?” she said softly, aware that the game was about to become something else, not so much a competition but a source of succor.

“And I’ll tell you why.”

Chapter 6

“Jonathon and Marcus Troy were lovers,” Ronan said slowly, unsure where to start, but he
was
sure as to what he’d leave out. There were elements of the story he wasn’t ready to share with anyone just yet and the truth about what had motivated his actions that night was not a truth Lucia would accept: every moment he’d delayed in the ballroom, every moment he’d drawn all eyes to him gave her a chance to flee and she’d made the most of it. But to tell her that tonight while there was the issue of the envelope yet between them would strike her as sentimental manipulation.

Lucia ran her hands up a leg, massaging his tight muscles where they strained against the ropes. He would have to demand she untie him soon. His patience with the cords was waning, the knots refusing to give, but he judged it would be worth it. By the end of this tale, he’d have won her trust, or at least enough of it to convince her he was safe for release. In the meanwhile her touch soothed him, gave his mind something other to focus on so that his words came objectively, unchoked by emotion. He’d not lied about the devils. He held himself just as culpable as he did Jonathon for what had happened, and he was haunted enough for the both of them. The only consolation was that Lucia was safe. At least he had not failed her.

She trailed gentle kisses up his calf, kneading his muscles as she went.

“I warned Jonathon, of course, but Marcus Troy can be very seductive when he chooses, and he evinces a sincerity that appears genuine.” It was his fault Jonathon had sought out any association at all with Troy, his fault that Jonathon hadn’t listened to the warnings.

“Jonathon learned too late that Marcus had sold the information to the Russians. When Jonathon discovered what Marcus had done, he thought only to warn us, but time was short and in the end his reckless desire to protect us didn’t warn us so much as lead Marcus’s men right to us, something he surely did not intend.”

Lucia’s hands moved deliciously up to his thighs, stroking the rough hair of his legs and massaging so close to his juncture that his muscles quivered at the contact, straining against the ropes out of reflex in an effort to capture her hands. Being pleasured without the ability to participate in it, to guide it or control it in even the most minimal of ways, was disconcertingly stimulating. Lucia shifted, reaching for the drawer in the table beside them, and Ronan followed her with his eyes. She took out a small vial.

“Lemongrass oil,” Lucia explained, pulling out the stopper. The sharpness of lemon filled the air between them. She poured some in her hands and blew into them. “To heat it,” she murmured, rubbing the oil into his thigh, intentionally brushing his groin repeatedly as she did until he thought he’d burst from the contact. Never in all his dealings with women had he been touched so intimately or so well and she had yet to take hold of him again. It was no wonder the Russian count had nearly shattered along with her glass. He was almost there himself.

Ronan strained, his body trying to make full contact with her hands, not wanting to settle for her skimming touches. She was playing the role of the wanton innocent to perfection and he ached for more. He wanted to be free, free to strip her out of her undergarments, free to lay her down on the carpet and take her, mastering her body the way she’d mastered his. For a moment her hands halted and he became frustratingly aware of their absence. “For heaven’s sake, Lucia, don’t stop.”

She kissed his inner thigh, sending a bolt of heat through him, and whispered against his skin, mimicking his words, “Then don’t stop,” reminding him that he had a role to play in this too. Would she seduce him thusly if he didn’t have information she needed?

“What happened to you?” she prompted between kisses.

“I stayed with Jonathon until the end. It wasn’t long in coming.” Jonathon had barely rasped out Marcus Troy’s name, squeezing Ronan’s hand with the last of his strength, regret rampant in his blue eyes as Ronan gathered him to his chest.

He told Lucia how Sarah Caldwell, the ambassador’s daughter he’d danced with, had swept forward then and made a fuss over claiming Jonathon’s form, making it impossible for Troy’s people to seize the body. It had been Sarah who’d rescued the pocket watch and kept it for him. But Sarah could not rescue him.

“And you?”

“I slipped out through the garden, but I did not get far.”

Lucia rewarded his disclosure with a drop of lemongrass oil on the head of his manhood. She rose up on her knees and began to stroke his length with her hand. It was different this time. He had no anchor against the pleasure sweeping him. He could not free his hands and bury them in her hair. He could not press his thighs together even a fraction of an inch to subdue the pleasure. They’d been tied far enough apart to make them useless against her effort. He could only endure it, could only let himself be vulnerable to the waves sweeping him, could only...

“Let go, Ronan,” she whispered, her eyes brilliant, as if she understood too that this taking of him was more intimate than before. Her hand worked him, stroking fast and slick, but her face looked up to watch as the pleasure rolled through him. With her gaze, she joined him in this most private of moments, their eyes meeting as his release took him and he was helpless to control it, to suppress it as it took him, sweeping his demons before it until he was empty.

It was some consolation in the aftermath to note Lucia was not unmoved by the sight of him achieving his climax. The event had left her as aroused as he was sated, her arousal bright in her eyes. She would want her own satisfaction. Dear lord, she would drain him before this night was through, a most exciting prospect if peril wasn’t lurking with the dawn.

“Untie me, Lucia, and let me...”
Let me love you the way I’ve dreamed of loving you
, although how he’d manage a feat so soon after the last was something of a mystery. He felt the ropes give. Ah, some luck at last. He might not have to wait for her.

She pressed a finger to his lips. “Not yet.” She stepped away from him and removed her chemise, pulling it up over her head so that her breasts were bare to him at last. She loosed the string of her petticoat and let it fall. His exhausted body stirred at her nakedness, of the curves and planes of her revealed to him in full. She raised her arms, her breasts thrust forward, begging to be taken in hands he couldn’t use without ruining the moment, as she reached for the remaining pins in her hair and sent the long tresses cascading down her back like the Aspara of Irish myth, come to seduce unwary men.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he should ask the price for this. What piece of information did she want to extract next? Really, this was turning into the most extraordinary of interrogations.

She oiled her breasts with the lemongrass, making them gleam in the lamplight. “Now it’s your turn to watch me.” Oh, lord, this was going to cost him, but right now he didn’t care.