Lord of Deceit (Heiress Games Book 2) (15 page)

O
ctavia had caught
a tiger by the tail. Now that she had him, what was she supposed to do with him?

She started to lead him toward the drawing room and the decanters there, but Rafe grabbed her shoulders. “Slow down,” he murmured in her ear. “We have the whole night ahead of us.”

Then he brushed her hair away from her neck. She’d removed her veil earlier and wound it around her reticule. When his lips grazed a pulse point, the bundle fell from her hand.

“Rafe,” she said, reaching up to touch his face. He had shaved that morning, but the trace of new-grown beard felt dangerous.

“You promised me a reward,” he said, his voice low and rumbly as he kissed her neck again. “But seeing your hair like this is the only gift I need.”

He ran a hand through it, sifting through the mahogany waves. She arched back, loving the feel of his fingers — the thrill of knowing that he was the first man to touch her like this.

He would be the first man to touch her. It shouldn’t have mattered. She could have slept with many men these past few years — she no longer had to think of her reputation, only of what might make her happy. But she was suddenly, fiercely, perhaps stupidly glad that it would be him.

His hand slid up her back. His fingers caressed her scalp, so tender that she thought, for a moment, that she might cry. She suddenly remembered how he’d held her when she’d found Lucy’s shrine. He had made her feel safe then. He made her feel safe now, no matter how much uncertainty swirled around her.

She had thought that the biggest danger would be in letting him make love to her. Their first kiss had already awoken something within her. She’d thought that her hunger for sex, once she knew exactly what it felt like, might be insatiable.

But now, she realized that he was slowly, inexorably filling all the loneliest bits of her soul — those places that she hadn’t even noticed were empty. Lucy was lost to her. Somerville had been kind to her, but it had never been enough.

Rafe could be enough, if she let him be.

If he wanted to be.

That question was far too dangerous to think about. She couldn’t do this if she had any hope of keeping him — not if she wanted to protect herself. He wouldn’t marry a ruined woman.

And she didn’t think she could bear being Rafe’s mistress, paid and kept, but always knowing he could toss her out at any moment.

So she wouldn’t let herself expect anything. This was a chance to see what lovemaking was all about before she made a decision about which protector she would take next. That experience was something she knew she wanted. Nothing more than that.

Her heart wanted more, but this time, her body won. His caresses were doing delightful things to her. She could focus on those for tonight. Tomorrow was soon enough to worry about the future.

She turned to face him, sacrificing the feel of his hand in her hair for something better. She leaned up on her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.

He let her explore his mouth at her leisure. There was something heady about feeling like she was in command — and something equally heady about knowing he could strip that command from her at any moment. Like all the nights they’d spent together on her mission, the power shifted and flowed between them effortlessly. Like partners, not acquaintances.

For now, it was her adventure. She nipped his bottom lip with her teeth. His mouth, when he finally opened for her, was warm and inviting — and not nearly as tinged by whisky as his appearance in the forest would have indicated. She sighed a little as their tongues met. Her body slowly started to relax — even as, deep within her, a warm, delicious heat started to build.

“Careful, love,” he murmured after a few endless minutes. By then she was breathless, languid and on fire at the same time. “We’re not going to have time for the drink you promised me if you keep kissing me like that.”

His voice was pure gravel. The warning felt like a dare.

She responded by stripping his greatcoat off of him. He wore riding breeches and Hessians — not the usual evening attire, but he had skipped dinner at Maidenstone in favor of pursuing their schemes. Perhaps, unconsciously, he had dressed for battle.

“Do you want a drink?” she asked, tugging at his cravat. “Or do you want to take me to bed?”

He tilted her chin up. His eyes were full of devilry. She grinned, perhaps a little too dazzled by what she saw there. “We have all night,” he said.

Then he kissed her, slowly, thoroughly. Her hand fisted in his cravat, pulling him closer, never wanting him to stop. Through her brocade prison, she felt him graze down her back, cupping her derriere.

Maybe the first countess had killed herself out of frustration, if this dress had always come between her and her lover’s hands.

Rafe’s touch was leisurely. But when he spoke again, there was tension in his voice. “We have all night,” he repeated. “But spending any of it doing anything but making love to you seems like a colossal mistake.”

Her heart leapt. She shoved it aside with a brutal reminder that this was about
now
— not about the future.

“Good,” she said, dropping her hand from his cravat to trail over the buttons of his jacket. “I don’t think I can sit in this dress anyway.”

“Then we’ll have to get you out of it,” he murmured, kissing the side of her neck again. “Lead me to your bed, general.”

She smiled, feeling wicked and wonderful. “I should court-martial you for trying to assume command, but I agree with your tactics.”

He laughed against her skin. “I live to obey, Octavia.”

How did he make her name sound like a caress? In another man’s mouth, her name sounded hard, like the Roman empress she was named after. But from him, it sounded like something else — like the woman she wanted to be, not the woman her ruin had forced her to become. A woman who could trust kisses and laughter. A woman who could find solace in someone else’s arms.

The woman she wanted to be was on fire now, eager for this man with the easy laugh and steady gaze. But she was still the woman she had been. And that woman had a sudden flurry of doubt.

“Why did you change your mind?” she asked.

The moment darkened. He pulled away from her, frowning. She almost regretted asking the question. But she had to know.

“Change my mind about what?”

“About this,” she said, waving a hand between them. “Last night, you said you thought this was a bad idea.”

He caressed her cheek. “I was wrong. This is the best idea.”

If she were eighteen, she would have left it at that. But the woman she wanted to be wouldn’t allow herself to be used for someone else’s pleasure — not unless she knew exactly how the playing field was situated.

“It
is
the best idea,” she said. “But I would still ask why you realized that now and not before.”

Rafe paused. For once, there was no charming smile or glib response. Instead, finally, he said, “I cannot say goodbye to you yet, Octavia. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. And I think we’re both too honest, or at least too practical, to believe that the future will be full of rainbows and butterflies. But tonight…I was able to deny it last night. But I can’t deny you again.”

He pulled her back into his arms, but it felt more like a hug than an amorous embrace. “Let’s have tonight,” he whispered into her hair. “But if you want me to stop, say the word and I’ll leave.”

He was giving her the freedom of choice. In his arms, she knew she was exactly where she wanted to be.

She also knew this would never, ever have happened if he knew she was a virgin. Gentlemen did not offer “tonight” to innocents — and if they did, they weren’t gentlemen.

She couldn’t tell him. He probably wouldn’t believe her anyway. If he did, he might ask questions about Somerville that she couldn’t answer.

Agnes had told her everything about the mechanics of the act years ago, when Octavia became Somerville’s mistress. Octavia had seen enough illicit couples at her parties to know a bit more than what Agnes had told her, but still, she was mostly in the dark.

But Agnes had told her that enthusiasm pleased men more than experience. Octavia had no idea if that was true. She hoped it was, though — because while she had no experience, she had endless enthusiasm for Rafe.

She pressed a kiss against his shoulder. “Tonight. Lucy may have us drawn and quartered in the morning, after all.”

He laughed. “Don’t borrow trouble. I’m going to give you all the trouble you can handle.”

He scooped her up in his arms. She shrieked as he tossed her over his shoulder. “What are you doing?” she demanded as her hair tumbled over her head and his arm wrapped around her thighs.

“You look gorgeous in this dress, you know,” he said conversationally, walking toward the stairs. “I never had this fantasy before, but I’d rather like to be the dastardly pirate kidnapping the Virgin Queen.”

She reminded herself that it was a reference to Queen Elizabeth, not that he’d guessed her secret. “I can still court-martial you.”

“You won’t,” he said confidently. “After tonight, you’ll promote me.”

“Aren’t you a confident beggar,” she said as he moved up the stairs.

“I’ll let you turn me into a beggar another night. But this is my fantasy, your majesty. Tonight, it’s your turn.”

She was entirely in over her head, but his voice was still full of humor and his arm was secure around her. She let go of the last of her doubts, let go of the woman she had forced herself to become.

When he found her bedchamber and tossed her onto the bed, she laughed.

“Kidnappings aren’t supposed to be fun,” Rafe said with a mock scowl.

She raised herself up on her elbows, looking at him as though she were a queen in truth — captured, perhaps, but always regal. “My country won’t ransom me, you know. You’ll have to take whatever you can find on my body.”

He grinned. “I would never let you go for money, love.”

She almost wished he wouldn’t use the endearment.

He moved away from the bed. Agnes had closed the curtains before she had left, but he threw them open again, letting the last of the moonlight filter in through the glass. “Not enough,” he muttered to himself.

“Can I help….”

He raised his hand, peremptorily, as though he really had kidnapped her. “Silence, wench.”

She giggled.

Rafe looked back at her and grinned. “That was too much, I know.”

He found a lamp on her dressing table and lit it. Then he lit the wall sconces and the candles on the mantel. When he returned to the foot of the bed, he stared down at her. He didn’t touch her, but she could very nearly feel his gaze as he looked over her. His smile was entirely wicked. “If you’re to be my payment, I want to see every inch of you.”

She shivered. That, at least, was not an act.

But she made a show of looking past him toward the clock on the mantel. “Do be quick about it, then,” she said, waving a hand. “I shan’t waste my sleep on a ruffian like you.”

He laughed. “That’s the spirit, your majesty.”

When they were flirting like this, she had no doubts at all. And so she was relaxed and eager with him, where another man might have made her nervous.

He grabbed her ankles, pulling her toward him until her backside balanced right on the edge of the bed. “Don’t move,” he said when she reached down to adjust her skirts.

He adjusted them instead, pushing them up slowly, revealing inch after inch of her stockings. He reached her garters, then looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “Red, your majesty?” he asked, with an eyebrow raised in mock disapproval. “I never would have guessed you to be a wanton.”

She couldn’t think of a response to that — not when he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, above the silk. She hadn’t known how sensitive she was there. He was only inches from her most private space — and she knew, from earlier, entirely personal discoveries that she was
definitely
sensitive there.

He pooled her skirts around her waist. “Hold them up,” he ordered.

Below the waist, she would be completely bared to him. She wasn’t nervous, but she couldn’t stop herself from blushing as she imagined how he saw her. He had gathered all the layers — the overskirt, padded underskirt, and chemise — leaving her in her stockings and shoes and nothing else.

Her hands shook as she held her skirts where he’d told her to. He shrugged off his jacket like a man preparing for serious work. He tossed his waistcoat aside. In his white open-necked shirt and riding breeches, with his Hessians gleaming in the candlelight, he almost looked like the pirate he pretended to be. And the acres of brocade that pooled around her completed the picture — a queen about to be claimed by right of conquest.

Yes
.

God, how she’d wanted this without knowing it.

He dropped to his knees in front of her.

“Paying fealty after all, pirate?” she asked. But her voice was thready. It was getting harder to keep pretending.

“After a fashion,” he said. “But by the time I’m done….”

He nudged her legs apart. It was shockingly intimate how he surveyed her — as though he really did want to see every inch of her body, to know the very core of her.

He placed a heavy hand, entirely possessive, over her curls. He looked up at her, daring her to stop him. “By the time I’m done, Octavia, you’ll be the one paying fealty. You’ll be begging me to let you come.”

His hand felt like a brand against her skin. “I’ll beg you now,” she whispered.

He grinned. “Too soon, love. And if you beg me now, you’ll miss out on this.”

He leaned in, tracing a hand over her calf and bringing one leg up over his shoulder. And then, shockingly, but suddenly inevitably, he kissed her most secret place.

Kissing wasn’t the right word. He worshipped. His tongue was a weapon he wielded with ruthless precision, stroking between her folds. He took his time, until she knew he was teasing her — giving her intensity for a moment, then retreating, alternating between long, slow licks and lightning flicks against the nub where her pleasure centered.