My Pleasure (16 page)

She was not alone. Someone else was with her. Someone who meant her ill.

She backed up, blinking in the fine rain as she looked for the source of the menace, but the alley from which she’d come was hidden in rain and fog. Was the danger lurking behind her or waiting in that black slit ahead? She strained, listening, but all she could hear was the sibilant hiss of rain.

“I can save you.”

She froze. The plaintive whisper reverberated in the tiny yard, making it impossible to tell from where it had come. She bent down and yanked free one of the cart’s broken wheel spokes, lifting it high and brandishing it like a cudgel. “Go away.”

“What do you think you are doing?” the voice whispered angrily. “Look at you. Your hair like a whore’s, your bosom exposed. Disgusting! You shouldn’t be here.”

“No,” she agreed, her voice quavering, “I shouldn’t. It was a mistake. I’ll go now.”

“Are you patronizing me?” The voice was cold. But was it closer? She turned slowly, inching toward the wall, the spoke high in her hand.

“No.”

“You best not. You best remember who you belong to.”

Who she belonged to? She trembled, confused and terrified.“Who are you?”

“Do you dare play games with me?” A dark figure suddenly materialized out of the gloom, coming rapidly toward her, anger vibrating from him. It was the bird of prey. “Think, my dear. Who else? You know. And if you don’t, I’ll teach you!” He swooped toward her, the back of his hand raised to deliver a blow.

She stumbled backward over the cart and fell, catching herself at the last minute against the wall, her shoulders banging painfully against the damp brick. She jabbed out with the wheel spoke. At the sight, the man stopped and laughed.

“Pitiful,” he snickered, leaning toward her. “Unfortunately, my dear, you are no Ramsey Munro.”

“No,” said a voice. “But I am.”

CORPS-A-CORPS:

French. Literally “body-to-body”; physical contact between two fencers during a bout, illegal if performed intentionally

THE MAN KNOCKED AWAY the spoke Helena held and grabbed her arm, yanking her to her feet and shoving her at Ram. Ram caught her as the birdman fled, escaping into the black maw in the corner. Ram’s arms wrapped tightly around her, holding her fiercely.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded. He started to set her aside, to go after the man. She clung to him. “Please. Don’t leave me. He’s gone.”

A muscle leapt in his lean jaw, but he did not let her go. “What are you doing back here? In case, you hadn’t noted, this is hardly Lovers Walk.”

She froze at the implication of his words, an implication she had intuited when their eyes had locked across the ballroom: He’d recognized her as the brazen young woman in breeches whom he’d kissed at Vauxhall. She stiffened.

“Don’t worry,” he said, his lips curling slightly. “Your precious anonymity is safe, Corie. I am no closer to knowing who you are now than I was at Vauxhall. But I am not deaf, darlin’. Your married beau shouted for you to don a pink dress for your next tryst. And thus when I saw a woman in a pink gown standing beside the same fool I’d seen at Vauxhall, I inferred your identity. But not your name. Your real name.”

There was only one reason Ram could imagine why she was so eager to remain nameless: Because whatever she had done or wished to do was best done in secret, under the cover of masks and darkness. Things she would be ashamed to admit to or lovers she did not want to acknowledge. And even more bitter than the knowledge that what she wanted she wanted for only short, intense, and stolen moments, was the knowledge that she didn’t want it from him. She wanted it from this harlequin.

He fought the jealousy surging white hot within him. He had no right to judge her. No right and no reason. For a week he had been haunted by the marquis’s suggestion, sought to wash away with innumerable bottles of wine the images his grandsire had painted in his mind of a woman seeking a covert lover, someone a little disreputable, a little dangerous, someone she would never acknowledge in the light of day. He’d been here before. But that that woman was Helena Nash!

Abruptly, Ram released her, turning partially away. The rain fell in earnest now, and his soaked shirt molded transparently to the corded and cut musculature of his chest, adhering to his ribs and the tight corrugation of his belly.

He was magnificent. A selkie. A watery demon. Dark hair covered his chest and whorled around flat nipples. A raised imprint of what looked like a stylized rose was stamped into the flesh of his right pectoral. It was strangely, perversely sensual.

“Where is your harlequin?” he asked roughly. “Surely it is his part to be saving you from unwanted advances? Or,” he looked down at her, his expression coldly interested,“were they unwanted? Am I
de trop
? If so, I do most sincerely beg your pardon.”

Crystalline blue eyes stared at him through the cutout eyes of her mask. He could see the minute his words took hold, the minute she realized how gravely he’d offended her. Now she would slap his face and leave. And he would be free to go.

But she didn’t slap his face. Her chin rose, her eyes catching the tiny bit of light left in the dark yard. “You are not suggesting that I wanted that man to accost me?”

He shrugged with elaborate indifference. “Why not? It would be a prime adventure.”

“I came this way by chance. I had no idea anyone was following me.”

“I see. You thought to leave the party alone, and here you had not one but two men following you, the crow and mine own poor self. You are exceedingly popular.”

“Why were
you
following me?”

Because I saw your body stiffen as you watched that poor trollop try and incite a bit of interest from me. Because I saw how it offended you, and thus it offended me. So I followed you before I understood I was doing so. Because that is what I do where you are concerned now. All my caution and discretion have been burnt to ashes by desire, and scattered to the winds, leaving only impulse and reaction. The very things a swordsman disdains if he wants to live.

“Because the way by which you left led to a place I knew was unsafe for a woman alone.” It was some of the truth.

“Then, once more, I owe you my thanks and ask that you guide me to where I might hire a hack.”

“I don’t want your gratitude, at least not for such slim service.”

Her head snapped up at that, and he smiled at her, idly tipping his shoulder against the wall and blocking her exit. He was a cad, an unspeakable roué. He didn’t care. He allowed his gaze to drift over her suggestively. Let her think he was drunk and dangerous. Hell, he was drunk, had been drunk, more or less, since the marquis’s visit. Because, damn the old man, he’d awakened demons Ram would rather have left sleeping.

And as for being dangerous…He didn’t have to pretend there, either. Because she’d fled without her cloak and, drenched in the tepid London rain, her skin shimmered with pearl-like incandescence, her hair coiling in dark, wet strands down snowy white shoulders and over the pale bosom exposed by the low neckline.

She looked like something carved from milk ice, something that could not possibly withstand the heated furnace of a man’s passion. If only he knew that wasn’t true. If only he didn’t know that her warm ruby lips were a far more telling barometer of her ardor than the cool, ice-blue eyes, the pale hair, the long white limbs. But he did.

He reached out and ran his fingertip along the damp edge of her gilt-painted mask. He had no pride. He had nothing left but desire: to hold her, to kiss her, to make love to her. He wouldn’t think anymore. Not about why she was here, why he was here, what tomorrow would bring and what yesterday had left behind.

“That’s twice now your fool has left you to your own devices,” he said. “Or, rather, that you have fled from him. Can it be that you are still so untried that you think the chase is the best part of the game?”

She didn’t reply. She just stood under his light, feathering caress, the rain beading on her shoulders and trickling down her bosom. He curled his finger low against her bared breast, catching one swollen drop just before it disappeared into the dark crevasse between her breasts. She shivered as he lifted his fingertip to his lips and sipped the drop off.

“It doesn’t even compare,” he whispered enticingly. “True, there are some poor sots who never reach the blissful, fiery end. They seek, they pursue, they struggle and strive. Their hearts race, their lungs labor.”

His gaze traveled down her flushed body. “But they do not find the satisfaction such sweet labor strives to achieve. In the end, they are left frustrated, impelled by a goal that exists beyond their reach, but not, alas, beyond their ability to imagine. Come, lass. Your harlequin is but a boy. Such an experience as you want requires a man.”

Her masked face rose. “A man with vast experience in achieving that fiery finish?”

He disliked the note hidden in the breathless query. He had no answer for it. Sexual concourse he’d had too many times, and too many times the moments after the little death had been empty.

He ignored the hollow memories, intent on only one thing—Helena. “That is what you are here for, is it not?”

He heard her breath catch and hold. Could see her fascination and her fear. Not a sound disturbed the moment. The fog rolled about them like a warm blanket, obscuring everything it touched, softening hard edges and obliterating ugly lines.

“Let me guide you, my wee tourist,” he coaxed softly. “Let me be your adventure.” His mouth hovered inches above the sweet, curved juncture of her neck and shoulder. She smelled of dried lavender and wet powder and rain. “Tell me yes. Give me leave.”

She trembled under his light, buffeting breath. His lips brushed her shoulder. Only then did her breath escape, rushing out in a sigh of dismay and acceptance and…excitement. She could not deny the excitement.

“Why me?” she whispered. “There are other women far better—”

“There is no other woman,” he murmured against the creamy column of her neck. “There is no one but you.”

She wanted desperately to believe him. His voice was so grave, low and unsteady. But the image of that blowsy beauty with her hand between Ram’s legs flashed across her mind’s eye, like acid spilled on a painting, destroying his assertion, destroying her ability to believe him.

She pushed him away. “I can’t—”

He clasped her shoulders and spun her around, pulling her back hard against his chest, facing her forward, away from him. His mouth fell on her neck, and, as if echoing the abrupt shift in mood, the misting rain grew heavier, harder.

She should struggle. Free herself. But an answering hunger roused within her like a starving animal intent on feeding. She reached up and back over her shoulders, her fingers raking through his thick, wet curls and her head falling against his broad shoulder. Behind the beautiful mask, her eyes drifted shut.

He dragged his mouth up her neck, beneath her jaw, the soft skin beneath the lobe of her ear and then down, to her delicate collarbone. He trailed the tip of his tongue against the elegant bone, taking more of her weight as her knees weakened under the sensual onslaught.

She tried to turn in his embrace, but his forearm lashed around her waist, holding her in place, locked against him.

“Don’t struggle,” he muttered thickly. “Just feel.” She did.

He could sense the tension seeping out of her, the incremental surrender to pleasure. To him. The rain drove down in spears now, stinging and warm, as drenching as the desire that flooded his thoughts, his plans, his conscience, and his reason, drowning them all.

He spread one hand wide against the hard panel of her stomacher, and finding a stiff board where tender flesh should be, he yanked open the lacings and pulled the busk out, dropping it to the ground. Beneath it, she wore only a fine batiste chemise, the shadowy inference of the nipples beneath.

He pulled her tighter, fanning his hand across her upper chest and brushing down. A little sound of pleasure purred from her throat, and his hand dipped beneath the sheer material, cupping one firm, plump breast.

She would stop him now. Surely now she would end this.

He dipped deeper, lifting her breast free of the loosened material. She did not resist. Her arms linked back around his neck, her throat arching, tendering its delicate length to his use. He used it well. He kissed her, nipping her skin, feeling her pulse jumping against his lips, his tongue. Against the very center of his palm, her nipple beaded into a taut little pearl.

God help him, never had he been so quickly, so wholly, aroused. Desperately he sought to tame the desire, to throw up barricades, to appeal to absent conscience and reason. He failed.

He needed. He would have.

He spun her around, bowing her back over his forearm, her exposed bosom pale and wet and irresistible. With a shiver, he gently squeezed the soft breast, lifting the enticing nub to his mouth and taking it deep inside. Beneath the thin veil of rain, her skin flushed, plush and warm, like honey and flowers and whiskey—potent, mind-wrecking whiskey. He suckled, and her breath jumped and started in her lungs, little gasps, sighs, and moans from behind the mask. And as he suckled, gilt paint washed off the mask, running in sparkling rivulets down her throat and shoulders, down her breasts, staining the rose-colored velvet and gossamer lace wedded to her skin.

He fed on her pleasure, feasted on her arousal, licking and sucking and tasting her, and still he needed more. He swung her up, carrying her to the wall, setting her on her feet, and bracing his arms on either side of her head, shielding her from the driving rain.

“Kiss me. Take off your mask and let me have your lips, your mouth, your tongue.”

Her head snapped up, and he cursed at the sight of the pretty disguise, its presence a cold knife gutting him.

Does she wear a mask? What name has she given you? Or has she even given you a name? A week of steady drinking hadn’t obliterated the marquis’s words.

“Take it off. Take off that curst mask!” Longing and pain filled his voice, ripping away his habitual insouciance and hauteur. With a growl, he raised his hand to snatch the thing from her countenance, but her hand intercepted his, catching his wrist with a strength born of desperation.