One Good Earl Deserves a Lover (21 page)

But the stallion would have to wait his turn, for seated on the woman’s long torso, in the shadowy stretch between breast and thigh, was a small, ugly figure, part beast, part man. The creature seemed to stare straight out of the painting, meeting the eyes of anyone who dared look. The expression on the goblin’s face was at once patient and possessive, as though he would wait for an eternity for the lady to awaken—and fight to the death to keep her.

It was the most compelling thing she’d ever seen, scandalous and sinful. She moved closer. “This piece—it is remarkable.”

“You like it?” She heard the surprise in his tone.

“I don’t think one
likes
it. I think one is captivated by it.” She wanted to reach out and wake the woman in the painting, to warn her of what was no doubt the beginning of a terrible demise. “Where did you find it?”

“It was used to pay a debt,” Cross said, closer, and she looked over her shoulder to find him at the edge of his desk, one hand on the ebony, watching her move toward the oil.

“A very large one, I imagine.”

He inclined his head. “I liked the piece enough to allow the debt wiped from the books—free and clear.”

She was not surprised that he had been drawn to this painting—to the wickedness in each brushstroke, to the darkness of the story it told. She turned back, drawn once more to the strange creature seated on the sleeping woman. “What is it?” she asked, reaching out to the little man, afraid to touch him.

“It’s an incubus.” He paused. Continued. “A nightmare. Demons were once thought to come at night and wreak havoc on those who slept. Male demons, like that one, preyed upon beautiful women.”

There was something in the way he spoke, a hint of—memory?—and Pippa looked to him. “Why do you have this?”

He was no longer watching her, instead, he stared down at the desk, lifting the dice she had placed there, clutching them in his palm. “I do not care much for sleep,” he said, as if it were an acceptable answer.

Why not?

She wanted to ask it, but knew, instantly, that he would not tell her. “I am not surprised, considering you spend most of your day in the shadow of this painting.”

“One becomes comfortable with it.”

“I rather doubt that,” she said. “How often do you use the passageway?”

“I find I don’t have much need of it.”

She smiled. “Then I might appropriate it?”

“You do not use it well. I heard you the moment you came near.”

“You did not.”

“I did. You will no doubt be surprised to discover that you are not very good at sneaking, Lady Philippa.”

“I’ve not had much cause for the activity, Mr. Cross.”

One side of his mouth kicked up in an approximation of a smile. “Until recently.”

“This place rather calls for it, don’t you think?”

“I do, actually.”

He returned the dice to the desk with a soft click, and the little white cubes captured her attention and she spoke to them. “Now, if I remember correctly, you owe me the answers to three questions. Four, if you count the one you left unanswered.”

In the silence that followed the statement, she could not stop herself from lifting her gaze to his. He was waiting for her. “All the dice were weighted. I owe you nothing.”

Her brows snapped together. “On the contrary, you owe me plenty. I trusted you to tell the truth.”

“Your mistake, not mine.”

“You are not ashamed of cheating?”

“I am ashamed of being caught.”

She scowled. “You underestimated me.”

“It seems I did. I will not make the mistake again. I will not have the opportunity.”

She snapped her head back. “You are reneging?”

He nodded. “I am. I want you out of this place. Forever. You don’t belong here.”

She shook her head. “You said you wouldn’t renege.”

“I lied.”

The unexpected words shocked her, so she said the only thing that came to mind. “No.”

Surprise flared in his eyes. “No?”

She shook her head, advancing and stopping a foot from him. “No.”

He lifted the dice again, and she heard the clatter of ivory on ivory as he worried them in his palm. “Upon what grounds do you refuse?”

“Upon the grounds that you owe me.”

“Do you plan to run me before a judge and jury?” he asked wryly.

“I don’t need to,” she retorted, playing her last, most powerful card. “I only have to run you before my brother-in-law.”

There was a beat as the words sank in, and his eyes widened, just barely, just enough for her to notice before he closed the distance between them, and said, “A fine idea. Let’s tell Bourne everything. You think he would force me to honor our agreement?”

She refused to be cowed. “No. I think he would murder you for agreeing to it in the first place. Even more so when he discovers that it was negotiated by a lady of the evening.”

Emotion flared in his serious grey gaze, irritation and . . . admiration? Whatever it was, it was gone almost instantly, extinguished like a lantern in one of his strange, dark passageways. “Well played, Lady Philippa.” The words were soft as they slid over her skin.

“I rather thought so.” Where had her voice gone?

He was so close. “Where would you like to begin?”

She wanted to begin where they’d left off. He could not escape now, not as they stood here, in his office . . . in a gaming hell, feet away from sin and vice and half of London sure to ruin her thoroughly if they were to find her.

And inches away from each other.

This was the risk she had vowed to take; his knowledge was the reward.

Excitement thrummed through her, promising more than she could have expected when she’d left the house this evening. “I should like to begin with kissing.”

Chapter Eleven

S
he might have wanted to begin with kissing, but he wanted to end with her naked, spread across his desk, open to his hands and mouth and body, like a country summer.

And that was the problem.

He could not give her what she wanted. Not without taking everything he desired.

Dammit.
She was too close. He took a step back, grateful for his long legs and the firm edge of his desk behind him providing stable, unmoving comfort. “I do not think Bourne would appreciate my instructing you in . . .” He trailed off, finding it difficult to say the word.

The lady did not have the same problem. “Kissing?”

He supposed he should be happy she had not asked about the other thing she seemed to have no difficulty referencing. “Yes.”

She tilted her head, and he could not help but be drawn to the long cord of her neck, the soft white skin there. “I don’t think he would mind, you know,” she said after a long moment. “In fact, I think he would be rather happy that I asked you.”

He laughed—if one could call the loud, quick
ha
of disbelief a laugh. “I think you couldn’t be more wrong.”

Bourne would kill him with his bare hands for touching her. Not that it wouldn’t be worth it.

It would be worth it.

He knew that without question.

She shook her head. “No, I think I’m right,” she said, more to herself than to him, he sensed, and there was a long moment while she pondered the question.

He’d never known a woman to think so carefully. He could watch her think for hours. For days. The ridiculous thought startled him.
Watch her think? What in hell was wrong with him?

He didn’t have time to consider the answer because something changed in her gaze, partially hidden by the glass of her spectacles when she focused on him once more. “I don’t think this is about Bourne at all.”

It wasn’t. But she needn’t know that. “Bourne is one of the many reasons why I won’t tell you about it.”

She looked down at her hands, clenched tightly in front of her, and when she spoke there was something he did not like in her tone. “I see.”

She shook her head, and he could do nothing but look down at her pale, yellow hair, the color of cornsilk, gleaming in the candlelight.

He shouldn’t ask. It didn’t matter. “What do you see?”

She spoke to herself, softly, without looking up. “It never occurred to me. Of course, it should have. Desire is a part of it.”

Desire.
Oh yes. It was an enormous part of it.

She looked up at him, then, and he saw it. Part uncertainty, part resignation, part—damn him to hell—sadness. And everything he had, everything he was, screamed to reach out to her.

Dear God.
He tried to put more space between them, but his massive desk—the one from which he’d drawn such comfort just seconds earlier—was now trapping him there, altogether too close to her as her big blue eyes grew liquid, and she said, “Tell me, Mr. Cross, do you think I might convince
him
to touch me?”

He could have managed the words if not for their intonation—for the slight, panicked emphasis on the
him,
meaning someone other than he. Meaning Castleton.

Meaning she had been hoping for
Cross
to touch her.

She was temptation. She was torture.

All he had to do was reach out and take her. No one would ever know. Just once. Just a taste, and he would send her on her way, to her husband. To her marriage.

To her life.

No.

She was untouchable. As untouchable as every other woman he’d known for the last six years.
More
untouchable.

Infinitely better.

His throat worked as he searched for words, hating that she’d rendered him speechless. If his partners could see him now, clever Cross, laid low by this bizarre, bespectacled, beautiful woman.

The words did not come, so he settled on, “Pippa . . .”

Color flooded her cheeks, a wicked, wonderful blush—the kind that a younger, reckless Cross would have read as invitation. The kind he would have accepted.

Instead, she looked back at her hands, spread them wide, not knowing how those crooked fingertips tempted him. “I’m sorry. That was thoroughly . . . It was . . . that is . . .” She sighed, her shoulders bowing with near-unbearable weight. Finally, she looked up and said, simply, “I should not have said it.”

Don’t ask her. You don’t want to know.

Except he did. Desperately.

“What did you mean by it?”

“I would rather not tell you.”

One side of his mouth kicked up. Even now, when she no doubt wished to do so, she would not lie. “And yet I would know.”

She spoke to her hands. “It’s just that . . . since we met, I have been rather . . . well, fascinated by . . .”

You.

Say it,
he willed, not entirely certain what he would do if she did, but willing to put himself to the test.

She took another breath. “By your bones.”

Would she ever say anything expected? “My bones?”

She nodded. “Yes. Well, the muscles and tendons, too. Your forearms. Your thighs. And earlier—while I watched you drink whiskey—by your hands.”

Cross had been propositioned many times in his life. He’d made a career of refusing women’s requests. But he had never been complimented on his bones.

It was the strangest, sexiest confession he’d ever heard.

And he had no idea how to respond.

He didn’t have to, however, as she was pressing on. “I can’t seem to stop thinking about them,” she said, her voice low and filled with utter misery. “I can’t seem to stop thinking of touching them. Of their . . . touching me.”

God help them both, neither could he.

He shouldn’t ask. He
shouldn’t.

But the King himself could have stormed into the room and it wouldn’t have stopped him. “Touching you where?”

Her head snapped up, fast enough to have done damage if she had been standing any nearer—if she’d been standing as near as he would like for her to be. He’d shocked her. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s a simple question, Pippa,” he said, leaning back against the desk, impressed with his ability to seem calm while his heart raced and his fingers itched for her. “Where do you imagine coming into contact with my bones?”

Her mouth fell open, honeyed lips soft in their surprise, and he crossed his arms. Her gaze followed the movement, his hands clutching his biceps, the only thing keeping him from grabbing her and kissing her until they were both gasping for air.

“Your hands,” she whispered.

“What about them?”

“I wonder what they might feel like on . . .” She swallowed, and the movement drew his attention to her throat, where her pulse no doubt pounded. He missed the next words on her lips—which was likely best for them both. “On my skin.”

Skin.
The word conjured images of pale, beautiful flesh, heated curves and soft swells, of wide expanses open to exploration. She would be sin and silk, and everywhere he touched, she would respond to him. He imagined the sounds she would make, the way she would gasp as he stroked up one leg, the way she would sigh when he ran the flat of his palm down her torso, the way she would laugh when he inevitably found a place where she was ticklish.

She was riveted by his left hand, braced against his arm, and he knew without question that if he moved it, if he reached for her, she would let him have anything he wanted.
Everything
he wanted.

He did not move it.

“Where, specifically, Pippa?”

She shouldn’t tell him, of course. She should run from this room as quickly as she could . . . no doubt she would be safer on the floor of the casino than she was here, with him. But he wasn’t about to tell her that.

“My hands,” she started, the hands in question splaying wide. “M—my cheek . . . my neck . . .”

As she spoke, she traced the body parts she named—unbeknownst to her, he would wager—and his desire deepened with every word, with every soft touch. Her fingers trailed down the long column of her neck, across the soft, pale skin of her chest, toward the edge of her bodice, where it stilled, hovering there on the green fabric.

He wanted to reach out and rend it in two, to ease the passage of those marvelously flawed fingertips. He wanted to watch her touch every inch of her body, pretending her hands were his.

Damn that. He wanted her to use his hands.

He wanted to do the touching.

No.

“What else?” he said, moving his hand, releasing her from her trance.

She met his gaze, eyes wide, cheeks pink. “I—” She stopped. Took a breath. “I should like to touch you, as well.”

And there, in the simple, unbridled confession, he discovered the last, fragile thread of his control. He was too close to her. He should move. Should place distance between them. Instead he said, “Where?”

He knew he was asking too much of her—this innocent girl who knew the human body but had no knowledge of it. But he couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t have her. But he could have this.

Even if he would burn in Hell for taking it.

Hell would be a welcome respite to the torture he suffered now. Here.

“Where would you like to touch me, Pippa?” he prompted after a long silence.

She shook her head, hands spread wide, and for a moment, he thought she might give up. Go home. Disappointment flared, hot and frustrating.

And then she said, simply, “Everywhere.”

The single word robbed him of strength and breath and control, leaving him shattered and raw. And desperate for her.

Desperate to show her pleasure. Some way.
Any way.

“Come here.”

He heard the roughness in his voice, the urgency, and was shocked that she was so quick to do his bidding, coming to stand mere inches from him. Her dress was a collection of layers, the topmost fastened by a thick green belt. He pointed. “Open it.”

God help him, she did, as though it were the most normal thing in the world, the edges of the gown falling open to reveal a finer green fabric beneath. “Take it off.”

She shrugged out of the outermost layer, letting it pool at her feet, her breath coming faster. His, as well. “All of it.”

She turned her back to him. She was saying no. Strength where he was weakness. Frustration flared, and he reached out, stopping just short of touching her, of tearing the cloth from her body and replacing it with his own.

Of course she was saying no. She was a
lady.
And he should not be near her. He was the worst kind of villain, and he should be flogged for what he had done. For what he demanded.

The heavy green wool of her dress lay on the floor at his feet, and he crouched to retrieve it, fingers brushing the fine fabric in desperation, as though it were her skin. As though it were enough.

It had to be.

He cursed himself, promising Heaven and himself that he would pack her back into this dress and send her home, but it was too late.

A layer of linen joined the heavy wool, the soft fabric brushing against his knuckles, still warm from her body.
Scorching.
His breath caught at the sensation and he froze, knowing with the keen understanding of one who had fallen before that this moment would be his destruction.

Knowing he shouldn’t look up.

Knowing he couldn’t stop himself.

She was clad in nothing but a corset, pantalettes, and stockings, arms crossed over her chest, cheeks flaming—the red wash an irresistible promise.

He fell to his knees.

S
he couldn’t believe she’d done it.

Even now, as she stood in this marvelous, wicked room, cool air running across her too-warm skin, she couldn’t quite believe she’d removed her clothes, simply because he’d ordered it in that dark, quiet tone that sent strange, little flutters through the pit of her stomach.

She should research those flutters.

Later.

Now, she was more interested in the man before her, on his knees, hands fisted on his long, lovely thighs, eyes roaming over her body.

“You removed your clothes,” he said.

“You asked me to,” she replied, pushing her spectacles up the bridge of her nose.

One side of his mouth rose in the half smile, and he ran the back of one hand across his lips, slow and languid, as though he might well devour her. “So I did.”

The flutters became more pronounced.

He was staring at her knees, and she was suddenly, very aware of the condition of her stockings, a plain, cream wool, chosen for warmth rather than . . . well . . . than this. No doubt they were hideous in comparison to the silk stockings he was used to women wearing in his presence. Miss Tasser likely had stockings in a score of colors, all laced and lovely.

Pippa had always been practical about her undergarments.

She pressed her knees together and tightened her arms across her chest, uncertain, wishing he would reach out for her. When he didn’t, she wondered if she somehow disappointed him—she wasn’t as beautiful as the women he was no doubt used to, but she’d never thought of herself as being unpleasant-looking.