Rules to Catch a Devilish Duke (10 page)

From his expression, he’d had something in mind from the moment the original game began, if not before that, even. He gave her the same languid inspection with which she’d just favored him. “I’m prepared to find that out, Sophia. Are you?”

“Hm.” In response she shuffled the cards and cut the deck again. A low flutter ran through her. The three of diamonds.

After he showed her the jack of spades, she bent down to remove her left boot. Handily there were no rules about the order in which garments were to be removed. And she wasn’t precisely wearing proper women’s attire, anyway. If she had been, she would have been much closer to being naked already.

She lost the next two hands, and removed her other boot and her jacket. And then she turned over an ace and a queen, leaving Adam with but one stocking and his trousers. As he straightened from removing his boot, he continued to his feet. While she watched him, quietly mesmerized by the play of his muscles beneath his skin, he walked to the door and turned the key, locking them in. Locking everyone else out.

“Another glass of wine?” he asked, continuing on to the generously stocked liquor cabinet and pulling out a decanter of brandy. “Or something stronger?”

She licked abruptly dry lips. “You know, demonstrating how composed you are might serve to distract me in a game of skill,” she informed him, “but cutting cards is pure chance. And I would like brandy, if you please.”

He pulled down two snifters and poured the amber liquid. “You’re wrong. It’s a matter of luck as much as it is of chance. Considering the outcome I’m anticipating, I’m feeling quite lucky.” Adam returned to the card table, a snifter held elegantly beneath the bowl in either hand. “Unless you mean this as a tease, that is. If you do, you should tell me now. And then you should run.”

Sophia lifted the snifter to her face and inhaled deeply of the heady, smooth fragrance. “This is a very fine brandy.”

“Of course it is.”

She eyed him over the rim, warmth cascading and crashing through her. It had never occurred to her from the moment she’d suggested altering their wager that this was only a tease. Even now, when he’d offered her an unexpected escape, all she felt was deepening excitement and arousal. “You’re an exceedingly handsome, witty, and interesting man,” she commented after a moment, the rush of her blood making her voice and her hands shake just a little. “You’ve been kind and generous on every occasion we’ve ever met, and three days ago you saved my life. I—”

“Is this gratitude, then?” An abrupt frown furrowed his brow.

“No. For heaven’s sake, I didn’t mean to prick your manly pride. All I’m saying is that you’ve never given me a reason to think ill of you. Quite the opposite, and I’m very … amenable to letting this evening play out as it will.”

“Good.”

Sophia took a sip of brandy, savoring the warm roll of it down her throat. “But I’m still willing to continue this game. Are you?”

He tilted his head, eyeing her. Then he set aside his brandy and picked up the cards. She expected him to shuffle, but instead he turned them faceup before he silently picked out three aces and slid them toward her. “I just won the next three hands,” he finally said, looking up again.

“You’re cheating!”

“I’m leveling the playing field. Three things. Remove them.”

Goodness,
she thought, then grinned at the thought. This seemed to be the exact opposite of goodness. “Very well.”

Once she’d removed both stockings, she paused. Clearly he meant for the third garment to be her waistcoat, so that her next legitimate loss would mean removing either her shirt or her trousers. But he still had on one stocking.

“Well?” he prompted, taking a sip of brandy.

“I’m thinking.”

“Too late for that.”

“Ha. It’s never too late for thinking.” Offering him a slow smile, she reached up to undo the top button of her waistcoat. Adam Baswich actually sat forward, his gaze on her hands. “Oh, wait a moment. I nearly forgot,” she continued, and reached up to untie the ribbon holding her hair in its long ponytail. “Now the field is level.”

Brief surprise and appreciation crossed his expression. “Well done, chit.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

“Shake out your hair.”

Deeper arousal spread through her, down to her most intimate place. She slowly shook out her hair, drawing her fingers through the red waves to settle the mass down her back and across her shoulders. “Like that?”

“Yes. Very like that.”

Her hands shaking even more noticeably, she gathered the aces and shuffled them back into the deck. “You first,” she said, placing the cards back on the table.

Adam reached out, brushing a finger across her knuckle, and turned over the two of clubs. “Don’t even bother,” he said as she went to pick up a card of her own, and he bent down to pull off his last stocking. Straightening, he dropped it to the polished floor.

“Next hand?” she asked.

When he gave a brusque nod, Sophia took a breath and cut the deck. This time she turned over the four of clubs.

“Thank Lucifer,” he muttered, and quickly reached over to select his card. “Eight,” he said, at the same time showing her the eight of diamonds. “The waistcoat.”

The low, intimate rumble made her damp. Her mouth abruptly dry, she took a large swallow of brandy and then went to work on the quintet of buttons running down her front.

“Slower.”

Evidently he’d lost the ability to speak in full sentences. Then again, so had she. Slowing her fumbling with the wrong-sided buttons, Sophia kept her gaze on Adam’s face, watching his expression as intense gray eyes followed every motion of her fingers. It made her feel … powerful. In some things, it didn’t matter if a man was a duke or a groom. Desire was desire, and it was all intoxicating. She could practically feel the heat and weight of him on her already, his warm breath in her ear, the pounding of their hearts.

Finally the last button came free, and she shrugged out of the garment, letting it fall behind her in the chair. The buds of her nipples showed plainly through the thin white shirt covering them, and she heard his intake of breath.

“Pick a card,” he said, his tone making it more an order than a suggestion.

Not bothering to shuffle first, she went into the middle of the deck and selected a card. Lowering her gaze from his, she looked at the card.
Good heavens
. Someone had a sense of humor, she decided as she showed it to him. The eight of clubs. Right in the middle. Even odds as to whether he or she was about to remove a very important piece of clothing. “Well, this is interesting,” he murmured, clearly making the same assessment she had. Then he turned the top card remaining on the deck and flipped it faceup so they could both see it at the same time.

The king of hearts gazed up at her.

FIVE

As a gambling man Adam reckoned the odds favored Sophia pulling off that damned shirt, but she’d already surprised him so many times over the course of the evening that he couldn’t be certain. Likely some witty comment was called for, but all the blood had left his brain half an hour ago. “Well?” was the best he could manage.

Women didn’t discomfit him like this. They didn’t arouse him to the degree that he wasn’t entirely certain he could shift in his chair without ruining both his trousers and very likely the evening. He was the definition of jaded, and had even had a female or two tell him that to his face. Yes, he enjoyed sex, and he engaged in the act frequently. But he didn’t lose all cognitive abilities while the chit still had her clothes on.

He could admit that this was a slightly different experience, in that Sophia White was neither an actress or opera singer who relied on the good graces of her gentleman admirers for survival, nor a highborn lady who needed to maintain a proper reputation in public whatever she might prefer in the bedchamber. No, Sophia made her own way in the world, and didn’t seem to care a fig what anyone else thought of her. Not even
he
could say that and be entirely truthful.

The lady in question wet her lips, then untucked the white shirt from her trousers. Keeping his seat by sheer force of will, Adam lifted his gaze from her hands to her face. Either garment would be perfectly fine with him, though he had to admit that he’d been imagining her breasts in his hands since before he’d kissed her that morning.

Sending him an amused, aroused glance, Sophia wrapped her hands around the hem of her shirt. In one motion she lifted the material off over her head and dropped it onto the dark blue carpet.

Adam blew out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She was smooth, pale, and utterly perfect, and she mesmerized him. Her creamy skin made the deep scarlet of her hair even more striking, and his fingers curled as his cock jumped.

“Shall we go again?” she suggested, her breathy voice uneven.

“I think I’ve had enough card play for this evening,” he returned, downing the rest of his brandy in a manner very unfitting for such a fine vintage. “What about you?”

“I agree, as long as we say that I won.”

Things seemed to be going rather well for him, as well, but he nodded. “As a gentleman, I could do no less.”

When she began stacking the cards into a neat pile, though, he decided that he’d had enough with waiting. Standing, Adam leaned across the table to cup the nape of her neck and draw her in for a deep, plundering kiss. Her hands swept over his bare shoulders, and he shoved the table out of the way to close on her.

He cupped her palm-sized breasts in his hands, tilting her face up to continue kissing her. She smelled of lemons, of summer even in the cold winter of Yorkshire. And she wore damned trousers.

The dogs had settled on the thick rug before the hearth, so Adam swept an arm beneath her knees and carried her over to the deep couch. He knelt on the cushions between her legs to unbutton those trousers. As he did so, Sophia sat up and leaned in, licking his left nipple. The contact jolted into him like lightning.

This was the difference, he decided as he opened the last button and tugged the trousers down her hips, between a lover and a mistress. There was no formal arrangement, no promise of exclusivity or even discretion. He wanted her, and she wanted him. Nothing else signified. And considering the path he needed to take this holiday, Sophia White might well be the last lover he ever had. A married man, if he cheated on his wife, did so with a mistress. He’d be a fool to risk a lover with no rules or indebtedness to him, and he was not a fool.

“Don’t rip them,” she said, grinning breathlessly as she lifted her hips. “I have to give them back.”

“I think you should keep them.”

Finally he got the trousers down to her thighs and shifted backward to pull them off past her knees and over her feet. Moving over her again, he took one of her breasts in his mouth, flicking across her nipple with his tongue.

She moaned, digging her fingers into his hair and arching her back and rendering his own trousers entirely too tight. Clearly Sophia was no virginal miss, but he hadn’t expected her to be one. And that didn’t matter. Of far more interest was the way she pulled him up to kiss him again, and then reached between them to begin unfastening his trousers.

“So tell me,” she said, shoving down his buckskins and then stroking a forefinger lightly down the length of him, “would you have stripped if you’d lost that last hand?”

His eyes practically rolled back in his head at her touch. For a moment he fought for control, refusing to give in before he’d had her. “I was ready to strip regardless,” he returned in a voice that sounded like a growl even to him. “I may never be able to play piquet again.”

Sophia laughed, the merry sound traveling from her and on into his chest. “I’d like to see you attempting to explain that at The Tantalus Club.”

“I think that’ll remain our secret.”

With another kiss he made his way slowly down the length of her body, kissing and nipping at her breasts, her stomach, then down to her ankles and up the insides of her thighs. With her pale skin and bright hair she reminded him of fire and ice, except that she wasn’t at all cold. Just the opposite.

Beneath him she moaned and wriggled and yanked at his hair, which made keeping his own composure that much more difficult. This was entirely more pleasurable than singing Christmas carols. In fact, if any of his missing guests had arrived at that moment, he would have closed the front door on them, regardless of the consequences to his purse and his power. With a half-smile he lowered his head, tasting her.

“Oh. Oh.” She sat up on her elbows, watching as he parted her with his fingers and moved in again with his mouth.

She was certainly no shy, retiring miss. In fact, she’d been the one to suggest they strip. For a moment he wondered just who had seduced whom, but immediately on the tail of that thought he decided it didn’t matter. They were both where they wanted to be.

“Stop teasing, you horrid man,” she gasped.

“Horrid?” he repeated with a grin, straightening. “Me?”

Momentarily leaving the couch, he retrieved his jacket and removed the French condom from one pocket. He’d put it there after dinner, on the chance that this very thing might happen. And he insisted on using one; he was not one of those fools who littered the countryside with bastards, as her own father had done.

“Allow me,” she said, sitting more upright and taking the thing from his fingers.

“Just don’t strangle me,” he cautioned, clenching his jaw as she slid the sheath over his throbbing cock and tied the delicate ribbon around the base.

Sophia grinned. “Think of it as a first-place award.”

Her humor was infectious, and he smiled back at her, reaching between them to adjust the fit just a bit. “I hope you’re saying that you’re impressed.”

She lowered her gaze to his cock again. “Oh, yes.” Sinking back again, she beckoned with one finger. “Come up here.”

He didn’t wait for a second request. Pausing again at her soft breasts on his way, he favored her with a deep, openmouthed kiss as he settled his weight on her. Sophia wrapped her ankles around his thighs and lifted her hips in as plain an invitation as he’d ever received.