Still, there was no mistaking it—Adele had placed herself in a position most precarious. A lady’s reputation was a silken thread, easily cut. If anyone were to discover what she had done, that she had been sneaking about London with the aid of Evie, hiring hacks, spending time alone with a coarse, baseborn scoundrel who made his coin by flouting the misfortune of others, her reputation would be irreparable.
What did he want from her?
Would he take her virtue?
How could she trust his word that he would aid Max?
The questions assailing her doubled and tripled with each passing minute.
Mayhap he would not arrive and his hulking, silent beast would return and escort her to the door as he had the previous evening, her innocence preserved for another day. Perhaps he would have mercy upon her…
She paced the sumptuous carpets in more determined strides when the door opened, stopping her. Those last two hopes died a swift death as Mr. Dominic Winter prowled into the room.
And just as it had yesterday, the full effect of his presence made an undeniable surge of awareness hit her. He was dressed to perfection once more, this time in all black, save for the snowy-white swath of his cravat. The knot was simple. The cut of his clothing fine, designed to enhance his masculine physique.
His glittering, brown gaze seemed to sear her as their stares tangled from across the chamber. Her heart thumped faster. Her stomach tightened. He seemed larger than he had the previous evening. More masculine, too.
The smile that pulled at his sensual lips was at once wolfish and pleased. He stopped halfway to her and executed a perfect bow. “And so the angel has returned to rescue the unworthy lord.”
There was no mistaking the mockery dripping from his low baritone.
Adele dipped into a curtsy, ludicrous though it felt to stand on ceremony with this man. Yesterday, he had touched her intimately. In the manner of a lover, rather than a gentleman. A tingle swept through her at the memory. A delighted tingle, because she was a wretched creature.
How could she feel this untenable attraction for a man as vile as he?
She swallowed to chase the unsettling feelings. “I am not an angel, Mr. Winter.”
Warily, she watched him close the distance between them. He rubbed the slashing angle of his jaw as he approached, and she took note of a marking on his hand she had not noticed the day before. It appeared to be an inking of a dagger, nestled between his thumb and forefinger. Adele had never seen anything like it.
“No.” His smile faded, his gaze raking over her body in a stare that seemed to see through all her layers of armor, real and imagined. “I reckon you aren’t, are you, love?”
His flippant familiarity made her flush as he reached her. She was hot from head to toe. “My presence here suggests the opposite.”
“Mmm.” He stopped before her, sucking all the air from her lungs. “I’m curious, angel. What makes you think you are worth my time, my attention?”
Excellent question. Although they could not be further apart in social standing, Adele had no doubt a man as dangerously handsome as Dominic Winter could have his choice of any lady in not just London, but all England.
“Intuition,” she bluffed, finding her courage. “Regardless, I have come here to you, just as you asked.”
He reached out, those long fingers catching her chin and tipping it up in a surprisingly gentle touch. “So I see. But have you come from your lover’s bed this evening?”
Adele wondered if this was an ordinary conversation for a man of his ilk to entertain with the sort of woman he supposed her to be. She rather felt like a fish, plucked from the stream to flop about helplessly on land, gasping for breath. Everything about this moment, this man, was foreign. Frightening.
Potentially lethal.
For herself and for Max.
“Do not think of lying to me, madam,” he said sternly when she hesitated with her response. “I can smell deceit in the air like smoke.”
“I have not,” she managed to say, and it was the truth. For she had no lover. She had only a brother who was beloved yet foolish. A brother she could not bear to see harmed again.
Mr. Winter was silent for what seemed a small eternity until finally, at last, he relented. “I will believe you an honest woman until you prove otherwise. And if you do prove otherwise…”
She shivered at the implication lacing his words. No matter how dazzlingly handsome the man before her was, and regardless of how her body reacted to his nearness and his touch, he was still her enemy. She must not forget.
“I am not lying to you, Mr. Winter.” Her voice was surprisingly calm and unaffected when within, she was anything but.
His eyes searched hers with maddening effect. Her heart was thudding. Part of her wondered, quite foolishly, if he could hear its gallop. Nay, he could not.
Could he?
“Fair enough, angel,” he said at last, a slight smile curving his lips. “You have come here this evening to make certain your protector is safe. I can vouch for his safety, provided you spend the evening with me tonight. However, I will not do the same for his duns. His debts remain. Do you agree?”
Here it was, before her with the finality of a hangman’s noose.
Mr. Winter was promising no further physical harm would come to Max. And in return, all she needed to do was spend one night with him. She could do it. Of course she could, for the brother she loved so dearly.
Adele nodded. “I agree, sir.”
“Dom.” A flash of his teeth appeared as his lips parted on a smile that turned seductive. “No ceremony between us for the next few hours.”
She was the daughter of a duke. She had been bred to respect propriety and her reputation, her adherence to society’s dictates, as highly as she held the Lord Himself.
“Dom,” she repeated.
One word, a truncated version of his Christian name. It ought not to feel so intimate. And yet, the air surrounding them seemed to change. To thicken.
He smiled, then. A true smile, the sort that made his dark eyes sparkle and fine lines feather from their corners. It meant he had smiled before. Many times.
She had pleased him.
And she liked it.
“Come, angel.” He held out his hand to her.
His gloveless hand, the hand of a ruthless man, large and lethal, long-fingered. Yet elegant too. It startled her to realize how much she wanted to touch him.
She placed hers in his.
For the night, she would go where he led her.
And pray it would not land her deeper in the murk.
Damnation, her skin was softer than a lily once more. Her fingers, curled tentatively through his, burned him. Lured him. Tempted him. Dom was sure this entire affair was a bad halfpenny.
But there was something about this woman that made him willing to forego his instincts and to instead rely upon the all-consuming force propelling him to act. Lust? Stupidity? Arrogance?
Curse him to hell if he knew. Or if he cared.
There was something different about this woman.
Angel, as he had begun to think of her. It was not just that she was bang up to the mark, the finest set of petticoats which had ever been within his reach. She was…plummy. That’s what she was. Only better than plummy.
Perfection.
Yes, a cove’s word. And she belonged to a cove.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, she was his. All his.
And he was going to show her Dominic Winter’s world. Or, at least, the best of it. Because there was quite a lot of it that was shite. No denying that.
He pulled her through the low-lit halls of his family’s hell. The private halls occupied by his siblings, his servants, and his men. All the way to the dining room they had recently improved. A true sign he had reached heights he had never imagined possible as a bastard fighting for his life in the rookery.
Dom gently tugged her over the threshold, looking back to take in her expressive face as he did so
. Her eyed widened. Mayhap she was impressed?
Her gaze settled upon a marble bust of some goddess whose name he had not bothered to learn. “What is this place?”
Could she not see the bloody table? The chairs? And a fine table too, commissioned instead of filched. Polished to shine.
“A dining room, angel,” he told her. “We are going to have dinner.”
“Dinner?” she repeated, as if it were a foreign word, a previously unimagined notion.
He stopped, their hands still linked because he was reluctant to end the tentative connection between them, it was true. She did not seem inclined to escape. Not that he had given her much choice. He banished the twinge of conscience accompanying that thought. He was Dominic Winter, by God. He took what he wanted. He owned this part of London. Even the goddamn rats knew his name.
“Sundenbury feeds you, no?” he asked her.
“Yes.” She shook her head, her dark eyes meeting his. “Yes, of course. But is this not like fattening the Michaelmas goose?”
He could not stifle his wicked grin, nor quell the swift rush of his reaction. “Trust me, angel. You’ll not be complaining if I eat you.”
A slow flush crept over her cheekbones. Dom had not believed there were yet ladies in the world capable of being put to the blush. What a complex mix she was, exuding sensuality that was at once innocent and blazing. He rather fancied shocking her. Fortunately, he had hours to enjoy seeing how far he could push her. Of toying with her, in the manner of a cat with its prey, before he settled upon his feast.
Her.
“But that is the dessert course,” he said, taking pity on her as he led her to the table. “First, we must dine.”
She seated herself with the grace of any queen. There was something different about her, something that called to him. To the deepest part of him. And that was why he had struck this bargain with her. Why he was feeding her dinner rather than carrying her immediately to his bed.
Actually, that was not entirely true. Any ammunition he had against the Suttons was a boon to potentially aid his plans. And Dom was not the sort to rudely poke a woman. He seduced her first. He made her desperate. He brought her to her knees with desire, and he took her to the heights of pleasure.
He could not resist bending and dropping a kiss to the side of her exposed throat. Christ, she smelled like a garden in bloom, or at least how he imagined it would be scented, had he ever strolled through one. Fucking laughable, the very notion. Still, he inhaled deeply, savoring her. She was even softer here. Even smoother.
He had to fight the sudden urge to haul her to her feet, settle her upon his kingly dining table, and take her then and there. Instead, he dragged his lips to the place where her pounding pulse told him she was not as unaffected as she pretended though she remained motionless, her posture tense.
As a practiced mistress of a lord, she certainly had an odd way of seducing a man. But never mind. Dom rather enjoyed pursuit.
He brushed his lips over her skin. “Are you hungry, angel?”
“N-no,” she said, stumbling on the word.
She refused to look at him.
“Do I frighten you?” After he posed the question, he licked the hollow behind her ear.
She shivered. “Of course not, Mr. Winter.”
“Dom,” he reminded her, rising to his full height and skirting the table to ring for the first course to be brought round. “And if I do not frighten you, then you are either brave or a fool.”
He seated himself opposite her place setting, the better to watch.
“Perhaps I am both.” Her serene voice, clipped in perfect accents that bespoke a genteel upbringing, slid over him in a serpentine caress.
His lips twitched, but he would not smile. Not yet. He admired this woman. Not many he knew would dare to challenge him in the bold manner she had. Desire unfurled.
“I tend to disbelieve you are a fool,” he commented.
Her dark gaze clung to his, and he wished he could read the secrets hidden in her eyes. But the light was too low, and their solitude quickly interrupted by the arrival of his staff and the first course of the meal. Dom watched her take in the flurry of activity surrounding them. For once, he was pleased he had spent so much blunt on aping his so-called betters at the hell. His food, his cutlery, his plates, and his wine were as fine as that which was laid before any duke or earl.
The succulent aroma of meat and rich sauces hung heavily in the air. Dom found himself wishing he could still smell her. He licked his lips and found the lingering taste of her upon them. Would that it were a different taste altogether.
Later, he vowed, taking a sip of his wine to distract himself from his rigid cock, rising to rude prominence beneath the table. Damn it, when had he ever wanted a woman the way he longed for this one?
Never.
Fuck.
He drained his goblet and one of his efficient staff was at his elbow, replenishing his stores. Reminding him they were not alone.
“That will be all,” he announced, which he had discovered was a fancy nib’s way of telling the servants to remove themselves from the room.
His companion’s eyes were upon him once more, brows raised in what he could only surmise was surprise. He waited until the door closed on the last member of his staff before speaking.
“Is something amiss, angel?”
She blinked. “Of course not. It is merely that I was not anticipating…” Her words trailed off and a charming flush stained her cheeks.
“You assumed I would carry you off to the bedchamber?” he guessed. “What sort of man would I be?”
She was solemn. “I have no notion of what sort of man you are.”
No, he supposed she did not. And likely, it was for the best. He was not a kind man, nor was he gentle. Life had stolen all the softness from him. Dom could not seem to squelch the thought that this woman could bring it back. At least for a night.
“Nor do I,” he told her. “Now do enjoy the meal. My chef is dedicated to his art. He is also a Frenchman. If our plates return to the kitchens laden with food, he will refuse to cook for an entire sennight.”
His guest sent him a wan smile. “I would not wish for you to go hungry, sir.”
He nodded. “Then eat, angel.”
Chapter Four
Dinner passed in a blur.
Adele consumed enough from her plate at each course that her host’s chef would not take umbrage. She still found the notion of the formidable Dominic Winter wishing to please his own chef quite entertaining. It was a detail she would pack away in her mind and revisit later.
Tonight, too many other things weighed upon her.
Last, but certainly not least, the impending loss of her innocence.
“Angel?”
Adele eyed the bare hand outstretched to her, absent of gloves, the fingertips worn with calluses. They were not the hands of a gentleman. She thought again of the inked marking she had spied on his flesh. His palms were broad and unblemished save for the common lines bisecting it.
She hesitated to place her hand in his, however. Indeed, part of her was prepared to flee into the night. To shy away from her every intention. But the reminder of her beloved brother’s injuries returned, pointed and incapable of being ignored.
Along with it, this time, came the thought of this man’s lips upon her skin, his tongue flicking out to taste her flesh. She shivered.
“Do you intend to live up to your bargain, or shall you sit here all night, gazing into the ether?” he asked next, his tone cool.
If she had not known him better, she would say he was irritated.
But somehow, over their shared dinner, something had changed. Adele had witnessed a new side of him. A side that enabled her to believe Dominic Winter was not being an arrogant boor. Rather, he was afraid she had changed her mind.
She was a lady of her word. Regardless of the trepidation rising within her, she would keep her promise.
Adele settled her hand in hi
s. “Of course I shall honor my word to you.”
His fingers laced through hers, his countenance betraying nothing of what he felt. “Good. Come with me.”
He did not ask or request. Dominic Winter was a man accustomed to giving orders and expecting those around him to follow. It was another unsettling observation. This evening, Adele was doing his bidding.
She had to.
But along with that knowledge came a shocking realization: she wanted to.
There was something thrilling about this man, this night, this place. All her life, she had tried to do what her mother and father had asked of her. She had learned skills she found uninteresting. She had donned dresses she deplored. She had done everything in her power to make them proud of her, to do them credit. Tonight, she was helping her brother, it was true. But if she were completely honest with herself, she would have to admit her actions were not entirely altruistic.
No, indeed.
She was here in this moment, allowing Dominic Winter—handsome, dangerous, undisputed king of London’s underworld—to lead her to his chamber. And she was doing it because she wanted his touch. Because she longed for his kisses. He intrigued her. He also terrified her in equal measure.
In silence, they passed through darkened halls, then up a staircase. Until at last, they reached a closed door. Using a key he held in his left hand, he unlocked the portal, then tugged her over the threshold with their linked fingers.
And then, she realized where they were. In the same chamber where he had taken her the day before when she had swooned. A chamber with a bed. His bed.
Her entire body went hot, from head to toe.
Why did he have to be so handsome? She tugged free of his hold and wandered deeper into dangerous territory, seeking to put distance between herself and Dominic Winter and failing utterly.
Winter’s Wallflower Page 3
