Was there anything this woman would not dare? And for the first time in the whole of his life, a lady of the ton rose in his estimation.
Gathering the cards, Ryker neatly stacked them and placed the deck in her palm.
She picked up the deck of cards and shuffled them with an expertness that could put the owner’s finest dealer out of work. He yanked his eyes to her in shock.
A mischievous smile hovered on her lips as she quickly dealt their hands. “Ryker?” she prodded, and he glanced blankly down at the cards in his hand.
The bloody minx. His neck went hot. He, Ryker Black, king of the gaming world, had been swindled. “You can deal cards, madam,” he said, folding his arms.
His wife leaned close. “It’s so very easy to see people one way and place them into neat categories that you can make clear sense of.” The floral scent of her filled his nostrils and fanned his senses, and an ache settled in his groin. “But do not believe I’m unable to do something just because I was born a lady.” Another exchange she’d listened in on. He searched for the appropriate fury that she’d duped him. Once more, however, the lady rose in his estimation, earning a grudging respect.
“Now, if you want your question answered, you must win the hand.”
“It wasn’t a question,” he mumbled. How neatly she’d maneuvered him. If his brothers learned a hint of it, his reputation would be ruined forever.
A mischievous glimmer danced in her eyes. “I know,” she whispered, and tweaked his nose. “I was teasing, Ryker.”
First, she’d challenge him. Then, she’d lecture him. Now, she’d tease him.
Ryker tossed down a queen of diamonds.
Penelope beat his card with a king. “What do you find joy in, other than gaming?” she added when he made to speak.
“Nothing,” he answered with an automaticity born of truth. Outside of the empire of wealth he’d built here in St. Giles, nothing else drove him. He motioned for her.
She inched forward on the seat until their knees touched. “Surely there has to be something?” Disappointment coated her words.
“That would be a second question.”
Muttering under her breath, Penelope gestured for him. Ryker tossed a king of hearts.
“Very well. You don’t want for anything as a man. What was one thing you wished for as a boy?” Penelope hadn’t finished turning the card before the words left her mouth.
What had he wished for? He scoffed. “Boys and girls born on the streets don’t have wishes, Penelope.” Innocent to the ugly that truly dwelled outside these walls, she could not know the bleak emptiness that faced a person daily. “You’re so focused on surviving, you don’t waste your time on dreams.”
Sadness filled her eyes. “Surely you must have wanted something?”
Safety. Shelter. Food. All those basic elemental needs craved by an animal were all the dreams he’d allowed himself. He opened his mouth to further disabuse her of her whimsical notions and froze. His gaze caught on a lone crystal cup set on the counter.
Oi saw a lord eating glass . . . Oi did. Oi swear oi did, and oi’ll bloody anyone who says o’im a liar . . .
Calum’s and Adair’s laughter of long ago reverberated in his memories, so real still it may as well have bounced off these very walls.
“Rock candy,” he said quietly. Of course the invisibles in the streets were blessed if they had bread in their belly. The luxury of sugared sweets was a gift reserved for only the wealthiest elite lords and their spoiled children. That reminder yanked him firmly back to the present. Ryker cleared his throat. “We’re done here.” His wife would have him wander down a path he’d resolved to never again travel. He gently touched her cheek.
“It is fine,” she assured him in a soft murmur.
It wasn’t. His hand fell to the table, and he gathered the cards. Any other woman would have been reduced to a blubbering mess, and deservedly so. “You’re too forgiving.” Another mark of her weakness. One that, three days ago, would have earned his disdain. Now, it roused something altogether different—disquiet. It highlighted her absolute misplacement in the Hell and Sin Club, with jaded men and women of the street. Narrowing his eyes, he glanced down, shrinking the space between them. “You’d be wise to be wary, madam.” Stuffing the cards inside his jacket, Ryker stood.
Penelope shoved to her feet and in a breathtaking display of fearlessness she walked toward him. There was a challenge in her eyes: “Of you?” Heat poured from her slender frame, searing him.
Ryker moved his gaze over her lush lips, taking in the birthmark on her neck. That faint heart-shaped mark that beckoned, distracted, and lured. “Especially me.”
I’m going to kiss her . . .
With a groan, he cupped her nape and claimed her lips in a hard kiss. He slanted his mouth over hers, again and again.
“Ryker,” she whispered, her ragged breath, that soft plea fueling his hunger.
He growled, an untamed beast capable of nothing but feeling. And he ached to know all of her. Penelope wound her arms about his neck, anchoring him close. Her little moan allowed him entry and he slid his tongue inside to explore her. He’d meant to warn her away. He’d meant to teach her the perils in being with and wed to a man like him.
Now, the student became the teacher, as his wife, with her lithe body, hot with desire, taught him the perils of taking her in his arms. He slanted his mouth over hers again and again; it was a forceful meeting, and she met boldly, with encouraging little moans.
This kiss was madness. It needed to end. And yet . . . Ryker roughly mated with her mouth, wringing breathless groans from her. She shifted against him, arching her hips in a desperate invitation. He frantically ran an exploring hand down the curve of her hip, lower to the lush swell of her buttocks; filling his palms with her, he pulled her closer to his throbbing shaft.
Penelope rolled her hips against him, fueling his lust. He drew back, and she tangled her fingers in his hair, but he resisted and dragged his mouth lower, earning her breathless moans of approval. The fragrant scent of flowers clung to her skin and filled his senses, heady and overpowering like a potent aphrodisiac. He suckled at the shell of her ear, wanting to lose himself in that fragrant scent of purity and innocence.
Guiding them down to the floor, Ryker shoved the bodice of her nightgown lower. Her small breasts spilled free. Cream-white perfection, and tipped with crimson peaks like apples, and he was a man with a hungering for sweet summer fruit. Ryker closed his lips over one of the swollen buds and suckled. Penelope cried out, and clenched and unclenched her fingers in his hair.
“Ryker,” she pleaded, and her thrusting hips took on a franticness that drove him.
Continuing to worship that swollen tip, he shoved Penelope’s night shift up. Using his knee, he parted her legs, and slid a hand between them to find her thatch. A keening cry echoed around the room, inside his mind, taking him down a path of madness he’d never before traveled. Sex had always been about two people joining and slaking their lust. There had never been this hungering need to explore or the desire to have the moment go on forever. He delved a finger inside her honeyed warmth, and she bucked against him.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he continued to stroke her tight channel. He pressed another finger inside, and as she closed her legs over his hand, her voice pitched higher. Her hips took on a sharp, jerky rhythm. She was close to spending. A primitive sense of male satisfaction, irrational and inexplicable, drove his lust. He shifted his attention to her other, neglected breast, and Penelope hugged him tight.
“Please,” she moaned, and that desperate entreaty drove him.
Ryker continued to work her with his hand, and she lifted into his touch. He pressed another finger inside her soaking core, and her body stiffened. Then her piercing scream echoed off the kitchen walls, as she arched and gyrated, coming in long, rippling waves.
“Ryker,” she keened, and then collapsed. Her ragged breaths filled his ears, in time to his wildly dr
umming pulse. A small, sated smile hovered on her lips, giving her the look of a cat who’d just swallowed the cream. Ryker lowered himself to his side, and they lay with their shoulders pressed against one another.
He willed her to silence. His panicky thoughts too muddied to offer any words. Words he’d never been good with anyway.
What had he done? His stomach lurched. Christ. The business arrangement between them had not included anything more. Now, with the musky scent of her and his fingers still damp from her release, he’d introduced a layer to their marriage which went against the formal arrangement he’d planned.
A faint snore cut across his panicky thoughts, and he glanced down.
She slept?
She slept.
He’d never allowed a woman to so much as sleep in his bed, and now this slip of a lady slumbered in his arms. There was a searing intimacy to her slight weight pressed to him that set off terror greater than any street fight. Ryker gave silent thanks for her resting state. Even as desire still raged through him, he preferred that torture to the unrestrained emotion Penelope had worn in her expressive eyes. He ran frustrated hands up and down his face. What madness had possessed him to put his hands on her—again? It was this inexplicable hunger that defied sense or logic. And he had no need for it. Ryker set his jaw. A woman who challenged him as Penelope, and who set the world upside down just by walking into a room, would only bring chaos to the club and to his own sanity.
The sooner she came to accept her place in the Hell and Sin, the sooner he could restore his world to rights. Ryker shoved to his feet and, adjusting her night shift, lifted her. She burrowed close, proving as naïvely trusting in slumber as she was awake. And goddamn if the weight of her close stirred his desire all the more.
Ryker made his way from the kitchen through the darkened halls. When he reached the stairway leading up to the private suites, the guard Oswyn started. His eyes took in the slight woman nestled in Ryker’s arms, and he swiftly averted his gaze. Ryker continued on, the stairs groaning in protest as he made his ascent.
When he reached his chambers, his nape prickled, and he glanced around. Shadows flickered off the walls of the empty corridor. Giving his head a clearing shake, Ryker entered the rooms, closed the door, and quickly locked it behind him. Picking his way around the mess Penelope had made of his chambers, he carefully set her down on the bed. His bed. Nay, his former bed.
He took a step to leave. Wheeling back, Ryker drew the coverlet over her slender form. When presented with lying in the same room, while his body still raged with mindless lust for the woman in his bed, or abandoning sleep, Ryker left.
The Hell and Sin had always proved a much-needed diversion from everything. Never more had he required a diversion than in this very moment.
Chapter 13
Dearest Fezzimore,
It is hardly fair that Jonathan is able to visit his wicked clubs while I am forced to endure horrid lessons on propriety and deportment. Gentlemen have all the fun . . .
Penelope
Age 12 (Nearly 13. Very nearly.)
As Clara helped Penelope through her morning ablutions, Penelope caught her reflection in the bevel mirror. Her cheek bore no hint of Ryker’s accidental blow. She grinned. Rather, her blush and eyes all spoke to the giddiness bubbling inside her that not even the glaring Clara could dim.
Penelope had pledged to be proper, but mayhap all that propriety business was stuff and nonsense after all. For surely, the passion in Ryker’s kiss, and the glorious release she’d known in his arms, was worth any price.
Last evening, the guarded stranger she’d feared a few days earlier had sat down to a game of cards and let her inside. You’re so focused on surviving, you don’t waste your time on dreams . . . Her smile dipped. She’d taken Ryker Black as a remote, unbendable stranger who roused terror in her breast and who cared about nothing beyond his club. Last night, however, he’d hinted at long-ago vulnerabilities that had shaped him into the man he’d become. Last evening, he’d cared for her with a tenderness that belied all the unkind words uttered about him.
Clara finished arranging Penelope’s curls into a loose chignon, and then stepped back. “Is there anything else you require, Mrs. Black?” she asked, breaking the silence. A morning meal. A friend. Her husband.
By the edge to the maid’s question she’d rather slice off a finger than help Penelope. “No. That is all, Clara,” she said, favoring her with a smile.
Mother always said one caught more bees with honey. Never before had she appreciated that more than now. Alas, the hard glimmer in the woman’s jaded eyes betrayed no hint of warmth.
With a quick curtsy, Clara stalked off. She closed the door behind her with a decisive click. Once again, Penelope shoved aside any upset at the maid’s apparent dislike. The people in this club knew her not at all. Why, they likely saw a spoiled, pampered lady who condemned their lifestyle.
Mayhap, in her short, disastrous four-year quest for propriety, she would have been the stuffy sort to turn her nose up at a gaming establishment. But she was more practical than anything else.
Fact: Ryker Black was a gaming-hell owner.
Fact: Ryker Black would sooner burn Penelope to the ground than he would his own club.
Fact: This was still her home, and she’d not be shut away while he went about his business inside this club.
A short while later, Penelope found her way to the kitchens. Shoving the door open, she stepped inside—and all chatter and movement came to a screeching stop. Fork frozen mid-movement, Calum sat alongside three equally fierce and scarred men at the long wood table. One of the strangers she recognized as the guard who’d dragged her to Ryker’s office several days earlier.
Penelope waited.
Well. Apparently the whole “rise while a lady enters” business didn’t apply here. Then, this wasn’t a London drawing room; it was a kitchen bustling with servants inside a gaming hell.
As the silence stretched on, thick and painful, she mustered a smile and started forward.
The servants sprung to movement, returning to their day’s chores.
She stopped alongside Calum and widened her smile, to the point of breaking. “Good—”
The tall, balding brute with pockmarked skin on the other side of Calum abruptly stood. At the loathing burning in his eyes, she swallowed hard. But then, he swung his leg over the edge of the bench. “Morning,” Penelope finished lamely, when the bear of a man stomped off.
Calum made the terse introductions. “That was Stone, the attending . . . doctor,” he said of the man retreating. They required an attending doctor on staff? Her mind whirred with a wicked thrill. What manner of danger unfolded here? Her brother-in-law motioned to the other two brutes looking back at her. “This is Adair. That is Niall.” These were Ryker’s other brothers. “Ryker’s wife, Penelope Black.” The wife Ryker couldn’t bother to introduce.
Tamping down her annoyance, Penelope sank into a curtsy. “How do you . . . ?”
The three men immediately returned their attention to their plates, frantically shoveling food in. Around large mouthfuls of food, they barked questions and commands.
Despite Calum’s brusque introduction, her heart tugged. Ryker had spoken briefly about his three brothers and sister. How much had his decision to wed her been driven of a need to look after these very people? These men who broke their fast together. There was something warm and familial in that. Something she as a Tidemore knew and found a kindred bond between these coarse strangers.
Then a frown hovered on her lips, and she did a search of the noisy space. Where was her husband?
“He wants the ledgers finished by midday, Adair,” Calum called loudly, cutting across her musings.
The brown-haired stranger scowled and yanked a large chunk of bread with his teeth. “There are too many revisions needed with the lost brandy supply.”
“I’m not telling him that. Get it done.”
While they carried on as though P
enelope were invisible, she shifted her focus to the bench. She eyed the bench warily. Given the end seats were occupied by Adair and Niall, there was no course but to climb astride.
Then, she was the same woman who’d ridden that manner before she’d mastered sidesaddle. Hiking up her skirts, Penelope swung her leg over the opposite side of the available seat.
All conversation died, and Calum strangled on a bite of food. She tamped down a wry smile. Did they expect she was too proper to straddle a bench? Alas, her new family would come to find she was no swooning miss. Penelope thumped her choking brother-in-law between the shoulder blades. “I recommend smaller bites and talking less while you’re eating,” Penelope offered, when he managed to at last breathe without gasping.
As she claimed the seat beside him, Adair barked with laughter, and even with the sharp glare Niall fixed on him, some of the tension left Penelope.
A young serving girl settled a plate, napkin, and silverware before Penelope, and with a murmur of thanks she attended her morning meal. Snapping open the white cloth, she neatly placed it on her lap, and then with her fork and knife sliced a sliver of bacon and popped it into her mouth. “Has my husband already finished his morning meal?” she asked, after she’d swallowed her bite.
She made to take another bite when she registered the absolute silence. Penelope looked up.
“Ryker does not take meals with us,” Calum explained, taking a drink of water.
She opened and closed her mouth several times. “Ever?” she blurted. Surely not.
“Ryker doesn’t let anyone in,” Adair said quietly.
“To morning meals?” Surely her husband was not so guarded that he’d keep even his family out?
“We’ve our reasons to be wary,” Adair murmured. “But Ryker keeps everyone out. That isn’t a right reserved to you.”
With that, each brother came slowly to his feet and abandoned the breakfast table, leaving Penelope alone. Fisting her hands on her lap, she stared down at her plate. Even now her Tidemore kin were sitting down to a noisy affair with laughter and teasing. A blasted sheen of tears blurred her vision. I will not cry. I will not cry.
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