The Heart of a Hellion

by Jess Michaels

  She reached the guest quarters quickly. Of course it was quiet. Right now the household and its staff were distracted, so it was the perfect time. She stepped up to the door of the chamber and tested it. Not locked, not yet, as no one was staying there. She smiled.

  “Selina?”

  She froze at the deep voice behind her, saying her name for only the second time. How it moved her, those three syllables in that voice. And terrified her, for she had been right and truly caught.

  She pivoted and Derrick stood there, arms folded across his broad chest, staring at her. Her breath caught and she forced a smile.

  “D-Derrick.” The missish stammer and heated blush which flooded her cheeks came easily, for the man unnerved her. Luckily they also served as a mask to protect her.

  He arched a brow. “What are you doing here?”

  Chapter 7

  Selina swallowed and drew a long breath to calm her racing mind. She’d been in difficult situations before, almost caught, and had always found a way out. She needed to do the same now. She just had to find an excuse. Except when Derrick speared her with those dark brown eyes, thoughts and plans and strategies were much harder to find.

  “I was just about to go into my room,” she blurted out, and immediately regretted it because his jaw set.

  “That isn’t your room,” he said softly, arching a brow as if daring her to press on her lie.

  She glanced at the door and back at him. She needed to get herself back together, and quickly. She took a breath to calm her throbbing heart and come back to herself. She was the Fox, after all. She knew how to do this.

  She smiled. “How silly of me. These big houses, you know, I get so turned around. Of course it’s that way.” She motioned behind him toward her actual chamber and then stepped forward, determined to pass him by and play this farce out.

  He wouldn’t allow it. As she brushed past him, his hand snaked out and he caught her elbow, gently but firmly. She was captured, caught, far too close to him, far too aware as she tilted her face up toward his. He was leaning down, and it felt like there was only a breath between them. Her heart began to pound again, wild in her chest, fear and need combined and it was…intoxicating. He was intoxicating, and in that moment she wanted to just drink him down and let herself be changed for a little while.

  “Selina,” he whispered, his voice rough in the quiet, but demanding. Firm.

  She shifted, but didn’t try to escape his grip. She didn’t want to. But she did need a better explanation. She dipped her chin and batted her eyelashes. “I’m sorry. I know you told me not to, but I wanted so much to help you.”

  He let out his breath in a long sigh and his grip loosened slightly. He believed her. She didn’t feel particularly good about that. About the lie. Even if it was necessary to stay alive, stay protected.

  “Don’t make that sound,” she continued. “I just thought I might look at Lady Winford’s chamber and see if I could garner any information about it to share with you.”

  “I don’t need help,” he said. Then his lips pursed. “Though it is a good idea. It was mine, too, actually, to check out the chamber before the earl and countess arrived tomorrow.”

  “You see! I am well-suited to help you!” she insisted.

  The corner of his lip twitched like he wanted to smile, though he didn’t. She reached up and covered his hand with hers, feeling the lean strength of those long fingers as she brushed them.

  “Please,” she whispered. “It isn’t truly dangerous, is it? Lord and Lady Winford aren’t here yet—no one will be in the room. I can help. Two heads and two pairs of eyes are better than one.”

  His breath exited his lips again in another sigh, but this one she thought might be of acquiescence. He glared down at her, an unyielding look that curled her toes in her slippers, even as she tried to remain unmoved by it. By him. By…this. Whatever this was.

  “It’s not a…bad idea,” he said with a shake of his head. “And since you are here and I am here, then yes. We can search the room together.”

  She grinned up at him. “Excellent! I’m so pleased.”

  His fingers tightened on her arm and his thumb moved slightly, stroking the underside of her bicep and sending a shiver up her spine. “But Selina, you must understand, this is the end of your grand adventure. After this, you must remove yourself from any idea that you’ll help me investigate.”

  She found her breath. “Yes, Derrick,” she whispered.

  His pupils dilated at those two words and he released her, stepping back. “Is the door locked?”

  “No,” she said, facing the barrier again so that she wouldn’t have to look at him. “It’s unlocked.”

  “Then let’s go,” he said. “Before more helpful guests arrive and we have to move the entire party into the chamber.”

  Derrick tried to find his focus, but it was almost impossible to do as Selina opened the chamber door and stepped into the darkness. It obscured her figure, making her nothing more than alluring curves and edges. Things he so wanted to explore, even though he shouldn’t. Just as he shouldn’t have let her come search the room with him.

  But it was happening, so he had to make the best of it.

  The room was unlit, of course. No servant would light a fire here until tomorrow when the earl and countess were closer to arrival. As a result, Selina was just a shadow as his eyes adjusted. A shadow who seemed very comfortable in the dark, for she moved forward and found a candle. He heard flint rasp and then she turned, the light haloing around her face.

  “There’s another one here, take this one.” She held out the candle and he took it. Their fingers brushed and the same awareness that had shot through him when he took her arm in the hall rocketed through him now. More intense because they were alone. In a bedchamber. And no one was going to come looking for them here.

  He cleared his throat and watched her light a second candle off the flame of his.

  “Very good,” he muttered, wishing he could think of something better to say. He backed away and turned to begin pacing the perimeter of the room. He wanted a sense of its scale, the edges of it. While he did so, he occasionally glanced over his shoulder.

  Selina wasn’t asking him about his actions, but was deliberately acting on her own. She opened empty drawers, feeling into them. She felt floorboards, and sometimes the candlelight caught her gaze and he saw her looking at the door to the hallway and to the dressing room attached to the main chamber.

  Exits and entrances. She was clever to naturally understand the importance of those things.

  “Lady Winford is…” She paused and then laughed. “Have you ever met her?”

  He darted his gaze up. “I haven’t,” he admitted. “Not exactly my circles, not anymore.”

  Her eyes flitted over his face. “Not anymore? Were you once of my brother’s world? The Upper Ten Thousand, as they love to be called? I suppose that makes the rest of us the Lower Million.”

  He smiled but didn’t argue the point. “I, er, had some attachment to this world once, yes. My grandfather is the Earl of Brillshire. My father is his third son.”

  Her eyes went a bit wide and she tilted her head. “You almost sound embarrassed by that fact.”

  “My grandfather is embarrassed by me. I suppose I return the favor when I can,” he said, and then wished he could take those words back. Although many people in the ton knew of his relationship to the earl and that allowed him access to their problems for his work, he didn’t speak of the man often.

  Nor to him.

  Selina turned her back on him and moved to a writing table. She opened each drawer carefully, then shut them before she said, “I don’t know why he should be.”

  “He doesn’t like that I didn’t follow the path he laid out for me,” Derrick said, trying not to let the pain he’d once felt at that rejection pass through his blood. “He wanted me to be someone important. He wanted to pay my way into the service as an officer. When I refused that…well, our rela
tionship soured.”

  She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “You had an honorable military career, escaped with your life, but only barely, and now you help people with their problems. How could all those wonderful things be considered unimportant?”

  “You ought to know,” he said. “You grew up the same way I did.”

  She froze and slowly turned. He could see her struggle on her face in that moment, the mask gone to reveal a real flash of pain. And of battle. Like she was waging war with herself about what she would say next.

  He leaned closer as he waited, holding his breath.

  “No, I didn’t,” she said at last. “I may be the daughter of a duke as a point of order, but as a truth, I was just a bastard. I didn’t grow up in this world. I didn’t have any link to it. My life couldn’t be more removed from it until…”

  Derrick moved a step closer, drawn in by this little tidbit about the woman who was taking up all the air in the room at present. All the air in his lungs, at least. “Until?”

  She pursed her lips. “It’s a boring story. I’m sorry I started it. The fact is that I’m not of this world, and my brother, for some reason, is not embarrassed of me. He is currently parading all his bastard siblings out, helping us all make a future for ourselves.”

  “You sound bitter about it,” Derrick said softly.

  She shrugged. “I shouldn’t be. He means well. He wants…he wants to be something more than our father was. And he is that. Robert is far and away a better man. I’m lucky, I know. But I’m not of this world. And I never will be.”

  She took a short breath, like she was gathering herself, then smiled at him. There was the mask again. Flirtatious, outrageous, wicked to the core, but in the very best way.

  “But I have met Lady Winford,” she continued, and stepped up to him, now just a few inches away. He could reach out a hand and touch her without even fully extending his arm. But he wouldn’t, even if his palm itched to do so.

  “And you think your interior knowledge of the lady will help me?” he asked.

  She giggled. “Oh no. All I can tell you is that she is a raving bitch. One of the worst people I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. Picture the nastiest, most petty person of power you’ve ever met. Not evil, mind you. Not criminal. Just…mean. Mean to those she wields power over, mean to those she ought to protect. That is Lady Winford.”

  He arched a brow. “That sounds personal.”

  “Everything is personal, Derrick,” she said with a little shrug. “When it’s happening to people. So when I’m walking around this room I’m trying to put myself in her wicked, nasty, tiny little mind. Trying to ask myself where I’d hide the Breston necklace if I were Lady Winford.”

  He stared at her a moment, eyes widening at what she’d just said. His hackles and his suspicions rising with every passing second. “How do you know that what the Fox is after is the Breston necklace?”

  She arched a brow at him as if that was a foolish question. “I don’t,” she said. “But what else would it possibly be? Lady Winford inherited the piece recently. Everyone knows it is of great value—she makes certain we all know that. Exactly the sort of thing this Faceless Fox man seems to take regularly…under everyone’s nose. I assumed.”

  “Clever,” he said softly.

  “Thank you,” she said, and he picked up the pink of her blush even in the dimness of the room. “I try.”

  “You might do better at this investigation thing than I gave you credit for. You seem to be able to enter the mind of the person you are looking into.”

  She shrugged. “Oh, only sometimes. Perhaps because I’ve had negative interactions with Lady Winford, that makes it easier. Should we look at the dressing room?”

  He nodded and stepped toward the adjoining door. She was at his elbow as he did, the warm vanilla scent of her teasing his nostrils and heating his blood. He needed to get himself back under control, but it was becoming increasingly difficult the longer he stood at this woman’s side. It was torture.

  They entered the dressing room and repeated their search as they had in the main chamber. Only this time, Selina stayed with him, watching what he watched, noting what he noted. She was a quick study and occasionally made observations that even he had missed about the room or its contents.

  “I think that’s all we—I need,” he said as he turned to go back into the main chamber. He stepped left as he said it, but she moved right and collided with his chest.

  He reached out to steady her, his fingers closing around her bare arms for the second time that night. And he was just as moved this time by her soft skin and the feel of her so close.

  He cleared his throat as he released her and stepped around her and into the other room. “As you can see, it isn’t that exciting,” he said, wishing his voice wasn’t so rough with desire he shouldn’t feel.

  “I wouldn’t agree with that,” she said, following him into the chamber and shutting the door. “It was quite…titillating.”

  He frowned as he faced her. There was that flirtatious, playful expression again. The one that challenged him and taunted him and tormented him and made him want to pull her against his chest. The one that made her so irresistible.

  “I should apologize for what happened in the orangery this afternoon.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Why?”

  He pursed his lips. “Is that a real question, Selina?”

  The teasing faded from her face and she folded her arms, a sudden flare of armor to protect herself. “Well, we both know each other’s background, don’t we? Do you not think me good enough to kiss now?”

  “You know that isn’t it. And it isn’t for a lack of wanting, which I have a sense you know equally well.” He let out a sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. “You are a lady, whatever your past may have been, and—”

  She waved her hand and cut him off with a snort of derision. “Please, don’t start reading to me from the book of good behavior for ladies,” she snapped, her voice elevating. “I am not some innocent made of glass who doesn’t know what she wants.”

  The passion of those words, the intensity of their tone, the meaning of them hit him in the chest like a shot. He rocked back a fraction. “And what do you want, Selina?”

  He heard himself say those words, laced with innuendo, going against every promise he’d been trying to make to himself about propriety and decency and boundaries in the home of this duke who allowed him to investigate within his party. He wanted to take them back. He also wanted to know the answer.

  She smiled. “I liked kissing you,” she said, her tone soft and breathless in the dimness of the room. She set her candle down on the table by the door. “And you liked kissing me. I felt it. Are you going to lie and tell me you didn’t?”

  He shifted as she eased up in front of him, her breasts just barely brushing his chest, her fingers tracing the top of his hand. “I don’t lie,” he whispered.

  She smiled again, this time softer, and lifted up on her tiptoes. Closer and closer, almost to heaven. He should have pulled away, but he didn’t. He should have refused, but he couldn’t. Only just before she could brush her lips to his, there was the sound of a door closing in the dressing room behind them. Likely the servants coming in through their entrance to finish readying the room.

  He expected Selina to gasp and blush and duck away, but instead she caught his hand with a soft giggle and pulled him toward the door. Like this was a game. Like it was fun. He followed, letting her drag him into the hallway.

  The bright light of the lamps there hit him, and it was like reality smashing him in the face with a frying pan. He wanted to kiss this woman. He wanted to do far more than just kiss her. But that didn’t mean he should. That didn’t mean he could.

  She pivoted back and grinned at him. “Just barely escaped. But that’s what makes it exciting, isn’t it?”

  He caught his breath and clenched his fists at his sides so he wouldn’t touch her. Then he said, �
��Selina, I did enjoy kissing you. And I won’t lie, everything in me wants to it again and again and again.”

  “Good,” she whispered.

  “But,” he said, catching her hands as she tried to lift them to his lapels. “But I’m not here for pleasure. And if I go too far, there won’t be any going back. So we can’t do it again.”

  Her gaze flitted to his mouth and held there for a moment. Then she sighed as she looked back up at him. He readied himself for arguments or even tears. But she didn’t do either. She just extracted her hand from his and placed it on his chest.

  “Not even once?” she whispered.

  The control he’d worked so hard on practicing frayed to the point of breaking as he looked down into those stunning blue eyes. His body leaned in toward her without him wanting it to, his hands unclenched so he could reach one out and skim it along her side.

  “Once,” he acquiesced. Then he dropped his mouth to hers.

  She lifted into him, gripping his lapels with both hands and pulling him harder into her. Her mouth opened, welcoming him, her tongue greeting him and tangling with his own in a passionate display of desire and need. He drowned in it for a moment, that voice telling him he shouldn’t fading deep into the background as he took and took and took what she offered. As his body edged him toward taking even more.

  But it was she who broke the kiss this time. She nipped his lower lip just a fraction, scraping the tender flesh with her teeth, and then backed away, smoothing her skirts with both hands.

  “Good evening, Mr. Huntington,” she said, arching a brow, as if daring him to break his control even more.

  He drew in a few rough breaths and then forced himself to say, “Good evening, Miss Oliver.”

  He turned on his heel and marched away, back toward the party they had each abandoned for their own purposes. Away from the temptation he could not surrender to again. Even if it meant every night he was here would be one he dreamed of her and took his pleasure in his hand in frustration.