‘Don’t be afraid.’ He removed his hand from her mouth. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’
She fought to regain her wits. How was it his proximity knocked her world from its axis every time? They stood in a dusky alcove, likely used to store items needed for the theatre, though the narrow recess was empty now. Well, except for them. Crispin closed the scant space between them, his face outlined in slanted shadows and fractured light from the stage far below. The second act had begun and the house was silent other than the actors’ words onstage. At last she found her tongue well enough to answer him.
‘Were you looking for me?’ She needed to know. His answer made all the difference.
‘Yes.’
He didn’t say more, his voice tight. Was he angry? For what reason?
‘Why?’ It seemed a natural question, though her heart pounded in wait.
‘I only need a minute.’
He cleared his throat and she wished she could see his eyes better. He stood close, the heat between them a palpable addition in the alcove. She rather wished it wasn’t so dark, though her body anxiously assembled to compensate. He smelled wonderful and the rich timbre of his voice in the dark was doing strange things to her stomach. Her fingers twitched restlessly against her silk skirt. She wanted to lay her hands flat on his chest and absorb the beat of his heart, measure the rhythm to determine if he was as affected by their nearness as she.
‘You forgot something.’
His suggestion that she hadn’t remembered something he’d proposed surprised her. She replayed their conversations often, as sad as that little fact was to admit. Did he somehow know she’d stolen his playing card? She didn’t want to give it back. It held too many lovely memories.
The stern warning from her father that she not converse with Crispin ran through her mind but she dismissed it just as quickly. Her father didn’t understand their connection.
The air between them filled with delicious friction and intense anticipation. Crispin moved closer, so close his coat brushed her hands, and she laced her fingers in front of her skirt so she wouldn’t reach out and pull him closer still.
‘Didn’t I thank you sufficiently?’ She tilted her face up to his.
‘No. That’s not it.’ He sounded impatient for some unknown reason. ‘You forgot this.’
She had no time to process his answer. His hands came up to frame her face as he pressed her to the wall with the strength of his kiss. Her eyes fell closed, lost in sensation, the wall of his chest buffeted against her bare skin, the texture of wool and silk, heat and fragrance, the experience overwhelmingly erotic.
Still, nothing compared to the feel of his mouth atop hers. His kiss was hungry and insistent, and she surrendered completely. This, this is what she wanted, needed, ached for in her soul. This connection they’d forged and tried to ignore, yet it lingered, persisted, despite everything they pushed in its path.
His hands slid from her face to her neck, smoothed over her shoulder and gripped her waist, to jolt her forward, her skirts against his trousers a reminder that too much space and fabric remained between them. She slid her hands up his chest, over his hard shoulders to twine around his neck. She needed to hold on, be closer. A low growl of pleasure reverberated against her lips. She sighed and he took advantage. The pressure of his kiss intensified. His clever tongue, silky-hot and wicked, sought hers and urged her into the dance.
Her pulse rioted to a maddening pace. She locked her fingers in his collar, the bristling ends of his hair tickling her palms with erotic temptation.
She fell into his kiss willingly and with wild abandon, in need of no lifeline as she drowned in sensation, consuming and yet as untamed as firework sparks. The contrary pleasures caused her to tremble, as alive and hot as a flame in the hearth. An aching hollowness began in her belly, lower, between her legs, and she tightened her muscles, willing it to subside, though the unfamiliar and tantalizing need grew stronger with each stroke of his tongue.
He angled his head, deepened the kiss and trailed nips along her jaw, then lower to the slope of her neck. She grew impatient with want. All his wonderful kisses, his bone-melting delectable kisses, didn’t cease the longing inside. Her shoulders were bare, heated by his attention, and when he slid her sleeve downward to expose her corset and then bare her breast, she didn’t object.
A husky sound of appreciation caressed her skin before his mouth found her. He coasted his tongue over her breast, slicked the tip, tight and sensitive, the exquisite reaction almost too much to bear. Her knees buckled, thankful for the wall at her back. He drew her into his mouth, teased and played with suckling nips, and murmured indecipherable words that reverberated in her soul. All the while his erection, hard and insistent, pressed against her belly as if to remind he was all strong man and she, soft delicate woman.
Some discarded sense of logic and conscience reminded this was wrong, to be secreted away in a public theatre with a devastatingly handsome man, but she bludgeoned that thought into submission and allowed sensation to take command instead. She wanted this. To be desired. To be wanted and thought beautiful. Just for one night it would be heavenly not to feel insufficient.
Cool air feathered across her ankles and she struggled for clarity, lost in a blissful haze until recognition followed. He furled her gown, layer by layer, sliding the silk upwards, collected in his fist until his fingertips traced the lace at the tops of her stockings. She quaked with the knowledge of what he intended and a shiver of forbidden pleasure shot through her, deep and low to settle in her core. That same relentless ache throbbed with demand.
What liberties would she grant this man? How could she not when she wanted his touch with ardent longing?
Chapter Seventeen
Crispin was lost. Drowned in desire and emotion, two conflicting qualities he made every effort to keep separated. This wasn’t like their kisses on the ship. This kiss was all-consuming and he had no way to fight against it. Every part of him seemed raw, vulnerable, yet he didn’t care. Her silken skin seduced him. The taste of her kiss proved addictive. He’d only meant for one embrace and now stood on a precipice, one hand dangerously close to her sex, his mind blurred by rampant desire. Every time her sweet tongue touched his, a shock of heat arrowed straight to his groin. Her fingertips clasped in his collar and tangled in his hair, urged his cock harder. He wanted to drive into her, claim her, and satisfy the insistent demand. To make her his so no one else could have her. These were all the wrong reasons, but he didn’t care, controlled by urgent need more than logic.
He dipped into the hollow of her mouth and deepened their kiss as he collected her gown in his fist. She would be hot, wet, ready, and the knowledge drenched his brain. He needed to feel her heat against his fingertips. It was uncontrolled curiosity, nothing more. One touch and he’d stop. He had no right, but he wanted her all the same.
She shifted, her lithe figure caught between him and the wall, and he pinned her in place, his hips positioned against her, the toes of her slippers wedged against his boots.
He broke the kiss to measure her emotion, but when her eyelashes merely fluttered and she sought his mouth again, he connected them in all the right places. Her mouth on his skin, her delicious curves, the need he experienced to be closer still, all proved a revelation. One he didn’t deserve but craved nonetheless.
‘I want… you.’ He drew a sharp breath and amended his words. ‘I want to touch you.’
‘Mmmm.’ She nestled against his chest like a warm kitten and whispered kisses against his jaw.
Her answer, pleasantly noncommittal, did little to assuage his sudden case of conscience. He wanted her, wanted to devour her, but couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her. Something about the moment suddenly seemed wrong.
And it was dangerous to want like this, recklessly without logic. The next time… no. This was the only time. Just this one time.
Yes, just this one time. Then he’d have her out of hi
s system. He’d be able to walk away and extinguish this maddening obsession. This was exactly what he needed. A distraction. Satisfaction to a sense of misplaced curiosity. Just this one time. That’s all he needed. Then he’d be free of her.
She wriggled her hips with impatience and he slid the back of his knuckles across the top of one stocking to trace the delicate skin. She trembled against him, the action incredibly erotic. He pushed more fabric beneath the pressure of his hip to hold it out of the way and grazed his fingertips over her inner thigh. He wanted to put his tongue there instead.
‘Touch me, Crispin.’ Her voice, like rough velvet, evoked another tremor of sensation.
She should have stayed quiet. She should have kissed him senseless and never uttered a word because, once she spoke his name in a raspy command, her sensual plea caused all reason to be lost.
He kicked his boot to the left and spread her legs wider. Desire pounded a frantic beat, a fire in his blood. Everywhere he caressed, her skin was silky smooth, delicate and delicious, scented with a light floral fragrance that may as well be opium for his reaction. The last thought he struggled to hold was how hot and wet she would be when at last he touched her.
He slid his palm across her thigh until he found the downy softness at the apex of her legs. With intense urgency he cupped her sex, delved inside with the same stroke as his tongue. He shuddered right along with her. She was wet, as tight and hot and wet as he’d anticipated. Maybe more so. He inhaled deep and fortified himself for the rush of intense pleasure. Still, he barely managed.
He forced his eyes open and pulled back from their kiss to assure she didn’t object, but she merely rested her head against the wall, her expression one of impatient want. He leaned into her with a murmured endearment, rested his forehead against hers and began a rhythm of pleasure with his fingertips. He liked watching the flash of emotion and sensation, the way her eyelids fluttered and lips parted on a breathy gasp. And he knew, for a fleeting moment too fast to measure, that he’d crossed the line.
‘That’s it, love.’ The word escaped before he could call it back. ‘Take your pleasure.’
He nuzzled kisses across her temple and quickened the work of his fingers. Stroke after stroke through her soft, slick heat, his thumb slow and sure to follow against her bud, the sharp reaction each time he touched reverberated in his body as well.
Completion was fast in coming. She gasped his name and clutched his shoulders so tight he thought she’d tumble them both to the floor. How he wished he didn’t have to stop. His cock throbbed with want, his body hummed with unspent tension, and yet he didn’t care at the moment. Viewing Amanda in climax was worth the ache in his breeches.
She came back to him quickly, the sensual luxury of lolling in bed stolen from them due to their impulsive passion, hidden in an alcove like two trysting lovers.
‘I…’ She reassembled with a few rushed adjustments, her hair the only element beyond repair. ‘Thank you.’ She curled a shy smile. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’
‘You needn’t thank me.’ He reached out and tugged her sleeve a mite straighter before he brushed a few wayward curls from her shoulder. Damn if he wanted to keep touching her.
‘I should return to my sister and aunt. They’ll worry over my absence.’
‘As they should.’ He lifted her hand, laced their fingers for a fleeting beat, and then placed a kiss against her palm, all the while telling himself to let go and be gone. ‘Good night then.’ He pushed aside the curtain and surveyed the corridor. ‘You should go now. No one is about.’
She didn’t contradict him and, with only the scantest glance over her shoulder, hurried away.
‘What happened to your hair?’ Aunt Matilda’s censorious tone expressed abject horror.
‘I lost the pins.’ Amanda swept the lengths over her shoulders and did her best to repair the damage.
‘What happened to your gown?’ Raelyn’s eyes flared.
‘It was a terrible crush.’ Did they fear she’d found herself in trouble, another self-inflicted mishap? Another mistake? She would never regard her interlude with Crispin as anything aside from glorious.
‘You look a little bedraggled,’ Raelyn added.
‘I was thrust against the wall.’ A secret smiled threatened and Amanda turned her head in pretence of watching the action onstage.
‘What?’
‘Ladies…’ Aunt Matilda scolded. ‘Enough discussion.’
‘I met a count from Italy,’ Raelyn added in a softer whisper.
‘You did?’ Could her aunt and sister somehow have made Ferris’s acquaintance while she was with Crispin? The juxtaposition of occurrences tickled her sense of humour and she giggled.
‘I’ll tell you about it on the way home.’ Raelyn matched her smile.
And then, with a surprising interjection, though they should have expected such, Aunt Matilda had the final word. ‘I doubt Lady Pembler can boast of knowing Italian nobility.’
The carriage was filled with animated conversation for the entire ride home. Raelyn overflowed with excitement concerning her introduction to an Italian count and it was wonderful to see her sister focus on her future instead of clinging to the past, fixated on what might have been.
In an attempt to cope with her embarrassing series of social blunders, Amanda believed everything happened for a reason, and the more she relished the tingly sensation alive within her at the memory of Crispin’s touch, the harder it was to think otherwise. He tried to dismiss their chance meetings – she heard it in his forced nonchalance – but the look of possession in his eyes when he held her, the scorching passion when their mouths met, told her otherwise.
And now, as the hour approached midnight and their evening came to a close, she wondered how she would ever survive without feeling his hands caress her as intimately as in that theatre alcove. She’d never allowed a gentleman such liberties, her sexual experience limited to a few kisses. Would Crispin seek her out? Come to call? Or was she just a convenient conquest, or worse, someone he desired but would not allow himself to have?
Crispin cursed fluidly, several black oaths in succession, and snared his friend’s attention. They were leaving Vauxhall, intent for St James’s, where they would walk two blocks to the Underworld gaming hell. Ferris remained wide awake since he’d slept through most of the performance at the theatre, and for that Crispin was thankful.
He’d retuned to the box, his emotions embroiled in a battle of head and heart, no solution having been found. His body was strung tighter than a bowstring and the satisfying privacy of his massive four-poster bed at Bedford Square would prove the better end to the evening. Unfortunately, the role of host interfered with his comforts.
At least with another appearance at the hell, he could further assess the clientele and climate. His goal of winning a fortune and dispelling the impression he lost his purse and left London to lick his wounds goaded his every action.
Well, not every action. He shook off the vivid memory of Amanda’s breathy moans of passion. He had no time for affairs of the heart and otherwise conflicting emotion. At least not until he set the record straight and was once again perceived with respect in London. He held no doubt he could charm her into just about anything, but one small choice had immense consequences and he wouldn’t wish for the lady to get hurt, or worse, believe herself in love. Even now the dull ache in his smalls reminded one way or the other, someone would be left unfulfilled.
‘Are you sulking?’ Ferris cocked a half-smile from where he lounged across the carriage.
‘I don’t sulk.’ Crispin shot the count a look that explained exactly what he thought of that comment.
‘You aren’t having a good time. I can tell.’
‘I’ve a lot on my mind.’
‘Englishmen think too much. Italian men live for the moment. I thought I taught you that lesson in Venice.’
‘You can’t undo my entire heritage in a matter o
f months, Ferris.’ This produced a smile from both of them.
The carriage rolled to a stop and they jumped out, anxious to stretch their legs and find some distraction at the hell. With their boot-heels on the cobbles in a steady beat, they approached number eleven, a two-storey building partially hidden by an umbrageous chestnut tree and otherwise similar to the brick-faced structures lining the street. Yet within this one, an entirely different world lived.
They’d almost reached the side door, guarded by one of the hell’s lads, who oversaw anyone who sought entry, when Stokes appeared and blocked their path.
‘Out to try your luck tonight, Daventry?’
Crispin flicked his gaze to Ferris. ‘Go ahead inside. I’ll follow shortly.’
‘Are you certain, amico mio?’
Crispin nodded, unsure why Stokes persisted, but anxious to put an end to the man’s annoying tendency to show up unwanted.
When the count passed through the entrance, Crispin redirected his attention.
‘What is it, Stokes? You’re not welcome in the Underworld and our association is complete. I appreciate your assistance while I was abroad, but I’ve returned now, paid you in full, and no longer require your services. Understood?’ His tone of intractability couldn’t be plainer.
‘I’m the one with the proposition now and you’ve all to gain.’ Stokes seemingly warmed to the subject, his crooked smile offset by the jagged white scar agleam in the moonlight.
‘Not interested.’ Crispin moved to walk away but Stokes blocked his progress.
‘Hear me out. You have no loyalty to the owners of the hell, least of all Sinclair. He married the one you wanted for yourself. They got themselves a family now.’
‘None of this matters to me.’ With a sense of relief Crispin realized it truly didn’t. With a touch of irony, he realized something he’d dreaded turned out to mean nothing at all. ‘If you want to make trouble, I won’t be a part it. I have a different purpose here.’
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