Lily pressed a hand to his chest. Not pushing. “What do you need from me?”
“Can you pinpoint the table the demons are seated at?”
“They’re in a booth against the wall, two down from the counter on the left hand side. There’s a… um, a shelf right above them, lined with green and blue bottles.”
“Excellent.” He dropped his hand from the wall and stood back. “A brief description of the demons, what they’re wearing, and that’s enough for the lads to go on.”
“What happens then?”
“The lads stick to their tails and we carry on our day as normal,” Kelan said. “We give the demons all the time and space they need to show us their hand.”
FOURTEEN
The curtains were doing a lousy job of keeping the day at bay; sunlight cracked through the two halves and clawed its way onto the bed. Arms wrapped around Georgina, their bodies as snug as a pair of spoons, Greyston’s shaft lengthened between her bottom cheeks.
She stirred, her head rolling against his chest. She looked at him from sleepy eyes, a slow smile tugging at her mouth.
“You’re awake.” He brushed a light kiss over her brow while his hand covered her breast, thumb and finger teasing her nipple into a hard pebble.
“Now I am.” She rubbed her bottom against his pelvis in deliberate, sensual strokes.
“Since you ask so nicely…” His other hand explored the curve of her hip, roaming down one thigh and then back up along the satin-soft inside to cup between her legs.
She sighed, long lashes forming a crescent moon beneath her eyes with the weight of desire.
He nudged her hair aside with his chin to nibble on an earlobe, then pressed his kisses down the side of her neck, all the way along the hollow of her collar bone to the end of her rounded shoulder. “Why does your skin taste like orange blossom nectar?”
“I’d tell you,” she said, “but then you’d know my last secret.”
“I very much doubt that,” he murmured, stroking the hot seam of her core. “I think you must have been a scout bee in some previous life.” His thumb strummed her pearl, sending a tremble of arousal through both their bodies. “At the end of every season, you’d pack a pearl drop of honey, tuck in your sting and go exploring foreign and exotic orchards for your queen.”
She groaned as another wave pulsed between them. “Butterflies are prettier.”
Greyston worked his kisses back up, his tongue licking and tasting every inch of skin until his lips found the corner of her mouth. “Spread your wings, my pretty butterfly.” He shifted her and his shaft slipped between her legs to bury inside with a single, smooth glide. Flames threaded his veins, thickening his blood with heat.
Her back arched and she turned her head all the way up to him, her lips seeking his more fully. He took her mouth in an urgent, possessive kiss, their tongue stroking to a mating rhythm.
One hand still covering her breast, the other cupping below, he thrust deep and long, rocking their bodies to a slow-building peak. At the first tremor of her release, Greyston spent in a series of hard plunges that took them over the top as one—their bodies locked and frozen on the crest of a timeless wave of ecstasy. On the other side, the world shattered into black and white diamonds.
He wrapped both arms around Georgina again, holding her close until their hearts stopped racing and breaths came easier. The slit in the curtains winked at them as the sun dipped in and out of a cloud.
“Oh, God,” Georgina groaned, “You’re a blackguard and a thief.”
He pressed his mouth to her hair, inhaling her scent. “I’ll concede to being a blackguard, but what am I supposed to have stolen?”
“Half my morning.” She wiggled in his embrace. “I have to go before the entire household is up to watch me sneak out.”
He rolled her onto her back and pinned her there with the full length of his body, propped on his elbows so he could look into her eyes. “We could bypass the sneaking and spend the day in bed.”
“You don’t know Devon. If he so much as suspects what went on beneath his roof, he won’t give a rat’s arse that I’m a widow.” She chewed at the corner of her mouth. “He’ll insist you make an honest woman out of me and that would simply spoil our fun.”
“I’m wounded.” He put all his weight on one elbow and pushed his fingers through her hair. “You don’t think I’d win a duel at dawn with Harchings?”
She arched up to give him a languid, tongue-deep kiss, then fell flat again with an indulgent smile. “Of course you would, darling.”
“Now you’re just humouring me.”
Her smile widened. “Of course I am, darling.”
He lowered himself over her, but before he got a taste of that smile, the bedroom door burst open.
Greyston bent his head to direct a scowl that way.
A brown bottle with a black and yellow label danced into his vision, followed by a roughshod Neco. His coat flung over one massive shoulder, the ends of his neck cloth flung over the other, and his hair funnelled into a tufted ridge on top his head.
“Close the damn door,” Greyston grunted. He rolled off Georgina and tucked the sheets up to her throat as he made the introductions. “Georgina. Neco.”
Georgina un-tucked an arm to reach across and pinch him. “Grey…!”
He grinned at her. “Neco is a celludrone. He doesn’t mind if you don’t.”
“I don’t mind,” Neco said, turning back from the door to set the bottle on a nearby table.
“A celludrone?” She cast a wary stare on the seven-foot man. “Are you sure?”
“Limited valet edition,” Greyston drawled.
“How limited.”
“Very.”
She pinched him again, hard.
He grabbed the offending hand and held it against his chest.
“One-of-a-kind limited,” he said, leaving Ana out of the mix for now. “Neco is an advanced celludrone. He interacts and thinks nearly like a human, but I assure you…” He leant close to whisper, “He doesn’t lust after naked woman.”
Now that stare screwed into him. “And how many naked women has he found in your bed?”
Greyston’s jaw tensed. None, to be exact. He lived between Es Vedra and the Red Hawk, and he’d never had a woman in either bed. But he’d never been invited to a country house party in his life and he didn’t want to mislead anyone. The fact was, he didn’t know if Georgina was the exception, or if the circumstances were.
“You should see your face.” Her stare unscrewed as she giggled. When he didn’t join in, she rolled her eyes at him. “You must admit, you deserved that. My heart stopped beating when the door opened to let in a strange man.”
He turned her hand over in his, entwining their fingers as his gaze softened on her.
She plucked her hand away. “I really have to go.”
“Neco doesn’t have to stay,” he countered.
“He stays,” she said firmly, her eyes going to Neco. She twirled a finger at him. “But hot-blooded male or celludrone, you do need to turn around so I can get dressed.”
“Of course, m’lady.” He put his back to them, which put him in sight of the gilded wingback chair in the corner where Georgina’s clothes had landed the night before. “Would you like your gown, m’lady?”
She bolted upright, bringing the sheet with her, and bent over Greyston to whisper, “Are you absolutely, one-hundred percent sure he’s a celludrone and not simply a man with prosthetic eyeballs?”
“One-hundred-percent sure, m’lady,” Neco replied.
A laugh rumbled in Greyston’s chest. “I should have mentioned, he has exceptional hearing.”
She jabbed his rumbling chest with a finger. “And he won’t gossip down below in the servant halls about what he sees up here?”
“I swear,” Greyston said, growing serious.
She spun away, dragging the sheet completely off him. “I’d love my clothes, thank you, Neco. And please, my name is Georgina.”
Greyston’s blood thickened all over again as he watched her shimmy into her knickers.
“Need help?” he said huskily when she lifted her dress above her head.
Her eyes grazed his naked body; she’d discarded the sheet into a heap on the floor when she was done with it. She arched a brow at his semi-erection and her lips twisted into a smile. “I’m not convinced your goal aligns with mine.”
She tugged the dress on. Ribbons at the side fastened the bodice, and then she perched on the edge of the bed to slip on her shoes. When she was done, she bundled stockings, garter belt and corset under her arm and crawled over the bed for one last kiss.
He wrapped his arms around her and took his time ravaging her mouth with dedicated skill to leave her wanting more. “Neco will lead the way and see you to your room.”
On the heels of a saucy wink, she slinked out after Neco.
Greyston lay exactly as he was for a full minute, wearing nothing but a wolfish grin.
The bottle of Pacific Rum caught his attention and he leapt from the bed, his mind turned to the less pleasant aspects of this house party. He lifted the brown bottle to his nose and sniffed the cork. The label wasn’t always a guarantee, but the fumes told him Neco had delivered.
When Neco returned, he had to ask. “What happened to your hair?”
“I lost my hat halfway to Hove.”
He raised the bottle. “Dockside tavern?”
Neco nodded. “I also found us transport to Calais. There’s a man who runs a skimmer—”
“What the devil is a skimmer?”
“He didn’t say, but it will get us from Hove to Calais in under two hours and yesterday you mentioned you were eager to catch up with the Red Hawk as soon as possible.”
“My hurry was more in terms of days than hours, but now I want to see this skimmer for myself.” Greyston set the bottle on the table and folded his arms, considering his options.
“The duke isn’t a man to be easily fooled,” Neco stated.
“Which is why I’ve changed my mind,” Greyston said, the plan forming as he spoke. “I’m going to need Evelyn’s help after all.”
FIFTEEN
True to his word, Kelan didn’t return from Westminster until after six o’clock. Lily was prowling the library, on the hunt for distraction from the constant peck-peck-pecker in her head. Her eyes crossed over at the serious memoirs, biographies and obscure collections of poetry. The McAllister library clearly needed a woman’s touch.
She stumbled across a lone copy of a Charles Dickens’ work, Pickwick Papers, tucked away on a bottom shelf as if embarrassed to be seen. Barely tolerable, but she’d given up any hope of finding a gothic mystery or, Heaven forbid, a brooding romance, to absorb the hours and hours of waiting. She was just rising from her haunches when Kelan entered.
He crossed to the drinks cabinet and poured two fingers of whiskey into a crystal tumbler. Not a single crease disturbed the elegant cut of the dark suit tailored to his broad shoulders.
He tugged at his neck cloth as he turned, and saw her. He raised the glass to his lips. “How was your day?”
A fog of horrific surrealism swirled over Lily.
Two demons cavorted in the slums while she’d sipped on iced tea in St. James Square with old friends, Pragella Lane and Elizabeth Wyncote. She’d spent the afternoon faking swoony sighs and deflecting a gushing inquisition as the centrepiece of the affaire de la saison.
Now her fake husband wanted to exchange pleasantries at the end of the day like an old married couple.
He’d boxed her up against a wall, looked into her eyes, and something deep inside her had responded. The precise what and why eluded her. She suspected she’d regret it. For now, however, she’d give his methods the benefit of the doubt and stop badgering about the demons
But if she went about her day as normal for another second, she’d be a candidate for Bedlam.
“Would it assault your manly senses to stock your shelves with anything remotely readable?” She thrust Dickens in his direction. “Have you even heard of Elizabeth Gaskin or George Eliot?”
Kelan sipped on his whiskey, his face a study in inscrutability. “Not so good, then?”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “Do you know of a place called Devil’s Acre?”
“That’s a stone’s throw from Westminster Palace,” Kelan said, brows drawn in sudden interest.
“So Armand tells me. We were practically standing in the shadow of Victoria Tower.”
The magnificent tower presided over the grit, soot and ashes slum with mocking glamour, glittering like a fairy sand castle built by dribbling grains of gold through a monarch’s fingers.
Lily tossed the book onto the sofa and joined it, curling up at one end. “I’m not ignorant of the plight of poverty, but I never imagined such wretchedness existed. I felt it suck the life from me, and I wasn’t even really there, not physically.”
A shudder rent her soul as she relived the handful of minutes from the demon glass. The stench of sewerage and sickness crept along the alleys of Devil’s Acre; tendrils of the visceral odour growing out of the cracks of soot-black tenements to snare skinny ankles of barefoot urchins, claw its way up tattered skirts, and fester in the deathly pallor of every living organism.
“Lower Westminster is infested with typhoid, cholera and the dregs of London’s Underworld,” Kelan murmured. “The honest poor suffer onslaught from all fronts. Victoria Street, with its modest housing and shops, was supposed to improve conditions, but that only served to displace the poorest and compact them into a swamp of low-rent apartments. George Peabody is making noise about cleaning up the area; he certainly has enough money, ideas and heart. But these things don’t happen overnight.”
Loose-limbed strides brought Kelan to the chair opposite her, but he didn’t sit. “That’s where the demons were today?”
“One of them.” She craned her neck to look up at him. “It was walking down Pye Street, with purpose, not strolling aimlessly. When I checked later, it had met up with a man. They were in some foul alley and I couldn’t see much. Except that he was too well-dressed to belong.”
She’d hoped they’d leave the alley together, so she could get a glimpse of the man, but she’d almost blacked out. “After that, I took one more quick peek. The demon was back in Seven Dials and that was a couple of hours ago.”
Kelan seemed neither impressed nor disappointed. “The lads should have more for us.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Lily said. “I didn’t see either Archibald or Liam once, and I looked.”
“They know better than to light themselves up like homing beacons.” He shrugged out of his jacket as if undressing in her presence were the most natural thing in the world.
Beneath, his vest was navy, a shade deeper than his eyes, the cut immaculate without an inch of slack for mercy. His perfect physique may not need it, but Lily did. She’d seen him in far less, but the casual gesture of stripping down charged the atmosphere with intimacy. It proved impossible to look and not see rippled muscle and sun-brushed skin. Her fingers tingled, retaining their own memory of an all-too-fleeting, exhilarating and exotic touch.
She caught herself staring at his chest and her eyes shot up.
Kelan regarded her with a closed expression, and for once she was grateful she couldn’t read his thoughts. She didn’t fool herself. Her eyes burned hot with phantom embers and he was too observant to not notice. But Lord knew what she’d do with the slightest indication he reciprocated—and anything less would be utterly mortifying.
Another minute passed, each second pressing heavier and heavier on her breast, before he released her gaze. He slanted away from her to drape his jacket over the chair. “Is Armand about?”
Lily wet her lips. “He said he needed to visit Hampstead Heath. He expects to be back before nightfall.”
She heard Kelan mutter something inaudible, but when he faced her again, there was no indication on his face to interpret
the sentiment.
“What’s in Hampstead Heath?” she enquired.
“An Aether Signaller,” he told her in true McAllister style, telling her absolutely nothing at all.
He propped himself on the tip of the padded chair arm.
“Let’s try this again.” His eyes rested on her as he stretched his legs out, crossed at the ankles, his hands shoved in his pockets. “How was your day?”
The compressed breath whooshed from Lily’s lungs. “The one constant I can rely on is your unyielding indifference, other than in my capacity as your demon sniffer, and now you’re asking me about my day?”
He cocked his head. “Maybe I want to reassure myself that you found enough amusements, outside dabbling in your demon glass, to keep you too busy to plot your next direct defiance.”
“Then you’ll be pleased to learn I indulged in a spot of harmless shopping.” Her eyes dipped to his wide, hard mouth. The ties left behind by a kiss that had ravaged her senses tugged low in her abdomen.
An impish voice inside her head nudged. If you lead him to suspect you’re up to your impetuous, reckless tricks again, he might feel compelled to assert his husbandly influence.
She cut off the voice that could only lead to trouble.
“I ran into friends and we spent the afternoon at a tearoom in St. James,” she said lightly. “I was so busy being a model wife, I barely gave the demons another thought.”
His eyes creased and his jaw softened.
The combination made her think of laughter, and she wondered if this was as close as Kelan ever got. The glimmer of a boyish nature, locked away long before he became a man, had a profound effect on the harsher angles of his face. Lily’s pulse staggered and her heart tumbled downhill to totter over a treacherous edge. She could make a project of tempting Kelan’s smiles and laughter.
A discreet knock arrived in the nick of time to save Lily from a dangerous game. The downfall of an idle mind. I’m safer off obsessing over demons.
The Dark Matters Quartet Page 59
