“You set the terms of this game,” Aiden pointed out. “She’s just playing within the rules you set.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Stuart replied. It wasn’t in Bian’s nature. He knew that as surely as he knew the feel of her flesh and the shape of her thigh. His hand still tingled with the memory and his body still grew taut each time he recalled it. His heart still thudded and his breath grew short.
He still remembered the way she trembled and clung to him. And he distinctly remembered how her shoulders straightened just before she looked up at him, her gaze squarely upon his eyes, as she bid him goodnight, before she turned away.
Courage. Rare courage.
He didn’t know why she had done what she did that night. But it wasn’t a game. At least, it wasn’t the petty sort of game that Aidan was proposing.
“You’re wrong,” Stuart told Aidan flatly.
“Am I?” Aiden asked softly. “Do you deny that she controlled the evening in some way?”
Stuart hesitated.
Aiden shrugged. “She has reasons of her own, brother. You have forgotten that.”
“No, I bloody haven’t,” Stuart growled. “What do you think has been driving me crazy for three straight days?”
Aiden grinned. “Finding her has been driving you crazy. I know you too well. Don’t lie to me. You haven’t worried so much about what drove her from you. All you’ve worried about is getting her back.”
The breath Stuart drew in hurt, so sharply did he inhale his surprise. Had he failed to consider Bian’s motives?
He sank down onto his chair. Was he such a selfish brute he could think of nothing but his own need to have her back?
Stuart buried his face in his hands, disgust thick in his gut, making him feel sick with it.
Aidan’s hand came down heavily on his shoulder. “Figure out what drove her away, and you might just find her again. Good luck, brother.”
* * * * *
Patrick’s butler returned with a morning gown and other essentials, which allowed Bian to appear in public once more. Dressed in a dark purple velvet suit, which offered some protection against the damp wind gusting along the streets, Bian climbed into her carriage and snuggled under the lap robe. She gave directions for Madame Evamy’s on Bond Street, with a sigh. It was the only establishment she knew. Madam Evamy would have to provide the props she needed to verify her sudden urge to replenish her wardrobe.
Bond Street was as busy as usual. The damp air rising from the Thames and whistling down the street had not discouraged business in the slightest.
Bian’s driver dropped the steps for her and handed her out, along with a caution in his rough accent, “Wotch it, Miss Bian. I couldn’t get no closer and the gutters are a right mess.”
She took a long step on to the footpath and looked up.
Stuart was there.
Bian smothered her gasp of shock with her gloved hand, staring up at him. He towered over her, large in his dark overcoat. His hair was ruffled and his chin unshaved. He looked like he had gone for a month without sleep.
“Dear lord! Stuart! Where did you come from? You startled me.”
His hands were pushed deep into his pockets. “Who are you?” he asked. His voice was as rough as his chin. “Why can I not stop thinking of you?”
She looked around for observers. Her driver stood with the carriage door open, watching with a wary eye. “It’s all right,” she assured him, for he looked like he wanted to leap to her defence. It wouldn’t be the first time he had wielded his blackjack for her and she knew the damage he could inflict. “I know this man.”
“Ye sure, miss? ’e don’t look all that good t’me.”
“I’m sure. But wait a moment.” She turned back to Stuart. “Where have you been, to look as you do?” Genuine concern pushed the question from her. He looked like he had been to hell and back.
“Following you,” he rasped. “I needed to know…needed to…” He stepped closer to her and cupped her cheek with a hand that trembled. “God, who are you? I’ve not slept since that night—”
It was more than she wanted her driver to hear. She glanced over her shoulder but the driver was staring at the passing traffic, apparently stone deaf.
“Come,” she told Stuart, tugging at his sleeve. “Come with me.” She climbed back into her carriage and gestured for him to board, too. She knew there was a risk she would be seen in a carriage alone with a man but didn’t care. The raw emotion pouring from him was making her own heart sing with joy and her insides roil with need. It didn’t matter that this man had betrayed his country. That she was here in London to find proof of his deeds that would survive cross examination in court became a distant fact she could barely bother acknowledging, when before it had driven her every action.
She could only feel the pleasure of being with him, even as dishevelled as he was. His ragged, exhausted, driven state sent a shiver of excitement through her. She had brought him to this.
She settled back into her corner of the bench and spoke quietly to her driver, who stood patiently at the door. “The townhouse.”
“No,” Stuart said sharply, as he sat beside her. He gave the driver an address that she recognized.
“Your house?” she said. “My reputation would not withstand the impact if I were seen entering it without a chaperone.”
“I suspect your reputation has survived far more than a peccadillo of this magnitude,” Stuart said, with a piercing glance at her.
She bit her lip, then nodded to her driver, who tugged at his hat brim and shut the door.
As the carriage jogged into motion, Stuart swivelled so that he was facing her, his long legs taking up most of the bench. “Who are you?” he said.
“I am Bian,” she said honestly.
“A mystery princess with the highest connections in the land,” he said. He laid his arm to rest along the back of the seat. It was a casual movement but the fingers curled into a tight fist. “You haven’t been home for three days.” His blue gaze pinned her to the seat, giving her no quarter. “When your carriage turned up this morning, I followed it. You know where it led me.”
The tension emanating from him was so harsh the air between them seemed to vibrate with it. “Patrick’s townhouse,” she answered. His tension was affecting her. She could feel a tightening in her own gut and the hurried beat of her heart. Longing swept through her. He was so close…all she wanted was for him to take her in his arms. To take her, utterly and completely. She was moist in her woman’s place, ready for him.
He nodded at her answer. “Patrick is another good friend, then?”
“Of a sort,” she agreed. “We do not share a bed,” she added.
“Or a sofa?” he returned swiftly.
“Patrick does not own a sofa.”
His gaze drilled into her. “And how did you know that the address I just gave your driver was mine, just now?”
She held her face steady and managed not to give a guilty start. “You gave my maid your card, when you called.” Her heart was really hammering, now.
He stared at her for a very long moment. Did he weigh up her answer? Finally, he released her and turned his gaze to a loose stitch in the upholstery of the bench that he picked at with his fingers. Again, it was meant to be a casual movement but the coiled, tightly contained energy in him made his hand shake, even as it kept the rest of his body as poised and still as a snake ready to strike.
She swallowed and her throat clicked with dryness. “You’ve grown tired of being the hunted already, Stuart?”
He made an impatient movement and pushed his hand through his pale blond hair. Now she understood why it looked so ruffled.
“This is no hunt, Bian. You must surely know that. In five days you have…” He looked out the window, as if he was suddenly unsure of the wisdom of what he was about to say. Then he turned back to face her and the blue eyes blazed with an emotion she could barely name. “You have carved your way into here—” and he pressed
his fist against his chest. “And here.” This time, he pressed the tips of his fingers against his temples. “And the pain is unlike anything I have ever suffered before. You are my doom, Bian.”
Understanding flared in Bian, as she recognized the same pain as that in herself. It was the agony of knowing she was completely at the mercy of the most unexpected, overwhelming…the most dangerous emotion in the world.
“Love,” Stuart whispered and looked back out the window, as if it were too difficult for him to look at her directly.
Her sigh blurred as tears filled her eyes. They were the same hot and achingly hard tears that she had shed while sitting on Patrick’s parquet floor three nights before. At that time, she had not recognized them for what they were.
But recognizing them did not relieve them. Her chest locked with the anguish building in her. Her tears slid down her face and her vision cleared.
Stuart still gazed out the window, as if he were afraid to see her reaction to his confession. “Why can I not stop thinking about you?”
“Because I made sure you could not,” she told him.
He looked at her then, hope in his gaze. “You really were the hunter, then,” he said, with growing wonder.
I still am. I must be. But she could not speak the words aloud. It was too dangerous to say them.
So instead she indulged in her rabid need for him, for the desire that coursed through her whenever she saw him. She reached for him.
It was all the encouragement Stuart needed. He gathered her into his arms and pressed her back against the seat as he kissed her with a thoroughness that left her breathless and lightheaded. His lips were warm and commanding and he was so large that she felt small and weak and deliciously feminine.
“No corset,” he whispered and groaned as his hands circled her waist and gently pressed inward, to feel only flesh beneath her clothing.
She shed her gloves and nimbly unfastened the buttons on her jacket.
As he realized what she was doing, his breath caught in a tiny hitch that was deeply exciting. He reached up to pull the curtains over the windows with sharp single tugs with each hand, as she pushed aside the velvet of her jacket.
She realized her hands trembled as badly as his. “No corset,” she confirmed.
He slid his big hand inside her jacket, to rest it against her torso. His thumb brushed against the cotton camisole she wore beneath the jacket and the weight of his hand pulled the fabric taut over her breast. The cotton was fine enough that the dark areolas were visible, circling the nub of her nipple.
“I have dreamed of this,” Stuart said, with a groan. He lowered himself to his knees in front of her. “I have thought of little else but this for…it seems like an age has passed while I sweated over not having you.”
She lifted his hand higher and placed it on her breast. “I wanted this, three nights ago,” she assured him. “What I took was a compromise.” She tugged at the ribbon holding the camisole closed and it snagged in a tight little knot. She sighed but it emerged as a frustrated whimper. “Tear it,” she told him. “Rip it.”
Stuart’s eyes seemed to grow even more blue, piercing her with their intensity. He snagged the neck of her camisole in both hands and tore the garment open down to the waist. Cooler air bathed her heated breasts and she took a sharp, excited breath.
“Beautiful,” Stuart murmured, his voice thick and heavy with excitement. His hands delved inside and came to rest against her torso, again. The thumbs stroked the flesh there and sent ripples of delight through her. Without intention, she arched, aware that the movement thrust her breasts at him. Offering them.
“Please…more,” she murmured, deliberately repeating the plea she had made in the conservatory. Her nipples were almost painfully erect and hard, ready for his touch.
His breath escape him in a rush. “God…!” His hands slid upwards and she held her breath, anticipating his direction. But it did not come.
Instead, she felt the lightest stroking just beneath the swell of her breasts. So close…so close. She groaned her disappointment but the stroking fluttered up against the globes of flesh, teasing in little, irregular touches.
He pushed her jacket off her shoulders and down her arms, so it effectively pinned them to her side. With a delicate movement, he picked up the straps of her ruined camisole and pushed them down her arms, as well. Now she was fully exposed to him. His fingers tickled and caressed her flesh over her shoulders, gradually moving down the slope of her breasts. With each hand mirroring the other, he slipped his fingers into the valley between each breast and brushed them along the side.
“Your teasing will kill me,” she groaned.
“You will beg for mercy before the end,” he promised her. He was watching her every reaction. Revelling in it, she realized.
He swayed toward her and she caught her breath. But again, it was misdirection. His hot tongue slid between her breasts, leaving a path of moisture, before his lips pressed against her cleavage.
Finally, his hands tightened around her waist and he brought her to him. She went willingly, arching hard to give him access. And this time his lips circled her nipple. She felt moist heat before all thought was interrupted by the sizzling pleasure that speared through her as his tongue nudged the nipple. She cried aloud and clutched at him to both hold herself up and to keep him bending over her so that he would continue to suckle at her breast.
Then his teeth nipped the bud and her head rolled back, her eyes closing. The pure, primordial excitement coursing through her was stealing coherent thought. She was left with ravening need, instead. It clawed through her, demanding satisfaction. Her body throbbed with it.
She writhed on the bench as Stuart transferred his attention to the other breast. The nipping, the stroking, it was driving her crazy with need. She realized that she was pummelling him with her fists, when she did not clutch at him with a desperate grip. But he remained bent over her, alternatively attacking each breast, until she not only writhed but panted and moaned her need to be fulfilled. She was reduced to a wanton who could think of nothing but the need to have him inside her.
“Please…!” she gasped, tugging at him, unable to form the words needed to explain her desperation.
He smiled a slow smile. His eyes were hooded and the big chest rose and fell rapidly. “What is it you want, hmmm?”
He shrugged off his overcoat, which left him, shockingly, in only a shirt and trousers. The shirt had no collar or cuffs.
And the trousers were straining over the magnificent bulge at the junction of his thighs.
But before she could consider the view at length, his hands slipped beneath the hem of her skirt and found their way to her calves, where they emerged from the top of her boots. She wore silk stockings. Stuart’s fingers sliding over the delicate silk was deliciously decadent and thrilling.
“Mmm…” he commented. He flipped up the skirt and petticoats in one movement, so that they folded back over Bian’s thighs, exposing her knees and calves to his gaze. And again, she found herself holding her breath as his fingers slid up the length of her calves. Then back down again, to circle around the top of her boots. Then back up again. First, at the outer side of her knees, then the front. Then, finally, the inner knee.
Her breath hitched and her whole body shivered as his fingertips circled around her inner knees. She had not known such a mundane location could possibly be that sensitive.
But when Stuart pushed his shoulders between her knees, spreading her wide open, then slid his tongue against the flesh there, that she knew she had judged too soon. The shivery, silvery explosion sweeping through her was a different sort of delight. Even through the stocking, she could feel the heat of his tongue and the sweep of it across her flesh.
In reaction, she tried to sit up but Stuart pushed gently on her shoulder so that she was slouched back against the seat once more. “Stay there,” he said. “I like the view.”
As he spoke, his hands spread out over her k
nees and pushed her skirts high, right up against her abdomen and hips.
She was fully exposed to his gaze, now. Never had she felt so wicked. So terribly aroused. She tried to reach for him, to bring him to her but he resisted her feeble tug on his jacket. “I won’t be hurried,” he murmured to her.
“I’ll die!” she warned.
He smiled. “I’ll do my best to make sure you think you have,” he assured her.
The shiver of anticipation that rippled through her in response was more of a shudder.
His thumbs were still doing their maddening little circles on the insides of her knees and her legs fell open even more. “Please…!” was all she could manage and her voice was distorted by the power of her arousal.
Stuart bent once more to nibble at her inner thigh. The mussed blond hair tickled the other limb. She found her hands on his shoulders, squeezing, encouraging him. She knew what Stuart intended and wanted it with a power that shocked her. No man had ever kissed her in such an intimate place. She had never allowed it. It would take too much trust for her to ever willingly agree to such a profound act of submission.
His lips and tongue and teeth played a medley, as they worked their way higher. It seemed to take a small ice age plus a week before finally, finally, his lips touched her folds. He did not linger there. He nuzzled her, opening her up, until finally his tongue stroked her very centre.
The explosion of pleasure threw her head back, thrust her hips forehead. She was aware that she was digging her fingers into Stuart’s shoulders. She could feel the warmth of flexed muscles beneath the rumpled fabric. But the thought was a distant one. Overriding any conscious thought was the need for more. It battered at her in silent voice. Very close was the nirvana of pleasure that she had only felt from her own experimentation.
But then he stopped and pulled away from her.
She gripped the shirt with a desperation that surprised even her. “No! Don’t stop, please.”
He was fumbling at her jacket, drawing it over the ruined camisole. “We must,” he said in a very low voice. “The carriage has halted.”
Royal Talisman Page 5
