Confessions of a Little Black Gown (20 page)

“This isn’t what you think,” she told him, as his hand reached down and pulled at her gown, tugging it up so he could trace his fingers over the smooth, sleek skin of her legs, her thighs.

Oh, God, how he wanted her. Desired her.

She sucked in a deep breath as his hand skimmed over her undergarment, reaching beneath the lace-trimmed silk and finding his way to the other silk—the curls beneath. So it seemed she felt the
same fire, the same passions, for her hips swayed at his touch, invited him to continue his reckless exploration.

How wrong is this?
he wondered. Was he as foolhardy as his sire?

To desire a woman bent on his destruction.

“You’re dreaming, sir,” she whispered, now sounding more desperate than angry. “You must stop.” But even as she said it, her hips arched up as he touched the folds hidden beneath her undergarments, slick and wet with need.

She desired him as much as he did her, for even now her fingers clung to his shoulders, and a soft moan escaped her lips as he teased her further.

He inhaled her perfume again, let his touch explore her, let the dark passion she invoked inside him come boiling to the surface and surrender to it every bit of caution he possessed.

A dream?
If only every night held dreams such as this. Yet what else could it be but a dream?

“You know not what you do,” she whispered, her struggles less anxious, her body moving with his.

“I disagree, my little minx. I know exactly what I am doing,” he told her before his mouth crashed down and his lips covered hers.

When Lord Larken’s lips covered hers, Tally knew she was lost. His kiss sent any bit of restraint she possessed scattering for higher ground.

Restraint had no place in his rakish bed. Not the way he touched her.

His tongue grazed her lips, inviting her to open up to his exploration, pleading with her to tangle with
him, taste him, as he was enjoying her. And she did, God help her, she couldn’t stop herself.

Every swipe of his tongue, the hard, unforgiving strength of his lips atop hers, the torture of his fingers on her sex, it was like being swept into the same sensuous dream that held him in its clutches.

He had an excuse for this scandal, but what was hers?

That she’d desired him from the first moment she’d clapped eyes on him?

Yes. Yes, she had.

He released her hands as if he could feel the change in her mood, that her fight had now turned to acquiescence, to a desire to burn with him.

His kiss deepened, and she clung to him, for it swept her along in this rising tide of madness. He kissed her thoroughly before breaking away and moving his mouth to her neck, her shoulder, down the front of her gown.

Beneath the heat of his lips, her skin burned. Her fingers raked through his hair, the wild tangle of dark strands falling to his shoulders.

He’d gone to sleep in only his shirt and breeches, and she brazenly ran her fingers beneath the linen and traced her nails over the solid wall of his chest, explored the crisp triangle of hair there, rough and tumble beneath her fingers.

Again he plied at her sex and it tightened and ached beneath his touch, her thighs quivering, tightening around his hand to hold him there. The torment as he stroked her made her breathless and restless and anxious all at once.

Was it possible to desire a man so completely? Want what only he could give you so utterly?

“Yes, yes,” she whispered as he loosened her gown and pulled it from her shoulders, his lips following the velvet down, until he caught hold of a newly freed nipple.

Taking it in his mouth, he sucked on it until it hardened and pebbled beneath the rough pad of his tongue, sending a new frenzy of passion through her veins.

As her body awoke beneath this sweet torment, he continued to pull and pluck at her gown, her undergarments, her chemise, until she found herself naked.

She should have been embarrassed, but she rather felt like a Venus she’d once seen in Lord Hamilton’s house in Naples, ripe and willing.

Far too willing.

And this rake knew it. For when he’d removed her clothes, he’d done the same to his, hastily divesting himself of his shirt and breeches, which now lay entwined and rumpled with hers on the floor, even as their naked bodies melded together.

Hard and long, the head of his member rode against her sex, his hips flexing as it went further and further between her legs.

For a moment, Tally panicked. If she did this, there was no going back.

Going back to what?
she thought, as he caught hold of her hips and drew her closer, his fingers teasing a path down over her curls, her legs opening to him, the cleft wet with need, ready for him.

She’d longed for one night with a rake for as long as she could remember. It wasn’t as if she’d ever cared for Society’s conventions…all she’d ever desired was to follow her heart. Her passions. And this man seemed to know exactly how to unleash them.

Slick and ready, he slid himself over her, rubbing her with his shaft, kissing her deeply, touching her, and bringing her to the brink of need, tempting her to take this one last leap into the unknown.

“What do we do now, my little minx?” he whispered in a ragged voice.

As if there was any other choice, for her body thrummed with desire, her breath caught in her throat, even her heart seemed to still.

“Take me, Lord Larken,” she told him, taking hold of his hips and pulling him closer.

Release me from this prison.

S
omewhere in the madness of passion, Larken began to awaken.

Enough to realize that he was enveloped in no dream. That the lady beneath him was Miss Langley.

Tally.

No, he mused. Her name should be Trouble.

But it was all too far gone by the time he’d found some semblance of reason, some inkling that he wasn’t dreaming. Perhaps it was the heat of her skin. The taste of her as he sucked at her nipples. Hard, round pebbled peaks beneath his tongue that were as sweet as heaven.

The wet, slick feel of her cleft beneath her fingers. A slippery slope if ever there was one.

He shouldn’t be doing this. Not with her. Treacherous, dangerous minx. And yet…

How he ached to be inside her, to drive himself
into her and stroke her until she cried out his name in her release.

Vaguely he thought of the consequences…that she was his enemy. Hollindrake’s innocent sister-in-law.

He kissed her again, and her tongue danced wickedly over his.

Perhaps not so innocent, he mused, his shaft growing even harder as she touched him there. Stroked him, explored him as he had done to her. Had he taught her all this?

Of course he knew the answer…yes, he had. For the other night, she’d been tentative and shy, but that was now lost, ruined by his need for her.

Her fingers wound around him, running slowly over his head and down the shaft, sending need so rife he thought he was going to spill himself all over her hand.

Did she know what she was doing to him?

In a daze he glanced at her face and found a feline smile tipping her pert lips.

Oh, yes. She knew.

“What do we do now, my little minx?” he asked her, nestling her beneath him so he was just above her, poised to fill her.

She answered with a reckless whisper, her hips rocking upward. “Take me, Lord Larken.” Her legs opened for him, wrapping around him, leaving him a course no man could refuse.

He didn’t hesitate, and began his plundering, thrusting inside her, sweeping aside the barrier that told the truth.

She was an innocent.

Or rather she had been.

He heard her gasp, and covered her mouth with his, kissing away her surprise and stroking her slowly, gently to rekindle the fire.

Larken had made love to countless women—widows, courtesans, even a princess once, but never had any of them done this to him.

Unleashed a desire inside him that drove him to such heedless need. And with it came an unsettling notion that no woman would ever satisfy him again. No one but this one.

This impossible, treacherous minx. His Tally. His Trouble.

Her hips met his, and she clung to him. What she whispered to him, he couldn’t hear through the roar of blood in his veins.

He wanted her. Wanted to spill his seed inside her, and feel her release twist and shudder around him.

“I—I—I—” he stammered as he felt himself gaining that peak. He continued to stroke her, kiss her, taste her, feel every bit of her lithe, lush body come alive beneath him.

And then it happened.

She came, her body dancing with release, her channel stripping him of the last of his control, pulling from him a wave of passion that sent him reeling back into the darkness from which she’d awakened him.

Tally had known that there might be pain the first time she made love. Every nanny from Rana to Tasha had told her that, but what she hadn’t expected was how fleeting it would be, or what came next.

Larken filled her with his sex, driving inside her, and all she could do was answer with her own ragged thrusts of her hips.

How she wanted him to continue. To push her further and further up this course. It was as if he were carrying her into the night sky, the stars and clouds and darkness giving way to a black void that called to her.

“Oh, please,” she whispered to him, clung to him as he stroked her toward this impossible madness. She was going mad, for all she wanted was to have him inside her, and every time he pulled away, she clung even harder to him, strove to regain the feel of his length.

Her body tightened, her nipples grew harder as they brushed against the hair on his chest, the thick masculine smell of him filling her senses.

Her heels dug into the mattress as she tried to get closer, get more from each stroke.

She looked up at him, and saw the very same need in his dark gaze. Wild and ready, filled with hunger.

His lips came crashing down atop hers and he kissed her, sealing their future. For even as his tongue entwined with hers, his rock-hard length dove even deeper into her, she found what she had been seeking.

For the night sky through which he’d been carrying her opened up suddenly in a hail of fireworks: ravishing, quaking explosions that drove a deep moan from her.

“Oh, yes, oh, yes,” she exclaimed, even as he thrust one more time inside her, and he found his own re
lease, his body shuddering and driving even deeper inside her as he sought to discover every last bit of passion there was between them.

And even after the frenzied explosion passed, and her body continued to tremble and quake, she clung to every indecent wave as it washed over her, for she never wanted this night to end.

Why would she? She was in heaven.

And in that moment, Tally knew she would never be the same.

Never be complete without him.

Without this man who would come to hate her when he discovered the truth.

Then again, as she looked up at him, spied the grin on his lips and the devilish cast to his eyes, she knew she needn’t worry about that just now.

For his lips sought hers, and their dangerous chase began anew.

The next morning, well, rather in the early afternoon, Larken made his way downstairs. The breakfast dishes had been put away long ago and the servants were carrying trays outside to the gardens, where a grand picnic was being laid out.

He followed one of the heavily burdened footmen down the hall and through a drawing room where the double doors to the terrace were thrown open. Yet he stopped short of venturing outside, into the sunshine, into the clear light of day.

No, right now, he preferred the shadows, a dark cloud having settled over him.

Larken had awakened alone in his bed, the sheets a tangled mess, and for a while wondered if his
memories of Miss Langley, his troublesome, impossible Tally, had been naught but dreams.

Dreams he could manage.

Yet the red stain on his sheets, the evidence of her lost innocence, pushed his doubts aside. As had her chemise, which, in her haste to slip away from him, she’d forgotten.

So his night of passion in her arms had been real. And that scared him more than any Paris prison, any covert trip into Spain. His fears weren’t from the fact that he’d ruined her—though he didn’t relish meeting Hollindrake over a misty lawn with pistols and seconds, nor how such an encounter (the duel, not the lovemaking) would look in his report—no, his anguish came from how she’d made him feel.

She’d done something to his heart last night in those final wee hours they’d spent together. The tenderness of her touch as she explored his body, the sweet temptation of her lips, and the soft sighs as she found her release that last time.

Larken raked his fingers through his hair and gazed at the terrace and lawn beyond the doors.

Tally was out there and he’d have to say something to her.

But what?

Tell her how she made you feel. That you care not what she’s done. That you find her impossible and dangerous and too tempting to resist. That you want her by your side always, for her smile and curiosity and bent for trouble would bring a light into your dark life that you can’t afford to live without.

He shook his head. He could no more tell her
those things than he could give up his pursuit of Dashwell.

But he must. For the first time in his life, he felt drawn to a world outside the espionage and subterfuge he had lived in for far too long. And all because of her.

With the war in France now over, and the fight with the Americans waning, where would he be when it was all over? A diplomatic post, as his father had held? Not likely. Not without Pymm’s help. And that he wouldn’t have without Dashwell’s capture…and end.

But there was another sort of life out there for him. And Tally’s bright eyes and smile were like a beacon into that world. This world. The one he’d been born to and had so studiously avoided.

Larken went to take a step outside, to seek her out, to tell her…tell her everything, when a dangerous, dark voice stirred doubt into his soul.

Who’s to say she hasn’t been doing her job, as you have yours? That she cares naught for you…that’s she twisted your heart as Aurora did to your father’s…only to free Dashwell, to see you stopped?

There was enough truth there to still his boot, hold him fast. For he had no doubt she knew who he was—or rather who he wasn’t—for his valise had been rifled through while he slept.

Larken couldn’t help himself. He smiled. And here he’d thought her boast about being able to pick a lock had been naught but her attempts to rouse him, to get him to break his vicarly veneer.

Well, she had now.

An image sifted through his thoughts.
Of a lady standing by a moonlit window, a handful of papers in her hand, and a stricken look on her face as she read them.

And while he’d thought it merely part of his dreams, he knew now that somehow in that drug-induced fog he’d seen her as she’d studied his papers. The ones he’d thought were so cleverly hidden.

He’d have to speak to Mr. Stennet the next time he was in London about considering a new design for his traveling valises. They were not as impenetrable as the man claimed. Not if an ordinary Mayfair miss could unravel its mysteries.

A Mayfair miss who could pick locks, flirt like a Frenchwoman and curse in Russian…

He shook his head. No, Tally was anything but ordinary.

Catching hold of the doorjamb, his fingernails dug into the wood as he tried to find a way to untangle this mess. But no, there was nothing left to do but go upstairs, root Dashwell out—damn Pymm’s orders to do so discreetly—finish off the American and leave.

Leave this house. Leave England. Travel as far from her and his past as he could. There would be someone else. Some other lady out there. There had to be.

One who wobbles about in stolen high heels? A chit who flirts like a courtesan and then innocently tumbles into his arms and steals his heart? Insists on keeping a wretched menace of a dog? And possesses a pair of bright blue eyes that beg a man to see the good in the world.

His chest tightened, and when he tried to breathe, it was like someone had shot a hole through it.

With a cannon.

No, he’d never find another lady like Tally.

Yet, she’d ruined his mission, done everything in her power to stop him. Divert his attentions. Unravel his plans.

Much as Aurora and her
L’Ordre du Lis Noir
had done to his father.

“Demmit!” he muttered under his breath as he tried to put all the pieces together in a way that…

No, the only way to end all this was to search this house quickly, top to bottom, starting with Miss Langley and Lady Philippa’s suite. Where he would no doubt find Dashwell.

If they hadn’t gotten him out already.

Turning on one heel and determined to be done with this business, he found himself running right into his other nemesis.

The Duchess of Hollindrake.

“Mr. Ryder!” she said, pasting a hasty smile on her face, while her gaze scanned him—judiciously, of course—for any sign of ill health or other infraction. “You look refreshed this morning!” she said as if she didn’t quite believe it. “Well, there may be hope for you yet. Why, you even look ready for this evening.”

“Pardon?” he replied absently, his gaze searching for an escape route. “This evening?”

“Why, the ball, sir! You haven’t forgotten, have you?” She made that “harrumph” his Aunt Edith favored when she was cross. “I believe Miss DeFis
ser should be here by then, though I can’t for the life of me understand what might be delaying her, especially when I wrote such promising things to her about you.”

Larken pasted a smile on his face. “Your concern and care in all this, Your Grace, has been too kind. Now if you will excuse me, I have some matters—”

But the duchess wasn’t really listening. She caught hold of his arm and spun him around and had him outside before he could take a breath. “You must come and join everyone for the picnic. Staines said you did not have breakfast—”

He glanced down at the petite bundle of dynamite beside him. Was there anything she didn’t know about her household?

Such as how her sister had spent the night…