To Seduce an Angel (24 page)

“Here?” She glanced at the abandoned coffee cups.

“You're not backing out now. Not in that dress.”

“The dress doesn't come with instructions.”

“We can figure out what to do.” He kicked off his evening shoes, and she did the same.

He led her into the shadows at the far end of the room, where a solid mahogany writing desk stood anchored like a ship in the calm blue sea of the carpet. He peeled off his jacket and laid it on the floor behind the desk. The gold walls and heavy red-velvet drapery made a shadowy cove, enclosing the space. Ordinarily he didn't put himself in tight places. He liked open doors, long vistas, and quick exits. He lowered himself to the makeshift coverlet and pulled her down on top of him. It made her squeal, a brief joyful sound, immediately stifled by his kiss. “Don't give us away,” he warned.

She shook her head. He kissed her again, coaxing her to lie on top of him, her body pressed to his so that the meeting of their mouths extended to their twined legs. Her weight was insubstantial, but every place their bodies touched he felt her least move and rose to meet it.

He pulled her body up so that he could lift his mouth to taste her skin, her throat, her collarbone, her breasts down to the just-concealed peaks. With the span of his hands he could cover the exposed flesh. Everywhere else layers of linen, wool, and silk separated them. He wanted to tear off her clothes and his, but he would take what he could get and maybe more. The game invited cheating.

He distracted her with kisses while his hands pulled the yielding gown up over her legs and over her bottom, so that he could palm her through the fine lawn of her drawers, feel the sweet, firm flesh, the heat of her, as he had the night of her nightmare. He eased his own legs open so that she docked like a ship against his straining cock, bobbing there against him, as wavelets of desire rocked them both.

She broke the kiss to look at him, propped on her elbows, her hands framing his face. He touched her springy hair.

With one hand he found the little loop at the back of her bodice and slid the sleeves down over her arms. Her pale breasts cupped by her stays lay open to him. He lifted his head to kiss first one and then the other. Wool and lawn and the bunched fabric of her gown still separated them. He flipped her over onto her back so he could look and touch and taste more completely.

Kneeling above her, he straddled her as she lay back breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling. She brushed her fingers up the rise in his breeches and nearly set him off. He caught her hand and held it in his shaking grip.

He found the drawstring at her waist and loosened her drawers and stripped them away. She was open to him now below the waist, her pale limbs circled by silken blue garters above the knee, her golden curls a shade darker than her skin.

“Pretty.” The word was all he could manage.

He found the place between her silken thighs where the hot slick center of her lay. He could not say why, but to possess her there, to cup that heat was a mindless pleasure. He had been denied it on the roof under the stars, but it was his here, now, in his jewel box of a drawing room. He slid one finger into the slick folds and felt her hips buck into his hand and his own body's answering jolt of pleasure. He stroked, learning the touch that made her writhe and whimper and shudder. With a sudden tight grip on his wrist she made him stop.

“Now you,” she said. She came up on her elbows, and he distracted her momentarily by kissing her breasts again, but she pushed him back and sat up fully, her gown falling over her thighs as she reached for his breeches. His body went still anticipating.

With one hand hooked on his waistband, she worked the buttons of his fall, drew him from his linen smalls, and cradled his swollen cock in her upturned palms, stroking across the top with her thumbs.

He sucked in a shaking breath. “I'm waiting for your compliment. You can't say ‘pretty.' ”

She looked up at him while her thumbs still stroked, her fascination obvious. It made him laugh. She had cupped Robin's toad in her hands with equal wonder. “It's handsome.”

“I don't know that I trust that compliment. I believe you found Robin's toad handsome.” His voice was rough like gravel. Her touch lifted him to full, flaring arousal.

A fleeting smile passed in her eyes, and then they darkened. “It's true, but this part of you is as much you as any other part—proud, strong, maybe rude.”

He laughed. “Rude will do.”

He pushed her back down and held himself above her on his arms while he kissed and plundered her mouth. She strained upward to meet that kiss. Then he lowered himself to rub his length in the liquid heat of her, in flesh so lush and creamy he could hardly keep from crying out at the pleasure of it.

Emma was melting. She was hot wax in a flame. Tatty had it backward somehow about the candle and the candlestick. The stroke of Daventry's body against hers called for an answering move, a lift of her hips, and opening of her person. Her heart wanted to lie open for him like a book on his library floor, the pages bent back so that the spine lifted and the long secret seam lay exposed to his touch. She turned her head and pressed her mouth against his taut arm, smothering a cry of pleasure.

Just this, he told himself for mindless minutes. No more, but the next moment his cock pressed in, not slipping across, but pushing to enter, a move beyond his intention. She tensed, her body tightening around him, and consciousness faded. He fought his way back to the floor of the drawing room, the blue rug with its ancient pattern, the heavy desk, the faint smell of cold coffee.

Swallow's words at dinner came back to him.
Dav can't marry her. Lords must marry ladies.
He pulled back and pressed his slick yard to her belly and tried to make his mind work.
Not here. Not now.
He couldn't manage a more coherent thought.

Emma felt the connection between them snap, like ice on a puddle cracking under foot, without warning, an instant plunge in cold humiliation. She lay under him unable to move or to escape. She had offered him her love, and he had refused the gift.

She felt desperate to flee, but he remained pressed to her belly, and after a long moment, he reached for her again with his hand. Helplessly she arched and shuddered under his touch, and felt him move and find his own release.

He rolled away and they lay still catching their breath, staring at the high white ceiling overhead. He caught her hand and held it tight in his—regret or promise—she didn't know. Their breathing slowed.

Dav was thinking again. It wouldn't last while he was in Emma's presence, so he needed to get her into her room away from him.

He used the soft linen of her discarded drawers to remove the evidence of their lovemaking and helped her to her feet. They worked to order each other's clothes. She stood behind him to retie the ribbon that held his hair in place. He inspected her in the shameless dress that now covered her breasts and limbs. No one would know that he'd stuffed her drawers into the old desk.

He kissed her again, once, thoroughly, before he opened the drawing room door. They started down the long gallery, walking side by side like cordial but indifferent acquaintances without touching. Daventry clasped his hands behind him. Emma twisted hers in the ends of her shawl.

He stopped and said something bland and polite about a painting.

Emma dutifully looked at the haughty face of a woman with powdered hair piled to an astonishing height above her pale face.

Don't touch. Don't touch.
But he was so near, and the room was so long, and empty except for themselves.

He started walking again.

Emma looked at the carpet. Best not to remember her step count now. Best to put one foot in front of the other. Her breasts, her secret folds still throbbed with the pleasure that had overtaken her. Her heart ached, raw from his withdrawal. She needed Daventry, to touch him, to kiss him, to taste him . . . To go the length of the room without touching was so hard. Without him it was going to be difficult to draw a breath in the world.

They had kissed on the roof and touched there and touched each other on the floor of his gilt drawing room. He had tucked her dampened drawers into a drawer of his desk. Each touch, each kiss had tuned their bodies to each other's being.

Emma stopped. As Tatty and Leo had been tuned to one another. That was why Tatty had to keep moving, running. All the kisses and touches had been taken away from Tatty; if Tatty stopped, she would probably die. And Emma would have to go on, like Tatty. Perhaps it was her good luck that he'd stopped. If she loved him, she should take herself away before they joined their bodies fully. If Emma stayed even one more day, they would become lovers. And when she left him, her betrayal would make another puckered scar somewhere deep in him.

They came to the end of the gallery and began climbing the stairs, their steps leaden. At her bedroom door, they faced one another, still not touching.

Then Daventry unclasped his hands and reached to lift her chin. “Emma.”

The word connected them again. She opened her arms to him. It had been so long, and they kissed and clung.

Dav laughed at himself. He'd thought that the long, slow walk through the gallery beneath the portraits of his father's frowning ancestors would cool his body and restore his rational faculties. He thought he could solve the problem of Emma's virginity and his position in the world. Both conditions called for a choice. Instead he could not stop holding Emma and kissing her. He pressed her against the door of her room, angling his head for access, holding her bottom so that her hips tilted up to meet his cock.

She pressed into him and made a little whimper of desire. He began to tug at her skirts, mad to touch her. Their clothes seemed heavy and irksome, but a tiny voice of reason intruded to remind him that he could not undress her in the corridor. He let her skirts go.

Footsteps and voices on the stairs made them break apart, breathing rapidly, and stand facing one another not touching. He laughed. He could solve this problem, and the sooner, the better.

“Call Ruth,” he whispered. Aloud he said, “Good night, Miss Portland.”

“Good night, Daventry.”

He reached past her to open the door of her room. One candle glowed in the sconce. Emma made herself step inside and close the door behind her, leaning against it. She would call Ruth, as soon as she put herself to rights.

She would leave tonight. The snow and rain had passed. She had given Tatty as much time as she herself possessed. Once the household was abed, Emma would leave. She closed her eyes to think of her plan. She would leave through the back and circle round on the passing road. She knew each place where she could pick up a pair of shoes or a tin of food.

She drew a breath and opened her eyes. Her room smelled like cold ash as if the chimney did not draw. She pushed away from leaning on the door. She could do nothing until she dismissed Ruth and until she was sure that Daventry also slept.

She was halfway to her dressing room door when the chimney smell made her turn to look at the hearth. A black shadow flew at her and a scream died in her throat as a stranger slammed her back against the dressing room door. He pressed his forearm against her throat, cutting off breath. The scent of dead pipe surrounded her. Choking, Emma stared into cold black eyes under heavy brows like crows' wings. Her heart jumped.

“Ye want to save yer neck, girl, ye'd best not cross Wallop.”

She could not breathe or cry out. She clawed at the arm pressed to her throat and kicked wildly at the man's shin. He was lean and hard and didn't budge. Her heels thudded helplessly against the door. She twisted and pushed the palm of her hand against his nose. Black dots danced before her eyes. She pushed harder. Her hands were losing their grip.

Her door burst open. Her attacker snarled and wrenched free of her hold on his nose.

“Emma!”

Daventry's hoarse cry made her attacker swing away. He shoved Emma to the floor. Daventry launched himself at her attacker. A knife glinted in the man's hand, and he slashed at Daventry, who dodged with a fighter's feint.

The two men circled each other while Emma gasped and tried to get her throat to open. Her windpipe felt crushed. Her lungs spasmed, and she coughed.

The knife in the stranger's hand winked wickedly in the candlelight. Daventry's gaze narrowed to the blade, his face intent, his movements quick, keeping himself between the stranger and the door, the fighter in him hardening his features. Emma pulled herself up against the wall. Her legs trembled weakly as she gathered them under her to rise. When she got to her knees, the attacker turned on her, swinging his knife in a wide swathe. Daventry lunged between them, catching the man's free arm and flinging him away from Emma. Like a whip recoiling, the stranger whirled. His arm flew up, and he brought his knife down the length of Daventry's arm. Daventry let go with a curse, and the attacker turned and fled.

Dav heard the man's footsteps going down the long stairs. He seized the bell rope and pulled, and turned back to Emma. Her eyes had lost their blue again, black wells of fear.

He watched her fight it and come back to him. “You're bleeding.”

He glanced at his ruined coat sleeve. Blood welled up over linen and wool. He didn't feel the pain yet. It would come. Kneeling, he took her in his arms. He could not crush her to him as he wanted. He'd burst into the room to see a figure like a black wing beat her down, and his heart had stopped and his other self had taken over, not Daventry but Boy.