The Courtesan's Wager (34 page)

Penrith and Raithby, she could only just discern as Cranleigh filled nearly every thought, obliterating nearly every other physical reality, drifted quietly away. Cowards. Did gentlemen leave a lady to face a tiger? For that’s what he was now, a tiger. Intent. Focused. Relentless. Dangerous.

She shivered, a long shiver down her spine that burrowed into her womb and nested there, throbbing with life.

Cranleigh, by a subtle shift of expression, seemed aware of her shiver and the throbbing.

Blasted inconvenient, being in the same room with a man who read desire in her so readily. Two years of kissing had apparently provided him with a map. Topographical.

Just thinking
that
, and staring into his eyes, and her nipples tightened painfully.

“Come, Amy,” he said, taking her arm again.

She yanked her arm free again, looking now around the room. They were being stared at, which was entirely predictable. She looked at Hawksworth. Hawksworth stared.

She looked at Calbourne. Calbourne shook his head in mild disapproval.

She looked at Edenham. Edenham winked.

She looked at Aunt Mary. Aunt Mary was drinking Madeira, and rather sloppily, too.

She looked at Aldreth. Aldreth simply returned her look, shifting his gaze to Cranleigh and then back again to her. Was he going to do nothing?

Apparently so.

She looked, finally, at Sophia. Sophia was speaking softly to Aldreth, saying perfectly horrid things, Amelia was certain. She never should have trusted Sophia Dalby. The woman was unscrupulous, devious, and cunning. And that was her list of attributes.

The Indians, Sophia’s odd family, the Earl of Dalby included, were staring at her with an odd look of expectancy. She couldn’t fathom why. Was she supposed to do something? To allow Cranleigh to push her about and have his way with her?

Her stomach dropped into her ankles at the thought.

Ridiculous. Cranleigh having his way with her resulted in kisses that were as equally torrid as they were equally proper. He never actually
touched
her, did he? Entirely proper, if one only discounted his mouth, which was not terribly easy to do.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’re not going to do it to me,” she said.

“Of course I am, Amy. To you and none other,” he said, and then, without another word, he lifted her in his arms and carried her out of the library. Without her shawl. Without a squeak of protest from anyone, Aldreth included, though she did seem to hear a woman’s muffled chuckle. Sophia, no doubt.

He was touching her. He was fully and completely and, by all appearance, enthusiastically touching her. His arms held her effortlessly to his chest, his breath smooth and even against her cheek. Yates watched Cranleigh lift her like a parcel, blinked a bit more forcefully than was usual, but said nothing. He even closed the door to the library behind them, leaving them in the relative privacy of the vestibule. But Cranleigh did not stop in the vestibule. He continued right on, carrying her as if she were some sort of war prize into the small anteroom connected to the dining room.

“You are not going to ruin me in a closet!” she said, twisting in his arms.

There had been quite enough ruining going on in closets the past week or two; she saw no reason to add to that number. Besides, it was such an undignified way to get a man to the altar. She did think to have done better. As to that, didn’t Cranleigh have higher standards? As annoying as he was, she had thought better of him than that. To simply ruin her, and in a closet. Why, it was becoming very nearly a cliché.

“Quite right,” he said. “The dining room table would be more comfortable.”

“Cranleigh! I shall not allow you to ruin me!” she snapped, delighting in the way the light turned his eyes to icy blue.

“Not in the closet or not in the dining room?” he said, setting her on her feet in the anteroom, pulling the neckline of her dress down before she could whisper a word of protest, and kissing her delicately on the back of her shoulder. His arm was wrapped around her waist, pulling her against his very obvious enthusiasm, while his mouth worked its way up to her ear, which he bit.

“Not at all!” she said. “What were you thinking, to grab me up and carry me from the room that way. It was not at all proper.”

“I was thinking that I was going to ravage you in the first empty room I could find. And how much I was going to enjoy it.”

She pulled away from him.

He pulled her back against him, grinding his enthusiasm against her hip.

“Why, Cranleigh? Why?”

“Because I want you, Amy, and when a man wants a woman, he takes her.”

It was shameful; it was delicious; it had the most startling effect on her. She could scarcely breathe, was the truth of it. Worse, she didn’t actually want to breathe. She wanted only to melt into Cranleigh’s arms and never come up for air again.

“But to be ruined, Cranleigh,” she protested, softly, but she did protest. It was an important detail and one she intended to insist Cranleigh remember. “I don’t want to be ruined.”

“Don’t worry, Amy,” he said, lifting her hair to kiss the nape of her neck, “I can make you want it.”

That
didn’t sound at all respectable. She very nearly giggled.

“Giggling?” he said. “Not at all what I want from you, Amy. You shall have to do better. Proper girls don’t giggle when they’re being ruined.”

“I’m not being ruined, Cranleigh,” she said, holding very still so that he could kiss her neck a bit longer. “You’ve kissed me before. I was not ruined.”

“More than kissing this time, Amy,” he said, lifting at her skirts with his hand, pulling her hard against him, nearly lifting her off her feet.

More than kissing. How often she’d wanted more than kissing. She’d wanted touching and caressing, skin and heat. Man and woman. She’d wanted things from Cranleigh that she couldn’t even name, except to know that she wanted them from him.

She pushed at his hand, pushing her skirts down. “I’m not going to be ruined!
Everyone
is getting ruined this Season.”

“Quite right,” he said, holding her away from him, studying her as if she were an exhibit at the museum. “We must do it better, mustn’t we? Something to make them sit up and bark, shall we?”

“What? That’s not at all what I meant, Cranleigh.”

“I’m sure it must be precisely what you meant, Amy. I shall prove it to you, shall I?”

And before she could draw breath to argue, which she surely would have done, he put her over his shoulder so that her hair quite tumbled down out of its pins and her derriere was quite alarmingly in his face, and carted her into the dining room, where he laid her on its gleaming wood surface and properly ravaged her.

No, no, that couldn’t be right. A girl couldn’t possibly be
properly
ravaged.

But it did feel lovely.

He put his hands all over her and, having waited for the weight and heat and texture of his touch for a full two years, it was quite as remarkable an experience as she had hoped, indeed dreamed. Why, for the past year her dreams had been quite uncomfortable on the subject of Cranleigh and his hands, causing her to awake in the dead of night with the most violent
throbbing
. It was such a convenience that she slept alone.

What would it be like to awaken at night, throbbing, with Cranleigh in the vicinity to tend to things?

She trembled just thinking of it.

“Enjoying this, are you? I thought as much,” he said, one hand in her hair and the other, the other, oh dear, the other quite where it had no business being. She could not possibly have been more delighted. It was quite obvious that Cranleigh could be pushed only so far and then pushed not a fraction more. “And what of this?” So saying, the cad, he trailed his fingers up her stocking until his hand met the bare skin of her thigh. “Your skin is like velvet, Amy. I could touch you for hours.”

She certainly hoped he meant that.

“Cranleigh, I do think you should stop,” she said, for she was certain it was expected of her to say something along those lines.

“If you think that, I’m doing something wrong,” he said, and then he kissed her.

That effectively killed all arguments she could have devised.

She was tossed into a vortex of sensation centered and controlled by his hands and his mouth, his weight and his heat. He was a hot, hard man, who touched her with soft seduction and relentlessly pleasured her.

Her skirts hiked up.

Her resistance was trammeled.

His kiss was gentle, thorough, leisurely. His hand the same. She was a meal, laid out for him and he ate of her softly, without haste and with great relish.

She moaned into his mouth, a sound of submission and of joy.

“Are you mine, Amy?” he breathed against her mouth. “Have I made it impossible for you to want any other man?”

“Stop talking. Kiss me,” she commanded under her breath, pulling his head down to hers and biting his lower lip.

He kissed her. He always did. Cranleigh, so reliable. So very reasonable of him.

He nibbled her lips and his tongue danced against hers, his fingers played with the top of her stocking, touching skin briefly, skipping down to play with her garter, skimming up again to brush a fingertip against her trembling flesh.

Her groin ached. Her hips thrust upward toward his hand as she moaned into his mouth.

“Why did you wait so long for this?” she asked, panting out the words, clutching his hair, feeling the shape of his skull and the slick texture of his hair. “Why did you resist?”

“Resist?” he said, sucking at her throat, his hand clasping her knee and forcing her leg outward until it pressed against the confines of her narrow skirt. Blasted skirt. “I could not resist you for an instant, Amy. The whole trouble, that.”

Was that a jest? Idiotic moment to be making jests.

“Cranleigh, you know perfectly well that you have been completely obstinate about the whole thing,” she said, nudging his hand upward, past the insurmountable barrier that was apparently her garter.

“The whole thing? The whole duke thing?” he said, removing his hand altogether, completely proving her point that he was obstinate.

The whole duke thing?
Didn’t he understand anything?

Blast. It was beginning to look as if he might have lost the thread and wasn’t going to properly debauch her after all. And after two years of waiting, too! He really was nearly hopeless. Did she have to arrange
everything
?

“Cranleigh, you are going to plead for my hand, are you not?” she said, trying not to sound petulant, but not entirely succeeding.

“Before or after I ruin you, Amy?” he said, his hand moving up her thigh again.

What a perfectly hideous thing to say, and while lying on top of her, too. Being brutish was one thing, she quite often enjoyed that, but there was no excuse for being common.

Amelia jerked her head back on the table, her hands fisted in Cranleigh’s blond hair, her skirts jumbled past her knees, and said sharply, “Before, I should think. In fact, I’m entirely certain that I don’t wish to be ruined, Cranleigh. Kindly desist.”

“No,” Cranleigh said, looking not even remotely put off. He barely lifted his chest from hers, and not before kissing her lightly on the cheek. “You have been ruined now, fully. The thing is done. You are mine.”

“You appear to have expected me to fall into your lap, Cranleigh, with almost no effort at all on your part.” And she had been so busy on his behalf, too. It was positively monstrous. “It isn’t going to happen quite that way.”

Cranleigh rose up from his prone position on the dining room table, and as it was a finely made table it didn’t even squeak in protest, though she was tempted to
. Blasted sailor.
Cranleigh offered her his hand, which she took, and slid off the table, her skirts hiking up even more, which she did think might be to her advantage in a thorny negotiation of this sort.

Ruined? Of course she wasn’t ruined. Not fully, anyway. She had an entire room full of people who, because of their desire to be on her list, would never breathe a word that would get them thrown off of it. Why, being on her list had become the most important measure of . . . something . . . of the entire Season. One only had to look into Aldreth’s crowded library to see the truth of that.

“You may believe that a man may cart off a woman and that instantly makes her his, but I don’t believe that for a moment. A man must do far more to win the woman he wants; simply escorting her from the room is hardly sufficient.”

“You were more than simply escorted, Amy,” Cranleigh said.

Escorted? She’d been carried. If she’d had her wits about her, it would have been kicking and screaming, but she hadn’t had her wits about her, and still didn’t, quite. Things were getting terribly complicated very quickly. She didn’t know what to think anymore, beyond the fact that she had felt wonderful thinking that things between she and Cranleigh were resolved, once and for all.

But they were not resolved, at least not to her satisfaction.

“I do think you could show a bit more fervor, Cranleigh,” she said, arranging her hair. It was a complete disaster.

“Any more fervor and I shan’t be able to walk,” he said stiffly. “You are ruined, you know. There’s no way out now.”

Yes, well, the line of his pantaloons was a bit strained, as well it should be.

“How charmingly put,” she snapped, turning to face him. He looked quite annoyed. Quite handsome, as usual, but quite annoyed. Entirely usual for him, actually. “You know, Cranleigh, you’ve had more than two years in which to ruin me, and yet you did not. You were so very careful that no one should ever know that we had stumbled into a few scattered improprieties. And yet now you are not careful at all. You want to ruin me now? Why?”