My Pleasure (17 page)

“No! No,” she panted. “Please!”

“Why?” he demanded. “Does anonymity spice the sin so well? Or are you so important a personage that, if revealed, your identity could topple the great thrones of Europe?” he sneered.

“Who are you, then, madame, a princess? A grand duchess? A great heiress?” he asked, daring her to lie, to reveal herself as the adventuress she had already declared herself to be and that he, fool that he was, would not believe. Well, he would believe now. He would make himself believe.

His scorn lashed at her and yet, even with her bodice undone and her breasts bare, even in the rain, dripping cheap gold paint and half-clad in sodden velvet, she’d only bow her head, and the nape of her neck filled him with inexplicable tenderness and a sickening compulsion to beg her forgiveness.

“Well?” he shouted, hating that she’d stripped him of the one thing he’d always owned: his much-vaunted, hard-won self-possession.

“No,” she whispered gravely. “You have it wrong. I am no one.”

No one. No words could have more completely destroyed him.

“You’re no one, boy,” the tired old woman at the workhouse had said. “The bastard of a Scottish bit. Penny a dozen these days. Ha’penny. Do no good to put on airs here, boy. You’re no one. Best remember that.”

He tried to hold on to his rage, but each tremulous breath she drew eroded it. “Why must you wear a mask?”

“Because…” She hesitated, pulling the chemise up to cover her bosom. “I could not stand for you to be disappointed.”

“Disappointed?” Surely she was mocking him now. There were few women in London who could challenge her beauty. Yet she sounded sincere. He would stake his life she spoke the truth, but how could she fail to know what all London celebrated?

And then another explanation offered itself. She did not know he knew her name. In her mind, if she took off her mask, she would reveal herself as the daughter of the man who had saved his life. A man who had been a respected, honored military hero. Of course she would not want him to know that Captain Roderick Nash’s daughter was slumming in White Friars.

So perhaps, she meant to tell him the truth, after all, truth wrapped up in a lie. Perhaps she feared he would be disappointed, but not for the reasons he would expect. Better that he thought she hid some physical deformity or imperfection than that she dishonored her father’s memory.

He turned his hand, breaking her hold, and lowered it to his sides. “How then am I to kiss your mouth?”

Helena hesitated, her gaze scouring his face, looking for the trap, a falsehood, some sign that he was not to be trusted. She could not find any. He stood in the rain like a statue, his soaked shirt welded to his broad chest, the long arms beneath cabled with muscle. His chest rose and fell as though he was winded, but his eyes were calm.

Go! she told herself, flee while he is in this amenable mood. But…his voice was so raw.

“Close your eyes,” she said softly.

His shoulders dropped. “You needn’t worry. I won’t stop you from going this time.”

“You told me once that I should beware of two things regarding you, and one of them was that you were a great liar.”

His brows dipped low. “I will not lie this time.”

“Then if you will let me go, it is no great thing to you whether I leave while your eyes are open or closed, is it?” she asked, amazed by this fearless, foolish Helena Nash who’d supplanted the reasonable, cautious woman she knew. “Close your eyes.”

He shut his eyes, and she laid her hand over them and she stretched up on her tiptoes, steadying herself with a hand against his broad chest. His heart beat thickly against her palm.

She brought her lips near to his ear. “If you will give me a promise that you will keep, then give me this one. Do not open your eyes.”

She pulled her mask off, letting it drop and hang from its laces around her throat. Then she kissed him, gently melding her lips to his.

For one breathless moment, he accepted her kiss. Emboldened by his seeming tractability, she combed her free hand through the silky wet tumble of demon black hair, pulling his mouth more firmly against hers. She arched against him, kissed him with all the passion she’d kept so long buried. She kissed him as if she could not stop, as if she meant to drown in his embrace.

No woman had ever kissed him like this before. He had no words to describe such exquisite, such honest and unreserved desire. He tipped her head back, her hand still covering his eyes, and found her mouth already open, waiting for his tongue, dependent on him to show her what to do, how to find pleasure’s apex.

It undid him.

Such carnal innocence. Such blistering virtue. He pressed her against the wall, pushing his thigh between hers, reaching down and pulling up the layers of rich cloth until he felt the satiny warmth of tender flesh.

A sound hummed deep in her throat. She wanted. He wanted. Nothing stopped them. His hands slid up the backs of long, slender legs and found the soft swell of her buttocks. Lust surged through him like a spear, bringing him to the point of pain. He filled his hands with soft female flesh and lifted her, pushing against the layers of damp velvet and taffeta and lace. He forced himself to hold there, like that, her hand blindfolding his upper face, their mouths locked in passionate combat, his cock pressed against the juncture of her thighs. So she could understand what would happen next. What was inevitable.

She made a sound between a purr and a moan. Her hand dropped from his eyes and her arms locked around his neck, her face against his shoulders. Her breath rushed against his ear, panting with desire. And she moved, she rocked against his erection.

He let her. He let her use his body, find the hardness that eased the painful pulse of arousal, all the while trying desperately to quell his own demon, the demon that wanted to take her here. His body ached. Desire raked him. He tipped his head back, his jaw tightened with the restraint he practiced as her hips rubbed against him, her movements erratic and unpracticed. And he knew, virgin or not, she’d little or no experience with what went next.

A virgin? Yes. Or near enough made no difference. Clumsy enough in her desperate pursuit of the ancient rhythms that if she was not a virgin he cursed the man who’d initiated her into womanhood. And with that came a sly, mocking whisper that trickled through his heated mind: He was no better. Because there was only so much of this he could stand before he spilled his seed or tossed up her skirts and entered her.

In the rain. Against a wall. In a bleak back alley.

No. No, no, no. He would not think that. He would block out everything but the feel of her rocking with awkward, soul-shattering little jerks against him. He would hear nothing but her breathless gasps and sighs, rising from where she’d buried her face against his throat. He would give himself to her use, and then he would have her.

Why not? Why not give them both what they so desperately wanted?

Somewhere down the alley, a window shrieked open and a voice called out, “Me bed is empty, gents. Anyone fancy a bit of sport? Three bob fer anythin’ you wants!”

He had his answer.

With a savage sound of self-denial, Ram pulled away from her. She made a soft sound of dismay, her arms tightening imploringly around his neck. He could only stand so much.

“No,” he rasped, his chest heaving with the effort he exerted. “No. Not here. Not like this. Put your mask back on!”

“But…”

“Put on your mask if you would not be seen!” he ground out, lowering her to her feet and averting his face as he felt her trembling hands find the dangling mask and raise it to her face. He looked down at the mask; her eyes caught a tiny bit of light behind the peepholes, and they were wide and awash in tears.

His anger battled with pity and yearning. “If you want a lover, God knows, ma’am, I’m your man. You know my name. You know where to find me. You have only to come to me. Any time, day or night. In any guise and in any fashion. I’ll beg if you like. But I won’t do this here. Not like this.”

She wouldn’t come to him. He knew it even as he forced the words from his lips. Given time, given distance, she would come to her senses.

His harsh words penetrated her haze. He wanted her, she was certain. No degree of inexperience could blind her to that. He’d wanted her as much as she had wanted him.

She supposed she should be grateful, but she wasn’t: She was resentful, edgy, insulted in spite of the fact that she knew he acted in her best interest. “Why?”

“Why?” he asked and turned his head back round to look down into her masked face. “Because what I want from you cannot be given in a back alley tryst. Because if we stay here any longer I will take you against that wall, and there will be nothing about it worthy of either of us. I want more. What do you want?”

Your arms around me. Your lips covering mine. Your body pressed hard and impatient against mine. She stared mutely up at him until, with a curse, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into the center of the little yard. The rain had eased, in the way of London rains, and the ground shimmered with rainbow-filled pools.

“One of us is going to be honorable. One of us is going to be a fool. I fear, my dear, I am destined for both roles. Now, let us go before I forget my intentions and only seek to fulfill yours.”

FROISSEMENT:

an attack that displaces the opponent’s blade by a strong grazing action

HELENA SAT IN THE CARRIAGE, staring unseeing at the street outside. Her mask, now washed clean of most of its gilt paint, lay unnoticed in her lap. She felt amazingly calm, except for the shivering. Ram had handed her into the carriage without saying a word. Nor had he lifted his hand in farewell.

She didn’t know herself. Despite her heated responses, she did not think herself wanton. Not until Ram Munro. And that, she suspected, was a problem.

Because even now, looking down at her damp gown, trickles of gold drying on her shoulders and bosom, even knowing she looked every bit a disreputable doxy and, even more, had acted like one, she did not regret this night. Except that the promises that had begun with Ram’s kisses and been compounded against a brick wall had not been kept.

Abruptly, despair washed over her. Where was he? Was that trollop who’d so brazenly handled him touching him now? Was she lying with him, beneath him?

As her sister Kate’s closest friend, Helena had been the recipient of all of her confidences. There was little about the intimate relations between man and woman that she did not know. Even if until this night most of it had been only an academic understanding.

She knew she had left Ram in a state of acute physical distress, a state in which men were most likely to do whatever was necessary to ease themselves. And should that tart make herself available to him, well, there was no reason to suppose that he would not avail himself of her offer—despite his rough declaration that there was no other woman but Helena.

She wanted to believe him, and she’d half convinced herself that he’d meant it. He had sounded so genuine, so angry. As though he didn’t want her to be the only woman, but could not deny it. But, her stubbornly pragmatic mind insisted, if that was true, than that meant he had become infatuated with a costume, a mask, a role she had played only a handful of times. How could he declare her “the only woman” when he did not know her? When he had never even seen her face?

Ram Munro did not strike her as the sort of man to be beguiled by a chimera. Yet she hated the only alternative, that he was a hard-hearted seducer of women, saying whatever was necessary to have what he wanted.

She rubbed her temples, trying to think clearly. Either way, she should stay away from Ram Munro. She must not even entertain the possibility of accepting his outrageous offer to become his paramour. It would destroy her.

But to go to him as his lover…. To feast on the sensations he alone called forth. Would he beg for her favors if she asked? Of would she end up begging for his?

“Ma’am? We be at the address you give me.” With a start, Helena realized that the carriage was standing motionless beside the curb. From the tone of the driver’s voice, it had stopped some time ago.

“Oh. Of course.” She opened the door to find the driver waiting outside. Quickly she descended and reached into her pocket for his fare, but he held up his hand.

“Gent already paid me, mum. Plenty well, too. Said I was to see you safe to whatever door you wanted. So which one is it?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Helena said. “I’ll be fine.”

The driver regarded her dubiously but climbed back aboard his rig. Then, doffing his hat, he clucked at his horse and drove off. She looked around. She stood at the head of the familiar tree-covered carriage lane that separated the back gardens of the great houses in Hanover Square, where Lady Tilpot lived, from the less elaborate but still exceedingly desirable ones on Adam’s Row.

She had only to go a hundred yards along the lane before slipping through the gate leading into the Tilpot House kitchen garden and from there into the home itself. By prior arrangement, Cook, the only one of Lady Tilpot’s staff whose position was sacrosanct, had left the door unlocked. But looking down the long, silent alley, she remembered what she had forgotten all evening: the man in the bird mask, his hand raised to strike her, his voice throbbing, “I’ll teach you!”

But that was miles away. She was safe here.

She started down the leafy corridor, following the muddy track. It was early yet, and many of the carriages were still out conveying their owners to balls and private dinners, musicals and lectures. Resolutely she started forward.

She had gone halfway when she heard the distinct sound of footsteps behind her. She peered over her shoulder, but the light spilling from a vacant stable door concealed whoever stood in the darkness on the other side. She turned back, moving quicker now. The footsteps behind matched her pace. She grabbed up her heavy, wide skirts and ran.

He caught her before she had gone a dozen yards.

His hand clamped down on her forearm, and he snatched her and threw her to the ground, as easily as a falcon dispatches a dove in flight. The taffeta petticoats cushioned the impact of her fall but could not stop the air from being driven from her lungs or her hair from tumbling free of its pins. She whipped around to face her attacker, shoving the heavy, wet tresses from her face.