Scandalous (32 page)

Gabby trembled uncontrollably at the memory.

"What the hell kind of father did you have?" His voice was harsh.

"A monster. He hated all of us, hated everyone. He— he blamed me, afterward, because the debt had not been paid, and he still owed Trent the money. I think he offered me to Trent again, when I was better, but Trent was not interested any longer because I was— crippled." Her voice caught on the last word.

He swore under his breath with a fluency that should have shocked her, and cradled her against him, rocking her in his arms, stroking her hair, her back. His lips brushed her forehead, her temple, her cheekbone….

But before she could allow herself to accept the comfort he offered, there was one more thing she had to tell him.

She took a deep breath in an attempt to steady her voice. "He— for some reason, now that we're in London, he seems— interested— in me again. He— was at Almack's tonight. He said— he said he still has the voucher. He said— he was coming for me, to collect on it. Soon." With the best will in the world for it not to do so, her voice shook.

His arms around her were suddenly as taut as steel bands. The warm, resilient body she lay against stiffened and stilled. His breathing deepened in a way that spoke of anger being put under careful control. Gabby suddenly remembered her first impression of him: that he was a very dangerous man.

"Trent threatened you tonight?" His voice was surprisingly devoid of emotion.

Gabby nodded, swallowing. Her throat was too dry to permit her to speak.

"Don't worry about it: I'll kill him for you." The words were said with as little force as if he were commenting on the weather.

Gabby's eyes widened. He could not be serious— but she knew instinctively that he was. She went cold with fear as she imagined him making an attempt to do just that, and instead being killed himself.

Her hand closed quite unconsciously on his chest hair again as she glanced up at him in a panic.

"No! No, please don't. Trent is very powerful. He is immensely rich, and besides that, he has— unsavory connections. I don't want you to get hurt. Please."

There was the tiniest pause.

"Gabriella."

She could feel a lessening of rigidity in the arms that held her. His body seemed to relax a trifle, too. Even his breathing gentled.

"Yes?"

"Did you know that that's quite the nicest thing you've ever said to me?"

In the midst of her panic, she was stunned at the note of amusement that had crept into his voice. His eyes glinted down at her in the familiar teasing expression. The smallest curve touched his mouth. She knew him well enough to know that despite his sudden levity he had not just abandoned his stated intention to kill Trent for her; clearly the problem was that he didn't appreciate the threat the duke represented. Her fingers tightened on his chest hair. Her hands were suddenly very cold. In any straightforward confrontation with Trent, Wickham must inevitably prevail. But Trent was not straightforward. He was underhanded and evil, and with his power and resources he need do no more than express the wish to have Wickham killed for it to be done.

"Ow! You're hurting me," he complained. One hand came up to close over hers, gently causing it to flatten on his chest and thereby release his chest hair.

"I shouldn't have told you," she said desperately, ignoring his non sequitur as she lifted her head to look directly into his eyes. "You must stay away from him, do you hear? He'll have you killed. He can order…"

"Gabriella," he interrupted, still smoothing her hand. "You need have no fear for me: I can take care of myself quite well, thank you. Trent won't harm me, and I will undertake to make sure that,
if
I let him live, he will never come anywhere near you again. You may safely leave the matter in my hands."

"You don't understand," she protested with a catch in her voice, making an abortive movement to clutch his chest hair again, which his stroking hand immediately quelled. "He won't do it himself. He'll order someone to kill you, and pay them well. And they will. Please, please promise me you'll stay away from him."

"You must just trust me." He sounded maddeningly placid as his fingers toyed with hers.

She made a despairing sound. "You are not invincible, you know, you big looby. Why, even I managed to shoot you."

His smile widened. "True, but in my own defense I must point out that I was not expecting such a proper young woman as you seemed to be at the time to harbor such a nasty, violent streak."

Gabby practically ground her teeth at his refusal to take her warnings seriously.

"Trent will stop at nothing," she insisted, scanning his face anxiously for some sign that she was getting through to him. "Having you killed wouldn't give him any more trouble than ordering the swatting of a fly."

"Gabriella," he said, and the glint in his eyes was pronounced now. "If I were conceited, I might interpret all this concern for my safety to mean that you have a care for me."

Blindsided by the notion, Gabby could only stare at him for a moment, unblinking as an owl. That she had a care for him…

The suggestion shook her to the core. Because, she realized with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, it was too horribly true. She did have a care for him, and more than just a care. Over the course of their acquaintance, she had come, by the smallest of baby steps, to depend on him to a remarkable degree, to consider him a dear friend, and more. Although, in the cool light of day, she knew—
knew—
that he could disappear as suddenly as he had arrived, tonight, wrapped tight in his arms, she discovered that hot air and moonbeams were possessed of an irresistible magic all their own.

I've fallen in love with him,
she thought. Her eyes, wide with her new knowledge, locked with his.

"I don't even know your name," she whispered, appalled, as the rational part of her mind screamed in protest over what her rash heart had done.

"Nick," he said, his eyes never leaving hers. "My name is Nick."

His hand cupped the back of her head, and slowly, oh, so slowly, he pulled her mouth down to his. Then he kissed her.

35

His lips were firm, and warm, and gentle. He kissed her softly, tenderly, with exquisite care, while her bones liquified and her blood turned to scalding hot lava in her veins.

Gabby closed her eyes and opened her mouth to his and let him steal her soul with nary a protest.
Nick.
It wasn't much, and for all she knew it might not even be his real name. A good many unsuspecting persons knew him as Marcus, after all. But, she discovered, it didn't matter. She was his, whoever he was, for however long he wanted her. Her body knew it instinctively. Her heart was a recent convert. Caught up in the heat of the moment, her mind accepted it, too. She had no thought of right or wrong, no thought of threat to the neat future she had struggled so hard to secure, no awareness of anything except him, and the way he made her feel.

Nick,
she thought again, wonderingly, then said it aloud, and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him back. The kiss changed; suddenly it was no longer gentle at all. He rolled with her, so that she was on her back and he was looming above her, propped on his elbows. One hard, heavy thigh slid across hers, rucking up her nightgown as it went, and she quivered at the excitement of it. He kissed her as if he were starving for the taste of her mouth, and her heart began to pound. His tongue plundered and invaded, caressing hers, warring with it. She responded shyly at first, and then with increasing boldness as her breathing grew ever more erratic.

He tasted of brandy and cigars, and she couldn't get enough of the taste. His jaw was prickly with bristles, and she loved the masculine feel of it brushing over her skin. His hands cradled her face, caressing her cheeks, her temple, positioning her mouth to deepen the kiss. She surged up against him in response, pressing her breasts to his chest shamelessly, wanting only to get closer to him yet. Against her hip, she could feel, hard and insistent, the turgid evidence of his desire.

"Gabriella." He lifted his head then, and his voice was faintly unsteady. Her eyes fluttered open in response, and her gaze flickered over his face.
Nick.
Her impossibly handsome Nick. "Gabriella, I…"

"Shhh," she whispered, one hand sliding behind his head to draw his mouth down to hers again. She no longer wanted to talk, or to listen to him talk. She wanted only to kiss him, to go on kissing him until she expired from the pleasure of it. She was on fire from his kisses, dizzy with them….

"Gabriella, listen." He resisted the pressure of her hand, keeping his mouth from touching hers even as she pulled his head down and lifted her lips to seek his. His eyes, glittering with the restless fire of black diamonds in the dim light, moved over her face. "I told you, I've had too much to drink. I can't just play, not like we've done before, not tonight. I want you so badly I'm hurting with it, and I'm afraid, if I don't get out of your bed, right now, that when the time comes I'm not going to be able to get out of it at all."

But even as he warned her, his gaze flickered to her mouth, and his hand slid sideways to trace the soft curve of her lips. As if it, too, had a mind of its own quite independent of his words, the hard bulge that was silent testimony to his desire rocked against her hip.

Lips parting instinctively as his thumb brushed over the line between them, Gabby looked up at him. Her breasts throbbed against the solid warmth of his chest. Her thighs quivered beneath the weight of his. She was mad for him, aching for him, starving for him.

Whatever happened, whatever the consequences, she could not just walk away from this. She might never again, the whole rest of her life, feel the way she felt with him.

"I don't want you to get out of my bed," she said, her voice surprisingly steady.

His eyes narrowed. "You don't know what you're saying. Tomorrow…" His voice was hoarse.

She caressed the warm skin at the nape of his neck, and wound her fingers in the thick cool silk of his hair. With the best will in the world to resist, she thought, he was still allowing his head to dip toward her mouth.

"I don't care about tomorrow," she whispered, and lifted her head from the mattress to find his lips.

"Gabriella." It was a guttural groan as her lips touched his. Then he surrendered. Suddenly his hands were all over her, caressing her breasts, sliding over her belly, stroking her thighs. Gabby was gasping, crying out, writhing, helping him as he pulled her nightgown up and off, quivering as she lay naked on the bed while he pulled his shirt over his head, then with quick, savage movements, freed himself from his breeches and stockings. Even before his knees slid between hers, her legs were parting to admit him. The man part of him touched her woman part, prodded, and she gasped at the burning, stretching sensation as it began to invade her most intimate flesh. At the sound he stopped. The muscles of his back seemed to bunch beneath her hands, and he pulled his mouth from hers to take a couple of deep, gulping breaths. His shaft was ever so slightly withdrawn.

"We'll take this slow," he said in her ear. His breath was a warm soft whisper that caused her to turn her mouth blindly toward his again.

His shaft rested against her inner thigh, hot and throbbing and swollen with need, but he made no further move to claim her. He kissed her mouth again instead. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she kissed him back with feverish abandon, and quite forgot about the thing between her legs.

"You're beautiful." He lifted his mouth, and smoothed wayward tendrils of hair back from her face with a hand that was not quite steady.

"So are you."

He smiled at her then, a heartbreakingly sweet smile, and kissed the tip of her chin. His mouth slid down her neck, and he turned his attention to her breasts, caressing them, suckling them, gently nibbling on her nipples, until Gabby was on fire with the pure pleasure of it. Her heart pounded. Her pulse raced. Her breathing deteriorated to fast little gasps that sounded as if she had been running for miles. Finally, when her hands were buried in his hair and she was offering her breasts up to him quite shamelessly, his hand slid down her body to the secret place between her thighs. She was burning hot there, and damp, melting and so far gone with passion that she no longer cared if she melted. When his hand found the nest of curls and stroked it, she moaned. When it went lower still, she lay helpless and quivering as he touched her where she had been dying to be touched without even knowing what it was that she wanted. He stroked her, found a tiny little nub that she had never even dreamed existed, and rubbed it. Tongues of flame raced over her body, and she cried out.

Then his fingers slid inside her.

Gabby's breath caught, and her nails dug into his shoulders. The slow penetration of her body by first one finger, then two together, made her loins clench and burn and ache. She gasped, then arched against his invading hand, begging it for— something. Her hips moved in a circular fashion, and his body suddenly went stiff as a board. For a moment he lay perfectly still.

"God in heaven," he muttered thickly. "This is going to be the death of me."

Her lids fluttered up, and her eyes met his. His were black with passion, blazing down at her, intent.

His fingers were still inside her. He pulled them slowly out, then pushed them in again, watching her all the while.

"Do you like that?" His voice was guttural now. His lips parted as his breath whistled between them.

"Yes," she gasped, clinging to his shoulders, lost to all sense of shame. Her body tightened, wept, quaked. "Oh, yes."

"I want you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life." The words were a groan. His gaze flicked over her face. "All right, then."

His hand left her body and he moved on top of her, supporting his weight on his elbows. Her legs parted instinctively to receive him. His thighs slid between hers and suddenly his shaft was once again probing at the hot, wet place his fingers had readied for it.