The Untamed Bride (16 page)

Through the sensual storm hazing his brain, he heard the bruisers’ pounding footsteps near, heard them halt, swear at the retreating carriage, then he heard them—yes!—hail the next hackney in line and clamber up, calling orders to follow the other carriage.

He didn’t lift his head when the carriage door slammed, not even when the horses’ hooves rang in the street. He didn’t pull back from the kiss and risk a look until the retreating hoofbeats were fading.

The hackney with their pursuers was disappearing into the murk at the end of the street.

They were safe.

Registering Deliah’s silence, he looked back at her. Despite the shadows, he fell into the dark pools of her wide, stunned eyes. He felt the quick rise and fall of her breasts, mashed against his chest. Saw her lips, lush and ripe, full and parted in the poor light. Beckoning.

He saw the tip of her tongue glide over her lower lip, making the lusciousness glisten.

He didn’t need to kiss her again, yet he did.

It wasn’t a simple kiss but one fueled by anger, and relief. And by something he didn’t understand—that something she and only she evoked, and set pounding in his blood.

Her lips had been parted; he filled her mouth, stole her breath, then gave it back. Deliberately lingered, tasted, explored.

He tightened his fingers on hers, kept their hands safely locked, arms down, even though every instinct pushed him to free his hands and seize her, hold her, bring her close—much closer.

He wanted her, and that want was open, undisguised, there in every bold stroke of his tongue, in the demanding pressure of his lips on hers. In the hard ridge that pressed against her belly. Deliah had no difficulty reading his desire, recognizing it—along with the response that raced through her, hot, instinctive, and strong.

She wanted him, and that was dangerous.

Dangerous with a capital
D
.

Yet she couldn’t back away, pull back—end this unwise kiss. Because she didn’t want to. Because there was, it seemed, no force within her powerful enough to counter the pull of it, and him.

Once again, Del found himself in the unaccustomed position of having to force himself to end a kiss—a kiss that promised so much more, that left him aching and hungry for much more. A “more” he now was certain he could have, but while this, it seemed, was the right time, it absolutely wasn’t the right place.

Drawing back from the exchange, limited though it had been, was hard enough. Lifting his head, he looked down into her face, at the lashes that fluttered, then lifted, revealing eyes clouded with rising passion. Her lips were lightly swollen, sheening from his kiss.

Stepping back was much harder, losing the elementally feminine cushion of her curves, an evocative softness that had cradled his hard frame. Easing back, subduing his rising clawing need, took more effort than he’d imagined, but he finally moved back, then, releasing one of her hands, he turned and stepped out of the alcove.

After checking they were indeed safe, he drew her out, too, without a word led her to the nearest hackney, opened the door, and helped her in. He looked up at the jarvey.
“Grillon’s.”

Climbing in, he shut the carriage door and dropped onto the seat beside her.

He didn’t say a single word on their journey back to Grillon’s—and neither did she.

By the time the hackney pulled up outside the hotel, Deliah had recovered her composure, but her pulse was still pounding.

With suppressed anger, and unslaked passion.

She recognized both, and knew which was the safer to address. While she could understand, even without his explanation, why he’d kissed her the first time, she couldn’t explain, and didn’t want to think about, why he’d kissed her again. The second time.

That second, much more thorough time.

Sweeping into the hotel’s foyer, she regally nodded to the clerk behind the desk, then continued without pause up the stairs and down the corridor to the suite.

Del, of course, followed; she heard his heavy footsteps closing in from behind. Reaching the suite, she threw open the door and swept in.

He strode in on her heels and shut the door with force.

Halting, she whirled on him, temper sparking. “Don’t you
dare
upbraid me for coming to your aid. I’ll do it again in such circumstances.”

“No. You won’t.” Eyes already narrowed, he walked toward her—only halted when he stood directly in front of her with a bare inch between her breasts and his chest, so she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes.

Eyes that snapped with a temper to match hers. “You will never, ever, disobey my orders again. If I tell you to go on, you will—without hesitation.”

She narrowed her eyes back. “No. I won’t. I’m not one of your subordinates you can order around. Whatever the situation, I’ll do as
I
think best.”

Del felt his jaw lock. He fisted his hands against a nearly overpowering urge to seize her and shake some sense into her. It was a moment before he could trust himself to speak. “If you wish to continue to be a member of this group—to assist in my mission—you will henceforth do exactly as I say.”

One finely drawn dark brow arched. Maddeningly. “Or what?”

He had to stop and think.

When he didn’t immediately answer—not because he couldn’t answer but because, belatedly, wisdom had caught his tongue, and he couldn’t immediately think of a response it would be safe to utter—her eyes, her expression, hardened, and she went on, “I’m not some flunky, or some private who has to jump to do your bidding. What’s more, if you recall, I offered—only this morning—to step away from this enterprise, but you insisted that, having commenced it, I had to see it through to the end. So I am—I will. However, I didn’t agree to transform into the sort of weak-kneed twit with more hair than wit who runs away and leaves you to deal with not one, not two, but
three
assailants—one armed with a club, another with a knife!”

She flung up her hands. “Why are you even lecturing me about this? We’re here, we’re safe—isn’t that the important thing? Aside from all else, I’m my own person. I’m twenty-nine, for heaven’s sake! I’ve sailed to Jamaica and back, more or less on my own. I’ve been an adult, my responsibility and no one else’s, for a very long time!”

“Which is undoubtedly my problem.” Del tried to shut up, but something—
that
something—was riding him hard. He met her glare for glare, leveled a finger at her nose. “This habit of yours of putting yourself in danger has got to stop!”

“
Me
putting myself in danger? Pray tell,
who
insisted we go to the recital tonight? And yes, I enjoyed it, thank you very much, but taking me there doesn’t give you the right to dictate to me!”

“You’re a female—one in my care. Your parents’ request
for me to act as your escort makes you my responsibility.” Lowering his finger, he jabbed it at her sternum. “It’s my job to protect you.”

Her eyes narrowed to flinty shards. “Indeed? Is that what that kiss was about then? The
second
kiss.
Protecting
me?”

Deliah heard her voice rise—abruptly remembered the kiss in Madame Latour’s narrow hall, the more recent exchange, and her helpless reactions. She searched his eyes, all dark, hot and heated. Heaven help her, he was infinitely more dangerous to her than any thug.

Luckily, he didn’t know it.

So she could look down her nose and scornfully state, “I am not yours, not in any way—you don’t need to feel responsible for me!”

Fueled by a senseless, witless fury that he’d only kissed her to keep her safe—to continue their roles before the modiste, to stop her making a sound tonight, and even tonight’s second kiss she felt sure he’d have a sensible reason for—she whirled and stalked into her bedroom.

The door had been left ajar. Passing through it, she shoved it closed behind her.

Waited to hear it slam.

It didn’t.

On a stifled gasp she swung around—to see Del, his face like a thundercloud, storming after her.

Fury boiled through her veins. She straightened to her full height, raised one arm and dramatically pointed to the door, opened her mouth to order him out—

He grabbed her pointing hand, jerked her hard against him.

His head swooped.

And he covered her lips with his.

C
rushed them. Hauled her into his arms and held her as if he were trying to absorb her into his body.

He kissed her in the same way.

As if he wanted to devour her. To own her, claim her.

Have her.

In every imaginable way.

Deliah sank her hands into his hair and kissed him back. With equal fervor, equal need.

Their wills met and merged in a clash of fire and passion.

Of instant conflagration and fiery need.

The anger that had driven her converted in a heartbeat to something more potent, to a compulsion that thrummed in her blood, that filled her head with dizzying desire, that burgeoned, erupted and swept her on.

Her inner self seized control, and it wanted, needed, yearned.

For more. For this. For what it had been starved of for so long.

He angled his head, ruthlessly, relentlessly deepened the kiss, and she pressed against him, into him, and met him caress for caress.

She remembered this, the heat, the urgency.

Yet this time there were flames and fire, and heady des
peration.

Del sensed the same, knew beyond doubt that he ought to stop, that if he’d been wise he’d never have kissed her.

Yet he’d had to.

He had to show her because she refused to see, had to demonstrate unequivocally in the most indisputable way that she was
his
—his in more ways, deeper ways, than could ever be needed to justify his right to protect her.

He wrenched his mouth from hers. “
This
is why I need to keep you safe.”

Safe from the Black Cobra. Safe from all danger.

Safe. And his.

She blinked up at him, jade eyes drowning in a glory of passion. Then her grip on his head tightened and she hauled his head down, hauled his lips to hers. Catapulted them both into a blazing inferno.

An eruption of molten desire shook him—snared him, lured him.

If he’d been able to think…yet he couldn’t, not with her hands gripping his skull, not with her lips ravenous beneath his.

Not with her tall, curvaceous figure provocatively plastered along the length of his.

She wanted, incited, and he broke, seized, took. Claimed her mouth, then, holding her tight within one arm, raised a hand to her breast and claimed that, too.

Her response was instantaneous, undeniable, encouraging—a murmuring moan trapped in her throat. Her fingers tightened in his hair as his fingers played, learned. Seduced.

Deliah felt the wanton within her rise, felt her blossom and bloom with every evocative touch, with every heavy thrust of his tongue against hers, every increasingly flagrant caress.

No matter her memories, it had never been like this. Never so fiery, never so fraught. She’d never been so desperately needy.

Even through her pelisse, his knowing hands made her
breasts swell and ache, a sweeter, sharper ache than she recalled. Griffiths, the bastard, had never made her feel like this. There was no comparison.

This was new, and she had to have. Better, more; she had to know. She reached for the buttons of his coat as he reached for hers.

The next minutes went in a blind flurry of hands and grasping, greedy fingers, of passion escalating degree by inexorable degree as this garment, then that, slid away.

Tugged, pulled, ripped away.

And blind need took over—infected them both, drove them, fired them.

His hands found her skin, hard, hot and urgent. Hers found his, greedy and grasping. The muscled expanse of his chest, his heavy shoulders, the shifting muscles of his back.

Then his lips left hers, slid lower. His mouth fastened over one nipple and she arched, cried out.

Discovery and demand, yielding, then seizing, insisting and commanding, they traded caresses, shared and challenged, uninhibitedly answered the other’s call.

Until they rolled on the bed, skin to naked skin, long limbs tangling, hands sculpting, urging, fingers searching.

Finding.

She arched beneath him as he stroked between her thighs. Lips locked with his, she burned, her hands gripping his sides, urging him over her.

Into her.

He complied. Lifting over her, he parted her thighs with his, spread them wide, set his hips between, and with one powerful thrust joined them.

She lost her breath. Every nerve in her body sparked, then whipped taut. She gasped, might have cried out, the sound muffled by their still rapacious kiss.

He withdrew and plunged in again, deeper still, steel encased in velvet shafting into her body.

And the wild ride began.

Pagan in its power, it held her, compelled her. She danced beneath him, rode with him, through the flames, straight into the heart of the fire.

And they burned. Hotter, more intense than anything she’d dreamed, a fiery need blossomed at her core. Relentlessly, ruthlessly, he fed and stoked the blaze….

Until that need became her all, until it throbbed beneath her fingertips, pounded in her blood, burned beneath her skin.

Silk and passion. She was that and so much more. Del had never known such urgency, such all-consuming, unwavering compulsion to have a woman—to take her and be damned. Regardless—despite—any and all restrictions.

Despite every last one of his rational reservations.

It was madness—this driving desperation, this compulsive conviction. Its claws were sunk deep, not just in his flesh but into his psyche, his soul.

He couldn’t live without having her—some part of him had accepted that as indisputable fact. That primitive side rejoiced as he pinned her beneath him, as her curves—those bounteous curves he’d coveted from first sight—cushioned him, cradled him. As, her long legs spread, she took him in, arched and took him yet deeper, all scalding slickness and wet, clinging heat.

She was tight, tighter than he’d expected, the walls of her sheath clutching, clamping, fisting him.

Taking him.

Lids heavy, breath coming in panting gasps, barely able to see, he was beyond all control, but so was she. This might have been unwise, but he didn’t care—and, thank God, neither did she. If he’d had any doubts, the half-moons her nails were scoring in his skin had banished them.

She was with him, urging him on even as he reached for her knees, and drew first one, then the other, to his hips, opening her to even deeper penetration. She only gasped, clung, rocked beneath him ever more evocatively, wordlessly pleading for release.

The roar in his blood grew, drowning out all but the need to have her climax. To see her surrender, to take her to the very peak of desperate sexual need, then tip her over into sexual bliss.

To feel her beneath him as he did, to sense that moment of absolute surrender.

To see her face, her expression, in the instant ecstasy took her.

He thrust deeper, faster, harder, more powerfully as he felt her rise.

Her fingers bit into his arms as she arched. She gasped into his mouth as her nerves drew that very last fraction tauter.

Then she shattered.

She came apart beneath him on a strangled cry, a sound that satisfied one of his needs. He’d expected to hold back, to take more of her, yet her convulsing sheath clamped tight, and she took him with her, pulled him over the precipice’s edge and on.

Release swept him; he couldn’t deny it. His roar muffled in the curve of her throat, he thrust deep and let go.

And joined her.

Felt her arms close around him and tug him down, wrap about him and hold him close as oblivion rolled in, over, and enveloped them.

For long moments, the heat held them, blessed and golden, a gentle sea.

Slowly, inexorably, satiation swept in, infusing them as they spiraled down, and drifted back to earth.

To the unexpected, unanticipated intimacy of each other’s naked arms.

December 14
Grillon’s Hotel

Deliah woke to a gray morning and the rattling of coals in
the grate. Heart leaping, she glanced at the bed beside her—only to discover it empty.

The bed was a four-poster, and at some point in the night Del must have drawn the curtains along one side and across the end; she could see the window and the leaden sky, but the hotel maid at the hearth couldn’t see her.

Or the rumpled, crumpled disaster of the bed.

Bess would be up shortly and undoubtedly would notice, but Deliah had no intention of explaining. Indeed, thinking back, she wasn’t sure she could.

How did one rationalize something so far beyond reason?

She spent two minutes trying, then gave up.

Aside from all else, she could not bring herself to regret a single moment of the night, something Bess would detect, and that would only lead to more questions. Difficult, prickly questions given Bess knew her history with gentlemen and was every bit as protective as Del wished to be.

Would he regret—was he already regretting—the interlude, their unanticipated explosion of mutual madness? Of shared insanity.

She knew he hadn’t intended it any more than she had, but they’d clashed, kissed fierily, and that had been that.

The firestorm of passion sparked by that kiss had swept over them and cindered all caution, and reduced all inhibitions to insubstantial ash.

The result…had been glorious.

Lying in the enfolding warmth, she replayed each scintillating moment, at least those she could recall.

Quite enough to heat her cheeks, to have her shifting beneath the sheet.

Then she remembered what had happened later, when he’d woken her in the depths of the night.

He certainly hadn’t behaved like a man burdened with regrets.

If he had been, he wouldn’t have…done it all again.

Only more slowly, and with much greater attention to detail.

Her body thrummed just from the memory.

The maid had left; the fire was crackling. She heard the door open, and Bess’s quick, light steps. Tossing back the covers, she froze, then set her chin, wrapped the loose sheet about her naked self, and swung her legs out of the bed.

“Good morning, Bess.” Sheet trailing after her, she walked out from around the bed. “Have you seen my robe?”

Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t wipe the smile from her face.

Bess stared at her, mouth open, for one long moment, then simply said, “Oh, my God.”

Washed, brushed and wearing one of the walking gowns that had been delivered from Madamae Latour’s salon, Deliah strolled into the sitting room of the suite in an entirely amiable mood.

Over the matter of the gowns she’d decided not to cut off her nose to spite her face. She’d accept them for now, but later she would insist on paying Del in full. In money.

But she needed gowns to wear now. Not anticipating a prolonged halt on their journey north, she had a few carriage gowns, and not much else. She’d charged Bess with shopping for chemises, stockings and similar necessities while she was out tempting the Black Cobra with Del.

He was in the sitting room, seated at the table breaking his fast with Tony and Gervase. At sight of her, all three started to get to their feet. She waved them back. “No—stay where you are.”

While the others subsided, with a careful look, Del pulled out the empty chair between his and Tony’s. With an airy nod and a light smile, she thanked him and sat.

She looked at Tony as Del resumed his seat. “So,” she asked, reaching for the teapot, “did anything come of your watch at the tavern?”

If Del could be a man of the world and evince no telltale sign of the hours they’d spent rolling naked in her bed, then she could do the same.

From the corner of his eye, Del watched her sip tea and
nibble a slice of toast and marmalade as Tony and Gervase recounted their disappointingly uneventful evening.

“The Cobra or his minions must have been watching from outside the inn, waiting to see if their hirelings brought a woman.” Gervase shook his head. “We thought of hunting to see if we could spot them, but in that neighborhood there are simply too many seedy characters.”

“And they
all
look suspicious,” Tony said.

Grimacing in commiseration, Deliah set down her empty cup. “So what are our plans for today?”

They discussed their options for drawing the cultists out.

Del had already told Gervase and Tony of the excitement following his and Deliah’s attendance at the recital. They’d been troubled, and not a little disgusted to have missed the action. They’d resolved they wouldn’t again leave Deliah and him unwatched while out of the hotel. However…

“We need to make it easier, more attractive for them to approach—to come out of hiding and make some move.” Gervase looked at Del and Deliah. “The museum’s a warren—it might appeal to them.”

They all agreed that the museum and its many rooms was worth a try.

Del stirred and shot a glance at Deliah. Tried to keep all expression from his face. “It’s too early yet to go to the museum.” He switched his gaze to Tony and Gervase. “I think I’ll take a stroll to Guards’ Headquarters. Laying more false trails can’t hurt.”

“That,” Deliah said, laying aside her napkin, her gaze on Tony and Gervase, “sounds eminently sensible. You two can follow and keep watch. I’ll wait here until you get back, then we can go to Montague House.”

Tony and Gervase agreed readily.

Del inclined his head.

And told himself he had no grounds on which to feel sensitive, let alone irritated, by his recent bedmate’s unaffected manner, by the lack of any hint of susceptibility, or consciousness in her attitude to him.

She was behaving exactly as he should want her to behave. Neither Tony nor Gervase had detected any change in the air between him and her.

Because there wasn’t any. At least, none to be detected. Even by him.

Despite all, he’d expected
something
—a tremble in her fingers, an almost imperceptible change in her breathing—some indication of her heightened awareness of him.

Entirely against his better judgment, he wanted to speak with her—just to jog her memory of the heated hours they’d shared last night—but all four of them rose from the table and, instead of giving him a chance to hang back and exchange those few words, with an airy wave, Deliah headed for her bedroom.