The Wicked One (3 page)

Her bosom lifted as she took a sudden breath. “Are you flirting with me?” she murmured, taking a sip of her tea.

She didn’t sound offended. In fact, she sounded intrigued. He certainly was. “Yes.”

“If you aren’t after a wealthy widow, Mr. Warren, then what do you want? Truly?”

“Truly? I want you, Lady Cameron. I want you naked in a bed with me inside you.”

Emerald eyes blinked. “You don’t…you don’t even know me.”

“I’ll wager I know you better than they do,” he said, gesturing at the room in general. Then he decided to press his luck. “So do you want to spend the afternoon pretending you haven’t noticed them all avoiding you, or in a more intimate setting with me?”

For the first time she appeared to hesitate. He supposed he might be assessing her through a too-cynical prism, but she interested him enough that he was willing to spend a bit more time deciphering precisely just how much of her mourning was genuine. She could merely be an extremely composed, artful young lady who’d dearly loved her late idiot of a husband, or he could be deliberately misinterpreting the careful application of quavering tones and handkerchief and lowered lashes. He’d seen weeping chits before, and couldn’t find a trace of it on her face. A certain…vulnerability, yes, but in a way that appealed to him rather than being off-putting.

“I think I would like that,” she finally said.

Thank Lucifer
. If he didn’t have her soon, he felt like he would combust. “Allow me to inform Lady Darham that you are overset by all the attention, and I’ve agreed to see you to a carriage, then,” he returned, standing when she nodded.

Once he’d made their excuses to the rather suspicious dowager marchioness, he offered Lady Cameron an arm, and she wrapped her black-gloved fingers around his sleeve. The countess was tall, the top of her head coming nearly to his mouth, and she seemed to have abstained from the heavy, flowery perfumes that ladies of her station favored.

The moment they were out of sight of Hoffler House and the horde of Englishmen inside, she stopped, pulling her hand free to face him. “You are trouble, aren’t you?”

Oliver nodded. “A great deal of it.”

“I don’t need more trouble.”

He brushed his fingers against her soft cheek. “Give me a night, and then I’ll leave if you like.”

Diane found herself nodding. She’d never been impetuous, never done anything scandalous—except to flee England with the dunners on her heels. Or on Frederick’s heels, rather. She’d never been tempted to misbehave. But this Oliver Warren…just being in his company felt like a very delicious kind of sin.

It wasn’t only sin, however. For two years she’d had chances to sin, every night that Frederick didn’t return home because he was in pursuit of a winning run of cards, every time he blamed her for the lack of funds at the end of the month when the servants and the rent were due to be paid. Every time she wished she had someone in whom to confide her troubles—and she’d refrained. And being proper had gotten her precisely nothing. No money, no friends, no one to keep her company.

Mr. Warren made her skin tingle all the way to her bones. He felt wrong, and dangerous, and alive – and interesting. Very interesting. Not until he’d seated himself beside her had she realized how very seldom she’d felt so…so anything.

“Shall I escort you to luncheon after all?” he asked. “I know a lovely bistro right beside the river.”

“You don’t need to cajole or charm me, Mr. Warren. You told me what you wanted, and I am in agreement.”

Light gray eyes swept down the length of her and back up again to her face. The warmth seeping through her deepened. “Then give me the direction to your house,” he murmured, signaling for a hack.

He didn’t bat an eye when the coach traveled well past the best-appointed part of Vienna and into the more ramshackle neighborhood where her rented rooms lay. But then he’d said he knew her to be nearly penniless. Evidently the state of her finances didn’t concern him. Neither did the quality of her conversation or the sharpness of her mind, but after nearly a fortnight of solitude, with nothing but her thoughts and a great many debts to keep her company, she didn’t want to think.

“This is…cozy,” he commented, when the hack stopped and she stepped out to the street.

“The man upstairs plays a very poor bassoon,” Diane returned, waiting as he handed up a few coins to the driver, “and the fireplace smokes.”

He followed her up the narrow stairs, the…heat of him at her back making her pulse speed. Before she’d married, before she’d met Frederick, Oliver Warren had been the very sort of man about whom she’d dreamed. The wicked, rakish Adonis who could steal a young lady’s virtue with a look and her breath with a mere kiss. And now he was standing inside her small, dingy apartment and looking at her.

“How long have you lived here?” he queried, walking over to push open the curtains in the main room.

“Thirteen months.”

“That’s very precise.”

“I’m very precise.” He had an air about him, an utter confidence in himself, that made him the centerpiece of the room, made the apartment seem small. She didn’t wish to take her eyes off him. Reaching behind her, Diane shut and locked the door. “Those curtains are to remain closed,” she said, setting aside her reticule and hat and attempting to keep her hands from trembling.

Over the past fortnight she’d felt abandoned, uncertain, and hopeless. This afternoon she felt eighteen and about to be seduced for the first time. She wished he would stop standing across the room and kiss her instead.

Mr. Warren pulled the curtains shut again. “Is darkness a mourning tradition? I’m not familiar with it.”

“It’s an attempt to keep the bill collectors worried that they’ll face a hysterical female,” she returned. He already knew her to be penniless; even if it wasn’t for the general rumors, the shabby apartment would have spoken the story just as eloquently. “If I can’t be reasoned with, asking me for money would be pointless. And it will definitely cause a scene.”

“Then we should likely keep my presence here a secret.” He tilted his head, dark mahogany hair falling across one eye as he gazed at her. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he announced, strolling up to her. “But because I’m not entirely without conscience, I will give you a last chance to send me away.”

She lowered her gaze to his half smiling, sensuous mouth. “I am a lonely woman, Mr. Warren,” she said, unable to keep her voice entirely steady. “I don’t wish to send you away.” Willing herself to have a little courage, she placed her hands on his dark gray lapels. Beneath her fingers his chest felt hard and unyielding, the jump of a muscle against her palm starting heat between her legs. “As you said before, this is about desire.”

“Then I think you should call me Oliver,” he murmured. Slowly he leaned down and touched his mouth to hers.

Diane curled her fingers into his jacket, leaning up along him and kissing him back. Wicked, sinful, immoral—she didn’t care. The moment skin touched skin, she felt alive. And excited. And aroused. And not alone.

He shifted to nibble at her jaw, then lifted his head a fraction. “Is the bed in there?” he asked, angling his chin toward the bedchamber door.

“Yes,” she returned, her voice muffled against his mouth as he moved in on her again. Hands splayed across her hips, pulling her up against him. Well. He hadn’t been lying about wanting her.

Oliver swung her up into his arms. With a surprised gasp Diane gripped him around the neck, unwilling to stop kissing him simply because he was carrying her bodily into the bed chamber. She was fairly certain that if he moved away, if they stopped touching, he would evaporate and she would be left alone again.

Sliding one knee up onto the bed, Oliver leaned down and placed her across the coverlet. “I’m not going to keep calling you Lady Cameron,” he said in a low voice as he gripped one of her ankles.

“Diane,” she rasped, as he shoved her gown up around her waist. “Diane will do.”

With a wicked grin he sank down between her knees. “Diane it is, then.”

Fingers, then lips and tongue nibbled at her down…there. Good heavens. A man she’d met less than an hour ago was touching her more intimately than her own husband had ever done. Gasping, she dug her fingers into his dark hair.

“I’m still wearing my shoes,” she exclaimed, then realized how absolutely stupid that must sound. “I mean, I don’t want them on the bed.”

He lifted his head. “Have you never had sex with your shoes on?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why not?” Sending a glance at the calf-length walking boots on either side of his head, he turned and grasped one of her ankles again. “They’re very fashionable.”

“I…I don’t know why not,” she returned, lifting up on her elbows. “They…they’re shoes.”

“And they’re staying on. I will risk being kicked in the head when I come inside you.”

Her face heated. “You shouldn’t say such things.”

Oliver straightened further, taking both her hands and pulling her into a sitting position. “You were married, weren’t you?”

“Of course I was. Don’t—”

”Did your husband not come inside you?”

“He was my husband.”

“Ah.” He reached into an inside pocket of his jacket and produced a French condom. She’d never actually seen one up close, but one evening when Frederick and some of his cronies had spent the night wagering and drinking in the front room she’d risen to find them jesting about the uses of one. Frederick hadn’t appreciated her disturbing his evening, and she’d quickly retreated again. “Better?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. So your shoes stay on. The gown, however, needs to come off.”

Somehow he’d taken command, but considering how very naughty she felt already, Diane had no complaints. None at all. She twisted so he could reach the trio of buttons at the back of her neck, then faced him again as he gathered her skirt in his hands and lifted. The black gown came off over her head, and he dropped it carelessly beside the bed.

Until this moment, only one man had ever seen her naked. As his warm hands cupped her breasts, thumbnails flicking deliciously across her nipples, Diane shivered again. One thing was becoming rather clear. Oliver Warren was nothing like Frederick Benchley.

“Let your hair down,” he ordered, sitting upright again and shrugging out of his jacket.

She started yanking out hairpins, setting them on the bed stand. Keeping her shoes on as he unfastened the buttons of his waistcoat, watching his face as his gaze swept across her and lowered to her breasts again—it felt so wicked and wanton. Her heart stammered frantically, reminding her forcibly of what Oliver had said earlier; she was not dead. In fact, she couldn’t ever remember feeling so…alive.

“Slower,” he instructed, the tent of material at his crotch telling her that he was as aroused as she was.

“I don’t want to go slower,” she stated, already breathless. “And I think you should remove the rest of your clothes. And your boots.”

His grin did something warm and twisty to her insides. “That’s more like it,” he murmured, capturing her mouth again.

When Diane knotted the hem of his white shirt in her hands, he lifted away from her just long enough for her to yank it off over his head. With a low chuckle Oliver reached between them to open the fastening of his breeches and shove them down past his knees. As his erection bumped between her thighs Diane fleetingly wished she hadn’t told him to remove his boots; it was just another delay to what she wanted.

With another deep, tongue-tangling kiss he sat back on his bare backside. First he pulled his boots off and dropped them to the floor, the sound loud enough that more than likely both the bassoon player above and the merchant lodging below her rooms could hear the sound. Then he pulled the French condom up around his cock and tied the ribbon around the base.

As he finished, he looked up at her again. “You can do that next time,” he said, still grinning.

He crawled up over her, and she lay back. This part she knew. Oliver paused at her chest, taking a breast into his mouth and sucking. Diane gasped, arching her back in response.

Nudging her knees farther apart with his own, Oliver settled against her hips. Then, with another kiss he angled his hips and pushed inside her. Diane groaned at the filling sensation, wrapping her booted feet around his thighs and digging her fingers into his back.

Again and again he slid in and out of her, until the string drawing her muscles tighter and tighter inside her snapped. With a keening groan she grabbed onto him as she came. Oliver kissed her, the smile of his mouth obvious even if she couldn’t see the expression.

Abruptly he put an arm beneath her and rolled them, so that she sat astride his hips, impaled. He sat up as well, facing her as he pinched her nipples, then took one in his mouth again. Holding onto his neck, she flung back her head. Her body wanted to move, so she began lifting up and down, the size and heat of him so intoxicating it left her feeling drunk.

“Harder,” he grunted, grabbing her hips and pulling her down on him. He pushed up against her in the same rhythm, their breathing and groaning and the slap of skin against skin the only sounds in the room. In the world, it seemed like.

Finally with a deep groan he spent himself inside her. The satisfied moan he uttered sent her climaxing for a second time. Oliver pulled her down across his chest and she lay there for a long moment, his arms around her, as she attempted to stop the spinning of the bed chamber and regain her breath again.

“That…was very nice,” she said against his neck.

“I don’t think you’ve been loved enough,” Oliver’s deep voice returned, the sound resonating through him and into her.

Passion, enjoyment,
laughter,
of all things. “I…I’m not naive,” she commented, kissing his throat. “It’s just different with someone else.”

Oliver took her shoulders, pushing her an inch or two away from him. “You are going to be very interesting,” he said, looking up at her, his gray eyes dancing.

He found her interesting. That was likely the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. Before she could begin crying and get him all wet, Diane sat up, then twisted to extricate herself from him. Her rumpled gown lay on the floor, and considering that it was the only black dress she owned, it needed better care than that. Her armor against the creditors, it was, and a soldier cared for his—her—armor.