Her Majesty’s Scoundrels

by Christy Carlyle

  “Seven months. Good God, I’ve been at Finsbury Hall for nearly a year. I lose track of time.” He dipped his head so that they were eye to eye, and several wavy strands of gold-brown hair slipped over his brow. Tavia reached up to sweep them back behind his ear.

  “Aren’t you ever lonely?” As she put the question to him, she heard a response in her own heart.

  Yes, so lonely. She’d cloistered herself too, remaining in her office until all hours of the night. Throwing herself into investigations and work to avoid grief. Trying to forget that she was alone in the world. What was he trying to forget? She sensed pain in him, an echo of her loneliness. In the longing in his gaze, and the need and hunger she’d tasted in his kiss.

  Her hand lay against his cheek. Touching him felt too good, too right.

  He nuzzled his bearded jaw against her palm before placing a searing kiss in the center of her hand. “Octavia,” he murmured against her skin. “You’re the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.”

  No man had ever spoken such words to her. Words that stoked a response in her body, a heat that melted her from the inside. He liked the taste of her because he’d kissed her, savored her, as no man ever had.

  And to think she’d considered using kisses to persuade him. To tempt him into accompanying her back to London. She was the one who was tempted. To know him better. To be close to him. To feel his mouth on hers just one more time.

  Killian lowered his rifle and caught her hand in his. “Come upstairs with me.”

  * * *

  Octavia froze, lips parted, eyes wide with shock.

  Killian wasn’t sure she was still breathing.

  Devil and blast. He’d take back his words if he could get her to look at him again the way she had a moment ago. As if she’d trust him, just a little. He wanted that. Trust was a gift he’d rarely been given in the past few years. A gift he did not deserve. But he craved it. Especially from this flame-haired woman who’d burst unexpectedly into his life.

  Hell, he wanted a good deal from Octavia Fowler. Starting with her mouth on his and their bodies joined as one.

  Such pleasures were only part of what he forfeited when he’d left society behind. And he’d been bloody thrilled to do so. Even then, he’d known no woman deserved to be saddled with his sins.

  Certainly not a woman like Octavia.

  Yet he couldn’t deny what she ignited in him. The attraction had been instant, a flash of need and heat that struck him before he’d had time to take cover.

  More, she reminded him of what he’d lost. What he lacked. Casting away responsibility and avoiding more failures had cost him the sweetest aspects of life—companionship, laughter, flirtation, the love of an extraordinary woman.

  Not that he’d ever craved love from any woman. Not that any had ever given him their heart. Not that he’d met many who would be willing to strike out on their own and trek across England to hunt a failed soldier for their queen.

  Finally, she blinked. Still breathing, thank goodness, but she continued to struggle. He could see the battle raging behind her eyes. Propriety versus yearning. Duty versus desire. He’d battled once too. Back when he cared about what others expected of him.

  He loathed seeing her in distress. A little ripple of shock ricocheted through him at the realization that he wanted her happiness as much as he wanted to bed her.

  He desired the woman so much, he was considering being an honorable man.

  “You need sleep.” The ache in his groin mattered far less than how the lady’s eyelids were drooping over her pretty honeyed green eyes. “I’ll tuck you in and resume my watch until the sun rises.” He was used to being hunted. Danger had always lurked around the edges of his life. But he was determined to keep her safe.

  His words allowed her to relent. She squeezed his hand and nodded, sending a wave of auburn hair dancing at her shoulder. Apparently, that hair of hers didn’t wish to be proper and restrained any more than he did.

  As they took the stairs side by side, everything else faded. His senses registered only Octavia. The soft slide of her skin, the rapid catch of her breath, the furtive glances she cast his way.

  His room lay at the end of the hall, and he stroked her fingers as they approached. If only he could retrace his steps and find the man he’d once been—young, idealistic, honorable. That man might have deserved her.

  A bitter chuckle escaped under his breath.

  He could never go back. He knew that better than anyone. But it wouldn’t stop him from aching for her, imagining how they would be together, yearning to run his fingers over every inch of her soft freckled body. Wanting to taste and pleasure her until she cried out his name.

  “Thank you for escorting me,” she said the moment they reached his door. Her voice quivered, despite her attempt to assume a matter-of-fact tone. “Good night, Major Graves.”

  “You called me Killian in the village. Grant me that, at least.” Raising her hand, he pressed his lips against her knuckles before turning to go. Walking away from Octavia Fowler had never been easy. He’d learned that ten minutes after meeting her. Now, parting was even harder.

  March, Graves. He heard his old army colonel’s voice in his head, barking commands in his ear.

  “Killian, you did offer to…tuck me in. Didn’t you?” She stumbled over the words, her voice breaking into a higher pitch. It sounded like a Siren call to his ears.

  “Indeed I did,” he replied, trying to stem his eagerness.

  Without another word, she stepped inside his bedchamber, and he required no further prompting to follow.

  At the bedside, she bent over and worked free the laces of her boots. Watching her slip her feet free was a shockingly intimate moment.

  “Your ankle.” His voice was as hoarse as it had been after a day of shouting orders over the din of a battlefield. “Is it better?”

  “Much better. Thank you.” She peeled back the coverlet and cast a demure gaze over her shoulder before bending her knee to climb into his bed.

  “Are you wearing your clothes to bed?”

  “I’m afraid I failed to pack any nightclothes.” After turning to him, she pursed her lips and watched him warily as she reached for one of the buttons on her bodice. “I suppose I could undress and sleep in my chemise.”

  His brain was stuck on “undress,” and his head was bobbing in agreement. “Yes,” he heard himself say. Heavens, yes.

  All at once, he was standing on the head of a pin, his body taut and strained. He didn’t wish to dissuade or unsettle her, but he didn’t want to leave her side either. He wanted her trust. He swallowed hard as she started on the buttons marching down the front of her blouse.

  Bloody hell. He wanted her. Full stop.

  “Would you stoke the fire?”

  At that moment, he would have agreed to anything she asked, but he realized what she truly wished was to distract him. She waited, her fingers perched on a button, until he started toward the fireplace.

  Busying himself with poking at the embers before adding a few bricks of coal didn’t allow him to forget for a moment that a beautiful, desirable woman stood behind him shedding her clothing. He cast her one quick glance and found she was watching him. Focusing again on the fire, he heard the swish of fabric tumbling to the ground and closed his eyes. Give me strength. Honorable. Gentlemanly. He’d been that man once. He could feign those qualities for one night.

  Standing, Killian dusted off his hands, sucked in a deep breath, and turned to face Octavia. He expected to find her in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin.

  Instead, she stood gloriously bare but for the thinnest gauze of her chemise. The fabric hid nothing from his view, from the freckles decorating the skin of her chest and legs to her perfectly round breasts tipped by berry-plump nipples to the vee of auburn curls at the apex of her thighs.

  “You’re exquisite.” Never in his life had he beheld a more enticing woman.

  “I’m ready.” She caught her bottom lip betwee
n her teeth as her pale skin flushed in a rosy blush.

  So am I. He started toward her and didn’t stop until he was so close she tipped her head back to gaze into his eyes. There was fire behind the green and gold of her gaze, a brewing passion. Desire that mirrored his own. And more. Emotions no one had offered him in years. Tenderness and trust.

  Her feelings were so transparent that, for a moment, a warning bell sounded in his head. He was hard and aching and couldn’t hide the way she affected him, but was Octavia feigning this show of affection and desire? She, the delicious and clever daughter of one of the Crown’s agents, had been chosen by the monarch to lure him back to London. After dozens of men had failed at the same task. Why her? Because they knew her boldness and beauty would turn him into a salivating fool?

  “Killian? What’s wrong?” Her brow pleated when he reached for the cover behind her.

  “Get in, Octavia.”

  Her lips parted a moment before she snapped her jaw shut, turned, and climbed into bed.

  With a few tugs, he drew the blanket over her, a shaky breath escaping when the back of his hand brushed her breast. God, it was hell pretending to be an honorable man. Yet it had been hell to be an outcast too, a recluse without any beauty or passion in his world. With Octavia, he struggled to recall why he was hiding. She made him wish to be whole. Even if her feelings for him were half ruse, he was a damned fool not to savor every last scrap of affection she offered.

  “Sleep well,” he whispered as he bent over her.

  She was still frowning up at him, though her eyes had gone from limpid and heated to unmistakably irritated. “What are you doing?”

  “Tucking you in, as promised.” As he backed away, his chest pinched with every step.

  She pushed against the mattress to sit up, slid her body toward the far wall, and cast the coverlet aside. “There’s room for you here.”

  A moment ago, his throat had been parched; now he was back in the desert. His body burning with no water in sight. Sluggish thoughts flitted through his mind. None of them sensible. None of them cautious. None of them honorable.

  “But you’ll want to take your boots off,” Octavia said as she dropped her gaze to his feet, then up his body. Slowly. “And perhaps your shirt and vest.”

  As he toed off his boots, he started on the buttons of his shirt, shucking the garment along with his vest.

  Octavia’s mouth curved. “Goodness.”

  Killian was stunned by the pleasure in her expression. His body was a bit like a battleground after a skirmish, torn and rutted by the violence it had endured. Scars had faded over time, but they would never disappear. He would always be a man who’d battled half his life away.

  Crossing the room, he lifted a knee onto the bed, and her body tipped forward. She planted a warm palm against him to steady herself. Her hand lay low on his belly, far too close to the part of him that was not feigning an ounce of his hunger for her.

  “I am trying to be an honorable man,” he managed on a strangled whisper.

  “I can tell.” She drew a little circle across his stomach with her fingertip. “It’s admirable.”

  “You’re not making the effort any easier.”

  “Then let’s go to sleep.” She withdrew her hand and patted the empty stretch of mattress beside her. “Get in.”

  That empty spot beside her would be his undoing. He knew it with all the certainty he’d lacked while marching into that valley in Kandahar.

  Octavia was a dangerous woman. Not because she lashed a knife to her hip and worked in service to the Crown, but because she’d already broken through his walls. If he touched her, pleasured her, tasted her as he wished to do, it wouldn’t be enough. He’d want her again and again. He might even come to need her. She wouldn’t just be able to lure him back to London. She’d be able to tempt him to hope. To fancy he deserved a future of nights just like this, coming eagerly to bed, desperate for her touch.

  “I should go downstairs and keep watch.” Like a soldier would. Sentry duty was something he understood. Far more than his feelings for the red-haired beauty within tantalizing reach.

  “Stay with me until I fall asleep.” Her voice wobbled, but the pitch had gone low and husky.

  He couldn’t resist her.

  Sliding into bed beside her, his first thought was that the fabric between them—his trousers and her chemise—was far too thick and entirely unnecessary.

  Octavia settled back, her thigh pressed to his thigh, her arm plastered against his, their hands lying side by side. For an endless moment, they remained that way, and Killian willed his urges into submission. Then she turned her head on the pillow, and he turned his head to face her.

  “Why didn’t you close your eyes?” she asked quietly.

  “Because I don’t sleep.”

  “At all?”

  “Very little.”

  She seemed to consider his answer a moment and then stared up at the ceiling. “Why? Do you have nightmares?”

  “Every night.” He laid back and studied the plaster above too. “They haunt me.”

  “Who?”

  “My sins. My regrets.” Though with Octavia at his side, wafting that delicious spice-and-sugar scent that was uniquely hers, they seemed far off. Not gone, but held at bay.

  “Do you think perhaps you should kiss me good night?” she said in an offhand tone, as if pondering tomorrow’s weather.

  “I think I should.” The woman was going to test every last bit of self-control he possessed. Perhaps she hadn’t been sent to retrieve him but to torment him.

  Staring up at the ceiling, she laced her fingers over her belly and waited. Killian moved slowly as he turned, bracing an arm on the pillow beside her. He stared at her lips, let his gaze wander down to her nipples, straining toward him through the fabric of her chemise, and bent to press his mouth to her forehead.

  He meant to stop there. To place a chaste kiss against the freckled patch of skin above her brows, roll over, and feign sleep while she slumbered beside him. That would be enough. To spend a night by her side.

  But he couldn’t stop once he’d started. He skimmed his lips down the arch of her nose and placed a kiss on the tip. He dipped his head to kiss her cheek, and then he had to kiss the other. Symmetry mattered at a moment like this.

  She parted her lips, her breath gusting against his face in quick, heated wisps. “Don’t stop.”

  He couldn’t have. Not even if a single fiber of him had wanted to.

  * * *

  Tavia wasn’t sure why she was seducing a duke.

  She wasn’t even certain the impulse that caused her to call him back every time he attempted to retreat was anything as artful as seduction. She only knew that she craved Killian—his strength, his touch, his nearness.

  As he peppered kisses across her face, her body flushed with warmth, a rush of sensual pleasure like she’d never known.

  For this one night, she wanted to know him.

  Not because she needed to fill gaps in the dossier she’d been provided, but because something in Killian called to her. Perhaps his loneliness or his insistence on living life on his own terms, whatever the cost.

  She’d chosen a profession considered unsuitable for a woman. If she succeeded in her mission for the queen, she would return to her office and devote her energies to detection for the rest of her days. He would return to claim a dukedom.

  But here, now, they were just a woman and a man lying beside each other, burning for each other. Needing each other.

  This moment with Killian might be the only chance at passion she would ever have. And if she could soothe the pain in his gaze and convince him to come back to London, all the better.

  When he finally pressed his mouth to hers, she opened to him instantly. His lips were deliciously warm and soft and lush. Taking control, she slid her hand around his neck, pulling him closer, delving her tongue inside his mouth to taste him deeply.

  She refused to squander this time with him
by giving into shyness.

  When they were both breathless, gasping for air, Killian shifted to move over her and lowered his head to kiss her neck. He laved a spot behind her ear, and she bucked below him. Their bodies fit together like a lock and key, and he rocked his hips against where her body pulsed with insistent need.

  Lifting his head, holding her gaze, he began working his way down her body. He tugged her chemise aside and trailed kisses across her breast. He circled her nipple with his tongue before taking the taut, ripe flesh into his mouth.

  “Killian.” She whispered his name and reached out to grip his shoulders, tangle her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer, urging him on.

  Sliding the hem of her chemise up, he stroked her belly, her thighs, and then skated his fingers toward her curls.

  “Wait.” She lifted her head.

  He stilled and did as she commanded.

  “I’ve never done this. Any of this.” The insistence in her tone seemed to cool his ardor. She trusted he would not wish to frighten her or cause her any harm.

  “Then we should sleep.” Gripping the edge of her chemise, he resettled the fabric over her thighs and lifted his body off hers.

  “Wait,” she said again. “I didn’t mean for you to stop. I just needed you to know that I’ve no experience at this.” She had no disguise or cover now. No false bravado. She wanted to be honest with him, to let him see her for who she was—inexperienced and awkward—and still want her.

  “It’s all right.” He bent to kiss her, and Tavia wrapped her arms around his shoulders, urging him closer.

  “Show me,” she whispered against his lips. Reaching between them, she tugged up her chemise. She was willing to risk everything, bare every part of herself, just to have this one night with him.

  Killian leaned back to watch, awestruck, as if she was a treasure slowly being uncovered.