The Lady's Guard (Sinful Brides Book 3)

by Christi Caldwell

Diana held his gaze squarely. “Those noblemen you’d push me toward . . . They do not have a jot of the courage, honor, or strength you have in your smallest finger alone.” Her words ran through him. “I don’t want a nobleman, or anyone else.” She stretched a hand out. “I want you.”

  I am lost. Niall groaned. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it aside. It sailed to the floor in a noisy heap. And with every discarded scrap and boot, Diana stared on. He strode over to the bed and climbed atop and hovered his hands about her.

  She captured his hand, twining her fingers with his. “You have been the only man who’s treated me like more than a fragile piece of china. Don’t you dare treat me any differently now.” Shoving up on her knees, she sidled over, looped her hands about his neck, and kissed him.

  All his reservations melted away.

  His pulse thundered loud in his ears as he returned her kiss, stroking his hands over her body, learning the curve of her hips. He drew back and she cried out softly, struggling to pull him close again. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, dragging a path of kisses from the corner of her lips. He suckled at her earlobe, and she made a breathless sound that was half moan, half laugh.

  “Shh,” he breathed against her ear.

  “That tickles.”

  He gathered her buttocks in his hands and, giving a slight squeeze, dragged her close. Her lips parted on a little gasp. “It isn’t my intention to leave you laughing, love,” he pledged, and then all amusement faded from her expressive eyes, leaving in its place a desire that matched his own. Reclaiming her mouth, Niall’s tongue dueled with hers. Blood rushed to his shaft as she boldly met his embrace. He struggled with the delicate row of buttons along the back of her gown, his hands shaking.

  I am shaking.

  He, who as a young man had bedded whores in an alley and then had lovers in the Hell and Sin, now found himself humbled and uncertain in ways he’d never been in the whole of his life. Abandoning hope for the tiny grommets, Niall yanked, and the beads flew about, pinging noisily upon the coverlet and wood floor, rolling around. Aching to at last see her bared before his gaze, Niall pushed down her bodice and chemise.

  A blush stained Diana’s skin, and she hastily folded her arms about herself. “Don’t,” he ordered, staying her movements.

  She let her arms fall to her sides.

  “So beautiful,” he whispered. Reverently, he cupped one of the plump mounds in his palm and flicked his fingertip over the engorged flesh. “So very beautiful,” he rasped, and then closed his mouth around the tip.

  Her ragged breaths filled the midnight quiet, and when she twined her hands in his hair, anchoring him close, he reveled in that bold encouragement. He suckled all the harder, drawing that turgid flesh into his mouth, flicking his tongue over it until her wild moans echoed from the rafters. He switched his attention to her neglected breast.

  “Niall,” she pleaded, her fingers clenching and unclenching in his hair.

  “I have wanted to do this from the first moment I saw you,” he panted against her chest.

  He slid a hand between her legs and brushed his palm over the downy thatch of curls shielding her womanhood. “Th-the first time inside the club?” She whimpered and moaned, splaying her legs wide for him.

  Despite the fire burning through him, he grinned. Her probing question even through her desire was so patently Diana Verney. “Not then,” he admitted, slipping a finger inside.

  Her breath hitched loudly, and she spasmed in his arms. “I-in the a-alley?” With a beautiful abandon, she began to lift her hips in a slow, rhythmic motion, rocking against his caress. Her wet nectar coated his fingers, slicking the way.

  Moisture beaded on his forehead, and he squeezed his eyes shut, attempting to focus on her question. “My third day here,” he managed to get out, sliding another finger inside.

  She cried out, and he swallowed that sound with his kiss. Their tongues tangled in a long meeting.

  “You were sashaying down the halls,” he whispered against her mouth, continuing to stroke her drenched core. With his other hand, he cupped the generous flesh of her left hip. “You were singing a tune.”

  “Was—was I?” she asked, eyes clenched tight. Her undulations took on a frantic, increased movement. She was close. Her wetness coated his fingers.

  “But it wasn’t your hips.” He trailed kisses down her neck and found her breast once more. He hovered his mouth over the sensitive flesh.

  Diana whimpered and made incoherent pleading noises with him as she tried to guide him to the swollen tip. “Wh-what was it—” Her query ended on a little hiss as he flicked her nubbin.

  “Ya invited me to join ya.” At the time, he’d been shamed by his own pathetic weakness that he’d been so enthralled by her seeing past the evil scarring his person and soul. Now, he saw, it was the moment she’d stolen his heart. Proved herself unlike even the street toughs of St. Giles who only saw a beast. “And Oi’ve been yours ever since.” That confession emerged on a low groan as he shucked off his breeches and kicked them to the edge of the bed.

  She caressed her fingers over his scarred cheek. “Niall,” she whispered, searching her eyes over his face. “I—”

  Terrified by the words on her lips, he covered her mouth and resumed his stroking. There would be time enough for reality later. Later, he’d face what they’d done here and the emotions battering at his chest. For now, this is what he’d know—her in this primitive, raw way that would bind them. He pressed the heel of his palm into her center, and she bucked into his touch.

  She broke their kiss. “I want to feel all of you,” she rasped against his lips, even as her determined fingers yanked at the edges of his woolen shirt.

  That request, and her purposeful efforts, had the same effect as one of those buckets of shop water that had been hurled at him as a boy stealing sleep on a London stoop.

  He gasped and wrenched away. His chest heaved from the force of his desire and panic. “Wot do ya think you’re doing?” His voice emerged as a gravelly order that immediately dimmed the hunger in Diana’s revealing eyes.

  “N-Niall?” She stared at him in abject befuddlement.

  Witnessing that hurt and confusion was like taking a blade to the belly. He scratched a frustrated hand over his brow. “Ya don’t need to see me,” he said gruffly, reaching for her.

  She caught his hand. “No.” Diana paused, giving him a meaningful look. “I want to see you. All of you.”

  Terror clogged his throat, and he struggled to swallow around it. He’d never revealed his whole scarred body to a single woman he’d taken. Not even his brothers had seen the marks riddling his frame. The words tattooed there. Something in exposing himself to Diana this way would leave him vulnerable in ways he’d never been.

  Had she pressed him and made demands, he’d have grabbed his breeches, tugged them on, and walked away, even as it would have killed him. Instead, she lay patient, her body opened before him—her meaning clear. She trusted him and asked for that same gift.

  Frantic, Niall glanced around at these chambers befitting a princess. For this wasn’t about trust. It was one thing to give her words of the crimes he’d someday pay penance for at the gates of Hell. It was another to lay proof of his evil before her.

  He warred with himself. The moments ticked by, and then with numb fingers, he grabbed the edges of his shirt. He’d not claim the gift of her innocence until she witnessed him and all his flaws before her. Still unable to meet her gaze, Niall tossed the garment to the floor and waited.

  The mattress gave a slight groan as Diana crawled over to him. She stopped so close that the heat of her body caressed his, and then a soft, broken sigh slipped from her lips. “Oh, Niall,” she whispered, her fingertips going to one of the many scars riddling his skin. He flinched as she trailed her index finger almost lovingly over a jagged, lightning-shaped mark at his side. Then she lingered her touch on those four words above his heart. Kill or be killed. Minutes may have become hour
s as, with an infinite tenderness, she stroked those four marks. She lowered her head.

  “No,” he pleaded, knowing her so well, he knew what she intended.

  Ignoring him, she placed her lips against each scar. As though with that tender caress, she could heal the memories and the nightmares and the marks themselves. But then, mayhap that was the power she possessed, because in her arms he didn’t think about the demons of his past . . . he only thought of her.

  Diana sat up and gave her focus to one single scar, until now neglected by her. This was no mark made by a bullet or blade, but rather a brand. Her lips quivered, and a sheen of tears filled her eyes.

  Once, he would have mocked those drops as signs of her weakness and pushed her away. He’d never been, nor would ever allow himself, to be an object of pity. But in this, with agony fairly bleeding from her blue eyes, his heart throbbed and beat harder from the evidence of her caring.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” he forced himself to say, as she at last brushed her fingertips over the “D” emblazoned forever on his chest. The tattoo left by the man who’d made him kill and served as Niall’s master for the first horrifying ten or so years of his existence.

  “No,” she whispered, raising her eyes from that old wound to his. “But it did at one time, and I expect it hurts even more now, in different ways.” How accurate she was, this woman, unafraid and unashamed to speak of emotion.

  His own screams reverberated around his mind, blending with Diggory’s laugh as he’d touched the scorching flame to Niall’s chest. He struggled to breathe, fighting past the old horrors—

  When Diana placed her mouth on the puckered flesh, that tender caress brought his eyes open.

  “He is gone. Let him go,” she urged. “He will never hurt you again.”

  His body jerked taut. And then the truth of her words slammed into him, robbing him of the air in his lungs. He’d lived his life in fear. It had been there long after he’d escaped Diggory’s clutches. In the walls of the Hell and Sin, Niall had battled back terror that his empire would end and he’d be the same desperate, starving boy in the streets forced to murder to survive. That same fear had been there each time the club had been infiltrated, and all the suppressed nightmares had surged to the surface after the attempt on Penelope’s life. This is why he’d been sent away. It made sense—at last.

  Diana traced her index finger over that long-hated “D.” “Every time you see this mark, do not think of him, think of me.” She raised her eyes to his. “Think of this night in my arms.”

  Groaning, Niall crushed her mouth with his. His manhood throbbed to life against the small of her belly, and he guided her down beneath him. He again found her moist center and stroked her sleek folds until her moans were reverberating in the silent chambers. Her body grew taut, and her movements took on a frenzied, frantic rhythm.

  “Please,” she begged, scraping her fingernails down his back. She parted her legs, and on a hiss, he positioned himself at her center. His shaft throbbed and pulsed as he ached to bury himself swift and deep inside her.

  “Easy,” he whispered, those words for himself as much as they were for her. Then slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he pushed himself through her wet folds, sliding inside her tight sheath. Niall froze, as his manhood pressed against the thin barrier between him and bliss. “Oi don’t want to hurt ya,” he rasped, dropping his brow to hers.

  “You could never hurt me,” she breathed.

  With a groan, he claimed her mouth and pushed past that wall. Her body stiffened, and he swallowed her cry.

  That sound of her pain cut across the maddening blaze of desire clouding his senses, restoring a fleeting control when all he wanted to do was pound hard and fast inside her.

  “I—I was wrong,” Diana said, her eyes tightly clenched. “That did h-hurt.”

  At the slight tremble of her bow-shaped lips and a single tear sliding down her cheek, a wave of tenderness washed through him. “Oi’m so sorry, love,” he whispered against her ear. He trailed a path of kisses from her tender lobe over to her brow. Her cheek and then her lips.

  Their tongues tangled and twisted in a ritual of desire that sent blood rushing to his manhood.

  Diana’s moans gave way to broken, ragged pleas of desire, and he began to move. He drew himself out and then slid forward over and over again. Slow. Giving her time to adjust to the feel and size of him. She wrapped her arms about him and held tight. Then she began to meet his thrusts until they were moving together, conjointly. Diana lifted her hips frantically, meeting his every stroke.

  She stiffened, and her channel clenched about his shaft. Oh, God, he was going to spend.

  “Come for me,” he pleaded, and reached between them to stroke her slick nubbin.

  Diana shattered on a scream, and he followed her over that magnificent precipice, hurtling, hurtling, and then falling as he came inside her in long, rippling waves.

  Gasping for breath, Niall collapsed, catching himself on his elbows to keep from crushing her. Their chests rose and fell together, with their hearts pounding a like maddening beat.

  His passion slaked, reality intruded. Good God, he’d hurt her. Niall drew back, but the sated smile on her lips called back his words.

  “I’ve never felt anything like that,” she murmured, and with her eyes closed, she had the look of the cat who’d swallowed the cream.

  And he, Niall Marksman, a man without even a name, felt himself grinning without any of the trappings of guilt, anger, or fear she’d rightly identified in him. Brushing a kiss over her mouth, Niall rolled sideways and took her against his side.

  There’d be time enough later for all the folly in what had just unfolded, but he’d not shatter this moment with the reality. He stroked his palm down her flat belly, caressing her satiny soft skin. From her birthright to even her body, she was his opposite in every way. But she’d seen more in him than even he saw in himself.

  A faint little snore broke into his gentle musings.

  She slept.

  Reaching down, he shoved the rumpled coverlet out from under them and brought it up over her naked body. Not before he lingered his gaze on her sweetly rounded frame. His shaft throbbed to life, aching to know her once more.

  He swallowed a groan.

  It was time to leave. There would be time to sort through all of this after. But he had to leave, before his presence here was discovered. It was one thing for her to trust him with the gift of her virtue. It was an altogether different one to ruin her reputation among the nobles who’d eagerly cut her again from their fickle fold.

  Reluctantly, Niall swung his legs over the edge of the bed and climbed to his feet. With a little moan, Diana burrowed deeper into the bed, sliding into the spot he’d previously occupied. As he dressed, Niall kept an eye on her. Her small, bleating snores filled the rooms, endearing in ways that he’d only have seen as dangerous before.

  Niall crossed over to her gold vanity and grabbed for his cloak—and froze.

  A small, official-looking scrap of vellum stood bright in the otherwise darkened room.

  Diana’s shuddery snore brought his attention briefly away from that page. Verifying she still slept, he returned his attention to it.

  It wasn’t his place to delve into her personal belongings, and certainly not forgotten letters left on her vanity.

  Nonetheless . . .

  Niall grabbed the page and skimmed.

  My lady . . .

  There have been changes to the agreed upon travel terms set out. His Lady’s Honor will set sail one week earlier, at the original agreed upon time.

  Captain Nathaniel—

  Niall crushed the sheet in his hands. “Wot in ’ell is this?” he hissed.

  Diana sprang up in her bed. The coverlet dipped to her waist, baring her breasts, and if he weren’t filled with a seething fury, the sight of her, a lush siren, would have tempted him from his very thoughts. Squinting, she rubbed at her eyes. “What are you—?” He stalked over, and he
r words trailed off, guiltily. “Oh, that.”

  That is what she’d say. Focusing on that anger that healed him from hurt, Niall hurled the document at her, and it noiselessly floated to a heap on the coverlet. “That is why ya needed a guard for six weeks,” he charged, as all the pieces at last made sense. She’d come to Ryker with specific terms laid out.

  Frowning, Diana grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to her chest. With the other, she recovered her sheet. “You and Ryker assumed it was for the end of the Season. I saw no reason to correct you,” she said, so very matter-of-factly that he reeled.

  Niall stumbled back a step and glanced around, feeling at sea the way he had as a boy picking his first pocket. “You saw no reason to correct me, along the way?” he demanded, when he trusted himself to speak and not shout. All these weeks, she’d slipped inside his heart, called herself his friend—he cringed—and all along she’d been planning to make off for wherever St. George’s was.

  At last the lady had the good grace to flush. She fiddled with the scrap in hand, that damned sheet that marked her time here as nearly complete. “I have not given it much thought since you came into my life, Niall,” she said softly. Rising, she hurried and gathered a wrapper and drew it on over her naked form.

  He dragged a hand through his hair, as her quiet words ripped an empty laugh from him. “Oi’m flattered, love.”

  She winced at the mocking condescension there, but he refused to feel guilty. She’d entered his damned club, upended his world, forced him to enter hers, slipped inside his heart, and all along she’d never had intentions of being here past the beginning of summer. His stomach lurched, and he spun away, unable to look at her. To look at the one person he’d ever trusted and loved, who’d board a ship and sail from his life. This was a loss different from her marrying and remaining in London. This would be a parting that saw them separated by a sea and world.

  The floorboards groaned, and he flushed. He’d failed to hear her approach. She’d robbed him of even his street sense that kept him alive. Diana touched a hesitant hand to his sleeve. “You can come with me?”