by Mia Marlowe
This is so wrong.
Her body shouldn’t be responding to him. Not after what she’d Seen.
But that didn’t stop the low drumbeat from starting between her legs. The ache roared to life, empty and insistent. She arched into him. If he lifted her skirt and tried to take her right there, she hadn’t the will to stop him.
“Who goes there?” A voice came from the far end of the corridor.
When Quinn pulled back, Viola peered over his shoulder and saw an embassy guard approaching them.
“Sorry to have bothered you, old chap,” Quinn said with a sheepish grin. “My wife and I were looking for a bit of privacy. We haven’t been married long, you see.”
The guard swept a quick gaze over Viola and winked at Quinn. “I quite understand, sir. Might I suggest the blue room at the far end of this hall? There’s a balcony there.”
“Much obliged,” Quinn took Viola’s hand and turned to go. “Oh! You might want to form up a detail to assist Lady Wimbly from the ballroom. She was fair done in when we left her. I don’t think she’ll be able to make the stairs. Her husband and the ambassador went to school together, you know. They’re great friends to this day, aren’t they, dear?”
“Utterly devoted friends,” Viola agreed.
“I see,” the guard said, quick to grasp an opportunity to ingratiate himself with his employer by providing a thoughtful service for his bosom friend. “Thank you, sir. I’ll see to it immediately.”
Quinn and Viola continued toward the blue room till the click of the guard’s heels faded up the stairwell. Then they turned and dashed back down the long hall toward the unguarded ambassador’s office.
And its unguarded safe.
CHAPTER 16
“How’s it coming?” Quinn whispered from his post at the crack in the ambassador’s door.
“The same as when you asked half a minute ago. For pity’s sake, Quinn, shut it. I can’t think.”
Viola stood with her ear to the tumbler, her left glove stripped off, the better to turn the rotating part with precision. Eyes closed, body tense, breasts rising and falling with carefully measured breaths, she was the picture of concentration.
And the picture of swiveable femininity.
Quinn’s cock still hadn’t settled after that kiss in the hallway. She’d kissed him back! She’d melted against him. He even thought he scented the sweet whiff of her arousal.
But was she only acting? Had she kissed him so soundly merely to throw off the guard?
Viola was a contradiction with feet. Cold or hot, vulnerable or strong-willed, he never knew which side she’d present to him. She was as many faceted as the gem they sought.
How many Violas were there?
Once they had the diamond, he vowed to take the time to find out.
A loud click broke the room’s silence.
“There,” she said softly. She turned the handle and opened the wall vault.
Quinn left his post as lookout and hurried to her side. There were several tall stacks of various types of bundled currency—pounds, francs, and lira. If they’d been after cash, it would have been a burglar’s motherlode. Files in sealed folders were stacked on the bottom shelf, the state secrets of a dozen potentates, no doubt. If blackmail was their game, the vault contained a treasure trove of embarrassing possibilities.
So many paths to wealth, so little time.
But fast ill-gotten wealth wasn’t Quinn’s aim. His gaze fell on a leather bag. A diplomatic pouch.
He lifted it from the safe and opened it. There was only a small box inside. He started to reach in for it, but Viola stopped him.
“Wait. If Sanjay is right and the diamond is dangerous, I’m the one wearing the protection.”
He didn’t believe all that Eastern mumbo-jumbo for an instant, but the earnest expression on her face told him she did. If it would make her happy, he’d humor her. He nodded, but watched her with the intensity of a hawk on a vole. If she was going to pocket the stone or make a switch, now was when she’d try to do it.
She drew out the jewel box and opened it for them to see. A red gem sparkled in the gas light. Quinn smiled, but Viola answered him with a frown.
“This isn’t the right gem.”
“It’s red. It’s the right size. Are you telling me it’s paste?”
“No, it’s a precious stone, but I don’t think it’s a diamond.” She picked it up with her gloved hand, the one bedecked with Sanjay’s silver and jet, and cocked her head as if listening intently. “The resonance is off.”
“What?” Could she somehow hear the jewel? In the silence that followed, he heard nothing but their soft breathing and the blood rushing through his ears.
Viola shook her head and transferred the stone to the palm of her bare hand. Her whole body suddenly stiffened.
“Here you are, Mr. Penobscot,” a round man with a fierce set of muttonchop whiskers said to the courier. “Bear this ruby to London using the Paris route. Guard it well. You will have a security detail traveling with you at all times. The more convincing you are about its supposed nature, the safer the real diamond will be.”
Viola watched the scene unfold beneath her as if she were a spider on the ceiling. She recognized the stone being handed to Mr. Penobscot. It was the same one she now held in her palm.
“And you, Mr. Chesterton,” said Mutton-Chops, “your papers show you to be a returning man of business and not a very prosperous one at that. Your security will be in the appearance of poverty.”
Chesterton was a small man, not much taller than Viola herself, with a balding spot on the top of his head no amount of creative combing would cover.
“Your route is through Hanover, Mr. Chesterton. Prince Albert’s people will be expecting you. Wait there until an armed contingent arrives to escort you the rest of the way. The closer you come to the queen’s collection, the more vulnerable you will be.”
Another stone changed hands.
A presence unrelated to the men below her crowded Viola’s mind. It was a dark, creeping malevolence, accompanied by a single low tone, so deep it made her chest vibrate. An invisible claw dragged across her spine. Menace emanated from the stone itself, but none of the men seemed aware of it. Panic flooded Viola’s mind when she glimpsed the jewel glittering like a bloody eye in Mr. Chesterton’s gloved palm.
Could the stone feel her watching it?
Was it watching her?
As if in answer, it turned its evil energy toward her and all the breath exploded from her lungs.
Viola yanked the ruby from her bare palm with her protected hand. Gasping, she blinked up at Quinn. She was still on her feet, waiting for the sick headache to smack the base of her skull.
The blow didn’t come.
Sanjay’s jet and silver must have offered her some protection, after all. She could almost kiss the Indian prince.
“Viola, what do you mean the resonance is off?”
The way Quinn asked the question assured her he hadn’t noticed that anything unusual had happened. The vision must have lasted only a blink. Her secret might still be safe from him.
“I just meant this is not a red diamond,” she said with conviction. “It’s a ruby. A very precious one at that, but it’s not the stone you’re looking for.”
She secreted the ruby in the small space where the stiff busk slid into the front of her corset, but Quinn’s fingers went in after it. Her nipples tingled at his nearness, but he wasn’t in pursuit of her charms.
“No, you don’t, my Lady Light-Fingers.” He came up with the stone, popped it back into its velvet setting and stowed the box in the diplomatic pouch. “We’re not stealing anything but what we came for.”
“But Quinn, a ruby that size is worth a great deal—not as much as a red diamond, of course, but still . . .”
“We’re not simple thieves.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Speak for yourself.”
He put the pouch back in the safe and closed it. The click o
f the latch sounded unnaturally loud. And was followed by the sound of heels on the marble hallway floor.
“Someone’s coming!” she hissed.
“We’re going to be caught,” Quinn said calmly as he turned down the gas lamp. “There’s no place to hide here, but I have an idea. Do you trust me?”
“When did you give me a choice?”
He took her hand and pulled her behind the ambassador’s desk. Then he pushed her forward so her upper body was resting on the elegant burled walnut. Quinn pulled up her hem, and yards of her gown and petticoats layered over her back.
“Quinn!”
“We’re going to be caught in any case.” He leaned over her and whispered in her ear, “We may as well be caught doing something that explains our presence here and will knock any suspicion of burglary from the guard’s mind—Why, Viola!”
She heard a wicked smile in his voice.
“You’re not wearing any drawers.”
“I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I tell you they spoil the line of the gown. If it’s good enough for you and Brummel, it’s good enough for me.” In truth, she simply loved the naughty sense of freedom going without them gave her.
She bit her lip as his hands smoothed over her bare bum and reached between her legs to tease the small hairs covering her sex. Moist warmth eased out of her. When he ran a finger along the length of her cleft, he found her wet and ready.
“Good,” he said as she felt him fumble with the front of his trousers. Then his engorged tip pressed against the soft welcome of her sex. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Too late.
He wouldn’t hurt her physically, but she was bound to be hurt in every other way that counted. Everything was such a muddle—the tatters her reputation would be in once she returned home, the vision of the horrific events at that lake, the phantom red diamond’s evil eye boring through her—it was all too much. She couldn’t think.
She could only feel.
Despite everything, joining her body to Quinn’s was the only touchstone of sanity in her lunatic world.
She tilted her pelvis and he slid his hard cock into her with the rightness of a homecoming.
Quinn murmured a soft cursing endearment and withdrew to ram into her again and again. His ballocks slapped against her thighs.
God, yes. Punish me. If you’re gentle, I’ll think too much and I need not to think.
“Harder,” she said through clenched teeth. She gripped the far edge of the ambassador’s desk. “For God’s sake, harder.”
Quinn shuddered into her again, filling her, stoking her sensitive spots, both her sickness and her cure.
Her insides coiled, tensed for release.
She didn’t even hear the door creak when the guard opened it. The extra light from his lantern made her raise her head, but her eyes were passion-blind.
Quinn stopped mid-stroke.
A sob escaped her throat. Only a little longer. One stroke more would have sent her over the edge.
The door partially closed and the guard’s voice curled around it, tentative and apologetic. “Beggin’ your pardon, milord, but you and the lady can’t be in there.”
“Give us a moment,” Quinn said, his voice ragged. He withdrew from her, pulled down her skirts, and buttoned his pants. She was boneless when he raised her from the desktop to stand upright.
“Quinn.” His name shuddered out of her, equal parts prayer and curse. He’d used her passionate nature as a distraction for larceny. “I hate you for this.”
“Hate me later,” he whispered. “Now we need to get out of here.”
Viola’s whole body thrummed with need and frustration. She leaned on Quinn’s chest and somehow her legs carried her along as he led her around the desk and out the door, keeping her on the side of him most sheltered from the guard—a different one from before.
“No one’s in the library, your lordship,” the guard said helpfully. “Third door on the right.”
Quinn mumbled his thanks and a coin flipped between him and the guard, sparkling for an instant in the lamplight before disappearing into the man’s pocket.
As they neared the third door, aching need overwhelmed her and she reached up and pulled his head down to kiss him. She drew all the breath from his lungs in a surprised rush.
He gasped when she released his lips. “I thought you hate me.”
“I do.” She cupped his genitals. “I hate you very much.”
His mouth descended on hers for another bruising kiss.
She’d thought him so unaffected in the ambassador’s office, so resolute to pull out of her as if it were nothing, but clearly she’d been wrong. He was shaking with need. They turned together, a stylized dance of lust, barely clearing the library door.
Quinn kicked it shut behind them.
He picked her up and carried her toward the big library table. He set her down and pushed aside the books stacked on either side of her hips in two long sweeps. Spines cracking, they tumbled to the floor, pounding one after the other in a rumble like thunder.
“Careful,” she warned, “you’ll bring the guard down on us again.”
“I suspect he’s too busy checking the ambassador’s office, making sure nothing’s amiss there.” He bent and reached under her skirts, running his palms up her legs all the way to the apex of her thighs.
Viola leaned back on her elbows and let her head loll as he caressed her needy flesh. The ache was building again fast. When he brushed his thumbs over her most sensitive spot, she cried out, so near release, but not yet at that place of unraveling madness.
“That’s it,” he encouraged as he unfastened his trousers again and teased her cleft with the tip of him. “Sing for me, love.”
He drove himself into her and she hooked her heels around his waist.
Love, he’d said.
No, she wouldn’t think about that. She’d think of this carnal adventure as a man would. It was only a wet, hot joining. A good hard swive.
Quinn feathered his fingertips over her face. She caught two of them in her mouth and sucked. He slid his other hand between their bodies and rubbed her little spot in time with her suckles. When she sucked harder, he stroked harder. If she went faster, he did too.
She was in control and feeling positively wicked. It was as if she were touching herself and could end her torment at any time with the right speed and pressure.
She opened her eyes and met Quinn’s gaze. No, it was only the illusion of control. He watched her intently, feeding on her need, turning it any way that suited him.
And it suited him to drive her to completion. Her insides tightened, coiled in on themselves. Her breath came in shallow pants. He arched into her and thumbed her spot in a maddening slow circle.
She flew off in a dozen directions at once, losing control of her limbs as her inner walls contracted around the hard length of him. Someone was speaking in other tongues, the garbled language of lust. The voice sounded like hers. She collapsed back on the table, not sure when or if she’d regain control of her body.
Or if she even wanted to.
Once her pumping subsided, his began.
He came inside her in strong, hot pulses. A throaty growl escaped him as he emptied himself into her. When he was finished, he laid his head down between her breasts, his spent breath streaming hotly over the mounds revealed above her bodice.
So much for using a French letter, she thought absently as her body answered his with a few more gentle spasms, a primal attempt to ease the last bit of his essence into her.
She almost didn’t care that she’d risked pregnancy once again. Well-being flooded her body. She ran her hand over Quinn’s dark head, ruffling his hair and running her fingertip around the shell of his ear.
“Viola,” he gasped, still out of breath from his exertions, “if I ask nicely, will you hate me again sometime?”
“It’s a distinct possibility.”
“Then I’ll live in eager expectation.” He rai
sed himself up slightly to look at her, a wicked grin on his face. “Well, Lady Ashford, we’ve had quite an evening. Perhaps we should be saying our good-byes to the ambassador and heading back to our hotel suite. Should you feel hateful again, no doubt you’d prefer a bed.”
She arched a brow at him. He sounded so calm, so collected. “You knew the evening would end like this, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.” He straightened and refastened his trousers. “But you can’t blame a fellow for hoping.”
CHAPTER 17
“We discussed this possibility before we left Bombay, sahib. You feared there might be a decoy. But if the real Baaghh kaa kkhuun is not in Paris,” Sanjay asked, “then where can it be?”
“Anywhere,” Quinn answered with a grim frown.
“I don’t know about that,” Viola said as she unfastened the jet and silver jewelry and returned it to Sanjay with a smile of thanks. It was wonderful to have used her gift for an extended vision without the accompanying blinding headache. She had no idea why the wristlet seemed to work. The silver kept the black stones from touching her skin directly. Perhaps the jet absorbed the psychic emanations of other gems as black cloth absorbs light. She wondered if any silver and jet jewelry would do the trick or if Sanjay’s set had particular properties. “There are a limited number of travel routes from India the diamond might take. What are they?”
It was a measure of his faith in her ability to identify gemstones that Quinn hadn’t questioned the fact that the jewel in the ambassador’s office was not the diamond he sought.
She resisted telling Quinn about her new vision and certainly wouldn’t divulge the one she’d received from his signet ring. She didn’t feel it was safe to tell him about that part of her gift. Not until she knew what had really happened to his brother.
What she’d Seen varied enough from Lord Wimbly’s account to raise questions in her mind. She was cautiously hopeful her version of Reginald Quinn’s drowning wasn’t as accurate as it seemed.