The Den of Iniquity

by Anabelle Bryant

  There was nothing gentle about their first kiss, but this one, with Vivienne leading, expressed everything and more without commanding a single thing.

  She angled her mouth over his, threaded her fingers through his hair to lock them together. An erotic noise came from the back of her throat and it sliced free any remaining shred of control. He lowered her to the table with the pressure of his kiss, their bodies aligned, breath uneven. She released her hold on his collar, her arms thrust back in wild discard against the gaming table, her eyes closed as if in the midst of a wanton dream. He broke the kiss. Watched her total surrender. Needed to remember her like this, in full abandon in the middle of his hell, waiting for him.

  Never one to deny something he wanted, and he wanted, he was damn certain after today she wouldn’t return; their meeting was chance, nothing more. He braced his hands on either side of the table and caged her in, all at once conflicted. He wouldn’t take what wasn’t freely offered.

  He leaned in, nuzzled a path of kisses alongside her neck, creamy skin softer than new silk and beyond to her jawline, across her eyelids and cheekbones, settling above her lips.

  ‘I want to taste you, Vivi. Let me kiss you everywhere.’ He captured her lips in a deep open-mouthed kiss that defined his intent.

  ‘Yes.’ With restless agitation, she writhed beneath him. Her sensual response pressed her breasts against his chest. ‘Here?’ She slit her eyes and glanced to her right at their surroundings.

  ‘No.’ He doubted she knew to what she agreed, but his kisses would convince her.

  ‘Where?’

  Her eyes trailed up to his office window so he moved his hand to the juncture between her thighs and cupped her sex with certain pressure. ‘Here.’

  Shocked, she clenched her legs, the involuntary action offering him a tighter hold. She rose to her elbows, her face expressing pure scandal.

  ‘What?’ She seemed dazed by his suggestion.

  He withdrew his hand and stifled a smile. He’d faced all sorts of challenges in his twenty-seven years: pistol shot, tavern brawls, destitution, abandonment and grave disappointment, but Vivienne’s innocent allure would be the death of him.

  Vivienne worked to recover from Max’s stimulating suggestion. Kiss her there? She hardly knew her body there, somewhat curious but likewise embarrassed to look too thoroughly when she bathed, modesty high on her list of feminine propriety. Yet when she’d clenched her thighs and caught his fingers tight, an invigorating and pleasurable wave of sensation washed through her. The enthralling feeling left her with a tingly awareness of being alive. How she yearned to feel again and abandon sorrow.

  She’d little history with kisses, never mind those given under clothing. Such a kiss would be wicked and sinful, but oh the pleasure to be wrought. Not that she would allow it. But the thought of it, that he would put his mouth there, her most intimate place, and kiss her with his tongue the same way he’d claimed her mouth…at her most intimate place. The scandalous idea would not relent and instead of diminishing, gained strength in her inner argument, as if it demanded consideration.

  ‘Let me give you pleasure, Vivi.’ His voice had gained a husky overtone.

  He was a devil who could divine her thoughts. His alluring whisper, intense darker than black eyes, destroyed any feeble objection. She would allow a single touch, nothing more, for no other reason than to satisfy her intrigue. It would be a secret between them. A confidence well kept.

  Her face grew hot, decision made. Curiosity won out. Besides she was so wet and sensitive from his deep delicious kisses, it seemed the natural thing to do. She searched his face for some sign of expectation, prepared to confess the truth. ‘No one has touched me there ever.’

  He growled a low noise of approval and bowed over her, a half-grin playing on his mouth as she eased back to the felt-covered table. His lips hovered near hers with tantalizing hesitation.

  ‘I’m ready. You may touch me…once.’ She granted consent in a whisper but it didn’t appear he listened. Had she aligned herself with a scoundrel? Acted too recklessly? Too rashly? She discarded the idea, convinced nothing she’d done was as dangerous as the heated look in Maxwell Sinclair’s eyes.

  ‘Come with me.’ He smiled, aware Vivienne would not realize the double entendre, and laced his fingers in hers. With a gentle tug he brought her to her feet, extending his arm so she’d keep pace as he moved across the room to the stairwell leading up to his office.

  He imagined her mind spun though she hadn’t said another word. His thoughts alternated between intensified anticipation and primitive craving, the desire to explore her body a potent demand in his blood.

  He locked the door behind them and eyed the sparse furnishings within his office. The desk littered with ledgers and piles of paper would not serve their purpose. The leather upholstered couch against the far wall would have sufficed if it didn’t immediately evoke images of his partners reposed in conversation. He huffed an impatient breath and turned to see Vivienne leaned against the thick velvet curtains shielding his office from the world downstairs.

  Perfect.

  In two strides he eliminated the space between them, his kiss crushing her to the drapery. She twined her arms around his neck for stability or to lock him closer, he didn’t know. Didn’t care. Somehow this slip of a woman intoxicated him, floral perfume and pure heart combined with ebony tresses and brilliant green eyes to beguile. There was no other explanation.

  He furled her gown with slow dedication. His fingers inched and gathered the skirt higher, while their kiss deepened. Breaking away with a heavy exhalation, he angled his mouth for another kiss, yet at the last moment he stalled. Her eyes were closed, black lashes crushed to pinkened cheeks, and he coveted the image. What would she look like in the throes of climax, her glorious hair fanned across his bed pillows in a wild tangle?

  He held her against the thick drapes, near overcome when he first touched her lace stockings. She quivered as he traced a line across the edge, one delicious stroke, so he did it again knowing it a dangerous game, his composure as fragile as hers. The third time he dipped his fingertip below the banded silk and skimmed where he wasn’t meant to touch, claiming her with intoxicating possession.

  His mind reeled with a thousand erotic suggestions of how he meant to have her. How could he, a man accustomed to tawdry women in brief jaded encounters, unaffected in matters of tender emotion, become taken by a woman of no experience? Her soft flesh beneath his fingertips wrought sensation as if his first time. One single breathless kiss erased his memory of any other kiss before. The blood poured to his groin. His muscles tensed and his cock strained for release, hard and persistent.

  This way lies danger.

  He’d lose himself as much as she. He had no use for the complicated tangle of emotions caused by poor logic and impulsive decision.

  He smoothed across trembling skin to the apex of her thighs in an act of sublime torture. Pressing a boot to the inside of her slipper, he eased her legs apart, the soft velvet at her back in support. They no longer kissed. Somehow she’d buried her cheek against his shoulder, her eyes closed as if she dreamed. She’d granted him one single stroke…if it didn’t break him, he’d wait for her to request for another.

  He touched a finger to the lace-trimmed slit of her pantalettes and she made the slightest sound, evidence of taut patience. He withheld another beat, determined to make her crave his attention as much as he suffered, until with deliberate finesse he stroked over her centre. She was hot, incredibly hot and wet, and he all at once wanted to drop to his knees, find her with his mouth and taste her sweet slick centre.

  Still he waited.

  One stroke.

  Deliberate. Achingly slow.

  He’d die if she didn’t ask for more.

  She gasped and whimpered; a muffled sound against his shirt, shifting so her weight bore on him, her heat so close a tremble would bring him to her flesh, his finger deliciously sli
ck.

  ‘Again.’

  He almost missed her plea, lost in the demanding thrum of his pulse. And, too, his body poised with an acute sensitivity to her every sensual nuance. He inhaled. Her scent filled him as he slid his finger against soft flesh. This time she shuddered, lost to the pleasure. Fighting the urge to plunge into her wet heat, he tipped her chin upward and captured her lips in a deep open-mouth embrace before he surrendered to undeniable temptation.

  She was everything at once: tight, hot, wet. If only she could see herself—the most erotic fantasy. She tightened around him. Perfectly. He eased out, rubbing against sensitive folds before he again slid into her sex. On some imperceptible level, he’d known before he’d ever touched her, Vivienne would pierce his world like an arrow through the heart. She’d create and destroy at the very same time.

  She moved now with his subtle rhythm, her forehead pressed to his shoulder, her hips angled against his hand and when she succumbed to pure pleasure with a sharp breath and boneless tremble, her thighs quivered against the back of his hand, his own body ignoring the desperate command to wait.

  He embraced her tight to the wall of his chest, no longer forced to manage multiple skirts and inconvenient layers, immobile and secure as she found completion with him.

  Bloody hell, what she did to him. What could she do in the future? The lady was dangerous indeed. He rarely felt threatened but it was the only label he could assign the uncomfortable emotion demanding his attention.

  They reassembled in silence shortly after, Vivienne’s wide-eyed stare confirmation she’d never experienced such pleasure and despite realizing that his most frequent decisions had proven poor, he would never regret this shared intimacy, her expression of awe and gratification too indelible.

  They moved down the hall towards the front of the house in silence. Did she feel the impact of their moment the same way as he? It didn’t matter. It would never happen again.

  He unlocked the door, reluctant and at the same time driven to see her out of his home. He couldn’t think straight.

  ‘I never realized…’ Her cheeks coloured or perhaps the shy sunlight caused her to appear embarrassed where they stood on the front steps. ‘What you did to me.’

  ‘I kept my word. I gave you pleasure.’ He was anxious to set her into a hackney. No good would come from her being recognized. Another reminder of their different stations in life. At the same time, he lingered, hesitating another minute so he might keep her company that much longer.

  ‘So now you’ve explored my hell. Is your curiosity sated?’ He strove for a deceptive cheerful tone, then gave a sharp whistle to summon a nearby hack.

  ‘Hardly.’ She met his avid stare with an emerald twinkle in her eyes. ‘I haven’t collected my winnings.’

  Was she flirting? She couldn’t be. Who was this newborn unabashed vixen? ‘So now you hold my vowels.’ He chuckled after he paid and directed the driver. ‘And I am never in debt.’ He said the latter with inflection, aware this time she understood his reference, pleased when her cheeks went crimson.

  Sin locked the hell as usual and began his walk home a little after half four. Ransom kept pace at his feet, a loyal companion. No matter that he’d concentrated on everything but, he couldn’t clear the remembrance of Vivienne from his mind. Once she’d left he’d thrown himself into ledgers and accounts, refusing to allow the image of her face to haunt him, yet it proved of little use. She stayed with him, the heat of her kiss, scent on his clothes.

  He hadn’t seen an inch of creamy skin under all those skirts, still somehow a vivid image formed. Her pantalettes were fine silk, lace-trimmed. He would have bet everything on that gamble and won. She lived in the rarefied world of the privileged social elite, a place where he didn’t belong and never wished to enter. Nevertheless, in a jejune dichotomy his thinking somehow divided into two segments: before and after Vivienne. It made little sense. He possessed a past that demanded attention and a future fated for revenge.

  Exhausted from a night of business and hell-keeping, his hollow steps echoed in the lonely quietude of the streets. Bed would be a blessing. One he didn’t deserve. Ransom interrupted the dour conclusion with a low menacing growl. They’d crossed Arlington Street and were but two blocks from his rooms. No one was about, the hour ungodly. Not even the rat-catchers kept his schedule and he preferred it that way.

  ‘Settle.’ He stated the low command though he scanned the area with renewed perception.

  Ransom stopped walking, his teeth bared in an aggressive snarl.

  ‘You’re as tired and out of sorts as I am, old boy—’

  But he never finished the insult as a hulking silhouette rose from behind a nearby stoop and took an intimidating stand directly in their path. Dressed all in black with a hat pulled low, his face was hardly decipherable, not that there was time for any such nonsense. Ransom launched at the intruder without pause. The man wielded a stout cudgel in his gloved hand and with a precisely aimed strike, struck the wolfhound who fell to the pavement, dazed.

  ‘Always with that cursed animal.’ The stranger dropped the club, the glint of daybreak keen on the long blade he now held in his right hand. He grabbed the back of Ransom’s head, the edge of the knife positioned against the dog’s neck. ‘This time you’ll wish you weren’t.’

  Sin’s fingers curled into fists, anxious to lunge at the man and free Ransom though his choices were few if he were to avoid causing the animal further harm. Still the realization he’d been watched, his habits noted, prodded he discover as much as possible. ‘What do you want?’ He didn’t know what Pimms looked like, wanting to kill the man for his role in the harsh misery of the past but never having made his acquaintance, otherwise the man would be dead for the deeds he’d committed. Reprehensible, unforgivable deeds.

  To have Pimms so close now and not take him down provided a bitter slap. At least he knew the man existed and better yet, remained in London.

  ‘Stop asking questions. Leave well enough alone.’ The lurking intruder pushed Ransom aground and bolted into a nearby alley. His footsteps echoed a hollow mocking rhythm as he ran away.

  Sin knelt beside the hound, at once examining the welt bleeding between the dog’s ears. He gathered his loyal companion against his chest with a gentleness one would never attribute to his stature and made for home, a swarm of questions and plans circling his brain.

  Chapter Eleven

  Vivienne entered the house and arrowed for the stairs. Her heart pounded and no matter how stridently she urged herself to consider something different, she only thought of Sin’s wicked touch. It was as though he’d drenched her in carnal sensitivity and tempting desire and now, by having experienced it, she was forever affected. One touch and she could think of nothing aside from how to see him again, kiss him again, and experience more—the word seizing her brain with possessive repetition. More. She wanted more.

  And the scandalous insinuation he’d put his mouth there. Like a poker heated in the fire, that singular suggestion burned through all others. How could one man possess such duality to compose both glorious nightmare and wicked dream?

  In want of absolute quiet and the opportunity to sort her feelings, she kept her chin down, concentrating on the emerald-green vinery border of the hallway runner like a lifeline leading to her bedchambers.

  ‘Vivienne.’ Lord Huntley dissected her path and were it not for her quick reaction they would have collided.

  ‘Stepfather.’ She moved back in surprise. ‘Excuse me. I wasn’t paying heed.’

  ‘You’ve returned.’ He offered her a kind smile. ‘Is everything all right? You appear upset or mayhap distracted would be a better explanation. Does something trouble you?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ She searched his face in hope she could understand. Their relationship was abstruse at the best of times. She couldn’t fathom a guess as to her stepfather’s considerations and attempted a carefree expression to avoid further inquiries. ‘Deep
in thought and not minding my way, that’s what I was doing.’

  ‘You should call me Ellis, now that it’s just the two of us here at Nettlecombe.’ He turned in step towards her rooms.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t feel comfortable.’ What an odd request! It went against all propriety for her to call him by his given name however brief his role as stepfather. A familiar unease crept down her spine, erasing all previous happiness. Eager to end the encounter she offered a solution. ‘Would you prefer I address you by title?’ She’d much rather call him Lord Huntley than add to the awkwardness that swamped their every encounter.

  ‘Come this way. I have a surprise to please you.’ He stepped towards the left corridor.

  She couldn’t refuse though she’d have liked to. It seemed whenever they conversed he was taking her somewhere, showing her something. Was it all a ruse to prolong their company together? Was he in need of companionship? Vivienne hemmed her lower lip, stricken by her selfish behaviour so unlike her mother’s generous spirit. He had lost his wife only months after they’d wed. How dare she cast stones at his manner of resolving this sudden unfair change in life? Much as she’d anticipated her mother’s guidance through life, he’d foreseen a different, more content future.

  Abashed, she followed in silence and stopped at his elbow where he gazed at her mother’s portrait, the one she’d remarked upon in the gallery two weeks prior.

  ‘You’ve had the painting moved.’ Relief washed through her. Perhaps her restive mood and faltering confidence were due to her own adjustment. She likely read into every word and movement with more attention than warranted. The house stood quiet often and with her mother’s long illness and subsequent death, she hadn’t grown to know her stepfather as she might have if circumstances differed. She’d only completed this thought when he reached for her hand to enfold in his.