“Close the door behind you,” she called after them.
A moment later, the soft click filled the quiet.
Standing several paces away from this man whom she now found herself bound to, his face a study in harsh annoyance, she snapped. “I understand you did not wish to wed me, Ryker,” she said, taking a step toward him. Her husband narrowed his dark blue eyes but said nothing, which only fueled her frustration. “I understand you have no desire to be tied to a lady of the ton, just as I have no doubt you have very important matters of business to attend.” It was of course silly to be annoyed. Why should he wish to marry her, a complete stranger? “However, you did marry me.” With every utterance, her tenor increased in pitch and fueled her forward march. “My mother, with my sister-in-law, prepared a wedding breakfast.” When presented with the possibility of knocking into the tall, towering brute, she came to a jarring stop. “And the very least you can do is sit and attend the bloody affair, for however many hours it—”
He covered her lips in a hard, powerful kiss that sucked the breath from her lungs. She stilled. Her first kiss. In all her imaginings of what that would be, it had been a chaste peck on the lips with more whispered words of endearment than anything else. Never had she dreamed of this scorching conflagration that threatened to set her ablaze. With a whimper, she twined her fingers about his neck and pressed herself against the hard wall of his chest.
He slanted his mouth over hers again and again, and she moaned. Ryker delved his tongue between her parted lips and stroked hers. The fire spread, as heat pooled at her center. With his tongue he tasted her. Explored her. Made love to her mouth in a way that was scandalous and wanton, and yet with every stroke her body burned for more.
Pressing herself against him, Penelope found herself frantically wanting . . . something. He tasted of brandy, which on him was vastly different from the spirits she’d imbibed but once as a girl. On his breath, it was heady and intoxicating, and liquefying. Her legs weakened as a moan spilled from her. Easily capturing her, Ryker swallowed the throaty sound of her desire. He drew back, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out at the sudden ache left in his absence, but he merely dragged his lips down the curve of her neck, nipping and sucking the flesh. A whole new tide of desire ebbed inside.
A wedding breakfast and a roomful of guests awaited, but if she stepped away from Ryker’s powerful arms, she’d be forever cold.
Then Ryker cupped his large hands under the swell of her buttocks. Heat scorched through the fabric of her gown, as he dragged her between the vee of his thighs. His shaft, thick and hard, prodded her belly. She moaned, as he gyrated against her, allowing her to feel his masculinity. He was wicked. And this was surely shameful. And yet how very right it felt. Penelope lifted her mouth for another one of his drugging kisses, and he obliged, plunging his tongue deep once more. She boldly met his thrusts and parries as their hips worked feverishly against each other, mimicking that frantic movement.
She wanted something more . . . she knew not what, only that the key to her relief throbbed at her aching center. And no one but Ryker could help her achieve it.
Then he pulled his mouth away, and an agonized plea burst from her lips. Her chest rose and fell hard with the force of her rapid breaths. She closed her eyes. Never. Never in the course of her eighteen, nearly nineteen, years had she felt anything remotely near the pleasure-pain bliss of being in his arms.
How could this man have stirred her body to such glorious perfection? It had been magical. It had been wondrous. She wanted it to resume, and go on forever, never ending . . . She wanted . . .
“We are leaving.” Ryker’s harsh, gravelly whisper had the same effect as if he’d doused her with a bucket of Thames water. He stepped out of her arms, leaving in its place a coldness where she’d previously been afire.
And just like that the world came to a screeching, jarring halt, landing her back in reality.
We are leaving . . . ? That is what he’d say? Not, I’ve never before felt anything like what I felt in your arms? Not, if I do not lose myself in your kiss again, I will be lost. Rather, we are leaving?
She blinked wildly. “Beg pardon?”
I kissed her.
Originally, he’d covered Penelope’s mouth with his to simply silence the endless flow of words on her lips. But the moment their flesh had touched, something had jerked to life, killing all practical reasons to silence her . . . and leaving him hungry to know every crevice of her lithe body.
Not only had he kissed her, he’d done so with a savagery better fitting a doxy in the Dials or one of the whores in his club than a proper, sheltered English lady. Or previously sheltered. Binding herself to a man such as himself would ultimately kill all hint of innocence. Even if the lady herself didn’t realize it.
Where lust had once blazed through Ryker, in its place was now nothing but a rapidly growing horror. He had even less place in his life for a woman whose mouth he wanted to again lay claim to.
“I beg your pardon?”
If he wasn’t still fighting for a grasp on his bloody out-of-control desire for this lady, he’d have found a healthy shock in her tartly spoken question. As it was, if he did not leave this townhouse now, he feared he’d only descend into further madness.
“Did you say we are leaving?”
God, she was tenacious. With her pluck mayhap she would have done well on the streets after all. Which only roused images of her taking on the likes of Killoran’s men. He growled, balling his hands into fists.
“Did you just growl at me?”
“I said we are leaving,” he said, ignoring the latter question. “Oi’ve business to attend and—”
“Do not do that,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
He cocked his head.
“Use those tones to simply gain the upper hand in a discussion. I’m not frightened by your accent . . .” She paused. “It is just an accent.”
And those handful of words spoke to the level of this woman’s naïveté. What she failed to understand was that a man born to the Dials never truly left it. And the crimes committed in those streets would never be forgiven. Not at the end when he paid his dues to the devil, and not by the men whom he’d fought on his rise to power. It was a healthy reminder. For even as he might have had a maddening moment in which he’d lusted for her . . . she did not belong to his world. She may be his wife in name, but she would never be anything more than that—ever.
“You can stand there in stony silence all you wish, but I—I am not leaving.” That faint tremble spoke to the mere facade she’d put on for his effort. “We are not leaving,” she added.
Ryker closed the space between them with such speed that he wrung a gasp from her. “You would give me orders?”
Even Helena and his brothers had known you didn’t put demands to him.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly. Was it desire? Fear? He scoffed. Of course it was fear.
But then . . .
“I am not afraid of you, Ryker.” Everyone feared him. “Even though I suspect you’d very much like that.” She squared her shoulders. “And regardless of what you intend to do, I am joining my family. I’d very much like you to come with me to the . . .” She grimaced. “Celebration.”
The celebration? At least they were of like opinion on the farce of it all. “But if you do not because you have important business that cannot wait another two hours then you are free to leave. I’ll have my brother’s carriage bring me to your . . . our townhouse.” He didn’t want a wife. Certainly not one of the peerage, but the lady had spirit, and that he appreciated. His fiery bride made to leave, and Ryker shot a hand out, circling her delicate flesh in his larger hand.
Penelope’s eyes flared and flew to his grip upon her person. Fear spilled from their blue depths. So for all her bravery, it was all show. The lady was scared of him. Smart girl. “Is that what you believe? That we’ll live in some Mayfair or Grosvenor Square stucco mansion?”
She darted he
r tongue over her lips, bringing his hungry gaze to that slight, but seductive movement. “W-won’t we?”
Her befuddled tone drew him back from the path of desirous musings. “Won’t we, what?” he snapped, frustration with his body’s awareness to her mounting. With her narrow hips and pert breasts she could not be more different from every other woman he’d taken to his bed. Yet he wanted this one with a ferocity that rivaled any sentiments he’d felt for all those others combined.
“Live in a townhouse,” she elucidated. “You asked whether that is what I believed and—”
“I live at my club.” And as such, for her safety, that is where she would now live. Whether either of them wished it or not . . .
She slapped fingers to her lips, and he braced for the display of waterworks and ladylike protestations. “Live inside the gaming hell?” her words emerged on an awed whisper. “Oh, that will be splendid,” she said with a widening smile, as she let her hand fall to her side. “I’ve always longed to visit one. When I was a girl, Prudence, Poppy, and I plotted ways to enter a gentleman’s club. I’d abandoned all hope of ever actually seeing one.”
Ryker jammed his fingertips into his temples and rubbed. She was going to give him a bloody headache.
She wrinkled her nose. “Though technically I did see the outside of one.” She paused. “And your office. I saw the inside of your office when one of your servants dragged me to your rooms.” Penelope gave a little wave. “Regardless, I shall meet you shortly at our club.” Our club? Had the lady just laid siege to ownership of his empire? He growled.
With a flounce of her tightly coiled black curls, she marched to the door.
“Penelope,” he said crisply. Regardless of her flawed assumptions, his wife would never saunter through the streets of St. Giles. Her protection fell to him.
She shot an innocent glance over her shoulder. “Ryker?” He’d never been that unsullied. Not even the moment he’d entered the world a squalling babe, ripped from his mother’s arms and turned over to the ruthless Diggory. “I’ll go to the bloody breakfast.”
A wide smile dimpled her cheeks. “Splendid.” She held an arm out as though he were any lord in London and not one of the most ruthless leaders of the gaming-hell world. “Shall we?”
With quick steps, he ate away the distance between them and awkwardly tucked her fingers onto his sleeve. The gesture unnatural. The movements awkward. He was a guttersnipe playing at prince.
He’d seen too many whores in the street and the floors of his club don a false grin only to seduce a man’s purse from his person. What did this lady want? They started down the hall, their footsteps muted by the carpet lining the floor. “What do you have to smile about?” he asked in a bid to get an understanding of the woman he’d married.
She looked quizzically up at him.
“You married a man you’re barely acquaintanced with. A gaming-hell owner your family doesn’t approve of.” With good reason. “What do you have to smile for?”
Penelope’s steps faltered, and he was forced to either keep walking and drag her down or stop. He stopped. Her keen blue gaze worked over his face, lingering on the crescent scar at the corner of his eye. In a knife fight that had almost cost him his eye. “What should I do?” she returned softly. “Should I cry and cower and bemoan my fate? Or should I try to make something of nothing?”
Make something of nothing . . .
Those words resonated with an eerie chord that struck deep. He was nothing like the lords and ladies whom he’d now sit and take a meal with. Yet his wife spoke in terms that resonated with who he was as a man who’d risen from the ashes of the Dials. Unnerved by her fearless scrutiny, he nodded, and allowed her to guide him on to the breakfast room.
A peal of unexpected laughter spilled from several doors down the corridor. Followed by the dowager countess’s annoyed tones.
“I am merely saying that of anyone, Penelope would be the one to ask a barrage of questions while the vicar was trying to deliver ceremonial vows . . .” Poppy’s pronouncement was followed by another curt rebuke from the girl’s mother.
Penelope’s cheeks went red, and she kept her gaze forward. Those words spilling from the breakfast room provided, however unwittingly, further details about the lady who’d been hiding under Helena’s bench.
He frowned. Which, oddly, until this moment he’d not given sufficient thought to. Why had she been outside in his sister’s gardens? Not that it mattered. It didn’t. His young wife and her interests or her actions didn’t have any bearing on his existence.
His bride looked up and missed a step. Ryker instantly caught her upper arm, and he lingered his fingers on her person. Satin. Her skin was smooth as satin, and—at the lady’s questioning look—he yanked his hand from her person. He who’d committed more sins than the devil knew existed felt his skin burn hot. He swiftly motioned for her to enter ahead of him.
All discourse came to a screeching halt as the Tidemores stared back. People did not stare at him. Not blatantly or boldly or in any way. Yet these people did. The muscles of his stomach knotted under that scrutiny, and he remained motionless. He’d not allow them to see how their attention affected him.
Then, the assembled family members surged to their feet as Ryker and Penelope walked to their respective chairs. Ryker glowered at the footman who made to pull out his chair. He needn’t a bloody servant to help him sit.
His wife settled a hand on his sleeve, and he stiffened. She gave him a smile. A reassuring one that had his mouth dry and heart racing. How many goddamn emotions could be conveyed with that slight tilt of the lips? It was a truth he’d not known until this very instant, because a man was wise showing no emotion.
“You can sit, Ryker,” she whispered, and a dull flush heated his neck.
With slow, precise movements, he sat, prepared to endure hell for another hour more. All he need do is maintain his silence. That had been deterrent enough for the men and women in his club. It was certainly enough for this lot.
“I understand you smoke cheroots,” Poppy called from across the table. She grunted and glared at her elder sister, Lady Prudence. “I’m engaging him in discourse. He is, after all, family. We should know something about him.”
Family? Ryker choked and grabbed a nearby goblet of water, downing it in one long, slow swallow, to the fascinated stares of the Tidemore clan. Into which Penelope’s sister would attempt to place him. He set his glass down hard, and a servant rushed forward to refill it.
“I believe what my sister is saying,” Lady St. Cyr said with a glare for the younger girl, “is . . .” Her cheeks turned red. “I believe . . .”
“They wish you to share something about yourself,” Penelope supplied for the other woman.
“Share something about myself?” he repeated dumbly. The only stories he had were the scandalous tales that would outrage the ladies and shock the gentlemen.
The dowager countess smiled that benevolent grin as though her daughter had wed a proper lord and not a man who’d killed to survive.
“I . . .” Have never been this exposed before anyone. Not even the men he called brothers. Ryker needn’t give them a goddamn detail. He’d married the girl; he needn’t answer to her or her family, pretending he was in any way their family. “I have three brothers,” he said gruffly. “And a sister.”
“Three brothers?” Penelope said with a frown. “I did not know you had any siblings beyond the duchess.” Let it serve as a reminder to the lady that ultimately they were strangers, and strangers they would remain.
Poppy beamed. “Three brothers for the viscount, and three sisters for Penny. I do say that means you have something in common, Penny.” Poppy brightened. “And there is one sister, just as you, Penelope, only have one brother. How interest—oomph.”
Another grunt from the garrulous lady who jabbered like her sister, along with numerous silencing glares for Poppy, at last quieted the girl.
Fortunately, the Tidemores were adept at fil
ling quiet, and as Ryker sat through the unending meal, from under his lashes he assessed these peers. The nobility had proved themselves equally heartless to the thugs in the street. They’d proved the plight of a child meant little while they lived for their own pleasures. This smiling . . . his lips pulled . . . loving family who protect their own contradicted a long-ingrained truth.
“I did not know you were one of four brothers,” Penelope said softly at his side.
Ryker shrugged. “It did not seem relevant to our one meeting.”
She fiddled with her fork, pushing it around the barely touched contents of her plate, and he raised his glass to take another drink. “What are their names?”
He froze, the glass midway to his mouth. So much of his efforts had gone into protecting those identities and how casually she expected him to speak their names aloud. Ryker flicked a glance about as the servants hovered. “Calum, Adair, Niall, and then there is Helena.”
“What are their ages?”
He lifted his shoulder in a shrug and finished his sip.
His response was met with a quizzical stare. “You don’t know . . . ?” He leaned down with such alacrity her words abruptly trailed off.
“Would you have me tell you that Niall and Adair don’t even know the dates of their birth?” he taunted on a harsh whisper. “I do not share their blood, but they are my brothers just the same. But then you wouldn’t know anything of that,” he said in a jeering tone, desperately needing to resurrect that safe barrier between them.
The lady’s frown deepened. “Why do you think I don’t know anything of that bond? Because I was born to the peerage? Juliet,” she discreetly motioned to the red-haired countess seated beside her brother, “she came to my family as a governess, after we’d run off every other woman. I was just thirteen.” With that admission, she opened the door, affording him a glimpse into the child she’d been. There would have been no knife fights or hungry bellies, but a girl engaging in harmless mischief that would never see her swinging at the end of a noose. “We were horrid to her.” The ghost of a smile hovered on her lips at that slightly emphasized word. “I’ve known her but six years but would lay down my life to protect her, as I would Poppy, Prudence, or Patrina. So do not expect I don’t know something of loyalty just because we were born to different stations.”
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