Rake Most Likely to Seduce

by Bronwyn Scott

  ‘The two of us? What about Signor Gray? He risked much to come for me. I doubt he did it out of charity. What is he to you?’

  ‘Some time you’ll have to tell me what happened in there. How did Nolan convince the clerk to open your room?’

  Giovanni was not fooled by the redirection. ‘I think the clerk found Signor Gray’s knife quite compelling. But you did not answer my question. Who is he to you?’

  The carriage door opened and Nolan put his head in, his tone cheerful as if this were a grand holiday. ‘Everything’s arranged. I’ve got rooms. They’re getting a bath ready right now. Giovanni, give me your hand. I’ll help you down. Careful, there’s mud to your right. This inn yard is one big meadow of muck. I am sorry for it. Your feet just have to go a little farther, though, and they can be clean. I’ll find you some shoes.’ He turned to her. ‘Stay here, Gianna. I’ll be back for you.’

  She watched them go, the image of the two of them together stinging her eyes—Nolan with his hand on her brother’s arm, leading him with gentleness, with consideration that preserved whatever might be left of a young man’s pride.

  Nolan slogged back through the mud and reached for her. ‘Are you ready?’ He swung her into his arms. ‘I can carry you, at least, and spare your dress the damage.’

  ‘Nolan, wait just a moment.’ She laid a hand against his cheek and pressed a kiss to his lips. ‘Thank you for what you did today, for what you’re doing now. I had no right to ask for any of this. I can’t possibly thank you enough.’

  His response was gruff as he carried her over the mud. ‘I didn’t do it to be thanked. You should know that by now.’ It was tempting to ask why he did it, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. It wouldn’t change anything in the end. She would still have to leave him behind. Now that she had Giovanni, there were no more excuses. It was time to set Nolan free. It was time to begin her life on the road. Funny that when she’d imagined her freedom she’d never equated it with running.

  * * *

  Nolan took the inn stairs two at a time. Things were looking up. What a difference a few hours could make, even a day. Luck had been with them. They’d actually found a decent inn, something he’d doubted existed in Italy. There had been hot stew for dinner and he’d been able to trade his silk-patterned waistcoat for some clothes and shoes for Giovanni. The innkeeper had been thrilled to own such a finely tailored garment in exchange for a few items that had once belonged to his grown son.

  After that, the innkeeper had been keen to barter. Nolan had also been able to trade his pocket watch for a wagon and horse. It wasn’t a glamorous carriage and they’d be out in the elements as they travelled, but it was the best they’d find in these parts. If his Grand Tour had shown him anything it was that the En­glish had a far superior coaching-inn system than anywhere else in Europe. Better roads, too—two things he’d never thought to appreciate before. Best of all, there’d been cards. Nothing rich, just farmers and a few travellers. Nolan had played carefully, not wanting to incur the local wrath, but it had been enough to put some coins in his pocket. They would be able to buy lunch and other food supplies tomorrow.

  At the top of the stairs, he opened the door to his room and stopped, his breath catching. His night was just about to get even better. Gianna sat before the fire in her shift, combing out her hair. Something swift and visceral struck, a coup de foudre, perhaps, as the French called it. This was all he needed: a warm room, a warm bed, an even warmer woman and a few coins in his pocket to get to the next adventure.

  Gianna looked up and smiled when she saw him. ‘How was cards? Did you win?’ She asked it the way Nolan imagined a woman might ask her man how was work. Her man. Did Gianna look at him like that? As more than a lover, more than someone who could be of use? Was that what he wanted?

  ‘Yes.’ Nolan jingled his pocket in demonstration. ‘I’ve managed a wagon, too.’

  She rose, the firelight outlining the curves of her body beneath the thin linen as she came to him, wrapping her arms about his neck. ‘I knew you would.’ She helped him of his coat, commenting on the lack of the waistcoat and laughing when he told her its fate. ‘It has done us a good service, then.’ She untied his cravat and he thought he could get used to these little rituals: Gianna undressing him, laughing with him, waiting for him.

  ‘Is Giovanni settled for the night?’ Nolan nipped at her ear, letting her slip his arms from his sleeves. It had been ages since a woman had done for him. It was as compelling as more direct means of seduction. He’d been hard for her the moment her hands had touched him, perhaps even before that. It had started the moment he’d walked in the room.

  ‘Yes, he’s sleeping next door.’ Her hands stilled on the waistband of his trousers. ‘He looks much better. Thank you for the bath, for helping him, for the clothes.’ She paused and looked up at him. ‘I could not have managed it on my own.’

  ‘You would have come up with something,’ Nolan offered, but he knew how much the admission cost her. It was an admission not so much of her own limitations but of the truth; she could not do this alone. She’d seen her limits first-hand today. He’d seen them, too. It had strengthened his resolve to see her safe whether she wanted his help or not. It had terrified him to see the warden, tiny as his cock was, lunging after her. She had done her job too well.

  Nolan took her cheek in his hand and turned her face to his, capturing her mouth in a slow kiss. It was time to persuade her she needn’t fear accepting assistance, that his plan was viable without threatening her autonomy. ‘You don’t have to go this alone. You have options. You have me, Gianna. We can go to England.’ He pressed his argument from this morning. When better to make his case than when he had her in his arms, his lips on her body, reminding her of all he could do for her? ‘We can head north tomorrow to Turin and up into Germany after that.’ He could see the route in his head the way he saw the playing cards. They could sail from Ostend or cut across to the west and stop in Paris.

  She had her hands in his hair, fingers fanned against his temples, eyes locked on his. He could smell the sage and rosemary of her. ‘Not tonight. Can we just make love? Please?’ Her hand slipped inside his trousers. ‘I need this. I need you.’

  He should resist. There were likely red flags galore. They had issues that needed addressing, mainly the nature of their future together. They could not go much farther without discussing it, discussing what they meant to one another. But Nolan had never been good at resisting temptation, only in joining it. It would be a shame to start now when Gianna needed him, when she needed him to be his most persuasive if he stood a chance of seeing her safe in England. The stakes of this seduction had suddenly got higher. Thank goodness he knew exactly what she wanted.

  She wanted to forget the demons of the day; wanted to forget seeing the conditions her brother was kept in, the condition he’d been found in, the escape, holding the warden at gunpoint, and even after all that, the fear wasn’t quite behind them. The count was still out there, on the road. Or not. The count was a twisted bastard. He would know the real fear lay in the not knowing. She had to always assume she was being chased. It was a lot to forget, but Nolan was up to the challenge.

  No walls tonight, no beds, at least not to start. He scanned the room and found what he wanted; the waist-high bureau with the washing basin and cracked mirror. He led her to it, stood her in front of him and whispered against her ear, ‘Look. Look at that beautiful woman.’ He kissed the tender hidden place between her ear and her neck where a pulse beat ever so softly. ‘I love her hair, how it falls over my hands, how it smells of rosemary and sage, the smell of a summer herb garden.’

  He closed his own eyes, breathing deeply of her as he nuzzled her neck, placed kisses on her throat, his hands cupping her breasts, moulding them through the fabric of her shift before tugging the string at the low neck loose, before giving it a push from her shoulders
and letting it shimmy to the floor. ‘She is too lovely not to be seen,’ he murmured, his hands returning to those beautiful breasts, lifting them, kneading them with a gentle caress. He ran his thumbs over the peaks of her nipples, feeling her arch into him as the pleasure started to spread.

  She wanted to close her eyes, but he wouldn’t let her. ‘Watch this woman, watch her come alive,’ he commanded in low, stern tones. He needed to forget, too. He needed to know he was the one she saw when the pleasure took her, that there was no room for memories of anything else but him. He needed to prove she was his, that the warden and the count had no place here. There was only them, the couple in the mirror; a man about to roughly pleasure a woman and a woman about to take pleasure.

  He nipped at her neck, his love words becoming coarser, a prelude, perhaps a caution that what was to come would not be delicate. She answered with a moan, her arm reaching back to encircle his neck, her body pressing into his, feeling the power of his erection against her bottom.

  He bent her forward, her arms taking her weight against the bureau. He whispered a harsh command at her ear. ‘Watch, your warrior would make you his sheath.’ He thrust into her then, his cock meeting the upturned buttocks, one hand filled with her breast, the other anchored on her mons, pressing against the hidden nub, stroking it in rhythm with his cock, driving her wild, driving himself wild. This was rough coupling at its finest, fast and obliterating.

  He watched her in the mirror, feeling himself drown in the sight of her, her hair about her, her eyes dark with desire, his desire. He did this to her. She moaned and gasped, she gave her body over to him, lost to his touch, his stroke. His own body was off its leash, any attempt at finesse lost when the final pleasure took them. He no longer knew who was at whose mercy. They were gloriously lost together. When had he ever so thoroughly lost control?

  Nolan held her tight against him, her buttocks against his stomach, his cock still entrenched, but calm now that the storm had passed. He felt her breathing start to slow. He watched her come back to earth in the mirror. Her eyes rested on their reflection, a moment’s yearning in her expression. ‘I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve you, but thank you. You took my mind off it for a little while.’ It wasn’t exactly what a man dreamed of hearing after mind-blowing sex in front of a mirror, but it would have to do. For now.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nolan got them to the bed and stretched beside her. At least now she was relaxed and might talk about some of the things she kept pent up inside her. Touch helped. He was a big believer in the idea that people responded better to you if you touched them. He drew figures on the flat of her stomach, idle designs to match his languid mood. ‘Did you know about the place?’ He wasn’t even sure what to call the home they’d found Giovanni in. It was part hospital, part prison. It was in no way a nurturing, wholesome environment.

  ‘I suspected. The count told me it was a school. He told me Giovanni had gone to a special boarding school for boys with infirmities. He would get special attention there.’ Gianna shook her head. ‘But I knew it wouldn’t be a good kind of special.’ Her voice broke, and Nolan looked up from his designs. ‘He was sent there because of me. It was my fault he was there at all.’

  Gianna sat up in a rush, her words angry. ‘The count sent him away to punish me and I could do nothing to get him back until today.’ She bunched her hands in the sheets in frustration self-loathing. ‘I let him suffer. I should have stood up to the count no matter what. I should have found another way to run. I should have tried again and again until I succeeded.’

  Nolan’s hands closed forcefully around hers, stilling them. ‘It’s not your fault. The count would have found a way to remove Giovanni no matter what. Together, you and Giovanni were a threat to him. You supported each other, and he couldn’t overcome that. Separated, he stood a better chance of using each of you as leverage against the other.’ He blew out a breath. ‘I know, Gianna. I used to think the same thing.’ He gathered her to him, rocking her. ‘It was the same for my brother and me. You can’t change it. You can just go forward.’

  And make damn sure it didn’t happen again. It was what he and his brother were doing with the safe house in England. They couldn’t undo their childhoods, but they could help other boys regain theirs, boys like Giovanni. Giovanni would love the house in England. He would be a mentor to the younger boys. Nolan had to stop himself. He was putting the cart before the horse. Gianna hadn’t agreed to come. But Nolan had thought of nothing else while he’d helped Giovanni bathe away the grime. There was so much they could do for him in England. Blind or not, Nolan could give Giovanni a new life there. He wished he had as much to offer Gianna, wished he could take away the fear she had to live with.

  There was one way to do it. It had come to him in Venice the day he’d found the secret bottom to the jewel case. It was admittedly risky not because she might reject it, but because of what that rejection might reveal—things he didn’t want to face.

  ‘Gianna, I’ve been thinking...’ Nolan began, his mouth in its familiar place at her ear, her body warm against his, his arms wrapped around her in the dark. ‘If you could be free of the count’s harassment and not have to give up the diamonds, would you do it?’

  ‘Yes, I’d do anything.’ She sounded defeated, as if she were tired of this futile exercise.

  ‘Then marry me. Let me give you the protection of my name. It would put your diamonds out of his reach.’ Nolan breathed his request in the dark and then he waited. How had it suddenly become so important that she say yes? Last week, she’d been an obstacle to his plans and now she was the plan.

  ‘So the count can kill you instead? So I can be a widow?’ she snapped, pulling out of his arms. ‘That’s a fabulous idea. It will solve everything.’ She made her sarcasm obvious. ‘How does that solve anything, Nolan? It only transfers the count’s attention.’ She saw him wince, and she felt a twinge of guilt. Even the urbane Nolan Gray who effortlessly rescued damsels in distress and their brothers had feelings. He’d just proposed and she’d thrown it back in his face. Better to be angry, though, than to be moved by his offer.

  She softened her tone. ‘It’s a generous offer, but it’s not practical. When you stop and think about it, you will see I’m right.’

  ‘I’m offended you think I haven’t thought about it, that this is some spontaneous post-coital offering. I assure you it is not,’ Nolan retorted, making her feel even worse. Great, now both of them had managed to turn the supposed most romantic moment of a girl’s life—a marriage proposal—into something awkward and quarrelsome. Apparently, proposals weren’t destined to be her thing.

  ‘Nolan, be reasonable.’ She waved a hand at the bed. ‘Just look at us. We’re sitting here naked in a rented room, running from a madman, and suddenly marriage is a good idea? Our very situation defies the logic of that.’

  Nolan leaned back on the pillows, arms behind his head, his body on glorious display in the firelight. ‘I am being logical. The count doesn’t want you, he wants what you possess, ergo, if you divest yourself of those items, he will stop chasing you. Whether you like to admit it or not, marriage is the best legal route by which to control a woman’s assets.’ He rolled to his side and bent his knee. It was a position that showed off the elegant muscles of his thighs, the heavy fall of his phallus, gorgeously masculine. He was like a prone version of the David.

  ‘I know. It’s why I’m running in the first place,’ Gianna ground out. ‘And you can stop doing that.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Lying like that. You know very well you’re carved from the very moulds of Olympus.’ The offer of marriage was more compelling than she let on, even if it was for the wrong reasons. Well, really just one wrong reason. She could have this, have him every night she chose.

  Nolan grinned. ‘So, you like my body. That’s a start. I like yours.’

&nbs
p; * * *

  ‘One should not get married for sex alone.’ She sounded like a prim spinster, not like the woman who had watched herself come in the cracked mirror of an inn room, mounted like a mare by a veritable stallion of a man.

  ‘Why not? It seems like a better reason than most. I’d choose mutual pleasure over mutual respect any day from a wife.’ Nolan was making this difficult with his ridiculous arguments, as if they were actually debating this seriously. He got up from the bed and stretched. He strode to the fire and picked up a poker to arrange the logs, bending and flexing in masculine beauty. He was making it hard on her, even when she knew better.

  Sex wasn’t enough. The life of a courtesan was a cautionary tale that proved it. Every night a man spent with her mother was a night he hadn’t spent with his wife, a night he spent in physical betrayal of her and his vows. It would be terrible when Nolan strayed. And he would stray. Most men did, and Nolan was far handsomer, far more charismatic. Women would flock to him and there would be plenty of temptations to pick from when he tired of being her knight in shining armour. What was she doing? Sex wasn’t even the real issue here.

  ‘Sex is a just a red herring, so you can put down the poker and give up the buttock-flexing. Nice as it is, there are other arguments, too, for not marrying you—more practical ones like your personal safety. The count is not your problem.’

  He came back to the bed, hands on hips. ‘But you are. You became my problem the moment I won you.’ He grinned down at her, boyish and vital and alive, as if this was a lark, as if nothing serious rested on this decision. When he looked at her like that, she wanted nothing more than to say yes. But ‘yes’ was rash and dangerous.