He chuckled again, a low rumble that echoed with a pleasant tickle in her belly. “I do adore your tenacity.”
“Then let me demonstrate for you.” Clary latched her hand with his and started off toward the edge of the park. When she glanced back, he cast her a gaze of such naked admiration the quivering in her belly turned to anticipation.
Clary Ruthven rushing off to her ruination was a magnificent sight. She seemed to have no notion or care that her hair had slipped half its pins and that he’d loosed a quarter of the rest with his eager fingers. She looked wild, like a woodland sprite, and a wanton one at that.
Then the rain started. A few intermittent drops at first, and he shucked his overcoat to hold the fabric above her head. She merely laughed and bolted ahead, tipping her head up to the sky, as if the cool drops were a gift from heaven.
Even when the rain began bucketing down, she seemed content to allow the shower to drench her hair and clothes. She was truly unlike any woman he had ever known, and he had no idea how he’d been lucky enough to win her affection.
Rain fell harder, faster, until the downpour made it hard to see. Gabe led Clary to a row of shops along Marylebone Road, and they ducked underneath an obliging awning. “We should wait until the rain lets up.”
“Shall we get a cup of tea to warm up?” She stretched onto her toes to scan the various shops along the road, and then her eyes ballooned wide.
Gabe knew the very establishment that had caught her notice. “Have you ever been?”
“Never, though I’ve always wished to go.”
Curling his hand around hers, he said, “Then let me make at least one of your wishes come true.”
They waited until the line of pedestrians passing had thinned and then started back out into the rain, picking up their pace to join the growing queue outside of Madame Tussaud’s waxworks. One umbrella-carrying lady nearly poked Gabe in the eye, and a gentleman tried to steal their spot in the queue when the newspaper he held over his head melted in a heap of soggy paper pulp around his shoulders.
Finally, Gabe paid for their tickets and led Clary inside.
“Where’s the Chamber of Horrors?” he asked the usher.
The man pointed them toward a separate room off the main display, and Clary nearly danced toward the entrance. On the threshold, she turned and reached for Gabe’s hand.
“Thank you,” she said when he drew up beside her, “for indulging my cutthroat tastes.”
He wished he could give her a lifetime of what she wanted. That he could devote every day to making her smile at him, as she was now. The satisfaction of all he’d accomplished—escaping his past, earning honest wages—paled in comparison to the simple joy of bringing Clary Ruthven pleasure. As he followed her into the dark, shadowy room done up like a dungeon, he tried to focus on the macabre tableaus and not on the other ways he wished to pleasure her.
“The marker says this is the actual guillotine blade used to behead Marie Antoinette,” Clary whispered with an almost reverential tone. She shivered as she took in the gleaming metal but then turned a beaming smile on him in the darkness.
He savored the feel of her hand in his, the easiness of being near her, her gasps of surprise or hums of interest as they proceeded through the displays. She moved quickly, missing nothing but taking in every detail with swift efficiency. She was too full of energy to linger. Her fingers sometimes twitched against his, and Gabe wondered if she was wishing for paper and her drawing pencils to capture the scenes before them.
One of the final tableaus bore the title The Six Stages of Wrong and was clearly meant to convey a moral lesson. Life-size figures portrayed the downfall of a man, from temptation to guilt to the bitter end of a scaffold’s rope.
Gabe’s skin itched. Once upon a time, it was a fate for which he feared he was bound. Others thought the same about him, cursing him to the gallows or worse. A fate, by any standard of law and fairness, he probably deserved. Not to mention most of the people he’d associated himself with while under Rigg’s thrall.
After a moment, he realized Clary had unlatched her hand from his and was examining the very last wax figure, a poisoner and his victim bride. She returned to him, drawing near until they were closer than many of the other couples passing through the exhibit.
“Now will you take me home?” Her tone was soft, as bewitching as the gleam in her violet eyes. Most enticing of all, she asked the question with absolute certainty. She knew what she wanted. And she didn’t doubt his answer.
As he followed her from Madame Tussaud’s, he cast one final glance back at The Six Stages of Wrong. He’d escaped the fate he deserved. Now the question was whether he could be worthy of the one he’d been given. He wanted to be worthy of Clary as much as he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
He hailed a cab when they emerged from the waxworks, unwilling to wait another moment to be alone with her.
Inside the confines of the carriage, she leaned against him, and he willed himself to be patient. Not to pull her onto his lap and take down her hair and kiss her until she was breathing as hard and fast as he was.
“Your muscles are tense and tight,” she mused as she placed a palm on his thigh.
“Vixen,” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple, inhaling the fragrant scent of her damp hair.
“Am I?”
If he she moved her hand any farther, she’d discover precisely how much her nearness drove him mad. Gabe breathed a ragged sigh of relief when the cab pulled up along the pavement in Bloomsbury Square. As he helped her down, he took in the whitewashed facade. His gut clenched with guilt.
“Let’s go someplace else.” He wanted her, desperately, but her brother was his employer. Gabe had done awful things in his life, but it hadn’t completely dulled his sense of right and wrong.
“For now, this is my home, and I have every intention of welcoming you inside.” With a flirtatious grin, she added, “As long as you promise not to flee as you did last winter.”
After they stepped inside, she started for the stairs, and Gabe caught her hand to pull her back. “I left because of you that night.”
“Because of me?”
“You shocked me.”
She nibbled her lower lip. “I can’t recall anything awful that I did, though sometimes I do blurt an opinion and only regret it later.”
“My reaction to you shocked me. When we first met, you were a girl of sixteen.”
“And you loathed me.”
“You were . . . vexing. But when I saw you last year, you’d become an irresistible woman.” Gabe slipped a hand around her waist. “Beautiful, clever, vibrant. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
“But . . . you left.” She leaned into him, creating an enticing friction between her chest and his. “Quite abruptly, as I recall.”
He chuckled and found laughter was becoming easy, especially with her. “Your sister suggested we dance together. As you now know, I had no idea how to dance. And even if I’d managed, having you in my arms would have made it impossible for me to hide my reaction to you.” Sliding a hand to her bottom, he pressed her closer.
She wiggled against him and smiled. “Come upstairs.” As she reached for his hand, a woman cleared her throat.
Gabe whirled on the woman, pushing Clary behind him.
“May I bring refreshments for you and your visitor, Miss Ruthven?” The old lady’s scowl raked him from brow to boot.
“No, thank you. I won’t require anything else this evening, Mrs. Simms,” Clary said with a tone of authority he’d rarely heard her employ. “Now,” she said, once the woman had turned on her heel and departed down the hall, “come with me.”
Gabe ignored the gnaw of guilt as he followed her upstairs, focusing on the sway of her hips, the bounce of flaxen waves down her back. Once he closed the bedroom door behind them, he took her in his arms and bent to kiss her neck, her cheek, her lips. She let out a low, erotic moan as she opened to him, letting him taste her with his tongue
.
She was heaven in his arms. Everything he wanted. Precisely what he needed. He loved her boldness, her honesty, the hunger in her eyes that burned as fiercely as his own.
She began working the buttons of her shirtwaist, watching him as if she never intended to let him out of her sight.
And where would he go? This. Right here. This moment with her was all he wanted. This moment made everything that came before fade away.
When she got to the buttons midway down her chest, she lost interest in her own clothes and reached for his necktie. He kissed her cheek, her nose, her forehead as she worked the knot, then kissed her lips as she tugged the fabric, with a long, sinuous tug, from around his neck.
He took over unfastening the maddeningly tiny buttons of her blouse, telling himself not to tear the delicate fabric. Below her blouse, her lush breasts spilled over the edge of her corset, but her thin chemise hid far too much of her soft skin her from his view.
“You’re like a thrice-wrapped present.”
She laughed against his mouth before pressing a kiss to the scar at the edge of his upper lip. Like a skilled seductress, she drew her fingers down his bare chest. “Be quick, then, and unwrap me.”
His fingers fumbled as he reached the last buttons of her blouse. Hard and aching, he only knew he wanted the barriers between them gone, so he could kiss every bare inch of her.
Clary only stoked his eagerness. Raining kisses against his face, sifting his hair through her fingers. Then she reached for the fastening of his trousers, and he clenched his teeth to stop himself from tearing her corset in two.
“Gabriel,” she breathed against his mouth as her nimble fingers worked. He gasped when she brushed her hand against him. Rather than shy away, she drew her fingers gently along his cock, exploring, biting her lip when she drew a hiss of pleasure from him.
“You’re driving me mad,” he told her before pushing the edges of her corset back and dipping his head to take one taut nipple in his mouth, sucking her through the gauzy chemise.
“Gabriel,” she said again, sinking her fingers against his scalp. He took her moans as encouragement, tugging and pulling until he got the chemise free of her skirt and over her head.
“So lovely.” He wanted to look and memorize every inch, but he wanted to taste her too. He reached back to work the hook of her skirt, then her petticoat, easing both down the generous swell of her hips. He bent his knees and hunched as he guided the fabric, drawing his fingers across her thighs, knees, calves, until the garments pooled at her feet.
She bent to roll her stockings down, and he pressed up on his haunches to kiss her. Only her drawers hid her from his view.
“Take them off,” she urged, planting her palms on his shoulders.
“I fear I’ll tear them.”
“Then do.”
He tried to be careful as he pulled at the knotted ribbon, but when it wouldn’t give way, he pulled the light cotton apart. Plump smooth thighs and a glorious thatch of burnished bronze curls were worth buying her a thousand new knickers. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Exquisite.”
“I want to feel you,” she said in a breathy whisper. “I want you to teach me everything.”
Bracing a hand on each of her soft, warm thighs, he leaned in and kissed her belly, stroked his thumbs nearer her curls. “Clary.” He was ravenous to taste her, to be inside all of her delicious energy and heat, but he told himself to go slow.
“Hurry,” she urged at precisely the same moment, and he chuckled against her belly.
He lifted a hand to cup her mound, parting her slick folds with one finger. She bucked against him, and he slid deeper. As he stroked, he bent to taste her. The honeyed sweetness made him shiver. He angled his tongue deeper, laving the velvety flesh until she dug her nails into his skin.
“It’s too much,” she said. “I’m falling.”
“I’ll catch you, sweetheart.” Gabe stroked her deeper, gazing up to watch the wonder in her eyes. “I’m right here. I’ll never leave you.”
She gasped and shuddered against him, clutching at his hair, tipping her head back against the door, bucking against his finger. Finally, she looked at him, her eyes lust-glazed, her hair hanging in a wild gold bramble around her face. “What happens next?”
Gabe smiled and straightened, hooking an arm under her knees to lift her against his chest. “Now I take you to bed.”
Laying her head against this shoulder, she let out a long, satisfied exhale, as if she’d happily doze there, but when he set her on the bed, she cocked a brow at him.
“Your trousers must go,” she commanded.
Edging forward on the bed, she shoved the loosened fabric down his hips, hooking his drawers with her thumbs, and pulling those along too. When his cock sprang free, she offered him the most erotic smile he’d ever seen. Then she reached out, shaping the length of him with her hands.
“Clary,” he said in warning, though the words emerged as a plea.
“The statues in museums are wildly misleading.” She grinned up at him, as she continued to stroke. “I must draw you like this.”
“I won’t be like this for long if you keep touching me.” He knelt on the bed to kiss her, and she released him with a little groan of frustration. “Lay back, love.”
She fell back onto the bed, her long hair spread around her, and she was so lovely his whole body burned to be inside her. He again told himself to go slow. Despite her wonderful boldness, he suspected Clary was innocent, and he’d not been with many women himself. He’d never much liked being touched before Clary. Never cared to be truly intimate with anyone. Now he wanted nothing so much as to be close to her, to strip away every lie he’d ever told, to lose his forced control, to be unfettered with her. To hold nothing back.
As he stroked a hand up her leg, she parted her thighs, lifting her arms to urge him closer. “I need your heat,” she said huskily.
He positioned his body over hers, eased himself between her legs, rocked against her slickness. Bracing on his elbows, he feared crushing her if he let her take his weight. But she was having none of his hesitation. She wrapped an arm around his shoulder and whispered, “Closer,” before lifting for a kiss. When she bucked her hips, he breached her an inch, and she broke their kiss with a gasp.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said against her neck. “We must go slow.”
“I hate slow,” she pouted. Gabe took her plump lower lip between his teeth, before taking her mouth. He stroked her with his tongue and eased himself against her, rocking ever so slowly, nudging deeper with every thrust. When he lifted to gaze down at her, to ensure she was all right, she lifted her hips. “More,” she whispered, before lifting her hips and drawing him deeper.
Sweeping her hair aside, he planted a hand on the bed beside her head, arching up to gaze into her eyes as he thrust deep. She nodded as if urging him on, and he built a rhythm as she stroked a hand down his chest, clutched at his shoulder, let out a delicious gasp as he slipped inside her.
He was lost. Clary was all that mattered. She was the bounty he was ever seeking, the reward for which he’d been searching all the ugly miserable days of his life. She was a bigger slice of heaven than he could ever deserve, but he would never get enough. Somehow, some way, he had to keep her. Love her every day, as she deserved. Pleasure her every damned night, as many times as he was able.
“Faster,” she hissed, his insatiable beauty.
When she twisted her head on the pillow, he dipped down to catch her pink taut nipple against his tongue.
“Please, Gabriel, don’t stop.” She bucked out of rhythm to his thrusts, drawing him deeper. Then she let out a lusty moan as her sweet body spasmed around him.
“I won’t, sweetheart,” he rasped, lowering himself against her chest, as the unbearable agonizing bliss of his release built.
She turned her head to kiss his neck, flicking her tongue out to taste him. “I love you,” she whispered against his skin.
Gabe jolted at the words. He craved them, needed them, and resisted their strange unsettling effects. Then his release tore through him, a violent rapture that turned his vision black but for flashes of light, like fireworks bursting across a night sky. He buried his face against Clary’s neck, rolled to his side, and pulled her with him. She curled against him, soft, warm perfection in his arms.
He didn’t deserve her. He never would. But he couldn’t bear to lose her either.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Clary awoke to a cloudy-dusk light. A breeze, fresh with the scent of rain, wafted in from her open bedroom window. She reached out for Gabriel, but he wasn’t beside her—though the sheets were still warm, as if he’d just stepped away. His clothes were still pooled on the floor too, except for his trousers and shirt.
Sitting up, she wiped the blurriness from her eyes and slid to the edge of the bed. Strange parts of her body were sore, but she didn’t regret a moment she’d spent with him. Yawning, she stretched her arms over her head and smiled. Her first thought was to find him and do it all over again.
A sound drew her attention to the window. Shouting, angry voices. Altercations were rare in Bloomsbury Square, especially out in front of the row of houses for all to see.
Rushing toward her wardrobe, she grabbed a dressing gown and tied the belt at her waist as she made her way to the window.
Down on the street, Gabriel stood arguing with a little boy. He fisted his hand in the child’s shirt front as he shouted at him.
Pushing the curtain aside, she slid the window up, and ducked her head out. “Gabriel.”
He either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her call. Without bothering to find her boots, she started downstairs. Gabriel burst through the front door, pushing the boy along ahead of him. The child had a colorful vocabulary and seemed determined to expend every foul word he knew denouncing Gabriel’s rough handling.
“ ’E’ll ’ear o’ this, ye can bet a crown, and ’e’ll bury ye in the Thames, you bleedin’ rotter.”
Gabe released the child, and he stumbled forward, straightening his ragged old frock coat as if it were Bond Street’s finest.
How to Woo a Wallflower Page 17