“I did not believe you three years ago, and I do not believe you now.” It was totally unnerving to have Deveril holding her captive in this way.
For him to be so close to her she could smell the citrus and sandalwood of his cologne, and be made aware of the warmth of his body through the thin material of her gown.
Her own body was wholly aware of his close proximity. Her breasts suddenly felt uncomfortably confined in a gown that had fitted her perfectly well a half hour ago, the dampening of her drawers an irritating chaff between her legs. As for the firm grasp he had of her… Her skin literally felt on fire where his fingers were curled about the slenderness of her wrists.
“You may believe whatever the hell you wish,” the marquis answered her coldly. “But what you will not do is continue to treat me with the same lack of respect you have shown toward me since my arrival here. Is that understood?”
“You—”
“Is that understood?” His other hand took a firm grasp of her chin and tilted her face up so that she had no choice but to look at his harshly etched features.
Alys glared her dislike of him and his dictatorial behavior. “It is.”
“Good.” His head swooped down, and his mouth took possession of hers.
Alys was initially too surprised to even think of putting up a fight, and by the time it did occur to her to do so, it was already too late. Her body had betrayed her. Her lips had parted of their own volition to allow Deveril to deepen the kiss, at the same time as she pressed her aching breasts against the hardness of his chest. A soft mewling noise escaped her throat.
It was the sound of that needy mewl, and the realization she was the one making it, which finally brought Alys to her senses. Enough to realize the evidence of the marquis’s desire, his hard and engorged cock, was currently pressing against the softness of her abdomen.
Deveril’s grip had loosened about her wrists, however, making it easy for her to break his hold and bring her hands down and push against his chest. She wrenched her mouth from beneath his. “Get away from me,” she demanded furiously. To her surprise, he immediately stepped back.
Whether her own fury was directed at Deveril or herself, Alys was unsure. Probably both. Him for daring to kiss her. Herself for responding.
A kiss from this gentleman three years ago, along with that throbbing evidence of his arousal, would have thrilled Alys to her very core. But here and now? All she felt was utterly disgusted with herself for having responded like a filly in heat. No, more like a cat in heat, the way she had been almost purring and rubbing herself against him.
Was she so starved for a man’s attention and warmth she was desperate enough to respond to Deveril, of all men?
Devil studied Alys’s flushed and furious face through narrowed lids. “Go,” he rasped.
“You—”
“Go, Alys, or I will not allow you to leave until after I have made you mine.”
“I will never be yours!”
A smile twisted his lips. “I warn you against challenging me into proving you wrong.”
She met his gaze defiantly. “Does your wickedness now include forcing unwilling women?”
He eyed her mockingly. “You are not unwilling.”
Her bosom quickly rose and fell in her agitation. “Bastard!”
“Possibly,” he drawled. “But at this point, I am offering you the choice of going or staying. Another second or two, and I will not give you that same choice.”
Devil waited until Alys had left the room, after casting one last disgusted glare in his direction, before allowing his guard to drop.
Kissing Alys had been a grave tactical error on his part. If she was Napoleon’s spy, then she might use that show of weakness against him at some later date. If she was not, then it had only succeeded in making Alys despise him all the more for having so openly revealed his desire for her.
To Devil’s surprise, he had desired Alys from the moment he first set eyes on her during her first Season. Her reddish-brown hair, creamy complexion, lively blue eyes, and vivacious nature had been like a beacon among all the fashionable blondes with their insipid and pale faces and simpering manners.
Not that Devil, aged two and thirty at the time, usually paid any attention to the new debutantes, but there had been something about Alys Newcomb which he, and his cock, had responded to on such a visceral level, he had been unable to ignore it.
Aware of the difference in their ages, he had set about making a closer acquaintance with her father in an effort to get to know Alys better. Singling her out at any of Society’s social events would have placed them both in the awkward position of the expectation of a betrothal announcement before the Season was over. Devil had considered himself well past the age of being trapped into marriage with a woman he would later discover he could not abide.
But Alys had proven to be as delightful on closer acquaintance as she had appeared from a distance. She had spirit and determination, a mischievous sense of humor, and a genuine affection for her father, who had obviously doted on her since the death of his wife ten years previously.
Goodness knows Deveril knew what it was like to be without a parent. His own had both perished when he was aged five, while making the sea journey from their estate in Ireland to their estate in England. He had been brought up by his paternal grandparents, who had probably spoiled him as much as Alys’s father had indulged her.
She had also been a little shy in Devil’s company, which he had found enchanting, and he had done all that he could to put her at her ease. To a degree he had believed there to be a genuine friendship developing between the two of them.
All that had disappeared the night her father was murdered.
To this day, Devil had no idea why he had picked up the pistol he found lying beside Peter Newcomb’s dead body. But he had, and Alys had chanced upon him immediately after he had done so. To his detriment.
Nothing he could say to her would convince Alys he had found her father that way.
Nor would Alys have anything more to do with him, and her public accusations toward him had affected her badly socially.
Alys was no doubt going to dislike him even more once she knew the real reason he was here was to discover whether or not she had committed treason against the English Crown.
Chapter 3
“Is the company too juvenile for your liking, my lord?”
There was no mistaking the mockery in Alys’s tone, but Devil chose not to respond to it as he glanced across the library to see her standing in the open doorway. He would not respond yet, at least. Obviously Alys was choosing not to heed his warning of earlier regarding curbing the sharpness of her tongue.
He could think of a far better use for that hot, wet organ than to have her mock him with it.
It had come as a surprise to realize Alys was the only woman present at Newcomb Manor. Usually the gentlemen would bring their wives with them to a summer shoot such as this one, and those ladies would entertain themselves during the day until the gentlemen returned to the house. All of Newcomb’s friends were young and unmarried, and the evening’s entertainment reflected that company.
Devil saw no reason to join in the competitive game of billiards which had ensued after dinner, and had instead made himself comfortable in the library with a decanter of Newcomb’s third-rate brandy and a good book.
Alys had now appeared and disturbed his relaxation. She was looking particularly desirable this evening in a gown of deep purple, and Devil could once again feel the rush of blood to his cock merely from looking at her and breathing in the heady combination of her perfume and feminine musk.
He closed and placed the book on the table beside his chair before rising to his feet. “No more so than you do, obviously,” he drawled as he crossed the room toward her. Like a bloody moth drawn to the burn of a candle’s flame, he acknowledged self-disgustedly.
In truth, Alys had been relieved to excuse herself from joining the raucous company in the bill
iards room. Teddy’s friends had imbibed freely of the wine during dinner and become overly familiar as the evening progressed. Alys had been more than happy to excuse herself once the gentlemen retired to the games room to play billiards and drink brandy.
She had assumed, after noting his absence immediately following dinner, Deveril had retired to his bedchamber for the night. She doubted he had any more interest in the younger men’s company than she did, if for different reasons. Having come to the library to collect a book she might take to her bedchamber to read before sleeping, it was unnerving to find Deveril seated beside the unlit fireplace, and once again causing her to behave shrewishly.
Damn the man.
Dressed all in black, with snowy white linen, his dark eyes glittering the color of jet, Deveril really did have the appearance of the devil incarnate.
“Join me.”
Alys blinked at the unmistakable command she heard in his tone. “I am on my way to bed.”
He gave a hard smile, revealing very straight and white teeth. “In that case, perhaps I should join you?”
She felt the color warming her cheeks.
There was much speculation among the ladies of Society in regard to Deveril’s exploits in the bedchamber. Alys tried to avoid such conversations whenever possible but was not always able to do so.
It seemed the marquis’s bed play did not include the ladies of Society, so none of those ladies spoke on the subject from personal experience. But apparently it was well known that he and his fellow Sinners—Deveril and the seven other gentlemen who had met while at school together and continued that friendship into adulthood—enjoyed robust and varied sexual relations with ladies of the demimonde.
Which indicated what in regard to Deveril’s having turned her own innocent comment into innuendo?
Alys drew herself up to her full height of four inches and five feet. “My remark was a statement, not an invitation,” she snapped her displeasure.
“Pity,” he drawled.
The heat in her cheeks was now caused by temper. “Do not attempt to play your flirtatious games with me, Dev—” Her scathing words came to an abrupt halt as she once again found herself held captive by the marquis’s fingers curled tightly about one of her wrists as he pulled her fully into the library before closing the door and pushed her back against it. His much taller and masculine body loomed over her ominously.
Aware of his superior height and strength, Alys refused to give him the satisfaction of fighting him. It was utterly futile of her to try to escape this man’s hold if he did not wish to release her.
“I never play flirtatious games, Alys,” he grated softly. “I never play games at all, flirtatious or otherwise.”
Strangely, Alys felt more at risk alone here with him in the library than she had in his bedchamber earlier. Possibly because, aware of her brother’s warning of yesterday, she dare not call out for help for fear of causing a scandal Teddy would never forgive her for. “My lord—”
“Sebastian.”
Alys blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“My name is Sebastian.” It was also a name Devil rarely, if ever, used. His closest friends always called him Devil, his servants and the ladies of the demimonde addressed him as my lord, and everyone else called him Deveril. For some reason he could not fathom, he now wished to hear his given name on Alys’s lips. Preferably as she cried out in the ecstasy of a physical release he had just given her. “Say it,” he instructed harshly.
“I do not—”
“Say it!”
Her throat moved as she swallowed before speaking. “Sebastian.”
Devil was known for his arrogance and disdain, not the shortness of temper or the lack of control he was now displaying. But he had not enjoyed having to watch Alys during dinner as she charmed her brother’s guests with her pleasing manner and appearance in the purple gown. His temper and arousal were now such Devil felt the need to either kiss Alys again or put her over his knee and spank her.
As he had never physically chastised a woman in his life and had no intention of starting with Alys, it left only the one alternative. Besides, the kiss they had shared earlier had merely whetted his appetite for more.
“I am going to kiss you again,” he informed her challengingly.
A look of panic entered her eyes. “I wish you would not.”
His brows arched. “Why not?”
Alys gave a pained wince, knowing the true reason she did not want Deveril to kiss her was because she was afraid she might respond, as she had the last time. “We are at loggerheads, my lord.”
“You are at loggerheads, Alys. As you cannot help but be aware, I am in lust,” he murmured.
She was aware, could once again feel the hard and throbbing length of his cock pressing against her.
It caused a plumping and hardening of her nipples and that responsive heat between her thighs.
Alys might not be a married woman or have even come close to being one, but she was aged almost one and twenty and had several married friends. Her conversations with some of the more outspoken ones meant she was no longer innocent of the physical evidence of a man’s arousal.
Deveril—Sebastian—was very aroused.
He killed my father.
The marquis insisted he had not. He had made that claim three years ago, and had continued to do so ever since.
For the first time, Alys questioned whether or not he might be telling her the truth.
Teddy seemed convinced of it. And surely no man could be callous enough, after killing a woman’s father, to expect that same woman to now respond to his lovemaking.
But if Deveril had not killed her father, then who had?
There had been no one else in the house but the three of them and a handful of servants on the night her father died. Deveril had to have done it. He was merely proving what an absolute monster he truly was by now attempting to make love to the daughter of the man he had killed.
“Take your hands off me,” Alys instructed coldly.
Devil drew his breath in sharply at the disdain in Alys’s tone and demeanor. It was as effective in dampening his desire for her as an ice-cold swim in a lake might have been. He released her and stepped back, hands tightly clenched at his sides. “Go to your bedchamber,” he bit out harshly. “Now. Before I change my mind and do something we will no doubt both regret.”
He only began to breathe again, was able to think again, once Alys had fled the room.
The desire Devil still felt toward Alys, to the extent he seemed incapable of keeping his hands off her whenever the two of them were alone, was a complication he had not foreseen. And he should have done.
There had been no falling-out between them three years ago, only Alys’s conviction he had killed her father. A belief which had meant Devil could not remain in her life, even as a friend.
The attraction he had felt toward her then had obviously not lessened in the slightest. No doubt due to the fact Alys was now three years older and a mature and beautiful woman.
Whatever the reason, Devil was aware that his impartiality in regard to her being Napoleon’s spy was now even more in doubt.
“Where did you and Deveril get to last night?” Teddy prompted curiously as brother and sister enjoyed breakfast together the following morning; their guests were either still abed or had risen early and were out riding before going out for this morning’s shoot.
Alys was slightly unnerved by the question but managed to maintain a cool demeanor. “If you recall, I excused myself and went to my bedchamber after dinner. I had assumed the marquis was with you in the billiards room.” A stretching of the truth, but she had only spent a matter of minutes in the library with Seb—the marquis. What Deveril had done after she left him, she genuinely had no idea. “Perhaps he also retired to his bedchamber? He was no doubt tired after his days of travel.”
Her brother snorted. “Deveril is five and thirty not five and eighty!”
Alys’s gaze remained
calm. “As I said, I have no idea what the marquis did after dinner.”
“Can’t have him growing bored and leaving.” Teddy frowned his displeasure at the idea. “Remember, you are the hostess, and I depend on you to help ensure all my guests are entertained. Even Deveril.”
“And how am I supposed to do that where the marquis is concerned?”
Her brother shrugged. “In whatever manner he sees fit.”
Alys was convinced her brother could not mean that as literally as it sounded. Because if Deveril had his way, she had no doubt the two of them would have spent the night together in his bed.
As she and Teddy would never agree on anything to do with the marquis, Alys did not wish to question her brother further as to his meaning. “What time will you be going shooting this morning, and will you be back in time for luncheon or require a picnic be brought out to you?”
Teddy glanced out of the window, where a typical fine summer rain was falling. “It is hardly the weather for a picnic. I doubt we shall be gone for more than a few hours. McHugh will have the beaters organized by ten o’clock.” He spoke of the Scottish manager of the Newcomb estate, and the man responsible for caring for and capturing the red grouse so prevalent in his own country. “Once we have shot a couple of dozen for our dinner, we shall return here for luncheon.”
Alys breathed an inward sigh of relief, both that she had successfully managed to deflect the conversation away from Deveril and that the servants would not be called upon to serve an open-air luncheon. She knew her brother enjoyed inviting his disreputable friends here for a shoot during the summer, but the few servants they had were already stretched to the limit, caring for the needs of so many guests.
She nodded. “I have almost finished my breakfast and shall speak to Cook directly.” At least the men would be returning with the main course for their dinner this evening.
Wicked Scandal (Regency Sinners 3) Page 2