A Beginner's Guide to Rakes

by Suzanne Enoch

  “You’ve gone mad!”

  Moving faster than she could follow, he stripped the pistol from her hand and tossed it into the bathtub. “More than likely.” Keeping his unreadable gaze on her, he moved sideways until he could dip his fingers into the bathwater. “Cold,” he said, as though that meant something. Which it did, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

  This was beyond mad. “You released me from your stupid bargain. Go away!”

  “You said you wanted to be convinced that I’ve changed.”

  “Yes, convinced! Not … frightened half to death by men falling through my ceiling.”

  “And how am I supposed to convince you of anything when you keep avoiding me? I know you, and you know me better than any other woman in the entire damned world. So you want flowers, I suppose? Jewelry? Fine gowns?” He walked toward her. “Poems? You would laugh in my face.”

  “Flowers are very nice,” she returned, stumbling a little on the wet, debris-covered floor as she backed toward the door leading to her private sitting room.

  “Men give you flowers every day. I’ll wager you don’t even recall the names of the men who sent you flowers today.”

  “I’ve told you numerous times that I don’t wager.”

  “Lord Quence, Michael Penn-Haller, and Lord Peter Selse.” He took another step closer to her. “I’m not giving you any bloody flowers.”

  Her heart skittered. “You make note of whoever sends me flowers?”

  Oliver’s gray eyes narrowed. “Every damned day.”

  Diane took another step backward, and her spine bumped against her bedchamber door. “I think you should know, cutting holes in my ceiling and refusing to bring me flowers is not how I would convince me of anything but your lunacy.”

  “Isn’t it?” Stopping a foot in front of her, he reached out and ran a finger from her throat to where the neck of her robe closed over her chest. “I can feel your heart beating.”

  “That’s what hearts do.”

  “You’ve risked your reputation, your money, my money, everything you own, on The Tantalus Club. And flowers are supposed to sway you? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  She hated to admit it, but he made a good point. After an arranged marriage ended in ever-increasing poverty, flowers had struck her as being overly sentimental and useless. “Then destroying my home is your chosen method of … swaying me?”

  “Was it successful?”

  At the moment, with heat twining down her spine and excitement making her hands shake, she couldn’t think of anything more arousing than a man—this man—breaking down walls or ceilings or floors to get to her. “So far.” If she’d trusted him just a bit more, she wouldn’t have hesitated at all. And that thought shook her a little.

  Oliver hooked his forefinger into the material of her robe and tugged her up against his lean, solid body. She couldn’t say who kissed whom first, but within a few hard beats of her heart she was so tangled into him that she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began, even through their clothes.

  “Tell me that you want me,” he murmured, pushing her robe down her shoulders and kissing her throat.

  The way he said it, the slight break in his husky voice, aroused her all over again. He might have broken in to get to her, but he seemed to need to know that she was glad he was there. It was very unlike the arrogant, self-assured marquis she thought she knew so well.

  Some kind of game or not, however, these days she took what she wanted. She even had a rule about it. “I want you, Oliver,” she breathed, tangling her fingers into his rich brown hair. “But not here.”

  He pulled back, scowling. “What kind of damned thing is that to say?” he demanded.

  “There’s a hole in my ceiling,” she explained carefully, gesturing. Clearly he was just about at the edge of reason. “I refuse to have my staff listening—or watching—us.”

  His expression eased again. “Ah. I apologize. All the blood has left my brain and traveled downward.” He sent her a sly look full of sex and secrets. “As you can likely tell.”

  “Yes, I can.” With a slow grin she reached behind her and unlatched the door leading to her sitting room.

  Half-stumbling out of the room, they ended up pressed against the back of a couch. His mouth lowered over hers again, and she closed her eyes, drinking in the sensation of him around her, his hands on her bare skin.

  “The door,” she managed shakily, using all her willpower to push him away.

  “Do you think I’ll be followed?”

  “The door.”

  Oliver leaned his forehead against hers, then kissed her again. “As you wish.”

  He closed her bedchamber door harder than he meant to; his control had clearly deserted him the moment she’d left him staring, alone, at his closing front door. For a few minutes he’d attempted to be logical and magnanimous and understand that she likely needed to hurt him so they would be, in some sense, even.

  But then he’d realized that if he allowed her to dictate the terms of this relationship, he would lose too much ground. He would be the servant, the subordinate. While he had never been in that position with anyone, with her it was even more vital that he neither follow nor lead. And most important, he would be going to bed alone, hard, aching, and furious.

  Returning to her, he untied the sash around her waist and pulled her dressing gown open. God, she was lovely. “You’re breathtaking,” he said aloud.

  Diane responded by pushing his jacket off his shoulders and stripping him out of his waistcoat so quickly that one of the buttons popped off. “Oh, apologies,” she muttered, tossing the garment to the floor.

  He grinned. “A button versus a ceiling, Diane. I’ve no complaints.” Dipping his head, he took one of her soft breasts into his mouth, flicking his tongue across her nipple.

  At her responding gasp he turned his attention to her other breast, attempting to ignore the constricted ache of his cock. This was the Diane Benchley he remembered, free with her expressions of pleasure. She still might not trust him completely, but she’d begun to.

  Thankfully the couch was both long and deep, and once he’d yanked off his boots he stretched out alongside her. Carefully he removed the clips from her curling hair, drawing the black, lavender-scented mass forward across her shoulders. When he lowered himself over her for another kiss, her wandering hands reached for his trousers.

  In a moment she shoved the material down past his thighs, and he kicked it off to the floor. “You’re so warm,” she breathed, arching her body against his.

  “You were just in a tub of cold water. Let me warm you.” With a grin he sank down, kissing her breasts and her belly and her thighs, then parting her legs to work his way up again. When he brushed his tongue and fingers along her folds, she gasped and moaned throatily. Good God. If she made that sound again, he would likely come right there, like some virginal schoolboy with his first chit.

  “I’m quite warm now, thank you,” she rasped shakily, digging her fingers into his scalp as he lowered his head to her again.

  He chuckled, then had to close his eyes and conjure images of dustbins and gouty old men when she bucked against him. Teasing and licking at her dampness until he couldn’t stand not being inside her for a second longer, he slid up her body again.

  Settling over her, Oliver kissed her again, relishing the way she pushed up, pressing her body close against his. She flung her ankles around his thighs and he angled his hips forward, pushing hard and hot into her. Everything became sensation: his mouth on hers, the slide of flesh around his, hands everywhere—time seemed to stop for those minutes, with nothing but the sound of breathing and moans and the slight, rhythmic creak of the low couch beneath them.

  She climaxed around him, but he held on to his slipping control as best he could. Slowing his thrusts to prolong her shuddering, shivering pleasure, he watched those sparkling emerald eyes as she panted beneath him. He’d run away from this two years ago. What in God’s name had possessed him?
When her breathing settled a little he sped his own rhythm, burying himself in her over and over, hard and fast and deep. With a grunt he came, emptying himself into her.

  For several long minutes they lay where they were, still kissing as he rolled onto his side next to her. He didn’t wish to stop touching her, caressing her—and then he remembered. That was what had sent him fleeing. Not the very exceptional sex, but that need to be close to her that consumed him at every waking moment. That desire to please her, to shoulder all of her troubles, to see the concern and worry gone from her eyes.

  But the oddest part of all this was that while he remembered his horror in those tangible memories, the idea of attachment didn’t … trouble him as it had before. He didn’t know whether it was the two years that had passed and everything that had happened in that time or the fact that he’d spent the past two years attempting to feel the pleasure without the need and had failed miserably.

  “I have a question for you,” she murmured, still sounding out of breath.

  “My mind’s not quite up to form, but I shall do my best to answer it,” Oliver returned, abruptly fascinated all over again by the soft curve of her throat. He placed a kiss over the soft, quick beat of her pulse there.

  “You gave up your eight hours hoping that I would be grateful enough to end up in your bed anyway, did you not?”

  “No.”

  Diane lifted an eyebrow, looking up at him. He briefly wondered what she saw. “No?” she repeated. “You took some rather extreme measures to find me when I declined.”

  “I wanted us to end up doing this,” he conceded, running his fingers in circles around her breasts. “But I wanted the odds to be even, so to speak.”

  “You didn’t wish to force me, you mean?”

  “I wouldn’t do that regardless, but yes, I wanted you to want to be here.” He was being very honest this evening; apparently whatever insanity had struck him when he’d decided that hacking through her ceiling would be the perfect way to get her attention hadn’t abated.

  “Ah, Oliver,” she sighed, stretching in a way that made him hard all over again, “you and bed and I have always been very compatible. It’s everywhere else I have my doubts.”

  “You know, living here is the closest to … domesticity I’ve had since I turned twelve. It may take me some time to become accustomed to it.”

  She chuckled, running her hand along his hip. “If The Tantalus Club is your idea of domesticity, it has been quite some time for you.” Her smile faded. “Are you ever going to tell me why you fled Vienna? And not that nonsense about needing to reconcile with your uncle.”

  Whatever this thing forming between them might be, a lie would ruin it. But it was very likely that the truth would as well—especially when he was still attempting to decipher his feelings, old and new, himself. “I’ll tell you,” he said slowly, “but not tonight.”

  “That’s not very reassuring.”

  “Suffice it to say that I’m not running now.” He took a breath. “Nor do I intend to.”

  Her emerald gaze held his for a long moment. “I will require some convincing, and a bit of proof.”

  Oliver turned her onto her side, facing away from him, then reached around her to caress her breasts. “I shall do my utmost,” he murmured into her ear, and, propping up one of her knees, slowly pushed into her from behind. As long as the task involved sex with Diane Benchley, he was more than willing to make amends.

  * * *

  It had to be near dawn when he fell asleep on the couch, Diane lying across his chest and a thin blanket covering the two of them from the late-night chill. And it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes after that when he jerked awake again at the sound of a female screech.

  “Diane!”

  Her sitting room door burst open, the swinging door closely followed by the French twist and two of the stouter-looking chits. This time Miss Martine was carrying a damned pistol—and it very much looked like she knew how to use it.

  “I’m well, Jenny,” Diane said groggily, sitting up in front of him and taking most of the blanket to wrap around her. “I told Juliet I would be indisposed.”

  “Yes, but that was when you were in his apartments. When you left, she assumed your plans had changed.” The chit scowled at him beyond Diane’s shoulder. “You know there’s a hole in the floor of the servants’ hallway upstairs. It looks directly down into your bedchamber.”

  Diane cleared her throat. “Yes, I know,” she returned, humor touching her voice. “We’ll have to summon Mr. Dunlevy and have that repaired.”

  “And that’s all you have to say?”

  “At the moment, yes. That’s all I have to say. We can talk more later, my dear. But I would truly like to get some sleep first.”

  “With him here?”

  “Him would like to stay, yes,” Oliver put in, becoming a bit annoyed at being spoken about as if he weren’t there. “We can chat tomorrow as well, if you’d like.”

  “Cochon,” she snapped.

  “It’s far too early to be calling me names,” he commented, lying down again and favoring her with his most porcine-like snort just to show that he understood the insult.

  Diane elbowed him in the rib cage. “I will sit down to breakfast with you, Jenny,” she said. “At ten o’clock.”

  “Yes, yes. I can see there is nothing to be done here now.”

  It had already been done, but if he said that aloud, she would likely raise that pistol again. Once Genevieve and her female guards left the room and closed the door again, Diane sank back down onto the couch. “That might have gone better.”

  “Considering that no one shot me this time, I have to disagree.”

  He felt rather than heard her chuckle. “Perhaps things are looking up for you, after all.”

  Oh, he definitely had to agree with that. And now he could begin to worry in earnest about what Cameron and Greaves might be planning.

  * * *

  “He wanted to get my attention,” Diane said, beginning to lose her patience. She rose from the breakfast table to fetch another slice of ham from the sideboard. “Which he did.”

  “He smashed a hole into your bedchamber ceiling,” Jenny retorted. It was the fourth or fifth time she’d made that statement—apparently she didn’t think Diane actually understood what she was saying. “If he wanted your attention, he might have sent you flowers.”

  “I made that same suggestion.” Sitting at the small table once more, she returned to her breakfast. When Jenny continued to glare at her, however, she set down her fork. “I’m not falling for him again, if that’s what’s troubling you. I don’t repeat my mistakes.”

  “Then why have you been smiling all morning? You detest Lord Haybury—or have you forgotten?”

  And that was the rub. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d ranted about Oliver to Jenny. The curses hadn’t been said to gain sympathy or to turn him into a villain simply because Diane felt she’d been wronged. She’d meant them all. But now was not then. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said aloud.

  “Then what—”

  “I do hope you’ve noticed how much more cooperative he’s been lately. And I’ve no complaints about his overnight performance.” None at all.

  Jenny scowled. “I only hope you aren’t being fooled in all of this. You may have caught him by surprise initially, but he is not a stupid man. And he does not like to lose. I can almost guarantee that he is making his own plans.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” What those plans might be, though—given the way he’d been mentioning domesticity and not going anywhere—disconcerted her.

  “And do you think the Duke of Greaves and Lord Larden were here because of you, or because of him? He’s bringing trouble.”

  “He didn’t bring Anthony.”

  “That, my dear, I will agree with. The new earl spent the evening touching the wallpaper and fingering the curtains and counting every penny the club took in last night.”

  W
ith a sigh, Diane set aside her fork. “Perhaps I’ve been a bit too clever at looking well-off. The costume might have convinced gentlemen to trust that I wouldn’t cheat them out of anything, but obviously Anthony thinks that either I or The Tantalus have a very fat purse.”

  “And how do you propose we discourage his interest?”

  For a moment Diane wasn’t certain whether Jenny was referring to Anthony or to the Marquis of Haybury. One problem at a time, she reminded herself. First she needed to protect the club, and then she could worry about her heart. “I’m not certain yet. I can keep Anthony from becoming a member of the club, but if a current member invites him as a guest…” She scowled. “This is so annoying! It’s my club, and he can’t have any part of it. I’ll see to that.”

  “Good.” Finally Jenny returned to her own breakfast. “By the way, as long as Mr. Dunlevy will be returning to repair your ceiling, have you considered giving some of your senior staff their own quarters?”

  Diane nodded. “I don’t see the harm in taking one or two of the dormitory rooms and dividing them into individual bedchambers. I want my captains to feel secure here. And to be able to make a home of this place.”

  For a long moment Jenny gazed at her. “I never expected to hear you say that.”

  “I’ve read those idiotic pamphlets Lady Dashton and her stiff-spined cronies are publishing. I doubt they’d be calling my employees whores if they happened to have too many daughters and not enough money to support them. Not everyone wants to become a governess or a lady’s companion, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Or to marry,” Genevieve put in feelingly. “The Tantalus Club is far more exciting than an embroidery circle.”

  Laughing, Diane lifted her cup of tea in a toast. “Darling, you have no idea.”

  “Then back to our starting point. Promise me you’ll continue to be careful about whom you … trust, no matter how pleasantly that devil is behaving.”

  “I will. I promise.” A knock sounded at the half-open door, and she turned her head. “Come in, Sally.”

  The footwoman sketched a quick curtsy. “My lady, Grace says you have a caller.”