by Lenora Bell
And he’d always pictured her wearing it.
No one else would do.
He slapped his gloves against his thigh. “Damn it all, Indy. Stolen antiquities are my specialty.”
“Here we go, having the very conversation I predicted,” said Indy with a mocking smile that reminded him of the one he always tried to maintain when he talked to her. “I explained to you last night that hieroglyphics are my specialty. You only want the glory and the fame of being a hero for England. I actually require the stone for my research.”
“I understand that you require the . . .” he lowered his voice and whispered the next word, “stone.” He transferred his gloves to his coat pocket and placed his hand over his heart. “I swear to you, Indy, that I will bring it back to you and you may research it to your heart’s content.”
Instead of mollifying her, his gallant proclamation only made her eyes narrow. “You’ll bring me the stolen antiquity and lay it at my feet like some knight slaying a dragon for a princess, is that it?”
“If you want to view it like that.” What was wrong with noble impulses? He’d fight the entire Paris underworld single-handedly if it meant keeping her safe.
“I’ll slay my own dragons, thank you very much.” She was standing so near he could see the gray and blue flecks in her irises that blended to produce that startling shade of purple.
There were faint lines at the corners of her generous lips. They were both growing older.
The lines only made her more beautiful.
He couldn’t let Indy know that he already had a strong suspicion about who had stolen the stone. If he told her, she’d probably rush right to Le Triton’s door.
He had to outsmart her, outmaneuver her, use every means at his disposal to frighten her away from going to Paris.
Good luck with trying to outsmart her, you fool.
Careful now. She’s already jittery and on edge. “I know you’re fearless and capable,” he said. “But some of the French antiquities thieves who could be behind this theft are ruthless and cruel.”
“Are you talking about Le Triton? I thought he was your friend. Aren’t you cut from the same cloth?”
It took all of Raven’s years of conditioning and training not to launch a stream of expletives.
“He’s not my friend,” Raven said in outrage. “Le Triton is evil and he’s extremely dangerous. He runs a criminal organization from his impenetrable stronghold in Paris and he doesn’t only deal in stolen antiquities but every nefarious enterprise you could imagine.”
“Well I’m not scared of him. And besides, I think it far more likely that the Russians are behind the theft.”
That was giving the Russians entirely too much credit, to his way of thinking.
“And another thing,” Indy continued, her eyes flashing. “I don’t need you, or any other man, telling me to stay home, to be quiet, to do my embroidery and let the menfolk risk their lives. You’re talking to a woman who has fought off knife attacks and survived venomous snakebites.”
“Indy, I know we haven’t exactly been allies in the past few years, but I’m here to ask for a temporary truce.”
“Don’t call me Indy. I’m not your Indy anymore, and there’ll be no truce.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily. “There’s nothing I can say that will dissuade you from going to Paris, is there?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“What happens if we meet in Paris?”
“I’ll cross the street.”
“I mean at an event. The British society in Paris is quite insular. How are you going to make inquiries without arousing suspicions about what you’re searching for?”
“A ha.” She jabbed his chest with her finger. When had they drifted so close to each other? “Now I understand what you’re truly worried about. You think I’ll bungle the mission. Let the cat out of the bag.”
“You’re not exactly known for your tact and discretion.”
She sniffed. “And you’re not exactly known for your sobriety.”
It was difficult to fight with her when she made him want to laugh. “There are things you don’t know, can’t know, about the circumstances of the theft.”
“Things which Sir Malcolm shared with you simply because you’re a man and you happened to be in the room when I discovered the stone was missing.”
“Well . . . yes.” And because he was a secret agent in Sir Malcolm’s employ, a fact that Indy could never, ever know.
“You . . . you . . .” she sputtered, her eyes sharp as the facets on a diamond. She was rarely at a loss for words.
He decided to press forward. “Why don’t you just go on your next archaeological expedition as planned? I’ll send you a very clear ink lithograph of the entire script when I recover the relic. I’ll personally supervise the printing.”
“Men!” She shook her head vehemently and dark tendrils of hair fell across her cheek. “You’re always underestimating me. You and every other man I meet. You may think me indiscreet but I would never jeopardize this mission.”
“All well and good, but I know you too well. If there’s trouble, you’ll be in the thick of it.”
She had a contentious nature and a flair for the dramatic, which would make his mission all the more complicated. He’d have to find the stone and protect Indy in the extremely likely event that she stuck her nose where it wasn’t wanted.
She turned her head away, obviously fighting for control over her emotions. She had the noble profile of a Roman goddess. Minerva hoisting her shield and spear and heading into battle.
She took several deep breaths, exhaling audibly.
The scent of her perfume teased his senses. She couldn’t wear something easily identifiable like other ladies. No roses or orange blossoms for her. She’d chosen something complicated that smelled like it must be extracted from strange flowers that only bloomed at night.
It was so much easier to combat this elemental attraction when there were literal oceans between them.
So much simpler to fight the power she held over him when her lips weren’t so very close to his.
“We’ve reached an impasse.” She brushed strands of dark hair away from her cheek with an impatient gesture. “As I predicted.”
“We’re like oil and water, you and I.” He drew a shaky breath. “Never the twain shall mingle.”
“Fire and ice.”
“The North Pole and the South.”
“I hate you,” she said. “Quite thoroughly.”
“So you’ve told me.”
“‘If I be waspish, best beware my sting.’” Now she was quoting from a Shakespeare play. Dirty fellow, that Mr. Shakespeare.
“‘My remedy is then to pluck it out,’” he rejoined, surprising himself by recalling the next line.
“‘Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.’”
“As I recall,” said Raven, “The Taming of the Shrew becomes rather bawdy at this point. Isn’t there talk of tongues in tails?”
“Yes, and men being three-legged stools to sit on,” she said, with the hint of a smile on her lips. “You know I’ll never be tamed, or ordered about, right?”
“I’m well aware. I don’t want to tame you. I want to protect you from being hurt,” he said, his voice jagged with emotion.
And he wasn’t only speaking of what could be, in Paris, but of what he’d done.
He’d wanted to make her hate him. And it had worked. Gods, how it had worked.
She inhaled, her full breasts brushing against his chest. Her softness made his body feel more solid. All of him solidifying . . . hardening like lava meeting the air, hardening to stone, but his heart kept glowing.
His Indy.
The fiercest person he knew . . . yet she was all extravagant curves, and they would fit together so beautifully. Two halves of a whole.
Forbidden thought.
She lifted her hand. The briefest touch along his jaw.
Forbidden
touch.
“You haven’t shaved since last night.” The words spoken in a throaty whisper. Her finger tracing the line of his jaw.
“I haven’t slept since last night,” he said roughly.
“You honestly think this will be a perilous undertaking?”
“I know it will be.”
He stood perfectly still as her finger continued its exploration. Over his chin, down his throat to his Adam’s apple.
Touch me. Caress me. Slap me.
I’ll never respond.
Never pull her close and lose himself in her scent, her lips, her Indy-ness. If he did he’d never come back up for air. He’d drown.
His chosen path would disappear. The oaths he’d sworn.
King and Country.
To prevent and defeat treasonable or other dangerous conspiracies against the state . . . or die trying.
No vulnerabilities. No attachments. Nothing his enemies could use against him, as Sir Malcolm’s enemies had done. The spymaster’s wife and young daughter had been poisoned to death one year before Raven had come to live with him.
We prefer our operatives never to marry. If you were compromised, a family would be a liability. And if you were killed in the field, as your father was . . . well you know what agony that causes for a family.
Her fingers moved to his lips and her gaze followed.
She was staring at his lips. Her thumb exploring, claiming territory.
He stayed completely still, not daring to breathe.
Stretched taut like a rope, fraying beneath the weight of his desire.
If he allowed himself to breathe, he would take her lips, as he’d dreamed of doing so many times, with fierceness and certainty.
Learn their lush contours by heart. Delve inside to taste her sweet, tart tongue. Swallow the I hate you and tease his name from her lips.
Say my name. Say you want me.
Raven. I want you.
He should say harmful, hurtful things. Push her away.
A new idea insinuated its siren song into his Indy-addled mind. What if he’d been going about this business all wrong? What if the best way to frighten her into staying in London wasn’t to push her away . . . but to pull her close?
It could work. He had to try something.
He wrapped his arm around her slender waist. Dragged her against him.
And kissed her.
Indy’s stomach flip-flopped and her heart danced in her chest.
She’d goaded him into losing control. Iron-willed Ravenwood. The impassive, mocking, infuriating man who always made her lose her patience, who always reduced her to a quivering mess of nerves and rage.
He was kissing her.
She’d won this round.
She’d won . . . his mouth pressed lightly against hers while his gold-brown eyes stayed hard and argumentative.
Half of a victory, then. She’d take it.
She’d take everything he gave and demand even more.
Victory tasted . . . incredible.
His lips moved against her softly, coaxing her lips apart, the sensation like nothing she’d ever known. She gasped into his mouth, betraying her wildly shifting emotions.
His tongue inside her mouth.
Like diving into an icy lake on a hot day in only your shift, nipples instantly tightening, blood pumping faster because of the instinctual threat of the cold stopping your heart.
The shock of sun-saturated heat meeting the freezing water . . . like tiny pins stuck under your skin.
The exhilaration.
I’m alive. I live. There’s never been anyone else like me.
There’s never been another kiss like this.
His tongue showed hers what to do: stroke and glide, find the buoyancy. Keep pressing deeper until the earth tilts and his eyes are the ground and your toes are hooked in the clouds.
You don’t float away because his strong hands clamp around your waist. Hands like heavy wooden stocks closing around you, immobilizing you. You’re being punished for having so many dreams about him, for fantasizing about this moment so many times.
A softening in his eyes now, almost a smile hidden in their depths. She smiled against his lips and he nipped at her lower lip with his teeth.
Did lovers do that? Nip each other? She tried it, nibbling on his lip. He tasted like brandy and smoke and forbidden pleasures.
She pressed her body against him and his hands tightened around her waist, pulling her against his hips. His hands shaped the small of her back and her hands wandered to his sculptural buttocks.
Learning his shape, the muscles like marble, the deep fissure down the center of his back, hillocks of muscle on either side.
For some reason the feel of all that solid maleness drove her nearly mad. He was a cliff wall and she must find handholds and footholds to climb him, scale his heights.
His lips never left hers. They kissed and kissed, needing nothing so prosaic as air.
They would live on kisses for the rest of their lives.
They might kiss for an eternity. They might turn to stone and be delivered to the British Museum: The Rivals’ Embrace, a study in marble.
He cupped her bum with his hands, squeezing gently, and she moaned, just like in her dreams; she moaned out loud, unable to stop herself.
They kissed and he took the lead, pressing into her mouth, opening her wider with his lips, diving into her and then she, not wanting to be outdone, took control. Raising her hands to the nape of his neck, playing across the corded tendons, and dragging him deeper into the kiss.
She’d wanted this for so long.
No thought for what this meant or what would happen afterward, only: yes, there, fill me and I’ll fill you.
She was a historian, an archaeologist, it was her job to hypothesize about long-dead passions and court intrigues.
Let’s write some history of our own. Inscribe this kiss in the record books.
“Ahem.”
The throat clearing noise came from somewhere far away. A cold, cruel world where kissing Ravenwood was the absolute worst possible thing she could do, and where being caught kissing him meant certain annihilation.
“Ravenwood. India.” An irritated voice. A gruff voice.
Edgar.
Indy wrenched away from Ravenwood. The look on his face nearly made her erupt into hysterical laughter. His eyes were frozen wide in the quintessential I’ve-been-caught-kissing-your-sister expression of sheer and utter panic.
This was a disaster.
Indy took a deep, steadying breath and turned toward the door.
Great mounds of steaming shite.
Had she thought this was a disaster? It was far worse than that. It was the blasted Apocalypse. The Four Horsemen would come galloping into the room any moment now, signaling the end of days.
Because it wasn’t just Edgar gaping at them from the doorway. The odious Mr. Peabody, of the Observer, bobbed beside her brother with barely contained glee, no doubt already composing tomorrow’s lurid headlines.
Victory Declared for Mankind: Lady Danger Tamed at Last by Rogue Duke’s Kiss.
Bollocks!
What had it looked like to Edgar and Mr. Peabody?
What do you think it looked like, you flibbering ninny? You were mauling each other like wild beasts.
His hands gripping her bum, her arms tangled around his neck, lips locked.
Everyone remained frozen in the tableau as if no one wanted to be the first person to speak, as if time might spin backward and the scene could be avoided if everyone remained silent.
“What exactly is happening here?” Edgar finally asked, a perplexed expression on his face.
“Lady India had a fainting spell,” said Ravenwood smoothly. “I was attempting to resuscitate her.” He placed an arm around her waist. “Are you quite recovered, my lady?” he asked solicitously. “Perhaps we should fetch some smelling salts?”
That’s when Indy’s already frayed temper completely ripped apart at
the seams like a bodice in a bawdy book.
She was angry with herself for touching his lips like a moonstruck young girl.
She was angry with him for kissing her so passionately that she completely forgot she hated him.
And she was furious most of all that they’d been caught in their moment of madness.
Only their intimate family knew that their marriage contract was still in existence. Everyone would say she was just another one of Ravenwood’s doxies after Peabody published his titillating tale.
She was no man’s doxy. Especially not Ravenwood’s.
And so she lashed out in the first way her kiss-scrambled brain supplied. How did one go about wounding a rogue?
Hit him where it would hurt the most: his freedom.
“Why, you great dolt of a duke,” she cooed, touching the tip of his nose. “You know I’ve never fainted once in my life.” She removed his arm from her waist. “I think it’s time for our little secret to be revealed.” She whirled toward their audience with her most theatrical whirl.
“Indy,” Ravenwood whispered warningly, only adding fuel to the fire.
“Dear Mr. Peabody,” Indy trilled. “What you have just witnessed has a very logical and legitimate explanation.” She paused for dramatic effect.
All three men leaned in closer to hear her next words.
She was almost beginning to enjoy herself now. She’d always loved a captivated audience.
“You see the truth is that His Grace has just made me the happiest lady on earth.” She lifted his hand to her lips and air-kissed his huge knuckles. “By finally agreeing to set a date for our wedding.”
Chapter 6
Raven swallowed the wrong way and began choking.
Indy thumped him on the back. “Are you quite all right, darling duke? Shall I fetch you some smelling salts?”
She had a sadistic spark in her eyes.
“We’ve been betrothed since birth, you’ll recall,” Indy said in a confiding voice to Peabody, who looked as bewildered as Raven felt.
“But I thought you had, that is to say, I was under the impression, that your ladyship and His Grace were no longer betrothed,” said Peabody.
Banksford laughed uneasily. “Ha ha.” He clapped his hand onto Peabody’s shoulder. “Nothing like a dram of drama in the morning. My sister’s always had a theatrical streak. It’s true that they’ve been betrothed since birth. The agreement was never formally ended. I’m very pleased to hear the wedding’s back on.” He laughed heartily. “Now do let me show you the small-scale model I’ve built of my new steam engine.” He tried to lead Peabody away but the man wasn’t having it.