Tempting the Scoundrel (Private Arrangements Book 2)

by Katrina Kendrick

  With a groan, Thorne tore at the buttons of his trousers and took his cock into his hand. He imagined her wet quim gripping his finger as he slipped it inside her. One finger first, then two, mimicking what he wanted to do to her with his cock. He would have eased her back on the sofa. His tongue would have licked a path down her throat as he removed his fingers and finally thrust into her.

  “Yes,” he hissed softly, working his hand fast.

  She’d be warm and wet and tight. She’d whisper in his ear a request, a litany, just like back in Gretna, and then again in their private rail cabin as the train swayed back and forth: Harder. Faster. Fuck me, Nick. Fuck me.

  He grasped the kerchief from his pocket. His orgasm left him dizzy. “Alex,” he whispered with a rough groan. “Alex.”

  After a few heartbeats, his breathing came down. Nick turned to toss the kerchief into the wastebasket—

  And found Alex standing in the doorway that connected their bedchambers.

  Nick shut his eyes and buttoned up his trousers. He wasn’t ashamed that she had caught him—for he knew, based on her expression, that she had heard him moan her name. That she knew exactly what he imagined in the privacy of his own room. How could he apologize for wanting her? It was fundamental, this fierce desire. It would be like apologizing for the way his heart sped up when he caught sight of her.

  She opened her mouth to speak.

  Nick braced himself.

  But she only whispered, “Why haven’t you been with other women?”

  Nick leaned over the desk again. “You know the answer to that question,” he said. “You remember the night in Gretna. I told you then.”

  “You told me so many things.” Her voice was so low, it barely reached him.

  “One truth. Do you want me to repeat it?”

  “No.” She shook her head sharply. “I don’t want those words from you.”

  And why should she? He had spoken those words the night after he was rewarded for his months long deception. Telling her he loved her didn’t matter, not after that.

  He studied her face, so familiar that he could recall every line, every freckle, every detail. It was terrain he had explored in his dreams for almost five years. Yet her thoughts were as uncharted to him as the darkest depths of the ocean.

  “Then what do you want from me?”

  She drew closer. Again, he braced himself. To Thorne, she would always be that woman in the lake, capable of loving him or drowning him. It was a mercurial notion often left to the Irish fairytales his ma told him as a lad, but she embodied it. Loving her meant taking the leap into the water.

  “As far as I’m concerned, this was our only truth in Hampshire.” She reached out and pressed her palm to his arm, but it was as if she had marked him. The heat of her touch seared his skin. “You desired me; I desired you. That was real.”

  “Alex . . .”

  She turned her nails into the fabric of his shirt. “We will not mince words. You wanted to fuck me in that room in Mayfair. Yes or no?”

  Thorne loosed a breath. “Yes.”

  “You want to fuck me now,” she whispered. “Yes or no?”

  Christ god. “You know I do.”

  “Then you must understand one thing,” she told him. “I don’t want pounds, shillings, pence, or properties. I want nothing from you. This means nothing. Do you agree?”

  Thorne went still. Aye, he comprehended her words well enough. She trusted him with her body, but not her heart. A younger version of himself would have laughed at the idea of an unforgivable dishonesty—but here it was: pretending that making love to Alex was a meaningless act.

  “Do you agree, Nick?” she repeated. This time, her words shook, the smallest crack along the exterior wall of her inner fortress. She was not as composed as she seemed. Her expression seemed to beseech him in a wordless plea: Say yes. Say yes.

  No, he would not say the words. He’d promised her no lies.

  He would show her the truth.

  Thorne leaned forward —such a small space between them, and yet it seemed such an infinite distance—and captured her lips with his. Their kiss was soft at first, tentative. Exploring. They relearned the texture and taste of each other’s lips, and hers was an intoxicant. The sweetness of honey, the heat of fine Irish whiskey—made for him. Just for him. She made some soft noise and deepened the kiss, her hands gripping his shirt to pull him closer.

  Slow. Slower. He wished to linger a moment, to assure himself that she wasn’t a dream. That this was real.

  She would not have it. Alex nipped at his lower lip and pressed her hand to his erection. Nick’s control snapped—four years, four fucking years—and he pushed her against the desk. His lips met hers fiercely, and she made a rough sound in approval. No gentleness now, only frayed control and desperate need. She bit him once more, harder this time—a wordless demand. Now. Take me.

  Thorne shoved the papers on his desk aside and lifted her. With a soft moan, she moved aside her petticoats and spread her thighs to pull him closer.

  There. God yes, there. The slit in her drawers was a godsend. The heat of her, the way she ground against him, her ragged breath against his pulse—these were revelations. She was not so calm as she appeared; these layers of petticoats and corsetry and fabric were another part of her fortress. They were her armor. And beneath that armor, she desired him with the same savage intensity as he wanted her.

  A ferocity gripped him, animal in its strength, and he knew from her response that he was not alone in this. Her fingernails grasped hard into his shirt; he could feel them down to his skin. Her lips tracked down the line of his jaw, her breath hot.

  “This means nothing,” she repeated on a breath, setting her teeth against the side of his neck as her hands strayed to his trousers. “Nothing.”

  “Then take it,” he said roughly as she flicked open his buttons. “Take your pleasure. Take it all.”

  “Now.” Her voice was desperate. She guided his cock to her entrance. “Now, now, now.”

  He pushed into her. Ah, god. He tipped his head back with a rough estimation of her name on his lips. She was warm and wet, and she bit him again, this time into the hard muscle of his shoulder. His response was just as savage, just as bestial, for he wished to bury himself inside her as far as he could go. He wanted to abolish the memory of any other lover she’d had; he wanted to lay some mark upon her bones. Something that said, remember me.

  Remember me.

  Remember me.

  There was no finesse to their coupling. Nothing soft. This was need, pure and simple, their bodies craving contact. A demand of: this. Now. Faster. Harder. Her response gratified him, the hard grasp of her hand on his arse to urge his pace. Her tongue at his neck, the kisses she pressed to his jaw as he satisfied her, the rough words she breathed into his ear.

  When she tipped her head back, her eyes were shut. He wondered what she thought of as her hips canted faster and faster to match his pace. What she imagined behind her lids. For that was another wall, wasn’t it? Hiding her pleasure from his view.

  Another savage urge raced through him. “Open your eyes,” he demanded, thrusting hard. Her lids fluttered open, her expression dazed. Yes. “I want you to watch me fuck you.”

  He wanted to keep saying it, keep commanding her. Look at me. Look at me.

  Heat filled her gaze. It was honest, that look. The wall around her heart had some vulnerabilities, critical flaws in the bricks and mortar she had stacked to keep him out. He wanted to see it demolished.

  Thorne reached between them and rubbed his fingers against her clitoris.

  Alexandra scrabbled her nails across his back as she came. He didn’t last much longer. He climaxed with some soft moan that brought him back to himself: soft thighs around his waist, mouth at his throat, her whispered words there.

  “You never answered me.”

  This means nothing.

  Do you agree?

  Thorne dragged a hand through his hair and whis
pered, “I promised never to lie to you again.”

  The reminder seemed to rouse her in some way. She gently pushed at his chest. Wordlessly, he stepped back as she slid off the desk and straightened her skirts. Thorne did the same with his own clothing.

  Alex started for the connecting door, but paused with her hand on the knob. “Nick,” she said softly.

  “Yeah?”

  She let out a long breath. “I thought you should know . . . there was never anyone else for me either.”

  When she left the room, Thorne shut his eyes. She had let him see the light beyond the high walls of her tower.

  Chapter 22

  The account books were a failed distraction.

  Thorne stared at the columns and numbers in his ledger, the scribbles of corrected sums—seven, by his count. Scratched out and re-tallied, mars on otherwise perfect rows of orderly numbers. Thorne did not make mistakes in his accountings; he knew the value of every bet, every pack of playing cards, every debt owed, and every last bit of quid the Brimstone earned right down to the last fucking farthing. Those neat tallies required no interpretation or doubt; mathematics had a single answer.

  His wife was another matter. Alex hadn’t left her room in three days.

  On the first day, Thorne saw the value in leaving her to think. When he came up from the club at night, he heard her pacing from one end of her room to another—back and forth, back and forth. Her mind was working again, he knew. Coming to terms with what happened between them, formulating conclusions, rejecting those conclusions, drawing up different ones. She’d paused at their connecting door, and he had held his breath waiting for her to turn the knob and step through.

  But in the end, she only resumed her pacing.

  The second day, Thorne risked knocking and asking after her welfare. “I’m busy,” she’d called through the door. The maid, Morag, had mentioned new clusters of paper on the floor. Alex’s hands covered in ink. Her pen tapping the desk in an agitated rhythm—he’d heard that one, all right. Just before dawn.

  Then, that morning, a letter came for her. This time, Alex had opened the door. Her golden hair had escaped its various pins, and a smudge of ink marred her cheek. When her blue eyes touched his, Thorne wanted to push her against the wall, tear off her clothes. Fuck her until she was so replete that she didn’t leave his bed for days.

  As if she read his mind, Alex bit her lip and reached out—so close to touching him—but aborted the gesture. Her fingers curled into her palm. “Who is the letter from?”

  Thorne held back a sigh and glanced down at it. “A Miss Annabel Dawes. Sound familiar?”

  She froze for a moment, then grasped the letter from his hand. “It’s my solicitor—well, officially her brother is my solicitor. But she’s my —” She cleared her throat. “Anyway. If you’ll please excuse me.”

  Then she’d shut the door in his face.

  So he had gone to seek a distraction. He’d been at the sums for hours now, and only succeeded in making a hash of his accounts. A knock sounded at his office door, making Thorne look up and hope.

  But it was only O’Sullivan. The factotum came in with a raised eyebrow look that clearly said, You, Nicholas Thorne, are a pathetic sod. O’Sullivan’s keen gaze swept the ledger in front of his boss, noting each mistake, but he only said, “Busy?”

  “Please tell me I have the pleasure of breaking a cheating toff’s face,” Thorne said, shutting his ledger.

  O’Sullivan smirked. “Not a toff. Guess who the lads saw loitering around his favorite watering hole tonight? Sean Gibbons. Looks like Whelan’s been contacting old allies.”

  Gibbons was one of Whelan’s few surviving loyalists. Once word got around that Thorne had murdered Whelan and marked every last one of his men for death, they scattered like vermin and went into hiding outside London. Rudderless and stripped of power, those men showed themselves to be cowards. It was easy to terrorize boys, after all. To force them to do unspeakable things.

  None of them had a single thought for what happened when abused boys trained in the art of murder became men.

  Thorne shoved away from his desk. “Tell Clements I’m going out. Unfinished business.”

  O’Sullivan blocked the door. “No.”

  “No?” Thorne drawled the word. Gave the other man a chance to amend it.

  But O’Sullivan did not. “You heard me. I told you about Gibbons as a courtesy, but I will go alone.”

  “Say again?” Thorne never had to use such a voice with O’Sullivan; he’d saved it for men who disrespected him. It promised violence.

  O’Sullivan shoved past Thorne and strode over to the desk. He threw open the ledger and jabbed a finger at the page. “You’re so unfocused that you missed two additional mistakes.”

  “It’s a fucking ledger, O’Sullivan,” Thorne snapped.

  “And out there”—O’Sullivan pointed to the window—“it’s your fucking life. You’ve had your mind elsewhere for days, and if Whelan is alive, it’s going to get you killed. Five years ago, it almost did.”

  “Won us the war, didn’t I?” he asked.

  The months after Stratfield Saye were muddy, obscured in his mind by guilt and anger. Guilt at having betrayed Alex, at taking her money and using it to destroy his enemies. Anger at Whelan and his men for everything they had done. Thorne had come back and battled for control of the East End.

  The knife he carried did not show mercy four years ago. And he hadn’t cared if he’d lived or died taking care of his business—he just wanted it done. He wanted to be free.

  And his freedom came with a price: her.

  “Yeah, you won the war. Barely. That lady toff left you a fucking mess after Hampshire. I helped you pick up the goddamn pieces last time, remember? Don’t make me do it again.”

  Thorne ignored that. “That lady toff is my wife.”

  O’Sullivan stepped closer, his gaze harsh. “That lady toff was your fucking mark.”

  Thorne made a noise. “She hasn’t been that for a long time, and you know it.”

  “Don’t care. If you lose focus and Whelan ends up slitting your throat, a lot of people will suffer for it.” O’Sullivan straightened. “I’m going to find Gibbons alone.”

  This time Thorne blocked O’Sullivan from leaving. “Things are different now. I have more to lose than I did four years ago.” He added, very softly, “And so do you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Thorne raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “So the woman managing my orphanage means nothing to you, then?”

  O’Sullivan’s lips flattened. “Leave Sofia out of this.”

  “I may not know what you went through after Whelan sold you, but she came to me when you were near dead. And she came to you when she needed help. I make my living on bets. I’d wager that means something.”

  O’Sullivan’s chest was rising and falling rapidly, his eyes hard behind his spectacles. “Fuck off.”

  “Sure. Answer me one question first: if trouble came for Sofia, would you let me block this door, or would you fight like hell to get past me?” O’Sullivan looked away, his jaw working. Thorne let out a dry laugh. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Fine,” O’Sullivan said. “But I’m coming with you. Someone needs to have your back, or you’ll find yourself with a knife in it.”

  The Golden Lion was a public house in the Nichol where Gibbons used to get soused on a near-nightly basis. Where some taverns in the East End acted as unofficial meeting places for anyone from laborers to businessmen, the Golden Lion made no attempt to advertise itself as a respectable establishment. Set within the ground floor of a crumbling tenement, the Lion appealed to men who wished to drown themselves in pint after pint. Aged prostitutes lingered outside the door, offering a quick fuck between tankards of the cheapest, foulest ale in London. Near nightly brawls spilled out onto the vomit spotted pavement, and it was a damned unusual day if you didn’t see a man passed out there from either a h
it to the face or too much drink.

  The Golden Lion was near the tenement cellar where Whelan had kept Thorne and O’Sullivan and the other lads. If he’d listened closely in the darkness, all those years ago, he could hear the noise from the public house. He knew how fucking idiotic it was to envy the brawlers and drunkards at the Lion, but when he was a lad, the raucous had sounded like freedom.

  Thorne slid his hands into his trouser pockets and leaned against the blackened brick wall of an old tenement. Beside him, O’Sullivan was quiet, watching the door of the Lion with a gaze that was narrowed and focused. Earlier, as they had drawn closer to the Nichol, O’Sullivan’s expression became shuttered, his mouth set in a firm line.

  O’Sullivan stiffened at a sound in the distance, unidentifiable.

  “All right?” Thorne asked him.

  The factotum didn’t take his eyes off the Lion. “Just wish we had gone after Gibbons years ago, and the other three that got away. They all brought lads down into that cellar for coin.”

  “Never too late for retribution. But somehow I don’t think you’re only speaking of Whelan’s men.”

  “Sunderland,” O’Sullivan said quietly.

  “Eight years since the night I hauled your pummeled arse out of that locked room,” Thorne said. “Reckon the earl is feeling comfortable about now.”

  O’Sullivan’s expression went hard. “I want him to sleep soundly,” O’Sullivan said. “Think he’s safe. Because after I come for him, he’ll never fucking sleep again. Him and his son, both.”

  “Good.” Thorne pushed off the wall as he saw a familiar face stagger out of the Golden Lion. Gibbons headed down the shadowed lane further into the Nichol. “I want to be there the day you ruin them.”

  Thorne lunged out at the right time, grasped Gibbons by the coat and slammed him into the wall. He slapped a hand over Gibbons’ mouth to cut off the man’s startled yelp. “Shhhhh. None of that now. We’re going to have a conversation.”

  O’Sullivan stepped out of the shadows with a smile that held a promise of retribution. Gibbons’ eyes bulged from behind Thorne’s fingers. The low lamplight revealed a man little changed by the years spent outside London. His hair was still greasy and thinning at the top, and the darkness threw his sharp cheekbones into stark relief. The stench of body odor and spirits clung to Gibbons like second skin—always had.