She had money, clearly. And power. A woman required both in spades for entry to 72 Shelton—even knowing the place existed required a network that did not come easily. There were a thousand reasons why she might wish access, and Whit had heard them all. Boredom, dissatisfaction, recklessness. But he couldn’t see any of those in Hattie. She wasn’t an impetuous girl—she was old enough to know her mind and to make her choices. Nor was she plain, or a dilettante.
He moved toward her. Slowly. Deliberately.
She stiffened. Her grip tightened on the paper in her hand. “I shan’t be intimidated.”
“He stole from me, and I wish it back.”
But that wasn’t everything.
He was close enough to touch her. Close enough to measure the height he’d noticed in her before, nearly equal to his own. Close enough to see her eyes, dark behind the mask, fixed on him. Close enough to be cloaked in almonds.
“Whatever it is.” She pushed her shoulders back. “I shall see it returned.”
Four shipments. Three outriders with bullets in them. After tonight, Whit’s own throwing knives, which he prized above all else. And, if he was right, more than could ever be repaid.
He shook his head. “It’s not possible. I require a name.”
She stiffened at the doubt. “I beg your pardon; I do not fail.”
Another man might have found the words amusing. But Whit heard the honesty in them. How was she involved in this mess? He couldn’t resist repeating himself. “What is the Year of Hattie?”
“If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”
No. He didn’t say it.
She took a deep breath in the silence, seeming to consider her options. And then, “It is what it sounds like. It is my year. The year I claim for myself.”
“How?”
“I’ve a four-point plan to captain my own fate.”
His brows rose. “Four points.”
She lifted a hand, ticking the answers off on her long, gloved fingers. “Business. Home. Fortune. Future.” She paused. “Now, if you would tell me what precisely was removed from your possession, I will see it returned, and we can go about our lives without bothering one another ever again.”
“Business. Home. Fortune. Future.” He tested the plan. “In that order?”
She tilted her head. “Likely.”
“What kind of business?” Whit had money to spare and could aid her in whatever business she wished . . . for the information he required.
Her gaze narrowed, and she remained silent. She likely had aspirations as a dressmaker or a milliner, both of which would buy her a home, but neither of which would earn her a fortune. But wouldn’t this woman be better suited to a future as a wife and mother on some country estate?
That, and not one of her four points made sense in the context of the Shelton Street brothel. He pointed to the paper clutched in her fist. “What were you hoping for from Nelson, investment?”
She huffed a little laugh at the question. “Of a sort.”
Whit narrowed his gaze. “What sort?”
“There’s a fifth point,” she said.
A clock chimed in the hallway beyond, loud and low, and Whit extracted his watches without thinking, checking the time on both before returning them. “And what is that?”
Her gaze followed his movements. “Do you have the time?”
He did not miss the teasing in the question. “Eleven.”
“On both watches?”
“The fifth point?”
A wash of red flashed over her cheeks at the question, and Whit’s curiosity about this strange woman became almost unbearable. And then she said, clear as the clock in the hallway beyond, “Body.”
When Whit was seventeen, he’d come out of the ring reeling from a bout that had gone too long with an opponent who was too big, the roar of the crowd stuck in his ears for the heavy blows he’d endured. He’d landed in the rear alleyway of a warehouse, where he’d sucked cold air into his lungs and imagined himself anywhere but there, in a Covent Garden fight club.
The door behind him had opened and closed, and a woman had approached, a length of linen in hand. She’d offered to clean the blood from his face. Her soft words and kind touch marked the most pleasure he’d ever felt in his life.
Until the moment he heard Hattie speak the word body.
In the silence that stretched between them, she gave a little nervous laugh. “I suppose it’s more of a first point, considering it is essential to the rest of the points.”
Body.
“Explain.” The word came on a growl.
She appeared to consider the possibility of not explaining, as though he would allow her to leave this place without doing so. She must have realized it, because finally, she said, “There are two reasons.”
He waited.
“Some women spend their whole lives searching for marriage.”
“And you do not?”
She shook her head. “Perhaps at one point I would have welcomed . . .” She trailed off, and Whit held his breath, waiting for her next words. She shrugged a shoulder. “Tomorrow, I am twenty-nine. At this point, I’m a dowry and nothing more.”
Whit did not for a moment believe that.
“I don’t wish to be a dowry.” She looked to him. “I do not wish to be commodified. I wish to be mine. To choose for myself.”
“Business. Home. Fortune. Future,” he said.
She smiled, wide and winning, that damn dimple flashing, and he could not resist lingering on those lips, the feel of which he keenly remembered from earlier in the evening. They moved again. “There is only one way to ensure that I am allowed to choose for myself.” She paused. “I do away with the only thing about me that is prized. I claim myself. And I win.”
“And you came here to . . .” He trailed off, knowing the answer. Wanting her to say it.
Wanting to hear it.
That blush again. Then, magnificently, “To take my virginity.”
The words rang in his ears.
And somehow this woman laughed. “Well, I can’t take my own virginity, obviously. It’s more a metaphor. Nelson was to do the deed.”
He let silence reign for a moment while he collected a riot of thoughts. “You relieve yourself of your virginity and you become free to live your life.”
“Precisely!” she said, as though she was delighted that someone understood.
He grunted. “And what’s the second reason?”
The red wash again. Who was this woman, somehow both bold and also blushing? “I suppose—” She stopped. Cleared her throat. “I suppose I want it.”
Christ.
She could have said a thousand things he would have expected. Things that would have kept him quiet, unmoved. And instead, she said something so fucking honest, he had no choice but to be moved.
But to move.
He stopped it before it began, holding back his desire, sliding the hand that reached for her into his pocket and extracting the paper sack there, fetching a candy from within. He popped the sweet into his mouth, lemon and honey exploding over his tongue.
Anything to distract him from her words.
I want it.
Hattie squinted at the pouch. “Are those—sweets?”
He looked down at them. Grunted his acknowledgment.
She tilted her head. “You shouldn’t partake in treats if you are not willing to share, you know.”
Another grunt. He extended the sack toward her.
“No, thank you,” she said with a smile.
“Then why ask for one?”
Another grin. “I didn’t ask for one. I asked to be offered one. Which is a different thing altogether.”
She was incredibly frustrating. And fascinating. But he didn’t have time to be fascinated by her.
He returned the candy to his pocket, trying to focus on the lemon, a tart, sweet pleasure—one of the few he allowed himself. Trying to ignore the fact that it was not lemon he desired in that moment.
Trying not to think about almonds.
He required the woman’s knowledge. And that was it. She knew who was attacking his men. Who was stealing his cargo. She could confirm the identity of his enemy. And he would do what he must to get her to do just that.
“You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong?” she asked.
“Wrong about what?”
“Wrong to want . . .” She trailed off for a moment, and a thread of cold fear went through Whit as he considered the possibility that she might say it again. When this woman said it, a man wanted to fill the space between those two minuscule letters with a score of filthy things. “. . . to explore.”
Good Christ. That was worse.
“I’m not going to tell you you are wrong.”
“Why not?”
He had no idea why he said it. He shouldn’t have said it. He should have left her there in that room and followed her home and waited for her to reveal what she knew. For there was no way this woman kept secrets well. She was far too honest. Honest enough to be trouble.
But he said it nonetheless. “Because you should explore. You should explore every inch of yourself and every inch of your pleasure and set your course for your future.” Her lips fell open as he closed the space between them, speaking a longer string of words than he’d offered another in an age. In a lifetime.
He reached for her. Lifting his hands slowly, letting her see him coming. Giving her time to stop him. When she didn’t, he removed her mask, revealing her wide, kohl-darkened eyes. “But you should not hire Nelson.”
What was he doing?
It was the only option.
Lie.
She caught the mask in her free hand, lowering it between them. Fiddling with it, her fingers brushing against him. Singeing him. “It will be difficult to find another man to assist me without repercussions.”
“I assure you it won’t,” he said, leaning in, lowering his voice.
She swallowed. “You intend to find me such a man?”
“No.”
Her brows shot together and he ran his thumb over the furrow there. Once, twice, until it smoothed. He traced the lines of her face, the sweep of her cheekbones, the soft curve of her jaw. Her plump lower lip, as soft as he remembered.
“I intend to be him.”
Chapter Five
As she’d come to 72 Shelton Street with the intention of ruination, Hattie really should have considered the possibility that the business of virginity losing might be pleasurable.
She’d never thought of it in such a way. Indeed, she’d thought it would be a perfunctory business. A ticking-the-boxes kind of business. The kind of business that was a means to an end.
But when this man touched her—mysterious and handsome and unsettling and more welcome than she’d like to admit—she was unable to think of anything but the means.
The very pleasurable means.
Very pleasurable means that took hold of her when he suggested that he be the one to assist her in losing her virginity.
But the combination of his low growl and the slow sweep of his thumb over her lower lip made Hattie think that he might do more than that. Think that he might burn her down. Think that she might allow it, incineration be damned.
And then it made Hattie think very little but yes.
She’d arrived earlier in the night to the promise that she would be met by an exceedingly thorough man who would prove a stellar assistant. But this man, with his amber eyes that saw everything, with his touch that understood everything, with his voice that filled her dark, secret corners, was more than an assistant.
This man was dominion—the kind that Hattie hadn’t imagined but now couldn’t not imagine.
And he was offering to make everything she imagined real.
Yes.
He was so close. Impossibly large—large enough to make Hattie feel small—and impossibly handsome—handsome enough to have given her pause on another, less heady night—and impossibly warm in the cold room.
And impossibly, he was going to kiss her.
Not because she was paying him; because he wanted to.
Impossible.
No one had ever . . .
The slide of his hand into her hair pushed the thought aside before it finished. “You will—”
Silence.
“—assist me—”
His fingers tightened.
“—with . . .” He held her hostage with his touch and his silence. He was making her finish the thought, dammit. The sentence. What was the thought? “. . . it?”
He met the word with a growl, a rumble of sound that she wouldn’t have understood if she weren’t so rapt. If she weren’t so eager for it. “All of it.”
Her eyes slid closed. How was it that a man could turn so few words into such pleasure? He was surely going to kiss her. That was how it began, wasn’t it? But he wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t he moving? He was supposed to move, wasn’t he?
She opened her eyes again, finding him there, so close, watching her. Looking at her. Seeing her. When was the last time someone had seen Hattie? She’d spent a lifetime becoming so good at hiding, she’d never be seen.
But this man—he saw her.
And she found she hated it as much as she liked it.
No. She hated it more. She didn’t want him seeing her. Didn’t want him cataloguing her myriad flaws. Her full cheeks and too wide brow and too big nose. Her mouth, which another man had once described as horsey, as though he were doing her a favor. If this man saw all that, he might change his mind.
And that made her brazen enough to say, “Can we begin now?”
A low rumble of assent heralded his kiss, the sound as glorious as the touch when he settled his lips to hers and gave her precisely what she wanted. More than it. She shouldn’t have been surprised by the feel of him against her—she’d kissed him quite boldly in the carriage before tossing him out—but that had been her caress.
This one was theirs.
He pulled her to him, tilting, tipping until they were perfectly matched, until his beautiful mouth was aligned with hers. And then his second hand came to match the first, to cradle her face, thumb stroking over her cheek as he took her mouth in little, sipping kisses, one after the other, again and again, until she thought she might go mad from the tease of them. Until he captured her bottom lip and licked, his tongue warm and rough and tasting like lemon sugar and making her . . .
Hungry.
That was what it felt like. As though she’d never eaten before and now here was food, rich and welcome and all for her.
Those licks made her wild. She didn’t know how to suffer them. How to manage them. All she knew was that she did not want them to stop.
She took him in hand, gripping his coat and pulling him closer, pressing herself to him, wanting his touch against every inch of her. Wanting to crawl inside him. She gave a little sigh of frustration, and he understood, his arms coming around her like steel, lifting her, forcing her to give herself up to him, her hands sliding over his massive shoulders and around his neck, the muscles of it all corded restraint and so warm.
She gasped at the heat of him, and he pulled back. Was he stopping? Why was he stopping? “No!”
Good God, had she said that aloud?
“I—” Her cheeks were instantly aflame. “That is—”
A brow rose in silent query.
“I would prefer—”
And then this silent beast of a man said, “I know what you would prefer. And I shall give it to you. But first—”
She caught her breath. First, what?
He reached for her hand, clutching his shoulder, an embodiment of the fear that he might stop before they’d had a chance to start. He pulled it away, forcing her to let him go, but not loosening his hold on her.
What was he doing? He turned her wrist over in his grasp, and set his fingers to the line of buttons along the inside of her arm. She watched for a moment. “You’re very adept at buttons
.”
A grunt as he worked.
“You don’t even have a button hook,” she said inanely, wishing she could take the words back before they’d even left her silly mouth.
He removed the glove from her hand, revealing her wrist, covered in ink stains from her afternoon at the offices, poring over lading books. She twisted the limb to hide the unsightly marks, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he studied them for a moment, his thumb stroking over the stains like flame before he returned her hand to his shoulder. Her now-bare fingers reached for the place where his collar met the warm skin of his neck, desperate for honest touch, and he released a rumble of pleasure when skin pressed skin. The ink was forgotten.
“First that,” he said.
Someone else must have replied, because surely it was not Hattie who slid her fingers into his curling black hair, pulled him toward her, and said, “And now you’ll give me what I want?”
But it was Hattie who received it, his kiss claiming her as one hand lowered to pull her tight against him, to lift her thigh over his hip, to press her against the thick ebony bedpost at her back.
His tongue stroked, entered, and she met him eagerly, matching his movements with her own, learning him. Learning this. She must have done well, because he growled again—the sound of her pure triumph—and he pressed into her, rough and perfect at the juncture of her thighs, drawing her attention to the ache there, an ache she felt certain he could cure. If only he’d—
He tore his mouth from hers with a curse—a word that seared through her, making her feel wicked and wonderful and immensely powerful. A word that didn’t make her want to stop what she was doing. And so she didn’t, lifting her hips to his again, increasing the pressure, willing her skirts gone.
His thumb pressed against her chin, lifting it high as he met her thrusts and set his lips to the soft skin there, nipping along the underside of her jaw to her ear, where he whispered, “Here?”
Yes.
Brazen and the Beast Page 4