“Particular pleasures like what?” he asked, turning to her.
She exhaled, part relief, part shock. Because there, in his eyes, she finally saw what he was thinking, the dark centers of his amber eyes blown wide with desire.
He liked it, this world she had built.
He wanted a taste of it.
And that was something she understood.
“Pleasures like the one you are experiencing right now,” she said, softly, now more than willing to accommodate him. “Would you like to find a room and explore it?”
“You misunderstand,” he said. “I don’t want to watch them.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
Her brow furrowed. Nearly a decade of working in and around sex had made her something of an expert in knowing what clients wished. She was not usually wrong. “Would you prefer to be watched?”
He shook his head. “Not unless you would like that.”
A thrum went through her at the invitation. At the willingness to explore it with her. At the desire in his darkening eyes. She lifted her hand, brushing a lock of blond hair back from his brow. “What, then?”
Something shifted in him, freeing him, and when he leaned in, his voice was low and dark at her ear. “Watching these women take their pleasure here in this place that you have built . . .” He wiped a hand over his mouth, and Grace thought that she might never have liked anything more in her life than that. “It makes me want to watch you take yours.”
The words struck deep in her core, and she suddenly wanted that, too.
Needed it.
She didn’t hesitate.
She wove in and out of the rooms, where more acrobats and musicians and bawdy songstresses performed, and a teeming mass of people drank and ate and writhed in revelry. They pushed down a long hallway where two separate couples were locked in embraces, and into the theater space, where Nastasia Kritikos had taken to the stage, rolling and trilling an aria that would have made her the muse of Mozart himself.
She looked back, expecting to find Ewan watching the diva, but instead, he was watching her. The moment her eyes met his, he tugged her around, pulling him to her. Stealing another kiss along with her breath and her thought. When he released her, she was clinging to his lapels.
“Show me what else you have built here.”
There were a dozen places for them to go: elaborately appointed rooms upstairs, each designed to evoke a particular fantasy; the catacombs beneath the building, wine cellars and cheese cellars; the hot house on the roof.
But she didn’t want to take him somewhere that belonged to the club.
She wanted to take him somewhere that belonged to her.
So, she pulled him through a small card room; a collection of aristocratic ladies was gathered round a table where a Frenchwoman Grace had discovered in the market square turned elaborately decorated cards and divined their futures. The cards were hand-painted and beautiful, but they were no match for the woman herself, who seemed able to look directly into her audience and read their deepest desires.
Rapt, not one of the women in the room looked up as Grace pulled Ewan past, heading for the corner, where she pressed the hidden latch on a barely visible door, and pulled him from Dominion into a back stairwell.
She closed the door behind them, and they were instantly shrouded in quiet, the sound of the wild celebration beyond immediately muffled. The stairwell was dimly illuminated, candles lit at distant intervals, and she was instantly aware of the sound of their breath. She looked to Ewan, now so close that if she leaned just an inch toward him, they would touch.
He took in the small, crowded space and then gave her a crooked smile. “I was thinking something a bit larger, but—” And then he took her face in his hands and kissed her, pressing her to the wall at her back as she gasped, wanting nothing more than his touch.
She let him kiss her, deep and thorough, reveling in him—his broad shoulders, the low growl of desire in his throat, the scent of tobacco threatening to consume her.
He pulled back, just enough to speak. “Mmm. This will do.”
Before she could respond, he was kissing her again, one hand sliding down to her bodice, stroking over the straining skin of her breasts above the suddenly too-tight gown. He dipped a thumb beneath the fabric, finding her nipple, straining for him. She cried out, and he kissed over her jaw to her ear, repeating that single, maddening touch over and over as he spoke to her. “This gown is sinful.”
She opened her eyes, struggling to find words. “I chose it for you.”
“Mmm,” he said. “I know.” He stroked again, and her eyes began to slide closed at the delicious touch. “Ah—” He stopped and she opened them again. “Watch me.” Another stroke, this one a bit firmer. “I want to lay you on a bed like a feast, and take you in. I want to memorize the way this gold shimmers against your skin.”
She pushed her head back to the wall and took a deep breath, unthinkingly exposing her neck and chest to him like a sacrifice.
He let out another little growl of pleasure and took it, placing delicious, sucking kisses down the column of her neck, then over the sloping skin of her breasts. Her fingers slid into his hair, guiding him lower and lower, until he hit the line of her bodice and they both groaned.
Grace cursed in the darkness, and she felt the curve of his lips there, on her skin.
“That makes me want to tear this from you,” he said, running a tongue along the line of the gown. “And you deserve better than that.”
Her fingers tightened in his hair. “I don’t care.”
He lifted his head, setting one finger to the skin at the edge of the fabric, tracing over one breast and up the side to her shoulder. “I do,” he said. “I promised you spools and spools of gold thread. And I won’t take it from you. Not ever.”
She watched him. Saw the truth in his words. And in that moment, in the dark stairwell of her club, as the most scandalous set in London laughed and drank and reveled in reckless abandon mere feet away—as this man she’d spent a lifetime hiding from refused to rip her bodice—Grace fell in love for the second time in her life.
And the realization was so terrifying that she did the only thing she could think to do. She clasped his hand, and took him to bed.
They ascended the back, secret staircase of 72 Shelton Street, up past the rooms used by the club’s patrons, and then past the floor where, a year earlier, she’d nursed him back to health, only to take him to the ring and send him away from her forever.
Thank God, he had returned.
But on the top floor, she threw a little latch and opened the door, revealing her rooms. More than that. Because this particular stairwell did not simply lead to Grace’s outer office, with its desk piled high with papers and ledgers. It did not lead to her sitting room—where no one ever sat—or to the little library beyond, where she read most evenings. No, this door led to her inner sanctum. To her bed.
He followed her into the room, and this time, it was he who closed them in, the quiet snick of door against jamb setting her heart pounding. She turned back to him, expecting him to come for her again, hot and wild. She wanted that, so unsettled by the realization that she had tumbled into love—that she was willing to do anything to prevent herself from having to think about it.
Ewan appeared to have no such concern.
He came for her, but with the lazy certainty of a predator, as though he knew he had all the time in the world for what was to come, and that she wouldn’t leave him.
Watching him, tall and handsome, his jaw square and perfect beneath his black mask, his eyes on hers, as though there was nothing in the world he’d rather look at, Grace realized that she wouldn’t leave him.
She wasn’t sure she could.
And then, from nowhere, she wasn’t sure she ever had.
She took a step back, unsettled by her thoughts, anticipation coursing through her, and she was suddenly off balance. Gone was the slow predator; he caught
her to him instantly, one arm around her back like steel. “I’ve got you.”
She caught her breath, not at the sensation, but at the words, unable to resist her own. “I know.”
He searched her eyes for a long moment. “Do you?” he whispered, lifting a hand to her hair, pushing a wild lock behind her ear. “Do you know that I will always have you? If you’ll let me?”
She went warm with the words.
“I will always be what you need,” he said.
“And what of your need?” she asked.
“Right now, I have it.” She took a deep breath, and he added, “But I warn you, I do not think I can take it in half measures.”
What if I want to give you all of it?
She held the question back, instead raising her hands to his face and removing his mask, revealing him to her. “No masks,” she whispered.
He smiled. “No masks.”
Grace didn’t know how she would ever wear a mask with him again.
“Turn.”
She did, instantly, his to command.
Gently, he gathered her hair and brought it forward, over her shoulder, giving himself full access to the back fastenings of her gown. The predator returned, slowly and methodically working the long line of buttons down her spine, each one loosening the golden fabric. She held it to her breasts as he leaned down, pressing a kiss to the curve of one shoulder, knocking one strap away.
His tongue touched her skin, and she was seared with fire.
And then he spoke. “That night . . . in my gardens.”
“You pretended not to recognize me.” She should be furious about it. But she wasn’t. There was a part of her that was grateful for it, because he’d freed her from the riot of conflicted thoughts she had held that night, and given her something else—the fantasy that they were simply lovers.
There had never been anything simple about them.
And tonight, they grew ever more complex.
“I recognized you,” he said. “Of course I recognized you.”
A kiss to the back of her neck, soft and perfect, sending a shiver of desire through her. Another lick of fire.
“I will never not know you,” he whispered, hot and perfect against her skin, and she was at once grateful not to be looking at him and desperate to see him as he confessed what should be a sin and was instead something far closer to heaven. “There will never be a time I do not know the shape, the sound, the scent of you, like sweet, spiced cream.”
She swallowed as he continued with his worship, one kiss after another, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that he might go faster.
As though it hadn’t occurred to him that she might lose her mind if he didn’t go faster, dammit.
“That night,” he told her shoulder blades as he worked the ties of her corset, loosening her, freeing her. “I told you that when I am with you, I feel like Apollo.”
“I remember,” she said, the words coming on a barely-there breath as he loosened the last ties, and his fingers found purchase inside, sliding over her skin, flushed and uncomfortable from the binding stays. She gasped at the unbearable pleasure of the touch. “He—” One hand tracked around her body and came to the underside of her breast, full and aching. He stilled, as though waiting for her to finish. “He turned a corner in a forest and saw a woman naked in a swimming hole.”
A rumble of amusement sounded at her back, the sound only amplifying the pleasure of his touch as he lifted her breast in his hand and rubbed his thumb over her nipple in a slow, languid circle. “She wasn’t naked in a swimming hole.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I was distracted, if I recall.”
“And is it possible you could be similarly distracted now?” she asked.
He gave a little tut of concern at her ear. “I’m telling you a story.” His other hand came to join the first—to lift the opposite breast. To stroke the opposite nipple.
“I’m sorry,” she said, writhing against him. “Go on.” He pinched one nipple, just enough to sting. And she gasped, “Please.”
“Mmm—” That rumble again.
Grace tried to focus on the story. “What was she doing then?”
“She was killing a lion.”
He released her, pushing the dress and the corset down over her arms and her hips, until the golden fabric pooled at her feet, the slide of silk against her skin a wicked tease, making her want to step back into his arms, and let him have his way with her. Every way he could think of.
Before she could make good on the desire, he clasped her hips in his hands and pulled her tight to him, the magnificent hard length of him against her bottom. She pressed back, and he lifted one of her arms, wrapping it around his neck, one of his hands returning to a breast as the other slid over the curve of her belly.
“Touch me,” she said, softly. “Please.”
He growled, his fingers sliding into the thatch of hair that covered the most secret part of her, one finger teasing at the place she ached for him. She turned her face toward him, finding his glittering eyes. “Ewan.” She sighed.
“Cyrene.”
“What?”
That magnificent finger moved. “Cyrene, the lion killer.”
“Mmm.” She tilted her hips, loving the little brush of pleasure he gave her. “Tell me.”
“She was born delicate and beautiful, the only child of a great warrior,” he said, that hand working so lightly—too lightly—against her. “And no one believed she was worthy of battle.”
“Ah. Taken for granted,” she said, her fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.
“Exactly that,” he said. “She wanted the battlefield, but she got a different kind of field—left home to tend sheep, always, as her father went to war.”
“Tasty treats for lions, them.”
He nipped her earlobe, sending a shiver of pleasure through her. “Exactly. And one day, as she was tending her flock, a lion came, and Cyrene, the great warrior, slayed it.”
“Enter Apollo,” she said, breathless, rocking her hips against him. “Faster.”
He stopped.
She swore.
“You learned that curse word here.” She could hear the wicked smile in his voice—the pleasure he took in directing hers. She turned to face him, wanting to see it. She’d spent a lifetime imagining the way he would smile in this moment, as he toyed with her pleasure and they pretended the world beyond did not exist.
His gaze tracked over her body as she turned, over every inch of her, each swell, each curve, every scar left from the fights of her youth.
She watched him catalogue them, following her legs down and back up, settling for a long moment on the dark thatch of curls that hid the most private part of her.
When he returned his attention to her face, he said, dark and delicious, “Apollo was laid low.”
And Grace, queen of Covent Garden, who could stop riots with a single word, realized she had never felt more powerful in her life than she did in that moment, as this man, strong and handsome and powerful in his own right, was lost in her.
He pulled her to him, lifting her high in his arms and taking her to the bed, where he laid her down, letting her pull him to join her on the rough silk coverlet. Letting her kiss him, long and lush, with a slow sweep of tongue and a slow suck of lip, until they were both aching.
This.
This was her pleasure. Being wanted. Being desired. Not for her money or her power or the position she held, but for herself.
But it wasn’t all. It wasn’t enough.
The pleasure was in the reciprocity. In being wanted and wanting in return. In giving and receiving. In needing and providing.
There was the pleasure for which she had spent a lifetime searching.
And here it was, in Ewan, her first love. And now, she suspected, her last.
He pulled away from her and pressed a kiss high on her cheek. Another at the corner of her eye. Another on her ja
w. “She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen,” he whispered, and she was suddenly desperate for the rest of the story.
With a sly smile, she said, “Everyone loves a girl who can fight.”
Those amber eyes tracked over hers, taking her in. “Truth.” And that single, soft syllable threatened to set her aflame. Before she could explore it, he continued, his fingertips lightly tracing over her arm, to her hip, where she shivered in anticipation for more. “Apollo had been a god a very long time, you see, and he’d seen many beautiful women, but never one who was so fierce and so committed to her path. A warrior. He fell instantly in love, proposing to her on the spot.”
“What then?” she said, breathless. “Did she tumble into his arms and they lived happily ever after?”
Another one of those small, knowing smiles. “You are not paying attention. She did not care that he was a god. She was one of the most skilled fighters the world had ever seen. She knew her power and was not about to relinquish it. Not even for an immortal.”
“Clever girl,” she said, her own hands on him now, stripping him out of his coat and untying his cravat as he spoke.
“Did I not tell you that she was brave and brilliant?”
She tossed the cravat away, spreading her hands over the fine white linen of his shirt, low, lower until she pulled it from his trousers. “And beautiful, you said.”
He caught her chin in his fingers, tilting her to him. “Incomparable.”
Another kiss, hot and delicious.
“But she did not want a second life like the one she’d lived with her father. She didn’t want to sit in idyll, the wife of a god. She wanted to rule a kingdom—a warrior queen.”
Grace was watching him now, hanging on every word, knowing the end of the story. The only way it could possibly end. “She refused him.”
He nodded. “And so the great god—god of the sun, of truth, of light, of prophecy—he did the only thing that was left to him.”
“He stole her,” she whispered. And the words, part of a silly story, horrified her. The idea that there was always someone with more power, who would stop at nothing to lay claim. How many times had she looked over her shoulder, terrified of that power, in the hands of men?
Daring and the Duke EPB Page 26