“With these.” She bent, and he blinked as she removed a dagger from each boot. With blithe expertise, she juggled the small cloisonné-handled knives in the air.
“Where in blazes did you get those?” Harry asked in disbelief.
“Ming. He trained me, too. My aim is excellent.”
Her underlying (and rather immodest) threat was clear. Jaw clenching, Harry was contemplating hauling her out over his shoulder when the redheaded wench came to her side. She was older than the others, a handsome woman with a hardened mien.
At her nudge, Miss Todd sighed…but she caught her blades, tucking them back into her boots.
The redhead addressed him. “I’m Pretty Francie, the madam of the club. Tessa’s safe ’ere. We keep an eye out for ’er, and she uses the ’idden corridors so none o’ the patrons see ’er.”
“I am obliged to you, Miss Francie, for looking out for my charge,” he said curtly. “Nonetheless, this is no place for a young lady. The fact that she has been allowed to run amok for so long is a disgrace.”
To his surprise, the madam gave a slight nod, her expression rueful.
“Ignore Bennett,” Miss Todd burst out. “He’s an overbearing prig—”
“It is not only my opinion that your behavior needs reforming, but also that of your grandfather.”
Harry’s deliberate evoking of Bartholomew Black did the trick.
The madam put a hand on Miss Todd’s shoulder.
“You’d best go wiv ’im, luvie,” she said quietly.
Miss Todd’s shoulders slumped a little, and she gave her friend an oddly hurt look.
Spotting a long black cape hanging on the wall, Harry said, “May Miss Todd borrow that?”
“O’ course.” The blonde wench went to fetch it.
She returned, and, up close, he saw the fading bruises on her face. When he reached to take the garment from her, she flinched instinctively, confirming his suspicions. His chest tightened. There was nothing more despicable, more cowardly, than a man who’d hit a woman.
Slowly, he turned his hand over, palm up, waiting for her to give him the cloak.
“Thank you, miss,” he said gently when she did.
“Oh…you’re welcome. You can call me Belinda.” She twirled a blonde curl around her finger and gave him a hesitant smile.
He inclined his head, then turned to Miss Todd. “Put this on.”
She scowled at him. “I’m not taking Belinda’s best cloak.”
“I’ll see that it’s returned. You cannot prance about in those indecent trousers,” he snapped. “Put on the bloody cape, or I’ll put it on for you.”
She hesitated, and he had a fiendish desire for her to disobey him. Just try me.
She snatched the garment. Knotted the strings and glared at him. “Satisfied?”
“Not until you’re safely home.” He pointed to the door. “To the hidden corridor. Now.”
She bent to scoop up her ferret. Exchanging swift goodbyes with her friends, she marched out into the hallway. Approaching the paneled wall, she pressed down on a section of the plaster molding. The panel swung open, revealing a corridor behind the walls.
She entered, swiveling to say smartly, “Don’t forget to close the panel behind you.”
He bit back a retort. Once inside, he shut the panel, cloaking them in dimness. He followed her through the cramped passageway. As he bent his head to avoid hitting the ceiling, a visceral memory struck him: of rock crashing down all around. Of being trapped in suffocating darkness. The old panic sparked, his heart racing, palms going clammy…
“Blood and thunder, this isn’t a stroll through Hyde Park.” Miss Todd’s tart voice jerked him out of the memory. “Stop dawdling and hurry up.”
He didn’t know whether to be relieved or exasperated by the distraction. Either way, the panic receded. He sped up, her scent reaching him through the gloom, the fresh sweetness banishing the lingering, acrid traces of gunpowder and cindered earth. In truth, her feminine fragrance had been teasing him for days, a mysterious alchemy of perfume, soap, and…her.
They headed down steps and continued their way on the lower floor. She halted, and he did the same, his nose inches from the top of her head. Her essence filled his nostrils, clean and vibrant and heady. He couldn’t stop himself from inhaling deeply.
“Why are we stopping?” he murmured.
“Shh. I think I hear someone coming.”
He strained, listening. The sounds were faint at first…footsteps? Thump, thump, thump. Accompanying voices grew louder, taking the shape of words.
“Ooo, you’re so big and ’ard,” a female voice moaned.
“Like my cock, do you? Then take it deep in your cunny!”
Sweat misted on Harry’s forehead as groans escalated along with the thumping, clearly not from boots against the floor…but bodies on a mattress.
Someone was coming. Just not the way Miss Todd had imagined.
Unbidden urges heated Harry’s blood. He was acutely aware of Miss Todd: her delicious scent and nearness, the escalating cadence of her breath. His body’s reaction was instantaneous. Warmth flooded his loins, and he hardened with shocking swiftness.
Devil take it. Get a grip on it, man.
“This time of day I wasn’t expecting...” She sounded flustered. “We can, um, continue on.”
She rushed ahead, and he followed at her heels.
What, precisely, is the extent of the minx’s sexual experience? Since their first meeting, the question had intrigued him. Here was a woman who played with dirty cards, called a brothel home, and took the sight of an orgy in stride. Unlike Celeste, who’d hidden her true nature beneath the mask of an angel, Tessa Todd flaunted her wickedness.
If you willingly drink her poison, you’d be the biggest fool alive, he thought darkly.
“Dash it, I think it’s my father.” Miss Todd’s panicked whisper jerked him back to the present. “He’ll murder me if he finds me here.”
Harry heard it too: male voices, footsteps emerging from the dimness just up ahead.
“Where’s the closest exit?” he said tersely. “Ahead or behind?”
“Behind—”
He wasted no time, trading places with her. “Get us there. Now.”
They dashed back the way they’d come. His pulse thudded as the voices behind them seemed to grow nearer and nearer. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the lick of lamplight against the tunnel wall.
Miss Todd came to a halt. She triggered a mechanism in the wall: a soft click, and the panel opened. They jumped out, Harry sealing the exit shut behind them. He waited, muscles bunched, as the steps paused…directly on the other side of the wall.
A man’s brusque tones filtered through the thin barrier. “Have the Roman orgy atrium cleaned up. They left a mess there last night.”
“Yes, Mr. Todd. Do you want to check the rooms on this floor?”
Harry looked at Miss Todd. Her green eyes were stormy with dread, the pupils dilated.
“Ain’t got time.” Todd’s voice bristled with impatience. “That’s your job, ain’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Beg pardon, sir.”
“Let’s get on with it.”
When the steps moved on, Harry released a breath. He did a quick survey of the hallway. Doors lined one side, a stairwell at the far end.
He said in a low voice, “Can you get us out of here?”
Miss Todd nodded shakily. “We’ll have to take the back stairs.”
One of the doors suddenly opened, voices floating out.
“Come again soon, gents,” a woman’s voice purred from within the room.
A chorus of male laughter. “With you, Sally, we always do.”
Two men emerged into the hallway.
Bloody hell. They would be in the men’s line of sight in an instant—nowhere, no time to hide. The best Harry could do was shield Miss Todd’s body with his own, try to keep her out of the newcomers’ view.
Before he could make the mo
ve, fingers slid into his hair. His head jerked, his startled gaze colliding with Miss Todd’s. He saw her determined expression the instant before she raised herself on tiptoe, crushing her mouth to his.
* * *
Kissing Bennett was a risky move.
Yet Tessa didn’t want to have to deal with her grandfather’s wrath if she was discovered here, and this stratagem was the best one to keep her identity concealed. The approaching men would pay no mind to an embracing couple. Bennett obviously agreed with her plan because he crowded her up against the wall, his big body shielding her from view, his mouth covering hers.
She’d seen people kissing, but she’d never done it for herself. She wasn’t certain exactly what she was supposed to do beyond smooshing her lips against Bennett’s. The truth was, having him so close was affecting her ability to think. She was acutely aware of his rigid form pressing into her, his strength and heat, and it was…distracting.
She tried to say something, but his mouth suddenly slanted, and the kiss deepened. Her thoughts blurred to awakening sensations. Bennett kissed the way he seemed to do everything: with focus, intensity, and skill. His lips dragged against hers, firm and velvety, stoking a feverish heat beneath her skin.
He tastes of peppermint, came the nonsensical thought.
Her mind fogged with sultry heat. Of their own accord, her lips parted to take in more of him. He shuddered around her, and, an instant later, she felt a hot, thick invasion between her lips.
Zounds…his tongue was in her mouth.
She’d glimpsed others kissing this way, and she’d thought it absurd (and, frankly, unhygienic), but experiencing it for herself changed her perception altogether. Bennett’s kiss was delicious, thrilling, addictive. He licked inside her, and a spark danced along her spine, igniting a flare between her legs. Her hands clenching in his hair, she tipped her head back, a desperate, silent plea for more.
In the next instant, she was crushed against the wall. Sandwiched against wood and Bennett’s harder length. Her unfettered breasts surged against his granite-hard chest as the kiss caught fire. His mouth consumed her, possessed her, laying claim with each bold thrust of his tongue. He’d taken control over the kiss, yet she felt strangely safe. Protected.
And hot. Dear God, she was burning up inside. His big hands splayed over her bottom, yanking her closer. His thigh wedged between her legs, the intimate invasion lodging her breath.
He nudged deeper against her sex, hitting an exquisite peak, and her breath popped free, turning into a moan as it left her lips. Her woman’s place was throbbing, aching, shockingly wet. Delirious with need, she rocked against the hard trunk of Bennett’s thigh, gasping at the blissful friction.
“God, yes,” he rasped against her lips. “Ride me.”
She couldn’t stop if she tried. As she rode his sinewy appendage, she felt another one pressing into her thigh. His male member, she realized dizzily. It was as hard and heavy as a steel pike, and when she squirmed against it, he groaned, the rumble hitting the back of her throat. His tongue pushed even deeper into her mouth, and, on instinct, she sucked—
“Couldn’t make it to a bedchamber, eh?”
“Must be a tasty wench. Care to share?”
She jerked at the leering male voices, but Bennett kept her pressed against the wall, his body shielding her from view.
Without turning, he snapped, “Mind your own bloody business, or I’ll make you.”
His lethal tone was enough to make the men scurry off.
When the coast was clear, Bennett stepped back.
Panting, her lips and breasts still tingling, Tessa watched as he removed his spectacles, studiously polishing them on his shirt. Watching the care with which his large, rough hands handled the delicate frame sent a quiver through her belly.
Dazed wonder seeped through her. So this is desire.
This was what she’d understood in theory but now actually understood. She’d attributed the magnetic, pulsating energy between her and Bennett to animosity…but it wasn’t that. Or not just that. Antagonism and attraction, she realized in a flash, were two sides of the same coin.
Bennett shoved on his spectacles, met her gaze.
“What the devil was that?” he ground out.
His fury came out of nowhere. Stunned, unprepared, she scrambled for words.
“I th-thought it was a good stratagem,” she stammered. “I didn’t want to be recognized.”
Before she could gather her wits, try to articulate herself better, he cut her off.
“The next time you wish to use me as the means to an end,” he said icily, “give me some goddamned warning. Unless you wish to be taken up against the wall like a bloody trollop.”
She stared at his harsh countenance, his smoldering eyes, and humiliation churned sickly. What was I thinking? Even if her aim had been to protect her identity, it didn’t excuse the way she’d acted. The way she’d lost herself, thrown herself at Bennett… Stupidly, she’d thought that he’d enjoyed the kiss, that he felt the same vibrant, life-altering attraction that she did.
But he didn’t. He thought she was a trollop.
God, she was worse than a trollop: she was a fool.
Words forced themselves through the tight ring of her throat. “I—I’m sorry.”
“We’re leaving.” His eyes dared her to defy him as he pointed to the stairwell. “Now.”
For once, pride abandoned her. It was all she could do to hold onto her composure. Silently, fighting back the heat behind her eyes, she fled toward the exit.
9
The next evening, Harry broodingly observed the proceedings of Baroness Lucia von Friesing’s supper party. He did not want to be here. In fact, if he’d been given the choice between shopping for a new wardrobe and being where he was now, he’d have taken off like a shot to Bond Street.
The reasons behind his desire for escape were multifold.
First, the dining room was small and stuffy. The dark paneled chamber barely accommodated the intimate gathering, and Harry was as out of place as the hastily-added and mismatched china setting in front of him. Yet, for some reason, Black had insisted that he have a seat at the table rather than wait in the carriage.
The second reason was that Harry found himself taking an instant dislike of the guest of honor. His reaction confounded him; it wasn’t his nature to rush to judgement—nor to experience so strong and irrational an antipathy.
Nonetheless, the Duke of Ranelagh and Somerville set his teeth on edge.
His Grace, who went by the sobriquet of “Ransom”—what kind of bloody name was that?—occupied the place of honor next to the hostess. A thin, silver-haired woman, Baroness von Friesing was fawning over him, the jet beads on her turban quivering as she nodded at something he’d said. Her expression was as rapt as if he were explaining to her how he’d discovered the Holy Grail.
Tall and fit, the duke had dark hair and arresting features. His tawny hazel eyes, slashing brows, and sculpted cheekbones hinted at an exotic influence in his lineage. He sported a mustache and, on his chin, a small patch of hair as carefully trimmed as a garden hedge. In Harry’s opinion, the latter was an affectation that no decent Englishman should adopt unless all razors were to vanish off the face of the earth.
But facial hair wasn’t the reason for Harry’s rancor toward the duke: it was the other’s languid arrogance. Ransom never spoke but in a mocking drawl, and his gaze flicked from guest to guest, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of any of them too long. And his treatment of Tessa, his supper partner, was downright shoddy.
Placed next to the duke, Tessa had looked ill-at-ease all evening, and no wonder. Whenever Ransom deigned to look at her, his mouth curled sardonically beneath his mustache…as if she were a cruel joke that had been played upon him. The few words he’d spoken to her were outwardly polite yet infused with condescension.
Arrogant prat. Harry’s hands balled under the table. She deserves better than the likes of him. She deserves be
tter period.
Which led him to his third and most pressing reason for not wanting to be here.
He felt…guilty.
A steel band tightened around his chest. His treatment of Tessa yesterday had been unforgiveable. Her kiss had caught him by surprise: it had set fire to his blood, hardened his cock, made him lose control. When the bastards had interrupted them, his haze of lust had bled into a memory he’d kept buried deep.
Celeste. Her surprise midnight visit to his bachelor’s lodgings. How she’d looked like an angel descended from the heavens to his shabby apartments…and how she’d kissed like one too. She’d tasted of honey, the sweetness hiding poison. With her soft, cool lips, she’d coaxed him into taking more and more…until he’d met his own demise.
The memory of her manipulation, of his stupidity, had roared over him. He’d vowed never to let a woman use her wiles upon him again, yet yesterday he’d found himself ensnared in another feminine web. Used again as a means to an end. Risking his mission and his honor in the process.
He’d taken his anger out on Tessa. When his fury had subsided—at least enough for him to think clearly—he’d seen his behavior for what it was: uncouth and uncalled for. He owed her an apology.
All day, he’d wrestled with what to say to her. How to explain his atrocious treatment of her without revealing his past. Not that she’d given him a chance.
Bold, willful, sprightly Tessa had cloistered herself in her bedchamber all day. She’d had her guard dog Lizzie in there with her, so he couldn’t exactly break down the door to offer her an apology. An apology that he hadn’t yet figured out. An apology that was overdue and growing more overdue with each passing moment.
As he watched her now, he couldn’t deny another fact. A discovery that made self-disgust rise like bile in his throat. One that made him want to kick himself and offer to let her do so, too.
Beneath that wicked, wild exterior, Tessa Black-Todd was…soft.
Vulnerable.
And unmistakably innocent.
Watching her avoid eye contact with him and leave her food untouched (she hadn’t eaten anything Mrs. Crabtree had sent on trays throughout the day either) and feeling the tension between them, he knew he’d hurt her. He recalled her stricken expression, her stammered apology when he’d called her a trollop, and the self-disgust turned to shame. Because as sweet and passionate and wanton as her kiss had been, it had also been inexperienced. Unambiguously virginal.
The Duke Identity: Game of Dukes, Book 1 Page 8