The Secrets of a Scoundrel (19 page)

Nick obeyed, unable to do otherwise. She thrashed with pleasure, goading him with her body, as massive jolts of sweet torment racked him. He clutched her hair and her shoulder so hard as he came that it hurt a bit. She didn’t mind at all, enraptured by his anguished cries of ecstasy.

He pulled out at the last second and spilled his seed into the folds of her peignoir. She supposed that was wise, but her body flinched at the denial. A fleeting thought of having his child only inflamed her the more, especially now that he had left her still craving release.

It was a state of affairs he remedied well as soon as he recovered some semblance of his wits. She lay there watching him, still on fire herself, but so gratified by the glow of pleasure that had come over him.

“Well, that took the edge off,” he panted at length.

“It was good?”

“Earth-shattering, I believe, is the word.”

She grinned. “I’m jealous.”

“Patience, darling.” He stripped her naked, getting rid of her ruined silk peignoir with a mumbled “Sorry.”

She waved off his apology with a chuckle and a shake of her head. It did not signify. She had dozens more back at home, and he could ruin them all in this manner if he liked. When she took it off, he ordered her under the covers with a smoldering stare.

Then he got up and finished the job of undressing. She leaned against the headboard and folded her arms behind her head and watched him in possessive appreciation.

He kicked off his shoes, then stripped the rest of the way down. When he had shed his black trousers and short drawers, her sultry stare traveled down his sculpted body in leisurely fashion, lingering on his phallus. Still engorged but no longer erect for the moment, it hung thickly from its surrounding tangle of black hair.

“Get a good look?” Nick drawled as he returned to the bed.

“You’re a beautiful man,” she said with a shrug.

He scoffed as he slid under the covers with her. “Don’t be absurd.”

“It’s true!”

“Right, well, yes, it’s always been my life’s ambition to join the dandies.”

“Cheeky!” When he turned his back, reaching out to check the nearby candle, burning low, she gave his bare arse a playful slap.

He looked over his shoulder at her in astonishment.

She bit her lip, her eyes dancing.

“Careful,” he warned. “I might like that. Or maybe you do.” He suddenly rolled her over. “Does milady need a spanking?”

“Don’t you dare,” she whispered, though she could not hide how she thrilled to his warm, taunting caress as he rested his hand on the curve of her backside.

She shrieked when he suddenly clapped her bottom with a hearty, stinging slap.

“What a bad girl you are,” he said.

“You are outrageous!”

“And what are you going to do about it?” he demanded.

She forgot to answer when he reached between her legs and began stroking her from behind. Still wet and oh so needy, she let out a desperate little gasp as he slipped a finger into her quivering passage.

“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, Virginia,” he continued, instructing her with his lips at her ear and his pleasantly scratchy chest against her back. “Whatever I say.”

“Never happen,” she denied in breathless tones.

“Watch,” he replied, an edge of amusement in his whisper. Kissing her shoulder, he brought his fingertip slicked with her teeming nectar to the rigid and acutely sensitized center of her mound. He touched her as lightly as a butterfly. She groaned aloud and arched against his hand, until he laid her on her back and kissed her all over her body.

She was utterly enthralled as his mouth descended down her throat over her chest, where he surely heard the thunder of her wild heartbeat. He spent a good deal of time sucking her nipples, but soon he moved on.

It was torture, waiting, as his lips skimmed down her belly, until at last he pleasured her with his mouth. She ran her fingers through his hair, writhing with his kisses, moans of bliss spilling from her lips. Her arching body begging for release, he made her scream with fraught delight in seconds, but by now, Nick was ready to go again.

The cries of ecstasy had barely faded from her lips when he moved up to cover her with his body, and took her again. He kissed her with brazen aggression, dominating her just as he had promised. There was nothing she could do about it. Nothing she willed to do but anything he wished.

She could taste herself on his lips as he threaded his fingers through hers, pinning her to the bed. “Is this what you wanted, my lady?” he growled in deep, primal knowing.

“Oh, God, yes,” she gasped, swept up in her ravishment. She raked her nails down his back, as though marking him, in turn, for her own.

And so it went throughout the night.

He made love to her for hours as the white autumn moon sailed across the black November sky and cast its ancient glow of magic over Paris.

Chapter 14

N
ick awoke the next morning with Virgil’s daughter sleeping in his arms, her head resting on his chest. Awareness returned gradually until he opened his eyes to find the flat gray light of morning filtering in through the closed doors of the balcony.

He felt curiously calm. Everything was peaceful. That was the first thing he noticed.

His constant companions, lo these many years—anger and loneliness—were noticeably absent. Gone. An anchor’s weight from which his heart had been unexpectedly cut free.

He marveled at the light sensation as he listened to her breathing, slow and deep and restful, felt the play of each exhalation tickle his chest where he cradled her sweet head.

For a moment, he stared at her, taking in the exquisite rightness of her being there—just where she was, wrapped in his embrace. As if she were always meant to be there.

Damn,
he thought mildly, unsettled by his own tenderness as he bent to inhale the flowery warm smell of her hair.
What have I got myself into here?
He had never been the lovelorn type. In fact, he usually mocked such men, but yet the kiss he pressed to her head was about as besotted as that of a newlywed husband.

Well.

All this was, of course,
not
what they were here for. And Virgil would certainly not have approved, considering how careful he had been to keep his daughter away from Nick and his fellow agents. No wonder the gruff old spymaster had always been such a mystery.

All those years he had directed his teams hither and thither digging up secrets across Europe, he had been slyly covering up his own.

Ah, well. His handler, her father, might not have approved, but it was too late now after they’d had their way with each other in every imaginable position all night long. A rascally smile passed across his face when he felt her stir.

She awoke tousled and thoroughly ravished, rolled onto her back with a sigh of contentment, taking a catlike stretch beside him. Then she gave him a sleepy little smile.

“Good morning, lovely.”

She touched his face in weary affection. He kissed the dainty fingertip she brushed across his lips.

Then she pushed up from the bed and rose, naked.

“Ow,” she remarked as she walked gingerly toward the screen in the corner behind which the washstand with its built-in chamber pot awaited. “God, Forrester, I can hardly walk, thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied, punching the pillow into the shape he wanted.

“Don’t listen, I have to tinkle.”

He chuckled in sleepy amusement. “You think you have any secrets from me now?”

She shot him an indignant pout from behind the screen before she disappeared again. “You
are
a bad man.”

“Warned you,” he replied, folding his arms under his head on the pillow and feeling quite the sultan of the earth.

He closed his eyes again, simply relaxing until she returned. Then he savored the sight of her sauntering across the room, every lithe, glorious inch of her nude body.

“Goddess,” he murmured heartily.

Her nipples stood erect in the morning’s chill. The vision instantly heated his blood. He was happy to warm her up. “Where do you think you’re going?” he growled playfully when she passed by the bed heading for her main trunk of clothes. He leaned out from the bed and threw his arms around her hips, pulling her to him.

She let out a girlish squeal as he tumbled her back into bed with him.

“I haven’t given you a proper good morning, my lady,” he said with wolfish innuendo.

“Oh, Lord, I’ve created a monster,” she replied.

“A very
friendly
monster,” he whispered.

“Apparently so.” She glanced down with a breathless laugh at his raging member nudging insistently at her thigh.

Nick grinned like a pirate.

He swept her nearer, curling her body into his, spoon fashion, but his intents were not exactly for a cuddle.

“Nick!” she protested halfheartedly.

“Come on,” he whispered at her ear, stroking up and down her silken side until she stopped fussing uncertainly.

“Honestly. Shouldn’t we get a start on our day?”

“Soon, my lady,” he breathed. “I want to love you again.” His choice of words melted her resistance and startled even him.

It had not been a calculated statement, nor even a euphemism. Somehow that particular verb flowed off his tongue with alarming ease with her.

With any other woman, he was sure he’d have said something far more earthy.

His heartbeat boomed in the morning stillness like the cadets’ morning practice at the artillery range as she yielded to him. Given her body’s permission, he slipped his needy prick into the velvet welcome of her core as they both lay on their sides. Before long, this position no longer satisfied.

He pressed her forward onto her stomach and took her from behind. Soon she was on her hands and knees before him, and Nick had hold of her hips, kneeling behind her.

“So good,” he whispered in mindless bliss.

It turned out to be nowhere near as quick an exercise as he had promised. Not after they had enjoyed their sport so many times last night. If she was using him—and he didn’t think she was, not anymore—he had already made up his mind that he didn’t even care.

He brought her to a wrenching climax that he believed the whole Île de la Cité heard quite clearly, including the nearby convent.

When he tried roguishly to cover her mouth with his hand to muffle the sound, the vixen bit his finger. He laughed, which threw him off his rhythm. He lost it for a moment, but she endured until he found it again.

Intoxicated with her, he wrapped his arms around her hips as he drove into her, savoring every stroke, until that perfect moment of release.

Pleasure exploded across his consciousness. Lightning ran down his every nerve ending. He clung to her, gasping, burying his face against her silky-smooth back. She stopped him from pulling out this time. Instinct had taken hold of her. She drove her hips back, keeping him inside her. Nick didn’t fight it, but sank back to a kneeling position, sitting on his heels; she lifted herself upright, also on her knees, but facing forward, her thighs spread, her splendid body draped across his lap.

He wrapped his arms around her slim waist as her elegant undulations milked his cock of every last drop of his seed. When they both were spent, she laid her head back on his shoulder, panting after the storm.

He remained ensheathed in her, feeling as close to her in that moment as he had ever been to any human being. As though their two spirits had somehow, over the course of the night, become knitted together. He caught himself on the verge of saying,
I love you.

What the hell? Surely that was madness. He tried to shake it off. But deep down, he knew as he held her that he wouldn’t think twice about giving his life for this woman if the moment ever came.

“Mmm.” She lifted herself a bit higher on her knees, breaking the seal of their joining, but only to welcome him into her arms when she lay back down on the bed.

Neither of them spoke of the fact that he might have just got her pregnant.

As he laid his head on her chest with a sigh, he doubted he was in any shape for the next thirty seconds or so for catching villains.

He didn’t care. Not for the next minute or two. There would always be evil in the world, but sometimes there was love, or at least beauty.

He had faced death so many times that he had learned to treasure those fleeting brushes with the inherent glory hidden behind all things.

She stroked his hair and his shoulder and kissed the top of his head. “Hungry?” she murmured.

“Starved,” he purred.

“Me, too.”

They had both worked up an appetite last night, to be sure.

“I’ll order some food. What do you want for breakfast?” she asked, kissing his forehead tenderly.

“Surprise me,” he answered, lazy as a lion.

He moved aside to let her up, then yawned and stretched and rubbed his eyes and started thinking about getting up for the day.

But as he watched her walk across the chamber, wonderfully comfortable, it seemed, being naked as Eve, he suddenly could not fathom attempting the American wilderness without female companionship.

Then he frowned. Obviously, the sophisticated baroness would never agree to go along with him on the journey. Dark, uncharted forest filled with hostile tribes, poisonous snakes, man-eating bears, deadly rivers that, after a point, became the only roads? Not a modiste’s shop nor a ballroom in sight?

No, the woman wasn’t a lunatic.

And for the life of him, Nick suddenly couldn’t fathom why he had ever wanted to go in the first place.

It was so much better wherever she was.

God, you are an idiot,
he told himself, but he didn’t care.
Stick to your principles, man.

Of course, he didn’t actually have any of those, now, did he?

And besides, who could say? The luscious Lady Burke might harbor a streak of the pioneer spirit.

She was half-Scottish, after all. She might surprise him. God knew, she had already done that repeatedly last night—and, indeed, from the first moment he had laid eyes on her through the bars of his dungeon cell.

Presently, as he watched her getting dressed with a possessive glow in his eyes, another stray question ran unbidden through his mind. Who exactly were these “gentlemen friends” who had shared a bed with her?

He bristled, shocked by his own reaction.

Not so much by his mild anger at her, that she’d behave that way, putting so little value on the treasure that she was. But utter, blind rage toward the men.

The thought of any lovers’ ever treating his goddess in a cavalier fashion made him want to kill all “gentlemen friends” guilty of this crime.

Now, now,
he told himself, blinking his way back to reason. She was an adult, free to do as she pleased, and too smart to let herself be taken advantage of.

Then again, she had to know what she was getting into, becoming the lover of a trained assassin.

Nick noted his own fiery reaction and realized this could possibly explain another reason why Virgil had never told his boys about his beautiful daughter.

With all of them vowing to protect her, it could have resulted in a very high body count, indeed.

She might even have become the one woman who could have made them turn against each other. Maybe Virgil had known the sort of effect she could have on them.

Hell, maybe it was his boys rather than his femme fatale of a daughter that the old man had been protecting—their cohesiveness as a unit—knowing how she could easily have made them rivals.

Whatever the answer, Nick did his best to shake off his distraction and tore his gaze away from her. Oh, but this woman brought out the most primal side of him. An animalistic side of him, worthy of the wilderness. Fully ready to kill any rival male who stepped too near his mate.

His mate?

Good God.
That was all quite enough. He took a deep breath and forced himself out of the honey trap of that bed, willing himself to remember he was primarily a soldier.

Not some lovesick jackass of a poet.

Stalking off behind the screen, he opened the washstand to perform his morning ablutions while Virginia rang for a servant to bring them the house breakfast.

Sanity returned for the most part after he had splashed his face.

Still, he was covered in her scent, marked by her love bites and the light scratches she had raked down his body in some fit of passion or another over the night’s velvet hours.
Whew,
he thought, shaking his head at his reflection in the mirror.

Then he poured more water from the pitcher into the basin and proceeded to wash. But he paused, smiling wryly when he discovered the mouth-shaped bruise at the base of his neck. Well, she
had
promised she’d give him a sign.

And there it was, he thought wryly.

Rather like an owner’s mark.

A
while later, Nick went out on his own to have a look around inside L’Hôtel Grande Alexandre. He wanted to scout out the territory before them, get a feel for the lay of the land before it was time to present their game piece.

He would mark the locations of the exits, check to see what sort of security the hotel had in place, and keep an eye out for any suspicious people among the hotel guests. He believed he could visually pick them out of the crowd—the sort of shadowy characters who might be also there to enroll in the Bacchus Bazaar.

Gin remained behind to monitor the people coming and going from the hotel through her telescope. Staying discreetly veiled behind the curtains, she had a good view from the glass doors of the balcony, and they had agreed that if she saw anything out of place, she would open the balcony doors and signal to him.

They both were on the lookout for anyone fitting the description of the mysterious Rotgut. Surely, that low criminal would stand out like a fly in a bowl of lemon sorbet in the lobby of the glittering hotel.

Peering through her little brass telescope, she followed Nick’s progress from her perch by the balcony doors. A sated glow of luxuriant pleasure and just a hint of possessiveness filled her as she watched him stride in his bold, confident way down the cobbled street.

She smiled to herself to note the almost jaunty spring in his step after the way she had taken care of him last night. Oh, yes, she quite believed she was getting to him. It thrilled her heart to think she had the power to make that hard, dangerous man happy.

Perhaps it was just as well they had parted ways for now, both of them a little overwhelmed by the intensity of the bond that had blossomed between them.

After the whirlwind of last night, she suspected he needed a little time alone to get his bearings.

So did she, which was why she did not insist on going with him.

Honestly, she was stunned and disturbed by the impulse he had revealed lurking in her heart: the secret, shameful craving to be dominated by a powerful man. She, who supposedly loved being in control at all times!