To Lure a Proper Lady (23 page)

He stretched out against the pillows. “Feel free to explore as you wish.”

“I like the sound of that.” She leaned forward to press her lips to his throat. Her tongue flicked out to taste him. “I was afraid I'd have to request my forfeit to ensure your cooperation.”

“Indeed? What would your great-aunt have to say about that?”

“I have the feeling she'd quite approve, actually.” Lizzie's hands slipped lower, over the ridges of his abdomen, her fingers making tantalizing forays beneath the waistband of his breeches.

His cock pulsed in anticipation of her fingers curled around it. He captured her gaze, held it, silently daring her to drop her hand to the straining falls of his breeches.

Her grin broadened to something worldly. Oh, yes, she knew just what he wanted. “Should I demand you touch yourself first, to show me how it's done?”

He groaned. She'd be the death of him yet. Without his conscious command, his fingers tore at the buttons, and his erection sprang free. Eyes never once leaving hers, he wrapped his fingers around himself.

She sucked in a breath, attention riveted on the motion of his fist, up and down his shaft, clenching when he reached the base, but his own hand would never replace the hot paradise of a ready woman. Christ, he wanted to remember her just like this, all bright curiosity and utter focus on what he was showing her, innocent yet carnal.

Then her hand closed over his. He sucked in a breath. One finger extended, reaching out to flick the pearly drop of liquid from the tip of his cock. At her boldness, his fist tightened, hers following. His bollocks constricted, and he nearly spilled on that bolt of pure lust.

“Tell me what you want, Lizzie,” he grated. “Because I'm not going to last much longer.”

“You,” she breathed. “I want all of you.”

A growl burst from the depths of Dysart's chest. No, lower. But Lizzie had no time to contemplate the origin of that animal sound. He pounced, bearing her back into the mattress, their legs hopelessly tangled. His lips took hers in a mindless kiss, as he rolled her beneath him.

His bulk pressed to her chest, her belly, her thighs. The hot, hard length of him throbbed against her most intimate flesh, a threat and a promise both. She canted her hips in invitation.

His fingers twined with hers as he grasped her hands and tore his lips away. Already his breath ripped from his lungs in ragged pants. “I don't want to hurt you.”

At the very least she expected discomfort. She'd seen the size of him as he stroked himself. She'd tested his girth with her own hand. “It doesn't matter.”

“Yes, it does. I want to be gentle, but I'm not sure I can be.”

“Don't coddle me.” Whatever he did, she wanted the full rawness of
him
and not some polite gentleman.

His lips contorted, whether a smile or a grimace, she could not tell. “Then wrap yourself around me.”

She obeyed, fingers enlaced about his neck, her knees hugging his flanks, and he settled between her spread thighs. He nudged at her entrance, the very tip of him teasing with possibility.

“Deep breath,” he said between clenched teeth.

She inhaled. He plunged forward, and the air exploded from her lungs on a cry.

He went utterly still, but beneath her fingertips, she could feel the tremor running just beneath the surface. His expression solidified into a harsh mask.

“Don't coddle me,” she repeated before he could say anything.

His entry burned, yes, but the sensation was ebbing into something else. He stretched her, but the discomfort was not beyond endurance. In fact, he filled an emptiness inside her she hadn't even known existed until now.

“I want this to be good.”

Her heart skipped at the conviction in his tone. “It will be.”

He brushed his lips against hers, the kiss brimming with a tenderness at complete odds with the wild energy that infused his body. The movement pushed him deeper, but she gave way before his invasion.

“Thank God, because I can't hold back much longer.”

There was more to this? Even as the thought occurred to her, she knew there had to be. The way he'd touched her—the way he'd stroked himself—had involved friction and rhythm, action, and motion. Discomfort aside, she wanted to experience it all. “Then don't.”

With a groan, he pulled back. Before she could protest, before she could tighten her grip on him, he thrust home, once more pushing the breath from her, but this time the air expelled on a gasp.
Yes.
Her instincts were right. This could be good.

He surged again.

It
was
good.

“More,” she sighed.

He loomed over her, pressing with long, firm strokes that drove her toward that cliff edge somewhere above. Heavens, to experience that ecstasy with him joined to her, part of her. She must reach that peak. With him.

Taking his weight on his elbows, he reared up. The angle of penetration changed, impelling him deeper, as if he wished to climb to her very heart. Were such a thing possible, she'd allow it. She wanted him there, part of her.

Her hands slipped to his chest, but she barely felt the straining of his muscles beneath her palms. His movement within her overwhelmed her senses. Soon, soon, he'd bring her where she needed to be, that same place he'd shown her with his fingers—and hers.

Her mind focused on him, on the passion he wrung from her, on the way he'd commanded it of her.
Look at me. Now.
And out of nowhere that sweeping rush was on her, emerging on a deep, guttural moan. Her body convulsed beneath his, her internal muscles clenching on the hard length within her.

From somewhere above, an answering groan rang out. He stiffened over her, thrust deep, and collapsed, but the pressure barely registered. She was already drifting.

Dysart stared at the ceiling, his heart sill pounding. He'd rolled off Lizzie to spare her his weight, but she'd immediately burrowed into his embrace. Idly, he dragged his fingers through her hair. He could only hope she'd floated to sleep again.

Earlier when he'd written off this attraction between him and Lizzie as mere lust, he'd told a blatant lie. God only knew he'd experienced his share of lust in his life. It was a simple, straightforward state, and easily assuaged. An itch in demand of scratching, nothing more.

Whatever lay between him and Lizzie was anything but simple. If he'd thought to ease his ache for her by giving in, he was wrong. Oh, so wrong. He'd only made the itch worse, because now, whenever he desired a woman, he'd have this joining to compare it to. This release that had torn him to shreds.

Shite, he was well and truly buggered.

Lizzie stirred against him. Her breasts pressed deliciously into the side of his arm. She raised her head, her lips stretched impossibly wide. Christ. The last time he'd seen an expression like that, it was on an urchin who'd just picked a particularly affluent pocket. He was not only buggered, he'd been left naked in the street.

“Good Lord, is it always like that?” Her words were all breathless wonder.

Not by a long shot, but that admission would cut too close to his heart. “Some times are better than others.”

She placed a hand flat on his chest. “You mean it gets better?”

God help him, he might not survive if it got any better. “With practice. With knowledge of the other person.”

Her hand slipped southward. “I think we should practice some more.”

Damn if his cock didn't agree with that assessment. It stirred to life at the mere promise of her unschooled touch. “I'm not sure that's such a good idea. We've already taken the chance of getting you with child.”

He'd meant to withdraw before he spilled, but when her climax hit, when her inner walls began to ripple about him, he'd completely lost focus. An unforgiveable oversight, one he couldn't risk happening a second time.

“Surely it doesn't occur on every occasion.”

“Do you really want to chance it?” Damn, where was the semblance of peace he'd usually found after a pleasant encounter with a female? He'd just gone and destroyed the moment. “You might be able to hide a small indiscretion, but not if it results in you increasing.”

Harsh words, and they pained him more than he'd like to acknowledge. Lizzie's smile dissolved into nothing. He wanted to touch her cheek, kiss her, do anything to make up for what he'd just said, but he couldn't risk losing himself in her again.

He gentled his voice. “Go to sleep, Lizzie. We need to make London tomorrow.”

Dysart already knew he'd be getting no sleep. He'd be lying awake, thinking about the consequences.

He was still thinking about them as they boarded the stagecoach the next morning, having paid for their lodging and sending Sherrington's coachman back to the manor with Boudicca, where he'd get help with digging the duke's carriage out of the mud.

Lizzie stared out the window as they set off, wedged into a seat opposite a dour-faced older woman, who cast dark looks and the occasional sniff at Lizzie's unconventional garments. Not that it would have mattered if they'd been alone in the carriage and could hold a conversation.

He had no idea what the bloody hell to say to Lizzie. The kind of woman who normally found her way into his bed was happy with a slap on the rump and a meal for her efforts. Someone of Lizzie's station was brought up to expect more—and Dysart couldn't afford those sorts of expectations.

Whoever Lizzie thought she'd made herself on this journey, at heart she was still Lady Elizabeth and far too high above him to consider seriously. Damn it, if his brain didn't insist on trying. But he kept returning to one inevitable conclusion. A woman of Lizzie's status had no place in her life for a Bow Street Runner.

He'd better focus on that thought. He wasn't daft enough to believe he could support her in the manner to which she was accustomed. He knew exactly what sort of life she'd been bred to expect. In a year, he didn't make enough blunt to pay for one of her ball gowns, let alone an entire Season's worth.

His old self might have acted the gentleman and offered, but if Lizzie was clever, she'd have turned him down. On the social scale, even an idiot like Snowley ranked higher.

By the time the stagecoach reached London, Lizzie's mood had turned decidedly foul. Endless hours of crowded jouncing in a poorly sprung carriage under the disapproving glare of a harridan would have that effect on anybody. Add to that the hardness of the seat and the particular tenderness in her nether regions. Good Lord, she'd felt every last rut in the road.

But it was the heavy pall of silence coming from Dysart's corner that plagued her most. Since the small hours of the morning when they'd all but set the bed aflame, he'd turned inward. Not even a sarcastic comment when their traveling companion sniffed for what had to be the hundredth time. At the very least, Lizzie would have expected him to offer a handkerchief.

She couldn't help but draw the conclusion she'd done something to arouse his temper. And in a way, she had. She'd all but thrown herself at the man. She ought to be appalled at her behavior, but she refused to apologize for it. Not after the way Dysart had awakened every last one of her senses and multiplied their response a thousandfold.

When you've known the kind of proper passion that bursts into flame…

No, she couldn't allow herself to complete that phrase, not even in her mind. Because she did know now. She'd experienced exactly the sort of passion Great-aunt Matilda was referring to, but rather than clarifying matters, the thought of Papa and her sisters and even Snowley only caused her thoughts to whirl in greater confusion.

The sky was darkening with the oncoming evening as they rolled into The Swan With Two Necks. Dysart handed her down into the teeming stable yard. Dodging harried ostlers leading horses to their stalls and weary passengers making their way to the coaching inn, they cut through the crowd toward Lad Lane and from there walked toward the shops of Cheapside.

“How far is it to Bow Street?” she ventured. Anything to break his silence, which seemed to amplify the rattle of carriage wheels, the steady plod of a cart horse, the cries of an argument echoing from the bowels of a haberdashery.

“More'n a mile.” He pulled a cheroot from his topcoat and set it between his teeth, though he clearly had nothing to light it with. “But ye won't have t' go so far. I've enough blunt for a hackney. Soon as I find ye one, I'll put ye in it.”

You
not
we.
She stopped in her tracks. “And just where do you think you'll be sending me in a hackney?”

“Mayfair. I assume yer family owns a townhouse.”

“They do.”

“Then that's where ye're headed.” He didn't add
where you belong,
but he didn't have to.

“Wouldn't it be sensible for me to accompany you?” she persisted, despite a sudden chill worse than yesterday's rain. “I can give your men vital information.”

“No more'n I can give'em meself.”

“But Barrows's description,” she insisted.

“Ye can tell me that, and I'll pass it along.”

She clamped her lips shut on a series of descriptive terms she might apply to Barrows and Dysart in equal measure, most of them inappropriate to pronounce in public and none of them helpful in identifying a person. A thick skull didn't show on the outside, after all.

Instead, she took a deep breath and strove for calm. “He isn't as tall as you, I'd say, nor as heavily built. Closer to Snowley in that regard, but maybe not as soft. He's in his middle fifties, dark brown hair, tending to gray. Prominent lines on his cheeks and forehead. Tanned complexion from going out in the sun.”

Dysart nodded. “I've seen him.”

He started down the street once more, instantly all business and focus. Had Lizzie imagined the awkwardness of the past day?

She trotted to catch up. “I thought you hadn't had a chance to speak with him.”

“He was in the woods t' other day. Damn it.” He chomped on the end of the cheroot before removing the sodden end from his mouth. “He was hiding from Pendleton, and I didn't realize it. I could've had him then.”

She wanted to touch him, to offer comfort somehow, but not in the middle of Cheapside and not dressed as she was. Later, perhaps, but she needed to open that door. “Once you've finished your business on Bow Street, will you come to the townhouse?”

He stopped and stared at her for a long moment. “I've got me own place.”

Five simple words, but he infused them with so much more meaning—things he, too, could not voice on the streets of London. While she might get away with spending the night with him in a disreputable coaching inn where no one could guess at her identity, she'd never manage such a feat in Mayfair.

“But you'll need my direction if you have news.” Lord, did she sound as desperate as she felt? As soon as his feet had hit the London pavement, he'd resumed his guise as Dysart, the lowborn Bow Street Runner. If he was trying to prove a point, he'd more than driven it home—like a hammer pounding a nail into solid oak, each blow of metal on metal more painful than the previous.

He raised his brows expectantly.

“Grosvenor Square.”

“Grosvenor Square,” he repeated, his echo carrying a knell of finality. “Of course.”

The hackney trundled to a halt outside a solid mass of red brick broken at regular intervals by mullioned windows. The driver hadn't so much as blinked at the prospect of taking a young woman dressed in bedraggled breeches and a wrinkled shirt to such an exclusive dwelling. No doubt in his profession he'd witnessed plenty of odder doings.