A Beginner's Guide to Rakes (17 page)

It took a moment for her breath to return. “Don’t be so certain of that.”

“I am.”

This time he didn’t give her a chance to respond, instead drawing her up over his thighs as he kissed and nipped at her mouth. Good heavens, the man knew how to kiss. Almost unaware of the motion, she slipped an arm around his shoulder, holding herself against him. Heat flooded through her, alive and shivery.

When he dipped his head to pull one of her breasts into his mouth, she threw her head back and groaned. Logic, plotting, strategy, all fell away. As he’d said, with twenty-four hours in his intimate company she might as well enjoy herself. He was, after all, very good at this.

Oliver trailed his palms up her thighs, then slowly slid one finger inside her. Diane bucked, arching her back as he continued his ministrations, moving his hand in time with the sucking motion of his mouth on her breasts. Her breath escaping her in gasps, she tangled her hands into his mahogany-colored hair.

When he straightened again to take her mouth, she pushed against his chest. “Enough of the bathtub,” she managed.

“I agree.”

He slipped his arms beneath her shoulders and knees, then stood. The fragrance of roses followed them as he stepped out of the water and carried her over to his bed. Her body abruptly felt chilled everywhere he wasn’t pressed against her, but she noticed the cool air only peripherally; inside, she burned.

He’d covered the bed with additional blankets, evidently anticipating that they would both be wet when they arrived there. Oliver settled her into the nest, tied the ribbon of the neat French condom around the base of his penis, then climbed up her body, kissing her thighs, her belly, and her breasts, and then taking her mouth in another deep kiss.

“Say you want me,” he breathed, reaching between them to rub his thumb against her left nipple.

With his weight settled on her hips, his arousal pressed against her thighs, remaining objective was becoming supremely difficult. He made her want to move, to take him inside her, to groan like a moonstruck girl. But he wasn’t allowed to know that. “You want me,” she responded, running her own palms down his muscular arse and up again along his spine. The play of muscles beneath his skin was intoxicating, heady, and arousing, and she blinked in an attempt to clear her mind.

“So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?”

“Yes,” she rasped as he took a breast into his mouth again. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”

“Everything about you surprises me.”

That seemed like an uncharacteristically straightforward compliment. Perhaps his head was as preoccupied with sensation as hers was. Because whatever her head thought of him, her body was very, very pleased. As Oliver parted her legs and settled her ankles around his hips, she forgot everything but the exquisite sensation of his hard cock sliding inside her.
Oh, God
.

He entered her again and again, his weight pinning her to the damp blankets. Diane couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but clench her fingertips into his back and groan in time with his penetrations. Every muscle tightened and then released as she contracted around him.

“I knew you wanted me,” he murmured, his gaze intent on her face.

Anything she could conjure at the moment would have sounded idiotic, so she settled for biting her lip and trying not to make the mewling sounds attempting to burst from her throat. Abruptly he rolled them so that he lay on his back and she sat straddling his hips, her hands splayed on his hard chest.

If she’d had any self-control at all she would have remained still; after all, this agreement was all his idea. But the sensation of him filling her took precedence over everything else, and she began to move, stroking up and down the length of him. This time
he
moaned, reaching up to fondle and knead at her breasts, pulling her forward for another hard, breathless kiss.

He thrust up into her faster and faster and then moaned as he convulsed against her, holding her close onto him as he came. More than anything she wanted to collapse on his chest, relax her tired, aroused muscles. But that would mean surrender—and she was not about to surrender. So instead she looked down at him and tried to capture enough breath to speak. “What now?” she asked. “You still have twenty-two hours remaining.”

“Damned chit,” he muttered, lifting her off him. “Lie down.”

She started to lie back, resisting the urge to cover herself or attempt something equally girlish. She wasn’t a girl. “Very original.”

“On your stomach.”

Diane frowned. “You are not g—”

“And shut up.” He pushed her with his fingers until she lay on her stomach, her arms crossed under her head.

A moment later she felt him wrapping a towel around her hair and then tugging it down. He repeated the action, rubbing the wet strands between the folds of the towel. “You’re drying my hair?”

“You’ll ruin my bed otherwise. Go to sleep.”

“So you’re finished with me?”

“I’m tired. We can begin battling again in the morning.”

She considered that for a moment, letting the feeling of him toying with her hair seep into her. Nothing had changed. They were still adversaries. It was only that she felt very relaxed at the moment. And very sleepy. “Agreed.”

Chapter Eleven

It hadn’t precisely gone according to plan.

Oliver sat back against the headboard of his large bed and gazed at the dishevelment of blankets and sheets beside him. Barely visible but for one arm and a tangle of long, curling black hair slept the greatest conundrum of his life.

He hadn’t meant to touch her until morning. A comfortable, confidence-lulling bath, a warm night in his bed while he slept elsewhere, followed by a decadent breakfast and then hours of even more decadent sex. And then he’d seen her sitting naked in the warm water, and he’d forgotten everything he’d planned.

People in general, and his peers in particular, thought him a hedonistic libertine. They thought he set his eyes on something and reacted to it as his gut—or slightly lower—wished. They were wrong, of course; he rarely acted without first considering where all the threads would lead. Of course, his only caveat of the past two years had been that the feminine distractions led him away from memories of Vienna.

Last night, however, his mind had evidently fled the premises. And the damnedest part of the disaster was that sex with Diane Benchley had not accomplished what he’d intended. Because while she’d clearly enjoyed the tumble physically, her mind and her heart had remained her own. Not that he’d intended to lure her into heartbreak again, but he found it aggravating that he’d lost control when she hadn’t.

This was supposed to be about proving to himself that Vienna had been … unique, a fortnight-long instance of mental confusion and weakness on his part. He was now supposed to be done with her—except that clearly he wasn’t.

Shifting carefully, Oliver slipped out of the bed, pulled on a pair of trousers, and went to his front room to ring the servant’s bell hanging against the wall there. A handful of seconds later, someone knocked and he pulled open the door. “Langtree. Good morning.”

Her steady gaze didn’t even acknowledge his bare chest. Damn it all, he was clearly not up to his usual standards. “I require breakfast for two, and suitable morning attire for Lady Cameron. Gown, shoes, a hairbrush, and whatever else she generally has need of when she rises.”

This time the servant blinked. “For Lady Cameron?”

“Yes, and be quick about it.” Before she could say anything else, he closed the door on her.

Interesting. The servants didn’t know where their mistress had spent the night. He wondered if the tall French twist had any idea about the terms of the new loan. The rest of Mayfair thought he and Lady Cameron were lovers already, mostly because she’d encouraged that interpretation herself. Evidently her own household wasn’t supposed to have come to the same conclusion.

While he waited, he sat down and wrote out a note to Manderlin excusing himself from the planned excursion to Tattersall’s, then another to Lady Katherine to inform her that he wouldn’t be available for an intimate afternoon tea after all. She wouldn’t be surprised; he hadn’t been available for anything intimate or otherwise for nearly five weeks.

The siren in his bedchamber kept drawing him toward the back of his apartments, and he sternly resisted the urge to go see whether she was still sleeping. He needed a new strategy, and he needed it quickly. Because if he still wanted her, then he had to do something to make certain she wanted him. Which meant something different, something unexpected, something to shake her free of her heretofore very accurate perception of him—the him whose character seemed to … improve when he was in her presence.

His front door rattled and someone shoved at the heavy wood. Hard. Out of habit he always latched it—one never knew who might be displeased with one.

“Open the door at once!”

Ah, the French twist.
“I’m not seeing visitors, Miss Martine,” he said, stifling a grin. Genevieve Martine hadn’t been informed of Diane’s obligations for the next … eighteen hours, either.

“Juliet, fetch me an axe and Mr. Jacobs!” she called from the other side of the door, naming the largest of Diane’s male club protectors.

Oliver unlocked the door and pulled it open. “I suggest you not attempt to break down my door,” he said in the same tone that had convinced several men not to fight him and subsequently lose their lives in idiotic duels.

“You will release Diane immediately,” she snapped back at him, her blond hair only partly put up and her gown slightly askew. “Or I will do worse than break down your door, you blackguard.”

“Mm-hm. Breakfast and clothes. If you want an explanation for Diane’s presence, you may ask her after four o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll ask her now.”

“No, you won’t.”

“You h—”

He shut and locked the door again. Immediately she began pounding on it. Generally women were either intimidated by him or set on attracting his attention. Other than Diane, none of them were openly hostile. Well, her and this chit.

“What the devil have you done now?”

Oliver leaned back against the shaking door and folded his arms across his bare chest. Diane stood a few feet from him, clothed in his discarded shirt and nothing else. With her long, loose hair, bare legs, and sleeves rolled up to her elbows, she looked … delicious. And she knew it. Otherwise she might have donned her shift. Did she want him to fall on her again? Even acknowledging that it would likely cost him some ground, he couldn’t help simply … gazing at her.

“Well?” she prompted.

“Your Miss Martine thinks I’ve kidnapped you,” he answered. “I’m assuming you didn’t inform your household about our agreement.”

She frowned. “I was waiting for an opportune moment. You’re the one who pounced on me before I could say anything to them.”

“I did not pounce, and you had several hours to tell whomever you chose.”

Diane waved a hand at him. “Oh, get out of the way before they break down the door.”

He didn’t move. “You aren’t leaving.” Even if he had to fight off a house full to the brim with angry, yowling chits.

“Not for eighteen hours.” This time when she motioned him aside, he shifted.

“She’s not allowed in, either,” he added, reaching over to unlock the door.

From his place behind the door, keeping it from opening fully, he couldn’t see the angry Miss Martine just on the other side of the oak planks, but he didn’t need to. Considering that he hadn’t been particularly unpleasant to the woman, he had to assume that Diane had spoken to her about the events in Vienna. Interesting, then, that Diane hadn’t said anything about this.

“No, I’m quite well,” Diane was saying as she curled her fingers into the half-open door.

She had elegant fingers. Perfect for a cardplayer, though she more than likely wouldn’t appreciate hearing that. Oliver reached out, intending to run his own fingers along hers, then stopped the motion. This wasn’t a seduction or a romance. This was him, attempting to purge her from his mind. Touching her for no damned reason was not going to help that.

“But
him
, Diane? You said you would rath—”

“I know what I said,” she interrupted, her grip on the door tightening momentarily. “But I also told you that I had an agreement to see to. I’ll attempt to explain it later, Jenny. In eighteen hours. Until then, you’ll have to make do without me.”

“The fiend asked for breakfast and clothes for you.”

Oliver frowned. While he didn’t give a damn what the French twist thought of him, he didn’t particularly believe he’d been a fiend. He looked at Diane’s profile. Had that been her word, or her friend’s? Was that truly what Diane thought of him? He leaned around the door. “And tea,” he added. “Now.”

With the flat of his hand he closed the door again, this time leaving it unlocked. The chit began a stream of muffled curses in several different languages, but he doubted she would attempt to break down the door again. Turning around once more, he gazed at his guest.

“I have a question,” he said, gesturing her to precede him to his small morning room.

“Did we decide that me talking to you was part of your agreement?”

Perhaps he should have kept her awake all night after all. That would have dulled her sharp tongue a little. “You can either chat with me or I’ll remember we have more physical things we could be doing together. I’ll let you choose.”

Color touched her cheeks. “I believe you had a question, didn’t you?” she asked, walking to the overstuffed chair beneath the window and curling into it like a cat.

He stayed silent as he sank onto the couch opposite, considering whether to ask the question foremost on his mind. It was a very poor idea, because it left him open to a riposte, but he genuinely wanted to know. “In Vienna,” he began, “when we met, what did you think the outcome would be?”

She drew a breath, turning her gaze toward the window and the treetops of her garden beyond. “Clearly my thinking was impaired in Vienna. I can’t answer your question.”