Regency Rogues Omnibus (42 page)

With heightened senses, Radford timed his movement with patience, because he knew if he were to move too quickly his ghostly sprite would flee. “Cherie, your game is dangerous.” His hand reached outward and found what he sought as he turned his body slightly with his words. His fleeting touch upon bare flesh startled them both, even though he had guessed the wanton play.

“Oh!” The lady breathed a breathless exclamation, instantly withdrawing from his touch with its sounding.

A buttock, naked and toned of satin
, Radford was certain. He placed the lady twirling away in the darkness from his touch in his mind and he advanced. The time had come to take the upper hand. “How bold and naughty, cherie.”

Radford turned his head to the side, bending his voice in a misleading direction as he followed Lady Nia’s scent, warmth, and slightly hitched breathing. In his mind’s eye he had a mental picture of the room. It was a talent he’d honed to perfection during his spying days. He knew the precise placing of every piece of furniture and every nook and cranny in the room. Nocturnal spying visits were his specialty. The lady might believe her safety would lay in a fool stumbling around in the darkness, yet what she would find instead was the stealth of a panther.

His hand reached outward time and again as he advanced with his fingertips brushing glancing strokes against warm and soft female flesh. Each touch enlisting a soft gasping, and each fleeting stroke guiding the daring minx into the direction that he wanted her to retreat.

It was a fast paced waltz in the inky blackness and each time Lady Nia sought to move in the direction of escape, the bold touch of his fingers and hand startled her back into the direction of his intention.
Cornered
. He was certain that he touched a full breast, a bare waist, and the creamy cheek of a nicely rounded ass with his briefly stroking fingers. Each tangible feeling amazing him with the reality of her complete nudity, and proved to stroke his ardor higher.

Suddenly, the back of Nia’s bare thighs bumped a small table, rattling a crystal lamp and something else unknown crashed onto the floor, shattering. She cried out, flinging her hands upward in the attempt to keep from falling. Then, abruptly in the pitched blackness, she was engulfed against warm material and a tall hardened body beneath.

“It is not to be like this!” she gasped, senselessly overwhelmed by the masculine presence carrying her to safe equilibrium with her spine braced gently against the wall beside the table. Her fingers clutched a twill jacket and the firm broadness of muscular shoulders beneath. All at a height that dwarfed her uncommon tallness.

She was not to be caught like this.
The written instructions had been clear. She was to tease, titillate, and flirt, perhaps flirting outrageously using her naked body in glancing touches to inflame the Duke. However, she was not to allow him to touch her more than briefly on their first encounter.

“Carefully laid plans gone awry, cherie?” Radford’s warm breath caressed her cheek too intimately.

She could not feel his hands touching her, only his unyielding body pressing down the entire length of her figure, pinning her to the wall at her back. “Yes, I...” she murmured in confusion, with her lips brushing the strong heated hollow of his throat as he moved his hips with a barely perceptible motion that slowly undulated the impression of his hardening cock against her lower belly.

“A little late to turn shy or moral, my sweet.”

Nia gasped as Radford’s tongue suddenly slid along the shell of her ear. She was clutching his shoulders and nearly pulling him to her, yet now her senses returned slightly with his words.
What was she doing?
She could barely think clearly. That had never happened to her before, not in such a simple situation.
Simple?
Oh Lord! She was losing her grasp. Nonetheless, just the permeation of Lord Sutherlin’s masculine heat, his smell, and the feel of his tall muscular body against her body, was overwhelming her. He
was
dangerous.

Nia realized in a breathless second that Lord Radford Sutherlin was a very dangerous man. Suddenly, she shoved against his shoulder wiggling her body with the purpose of freedom against his towering build. “
Let
me go,” she cried tightly.

The second the words left her lips, he stepped backward, completely surprising her. She turned instantly thinking to flee, yet her bare breasts encountered his straight arm braced against the wall, halting her forward motion. Instinctively, she backed up only to find herself halted by his other arm braced straight behind her.

“Hush, cherie.” His voice deepened with soothing sounds. “But we will talk.”

Talk,
Nia thought, with her body shivering? If only, she could think of one clear thought. She wondered where her demeanor of being a vibrant and brazen lady of the night had fled to. “You have t-trumped me, your grace,” she managed to say, lifting her chin.

“In this intimacy of your making, amour. I insist you begin to call me, Radford.”

Crazily, Nia suddenly wished for the strength and warmth of his body back against hers once again as she shivered and cupped her hands over her naked breasts. His deeply sensual and masculine voice in the darkness alone was making her knees weak, and the desire to see his features was wreaking havoc with any common sense she held. He had to be incredibly handsome, if one were to judge by his voice alone.

“Radford,” she whispered. It was silly. She should try to push away from him. She had the feeling that he would release her, rather than frighten her, and the amount of personal honor that held in this situation was astonishing. Most of the spoiled and jaunty aristocrats that she knew of would not be so controlled or the least bit honorable under these circumstances.

“The sound of that husky Irish lilt is going to keep me awake far into the night, cherie.”

Charmer.
He was all that and more, Nia thought. Somehow, she needed to regain her footing. If only his mere masculine aura were not swamping her so deeply. What would an authentic lady do in a situation like this, she wondered, then she nearly laughed outright? A truly proper English lady would
never
find herself in a situation such as this. Blimey, they would swoon if even too much of one of their ankles might be revealed to a gentleman.

Nia worried her front teeth over her fuller bottom lip. What she was doing was so blatant, and she knew that Radford had to be wondering about the same thing. She wondered at the sanity of Lord Benny for instructing this amorous adventure at the same time he directed her to portray herself a lady of the realm. Yet suddenly, she thought that perhaps acting like a helpless and befuddled lady might be the key to holding her disguised roll intact. She was grasping at straws, however she certainly felt befuddled and at the same time embarrassingly aroused.

“Y-You have me at a disadvantage, your grace.” Nia forced a catch of demureness into her voice, trying to ignore the stimulated and achy tips of her nipples, where her hands clutched their fullness.

“Radford,” his voice insisted lowly. “Now you will play the shrinking demoiselle, captured by the noble male, forcing you thrillingly perhaps against your will? You are on the first sense an intriguing variety of contrasts, none of which promises honest revelation.”

“Or just the breath of your nearness, noble swine, consumes my reasoned senses. The thrill of unknown chances lay bare upon my breasts, caressing mindless rapture of wet confusions,” she whispered. She startled at the feel of Radford’s cheek brushing a soft-whiskered rasp against her cheek.

“A poetess?” his voice murmured a base tone of surprise. “And a bawdy one of course.”

“It is not bawdy, yet erotic!”

Nia realized too late that she defended herself too quick, too openly, and too vocally. Her unchecked vehemence brought her stubborn chin aloft and suddenly her lips were sealed beneath Radford’s mouth. That first sparkling and astonishing touch, ignited instantly between them. Radford’s with a gruff sound in his throat that vibrated heat over her lips, while she whimpered an instant aroused response. Wildly, their mouths hummed against each other delving and exploring, and then Radford’s hand was pressed to the back of her head bearing her kissing lips deeper beneath his mouth.

Chapter Five

The first rule of a
fille de joie:
never let them kiss you. A woman’s heart was in her lips. Overcome, Nia flowed into Radford’s body with the tips of her sensitive nipples scraping against his linen shirt. She gasped into his mouth, feeling the twin bites of rapture, before her breasts were braced fully upon the unbending sinew of his chest. His lips and the heat of his mouth coursing over her mouth were irresistible. The texture and the firmness of his lips, coupled with the sensually exacting movements of his mouth, spun passion into her senses.

Then, he churned a deep and driving male sound in his chest that if put into words would say, “Now more. Now more until I consume you.” His tongue lashed into the recesses of her mouth. Her eager moan answered his tongue, slipping along the surface of her tongue, and she was lost. She was wholly lost with only a passionate kissing of their tongues.

Vixen! Minx! Passion!
Radford understood that it was only by the smallest of degrees that he held his igniting arousal in check, when all that his hard and throbbing prick wanted was wet pussy. Vanilla cream.
Vanilla cunt lips
. Judas, all he could smell were vapors of aroused vanilla woman.

He had never intended to advance so far. Only one kiss to set the Lady Minx back on her delicate heels as a warning that he was not a man to be trifled with.
Who was Nia?
What was Nia? Nothing connected in his mind except the shivery gossamer throbs of her tongue as he suckled it with ever slower motions deeper into his mouth. Tenaciously, he slowed their urgent and wild pace with a sensuality that he had forever deeply craved, yet not until this moment had he found an allure worthy of bringing it to the surface. He had never found passions fiery and uninhibited enough to tantalize and quicken him this way.

He could feel the willowy ripeness of Nia’s body pressed eagerly against him. The ardent minx undulated her belly over the bulge of his stiff and responding cock. Her manner was not that of a shallow and innocent virgin, but more the full-bodied answer of known pleasure and where those sexual pleasures came from.

Suddenly, he had to know, and it was a catalyst of illogic in his cunningly forced and logical world. He should step away, yet even as he thought this, his free hand stroked down Nia’s satin fleshed hip. He still held his riding gloves in that hand and some devilment in his mind assured him that it was a more acceptable way of keeping his entire hand from touching. But not so his fingertips, which were tracing flowing feminine curves in the dark, like a blind man admiring the lush lines of a sculpture. Because what he was being urged beyond reason to attempt was forbidden, without class, and strictly speaking, it was dishonorable.

Not that he was ever particularly honorable in the rituals of seducing women. More aloof. He bedded whores quickly, strictly making certain they were pleased, yet he was always gone within an hour. He could flirt, however he rarely did, and he never tried to seduce or bed noblewomen. Not out of honor, but out of apathy. No women of his acquaintance, thus far, had stirred to life the sensuality within him that lay waiting.

“Oh
mm
, no. You should not,” Nia gasped against his lips, just as his glove and fingertips found the electrifying bareness at the top of her perfect mound.

He was staggered in lust at the discovery of the complete bareness of her ripe pussy, as even his cock bucked beneath his riding britches.
“Run,
if you will.” His voice was a restrained growl. He held the lady by nothing but his lips hovering over her lips and his fingertip just barely dipping into the top crease of her heated pussy. Her answering whimper of desire at his intimate petting immediately brought his lips crashing down over her mouth once more.

Bared, tender, sweet, and wet.
He could not stop now if he chose to and the lust of his mind conjured ill-gained, wicked, and lusty reasons not to. Yet, logic was beyond him as smoothly bared cunt lips quivered and coated his stroking fingers with dewy arousal that could not be denied. A distant part of his mind consoled himself with the fact that his Lady Minx was as consumed by the desires flaming between them as he was.

So slowly . . . slowly, he fingered the budding of his lady’s clitoris. A lush eager love bud thrusting outward in swollen advance. Nia’s returning moan into his mouth was the sound of a tempest sea crashing onto the cliffs. Elemental and unstoppable. The sound of her surrender thrashed through his tall frame as he bore her writhing feminine curves up against the wall.

That what he was doing was illicit seemed to spur him on rather than deter him. Added to Nia’s ardent response and he was conquered within the moment. Good sense fled beneath the caress of his finger over Nia’s swollen and throbbing budding. Each faster paced twirl of his finger won him a palpitating throb and a torrid whimper from his lady. Her body moved like desire and her mouth tasted of passion fires as she suckled on the thickness of his tongue that he fed her. Her breasts buoyed deeply into his chest with her taunt nipples piercing him as he stroked her honey cunt and she drizzled her answering arousal over his fingertips and glove.