Lord of Scoundrels (Scoundrels 3)

Lecturing herself didn’t do any good. She knew he was perfectly awful and he’d used her abominably and he was incapable of affection and he was wedding her mainly for revenge…and she wanted him to want only her, all the same.

“Have I finally shocked you?” Dain asked. “Or are you merely sulking? The silence has become deafening.”

“I am shocked,” she said tartly. “It would never occur to me that you would mind being watched. You seem to delight in public scenes.”

“Beaumont was watching through a peephole,” Dain said. “In the first place, I can’t abide sneaks. In the second, I paid for a whore—not to perform, gratis, for an audience. Third, there are certain activities I prefer to conduct in private.”

The carriage drive at this point began to veer northward, away from the banks of the Serpentine. The horses struggled to continue along the riverbank, aiming at a stand of trees. Dain smoothly corrected their direction without appearing to take any notice of what he was doing.

“At any rate, I felt obliged to clarify my rules with the aid of my fists,” he went on. “It’s more than possible Beaumont holds a grudge. I shouldn’t put it past him to take out his ill feeling on you. He’s a coward and a sneak and he has a nasty habit of…” He trailed off, frowning. “At any rate,” he went on, his expression grim, “you’re to have nothing to do with him.”

It took her a moment to grasp the implications of the command, and in that moment the world seemed to grow marginally brighter and her heart a cautious degree lighter. She shifted sideways to scrutinize his glowering profile. “That sounds shockingly…protective.”

“I paid for you,” he said coldly. “You’re mine. I look after what’s mine. I shouldn’t let Nick or Harry near him either.”

“By gad—do you mean to say I am as important a possession as your cattle?” She pressed her hand to her heart. “Oh, Dain, you are too devastatingly romantic. I am altogether overcome.”

He brought his full attention upon her for a moment, and his sullen gaze dropped to where her hand was. She hastily returned it to her lap.

Frowning, he turned back to the horses. “That overgarment thing, the what-you-call-it,” he said testily.

“My pelisse? What’s wrong with it?”

“You filled it better the last time I saw it,” he said. “In Paris. When you burst into my party and bothered me.” He steered the beasts right, into a tree-lined avenue a few yards south of the guard-house. “When you assaulted my virtue. Surely you remember. Or did it merely seem to fit better because you were wet?”

She remembered. More important, he did—in sufficient detail to notice a few pounds’ shrinkage. Her mood lightened another several degrees.

“You could throw me into the Serpentine and find out,” she said.

The short avenue led to a small, thickly shaded circular drive. The trees ringing it shut out the rest of the park. In a short while, the five o’clock promenade would begin, and this secluded area, like the rest of Hyde Park, would be crammed with London’s fashionables. At present, however, it was deserted.

Dain drew the curricle to a halt and set the brake. “You two settle down,” he warned the horses. “Make the least bother, and you’ll find yourselves hauling barges in Yorkshire.”

His tone, though low, carried the clear signal of Obedience or Death. The animals responded to it just as though they were human. Instantly they became the most subdued, docile pair of geldings Jessica had ever seen.

Dain turned his moody black gaze upon her. “Now, as to you, Miss Termagant Trent—”

“I love these pet names,” she said, gazing soulfully up into his eyes. “Nitwit. Sapskull. Termagant. How they make my heart flutter!”

“Then you’ll be in raptures with a few other names I have in mind,” he said. “How can you be such an idiot? Or have you done it on purpose? Look at you!” He addressed this last to her bodice. “At this rate, there won’t be anything left of you by the wedding day. When was the last time you ate a proper meal?” he demanded.

Jessica supposed that, in Dain’s Dictionary, this qualified as an expression of concern.

“I did not do it on purpose,” she said. “You have no idea what it’s like under Aunt Louisa’s roof. She conducts wedding preparations as generals conduct warfare. The household has been in pitched battle since the day we arrived. I could leave them to fight it out among themselves, but I should not care for the result—and you would detest it. My aunt’s taste is appalling. Which means I have no choice but to be involved, night and day. Then, because it takes all my will and energy to maintain control, I’m too tired and vexed to eat a proper meal—even if the servants were capable of making one, which they aren’t, because she’s worn them to a frazzle, too.”

There was a short silence. Then, “Well,” he said, shifting a bit in his place, as though he were not altogether comfortable.

“You told me I should hire help,” she said. “What good will that do, when she’ll interfere with them as well? I shall still be involved—and driven—”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” he said. “She’s bothering you. I’ll make her stop. You should have told me before.”

She smoothed her gloves. “Until now, I was unaware you had any inclinations to slay dragons for me.”

“I don’t,” he said. “But one must be practical. You’ll want all your strength for the wedding night.”

“I cannot think why I should need strength,” she said, ignoring a host of spine-tingling images rising in her mind’s eye. “All I have to do is lie there.”

“Naked,” he said grimly.

“Truly?” She shot him a glance from under her lashes. “Well, if I must, I must, for you have the advantage of experience in these matters. Still, I do wish you’d told me sooner. I should not have put the modiste to so much trouble about the negligee.”

“The what?”

“It was ghastly expensive,” she said, “but the silk is as fine as gossamer, and the eyelet work about the neckline is exquisite. Aunt Louisa was horrified. She said only Cyprians wear such things, and it leaves nothing to the imagination.”

Jessica heard him suck in his breath, felt the muscular thigh tense against hers.

“But if it were left to Aunt Louisa,” she went on, “I should be covered from my chin to my toes in thick cotton ruffled white monstrosities with little pink bows and rosebuds. Which is absurd, when an evening gown reveals far more, not to mention—”

“What color?” he asked. His low voice had roughened.

“Wine red,” she said. “With narrow black ribbons threaded through the neckline. Here.” She traced a plunging U over her bosom. “And there’s the loveliest openwork over my…well, here.” She drew her finger over the curve of her breast a bare inch above the nipple. “And openwork on the right side of the skirt. From here”—she pointed to her hip—“down to the hem. And I bought—”

“Jess.” Her name was a strangled whisper.

“—slippers to match,” she continued. “Black mules with—”

“Jess.” In one furious flurry of motion, he threw down the reins and hauled her into his lap.

The movement startled the horses, who tossed their heads and snorted and commenced an agitated dance. “Stop it!” Dain said sharply. They stilled.

His powerful right arm tightened round Jessica’s waist and he pulled her close.

It was like sitting in the throbbing heat of a furnace: Brick-hard and hot, his body pulsed with tension. He slid his hand down over her hip and clasped her thigh.

She looked up. He was scowling malevolently at his big, gloved hand. “You,” he growled. “Plague take you.”

She tilted her head back. “I’ll return it, if you wish. The nightgown.”

His furious black gaze moved up, to her mouth. His breathing was harsh. “No, you won’t,” he said.

Then his mouth, hard and hungry, fell upon hers, dragging over her lips as though to punish her.

But what Jes

sica tasted was victory. She felt it in the heat he couldn’t disguise, and in the pulsing tension of his frame, and she heard it clear as any declaration when his tongue pushed impatiently for entry.

He wanted her. Still.

Maybe he didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help it, any more than she could help wanting him.

And for this moment, she needn’t pretend otherwise. She squirmed up to wrap her arms round his neck, and held tightly while he ravaged her mouth. And while she ravaged his.

They might have been two furious armies, and the kiss a life-or-death battle. They both wanted the same: conquest, possession. He gave no quarter. She wanted none. She couldn’t get enough of the hot sin of his mouth, the scorching pressure of his hand, dragging over her hip, brazenly claiming her breast.