Page 10 of The Devil of Drury Lane
Damien swallowed, his lips parting to allow a whispery breath free. “When?”
“It only happened once, at his parents’ Regent Square terrace when they were in the country. He was kind, but indifferent. And I was selfish. For all of five minutes, we surrendered to curiosity.”
Damien slid the paintbrush from her fingers, then stared down at it as if he was trying to figure out what it was. “Selfish?”
She tipped his chin until his gaze met hers. He wasn’t going to hide from her like he did from everyone else. “I used him. Because, for whatever reason, childish or fantastical, impractical or reckless, I wanted you. I’ve always wanted you, even before I recognized what that meant. I obviously couldn’t have you because my father would never accept a third son of a tarnished title, not when we have Percival on the hook and—”
“I don’t want to talk about that bloody blighter you’re set to marry or some goddamned Frenchman. Not when you’re making me feel like I have ownership in a manner I can’t imagine you’d give me.”
Before she could prepare a reply, tell him she wasn’t yet set to marry anyone, Damien cursed and dove his fingers into her hair, scattering pins and reason, sending her heartbeat and her blood soaring. His other hand grazed the side of her breast on his way down, before curving around her hip, and anchoring her against his hard heat. She grasped his shoulders to keep from slithering to the floor in a pool of welcome, relieved joy.
Kneeling before her lewd painting, hip to hip, chest to chest, the most reserved man in London began to show her what she’d missed before.
Without a hint of the restraint that normally defined him, his lips opened atop hers, greedy, molding, teasing, tenderness mixed with a primal hunger she’d never imagined he possessed. Never imagined she possessed.
He didn’t indulge, he seized.
Tongues were meant to battle like this, she thought in wonder. Torment and in the next moment, soothe. Kisses were designed to steal one’s breath while committing to the promise of pleasure. Second by second by second, the stakes rising, the air thickening, need and reason waging war.
She sighed a token release, encouraging him. Please, don’t stop.
In response, his hand crept from the nape of her neck to her jaw, tilting her head to allow the contact to deepen, until they were immersed, breathless, one. A chemical magic raced between them. Her head fell back, submission from a woman who never submitted.
His hair was silky beneath her fingertips, his shoulders rounded, muscles flexing. Heat stole into places it hadn’t before. Between her thighs, weighing her breasts, peaking her nipples to hard points—raw, liquid delight. She wiggled against him in desperation, murmurs slipping from her throat into his.
He shifted and pressed his brow hers, his chest rising with his tortured breaths. “What are you doing to me, minx?”
She turned her head and nipped his cheek, his jaw. He tasted like something dazzling that was all his own. An indescribable reverie. “The same as the others have done,” she whispered, the thought giving her stomach an ugly twist. But a man didn’t kiss like this without experience—and lots of it.
The DeWitt’s were known for their conquests. Or at least, the twins were.
Gently taking a fistful of her hair, he dropped his nose into the tangled bundle, and exhaled a shaky reply that wasn’t a reply. Then they rocked together for a long, trembling second. Finally, leaving her steady but swaying, he was on his feet, prowling the space like a caged tiger from one end of her modest flat to the other.
She had enough understanding to know what he sought.
“It’s in the cabinet behind my easel. I only have brandy left from the previous tenant, so I can’t vouch for its quality. Teacups are on the shelf below.”
He ripped open the cabinet door, forgoing a cup in favor of drinking straight from the bottle. Her senses fired as she watched his sun-kissed throat pull, his hip bumping the counter in vexation.
Mercy realized as she sank into a sloppy puddle against the settee that she didn’t know Damien DeWitt at all—and neither did anyone else in England.
This tall-as-a-timber specimen, his blue-black hair disordered by her touch, his arousal creating an inspiring tent beneath his trouser close, his eyes such a startling shade of hazel when they touched upon her every third second or so, wasn’t anyone she knew.
He was merely someone she’d desperately, ravenously, wanted to know for her entire life.
Throwing her a hooded look, Damien scrubbed the hand holding the bottle across his lips. She trusted their rosy color was due to her, completely. “I can leave, and we’ll pretend we never had this conversation. As a gentleman, I’m putting this suggestion out there.”
Mercy’s eyes widened; she suppressed the jolt of fear that he was going to take his impressive erection and radiant eyes back to Mayfair without giving her another second’s notice. Think, Mercy, think. She was patient, persistent, willing to go the extra mile to attain her goals. She’d spent her life playing a role for society so she could be true to herself behind closed doors.
It wasn’t too much to ask of that woman to give the puzzle of Damien DeWitt a chance to unfold.
Not when it looked as if he’d yet to figure the puzzle out himself.
Nonchalant, she flicked her hand, and grimaced to see a charcoal smear on the inside of her wrist. “Go, if you feel you must,” she said, rubbing the stain from her skin. “I can’t stop you.”
If a kiss like that wasn’t going to hold a man for a moment or two, there was no hope on this earth of keeping one.
He laughed against the bottle’s neck and took another drink. “Not easy when you’re gazing at me like I’m your savior. When I’m coming to fear you’re mine. That urchin creeping through the hedges somehow being the thing I need more than oxygen in this life. Her damned sketch burning a hole in my pocket for years. Christ,” he whispered and tilted his head to stare at the ceiling. “I’m an academic. I don’t believe in flights of fancy. In dreams of love. Frankly, I’m not sure I believe in love. And I certainly don’t believe in kismet. Which if you don’t know, derives from the Arabic qisma, which means fate. A man’s bloody destiny.”
