A Dangerous Temptation (Bow Street Brides Book 5) Read online

  “Where the hell am I?” he snarled, bolting upright with the speed of a cat. His eyes, so black it was all but impossible to distinguish the pupils from the irises, focused on Amelia with an intensity that seared. “And who the hell are you?”

  Oh dear.

  If she’d thought him dangerous when he was unconscious, it was nothing compared to now. The man was positively terrifying and even Amelia, who did not frighten easily, discovered her throat had gone dry as dust when she tried to speak.

  “I…” Wetting her lips, she swallowed and tried again. “I am Lady Amelia Tattershall and you – you are in my carriage. Do you recall what happened?”

  She could all but see him searching his memory and knew the exact instant he remembered when his eyes narrowed and his hold on her wrist tightened even further, causing her to wince.

  “Ye struck me,” he growled.

  “Technically speaking you struck me. Well, that is to say my carriage. But,” she said, smiling weakly when his eyes flashed, “there was no damage done. Except for the damage done to you, of course. How are you feeling, by the by? You took quite a serious blow to the head when you fell.”

  “You mean when ye bluidy well ran me over!”

  Was that a bit of brogue she detected?

  Amelia had always had a soft spot for a bit of brogue.

  “Do you mind releasing my wrist?” she inquired politely. “I am having difficulty feeling my fingers. Then I am sure we can discuss the matter in a civilized manner. I assure you, I mean no harm or ill-will.”

  It was irony in its best form that she was reassuring him.

  Like a lamb telling the lion everything is going to be fine, she thought. Right before the lion pounces.

  Except her stranger was no lion.

  Lions were golden, brawny, regal creatures. They enjoyed dozing in the sun and having their lionesses bring them meals. The man sitting across from her was a wolf, lean and savage and more wild than tame.

  “My wrist, if you would,” she said softly, glancing up at him from beneath her lashes.

  He met her gaze and the sudden flare of heat in the depths of those obsidian eyes made her tremble. A strange warmth pooled in her belly and trickled down between her thighs. The feeling was foreign, and it wasn’t until he’d slowly lifted his hand away and sat upright that she realized what it was.

  Desire.

  For the first time in her life, she felt desire.

  “Where are you taking me, Lady Amelia Tattershall?” He reclined back, thighs spread and head tilted ever-so-slightly to the side. By all outward appearances he was calm and relaxed, but she saw the tension in his hands as they rested, fingers braced, on his knees.

  “Lady Amelia will suit perfectly.” Sitting up straight – her mother abhorred slouching – Amelia fixed her wary guest with a coy, lash fluttering smile that was just deep enough to reveal the dimple in her right cheek.

  It was a smile that had served her well over the years. No one was immune to its power. Not her parents. Not her governess. Not the lords she picked up and discarded with an icy flick of her gaze. When her long line of suitors saw that particular smile emerge they stumbled over themselves to approach her, for it meant there was a chance (however slight) she might not give them the cut direct. In short, it was a smile Amelia used when she wanted something. And what she wanted in this case was for her handsome stranger to smile back.

  Instead he stared at her with all the expression of a blank stone wall, his mouth a flat line completely devoid of emotion. If she didn’t know any better, she’d almost be led to believe he was bored. Which was impossible, of course.

  Spinsters were boring. Wallflowers were boring. Bluestockings were so academically inclined that men thought they were boring. The only daughter of a duke with an enormous dowry at her disposal and enough awareness to know how to use her considerable physical assets to her best advantage?

  Decidedly not boring.

  Perhaps, given the dim interior of the carriage, her smile wasn’t having its full effect.

  Yes, she decided. That was almost certainly the case.

  Determined to get a reaction, she fluttered her lashes again.

  Nothing.

  She widened her smile to show off the dimple in her left cheek.

  Nothing.

  She bit her bottom lip. The last time she’d done that the Count of Northumberland had all but swallowed his tongue.

  The stranger yawned.

  “If you’ve finished with all your eye blinking,” he said, lifting a brow, “you can tell your driver tae pull over and let me out.”

  Eye blinking?

  He’d reduced her very best attempts at flirtation to eye blinking?

  The nerve!

  “I’m taking you to my home where you can be evaluated by our family doctor. You’ve clearly sustained a serious brain injury,” she sniffed.

  “Because I haven’t fallen tae me knees mad with love for ye? Aye,” he said, a flicker of amusement gleaming in his eyes when a tiny muscle ticked in her jaw. “I know your type well enough. Fancy, highborn ladies so sick of their bland, boring lives they seek entertainment wherever they can find it. A piece of advice, Duchess. Keep to your purebreds. This mongrel has sharp teeth.” The stranger leaned towards her, his husky voice sending a ripple of awareness down her spine. “And he’s not afraid to bite.”

  Amelia’s lips parted on an angry huff of breath. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

  “Does it?” he murmured, his gaze holding her captive.

  Yes, it did.

  But it also excited her.

  “What’s your name?” Their heads were bent so close together she could smell the coffee on his breath. For the first time she realized his eyes weren’t black, as she’d originally thought, but rather a deep, dark amber. She had never seen eyes that color before and the flecks of gold in his irises made her think of the well she’d tossed coins into as a child. It, too, had been deep and dark but when the sunlight hit it just right the stones, woven through with mica, glinted and gleamed like the most precious of jewels.

  “Kent.” He sat back. Cocked a brow. “Me name is Kent.”

  Amelia suppressed a sigh. The man wasn’t going to make anything easy, was he?

  “Is that a first name or a surname?” she asked.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Because…”

  Because you’re the first man to make me feel…anything.

  Ever since she was a young girl Amelia had been raised with the expectation that she would attend a ball, lock eyes with a handsome man across the room (a handsome, titled, wealthy man, of course), and be instantly overcome with all the soft, dewy, swoon-inducing feelings one felt when they met their future husband.

  Instead, ball after ball, season after season (much to her mother’s embarrassment, she had almost completed her fourth), she’d locked eyes with one dashing nobleman after another (some of them considerably less dashing than others and all of them less dashing than the man who sat across from her now) and felt…nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Well, that wasn’t one hundred percent true.

  She often felt something.

  Unfortunately, that something was usually annoyance.

  “Because I should like to know how to properly address you,” she said in a clipped tone. Amelia was not accustomed to being defied or questioned, and she found it quite irksome. “I introduced myself. It is only polite you do the same.”

  The hint of a smirk toyed with one corner of his mouth. “What gave ye the impression I was polite?”

  “Fine. Have it your way, then.” Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, she looked out the window instead. The carriage had slowed in preparation to turn down a narrow, tree-lined street laid with fresh stone. Here the houses were large and stately with gabled roofs and impeccably groomed courtyards tucked behind wrought iron gates. Her family’s residence was at the end, a three-story mansion overlaid with white stucco and
trimmed in marble. As they approached it Kent gave a long, low whistle.

  “Is this where ye live, Duchess?”

  “Yes, while we’re in town. We’ll be leaving for Bath at the end of the week.” Her brow furrowed. “And my mother is the duchess, not I.”

  “Not tae worry,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be one soon enough.”

  He spoke with such confidence Amelia was left to wonder if he knew something she didn’t.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I’m looking at ye, aren’t I?” His gaze was faintly mocking as it traveled from the top of her bonnet to the tips of her satin walking shoes before returning to her face. His top lip curled. “That dress you’re wearing is worth a bluidy king’s ransom and I’d be willing tae bet my favorite bottle of whiskey that if ye pricked your finger it would run blue as the sky on a sweet summer day. You’re royalty, Duchess. A blind man could see it. You were born, bred, and raised tae marry a duke.”

  He’d touched enough of the truth to sting, and there was a sharp edge in Amelia’s voice when she snapped, “You have no idea what you’re talking about. And stop calling me Duchess!”

  “Why? It has a good ring to it...Duchess.”

  “Are you always this nettlesome?” she demanded. “Or did the carriage accident addle your brain?”

  “No.” The ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “Usually I’m far, far worse. Well Duchess, this has been lovely, but I’d best be on my way.”

  “Wait!” Alarmed when he suddenly stood up and opened the door, Amelia lunged forward and grabbed onto the back of his coat. “You’ll kill yourself!”

  At that exact moment one of the wheels struck a rut and she was tossed like a ragdoll into the open doorway. A muffled shriek burst past her lips when she saw the ground come rushing up. With a loud curse Kent wrapped his arm around her waist and yanked her back into the carriage. The momentum sent them both reeling and she fell onto his lap, her bonnet knocked askew and her skirts tangling around her knees.

  Gasping, Amelia tried to sit up, only to discover Kent’s arm was still wrapped around her ribcage, his breath echoing harshly in her ear. She could feel the throb of his heartbeat against her back, and another sort of throb all together where her bottom was pressed snugly against his groin.

  “That was bluidy stupid,” he growled.

  “Are you referring to your actions or my own?” Twisting in his arms, she glared at him over her shoulder. “Because you’re the one who opened the door of a moving vehicle!”

  “Aye, but I wasn’t about tae fall out of it face first!”

  “I wouldn’t have almost fallen if you hadn’t opened the door!” she shot back.

  His eyes darkened. “If ye had stayed in your seat where you belong–”

  “Where I belong?” she interrupted, outraged. “You have no right to tell me where I do and do not belong! This is my carriage!”

  “Then I suppose I should have just let ye fall?”

  She lifted her chin a notch. “Maybe you should have!”

  “I don’t think so, Duchess.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because then I wouldn’t have been able tae do this.” And sinking his fingers into her hair, he claimed her mouth in a searing kiss.

  Chapter Two

  Amelia had been kissed three times in her life.

  Once by Lord Ascot and twice by the Earl of Reinhold. The earl had tried for a third, but had become quickly dissuaded when her heel accidentally on purpose slammed down on his instep.

  Kent was her fourth kiss. But he might as well have been her first, because she had never been kissed like this before.

  Turning her roughly in his lap until she sat astride one of his powerful thighs, Kent gathered her against his chest and kissed her as if she was the sun and he was trapped in the shadows, desperate to feel the light upon his face.

  He bit her bottom lip then slid his tongue into her mouth when she whimpered, the tiny mewling sound carrying as much pleasure as it did pain. The arm around her waist tightened as he angled his head and deepened the kiss. Sparks flew behind Amelia’s closed eyelids and the tiny flickers of heat that had been smoldering in her belly erupted into flame as Kent took what he wanted without apology.

  He tasted of passion and desperation.

  Of wickedness and sin.

  Of lust and need.

  She pressed herself shamelessly against him, her fingers latching into the thick curls at the nape of his neck. She wasn’t nearly as experienced in the art of kissing as her handsome stranger obviously was, but what she lacked in experience she more than made up for in boldness. Amelia may have looked like a prim and proper duchess, but her carnal desires were as far from prim as the earth was from the stars. Her previous kisses had always left her filled with a sense of vague disappointment. But this one…this one filled her with purpose.

  The surly Irishman growled when she pulled his hair before using his large hands to place her directly over his arousal. She could feel the bulge of his cock through the thin fabric of her knitted silk drawers. It was hard and hot and she couldn’t help but marvel at its size. That was supposed to go inside of a woman?

  She didn’t know whether to be impressed or concerned.

  After her mother refused to divulge any information about matters of the bedroom (‘Ladies do not discuss such things’ she’d hissed before hurriedly changing the subject) Amelia had been left to do her own research. Discovering an old medical journal amidst her father’s vast collection of books, she’d learned – complete with pictures and labeled diagrams – how intercourse worked. In the most technical of terms, she knew what everything did and where everything went.

  But no amount of reading could have prepared her for this.

  Kent cupped her breasts through her gown, the rough pads of his thumbs sliding across her nipples. Wrenching himself free of her mouth he murmured something in a language she didn’t understand – Gaelic, perhaps? – and then started to kiss a burning path down the slender curve of her neck while she squirmed restlessly on top of his thighs.

  The soft curls between her legs were damp, and a dull flush spread up her chest as she wondered if he could feel her wetness. Then he lifted his head to trace the shell of her ear with his tongue and any embarrassment vanished along with whatever slender string of personal restraint she had left as her head fell back, exposing herself to whatever wicked pleasures Kent wanted to inflict.

  The vehicle filled with the sounds of whimpers and moans, the latter of which steadily increased in volume when Amelia discovered the shocking wave of heat that swept through her whenever she rocked herself upon Kent’s lap. With a low, savage snarl he slipped beneath her skirts and grasped her plump thighs, holding her locked against him until the only barrier between their aching sexes were his trousers and her drawers.

  He kissed her again, his tongue plunging between her lips in rhythm with the frantic undulation of her hips as the fire inside of her grew to a raging inferno. The carriage started to rock back and forth but she didn’t notice, and when she did she didn’t care.

  Her entire being was consumed with desire. She felt as if she were climbing up a nameless peak. One so tall it towered above the clouds. She didn’t know what would happen when she reached the top. The medical journal she’d read had said nothing about mountains. Or ear licking, for that matter. The only thing she knew was that she had to get there and once she did everything else would cease to exist.

  Then, without warning or even the courtesy of a by your leave, Tobias picked her up by the waist and sat her down on the opposite seat. Her lips parting in dismay she started to reach for him, but with a curt shake of his head he jerked his thumb towards the window.

  “We’re nearly there,” he said, his gruff voice indicating she wasn’t the only one who felt as if something had been stolen from her. “And unless ye want to put on a show your driver won’t soon forget, I suggest ye tidy y
ourself up.”

  Amelia’s mouth snapped closed.

  Good heavens, she thought, her eyes widening as she looked down at her gaping bodice and the full impact of what she’d just done – of what she’d been about to do – settled on her shoulders like a cartful of bricks.

  She had allowed herself to be ravished by a complete stranger!

  More than that, she had partaken in the ravishing.

  And quite liberally, at that.

  If anyone were to discover what she’d done…

  You’d be ruined, she told herself. And not oh-you-really-ought-not-to-do-that-Lady-Amelia-it-may-cause-a-stir ruined. You’ll be actually, irrevocably, completely ruined.

  “I…” What did one say to a man whose tongue had just been down one’s throat? “I don’t suppose we could pretend that never happened? That’s not to say I did not enjoy myself,” she added when he remained silent. “I did. Immensely.”

  Truth be told it was the most enjoyment she’d ever experienced in a carriage. And that included all of the chaperoned rides through the park in the company of some of the ton’s most eligible bachelors, any one of whom a lady in her position would have gladly cut off their right pinky finger to be granted an audience with. But what was a bit of idle chat about the weather compared to a kiss so potent her body was still trembling?

  Pressing her thighs together in an attempt to quell the tiny flickers of need that were still pulsing through her core, she bit her lip and forced herself to focus on the practical. A passionate embrace was all well and good, but not when it was practically performed on one’s doorstep.

  Thank goodness Kent had possessed the wherewithal to stop when he did, for heavens knew she hadn’t been about to put an end to their kiss. A pretty blush filled her cheeks when she imagined her mother’s expression upon peering out the window and seeing her only daughter splayed across the lap of a common stranger.

  “As I said, it was very enjoyable,” she began, trying in vain to collect her scattered thoughts. “It’s just that…well, you see…”

  “You’re a duchess,” he drawled when she trailed off. “And I’m no duke.”