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

  Her mother expected her to marry a duke and be the perfect duchess.

  Her father expected her to forgive him every time he returned home.

  Her suitors expected her to fall at their feet and hand over her dowry.

  The only person who didn’t expect anything of her was the one who wanted nothing to do with her. But when she dried her tears and lifted her head there he was, standing right in front of her, as if plucked straight from her very thoughts.

  “Kent.” Dashing the heel of her palms beneath her eyes, she blinked up at him. “What – what are you doing here?”

  The sun shone brightly behind the Irishman’s head, throwing his countenance into shadow. “I think the better question is what the hell you are doing out here all by yourself. Shouldn’t ye have a nursemaid?” he demanded. “Or a bluidy governess? Where’s that sanctimonious driver that wanted tae throw me in the damn Thames?”

  The vehemence in his tone took her by surprise. Not wanting them to be on unequal footing, she swept her skirts to the side and stood up. A small improvement, given that the top of her head barely reached his chin, but an improvement nonetheless. “I needed some time away,” she said haughtily. “Not that it’s any of your concern. And I haven’t had a nursemaid since I was a small child.”

  “Away?” he sneered. “What does a fancy nabob like you need tae get away from?”

  “You’d be surprised.” She glanced down at her hands, the fingertips of which were still damp from her tears, and Kent’s expression abruptly softened.

  “Here,” he said gruffly, dragging a handkerchief out the front pocket of his waistcoat. “At least wipe your face properly. It’s all wet.”

  Amelia accepted the handkerchief, but she didn’t use it. “What are you doing here?” she repeated instead. Then her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Are you – are you following me?”

  “No,” he said quickly.

  Too quickly.

  “You are,” she exclaimed. “You are following me. But…why?”

  “It’s nothing personal, Duchess,” he said with an indifferent shrug, effectively extinguishing the tiny flicker of hope that had flared to life within her when she’d realized his sudden appearance was no accident.

  Very well, she thought silently. We’ll do this the hard way.

  Amelia knew they hadn’t ended on the best of terms at the ball, but she wasn’t about to give up on him. More than that, she wasn’t ready to give up on them. Not yet. Not until she knew with absolutely certainty they had no chance of a future, as far-fetched as that future seemed.

  He was a Runner. She was a lady. They weren’t meant to be together, but she couldn’t deny – or ignore – the passion that existed between them. Passion she’d never felt with any other man before. Passion she didn’t want to feel with any other man. For as absurd as it seemed, Kent’s kiss had awoken something within her. A sense of defiance. A sense of knowing. The idea that this, this was what it was supposed to feel like.

  Whatever ‘this’ was.

  “I am just doing my job,” Kent continued, raking a hand through his hair. Badly in need of a trim, the dark tresses tumbled across his brow in an unruly fashion. Amelia’s fingers itched to sink into the ebony locks, so much so that she linked her hands together behind her back for fear of what they might do if left to their own devices. “Reinhold has already proven he’s a man who doesn’t like tae take no for an answer. If he decides not to heed my warning and tries to claim the kiss he wanted at the ball, you’ll need someone tae protect ye.” The corners of his mouth tightened. “Which is why you shouldn’t be out here in the middle of the damn park all by yourself. Do ye want to be robbed or yanked into a carriage and held for ransom by some blighter?”

  “I highly doubt I’m in any danger,” she said with a pointed look around at their neatly groomed surroundings. “This is Hyde Park. Not St Giles. A grove of silver birch trees is hardly the hunting ground for pickpockets and cutthroats.”

  “A murderer doesn’t care where ye are,” Kent said viciously, lifting a blonde curl off her shoulder. “He’ll carve up that pretty flesh of yours in Kensington Gardens the same as he would in Seven Dials, then leave your body to rot in the sun.”

  Amelia instantly paled and took a step back. She was accustomed to being courted with flowers and chocolates, not threats of violence. “Are you trying to frighten me on purpose?” she demanded. “Because that is a cruel thing to do, and a cruel way to go about it.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I don’t give a shite if you’re frightened, so long as ye heed what I’m telling ye. Go home, Duchess. Even the pretty bits of the city are no place for a woman alone.”

  “You say that as if there are monsters hiding around every corner,” she scoffed.

  “Because there are,” he said quietly. “And ye won’t know it until it’s already too late.”

  The pain in his eyes caught Amelia off guard. She’d seen his anger and his arrogance, but he’d yet to display any traces of vulnerability.

  Until now.

  “Kent.” She reached for his cheek, but he turned abruptly away and walked to a small wooden bridge stretching over a babbling brook. Muscles rippled and clenched in his shoulders as he gripped the railing and stared down at the clear water below.

  Amelia followed him.

  “Don’t,” he rasped when she touched the small of his back.

  Her hand lifted. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t think I’m any better than I am. Don’t think ye can fix me. Don’t even bother to try. I’m broken, Duchess. I’ve been broken for a long time.” The sheer bleakness in his expression when he turned and looked at her made her heart ache. “And ye can’t put broken pieces back together again.”

  “I can try.” Ignoring his warning glare – beasts were always gruffest right before they were gentled – she embraced the side of his face, her palm cupping the rigid line of his jaw while her thumb brushed against the edge of his chin. “Let me try,” she whispered.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said hoarsely.

  “Then teach me.” And rising up on her toes, she softly pressed her lips to his.

  Kent hadn’t tracked Amelia down with the intention of kissing her. Or being kissed by her. In fact, he’d told himself there was not going to be any kissing under any circumstances. A simple enough order to follow. Or so he’d foolishly believed. After all, he saw hundreds of women a day and didn’t want to kiss a single one of them. But they weren’t Amelia, and the moment he had seen her sitting on the bench beneath the dappled shade of a birch tree with her slender shoulders slumped in dejection, her sculpted cheekbones damp with tears, and her cornflower blue eyes awash in misery, all he’d wanted to do was kiss her sadness away.

  Of course he’d had to open his mouth and scare the wee thing half to death. A poet, Tobias was not. And it had been a long time since he’d been around a true lady. Long enough for him to forget how to be gentle. Long enough for him to forget how to be soft. But Amelia made him want to be those things again. She brought out pieces of the man he had been before his wife died. Pieces he hadn’t even known still existed.

  When he was with her, the demons didn’t scream so loudly.

  When he was holding her, the darkness didn’t seem so bleak.

  When she was kissing her, the sun didn’t feel so far away.

  Sliding his fingers into her hair he deepened the kiss, eyes pinched tightly shut as he closed out his self-doubts, ignored his demons, and embraced the light.

  What had started off warm and giving quickly turned hot and demanding. Lust poured through him as he traced her bottom lip with his tongue before pulling it between his teeth. She reacted in kind by nipping the corner of his mouth, her fire rising up to meet his until they were both burning with desire.

  The flames from their kiss threatened to engulf the entire park as their passion grew unchecked. Tobias had never felt the like of it before, not even with Hannah. And he feared what it
meant even as he took what he wanted.

  He pressed her back against the bridge, one hand holding onto the wood for support while the other cupped her breasts. Flush with arousal her nipples strained against her bodice, attracting the attention of his fingers which petted and pinched and teased the sensitive nubs while his tongue continued to torment and tantalize.

  Everything else faded away as they continued to lose themselves in each other. The clear blue sky and green grass and birds twittering in the trees. The doubts and demons and denials. All gone until there was only Amelia.

  Beautiful, sharp, bewitching Amelia.

  His most dangerous temptation.

  And his greatest sin.

  Tobias knew he had no business kissing her. No right to even touch her. But that didn’t stop his mouth from skimming down her lavender scented skin until he found a tiny spot between her neck and shoulder that made her moan with pleasure. Nor did it stop his hands from slipping beneath her plump bottom and lifting her onto the railing so her thighs splayed open beneath the heavy folds of her skirt.

  “Oh.” Her eyes went wide when he skimmed a finger along the inside of her leg. But before he could go past her knees she pinched them together. “We can’t do that here,” she hissed. “We’re in the middle of a bridge!”

  His hands encircled her tiny waist as he took a cursory glance around. “There’s no one around but the two of us, Duchess.”

  “Oh,” she repeated. “Well, in that case…carry on.”

  The hint of a roguish grin teased his mouth. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. Keep doing whatever it was you were…er…” Her cheeks bloomed with color as her gaze fell to his chest before darting back up to his face. “Doing,” she finished vaguely. “Just keep doing whatever it was you were doing.”

  “Ravishing ye?” he suggested.

  Her blush deepened. “Indeed. Keep doing that.”

  Tobias didn’t need to be asked twice. Sliding his hands behind her skull he captured her mouth in another bruising kiss, tongue sweeping between her lips to taste her sweet nectar. They pressed against each other, legs entwining, and were they not on a bridge in the middle of a park he would have already had her gown off and her drawers at her ankles.

  He angled his head, deepening the kiss as desire, need, and arousal combined to create a cataclysmic explosion of lust. Tobias’ entire body pulsed in a sensual rhythm, his hard cock straining against his trousers. He wanted to be inside her more than he wanted to breathe. More than he wanted to fecking live.

  She yanked at the lapels of his jacket.

  He sent her hairpins tumbling into the stream.

  She nipped his ear.

  He licked her neck.

  She whimpered.

  He growled.

  They would have done more if they hadn’t heard the jingling harness of an approaching carriage. With a startled gasp Amelia wrenched herself free and ducked underneath his arm, her hands reaching frantically for her hair. It tumbled down her back in loose waves, her coiffure having been torn asunder by his pillaging fingers as they’d swept greedily through the silken locks.

  “My pins,” she cried, whirling in a circle. “Where are my pins?”

  “Gone.” Tobias drew a ragged breath, then leaned back against the railing, a rare smile lifting one side of his mouth as he watched her spin this way and that like an agitated sparrow hopping from one branch to another.

  “Gone? What do you mean, they’re gone? Those belonged to my mother!”

  “Casualties of war, Duchess.”

  She followed his gaze to the water and her jaw dropped. “Do you mean…that they’re…”

  “Drowning a watery death? Aye.” His smile widened into a grin. He shouldn’t have found pleasure in her misfortune, but seeing her like this – flustered, imperfect, her hair a riotous mane of golden curls around a face flushed pink from his kisses – almost made her seem attainable for a wretch like him.

  Almost.

  Tobias’ grin slowly faded as reality settled in his stomach like a lump of coal. Now that the cloudy haze of their desire had started to fade, he was faced with the cold hard truth. And the truth was that Amelia would never be attainable. The truth was that this was as close as he’d ever get to her. The truth was that she was destined for a future he couldn’t even imagine. One with dukes and balls and mansions so large a person could get lost for hours if they weren’t careful.

  He couldn’t provide her with that sort of life on his pittance of a salary as a Runner. He couldn’t even provide her a quarter of the wealth she was accustomed to. Her footmen lived better than he did, and he was bluidy well dreaming if he ever dared to think otherwise.

  “I cannot return home without those pins. My mother would disown me.” Amelia cast a furtive glance over her shoulder as the carriage that had interrupted their kiss trotted towards them…and at the last moment veered left onto another trail and disappeared from view behind a long line of forsythia. Amelia squared her shoulders.

  “You need to go get them,” she ordered imperiously, jabbing her finger at the stream.

  Tobias started to chuckle. Then he realized she was serious.

  “The devil I will,” he scoffed. “You go get them, if they’re that precious to you.”

  “I’m not the one who dropped them.”

  “Ye weren’t this concerned about your bloody hair pins when my tongue was–”

  “Be quiet,” she hissed, her gaze darting left and right.

  Tobias lifted a brow. “Embarrassed to be seen with me, Duchess?”

  “No, nothing of the sort. It’s just that–”

  “Ye like me well enough when there’s no one around tae see,” he said evenly as something unpleasant twisted within him. “But you don’t want your fancy friends to know ye want a commoner in your bed, do you?”

  “No, that’s not it at–”

  “Maybe I don’t want tae be seen with you. Did ye ever think of that? Me mates would have a royal go at me if they knew I was knocking boots with an uptight, spoiled little duchess who doesn’t have enough sense in her head not to go wandering around an open park by herself!”

  Tobias didn’t know why he was picking a fight. There was no reason for it. Nothing she’d said he had found genuinely upsetting. Or even surprising. Of course she didn’t want to be seen with him, and he didn’t blame her for it. After all, there were times he didn’t even want to be seen with himself. But when he was angry with her he wasn’t kissing her, and when he wasn’t kissing her he didn’t feel vulnerable. But he did feel the reverberation all the way across the bridge when she stomped her foot into one of the wooden planks.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I should have left you laying in the street!”

  “Why didn’t ye?” he taunted.

  “Because I’m not a beast like you!”

  “Aye.” As he felt the familiar ugliness creeping back into his soul, Tobias closed the distance between them with long, predatory steps until he could see the flecks of sapphire glittering in her irises. “I am a beast,” he said with deadly calm. “And ye would do well tae remember it. Get your own damn pins, Duchess. I’m not your servant.”

  She glowered at him.

  He glared at her.

  Unwilling to back down, neither one of them moved and could have very well stood on the bridge for the rest of the day if a gaggle of young debutantes being led by a goose-faced governess hadn’t come around the bend and stopped short.

  “My dear,” the governess said, looking at Amelia with beady-eyed concern. “Is this young man bothering you?”

  “More like she’s bothering me,” Tobias muttered under his breath. He grunted when Amelia placed a well-aimed elbow into the middle of his gut before she strode out to meet the governess and her flock of young ladies; sisters by the look of their matching red hair and thin faces twisted into matching expressions of boredom.

  “Not at all,” Amelia said brightly. “Truth be told, I’ve gotten a tad bit tu
rned around and he was kind enough to stop and give me directions. Isn’t that right, Mr. Kent?”

  “Aye,” he said sourly, crossing his arms. “Something like that.”

  “I see.” Still the governess hesitated. “If you would like us to accompany you home, my dear, it wouldn’t be any trouble. A lady such as yourself should not be in a public place without a proper chaperone. Or a bonnet or gloves, for that matter,” she chided gently when her gaze fell to Amelia’s bare hands.

  Tobias gave Amelia an I-told-you-so look which she completely ignored.

  “How very thoughtful, but I know my way now,” she told the governess.

  “Still…” The governess glanced dubiously at Tobias. He returned her stare without blinking and, just for a little fun, bared his teeth. The debutantes gasped and clustered together like frightened sheep.

  “Oh don’t mind him,” Amelia said cheerfully as she brought back her elbow and delivered another discreet blow to Tobias’ midsection. “I admit he appears surly on the surface, but beneath all that gruff and bluster he’s harmless as an old toothless dog.”

  Tobias’ brows snapped together.

  An old toothless dog?

  A growl rumbled in his throat. If she jabbed that pointy little elbow at him again he’d show her precisely how many teeth he had. Maybe if he were nibbling his way down her neck she wouldn’t find him so harmless then.

  “Mr. Kent is a Bow Street Runner,” Amelia continued, “and I couldn’t be in safer hands. Isn’t that right, Mr. Kent?”

  She could not have been more wrong. Still, he nodded, and – even though it took a great degree of concentration – managed something that vaguely resembled a smile. “Aye,” he agreed. “She won’t find better hands in all of London than these.”

  Amelia’s quick glare over her shoulder revealed the innuendo had not gone by unnoticed, but if the governess found it inappropriate she made no mention.