Page 29 of Duke of Wickedness (Regency Gods #4)

D avid was, in many ways, obviously an idiot, but that didn’t mean he was a fool.

He knew an invitation when he saw one.

The idiocy part came in when it only took him about two seconds to decide that he was going to follow her.

He felt that he had done an admirable job of keeping away from her.

He’d gone nearly a week, after all, and not once had he sent her a note asking her to meet him.

He had drafted a few of them, certainly, but he’d always come to his senses before he sent them.

And if he threw them in the fire as a precaution against his wavering conviction? That was just pragmatic.

He was getting rather good at self-denial. And self-delusion, perhaps, because he refused to admit that he had come here tonight because he wanted to see her.

He had tried to stay away. He really, really had.

Even when she’d looked at him, even when he’d seen how bloody beautiful she looked in that vibrant color.

He was proud of her for that choice, proud that she refused to fade into the background just because it was what Society demanded of its young women.

He wanted to tell her, desperately. He wanted to show her.

He hadn’t. He’d been good. He’d been so good—and he was not a man naturally inclined to goodness.

He’d been resolute as she’d laughed with her friend, looking so goddamn pretty in her joy.

He’d stayed strong as she’d danced with other men, even when he felt himself nearly overwhelmed with the urge to steal her away for himself.

The moment she tried to tempt him, the moment she very intentionally taunted him with the possibility…

That was when he broke.

“Hello, little bird,” he said quietly as he came up behind her.

She was pretending to smell a flower, but even in the dim light cast by the moon, David could see that it was just a common poppy, which didn’t smell of anything at all.

He could only conclude, therefore, that she was doing this because it pushed her arse in his direction at an extremely flattering angle.

This was what he got for teaching her about seduction, apparently. She learned how to bloody seduce him.

She shot him a coy look over her shoulder. The little smirk was pure mischief.

She was truly going to be the end of him.

“Good evening,” she said. “Fine night for a walk, don’t you think?”

It was a spectacularly fine night for a walk, actually, one of those beautiful, perfect spring nights where the air was balmy and the gentle, droning hum of insects blended into the chatter of voices as they moved away from the party and closer to the manicured thickets of trees.

He followed her like this was Hamelin and she the Pied Piper. She touched flowers as she passed with featherlight grazes, and he wondered if he would be able to smell their fragrance on her skin when he reached her. Lavender. Honeysuckle. Peony.

“Ariadne,” he said when he knew they were far enough from the crowd that nobody would hear him using her given name. God, it felt good to say. He hadn’t uttered it all week.

He hadn’t been allowed to say it, because nobody knew about the two of them, and nobody could, not ever. The idea stung all the more every time he considered it.

“Hm?” she asked absently, not stopping in her idle perusal of the garden’s splendor.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

What are you doing to me? he thought.

She turned to face him, then. She bit her lip teasingly as she kept moving, this time backward, and it was charming and tempting and precious, yes, but David was also full of the stupid, consuming worry that she would trip and fall and hurt herself.

He should turn back. He should return to the ball.

He knew he wouldn’t, though.

“I’m taking a walk,” she said sweetly, smile bright. “What are you doing?”

He reached out and grabbed her, first by the wrist, then around the waist, stopping her from retreating further. He took the hand that had touched the flowers and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss in the center of her palm. Lavender. Just like he had thought.

“David,” she murmured. Her voice was no longer as unaffected as it had been a moment ago.

It was absurd, really, how easily this woman got under his skin. At least he seemed to have a similar effect on her. It was scant balm on his pride, which had taken a beating every day since he’d first started spending time with Ariadne Lightholder.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said, though nothing about the way her palm was pressed to his chest suggested that she actually wished for him to release her.

“No,” he agreed, letting his arm tighten slightly around her waist. She fit against him perfectly. He wanted to tuck her head under his shoulder, wanted to stroke her soft, golden hair. “We shouldn’t.”

“We should go back inside,” she said. She leaned her head against him, as if she had read his mind. Honestly, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she could peer directly into his thoughts. How else did she always manage to be so perfect ?

“We should.” He let his cheek rest atop her head.

“But…”

He smiled.

“But it is a very nice night,” he said mildly.

“And we get so few of them each year,” she added approvingly.

“It’s practically our duty to enjoy them.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist, then tilted her head back up to look at him.

“You’re very agreeable this evening,” she observed, an approving look mixed in there with her teasing smile. He found that he liked that approval more than he ought.

But some things were best kept hidden inside the deep, dark recesses of his mind, so he matched her tone for lightness as he retorted.

“I’m always agreeable.”

She laughed at that, laughed outright—directly into his face. It was brazen and rude, and he was sick with happiness at seeing her joy.

He kissed the laugh right off her face.

He hadn’t realized how much of his effort had gone into holding back from her. Not just tonight, though that, too. But the whole week. The whole week, he’d wanted this.

He’d wanted her .

The idea should have frightened him, and likely it would later, but now, there was only Ariadne—the taste of her, the way she pressed up on her toes to meet his mouth more firmly, the way he could feel the curve of her smile at the same time as the probing curiosity of her tongue.

“You know,” she said, the comment unfolding between kisses—when had she learned that particular trick? It made David feel desperate to pull her tighter against him. “It’s high time that you took proper responsibility.”

“I—what?” he asked. The words themselves should perhaps have been alarming, but the lazy, happy expression on her face curtailed any worry he might have felt.

“You,” she said, then kissed him again, and again. “You make me feel as though I am aflame .”

David felt the way she breathed the word down to his bones, felt it in the echoing chambers of his heart.

“Yes,” he said. “God. Ariadne. You make me burn .”

She looked at him as though she wanted to consume him, and goddamn it all, he had taught her too well, because he felt seduced , felt himself losing his head more and more with every gasping breath.

David was a pleasure-seeker; he’d been so for nigh on a decade now. But he’d always considered himself to be in control of that pleasure. Now, though, the cool head he’d always been so proud of was gone. Ariadne held him perfectly in the palm of her hand.

Damn him if he didn’t like being there.

They were just kissing. Their hands didn’t wander, or at least not very much, and goodness knew there was no chance of things going much further. There wasn’t even a suitable bench in this garden. David had some standards, and laying a woman directly down in the dirt did not meet them.

But even with all that…

Kissing her was just so nice . Because yes, yes, he burned—he always burned when he was with her—but it was a kind of smoldering burn, the kind that burned on and on and on. The kind you could sustain, could bank and then reignite. The kind that endured—that never went out.

The kind, David reminded himself, that led to houses burning down, because nobody ever took the danger seriously.

He tried to hold on to that thought, even when it felt foolish and fleeting.

He should pull away. He should pull away. He should?—

“I want you to make love to me.”

David jerked away, surprised beyond words.

Ariadne blinked up at him, clearly a little nervous, but determined.

Her head was held high, her shoulders squared.

She was excited— excited , when young ladies were taught to treat lovemaking as one of life’s greatest terrors, shrouded in mystery until marriage, with the only hints they ever received being about how much it would hurt, how it was something they had to endure.

But she trusted him. It was clear that she wasn’t afraid, because she trusted him .

He felt that urge to rub at his chest again. Maybe he was suffering from an angina attack.

“You do know that this will be something that might affect your matrimonial prospects,” he said.

It would be unjust of him not to. “You know I don’t hold with all that ‘purity’ nonsense, and of course I’d never tell anyone, but, sweetheart, you aren’t exactly the smoothest liar.

Is this the kind of secret you’re prepared to keep? Perhaps for the whole of your life?”

She gave him a reassuring smile, but it wasn’t a dismissal.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know who I will end up marrying.

I don’t know anything about what the future will hold.

But,” she went on, holding his gaze, “I do know that I don’t want to marry a man who will hold a past against me.

And I do know that I want this. I want to experience this with you . ”

David closed his eyes. He didn’t know why. He just—he needed to close his eyes.

“Of course, little bird,” he said, even as he knew it was a very, very, very bad idea. A catastrophically bad idea, really. “Anything you desire. That was what I promised you.”

He would keep his word. A man who didn’t keep his word was nothing. David paid his debts, and he upheld his vows. He would not go back on that, not ever, and especially not with her.

He opened his eyes to see her happy smile.

And maybe this was a catastrophically bad idea in the making—well, there was no maybe about it—but that happiness made it worth it. Forget the deals. Forget the debts.

“Well, good,” she said brightly. She looked around the dark garden, her mouth twisted up to the side. “Right. Well. This isn’t the ideal location, I’ll grant you?—”

He started to laugh. Really, she was magical. It was extraordinary, this ability of hers to shake him out of dark moods without even trying.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said, shoving at his shoulder.

He, of course, laughed harder.

“You are a gift, little bird,” he told her.

“But you are also out of your bloody mind if you think we are going to do this here . Or if you think we’re going to do it tonight,” he added when she opened her mouth to respond, the gleam in her eye a little too mischievous to mistake.

“You have asked for something, and I intend to see it done right.”

She pouted.

“Oh, very well,” she said, sounding enormously put out about it.

He kissed the pout off her mouth. It was too tempting not to.

And it was all too easy to get lost in the feel of her touch, the taste of her, the sheer heady pleasure of being in her presence.

He got so caught up, in fact, that he almost didn’t hear the footsteps coming up the path until it was too late. He was so enchanted by her that when they had to bolt away from one another, he didn’t feel nearly as horrified as he ought to have done at the near miss.

Instead, he smiled and stuck his hands in his waistcoat pocket. As he walked back to the ball, he had to keep himself from wearing a too-foolish smile on his face.