Page 28 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Twelve

Moonlight streamed through the casement behind him, which Thorne knew cast his face into the deepest of shadows while illuminating every line of Lucy’s tall, slim form.

He hovered with a hand still on the window frame, full of unaccustomed hesitation.

The sight of her struck the sense from his head. All he could do was stare.

Lucy stared back at him, eyes wide and lit from within by whatever life force it was that made her seem to crackle with energy, even when standing still. Swathed in a saffron velvet brocade dressing gown, she glowed in the dim bedchamber.

Her lustrous dark hair flowed loose over her shoulders and her bare toes were pink and perfect beneath the hem of the robe. The intimacy of the sight stunned Thorne momentarily.

He marshaled his wits when she whisper-shouted, “Did anyone see you?”

“No,” Thorne said, pitching his voice low and rough, though he couldn’t resist sketching an elegant bow. The Gentle Rogue had a reputation for panache, after all.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said urgently. “There is a man looking for you, to arrest you?—”

Thorne shrugged. “I already know about him. There’s always someone looking. Don’t worry, he’ll never even get close.”

“You don’t understand. This man, Sir Colin Semple, is an agent of the Crown. He knows about us. That we’ve been in contact.”

“In contact,” Thorne repeated, amused. “Is that what we are?”

“You’re not taking this seriously. This man could be a threat to you?—”

“You’re sweet to be concerned.” Thorne drank in the sight of Lucy in the moonlight, near to wringing her hands because she cared what happened to him. His chest warmed.

“I can’t tell if it’s arrogance or…” Lucy gave an exasperated huff. “No, I take it back. It’s definitely arrogance.”

He took a step closer and watched the quick hitch in her breath. “Do you want me to go?”

She struggled for a moment, then burst out, “No. But I didn’t think you would come. I mean, I suppose I’m not used to men who do what they say they will.”

The downward turn of her lips stabbed at Thorne’s undefended guts. She was talking about him. Thornecliff.

Well, that’s what he was here for. To right (some of) his wrongs by giving her what she wanted: a fantasy come to life.

And when it was done, he would walk away. And so would she—because The Gentle Rogue would hang up his mask for good and disappear.

This Sir Colin from the Home Office sniffing around was the final straw.

The reasons Thorne had started this highwayman lark so many years ago hadn’t changed, but they had evolved.

He no longer needed the income from the purses he took, now that his investments had begun to pay off.

All his little projects were proceeding smoothly these days. Almost boringly so.

He would need another outlet soon, he supposed. Something dangerous, forbidden or exciting enough to see him through the long nights.

Standing here, watching Lucy as she watched him in return, it was hard to imagine a moment when he might need help staving off sleep. He’d never felt so awake, so aware, so electrified by life’s possibilities.

“You held up your end of our deal,” he rasped. “I read the papers. ‘Lady L--- L--- seen on the arm of the Duke of T---, all over Town.’”

“That’s right.” Her small, pointed chin lifted. “As you specified.”

“And did you learn anything from the experience?” he couldn’t help but ask, already knowing he would hate the answer. “Still think you’d rather throw yourself away on a masked highwayman than hobnob with a duke?”

Something flickered across her face, too fast for him to read, or maybe it was only a trick of the moonlight because her voice was steady when she replied, “I didn’t need two weeks to know that particular duke’s company was enough to put me off dukes forever. All I want is you.”

That’s not what you said earlier , a voice snarled in his head, but Thorne bit it back. That was what he got for torturing himself with the question in the first place.

Telling himself it didn’t matter that she wanted The Gentle Rogue, who was also him, wasn’t as helpful as he would have wished.

Are you going to cry about it? The cool, dispassionate voice in his head was his uncle’s. Pull yourself together. She wants the man standing before her, and you are here to give her what she wants.

Your pathetic desires need not enter into it.

Thorne had heard a variation on that so often while growing up that he had made something of a career out of indulging his own desires as an adult. But he found he had just enough of that scrawny, determined, desperate-to-please boy left inside to be able to reject the habits of a decade…for her.

He prowled closer, darkly amused by the way she wobbled, as though her instincts told her to back away before her chin went up again and she held her ground. Beneath her wrapper, those delectable little breasts were rising and falling rapidly with the swift intake of her breaths.

“One night,” he whispered when he was close enough to touch her. A lock of hair fell across her forehead. There was no power on earth that could have stopped him from reaching up to smooth it back. She was everything soft and silky under his rough fingertips. “One night is all I can promise you.”

He expected an argument—when did Lucy not fight for what she wanted?—but after a brief moment, she gave a small smile and said, “If that’s what you’re offering, I suppose I must be content with that. After all…”

Her hands went to the tightly tied sash at her waist and pulled it apart. Her dressing gown swung open over her white night rail, which was of such fine lawn that it was nearly translucent in the pearly gleam of moonlight.

Thorne could see the contours of her breasts, the darker shadows of her nipples. He could see the shape of her long, slender legs and the merest suggestion of the dark curls at their apex. His mouth went dry; his hands flexed.

“… a lot can happen in one night,” she concluded throatily, never taking her gaze from his face.

Whatever restraint and control Thorne had left collapsed. He reached for her like a drowning man clawing desperately for the surface.

Her body was lithe and warm against his. She’d been in bed, he realized in a haze of lust. Curled sweetly beneath her covers, all that glorious sable hair spread out on her pillow.

The image was too much for him, so he squeezed his eyes shut. But that didn’t help, because then he felt her all the more acutely, every place they touched.

Her slim thighs against his. Her bare arms, white and smooth, coming up to circle his shoulders. The taut curves of her chest brushing the front of his cloak.

And when he pulled her in tighter, the soft heat of her lower belly pressed against the stiff, thick ridge of his erection.

Had he ever been with a woman as tall as Lucy? They were so well matched. It was unexpectedly tantalizing.

“Kiss me,” she urged in a voice that shook, and Thorne wasted no time in complying.

He fell into her, starving for her, as though it had been days and not hours since the last time they’d kissed.

Lucy met him with her own passion, but there was a slower, more measured quality to it than she’d had on the street behind The Grand, or in the anteroom at Sharpe’s. It occurred to him that this was the first time they’d kissed someplace private, where no one was likely to walk in on them.

Someplace with a bed.

Fire scorched through him, but he forced himself to keep to her pace. This was for her. It was his penance.

But as she nestled into his arms and slowly stroked her tongue against his, Thorne had to acknowledge that it would be the most pleasurable penance he’d ever paid.

* * *

Lucy’s mind was a whirl. She could hardly believe the evidence of her own body, but he was here. He’d come.

That fact alone convinced her she’d been imagining things earlier when she’d started to draw parallels between Thornecliff and The Gentle Rogue.

Thornecliff was done with her.

Meanwhile, the man of her literal dreams was standing in her bedroom, kissing her as though he wanted to consume her, and there was a part of Lucy’s dizzily spinning brain that kept whispering Not him…

But that was madness. This—this man, all broad shoulders and gruff voice and big, deft hands—was who she wanted. Who she’d always wanted, since the night he’d plucked her from a carriage accident and set her before him astride Dante, and listened to her.

The connection between Lucy and The Gentle Rogue was real , and she wished she’d had the chance to tell Thornecliff so, to dispute his accusation that she only wanted a fantasy. Lucy had been with men she didn’t know or care for in any real way; she knew what that felt like.

Her attraction to The Gentle Rogue was something else.

And regardless of that silly voice in her head pointing out that nothing quite matched up to how it had felt to kiss Thornecliff in the rain, Lucy’s body seemed to know exactly what it desired right now.

Her breasts ached to fill his palms, the tightly ruched tips throbbing for the soft, devastating pinches he’d given them before— No! That had been Thornecliff.

Dazed, Lucy broke the kiss to gasp in a breath. She felt almost faint with the force of her longing, the thrum of need in her empty core, and the frenzied hunger in all her flesh to be bare and pressed close to him.

Desperate to quiet her intrusive thoughts and rid herself of Thornecliff once and for all, Lucy threw herself forward without considering anything beyond the very next moment.

Wiggling her arms up between their bodies, she unfastened the tiny seed pearl buttons at the neck of her night rail and whipped it over her head with a flourish.

It wasn’t until she stood naked in front of him while he remained fully clothed that she thought to wonder how it would feel.