Page 13 of Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone (Dukes in Disguise #2)

Chapter Thirteen

Hushed whispers rustled around her, a hum of excited conversation Bess couldn’t parse and didn’t care about. She blinked, and suddenly the proprietress of The Nemesis stood in front of her once more.

Madame Leda regarded her curiously, her regal head tipped slightly to one side. “So, you’re the one.”

Bess startled as though waking from a dream. Or was it a nightmare? She hardly knew. Gasping in a breath that felt like the first real breath she’d taken since the start of the fight, Bess wavered on her feet for a moment.

“Ah, little lamb,” breathed Madame Leda, slipping a steadying arm about Bess’s shoulders. “Remember, you needn’t go with him if you don’t like to. Only what makes you feel good.”

What made her feel good. Bess’s next breath felt more like a sob. How could it feel good to watch something like that?

The moment when Red Jack had landed that hit on the very place Nathaniel was wounded, where he’d seeped out his blood onto her hands, opening the wound once more—Bess wanted to throw up.

Even now, she wanted to stride over to the ring and kick Red Jack in the ribs where he sat panting on the floor. She wanted?—

“Take me to him,” she demanded, voice shaking but clear. “To…The Berserker.”

Madame Leda’s perfectly drawn brows arched above the low line of her mask. “Listen, lamb…”

“He’s bleeding,” Bess ground out, unable to stand the thought of it. She drew herself up and met the proprietress’s concerned gaze head on. “Show me where he is. He chose me, didn’t he? So let me go to him.”

Reluctant respect, tinged with amusement, shone in Madame Leda’s dark brown eyes. “Well, well! Perhaps less of a lamb than I thought. Come along, then.”

It was true, Bess thought, with a touch of wonder. She felt more like a lioness in this moment than a lamb.

“We’ll need hot water,” she said, gathering her composure as they wended their way through the chattering crowd. “And a length of fresh, clean linen, if you have it.”

She couldn’t afford to ruin two petticoats in as many days.

“I’ll send it up,” Madame Leda promised, her hips swaying gently as she climbed the stairs ahead of Bess. “But no one will enter the room. Complete privacy and discretion are assured here.”

The light comment reminded Bess of what Madame Leda, what every single person downstairs in the tavern, assumed she and “The Berserker” would be doing in that private room.

Probably it was what he assumed they’d be doing, too. With a nameless woman he’d never met but had seen—and wanted.

She shivered, though not with cold. The thrill that ran through her when she remembered the moment he’d singled her out, chosen her from the assembled throng of people—it was hot enough to sizzle like water droplets dancing across an iron pan.

“Thank you,” she managed as they came to a stop in front of a door painted a deep shade of red.

The Berserker. The Duke of Ashbourn.

Nathaniel.

He waited behind that door.

Madame Leda paused with her fist raised to rap against the door. She cast a look at Bess over her shoulder. “Last chance to back out. You can walk out of here now with no one the wiser. Shake the dust of this place off your heels and never think of him again.”

Bess paused. It would undoubtedly be the wisest course. Yet she shook her head. “Far too late for that, I’m afraid.”

And, stepping up beside Madame Leda, Bess knocked on the door herself. Without waiting for an answer, she pushed it open and went inside.

As the door swung quietly shut behind her, Bess blinked in the dimness of the room. Most of the light came from the moon, shining through a small square window set high in the wall. A wisp of smoke curled up from the candelabra atop a round table in the center of the room, as though it had only just been extinguished.

There was one candle still lighting the room, a small one on a nightstand casting its golden glow over a large, canopied bed that dominated one wall of the small room.

Bess’s breath caught in her chest, but even as she glanced in that direction, a dark shape loomed from the shadows, arm lifted as though to snuff out that candle too.

Without thought, Bess said, “Don’t, please! I want to see you.”

The form hesitated, clearly reluctant, but he left the candle burning and turned to face her. Though he kept to the shadows at the edge of the room.

“I mean, I need to see you,” Bess amended hastily, taking a wary step closer. “To see to your wound.”

“There’s no need. It’s fine,” he said, low and rough.

Well, thought Bess philosophically, at least now I know it wasn’t personal when he tried to send me back to bed last night instead of letting me help him .

Apparently, this man would turn away the help of a perfect stranger rather than appear vulnerable.

Unless…could he possibly have recognized her?

Bess touched a nervous hand to her mask, but it was still tied firmly in place. Thank goodness she was wearing one of her old dresses, not one he’d bought. Most likely, he hadn’t recognized her. After all, if he knew it was her, would he not say something?

If he knew it was Bess, would he still have chosen her?

Ignoring the ache this produced in her chest, she decided the only way forward was to assume he had not recognized his sister’s chaperone in the masked woman before him.

She took another step toward him, squinting into the darkness. He’d put on a shirt, she saw, though it hung untucked over his thighs. His feet were bare, a shockingly intimate sight. “I should like to see the cut for myself, all the same.”

“You and everyone else down there,” he muttered under his breath, but Bess heard him.

“What do you mean?”

One massive shoulder hitched up in a shrug. When he spoke, it was soft and deep, without the usual clipped precision of the Duke of Ashbourn’s polished accent. “That’s what they come to see, what you all come to see. Blood on the floor. The mighty brought low.”

The weary contempt in his low voice surprised her. She immediately wanted to deny that she was like the rest of them, that she’d any interest in seeing anyone’s blood, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth.

“There is something about it,” she admitted. “Watching two strong fighters try to best each other. Something primal and exhilarating. Do you not find it so, to be the one in the ring?”

“Primal.” Beneath the leather mask, his sharply bowed lips curled derisively. “I would say more…bestial.”

She took another step. This was quite a lot like approaching a wild animal. He tracked her progress with the awareness of a predator but made no move away. “But not exhilarating. So why do it?”

His bared teeth glinted white in the darkness. “Maybe I like to win.”

Bess shook her head. Took another step. “If that’s true, you ought to be smiling—you certainly won tonight. Madame Leda says you always win.”

Her eyes were adjusting to the shadows. She saw his big hands clench into fists, then relax as though he’d deliberately released the tension.

“My reasons for fighting are my own,” he said hoarsely. “Everyone who comes here harbors secrets. I could ask why you came tonight.”

The longer they talked, in this hushed twilight of a room, the more certain Bess became that he didn’t know her. It gave her an odd, untethered sensation that reminded her of their conversation in the drawing room after the Devensham ball.

Masks could be freeing, indeed.

A bold recklessness seized her. She took another step, close enough to him now to feel the heat his large body threw off like a bonfire.

This was her chance. The chance she’d been searching for, to feel alive and desired—and for it to be happening this way, in this shadowy space between real life and fantasy with the man who had consumed her thoughts for the past weeks…she had to be brave enough to seize this moment.

If she didn’t, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.

Tipping her chin up, Bess gathered up all her courage and all her hopes and all her most secret desires and said, “I did come for the fight, in a way—but I also came because of what I’d heard rumored about this place.”

“And what is that?”

He was staring down at her transfixed, as though a cannon could blast through the wall beside them and he wouldn’t notice. His eyes behind the mask were crystalline and otherworldly, tonight appearing the same color she’d reminded Lucy of the word for.

Celadon. Like the deepest heart inside a stalk of celery, tinged ever so faintly and brightly green.

A woman could get used to being looked at that way, by eyes like that.

Stop it. There is no future here. There’s only tonight.

She swallowed, her nipples tingling and her core clenching hard on nothing, sending shivers through her. Her heart pounded.

“I heard,” Bess replied, “that the winner of the fight was awarded a prize. A night with the partner of his choosing. And I thought…”

Here her courage faltered and she looked down at her shaking hands clutching at the fabric of her woolen skirts. But he moved, finally, for the first time since she bade him leave the candle lit, and lifted a hand as though to cup her jaw.

He didn’t touch her though—his hand hovered a bare inch from her face, close enough for her to feel the warmth of it. Like a bird too wary to light.

Intuiting what he wanted, Bess tilted her face up to the intense scrutiny of his luminous eyes. They roved her features greedily as though he would devour what he read there.

Bess held her breath and let him look. Let him see it all. If he saw through her mask and pushed her away in shock, better that it happen now.

But he didn’t.

“What did you think?” he asked, the question ripped from him unwillingly, through gritted teeth. A proud man reduced to begging.

Bess breathed in his smell, the sweat of hard use and the underlying bay laurel of his soap. This was her chance. Her chance to be ravished, to be passionate, to be touched. She had to take it.

“I thought…I’ve never been anyone’s prize.” Bess smiled up at him, though she could feel it tremble a bit at the corners. “I’d like to know how it feels.”

He drew back, pulling his hand farther away. Those strange, glittering eyes bored into her as though seeking the deepest truth behind her words. All his muscles were locked tight.

A pang of tenderness speared through the gathering tension of the moment. Bess almost smiled. He couldn’t simply let himself have this. Have her.

He needed more. So she gave it to him.

“You won me,” Bess said gently, her heart in her aching throat. She placed her hand atop his and pressed his broad palm to her cheek, savoring the heat and scrape of his calluses. “I’m your prize. Won’t you show me how it feels?”

His lips crashed into hers like a wave cresting on the shore, and Bess was dragged under instantly. She was vaguely aware of his other hand coming up to cradle her face, the delicacy of his touch at odds with the hungry, seeking stroke of his tongue and the rasp of his stubble against her lips.

The edge of his teeth caught at the plump softness of her lower lip, making her gasp and forget the thought that fluttered at the edge of her consciousness:

He kissed me.

So he can’t possibly know it’s me, because the Duke of Ashbourn would never.

It was there and then gone, jetsam swirled out to sea, caught in the tidal rush of sensation his mouth created against hers.

She moaned and he swallowed it. Bess let go of his hand, now that he had the idea, and went on tiptoe to spear her fingers into the wavy brown strands of hair at the nape of his neck. Damp with sweat, they clung to her like wet silk. His body strained against hers, solid and strong and so hungry.

An answering hunger welled up in Bess. She pressed closer, muffling a whimper into his mouth when she couldn’t seem to get close enough. His palms brushed down under her jaw, down the sides of her throat and over her shoulders to pull her in tighter. Crushed against his chest, her breasts throbbed in a way that made her twist in his arms, restless and wanting.

A light rap at the door made Nathaniel drag his mouth from hers.

They stared at one another for a moment, wild-eyed and panting, before Bess was able to calm her breath enough to say, “I asked Madame Leda for water. And bandages.”

“Don’t need them.” He dipped his head to kiss her again, and though she wanted to curse the interruption, Bess pressed her fingers to his lips before he could.

“Please,” she said. “I won’t be easy in my mind until I know you’re seen to.”

He dropped his masked forehead to rest against hers for a brief instant, those luminous eyes squeezed shut, and Bess felt as though her very bones were melting.

If he pressed her again, she wouldn’t be able to summon her common sense a second time. Luckily for her, or luckily for whatever was going on with his wound under the loose, untucked white lawn shirt he’d thrown on, he let her go.

While Nathaniel stomped over to the door to retrieve the offering from Madame Leda, Bess took a moment to press her hands to her too-hot cheeks and feel the anticipation of the evening ahead all the way down to her toes.

At least he was moving well, as far as she could see. None of the unbalanced staggering of the night before, and he didn’t seem to favor the side where he’d been cut. Mostly likely he was fine, but she would check to make sure. And then…

A steady hum of hunger thrummed beneath her skin, sensitizing her so that she felt the very brush of the air as a caress when he closed the door and turned to place a tray on the round table.

Bess considered asking him to relight the candelabra, but the moon was full and bright through the window and her eyes had long since adjusted to its silvery gleam.

That meant she could see perfectly well that in addition to a large copper bowl of steaming water and a folded pile of linen, there was a plate of cold sliced ham with mustard and hard-boiled eggs, a hunk of crusty bread and a knobbly wedge of cheese. His large hand hovered over a pair of cups sitting beside an opened bottle of wine.

He glanced up at her. “Would you like?—?”

“I didn’t come up here for a little light refreshment.” She smiled at the way that made him press his lips together in a bid for self-control.

To help him out, Bess adopted a brisk, business-like manner. “Now, the quicker you let me see to you, the quicker we can get back to…other things.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he turned aside and lifted the voluminous shirt out of the way.

Bess’s mouth went dry. I could wish you were always this biddable , she thought giddily, taking in the lean lines of his tapered waist with its slabs of hard-cut muscle.

The arrow of dark hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his black breeches was just a shadow in the darkness, but she remembered how it had felt against the inside of her wrist when she wrapped the bandage around him last night.

Well. She didn’t have to rely on memory alone. She could touch him. He’d all but invited her to.

Heart rising in her throat like a Yorkshire pudding expanding in a hot oven, Bess went to him. Last night had been all urgency and uncertainty, and fear for him.

Bess allowed herself to slide one hand over the softly furred hardness of his stomach. To hold him steady as she bent to inspect the gash in his side.

He shifted his weight once when she first touched him, but thereafter remained as still and stoic as a statue while Bess checked that the bleeding had already stopped, and a new bandage wasn’t needed. He didn’t move or make a sound when she wet a length of linen in the water and used it to clean the streaks of blood from his side.

When she was done, when she’d straightened up and brushed back the hair that had come loose from her braid to straggle over her masked face, he took the damp cloth from her and dipped it in the water once more.

Silent and efficient, in the manner of someone well used to taking care of himself with no help, he stripped off his shirt entirely and began to wash away the dried sweat and dirt of the ring from his neck and chest.

Bess watched with unabashed interest the way the moonlight played over the bunch and flex of his muscles, the way a droplet of water gathered in the hollow of his collarbone before traveling slowly down the center line of his chest and abdomen.

She followed its progress with her eyes and wondered what it would be like to do the same with her tongue.

He thought her a bold, wanton stranger already, she mused. Would that bold stranger hesitate to do whatever came into her head?

No.

So Bess stepped close enough to touch her tongue to the dip at the base of his strong throat. He froze. She put her hands on his hips and dragged her tongue along the path of that water droplet until she could bury her nose in the coarse silk of the hair on his lower belly.

He made a sound like he was dying, and Bess pressed her smile to his warm, salty skin.

She had missed this, she realized. Oh, she’d known she was starved for the touch of another—but she hadn’t known how deeply she missed the closeness, the intimacy, the joy of touching someone else. Bringing pleasure to someone else.

It was more intoxicating than the strongest wine, and Bess wanted more.

Standing up, she took the damp cloth from his unresisting fingers. He blinked down at her, jaw clenched tight. Sparing a moment of regret that she couldn’t see his whole face and the way passion would draw it taut, Bess circled around behind him.

His body was an undiscovered country, and Bess intended to enjoy her explorations. She drew the cloth slowly across the wide plane of his shoulders, then down the valley of his spine to the sensitive dip in the small of his back.

“You don’t have to do that,” he rasped.

“I want to.” She’d never meant anything more.

All the places he couldn’t reach on his own, Bess cared for. With soft, sure swipes of the cloth that soon she couldn’t help but follow with the press of her lips, the flick of her tongue, the soft test of her teeth against the smooth, supple muscles.

He heaved in a breath, his rib cage flaring beneath her hands. At his sides, those big hands flexed and curled into fists as though to keep himself from touching her. Bess admired the restraint, she truly did.

But she couldn’t help wondering—what would it take to break that iron control?

Bess was no virgin; she and Davy had given themselves to each other with shy, eager innocence, intending to spend the rest of their lives together. But Bess had never been a fool, either, so they’d spent most of their illicit time discovering the ways they could make each other happy with hands and mouths rather than in the way that might produce a baby before they were ready.

When she thought of taking Nathaniel between her lips, swallowing him down, her breath came short and her mouth watered. Her hands shook as she folded the cloth and set it back on the table.

Before she could lose her nerve, Bess circled around him once more, fingertips trailing the miles and miles of skin just beginning to bloom here and there with bruises from the fight. She touched a particularly livid mark and made a displeased huff that was drowned out by his grunt.

Eyes flying to his face, she drew away. But just as she was about to apologize for hurting him, his eyes squeezed shut again, and his hand came up to cover hers and press it insistently back to his battered flesh.

“Doesn’t it pain you?” she asked, anxious.

His throat worked for a moment. “It only hurts when you stop touching me.”

Her heart stumbled in her chest, but then he opened his eyes. And released her. Giving her the choice, once again. All of that iron control, still on display.

Well then. If it was up to her? Her choice? Bess knew precisely what she would choose to do with this man.

She lifted her hands away from his skin, registering the flare of weary resignation in his seafoam eyes for the instant before he realized she’d started unbuttoning his breeches.

Savoring the conflagration of shock and need that slammed into him as she opened his falls, Bess put her hand inside to grasp the satin steel of his straining cock.

It flexed in her grip as though welcoming her touch. Nathaniel ground out a low sound that encouraged her to measure the length and width with curious fingers.

Much bigger than I remember from the last time I handled one of these , Bess thought dizzily. But then, everything about this man was big. Her core tightened in anticipation. Her thighs were damp and trembly beneath her skirts.

“You don’t…” His hands were still fisted at his sides. “You don’t have to do this.”

She shook her head. This again.

Only one way to convince him.

Sinking gracefully to her knees before him, never letting go of her prize until it was angled directly at her moist, open, wanting mouth, Bess whispered, “I know I don’t have to. That must mean…you’re going to have to believe that I want to.”

She put out her tongue and licked him, from root to tip, before opening her lips around the smooth head.

A burst of brine, the stretch of her jaw, the rub of him along her tongue—she barely had a moment to enjoy the sensations of having him in her mouth before his hands curled firmly around her upper arms and lifted her, astonished, to her feet.

His eyes burned down at her, his fingers like ten individual brands on her arms.

“You should not be on your knees for me,” he said hoarsely, as certain as she’d ever heard him. “Not when you’re the one who needs worshipping.”

And he shoved himself back into his breeches and knelt.

Bess blinked and found herself seated on the chair, Nathaniel’s sure grip pulling her forward until she was on the edge of the seat. Her skirts were up around her hips. His hands—his hands were on her thighs, the thin muslin of her drawers no barrier at all.

In the next instant, those dexterous fingers found the seam in her drawers. Bess shook and clutched at the hard wooden seat.

He spread her knees wide around his shoulders, so wide her inner thighs ached. He curled his hands around her hips to tilt her to his mouth.

Bess’s head hit the back of the wooden chair, stars wheeling across her vision at the first slow, implacable stroke of his tongue and all she could think before the pleasure wiped her mind clean of any thought at all, was, I must provoke him into losing control more often …