Gilded frames containing portraits of naked women adorned the walls. Tapered candles within ornate crystal sconces cast eerie shadows upon crimson satin wallcoverings; shadows that would have terrified a lesser person. Sin oozed from every crevice that made up the notorious gaming hell. When it came to celebrating wickedness, no detail had been spared.
This was the place where fortunes were lost, and debaucheries of all sorts were indulged; a den of sin no innocent lady visited.
In fairness, Faith, and her friends, Marcia and Anwen, had not come to Forbidden Pleasures of their own free will. Abducted earlier that evening, on their way to the theatre, rescued by big, burly strangers, and whisked away to the clubs, they’d been deposited in the proprietor’s offices until Lord Waters arrived to collect them.
Given all that, Faith and her friends had been fortunate to escape with not only their lives and, hopefully, their reputations, intact. As such, Faith should have only one thought in mind: getting out as quickly as she could. Especiallysince she’d been discovered snooping through the club ledgers by the head proprietor, Mr. Rex DuMond.
Faith had altogether different plans.
Her heart pounded. Not from fear.
She’d had the club’s ledger in her hands. All the names and all the details of the members in this den of iniquity, their debt, their sins, their secrets, all at her fingertips. For all the pages she’d turned and the information she’d committed to memory, aside from Lord Waters, there’d been one gentleman whose sins she cared about. And whose information she would have had were it not for the interruption of Mr. DuMond.
Lord Somerville.
The man who’d ruined her Aunt Caroline’s reputation could at last have his comeuppance.
As she continued to follow her friends through the darkened halls, Faith kept her gaze, not on her skittish friend, Anwen, moving quicker than Faith had ever seen her, or a somber Lord Waters, but that oblivious guard.
He was too predictable. Every twenty seconds, he looked to the viscount, eying him with a good deal of suspicion.
It was so very typical. A man would expect only the viscount to be one to watch.
Never did he once so much as crane his neck to catch sight of the ladies he led along the quiet passage. Another time that underestimation would have rankled. Now, she’d use it to her advantage.
Having moved ahead of Faith, Anwen paused, and looked back. Behind her wire-rimmed spectacles, horror dawned, and her eyebrows went flying up.
“What are you doing?” Anwen mouthed.
Faith touched a fingertip to her lips, compelling her friend to be quiet.
Anwen pleaded with her eyes. “Don’t,” she silently enunciated that single syllable entreaty.
“I’m sorry,” Faith mouthed. But she had to.
When they reached the end of the hall and the hulking giant finished with that predictable check, Faith bolted. Doubling back along the path he’d led them, she raced so quickly to Mr. DuMond’s offices, her lungs screamed in protest. She compressed her lips tightly to keep those respirations quiet.
Pressing her left ear against the oak panel, she strained, listening for the hint of voices, footfalls, anything. Only the hum of silence greeted her.
Faith let herself back inside Mr. DuMond’s offices. She swept her gaze over the room.
Empty.
Drawing the door shut quietly behind her, Faith hurried across the floor and dove under the same desk she’d pillaged a short while before. This time, she made even quicker work of the lock.
She didn’t have much time.
Heart racing, Faith flipped through the pages, looking for that one name she’d spied earlier.
And there it was.
Lord Somerville
As Faith read, each sordid word burned into her mind, stamped in her memories.
Debt to Forbidden Pleasures—twenty-thousand pounds.
Wicked Pastimes: Dripping hot wax on his lovers
Vices—Pays a fortune for the most experienced whores, assigns them the names of innocent young ladies of the ton, and beats his bed partners…
“Oh my God,” Faith whispered. This is the man her Aunt Caroline had given her virtue to? She may have been brokenhearted all those years ago, but she’d dodged a proverbial bullet. No woman should ever suffer such a miserable fate as marrying such a cad as—
“Back for another look, are you?”
Faith lifted her head, cracking the top of it upon the wood drawer, and she groaned at the rush of pain. The book slipped from her fingers and landed with a damning thump.
Having been born partially deaf, Faith found the world often existed in a muffled hum. Speech and sounds were either quiet or distorted—especially when a room was crowded. But this room was not crowded. And there were no people present.
There was only her.
Her…and now…him.
Even knowing as much, Faith dipped her head out from under the desk.
None other than Rex DuMond.
At some four inches past six feet with heavily muscled shoulders and biceps that strained his coat sleeves, he conjured thoughts of that goddess Aphrodite’s favored lover, Adonis. Only, the gentleman was dark as sin and menacing as Satan sauntering into sermons on Sunday. From the top of his midnight black hair to the smooth line of his Grecian nose and the wicked scar on his chiseled cheek, he’d have caused the flutter of any lady’s heart—Faith’s included. That was, if he’d not fixed a pair of unforgiving ice-blue eyes upon her.
Bloody hell.
Fear sapped the moisture from her mouth.
She’d not, however, reveal a hint of the terror he roused.
From a place she knew not where, she forced out a breezy response. “You again?”
“Me, again,” he said grimly. “In my own offices. Imagine that.”
With all the grace she could muster being discovered examining his books for a second time, Faith sailed to her feet.
“We really must stop meeting like this, Mr. DuMond.”
“We could avoid that if you stopped snooping in my offices and availing yourself of my ledger.”
“Touché.” Faith forced more of that flippancy and swept across the room. “I should be go—”
He shoved the oak panel shut with one of his broad shoulders, and she stopped halfway toward him.
Mr. DuMond lounged against the door, the flat of his gleaming black boot pressed against the panel in what would be a casual repose for most. Not for this man; this man radiated an ominous energy, and his booted foot may as well have been an additional lock upon the door.
Bloody, bloody, bloody hell.
Well, when faced with being disarmed or doing the disarming, she’d opt for the latter.
Faith dropped her hands onto her hips. “You had me followed.”
“Do you think I’m stupid? Careless?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to point out he’d been careless enough to have a lock easy for her to pick as the only thing guarding his secrets, but she thought better.
“Do you make it a habit of going through people’s things?”
Given he’d found her doing that twice now, she really didn’t feel an answer was required.
And then he unfurled, very much like a serpent unwinding its frame and slithering forward. He stopped a pace away. “Hmm? No answer, Honest Jack?”
Honest Jack? Faith tipped her chin back a fraction. “My name isn’t Jack.”
Did she imagine the smile that ghosted his lips? Surely, she did. For that firm, hard-looking mouth appeared incapable of so much as a smidgeon of warmth. He was a man toying with his prey. Toying with Faith, and that sent her spine up.
“Honest Jack was one of England’s most notorious thieves.”
“Oh.”
“But you’re a different kind of thief, aren’t you?” he murmured.
Faith’s heart thumped oddly in her chest, and she made herself smile in a bid to muddle him as much as he’d muddled her. Alas, his flat expression marked him as unmoved as all the other gentlemen of Polite Society had proven towards her.
In a bid for nonchalance, Faith struck out her right satin-slippered foot and struck a pose. “Are there really different kinds of thieves? Property, money, food, people.” She looked pointedly at him on that one, and lifting a finger his way, she waggled the tip at him. “It’s all bad and not at all good.”
“Isn’t ‘all bad’ and ‘not all good’ the same?”
She gave an energetic nod. “Precisely.”
He started forward. His wasn’t a walk. It was a prowl. Sleek of step, he stalked like a jungle cat she’d once been riveted by in the Royal Menagerie. Then, she’d been grateful for the cage between them. Now, she felt that same protective barrier would serve her even better in this moment, with this man.
She took a belated step back, but he was already upon her.
Unnerved—afraid, even—she stood her ground. She’d never been one to shrink and she wouldn’t do so now.
Faith tipped up her chin another notch, daring him with her eyes, and as he leaned down and in, she promptly wished she hadn’t.
With all that six feet four inches of pure heavy muscle, even as he bent close to meet her not-so-small five feet five inches, he still managed to tower over her, to make her feel tiny.
He opened his mouth to speak.
Unsettled, Faith beat him to it. “You smell.”
He stilled.
“Good,” she managed to finish through her muddled thoughts. Having learned early on to compensate for the sense she did not have, her others had become heightened. Always that skill had been a gift. Distracted as she was by Mr. Rex DuMond’s masculine fragrance, she found herself, for the first time, regretting this heightened awareness. “You smell…good?”
“You’re surprised.”
“Qu-Quite. I should think you’d smell like sweat and unbathed bodies. At the very least, cheroots and brandy and—” She sniffed the air. “Though you do have a faint hint of both upon your person. But there’s also a whisper of…” She sucked in through her nostrils a second time. “Orange.”
His mouth twitched, and this time close as they were, she knew she’d not imagined his faintest of grins. An elusive one that teased hard lips; like he was a man who guarded his grins with the same ferocity he did the secrets of this sinful club of his.
He brought his mouth closer…to her right ear, and she abruptly turned, presenting him instead with the one she could hear fully from. So he did not have her at a greater disadvantage. So that he did not discover her greatest flaw.
“You are a thief, indeed, Faith Brookfield,” he murmured, and she bristled.
“How dare—?”
“A thief of many hearts, I trust.”
Faith went motionless and drew back slightly so she could better view his harshly chiseled features. And then, she promptly burst out laughing. She laughed until tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, poured down her cheeks, and her entire body shook from the force of that emotion. She doubled over clasping her knees and continued laughing.
Until she registered the otherwise stillness and silence of the room and the man opposite her.
Her smile faded, and she slowly straightened. “You…surely you aren’t…serious?” she asked, because despite his deadly serious expression, he still must be jesting.
He dragged a single finger—his thumb—down the curve of her right cheek. The pad of that digit was callused and rough and yet intoxicating for the realness of it. Her body trembled.
“Do you take me for one who jests?”
“No,” she blurted. “Is that a rhetorical question?” He opened his mouth. “I suspect it was.”
“It was.” His eyes glinted. With amusement…and desire? Surely, she imagined both. And yet, both together proved heady and distracting, and well, he was the last man she should become heady over or distracted by.
Faith forced herself to back away from him and his touch. “Either way, I’m not a thief of hearts or anything else.”
A tension charged the air once more, erasing the almost playful nature of their exchange moments ago.
“Ah, but aren’t you?” he whispered. “Did you not break into my desk and avail yourself of my ledgers?”
The backs of her legs collided with his desk, knocking her off her feet.
She’d not even known she’d been backing away from him, her retreat having been primitively instinctive.
As primitive as those leopard’s steps of his, the ones currently carrying him over. Closer. And then before her. Close as he was, he’d her blocked in, unable to stand unless she asked him to retreat, which she didn’t bother wasting a breath on as she’d wager her fully-hearing ear he’d not relent.
“Hmm? Nothing to say?” He purred like that sleek black cat, too. “Nothing to say about helping yourself to my books, my lady?”
Ah, it had been too much to hope he’d let that matter rest.
“That…was not a rhetorical question earlier, either?” she ventured in hopeful tones.
“Not that one, either.”
Drat.
Refusing to be cowed—and because to hell with him and this cat-and-mouse game he played with her—Faith angled her head farther back and met his eyes squarely. “You are, in fact, the worst sort of thief, Mr. DuMond.”
“Am I?” He sounded casually bored, and that only rankled.
“Indeed. You are a thief of people.”
He clucked his tongue. She followed that slight but telltale movement of his lips, while only faintly making out the sound of it.
“Here I thought you should be more grateful, Faith. I, in fact, rescued you.”
“I don’t believe that for an instant,” she shot back.
“Oh?” He folded his arms across a broad chest; that slight movement sent the black fabric of his jacket rippling over his muscles, highlighting and defining that sinew. “You must enlighten me, my lady.”
His was both an order and a challenge and one she’d be wise to keep silent on. Alas, Faith had never been a master of her own silence.
“Your guards abducted me and my friends.”
“My guards interrupted your abduction, brought you here, and summoned Lady Waters’ husband.” He scowled. “More the fool my men,” he muttered under his breath.
Faith faltered. Only… “I’d be foolish and naïve to trust that you and your men operated with any real benevolence.”
“You wound me.” He sounded anything but.
“I think you took us, Mr. DuMond, so that you might leverage the funds Lord Waters now has after marrying my friend. You found a way for him to pay his debt to you. I believe you calculated—and incorrectly—that our families will not discover what you’ve done.”
“Indeed.” He sharpened menacing blue eyes on her face. A shade, very nearly aquamarine, had those irises belonged to another man, they would have mesmerized and not terrorized. “Is that all?”
There was a warning steeped within this question that this time wasn’t really a question.
“It is certainly not. You see, I’ve gathered you aren’t only a thief of people, but also of your patrons’ fortunes and respectability.”
In that moment, Faith knew she’d crossed a bridge too far. A gentleman would have taken offense with having his honor questioned, and yet this man…this man’s eyes only sparked with an icy rage when she’d mentioned his club and his clients.
Faith dampened her lips, and unable to meet those unforgiving eyes a moment longer, she slid her gaze past him to the sealed door. “Now, if you would be so good as to excuse me?” With a toss of her head, Faith ducked around him and headed for that escape.
Mr. DuMond slid into her path, blocking her retreat. He slipped an arm around her waist and drew her close, and then lowered his mouth close to her ear.
Faith swiftly turned, presenting him with the one capable of hearing. “Never tell me you intend to say all that and just…leave?”
His voice was a soft purr, one that rumbled and resonated through her. Her body trembled and her thoughts were jumbled with disgust at his nearness. It had to be disgust.
“Nothing to say, Faith?”
The sound of her name falling from his hard lips brought her eyes flying open.
He laid claim and control of that single syllable as if he were the master of all. And in this universe, in this world, he was.
For the first time since she and her friends had been abducted and then separated within the gaming hell Forbidden Pleasures, the reality of her circumstances hit her. Truly hit her. The danger she faced.
A proper lady would surely worry at least some for her reputation. Not Faith. Faith was more focused on the whole living thing.
“You’re afraid,” he remarked, sounding so entirely pleased by that discovery, it effectively freed her from that emotion.
“Anything but, Mr. DuMond. I am not one who scares easily.” Or she hadn’t believed she was. Something about this man made her shake, when before him, she’d only believed that quavering happened on the pages of gothic novels she read.
The dark-haired proprietor smiled, a small, cold, and knowing smile. “Don’t you?” he whispered. He rested a large palm on her right hip.
She felt that touch all the way through the fabric of her cloak and dress and the undergarments she wore underneath. How was it possible to feel the heat of a hand through all those layers? But God help her, she did. Her lashes fluttered. “D-Don’t I, what?”
Another grin formed on his unforgiving mouth, this one slightly different than the one to precede it. This was a confident, cocksure, arrogant tip of those hard-looking lips that could only come from a man who’d gathered the effect he was, in fact, having on her.
“I’m going to commit another theft this night,” he said, and she trembled once more.
“It is probably not the wisest to confess as much. A good thief would not go bandying about his intention—”
“I’m going to steal a kiss from you, Faith Brookfield,” he murmured, that low baritone floating over her and doing funny things to both her heart and her belly.
Fear. It was surely fear. Only—
“What say you to that, kitten?” he teased, bringing his mouth close to hers.
“I…t-tend to prefer dogs,” she stammered breathlessly. “My Uncle Leo has a dog and she’s expecting pups. The dog, not my uncle. And he offered to give one to my sister. Though I’m sure cats are endearing too.”
“Ah, but ‘what say you to that, pup?’ doesn’t have quite the same feel to it.”
Faith puzzled her brow. “No. I see your point there.”
They conversed so easily she could almost forget that every movement of their mouths nearly brought their lips touching.
“We might opt for ‘little owl’,” she ventured.
“Little owl?”
“I’ve been told I have large eyes.” Faith blinked, illustrating as much.
He slid his gaze over her face, lingering his stare on those eyes in question. “No, little owl is not beautiful enough for you, petite chouette.”
“Little Owl in F-French does sound a good deal prettier.”
“Indeed. I’m going to kiss you, petite chouette, and I think you are going to both want it and like it.”
Faith’s breath hitched, and she attempted casualness—failing tremendously the moment her words slipped forward like a whispery exhalation. “That is not…very…convincing. You think I am going to like it doesn’t convey much confidence in your abilities.”
He curled his lips up again and this was a brazen smile, a sexy one belonging to a man all too confident in his prowess. “I know you are going to like it.”
“Th-there. That is b-better.” Closing her eyes, Faith leaned up and touched her lips to his in a quick, fleeting kiss.
He stilled, bending his knees slightly, and angling back a fraction, he searched his eyes over her again. “Did you just kiss me?”
“Only to avoid having you steal it,” she blurted. “The kiss. I don’t like having anyone steal anything from me.”
His eyes darkened. “You’d want this theft, Faith,” he whispered. “It’d melt you inside and leave you hot in places you’ve never been, longing for more. Begging.”
Her chest hitched once more. “I d-doubt that.” The tremble to her voice marked her for the liar she was, and the amusement glinting in his hard eyes indicated he knew it too. “I daresay you must get on with it so that I can see for mysel—”
His mouth was on hers in an instant.
And all the saints in heaven combined, he was right, and she was as wrong as she’d suspected she’d be. His kiss was gloriously hot and hard. He laid claim to her, slanting his lips over hers. He was a man determined to possess her mouth, and Lord help her, she was more than content to surrender it to him.
And she did.
Faith whimpered, and he gripped her jaw with his left hand, firm enough that she suspected he’d leave a slight imprint of his touch, but gentle enough that she wanted him to grip her harder. “Open for me, petite chouette,” he commanded between his kiss. Their kiss. It belonged to both of them. “Let me inside to taste you.”
Faith opened for him. She was powerless to deny him. And here she’d never believed powerless could be this wickedly wonderful, just as she’d despaired of any man in London ever kissing her because not a single had expressed so much as an interest in courting her, let alone embracing her.
She’d been invisible to the men in the market for a wife.
Not that she believed Rex DuMond was in the market for a wife. Nor was she in the market for a husband—that was, a husband like Rex DuMond.
She, however, took what he gave—her first taste of passion. And she tasted of him. That citrusy sweetness of orange she’d caught a hint of before, along with cheroot and brandy, clung to him. Only those latter two didn’t repulse as she’d expected. Instead, there was, if possible, an even greater aura of pure masculinity that left her warm in her belly and between her legs—just like he’d predicted.
His tongue swirled within her mouth. That hot flesh teased her, and she touched her tongue to his, tentatively at first. “Good girl,” he praised, emboldening her, and then he moved his hands down her body, as if searching her, all the while enflaming her. He gripped her hips and dragged her close so she felt the long, hard ridge tenting the front of his trousers.
Suddenly he released her, and Faith stood there, dazed, hot, and her senses addled.
Rex chuckled, that guttural sound of amusement primal and filled with male satisfaction.
“Well?” he whispered against her lips, and she silently wept inside, secretly wanting more of him and his kiss.
Faith forced her lashes open and made a show of thinking. “You do smell of cheroots and brandy, after all.”
“Do you mean taste of?” His was a taunting husky challenge.
“B-Both.”
He chuckled. The low rumble shook his chest, and close as they were, she felt it inside. It shook her, too. In all the ways she’d not already been left shaken by him.
“I should leave.”
“You should. But not without me verifying you haven’t taken anything that is mine.”
She dampened her mouth. “I didn’t.”
“Excuse me if, given the fact I’ve found you going through my belongings, I’m a bit hesitant to take you at your word.”
Locking his gaze with hers, Mr. DuMond pressed both of his large palms under her arms, and then proceeded to run his hands along her side. There was something methodical about his search, and even so, her breath caught at the sureness of his touch.
“S-See? I-I told you.” Everything she’d stolen, she’d committed to memory. “I don’t have any—” Her words faded to a gasp, as he sank to a knee. “Wh-What are you doing?”
“I told you. You availed yourself to my ledgers, petite chouette. I’m not a stupid man, and I’m not one to underestimate anyone. I’m searching you everywhere.”
Oh God. “V-Very well,” she said, staring over the top of his dark hair. “Best get on with it, then.”
And he did. With one hand, he slowly inched up her skirts and ran his other large hand up her leg starting at her ankle, and then shifting his search along her calf, and then higher, ever higher.
He pressed his large palm against that place between her legs that shamefully ached in a way she’d never ached before. Even as his exploration was methodical in nature, her body did not care for the distinction.
And then, he removed his hands from her and lowered her skirts.
Suddenly, his features snapped alert.
“What is—?” Faith’s question was interrupted a moment later by a frantic pounding on the door, a pounding loud enough for her to hear and one that both shook the panel and sent reverberations rolling along the floor.
Despite the franticness of the muffled but distinct shouts from the corridor, Rex DuMond moved with the same slow, casual grace he had through her entire brief knowing of him. Strolling across the floor, he reached for the lock.
“Your cravat,” she whispered furiously.
He paused with his finger on the elaborate, carved key jutting from the keyhole, and glanced back.
Lord Waters’s furious shouts reached into Mr. DuMond’s—Rex’s, because surely after a kiss such as that one, Christian names were permitted—offices. “Open, you bloody…”
Faith motioned frantically to his rumpled cravat.
Mr. DuMond—Rex—bent his neck forward at an awkward downward angle to examine the article in question, and then in one smooth motion, he yanked off the offending article and tossed it on the floor. “Better?”
Faith slapped a palm over her eyes. “No. That is the opposite of better. That is—”
“Worse?”
She nodded frantically.
“But eminently more comfortable.” And then dismissing her outright, with his cravat lying damningly on the floor near his feet, Rex drew the panel open.
The enraged viscount all but fell forward into the room.
“Lord Waters!” Faith exclaimed.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded.
“Not at all.”
The viscount eyed Rex a long moment. The proprietor offered him no assurances; he gave Marcia’s husband nothing but silence.
“Come along, my lady. My wife and your other friend are with the Duke of Rothesby and Lord Landon, waiting in the carriage.”
As he beckoned, Faith quit Rex DuMond’s offices for a second and certainly last time.
