He arched a brow at the nickname but didn’t comment. His gaze took in the worried pucker of her forehead, the twitching fingers and fidgeting toes, those eyes as round as a punished child’s, and a feeling of overwhelming tenderness poured through him. “Why are you uneasy with me, love?” he asked softly.
“I thought you might be angry, because I went alone into the warehouse.”
“I’m not angry. Just slightly tormented by the thought of anything happening to you.” Taking one of her hands, Gabriel drew her to a nearby chair and sat with her slight weight on his knee. She relaxed in relief, her arms linking around his neck. She was wearing perfume, a light touch of something flowery and crisp, but he preferred the silky, salty fragrance of her unadorned skin, more potent than any aphrodisiac. “Pandora, you can’t take risks by going into unfamiliar places without protection. You’re too important to me. Besides, if you deprive Drago of the chance to intimidate and oppress people, you’ll demoralize him.”
“I’ll remember next time.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “What’s going to happen now? Is Dragon going to tell the police about what he saw?”
“Yes, and until we find out whether or not it’s worth investigating, I’d rather you not venture far from home.”
“Gabriel . . . Mrs. O’Cairre is a nice woman. She was very kind and encouraging about my board game company, and I’m sure she would never hurt anyone knowingly. If she’s caught up in something dangerous, it can’t possibly be her fault.”
“Let me caution you, love: Sometimes people you want to believe in will disappoint you. The more you learn about the world, the fewer illusions you’ll have.”
“I don’t want to become cynical.”
Gabriel smiled against her hair. “Being just a little cynical will make you a much safer optimist.” He kissed the side of her neck. “Now, let’s decide how I should punish you.”
“Punish me?”
“Mmm.” His hands wandered over her slender bare legs. “You can’t learn your lesson properly if I don’t reinforce it.”
“What are my choices?”
“They all begin with removing your drawers.”
A smile deepened the curve of her cheek as he sought her lips. “There’s not enough time before dinner,” she said, squirming as he reached for the drawstring just below her waist.
“You might be surprised at what I can accomplish in five minutes.”
“Based on recent experience, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.”
Gabriel laughed against her mouth, relishing her impudence. “A challenge. Well, you can forget all about dinner now.”
Pandora struggled and squeaked as he divested her of her drawers and pulled her fully onto his lap, with her naked legs dangling on either side of his waist. The corset, with its stiffened fabric and stays, forced her back to remain straight. He tugged down the shoulders of her chemise and lifted her breasts from the supportive half-cups of the corset. He kissed the pale curves, leisurely catching the soft pink nipples with his lips, flicking them with his tongue. Her breathing grew labored within the confining grip of the corset, and she reached down to the front hooks.
Gabriel stopped her, gently grasping her wrists and drawing them back around his neck. “Leave it on,” he murmured, forestalling arguments by taking her mouth with his. It was a decoy she couldn’t resist, heat instantly taking hold like flame racing through kindling.
Adjusting her weight, he let her bottom settle between his spread knees, leaving her open and exposed. He kept one arm behind her back, while he slid his hand between her thighs. His fingers tickled and stirred through petals and silkiness and tender wet heat, until Pandora quivered in his lap. He knew what was happening to her, the way the corset redirected sensation below her waist in unfamiliar ways. Pressing a fingertip just above the hidden peak of her clitoris, he agitated it softly. Pandora’s moans grew louder. He circled the emerging bud and slid his finger to the little cove below, and sank it inside her. He felt her thighs and hips flexing, muscles struggling to bring their bodies closer, to close around the teasing stimulation.
Withdrawing the gentle invasion, he continued to play with her idly, making her wait, making her arch and squirm in rising frustration. He caressed her with skillful, circuitous strokes, avoiding the place she most wanted him to touch. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and unfocused, her face exquisitely flushed. He kept her hovering at the edge of release, gentling his touch every time the erotic torment seemed about to spill over into pleasure.
Cupping his free hand behind her head, he brought her lips to his, and she kissed him almost violently, trying to draw his tongue into her mouth. He gave it to her, and covered her sex with his entire hand, savoring the fiery damp softness of her.
Breaking the kiss with a sigh, Pandora let herself fall forward stiffly and dropped her head to his shoulder.
Relenting, he picked her up and carried her to the bed. He set her feet on the floor and bent her over the mattress. She braced for him, shaking visibly, while he unfastened his trousers. His flesh was hard and almost obscenely swollen, his groin filled with a savage ache at the sight of his wife laying there waiting for him, so trusting and still. So innocent. He thought of what he’d once told her, that there were certain things gentlemen didn’t ask of their wives. She’d said something about being willing, but it had been obvious she didn’t understand a damned thing about what he’d meant.
His hand moved over her narrow corseted back, hesitating at the bow-knot of laces. Erotic thoughts floated through his head, and he didn’t want to hide them from her. He wasn’t sure whether revealing more about his private desires would change the way she felt about him. But if there was ever a woman who could be both wife and mistress, who might be able to accept the whole of him, including the complexity of secret cravings and foolish fantasies, it would be her.
Before he let himself think twice about it, he untied the knot of the corset laces. Wordlessly he reached for Pandora’s arms, guiding them downward and behind her back. She tensed but didn’t resist. The position drew her shoulders taut and arched her bottom upward. His heart drummed as he deftly tied her wrists to the corset, taking care not to make the cords too tight.
The sight of her lightly trussed on the bed sent a wave of overwhelming heat through him. Breathing unsteadily, he kneaded and stroked her bottom. He sensed her bewilderment and curiosity, and saw her wrists flex tentatively against the cord restraints. She was half-naked and he was the one who was fully clothed, but he’d never felt more exposed. He waited for her reaction, ready to free her instantly if she objected. But she was silent, unmoving except for the quick rise and fall of her lungs.
Slowly his hand wandered down between her legs, coaxing them wider. He grasped the aching stiffness of his erection and stroked the head across her melting flesh, back and forth. The arch of her back deepened, and her fingers began to curl and straighten like delicate anemone fronds. She made a low, vibrant sound, and pushed backward against him, signaling not only permission but pleasure. Clearly she would allow this, and other intimacies in the future, as long as she trusted him.
Suffused with relief and excitement, he leaned over her and groaned out a few words, some of them tender, some crude, but he was beyond controlling anything. The second he entered her, she cried out and began to spasm, her inner muscles tightening while his hips rolled in continuous nudges that almost lifted her feet from the floor. Driving deep into the wet pulsations, he rode out her climax to the last helpless shudder, and when at last she lay still and gasping, he tugged at the laces to free her wrists.
He crawled onto the bed with her and unhooked her corset with savage tugs. After spreading the garment open, he tore the thin layer of her chemise down the front. He bent to lick upward from her navel to her breasts. She wriggled as if to escape, and laughed breathlessly as he growled and pinned her hips to the mattress. But he was too far gone for amusement, too ma
ddened by need. He mounted her, his shaft roughly probing until he found the right angle. As he slid inside, her intimate muscles gripped him fluidly, pulling him in to the hilt.
Pandora’s face changed, and she turned docile in the way of a wild creature accepting her mate, her hips canting upward to cradle and welcome him. He took her mouth with his, and thrust into the depths of her, building sensation until she began to gasp. He circled his hips, grinding sinuously, sending her into another climax. She nipped at his shoulder, dug in her nails, the little stings of pain inflaming him beyond sanity. Plunging deep, he took his own pleasure, letting it explode and shatter and dissolve him until he was lost in her, surrendering completely, wanting no other woman, no other fate.
Chapter 19
The following day, Dragon reported that his contact in the detective department had agreed to visit the print works in Clerkenwell and question Mrs. O’Cairre. In the meantime, Pandora could go about her usual activities, as the detective saw no reason for undue alarm.
The news was welcome, since Pandora and Gabriel had already agreed to attend a play that evening with Helen and Mr. Winterborne, and have a late dinner afterward. The comedy, a revival of The Heir-At-Law, was playing at the Haymarket Royal Theatre, the most fashionable playhouse in London.
“I’d rather not take you to a public place until the investigation is concluded,” Gabriel said with a frown, pulling on a shirt in his bedroom. “The area around the Haymarket is notoriously dangerous.”
“But I’ll be with you,” Pandora pointed out, “and Mr. Winterborne will be there as well. Furthermore, Dragon has insisted on going even though it’s supposed to be his night off. What could possibly happen to me?” She glanced in the mirror on top of the mahogany dresser and adjusted the drape of her double-stranded pearls over the lace bodice of her lavender-and-ivory evening gown.
Gabriel made a noncommittal sound, folding back the cuffs of his shirt. “Would you hand me the cufflinks on the dresser?”
She brought them to him. “Why aren’t you allowing Oakes to help you? Especially when you’re dressing for a formal evening. He must be distraught.”
“Probably. But I’d rather not have to explain where the marks came from.”
“What marks?”
For an answer, he pulled aside the open placket of his shirt, revealing the little red places on his shoulder where her teeth had nipped him.
Contritely Pandora stood on her toes to examine the marks, her color rising. “I’m so sorry. Do you think he would gossip about it?”
“Good God, no. As Oakes likes to say, ‘Discretion is the better part of valets.’ However”—his golden-bronze head lowered over hers—“there are some things I’d rather keep private.”
“Poor man. You look as though you’d been attacked by a wild beast.”
A husky laugh escaped him. “Just a small vixen,” he said, “who grew a bit fierce in her play.”
“You should bite her back,” Pandora said against his chest. “That would teach her to be gentler with you.”
Curving his hand along the side of her face, Gabriel tilted her head upward. After nibbling gently at her lower lip, he whispered, “I want her just the way she is.”
The interior of the Haymarket was luxurious and opulent, with cushioned seats and tiers of boxes decorated with gold moldings of antique lyres and oak wreaths. The domed rose-colored ceiling was covered in gilded ornamentation and hand-painted depictions of Apollo, while cut-glass chandeliers shed rich light on the fashionably dressed crowd below.
Before the performance began, Pandora and Helen sat in the theater box and talked, while their husbands hobnobbed with a group of men in the nearby box-lobby. Helen was in glowing good health and full of news, and seemed determined to persuade Pandora to join a ladies’ fencing class with her.
“You must learn to fence as well,” Helen urged. “It’s very good for posture and breathing, and my friend Garrett—that is, Dr. Gibson—says it’s an exhilarating sport.”
Pandora had no doubt that was all true, but she was fairly certain that putting a woman with balance problems in the proximity of pointy objects would have no good outcome. “I wish I could,” she said, “but I’m too clumsy. You know I don’t dance well.”
“But the fencing-master would teach you how to . . .” Helen’s voice faded as she looked in the direction of the upper dress circle seats, which were on the same level as their box. “My goodness. Why is that woman staring at you so fiercely?”
“Where?”
“On the left side of the dress circle seats. The brunette in the first row. Do you know her?”
Pandora followed her gaze to a dark-haired woman who was affecting interest in her theater program. She was slim and elegant, with classic features, deep-set eyes with extravagant lashes, and a pencil-slim nose angled perfectly over full red lips. “I haven’t a clue who she is,” Pandora said. “She’s quite beautiful, isn’t she?”
“I suppose. All I can see is that dagger-like stare.”
Pandora grinned. “It seems my skill at annoying people has now extended to ones I don’t even know.”
The striking woman was seated next to a stocky older gentleman with prodigious whiskers and a curiously two-toned beard, dark gray on the cheeks and jaw and white on the chin. His posture was military-straight, as if his back had been tied to a cart axle. The woman touched his arm and murmured to him, but he seemed not to notice, his attention fixed on the theater stage as if he were watching some invisible play.
Pandora felt an unpleasant shock as the brunette woman’s gaze met hers directly. No one had ever stared at her with such cold hatred before. She couldn’t think of anyone who would have a reason to look at her that way, except . . .
“I think I might know who she is,” she whispered.
Before Helen could respond, Gabriel came to occupy the empty seat next to Pandora. He turned so that his shoulder partially blocked her from the woman’s lethal stare. “That is Mrs. Black and her husband, the American ambassador,” he said quietly, his features hard. “I had no idea they would be here.”
Comprehending that it was a private matter, Helen hastily turned away to talk with her husband.
“Of course you didn’t,” Pandora murmured, surprised as she saw a tiny muscle jumping in Gabriel’s clenched jaw. Her husband, always so calm and sure of himself, was on the verge of losing his temper right there in the Royal Theatre.
“Would you like to leave?” he asked grimly.
“Not at all, I want to see the play.” Pandora would have rather died before giving his former mistress the satisfaction of making her leave the theater. She peeked around Gabriel’s shoulder and saw that Mrs. Black was still glaring at her as if she’d been wronged. For heaven’s sake, the woman’s husband was sitting beside her. Why didn’t he tell her to stop making a public display? The minor drama had now started to attract the attention of others who were seated in the dress circle, as well as some in the mezzanine boxes.
It must have seemed like a nightmare to Gabriel, whose every accomplishment and mistake had been scrutinized for his entire life. He had always been careful to protect his privacy and maintain an invulnerable façade. But apparently Mrs. Black was determined to make it clear to most of London society . . . and his wife . . . that they had been lovers. Knowing what a source of shame it was for Gabriel to have slept with another man’s wife . . . and to have it made public in this fashion . . . Pandora’s heart ached for him.
“She can’t hurt us,” she said softly. “She can glare until her eyeballs fall out, and it won’t bother me in the least.”
“This won’t happen again, by God. I’ll go to her tomorrow, and tell her—”
“No, you mustn’t. I’m sure Mrs. Black would love nothing better than for you to visit her. But I forbid it.”
There was a dangerous cold flicker in Gabriel’s eyes. “You forbid?”
It was quite possible no one had ever said such a thing to him before. He certainly d
idn’t seem to like it.
Pandora touched his face with her gloved hand, gently stroking his cheek. She knew that demonstrations of affection in public, even between husband and wife, were highly inappropriate, but at the moment, all that mattered was comforting him. “Yes. Because you’re mine now.” She smiled faintly, holding his gaze. “All mine, and I won’t share you. She’s not allowed to have even five minutes of your time.”
To her relief, Gabriel took a slow breath and seemed to relax. “You’re my wife,” he said quietly, catching her hand as she began to lower it. “No other woman has claim on me.” He held it in midair and deliberately unfastened the three pearl buttons at the wrist of her elbow-length kid glove. Pandora gave him a questioning glance. Staring steadily into her eyes, Gabriel tugged at the fingertips of the glove, one by one. Her breath caught as she felt the glove loosen.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
Gabriel didn’t reply, only pulled the glove slowly until it slid away from her arm. Hectic color spread over every inch of Pandora’s skin. The sensuous way he’d removed it, in front of so many curious gazes, sent a wash of hectic color over every inch of her skin.
Lifting her bare hand, Gabriel turned it over and pressed his mouth against her sensitive inner wrist, before nuzzling a kiss into the vulnerable cup of her palm. A few happily scandalized gasps and murmurs came from the crowd. It was a gesture of ownership, of intimacy, intended not only to demonstrate his passion for his new bride, but also to rebuke his former mistress. By tomorrow, every fashionable parlor in London would be buzzing with the gossip that Lord St. Vincent had been seen openly fondling his wife at the Haymarket, in view of his former mistress.
Pandora didn’t want to be used to hurt anyone, not even Mrs. Black. However, as Gabriel gave her a warning glance, daring her to protest, she kept her mouth shut and decided to take issue with him later.
Mercifully the lights were soon lowered, and the play began. It was a testament to the quality of the production and the skill of the actors that Pandora was able to relax and laugh at the quicksilver dialogue. However, she was aware that Gabriel was enduring the comedy rather than enjoying it.