The Devil You Know (The Devil DeVere #3)(19)

Diana spun around. “Excuse me?”

“I will see the mare run at four o’clock.”

She almost forgot to breathe. “Then we have an agreement?”

“A conditional agreement,” he responded. “I won’t allow you to hazard what little remains in your possession unless I deem her a true prospect to win.”

“It is hardly your decision what I do with my jewels or my horse, but you won’t be disappointed,” Diana said.

The corner of his lips twitched. “I hope not. Twice in one day would surely be more than I can bear.”

50





Chapter Six


“Darling, when you return to town after entertaining these rustics, don’t you think we should make it official? I am three months out of mourning, after all. Not that our...arrangement is any particular secret.” Caroline chuckled as she traced circles around the flat disk of his nipple.

Her words sounded a deafening alarm in his head, pulling Ludovic abruptly from his sex-sated stupor. He regarded Caroline from under a deceptively hooded gaze. “Official?” he drawled.

“Of course. Now that Beauclerc no longer stands in our way, we are at last free to be together.”

DeVere answered dryly, “By my count, we have already been together in as many ways as is humanly possible. Thus, it appears to me the good duke was never any true obstacle.”

“You are entirely too wicked.” She laughed and raised herself up to straddle his belly. She rubbed her mons against him with a purr, reaching a hand behind to guide him into her, but not find-51

The Devil You Know

ing what she expected. “Is there a problem, my lord? I’ve never known your cock to require any encouragement.”

“Perhaps it’s become bored with the menu?”

“Bored!” She threw her powdered head back with a derisive laugh. “You lying whoreson! I’m the best you’ve ever had! You just don’t want to make an honest woman of me.”

“All too true, my sweet. Did it never occur to you that it was precisely your unavailability that made up the greater part of your charm?”

Her face contorted with rage, she drew back to strike him, but he caught her by both wrists. “Tsk, tsk, Caro. I think not!” He flipped her onto her back, caging her with his body.

“I thought we would be good together, but I see now I’d only demean myself if attached to you.”

He smirked. “But why would you even consider settling for a mere viscount after having a ducal coronet? As I recall, you once thought it a very poor bargain.”

“Is that what this is truly about?” Her breathing was ragged, her gaze venomous. “Just some petty revenge because I once jilted you? How pathetic.”

He thought she would make the effort now to push him off her, but she undulated beneath him instead, wrapping her legs around his waist, pressing her hot core against him. He found himself hardening against his will.

“Part of you still wants me,” she said with smug satisfaction.

“You can’t deny it now. ” No, he couldn’t; but then again, his cock always had defiantly refused to be ruled by his brain. “Very well, Caroline, I won’t deny it.” He gave her a fulsome smile as he thrust into her. “So let us just consider this our farewell f*ck.”

Diana left DeVere’s

***

chambers in a peculiar daze comprised of equal parts anger, confusion, and lust. She had never been so affected by a man. All he had to do was look at her to set her skin tingling and pulse racing. It had taken little more than a touch and a suggestive word from him for her emptiness to expand and a powerful yearning to take hold of her body. When his lips had seared her skin, she had almost melted away—certainly her fine upstanding resolution had.

52

Victoria Vane

Outwardly, she had reacted with the proper amount of righteous indignation, storming away as any virtuous woman would, yet now she wondered how virtuous she really was. The meaning of his parting comment was clear, and Diana wondered if a small part of her shared his disappointment.

Deny it as she tried, she actually envied the freedom of those like the duchess and DeVere, people who broke convention and flouted society to take what they wanted and do as they pleased.

She knew that many unhappy wives hired strapping, young footmen to satisfy their unfulfilled needs, but she told herself she wasn’t such a woman. If she was, wouldn’t she have taken a lover long ago? But then again, she’d never experienced the acute physical awareness, the profound magnetic pull that she felt with DeVere. God knows what might have happened had the duchess not interrupted them.

Still, as much as Diana was drawn to him, she hated her vulnerability. He was unquestionably an expert in the arts of seduction. Even his best friend had warned her about him, but she had believed herself impervious to his mesmerizing charm. She now laughed at her own folly. The Viscount DeVere was a dangerous man indeed.

With these thoughts pillaging her peace, Diana knocked on Annalee’s door.

“Come in,” was the faint reply. Diana entered the apartments decorated in soothing shades of oyster and dusty rose damask to find Annalee had been dozing with a book in her lap. She gave Diana a tired smile. “Have you seen DeVere?”

“Yes,” Diana said. “I have just come from speaking with him.”