Dreaming of You (The Gamblers #2)(97)

Derek shrugged. “That’s one reason,” he said without conceit. “The other is that I don’t enjoy it.”

“You don’t?”

“I never did.”

“But how can you be so good at something and not enjoy it?”

“Now there’s a question,” he said, and laughed softly, setting aside the cards. Leading her to the hazard table, he took her by the h*ps and lifted her up. She sat on the edge of the table, her knees pushed apart as he stood between them. Derek leaned forward, his mouth a warm, gentle brand. “It’s not like your writing, sweet. When you sit at your desk, you put your heart and your mind into your work, and it gives you satisfaction. But cards are just patterns. Once you learn the patterns, it’s automatic. You can’t enjoy something if it doesn’t demand a little of your heart.”

Sara caressed his black hair. “Do I have a little of your heart?” A moment after she asked, she regretted the question. She had promised herself not to push him, not to demand things he wasn’t ready for.

Derek’s eyes were shadowed green as he stared at her without blinking. He leaned forward, and his lips sought hers, kindling a warmth inside her that rapidly leapt to bright flame. Sara shivered as she felt him raise her skirts to her waist. He wedged himself tighter between her spread knees. They kissed ardently, groping underneath confining clothes, clumsily plucking at buttons in impetuous haste.

Sara gasped as she felt his hot, intimate flesh rising against her body. “Not here…Someone will see…”

“They’re all gone.” Gently he bit into her neck.

“But we can’t…”

“Now,” he insisted, pulling her head against his shoulder as he took her there on the hazard table, making her shudder in helpless pleasure.

* * *

Sara was alone in the private apartments over the club, viewing herself in the long mirror of the bedroom. She was dressed to attend the birthday dinner of Lord Raiford’s seventeen-year-old brother Henry. On private occasions such as this the Raifords surrounded themselves with warm, enjoyable company. Sara knew the evening would be filled with wit and laughter. Derek had gone with Alex to help deliver Henry’s present, a shining Thoroughbred horse, to Swans’ Court before the boy arrived home from Eton.

Sara smoothed the skirt of her green velvet gown. Low-cut and severe in its simplicity, the gown was adorned only by a row of six golden clasps that held the split front of the skirt together. She was wearing a necklace Derek had given her to mark their first month of marriage, a gorgeous creation of diamonds and tumbled emeralds that lay in intricate strands over her chest. Admiring the sparkling necklace in the mirror, Sara smiled and turned to view it from another angle.

Suddenly her heart stopped.

The reflection showed there was someone behind her.

Whirling around, Sara stared with wide eyes at the golden-haired woman who held a pistol pointed directly at her.

Chapter 12

Lady Ashby’s face was taut, her eyes brilliant with madness and hatred.

Sara was the first to speak, hearing her own calm voice with a sense of amazement. “You must have come through the hidden passages.”

“I knew about them long before you ever met him,” Joyce sneered, her gaze darting to the huge gilded bed. “I was with him in that bed too many times to count. We were magnificent together. We invented things that had never been done before. Don’t move.” Her grip on the gun was steady.

Sara took a quick, shallow breath. “What do you want?”

“I want to have a look at the woman he’s taken as his wife.” Joyce smiled contemptuously. “Covered in velvet and jewels…as if that might fool others into thinking you’re a lady of consequence.”

“A lady such as yourself?”

Joyce ignored the jab, staring mesmerized at the necklace that glittered against Sara’s pale skin. “Those emeralds are the exact color of his eyes. No one else has eyes like that.” She glared at Sara in crackling fury. “I said don’t move!”

Sara froze, having begun to inch toward the long tasseled rope that would ring the servants’ bell.

“You must be pleased with yourself,” Joyce said, “admiring yourself in your fine gown, with his ring on your finger. You think you have what I covet most. You think he belongs to you. But your marriage means nothing. He belongs to me. I put my mark on him.”

“He doesn’t want you,” Sara whispered, her eyes locked on Joyce’s vindictive face.

“You country simpleton! Do you actually think you’ve had any more of him than a hundred women could claim? I know him every bit as well as you do. I know the pattern of hair on his chest, the smell of his skin. I’ve felt his scars beneath my hands, and the muscles moving on his back. I know what it is to have him inside me…the way he moves…slow and deep…just before he finds his release.” Joyce’s eyes half-closed. “A gifted lover, your bastard husband. No other man on earth understands a woman’s body as he does. A big, sensual beast, with no conscience and no scruples. He is my perfect counterpart—and he knows it.”

Swiftly Sara darted to the bellpull and gave it a frantic jerk, expecting to hear the explosion of the pistol. But Joyce didn’t fire. Trembling and white, Sara faced her. “The servants will be up here right away. I suggest that you leave, Lady Ashby.”