Then Came You (The Gamblers #1)(7)

“Where was her husband?”

“Away to the country.”

“What would she want to do with a dirty boy she had just plucked from the streets?” Lily asked suspiciously, and scowled as he gave her a knowing smile. “I don’t believe this, Derek! Not a bloody word of it!”

“First she ’ad me take a bath,” Derek reminisced, a thoughtful expression on his face. “God…the ’ot water…hard soap, an it smelled so sweet…an the rug on the floor…soft. I washed my arms an elbows first…my skin looked so white to me…” He shook his head with a faint smile and sipped some brandy. “Afterwards I was shiwerin’ like a newborn pup.”

“And then I suppose she invited you into her bed and you were a magnificent lover, beyond anything she had experienced before,” Lily said sarcastically.

“No.” Derek grinned. “The worst, more like. ’Ow did I know to please a woman? I only knew as to please myself.”

“But she liked it anyway?” Lily asked skeptically. She was experiencing the same confusion she always had concerning such matters. She had no idea what drew men and women together, why they desired to share a bed and engage in an act that was so painful, embarrassing, and joyless. There was no doubt that men enjoyed it far more than women did. Why would a woman deliberately seek out some stranger to couple with? A blush came to her cheeks and her gaze fell, but she listened intently as Derek continued.

“She taught me what she liked,” he said. “An’ I wanted to learn.”

“Why?”

“Why.” Derek hesitated, drinking more, staring into the dancing fire. “Any man can rut, but few knows or cares to please a woman. An’ to see a woman like that, going soft an eazy underneaf me…it gives a man power, y’see?” He glanced at Lily’s perplexed face and laughed. “No, I s’pose you don’t, poor gypsy.”

“I’m not poor anything,” she retorted, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “And what do you mean by ‘power’?”

The smile he turned to her was faintly nasty. “Tickle a woman’s tail right, an’ she’ll do anyfing for you. Anyfing.”

“Thing,” Lily said distinctly, and shook her head in bemusement. “I don’t agree with you, Derek. I’ve had my…I mean, I’ve done…that…and it wasn’t at all what I expected. And Giuseppe was known everywhere as Italy’s greatest lover. Everyone said so.”

Derek’s bright green eyes filled with mockery. “Sure ’e did it right?”

“Since I conceived a child from the act, he must have done something right,” Lily retorted.

“A man can father a thousand bastards, an’ still not do it right, lovey. Plain as a pipe stem—you don’t know nofing about it.”

Arrogant male, Lily thought, and gave him a speaking glance. She didn’t care how someone did it, there was no possible way it could be pleasant. Frowning, she remembered Giuseppe’s wet mouth on her skin, the suffocating weight of his body, the pain that had driven through and through her until she had gone rigid in silent misery…

“Is this all you have to give?” he had demanded in his fluid Italian, his hands roving over her body. She had flinched from the intimate groping that had brought only embarrassment, the rough probing that brought pain. “Ah, you’re like all the English…cold as a fish!”

Long before then, she had learned that men could never be trusted with her heart. Giuseppe had taught her not to trust anyone with her body, either. To subject herself to that again, from any man, would be more degradation than she could bear.

Reading Lily’s thoughts, Derek stood up and approached her chair. He braced his hands above her head and stared down at her with glinting green eyes. Lily shifted uncomfortably, feeling trapped. “You do tempt me, lovey,” Derek murmured. “I’d like to be the man what shows you the pleasure it can be.”

Disliking the threatened feeling that was coming over her, Lily scowled at him. “I wouldn’t allow you to touch me, you wax-nosed cockney.”

“I could if I wanted to,” he returned evenly. “An’ I’d make you like it. You needs a good tumble, worse than any woman I ever knew. But it won’t be me that does you over.”

“Why not?’ Lily asked, trying to sound bored. Her voice held a nervous quaver that made him smile.

“I’d lose you then,” he said. “That’s what always ’appens. An’ the devil will go blind before I loses you. So you’ll find some other man to lift your ’eels for. An’ I’ll be ’ere, when you come back to me. Always.”

Lily was quiet, her wondering gaze locked on his purposeful face. Perhaps, she thought, this was as close as Derek could ever come to loving someone. He saw love as a weakness, and he despised weakness in himself. But at the same time, he depended on their odd friendship. He didn’t want to lose her…well, she didn’t want to lose him, either.

She gave him a glance of mock scorn. “Was that supposed to be a declaration of affection?” she asked.

The mood was broken. Derek grinned and rumpled her short hair, pulling at the silky curls. “Whatewer you wants it to be, lovey.”

After her meeting with Zachary, Lily went to Craven’s in search of Derek. Certainly he would know something about Raiford. Derek knew the financial worth of every man in England, including past bankruptcies and scandals, future inheritances, and outstanding debts and liabilities. Through his own intelligence service, Derek was also aware of the private contents of their wills, which men kept mistresses and how much they paid for them, and what marks their sons made at Eton, Harrow, and Westfield.