Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)(46)

Good Lord, this was happening. Really, truly, disastrously … finally … happening.

He bent his head and pressed his lips to her exposed throat, reveling in the heat and scent of her skin. His tongue flicked over her pulse as he murmured her name. “Lily. Lily.”

“I lied to you earlier,” she whispered, between arousing gasps and sighs of pleasure. “I haven’t been thinking of taking a lover. I’ve been thinking of you.”

“I can’t do this,” he murmured, even as he traced her jaw with his tongue. Bollocks. He was already doing this, and he was primed to do far more on the slightest encouragement.

And encouragement was what she gave. Nothing slight about it.

“I can’t stop thinking of you. All day long, all yesterday for that matter. Ever since that first kiss. I can’t concentrate. I’m so restless in my own skin. When I close my eyes, all I see is you. All I feel is this.” She kissed his temple, his cheek. “I don’t know what’s happened to me, but I need this, Julian. I need you.”

Sweet heaven. He felt like he’d been waiting his whole life to hear those words. A fount of bliss and lust opened up inside him. He couldn’t dam it now. It just wasn’t in his power. Perhaps he juggled two identities, but he was only a man, at the base of both. A man who went after what he wanted—and he’d wanted her for so damned long. What restraint he possessed had been exhausted earlier that afternoon, walking away from her in the drawing room—and there, he’d had the added inducements of servants about, full daylight to reveal them, Leo’s ghost, and a judgmental parrot dangling from the gilt chandelier. Here, in this alley, they were just a man and a woman, stripped down to essentials. Anonymous. Libidinous.

Nothing could stop him here.

Possibilities churned furiously in his mind. He could have her, just for one night. Satisfy her curiosity, slake his own need. Just this once. He could protect her from consequences; he was expert at preventatives. If he experienced a sudden attack of conscience, they could simply refrain from actual intercourse. He needn’t physically join with her to give her pleasure.

God, the vivid images that thought inspired … A groan scraped from his throat.

But where? There was no good place. This was Lily. He could not take her to Julian Bellamy’s house, the scene of so many illicit liaisons. He would never allow her near James Bell’s humble rooms. A hotel? Too public. A carriage? So sordid.

“Take me home,” she said, intuiting his dilemma. “Just see me home, then stay. No one will notice. No one will care.”

Her house. Leo’s house. Inconceivable. He might as well dig up the man’s coffin and spit on it. “Swift would murder me.”

She launched herself into his arms, sending him back against the brick wall. He landed with her straddling his leg, the luscious swell of her thigh rubbing against his arousal. Pleasure blanked his brain. He grasped her backside, rocking her pelvis against his. How could something feel so unbelievably good, but still be not nearly enough? He needed more from her. He needed all of her. There had to be somewhere they could go.

She licked his ear, and he bit back a growl.

Here. There was here.

“Greedy bastard!”

The shout from the end of the alley froze him in place. Lily, oblivious to the interruption, kept right on tracing the contours of his ear with her tongue, greatly impeding his ability to think. Had a man from inside followed them? Or was this someone new?

“’Ere now, lass,” the man called. “Give us some o’ that, eh?”

Julian’s stomach turned. Not only from the quite deserved implication that he was about to use Lily like a cheap whore in the street, but because the accent marked the man a Scot.

There were thousands of Scotsmen in London. Thousands.

Still, Julian couldn’t help but wrench Lily away and crane his neck for a glimpse of the shadowy figures disappearing into the mist. Two large, densely muscled men. As they moved around the corner and through the feeble illumination of a lamp, Julian thought he caught the light glinting off a smooth, hairless head.

Two men. Large brutes, the both of them. One a Scot, the other bald.

Jesus Christ. After all his futile searching … Could it be Leo’s murderers had finally found him?

Chapter Twelve

Lily hardly knew what was happening. One moment, she and Julian were entangled in a passionate embrace. The next, he’d set her on her feet and dashed off down the alley.

Her kiss couldn’t have been that bad. Could it?

She hurried after him, catching up to him at the end of the block. “Julian—”

He motioned for quiet, peering around the corner.

“What is it?” she whispered. “What’s going on?”

Pointless to ask. In the dark, it wasn’t as though she could see to read his answer. He knew it, too, so he didn’t stop to give her one. He just grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her around the corner, pulling her down the street. They walked quickly, clinging to the shadows that edged the narrow lane. Lily spied two men some distance in front of them, lumbering down the street with the unhurried arrogance of men who’ve had too much to drink. Julian seemed to be following them. For what reason, she couldn’t imagine.

She struggled to keep pace with him, skidding and sliding over the wet cobblestones in her impractical evening slippers. She would have been better off barefoot. Her heel caught in a narrow gap in the pavement, and her ankle turned. Surprised by the sharp twist of pain, she cried out.