The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(19)

Unbidden, her gaze drifted from the page over to the door, as the stranger’s visage wandered through her thoughts once more. Who was he, the late-night wanderer with his sad eyes who’d buried that misery in drink?

For the course of her life, with her brother’s tutelage, she’d been trained to see noblemen as emotionless, unfeeling bastards. It had been a lesson already learned through her own experience on the streets as a child, begging for a coin at the hands of those lords and ladies, only to be invisible in her struggles.

Yet, the depth of emotion she’d spied in the blond stranger’s agonized gaze contradicted those long-held truths. What pain should he know that he’d imbibe to the point of falling all over himself in such a disreputable gaming hell? Oh, yes, her brother said all men imbibed, but when she’d spied him in the club, there had been a wealth of emotion in his eyes. An intelligence and somberness absent in most of the men she observed from her lonely window abovestairs.

All that emotion had been lost to the effects of alcohol, but so remained the questions about what had driven him to lose himself in that bottle. “Enough,” she muttered, and abandoning all hope of work, she slammed the ledger shut with a comforting thump. She tossed it onto her nightstand.

It spoke volumes to her predictable existence that she should allow one chance meeting with a drunken stranger to shape her thoughts and wonderings. She yanked off her spectacles, and dropped them atop the leather book.

Helena burrowed into the downy-soft feather mattress . . . and stared unblinking at the ceiling above. She frowned, and wiggled in her spot. Too many nights she’d lain awake, dreading the nightmares that came when she drifted off to sleep. With an aggravated sigh, she flipped onto her side . . . and looked at the opposite wall. Tonight’s restlessness had nothing to do with the demons that lurked from her past.

Rather, the wicked grin of a powerfully built gentleman haunted her waking thoughts.



Firm lips found the sensitive spot along her neck, where her pulse fluttered. With a shameful moan, Helena turned into that sweet caress. In response, the stranger ran a large, strong hand over her back, lower, ever lower. He tugged at the hem of her nightgown. His fingers danced along her skin, and she arched, a breathless cry escaping her. His lips moved from the sweet spot he loved on her neck and she moaned in protest, but he merely shifted his attention to the peak of one breast. Her hips shot off the bed as she begged for more. Not knowing in her innocence what more was, but knowing he would show her.

And he did.

Another groan escaped her as he shoved her modest nightshift higher still. He searched his palms over the curve of her hips, and pulled her buttocks close against the vee of his hard thighs.

Heat, the kind rained down by a stream of sunlight, bathed Helena from within. The sensation filled every corner of her once-chilled body—

Helena jerked upright. Her chest moved quickly from the force of her dream. Not the nightmares which so often plagued her but rather a dream which a virgin, still at four and twenty, had no business having. With the clock ticktocking a grating staccato beat in the silence, Helena pressed her palms to her flaming cheeks, and concentrated on drawing in slow, even breaths. It was all manner of things improper and scandalous, and yet . . . Helena closed her eyes and fought to draw forth the memory of the faceless stranger who’d come to her. His unidentifiable features shifted in and out of focus, until he was transformed into a bold, midnight visitor with the face and physique of a Greek god carved in stone, so vastly preferable to the horrors that often dogged her sleep.

“Enough,” she mumbled. There was business to attend. There was always business to attend. She glanced to the slight crack in the brocade curtains and choked. Sunlight filtered through that narrow opening. Daylight? Surely not. She shot her gaze to the clock. Ten minutes past nine? A groan spilled from her lips and she covered her face with her hands.

Making it a point to rise just before the sun peeked over the horizon, she never slept in. Laziness and sloth were unpardonable sins in the Hell and Sin Club, and she held herself to the same high standard Ryker expected of all his employees. She’d worked to build her position as one to command respect for what she did for the club and not her relationship to the owner of it.

Helena flopped back, her head colliding with the soft, still-warm pillow, and closing her eyes she ran anxiously through her daily tasks. The books needed tending. She still had to prepare the liquor reports for Ryker, and with the mess they were in, and her lolling about in bed, she’d be behind in her work. She was never, ever late in completing a—

A loud snore penetrated the quiet and she froze.

Ticktock-ticktock.

Helena whipped her head to the right, and her gaze landed on the same golden stranger who’d slipped into her dreams. All air left her on a swift exhale, as the wicked memories of her dream came rushing forward.

It had been a dream. Mayhap it still was a dream.

She quickly yanked her attention upwards, concentrating on the faint crack in the plaster, on the tick of the clock, on anything other than the panic roiling in her breast.

Angling her head ever so slightly, she stole a sideways peek. Oh, bloody hell!

The aquiline nose and high, proud cheekbones lent the midnight wanderer an aura of strength and confidence, even in sleep. Her breath came in quick, panicked spurts and she promptly pressed her eyes closed. Unleashing a silent stream of vicious curses, she forced herself to look at the man lying beside her. In her bed. Her redundant, panicked thoughts rolled over each other and she attempted to slow them as they rapidly careened out of control. Her lips still burned from the memory of . . .