When she bent over, her short shift went up to reveal the cheeks of her gloriously round bottom. “Alex, I swear to God you are purposely teasing and tempting me … you are a born coquette!”
She straightened quickly. “ ’Tis you who are purposely teasing me, you devil, just to keep me covered with blushes.”
“Blushes are the only thing I want you covered with, my love.”
She set the stool down behind him and picked up the second towel. Then she used his shoulders to help her step up onto the stool. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” she asked anxiously.
“Almost brought me to my knees, and no doubt will before you are done with me, Hellion.”
“Do try to be serious for a moment,” she reproved. “Now, hold absolutely still while I dry the back of your head.” She dabbed his wound with gentle fingers, then held the towel still while it absorbed the water from his curling black hair. Finally she pronounced, “There, you are almost good as new.”
Nicholas turned to face her, plucked the towel from her fingers, and dropped it to the floor. Then with purposeful hands he lifted her damp shift over her head and dropped it after the towel. He cupped her face, gazed worshipfully into her eyes, dropped a hungry glance on her mouth, raised his eyes once more to hers, then drew her close for a tender kiss. “Alex, I worship you.”
His hands and his lips were so gentle, so reverent, it brought a lump to her throat. Slowly, his mouth became more demanding, and his hands dropped from her face and slid around her body, bringing her soft curves close against his hard length. His marble-hard shaft lay rigid between them, and he heard her draw in a swift breath as if he were hurting her. “This will be far more comfortable; trust me.” He slipped his erect cock between her legs, so that it lay along her hot cleft. Even with the stool beneath her feet, she had to rise up on her toes to facilitate their intimate position. Nick groaned. “I like you on a pedestal, my love. I swear I’ll never be able to look at a footstool again without thinking of you.”
Alex tasted the brandy on his lips, but it didn’t matter; the kiss made her breathless with longing. Each time her nipples brushed against the curly hair of his chest, she wanted to scream with excitement. His powerful, possessive hands stroked down her back and caressed her bum, drugging her senses. The words he murmured into her ear in his deep voice were becoming husky with desire, and the lids over his smoldering gray eyes were half closed and heavy with sensuality.
Her reaction to Nicholas was cataclysmic, and she knew it had nothing to do with the highly erotic setting of the brothel, with danger hovering close by. She had daydreamed about the dark, dominant twin for more than five years, perhaps even longer. The reality of this romantic encounter was overwhelming, a thousand times more intensely compelling than any girlish fantasy. His touch stole her senses; he was far more potent than any intoxicant. The heat of his body seeped into her flesh, setting her aflame with a raging desire that threatened to burn out of control and consume her. She was panting with need, and her breasts rose and fell against his powerful, muscled chest. Her hands alternately caressed then gripped his shoulders to prevent her body from dissolving into a pool at his feet. His eyes were now the color of smoke, and she prayed his yearning was as intense as hers.
Nick’s senses were saturated with the feel of her silken skin, the scent of her red-gold curls, and the taste of her honeyed mouth. “Lord God, how you make me quiver.”
Alex came out of her trance, immediately contrite. “Oh, it’s not me … it’s because you have lost so much blood! You should be abed, Nicholas.” Her eyes searched his face for any sign of an imminent collapse.
He gazed back at her and said solemnly, “Perhaps I will take advantage of the bed, since we must stay put until after midnight.”
She arched her bum away from him, and his erection immediately slid up her belly and touched her navel, sending a delicious shiver up through her breasts.
“Sweetheart, I wanted to carry you,” he protested.
She touched his lips with hers. “When you are recovered, you may carry me about all night and all day, if you desire.”
“I desire.” The tip of his tongue traced the outline of her lips, as if he could not bear even the briefest separation, then he took possession of her hand and helped her down from her pedestal. As he moved toward the big curtained bed, she felt shy and hung back, but hand-clasped as they were, he compelled her to follow. He drew the curtains closed, then stretched out on the black satin sheets and gently pulled her down to lie on top of him in the dominant position. After one lingering kiss, he murmured, “Sit up, so I can look at you.” And look he did. As she rose to her knees beside him, his eyes missed no finest detail as they worshipped her body, as if they were making intimate love to her.
Alex gazed down at the magnificent male who lay beneath her. Against the black satin, his dark beauty, more tempting than sin, aroused a wild passion she had never before experienced. Midnight-black lashes fringed pools of gray so deep and inviting she would willingly drown in them. Everything about him was virile, hard, and overtly male, making her feel delicately soft and feminine.
He slid his knowing fingers around her wrists and exulted in the rapid pulsebeat he found there. “Touch me,” he invited.
With his fingers still encircling her wrist, she reached out to stroke the slabs of muscle on his impossibly wide chest. The slight pressure of his fingers drew her hand lower to caress his taut belly and dip into his navel. The swift intake of his breath told her that her touch thrilled him. He drew her hand to his marble-hard shaft, and when she ran her fingertip from its velvet head down along its length, her eyes widened as he became engorged and his size increased. “Now, you take my wrist, and guide me to touch you.”
She slid her fingers around his thick wrist and lifted his hand to touch her lips. Then shyly she lowered it so that his fingers caressed her heart. “Can you feel how wildly my heart is beating?” Her flesh leaped wherever his hand touched, and breathlessly she drew it up so that he could cup her breast. A sigh of enchantment dropped from her lips as he weighed it in his palm then circled her taut nipple with his fingertip. Feeling more bold, she drew his hand to her other breast and received her reward. With great daring, she moved his hand to her belly and shuddered when he drew a circle around her navel then delved inside. She held his wrist tightly, not daring to lower his hand, yet wanting him, needing him, longing for him to touch her mons. Finally, she simply withdrew her fingers from his wrist and allowed him to wander wherever he wished.
Nicholas threaded his fingers through the red-gold curls on her high mons. “Have you the least notion how many times I’ve done this before in my dreams? I want you to straddle me, love.”
Alex could not bring herself to open her thighs wide enough to span his hips, narrow though they were compared to his chest. Instead, she straddled one muscled thigh. As she did so, she felt his heavy sac brush against her knee. His quick groan made her think she had hurt him. “Are you all right?”
“No, my love, I am in an agony of need, but I beg you to leave your knee exactly where it is. Now, lean back a little.”
She did as he asked and saw that it thrust forward her pubic curls most impudently. She watched in delicious fascination as he reached out once more to play among the red-gold tendrils and toy with the tiny bud at the tip of her cleft. “Nicholas!” she breathed as a small spring coiled tightly within the folds of her woman’s center.
Crying out his name encouraged him to slip a long finger into her hot sheath and delicately stroke her tight honeyed walls. She wanted to protest, but the sensations his finger aroused made her crave more, not less. She began to pant, then writhe, needing more, much more. “Nicholas … no!”
He immediately withdrew his finger and cupped her entire mons with his palm. He squeezed firmly to ease the ache he had caused, then held out his arms to her. “Come to me, love.”
She went down to him, and he enfolded her in strong, powerful arms that Alexandra knew wo
uld keep her safe forever. She offered up her lips, and his mouth claimed hers in a possessive kiss that left no doubt just how much he wanted her. One hand stroked down her back, while the other cupped a delicate breast, and his arousal pressed into her belly like a hot branding iron. “Nick … please!”
He looked down into her lovely face with disbelief at what she was begging him to do. “Alexandra, my beloved, I have no intention of initiating you in a brothel on black satin sheets!”
Alone with Nicholas in the big curtained bed, the world had receded for Alex. In their own warm, intimate cocoon, filled with love and magic, it seemed as if nothing and no one could touch them. Even her ability to think had been stolen by the dark, dominant, dangerous male who lay naked beside her, enfolding her in his arms. Her mouth curved in a secret smile. He had his own rigid code of respect that obviously extended to where he would make love to her. She kissed the cleft in his chin, which had always been irresistible to her. “Who taught you such honor?”
“My idea of honor has undergone a drastic change in the past year, about many things, but not about you, Alexandra. Honor is instinctive. No man can give it to you; no man can take it from you. Honor is something you give yourself.”
Alexandra pressed closer. His honor had kept her at arm’s length for years, because she was intended for his twin and thus forbidden to him. For a blinding moment, she feared he would never make her his. If he rejects me again, I shall die!
His hand stroked over her bum so possessively that the fear of rejection melted into a warm pool of pleasure, where she lay floating ever closer to the shores of Paradise. Her mons lay against his hip, and each time he moved, she became more aroused. The slow glide of his lips along her neck turned her blood to molten hot gold, which flowed into her breasts and down into her belly then cascaded between her legs, making her sheath burn with liquid fire. She arched against his hip, then slid down and rubbed her woman’s center up and down his muscled thigh.
Her raw sensuality stunned him, and he sent up thanks to the Goddess of Love, who must have bestowed such a rare gift upon them. He decided to keep her in a delicious state of arousal until he was able to lift her into his own bed at Curzon Street. Only then would he release the passion that he had held in check for years. Again he found her lips, traced the seam with an insistent tongue, then entered the dark, hot cave. At the same time, his fingertips separated the red-gold curls and slipped into her pink cleft, unerringly finding and stroking the delicate little rosebud until it unfurled its petals. His tongue thrust in and out in the sensual rhythm in which lovers had indulged since the dawn of time. His fingers pressed firmly into her scalding, dewy cleft, then began a slow, circular motion, designed to arouse her fully.
His mouth and his fingers took her higher and higher, until she was flying to heights that were dizzying and intoxicating and so blissful she wanted him to make love to her with his tongue and fingertips forever, and never, ever stop. She became aware of a fluttering as delicate as a butterfly wing, then an ache deep within began to build, making her arch her mons into his powerful hand as he skillfully lifted her toward climax. Everything, including time, seemed to stop, as she hovered precariously on the brink; then, with reckless daring, she plunged over the edge of the precipice. The sunburst of sensation made her so delirious, she bit his shoulder. She heard a scream and knew it was her own. It was truly the most glorious feeling she had ever experienced. The initial explosion was followed by deep, intense throbs, close together at first, then drawing out to smaller pulsations. By the time they ceased, Alexandra felt boneless and replete.
Nicholas cupped her mons in his hand, enjoying the feel of her pulsations as he took the soft animal cries she made into his mouth. This was the way he wanted her every night for the rest of his life, writhing and frenzied beneath him, while he buried himself deep inside her. He was in an agony of need as he released her lips, dipped his head to her lush breast and licked his tongue around its jewel-hard center, then sucked it whole into his mouth.
As his teeth toyed with her nipple, Alexandra felt hot threads spark to life between her legs, and she realized that he could ignite her again at will. Suddenly, she wanted to know what would make him groan with need and cry out with passion. More than anything, her desire now became centered on his pleasure, his hunger, and she wanted to learn ways to satisfy that hunger. Feminine ways, wicked ways, surely there are more than one! Alex boldly reached out to touch between his legs, but Nick’s powerful hand covered hers and drew it away. “Don’t, my love. I’ll spend!”
“Don’t you want to spend?” she whispered shyly.
“Of course I want to spend, but not now, not here.” How can I explain? He knew he couldn’t. “I need my strength,” he improvised.
“Oh, Nick, I’m so wicked, thinking only of pleasure. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”
He grit his teeth to hold on to his control and stop his semen from cascading all over her. “Talk to me; that might help. Tell me what in the name of God you are doing at Champagne Charlie’s.”
Alex took a deep breath and plunged in, instinctively putting her actions in the best possible light. “Nick, you were so right to laugh at my ambition to become a writer; I soon learned that selling a novel was an impossibility. Dressed as a male, I did manage to get a job writing articles for the Political Register, but even when I included a scandalous caricature of Prinny, they only paid me a pittance.”
“Dressed as a male?” he repeated quietly, as if her sanity should be questioned.
“Well, it was so much easier dressed that way to roam freely about the seedy areas of London, where crime and poverty flourish. You were right about London having an underbelly, and now I understand completely why you didn’t want me exposed to it.”
“Roam freely where crime and poverty flourish?” He couldn’t believe the things she was telling him!
“But the best part was that it allowed me to frequent the haunts of the ton, such as White’s and Champagne Charlie’s.”
Nick held her away from him, so that he could search her face. “You came to Charlie’s dressed as a male?”
“Well how else could I have an intimate conversation with a high-class harlot?”
“How else, indeed? Do go on, sweetheart.”
“It was a revelation to learn how much money a female could earn in a place like this. Up until Charlie’s, I’d only seen street prostitutes, usually accompanied by their whoremaster.”
“Alexandra, words fail me.” It is a miracle she hasn’t been raped or murdered by now! He held her more tightly. She truly does need a keeper, if only to protect her from herself! But a part of him admired her—she certainly hadn’t been sitting around sewing doilies while he was off at war!
“Then I found my mother living in the Rookery in St. Giles. She was very ill and needed care. I took her home to Dottie but thought it only fair that I shoulder the medical expenses and whatnot. That’s when I came to Charlie with a proposition.”
“You propositioned Charlie?” he asked faintly. “The way you tell it, my love, it sounds perfectly reasonable.”
“And so it was perfectly reasonable. I knew Lady Emma Hamilton had been a posing girl and thought this place might benefit from a similar attraction. Charlie agreed, and here I am.”
“Here you are indeed, naked, with a man who doesn’t know whether to spank you or bed you, and will likely do both before morning!”
“Oh, I never performed actually naked. I wore a flesh-colored body net that covered me from neck to knees; it belonged to Dottie, as part of her Godiva costume. But it finally fell apart, and tonight I had no choice but to perform naked.”
“Then it was providence that guided me to Charlie’s tonight.”
“I don’t believe it was. It was sheer risk and recklessness, Nick Hatton! Did you really rob the Prince of Wales?”
“I did,” he acknowledged solemnly, “and Frederick and Cousin Gloucester. My ill-gotten gains are in a bag und
er this very bed.”
Suddenly, Alexandra began to laugh. “We are a matched pair!” Her breasts rose and fell against his chest. “We are a perfectly outrageous couple with far more daring than brains.”
From somewhere they heard a clock chime midnight. “Get your clothes and I’ll dress you.” His mouth went dry at the thought of inching her stockings up her long legs and fastening her garters.
When Charlie looked in on them, Nick had on his trousers and boots, and his female companion was fully dressed. “I can manage without a shirt, but I’m afraid I must impose upon you for a jacket, my dearest Charlotte.”
She looked him up and down with appreciative eyes. “It will have to be one of the servant’s. I can’t purloin a jacket from one of my customers, no matter how anxious he was to rid himself of such an encumbrance.”
When Charlie returned with a claret-colored coat, Nick gallantly thanked her. But when she dutifully counted out Alexandra’s hundred guineas, Nick looked on grimly. “Caprice will not be back.” His tone permitted no argument.
“I surmised as much, and I don’t imagine your visits will be any too frequent in the future, Hazard Hatton,” she said smoothly. “I believe you have met your match!”
Out on Pall Mall, Nicholas entered the hackney first, and when no one rushed forward to arrest him, he signaled to Alexandra, who stood waiting just inside the doorway.
Nicholas Hatton need not have worried, as it turned out. The Prince Regent and his royal companions were quite vexed at both the Guardsman who had cried, “Stop, thief!” and the officer from the Bow Street Mounted Patrol who had fired off a shot then initiated pursuit. Under no circumstances did Prinny wish to draw attention to himself when he was indulging his insatiable vice of gambling. Especially not at the den of iniquity known as the Foxhole, where they were usually entertained by Champagne Charlie’s whores. If such a thing got out, the cries for reform could very easily turn into demands.