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“You’re playing with fire.” His reply was barely a rasp, eyes fixed on the swirling cloth. He couldn’t hide the raw quiver of need in his words, and Bronwyn dropped a bold gaze to the crotch of his trousers that was already crudely jutted. He might be made of ice and able to put on an impassive mien, but he wasn’t immune to her down there.
“But I do so love a good game. Don’t you,sir?”
Eyelashes flickering down, she abandoned the cloth, her hands reaching indelicately between her thighs. Gracious, she was so aroused, her body started to shudder at the faintest brush of contact. The primal growl that rumbled out of the duke’s chest made the paroxysm hovering just below the surface break free. Bronwyn gave into it like the wanton she was, soaking up every undulation of pleasure that came forth.
The slam of the door was the only sign that he had gone.
That round of battle went squarely to her.
Was thatdisappointmentshe felt? Bronwyn threw an arm over her face and sank below the water. She hadn’t meant to do what she’d done. She had only hoped to rattle him a bit, but then she’d lost control of the very game she had been playing. She might have won the battle, but him leaving hadn’t meant he’d flown a white flag of surrender.
No, this conflict was just beginning…and all she had succeeded in doing was to provoke her opponent. Bronwyn had no intention of giving in without a fight. She was clever and she was persistent. There had to be a way off this ship once they got closer to London.
She would find it, if it was the last thing she did.
Eleven
Valentine felt no guilt at stroking himself to vicious completion, bathing for the second time today, now that his spend was coated all over him. He’d barely been able to get his excruciatingly hard cock from his trousers. After watching her in that bath, two delirious pumps were all it had taken to feel like his entire insides had shaken loose from their mortal trappings.
Panting, he leaned his head on the porcelain side of the tub, images flowing through his mind of her sprawled in decadent display, breasts bobbing above the water and begging for his mouth. Valentine had no idea how he had remained upright at the door and not crouched at the side pleading for favors. Imploring for a taste…wanting his tongue to be pressed where her fingers were.
Hell! He was growing hard again.
How had he been brought so low as to this base version of himself, driven by carnal need? This uncontrolled, wild creature that he loathed.Thiswas why he kept his emotions firmly buried beneath layers and layers of pure frozen will. A man should not be ruled by his passions, especially not a man in the bloody business of espionage.
A chit who fancied herself a spy.
Valentine’s laugh was guttural. Did she have an ounce of sense in that fool head of hers? Gallivanting off with stolen reports and secret messages to America where she could have gotten herself killed or incarcerated, which would have had her wishing for death! He knew of the ills that went on in those places for prisoners of war. It didn’t matter if one was female. In fact, the cruelties of war were much worse.
God damn it!She made him see red.Burnred. He found her infuriating and intriguing in equal measure, but it was evident that she was in over her head, and whatever she was doing had to stop before she got hurt.
What on earth was she thinking by colluding with Van Lew? Who had put her in touch with the woman in the first place? He’d heard whispers of the infamous spy known as Crazy Bet in the last two years since she’d been recruited by Union General Benjamin Butler, thanks to some of his former associates in the know. Bronwyn was nothing like her. She was young, inexperienced, and untrained. A sheltered, delicate, highborn aristocrat.
She’s not so delicate.
Valentine recalled her grim determination and shot to the man’s thigh in the square, and he scowled. That could have been by pure accident, and if it wasn’t, so what if she could shoot a gun? Being a good marksman didn’t make her an expert in deadly situations. Now, she had a target on her back.
His anger returned full force. It wouldn’t compare to that of her brother’s however. Valentine didn’t want to have to be the one to tell the duke what his younger,unwedsister had been up to across the Atlantic with no chaperones or protection. Ashvale would have her hide the moment they docked and lock her away in a remote convent somewhere.
If she was lucky…
She was so maddeningly immovable, refusing to confess who her contact in London was. There was either a traitor in the Home Office or someone was running a clandestine operation under the authority of the one person who could approve something like this…the queen herself. Then again, nothing went without Palmerston’s sanction, so who the bloody hell was it? Who would endanger a duke’s sister?
She knowingly endangers herself.
Good God, his thoughts were all over the place. Valentine was all for any woman following her dreams and doing whatever she wanted, but he was thinking like a caveman when it came to Bronwyn Chase for some reason. He wanted to protect her…by keeping her under lock and key. Would he have done the same with Lisbeth? He knew the answer before he even finished the question. Of course not. Lisbeth was a seasoned, trained assassin, if she had to be. She could speak half a dozen languages, blend into any situation, and seduce the hell out of anyone.
Bronwyn is capable all those things.
Of course she was.
She was the fuckingKestrel.
Valentine scrubbed a palm over his face. That thread of guilt beneath all the self-recrimination pulled taut. The tangled web seemed to constrict with him squarely at the center. His unruly emotions veered from being furious that he hadn’t recognized her for what she was more quickly…that he had been so blinded by his lust for hisbest mate’s sisterthat he hadn’t been aware of what was right in front of him all along. She dulled his very reliable senses, and perhaps that was the most frustrating part of it, because she also made him feel the most alive than he had in months. Years, even.
Good Lord, theaudacityof her in that bath.
He’d wanted to pluck her from the water like a rosy, freshly washed fruit and devour her. Show her how to make that luscious body writhe and squirm. But the lady was squarely off-limits. At least until he decided what to do with her. The ship had already left port, so unless she jumped over the side into frozen water, she wasn’t going anywhere.
