The Secrets of a Lady

Chapter Eleven

Audrey felt the arrow pass by her head rather than saw it. A great gush of wind lifted the tufts of curls around her face as the steel shot past, though when she raised her gloved hand, there was no blood on her cheek.

“Damn and blast,” she muttered, surprised nearly being run through didn’t cause her much upset. In fact, she felt rather exhilarated. The rush of her blood, her heart lodged in her throat, pounding out a staccato beat against her neck… fantastic!

Audrey scanned the crowd for where the arrow could have come from. There were several possibilities. To her right a group of men huddled together, one of them looking in her direction from time to time. On her other side, a lone gentleman shoved something under his coat. Even a group of young boys who looked distinctly guilty about something could have been to blame. Before she could find the culprit, two strong hands grabbed her arms and yanked her down from her little perch on the hill.

“Audrey!” Griffin said close to her ear. His voice was full of the fear she herself hadn’t felt a moment before.

The sound of his voice and her sudden presence in his arms threw her off-guard. “Griffin?”

She turned toward him and was surprised at the look on his face. He still held one of her arms tightly, but he didn’t move at all for a long moment, merely staring at her face as if he was afraid she would vanish if he moved or spoke.

“Griffin?” she repeated, her voice much softer this time.

The sound of her voice snapped him from whatever spell he was under, but instead of answering he turned on his heel and began dragging her across the park. Her bonnet flew out of her hands as she stumbled after him, barely maintaining her balance as he yanked her through the crowd toward the carriages.

“What are you doing?” she demanded with a quick glance around her.

The two of them were receiving strange looks from the crowd. The men had a knowing gleam in their eyes, while some of the women seemed scandalized.

“Stop it!” She practically had to run to keep up with him in the hopes it would look less like he was dragging her away. “Griffin, please!”

He ignored her, hauling her ever closer to the carriages a few hundred yards away. Like a man possessed, he guided her through the groups of people until he reached his coach. The driver looked down from the box in surprise. Audrey couldn’t blame him. It should have been hours until their return.

“My lord?” The young man jumped down with a tilt of his head.

“Get us out of here,” Griffin said through clenched teeth. “Now.”

The man gave a smart bow. “Yes sir.” Reaching up, he nudged the footman at the back of the carriage none too gently. “Hey, you, open the door for his lordship.”

“Never mind.” Griffin yanked the door open himself and shoved Audrey inside. “Just take us home.”

“It may take a while to get us out of this bottleneck, sir.”

Griffin climbed in beside her and neatly blocked her attempt to escape with his body. Ignoring her glare, he snapped, “I don’t care if it takes an eternity!”

With that, he slammed the door and slid the curtains shut, enveloping the two of them into dark, warm silence. The carriage tilted as the driver climbed back up to the top and the vehicle rocked into slow motion.

“Are you planning on explaining yourself, Griffin Berenger, or just dragging me back to your home like the puffed up, pompous…” she trailed off, trying to find the right word. “Brute that you are?”

He didn’t answer, but turned his head away to stare at the curtain-darkened window.

“Griffin!” Her voice rose a notch as her frustration elevated. “You drag me away from my job, put my life, as well as my brother’s life in danger and now you refuse to even speak to me? Of all the…”

She stopped as she took in his expression in the dim carriage. His face was pale, ashen almost in the fading light and his hands trembled even though he’d clenched them into fists in his lap.

“You look like you’re going to be sick.” She moved closer to him and tilted her head to look at his face. “What is it?”

“I thought…” he began, then swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “You almost died and there was nothing I could do, Audrey. I watched that arrow pass within inches of your head and I couldn’t protect you.”

With a sigh of relief, she relaxed against the carriage seat. It was only fear for her life that made him look so torn.

“I’m fine,” she reassured him. “After the first explosion, Douglas went to investigate and Hannah saw an informant so she left to press him for more information. I believe the arrow was just a misfire, not aimed at me. My cover is fine, Griffin.”

“Your cover?” He turned to look directly at her. His voice grew dangerously low in the gloom. “Damn your cover!”

Suddenly his arms wrapped around her and pulled her against his chest. Her breasts flattened against the broad expanse of his body and her bated breaths reflected back from his throat.

“I thought you might die. I couldn’t lose you, not when I’d just found you again. Do you understand me?” His voice cracked as he gave her a gentle shake.

“Griffin,” she whispered, pulling one arm free from his powerful grip to raise her hand to his face. He flinched as her palm cupped his cheek, but relaxed almost immediately with a throaty groan.

“Don’t do this to me,” he said, just before his lips came down on hers with consuming force.

Though words of protest sat on her tongue, Audrey couldn’t seem to voice them. Any resistance she had left melted away and immediately she wrapped her arms around his neck to hold him closer. Close enough that she could feel his pounding heartbeat through his crisp linen shirt and dark jacket.

Opening her mouth, she reveled in his taste, the sensations that ripped through her when his tongue brushed hers, dipping inside the cavern of her mouth. All the reasons for them to stay away from each other faded as their kiss intensified. The carriage seemed to shrink, leaving little room for anything but the tangled heap of their two bodies straining to get ever closer.

Griffin’s hand settled on her waist, then inched up to cup the swell of her breast. She moaned against his lips at the crackle of sensation that shot from his hand to every nerve of her body, arching nearer and praying this moment would never end.

Pulling back, she yanked her gloves off to toss the yellow silk on the carriage seat opposite them. She wanted nothing to separate them. Somehow her hands found the buttons of his shirt and she tore at them. She didn’t even care when one popped away and clattered to the carriage floor to disappear under the seat. She wanted to feel his skin pressed against her, to wrap his warmth around her until they were one. It was the only way she’d ever be close enough.

Pulling the tails of his shirt free from his trousers, Audrey unfastened the last of the buttons and slid her hands into the opening. Griffin let out a long hiss as her fingertips raked across his naked torso, tangling in the wiry curls on his chest.

“Did I hurt you?” she whispered. Somehow she feared the moment would end if she spoke too loudly.

“No,” he said, his own voice just as low.

He edged his hands up from her shoulders to cup her face and pulled her across his body for a long kiss. Shifting, she eased herself into his lap, holding fast to his chest as his fingers sent her auburn locks trailing out of her bun and down around her shoulders.

The carriage tilted as it moved slowly around a corner on the busy city streets, and Audrey found herself pushed even closer to Griffin. Her cloth-covered thigh brushed against his lower body with increasing pressure.

“I’m not going to be able to stop if we…” His dark eyes met hers and held them.

“I don’t want you to stop,” she answered as she feathered light kisses along his cheekbones and down his jaw line. “I can’t help it.”

“I should then.” He wrapped his hands around her arms as if to push her away, but he couldn’t quite do it. “Don’t you see? If you can’t stop this, I should. I’m the more experienced. I’m the one who should end this.”

“But you can’t.” She grasped his wrists and slid his hands away from her arms and to her waist. She never let her eyes move from his. “You can’t any more than I can.”

“What are we doing Audrey?” he asked even as his hands stole to the tiny buttons at the back of her dress. One by one, he worked them open.

“Ending our ridiculous fight against fate,” she said.

She took in a sharp breath as he peeled the yellow layers of her gown down to her waist and left her nearly revealed to him. Only her chemise separated them, and she could already feel his body heat burning through the thin sheath of cotton.

“Fate?” He lifted his eyes to meet hers again. She was lost in their depths for a long moment before she found the power to speak.

“Isn’t that why we were brought back together after all these years apart?” she asked, pushing a stray lock of dark blond hair from his eyes. “Isn’t that why neither one of us can stay away from each other despite all the good reasons why we should?”

Griffin took in a long, shuddering breath as he brought his mouth against the hollow of her throat and began a slow trail downward.

“I don’t believe in fate.” His words reverberated off the lacy edging of her chemise.

She couldn’t answer as his hot mouth moved lower, clamping around the taut peak of her nipple and suckling there through the cloth.

“Then…” she gasped. “Then believe I want you. I need you.”

“I believe that,” he said, pausing in his sensual torture to look up. A grin flashed white teeth at her, then his mouth returned to its torment.

Closing her eyes, Audrey relaxed in his arms and let him hold her as he kissed and caressed her in ways she’d never imagined, despite Hannah’s explanations. Cold words were nothing compared to the way Griffin swirled his tongue over her breast, pulling the tight bead of her nipple in and out of his mouth.

“God, you taste so sweet.” He looped his fingers under one strap of her chemise and pulled the whole contraption down around her waist to bunch with her dress. “Better than I’d imagined.”

A wash of pleasure worked through her not just at his mouth returning to her now naked flesh, but at his words. Griffin had imagined this, just as she had. He wanted her, not just any woman in his bed, but her.

Griffin stifled a moan as he trailed his hand down Audrey’s body, reveling in how smooth and soft her skin was under his rough palm and in the way she arched up with innocent desire to meet his touch. When he found the hem of her skirt, he began inching the gown up, revealing smooth calves that tensed under his fingertips. Further up, he touched the garter of her silk stocking. In one smooth motion, he unfastened one, then the other.

Audrey’s little gasp made him smile against her skin, though it was a reminder of her innocence. Despite his body’s demands, he would go slowly with her, give her as much pleasure as he could.

Massaging his hands along the lines of her thighs, he pushed apart the opening of her thin, muslin drawers to touch the core of the desire he was kindling. As he expected, Audrey stiffened at this new invasion and struggled to sit up.

“I won’t hurt you.” He pressed a hot kiss against her mouth. When he leaned back he saw her wide eyes had drooped back to half-closed and her bated breaths slowed.

“I trust you,” she said. “You only surprised me.”

With a soft laugh, Griffin whispered, “You’ve many surprises in store for you, then.”

A small smile turned up her lips as she wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled his mouth down to meet hers. The kiss they shared was gentle at first, then grew more heated as the half moons of her fingernails pressed into the planes of his back. Griffin groaned as his hand tightened around her thigh. With a little sigh, she relaxed and her legs fell open a fraction.

The movement gave Griffin enough room to return his fingers to her slick opening, first just teasing the outside so she would be accustomed to his touch, then plunging one finger inside where she tightened against him in surprise and pleasure.

“Is it supposed to feel like this?” she whispered as she rested her head against his shoulder.

“How does it feel?” He could scarcely breathe wheneHewhen she began to match the rhythm of his teasing fingertips with her hips.

“Hot…” she breathed. “Like there’s pressure building…”

“Good?” He brushed his lips against hers very gently to let her hot breath warm his face.

With a little cry she arched against him as her muscles quivered in release. Then she relaxed and for a moment said nothing, just lay in his arms with her eyes closed. Slowly, she opened one eye and gazed up at him.

“Very good,” she whispered. “But I know that wasn’t all of it.”

Griffin laughed despite the hard, insistent need throbbing between his legs. “Do you?”

She smiled as the slightest flush darkened her cheeks. “There are advantages of having a former lady of the evening as one’s maid.”

Audrey smiled as Griffin’s eyes widened. There didn’t seem to be any need to explain her comment further. He understood she knew about physical joining in theory, if not practice.

Sitting up, she shifting her position until she straddled his lap. Her body was still trembling from the powerful release he’d given her, but she sensed he could give her so much more.

He leaned up to kiss her. “This will be very painful if we start this way.”

“I don’t care.” Resting her forehead against his, she measured her breaths until they matched his. “I want to do this.”

“I think we should…” he began, but stopped with a throaty moan when Audrey let her hand move between them to touch the hot length of him. Even through his trousers she could feel the hard thrust of muscle.

As curious as she was excited, she began to work open the buttons, sliding each one free until he was splendidly revealed to her. With a nervous smile, she edged back and looked at the stiff thrust of muscle arching proudly before her. Audrey had never seen a naked man, but Griffin was a fine specimen to begin with. His erection stood at attention from the thatch of curly, dark blond hair between his thighs.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, reaching down to touch it. She was surprised how soft his skin was and how hot. Even more amazing was how he rose up to meet her with a soft groan. “You’re beautiful.”

It was true. Even disheveled, his white shirt cockeyed over his shoulders and his trousers open around his hips, every line of him was perfection. Like the statues she’d seen when she and her brother traveled on the continent. Somehow she’d always pictured them as gods, not close to what a real man would look like. But Griffin was hard as the granite they’d been carved in. Only better. Griffin was real.

Griffin was hers.

Slowly she slid her fingers over the head and down the shaft of his penis, mesmerized by his reaction. Closing his eyes, he tipped his head back and shivered. She realized his expression was very much like the way she must have looked when he’d pleasured her with his hands.

The memory inflamed her body. Sliding forward, she carefully positioned herself before she lowered herself onto him. The sensation of their joining was strange, but not unpleasant.

“This will be better if we do it quickly,” Griffin promised, then gripped her hips and tugged her down as he thrust upwards.

Audrey gasped at the sharp pain when he filled her completely. She shut her eyes to it and held his shoulders with all her strength.

“I’m sorry.” He reached up to push the hair back from her face.

She moved a little. “No. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Though she felt tender, the pain was gone. Out of some kind of instinct, she began to move over him. The rhythm Griffin had begun with his hands earlier, she mimicked now. Back and forth, in and out until she felt herself coming to the edge of a precipice. But instead of fearing the fall, she craved it.

In an explosion of light and sensation, her body quivered with release and she held Griffin against her with a cry he muffled with his mouth. He moaned with her, spilling himself inside her as he pulled her closer, closer… until she wondered if it would be possible to melt into him and truly become one.

For what seemed like an eternity neither of them moved, though it must have been just a few moments. Finally, with a little sigh, Audrey moved away from him and sat back down on her side of the carriage seat.

“Thank you.” She reached under her skirt to adjust her drooping stockings and rearrange her twisted and mangled under things.

Griffin wrinkled his brow as he refastened his trousers and smoothed his blond hair back into place. With a smile, she reached up and tucked an errant lock behind his ear.

He caught her hand in his to place a kiss across her fingertips. “Why thank you?”

“I never thought I would ever experience anything like that,” she explained. “After all, I’m bordering on old maidenhood. And now I understand so much more than I did before.”

“Here, turn around.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and leaned closer.

She did as she was asked, marveling at how his warm hands on her bare skin managed to make her tingle all over again.

As he lifted her chemise back over her shoulders, then her hopelessly wrinkled dress and began refastening her buttons, he said, “First off, you’re hardly an old maid.”

She shivered as he placed a soft kiss at the base of her neck before turning her back to face him.

“I’m three and twenty. Do you know how old most of my friends were when they married?”

“How old?” he asked, though his tone was one of a man humoring her.

She gathering up her sweaty locks into her hands and began piling them up on her head, jabbing in the pins he offered her from the floor.

“Seventeen, perhaps eighteen,” she said. “According to my mother, I am firmly on the shelf.”

A frown creased his brow. “Your mother’s opinion makes a great deal of difference to you, doesn’t it?”

With a frown of her own, she dropped her head. “She disapproves of me. She always has.”

Griffin smiled. “Always?”

She refused to return his smile. “Always.”

With a sigh, she looked down at herself, still disheveled despite their best efforts to make her look presentable. Reaching over, she snatched up her gloves and shoved them back on.

“Who can blame her, really? I’ve given her enough ammunition. After all, I’m unmarried and I just lost my virtue to a man she’s told me a hundred times will never love me.”

The second the words were out of her mouth, Audrey clamped her half-gloved hand over her lips.

Lifting her eyes, she looked at him. He was frozen in his place, his eyes locked on her.

“Your mother told you that?” His voice was unreadable in the semi-darkness around them.

“I was a young girl,” she explained, hoping her tone made it seem like her infatuation was unimportant now. “And she knew best, after all.”

“What do you mean?” His voice was suddenly strained.

She watched him with intent, but still couldn’t read his expression. “You married Luci, didn’t you?”

He winced as he looked away, pulling the curtain back to allow the city lights to brighten the carriage a fraction. For a long time he didn’t say anything.

“Luci was…”

Before he could finish, the carriage pulled to a smooth stop. The coach rocked as the footman and driver climbed down.

“We’ve arrived,” she said, suddenly feeling awkward.

Though she’d just shared the most intimate of experiences with the man beside her, the thought of entering the blazing light of the house with him was a bit daunting. Surely people would look at both their mussed appearances and wonder what they’d been doing.

The door opened, but Griffin didn’t move. Her own exit was still blocked by his body.

“Griffin?”

“You don’t understand, Audrey.”

He accentuated the comment with a sigh as he finally stepped out of the coach and into the cool night air. Instead of allowing the footman to help her out, he extended his own hand.

With hesitation, she took it. She was nearly shattered by the electricity that rushed through her when they touched. Somehow it surprised her she’d still feel such heat between them after they had purged their more animal instincts. From all she’d heard, the passion between two people often faded once they had been intimate. Noah certainly seemed to lose interest in his paramours soon enough.

Griffin led her up the walkway in silence but the moment they entered the house, he released her and walked away down the hallway. Instinctively she followed him.

“I’m sorry if my actions interfered with your plan tonight,” he said, his voice clipped as she came into the leather and cherry wood room he called his office. “But I felt I was protecting you. You may explain that to your brother if he’s angry, or send him to me. I’ll gladly tell him exactly why I couldn’t stand to see you in danger one more moment.”

“Griffin?” She tilted her head as she pushed the door shut. “Are you angry with me?”

“No,” he said, but his voice was strained as he turned his back to her.

With hesitation, she added, “Are you sorry for what we did tonight?”

The answer was so important that she could barely hear it over the rushing of her blood in her ears. If he was sorry, she wasn’t sure she could bear it.

Griffin paused with his hand on a crystal decanter at the bar beside his desk. “I should say I’m sorry.”

“But…”

Turning, he looked at her with a gaze that was both even and so heated that her knees went weak. “I wanted you then. God help me, I want you now. Wrong or not.”

With a shiver, she moved a step closer. “I’m not sorry.”

He poured the drink he’d been neglecting and downed it in one sip. “Wait until morning to say that.”

With a tilt of her head, Audrey smiled. “I’ll feel the same way tomorrow. I don’t often change my mind.”

The tension in Griffin’s face left for a fleeting moment as he turned to smile at her. “I remember that about you.”

“I told you Griffin.” She stepped toward him and placed her hand on his face. The beginnings of stubble were rough on her palm and she longed her rub her cheek where her hand now lay. “What happened between us was fate. Don’t blame yourself for that.”

With a deep breath, Griffin covered her hand with his. “I’ll order one of the maids to bring bathwater to your room. The ache will ease if you soak for a while. Now go.”

Audrey took a step away with a broad smile. Even if Griffin didn’t believe in fate, she did. Fate had brought her to him once, and she had no doubt fate had much more in store for them before this assignment was through.