Sins of a Virgin (27 page)

Her fingers twisted in his hair as she welcomed the increased pressure of his mouth. Suddenly, she stiffened, his name a gasping cry on her lips. She threw her head back, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

Gabriel treasured each imperfect, broken moan that escaped her as she climaxed.

He swept her onto his lap and she smiled at him, the grin open and relaxed with just a touch of awe.

She was so utterly perfect.

His Madeline.

She stayed nestled there for a brief moment, then pulled away. Her hand slid down his chest to caress the proof of his arousal pressing against her thigh. “My turn.”

M
adeline knew Gabriel was tempted to stop her, but she’d have none of that. For the first time in her life, she wanted to use her skills not for an assigned task, but for the pure enjoyment of it.

Her body throbbed with residual pleasure as she tried to slide off Gabriel’s lap, but his arm tightened around her waist, stopping her.

“You don’t have to,” he whispered against her neck. His hands covered her breasts as he spoke. The heat languidly moving through her veins instantly reignited.

“I know. I want to do this.” She shifted against him.

“Are you sure you don’t want this instead?” His hand trailed down to the aching place between her legs, effectively distracting her from her goal. She whispered his name again and again as he drove her to the edge of that blissful cliff and then sent her soaring over the precipice.

In her former profession, she’d been trained to always use endearments in bed. It removed the risk of shouting out the wrong man’s name at inopportune moments.

But Gabriel’s name tumbled from her lips. It felt as instinctive as breathing.

Rather than pondering that disturbing fact, she scrambled off him before he could tempt her again. “Now as I was saying before I was rudely distracted—”

“Rudely?”

She gave the question mock consideration. “Pleasantly.”

“Pleasant?”

She laughed and darted out of the way of his grasp. If he caught her, she’d never have the chance to pleasure him, and she was strangely eager to do so. “Exquisitely interrupted.”

Gabriel sat back, the hard muscles of his chest rippling from the simple movement. “Better.”

“I want to pleasure you, Gabriel.”

His exhale was harsh, and tendons bulged along his forearms where he gripped the edge of the fountain. “Madeline, I don’t expect this of you. I don’t think of you as—”

She stopped his words with a kiss. “Are you truly going to refuse me?”

He searched her face for an instant. “I’m not noble enough for that.”

She tugged him to his feet, then unfastened his trousers, easing them down. With a smile of pure feminine satisfaction, she took his hard length in her hand, tracing the velvety contours. Gabriel tensed, his body stiff with control. If not for the heat pulsing under her fingers, he might have been a statue.

A very erotic statue.

She lowered herself on the side of the fountain and brought him to her mouth, her lips brushing him as she spoke. “So aren’t you glad I’m not a lady?”

But he seemed to have lost the ability or perhaps just the inclination to speak. Except for the occasional groan, Gabriel was silent as she pleasured him. But she quickly learned to read his body’s responses. The clench of his fists. The tightening of his buttocks. The ripple of the muscles in his abdomen. The twitch in his shoulders. All providing clues as to his most sensitive areas and his preferred sensations and tempo.

Madeline took note of each discovery, adding it to her arsenal, drawing on his favorites over and over again. Her experience had also alerted her when he was nearing his climax so she could draw him back, only to return him to the brink.

Madeline hadn’t lied when she said this was for her. She loved him in her mouth and on her tongue. She loved that she had the power to give him this pleasure.

She also loved the way he looked at her as if he’d never seen anything so incredible. She’d never been vain about her looks. But Gabriel made her want to stroll through the ballroom with nothing on but a grin.

Although she feared she’d never have her fill of him, she took pity on him, drawing him deep and hard into her mouth. That finally broke his silence. As his hips jerked with tight thrusts, her name issued from his lips in a guttural growl she savored down to her toes.

After he stilled, Madeline slowly drew away from him. Gabriel’s finger traced down her cheek in a lingering caress, then he drew up his pants and gathered her clothing and his own.

With their lust sated, the cold finally began to penetrate and Madeline shivered. She shook out the toga, then hurried and pulled on the meager protection.

Odd, but for as many men as she’d seduced in the past ten years, she’d never had to deal with an afterward. The sedative she gave them always took effect no more than a few minutes in. She left them sleeping while she escaped with the information she’d been sent to collect.

But it wasn’t in her nature to be shy, not even in a situation like this. So she smiled at him.

The smile slowly faded. Neither was it in her nature to be foolishly sentimental. While Gabriel might feel warmly toward her, he had no intentions toward her.

Neither was he a man to want her back after she’d sold her virginity. And while that small piece of skin might still be intact, she had ceased being a virgin long ago.

She was a whore.

Hadn’t she just proved it?

No, their lovemaking hadn’t been soulless, yet not even in the darkest corner of her mind would she examine what it had been.

“Well, we no longer have that simmering between us.” But she knew it for a lie even as the words left her mouth. All she had to do was look at him and the heat threatened again. “Or at least, we’re adult enough to enjoy ourselves while not letting it interfere with our goals.”

Gabriel’s jaw tightened. “You can make love like that, then walk into the ballroom and resume your auction?”

Madeline smoothed her skirt with a flick of her hand. “I believe I’ve always been clear on that.”

She strode back to the ballroom before he could speak again.

Chapter Twenty-four

“S
o you want to tell your Runner.” Ian’s question was more of a statement. He opened the lids of the few dishes arranged on the table a second time. “Is Canterbury spiting me, or is this really the way you’ve been eating?”

Madeline scooped half the eggs he’d helped himself to onto her plate. “If you’re going to complain, Ian, you don’t have to eat.”

Ian pulled his plate closer to him with a scowl and shoveled a pile of eggs into his mouth.

Clayton watched them with resignation while buttering his toast with the same precision with which he addressed everything in his life. “Ian said Huntford was sneaking about in your room a few nights ago.”

Madeline nodded. The fact, although new, was unsurprising. “Do you think I would have let myself rest if there’d been anything for him to find?”

Ian spoke with his mouth full. “Why the sudden urge to bare your soul?”

“If you think it will improve his opinion of you, you’re mistaken. In the eyes of the English, a female spy is worse than a camp follower,” Clayton said.

“I don’t want his good opinion.” After all, what would that do but make things more awkward?

Instead, she explained the two additional attempts on her life as well as the threat from the night before, repeating the exact words from the masked man three times at Clayton’s request.

Clayton’s knife had stilled. “Why haven’t I heard of these other attacks?” His dark gaze could have been hiding anything from guilt to rage. She suspected it was a touch of both. It was often difficult to read Clayton, even for Madeline.

She sipped at her tea as she considered the question. She hadn’t told them because Gabriel knew and that had seemed enough. Odd. She had long relied on Clayton to pick meaning out of chaos and Ian to lay plans to address it.

“I knew about the attacks,” Ian admitted. He shrugged in a manner he thought mysterious, but had instead become rather irritating after the first month they’d known each other. All the shrug really meant was that he was determined to be stubborn.

“I told him.” Canterbury strolled into the room carrying an additional plate of toast.

Ian sighed in resignation. “I’ll lose my reputation for being omniscient if you reveal I learn information in such a mundane manner.”

Canterbury set the tray on the table as far away from Ian as possible. “The only one who mistakenly believes that reputation is you.”

Ian leaned across the table to claim a piece of toast even though two remained untouched on his plate. “Huntford
has
kept you alive through three murder attempts. That says something in his favor.”

“But that the three events were able to occur does not,” said Clayton.

“Yet she trusts him so much she didn’t tell us she’d been thrown into a river and nearly burned to death. I think the implications are obvious.” Ian’s brows waggled, but his eyes were serious.

Madeline kept her chin up and refused to look away. “That Gabriel’s competent, nothing more. If he continues to guard me, his life will be in danger. I want him to approach the situation with open eyes.”

Clayton nodded once. “Tell him then.”

Ian pointed at her with a piece of toast. “Might as well. It’s not as if the government thought to swear us to secrecy or any such thing. You could shout it from the rooftops if you desired.”

Madeline sucked in a breath, feeling as if the floor had disappeared under her feet. She’d stayed awake half the night perfecting arguments to win them over. Now, their easy acceptance left her unbalanced. “But if he betrays us, none of us would be safe.”

“If you thought there was any possibility of that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Although Clayton was calm, he didn’t look up from the tea he was stirring. She sensed that she’d hurt him by not coming to him first with her problems.

“Besides, if Huntford shows signs of gossiping, I’ll kill him.” Ian bit into his toast with far too much relish.

Perhaps if she’d been forced to argue her case, she would have convinced herself that telling Gabriel was the right thing, but as it was, she still hesitated. “But the knowledge might put him in danger—”

Clayton tapped his spoon dry on the rim of his cup, his gaze hooded. “As you pointed out, he’s already in danger.”

She twisted her napkin until it balled in her fist.

As Clayton watched her, a fraction of the tension eased from his expression. He retrieved the abused cloth from her hand. “We’ve told people who we are before.”

Without the napkin, Madeline began creasing her skirt. “Yes, other spies, couriers. But even then they didn’t know our real identities.” The last syllable sounded distinctly like a whine.

Enough
. When had she become so weak-willed and vacillating? Why did she care if Gabriel knew about her? If he thought her more detestable? She had to focus on her priorities, which were capturing the man trying to kill her and completing this auction.

Ian glanced pointedly at the mangled napkin on the table. “You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?”

The reminder of her goals bolstered her enough to laugh. “Not in any permanent fashion.”

G
abriel rubbed the weariness from his eyes as Canterbury showed him into the study. The idea of sleeping had been laughable after he’d returned home from the ball last night, so he’d resorted to his favorite sleep tonic—prowling the streets of London for criminals and information until he was too exhausted to stand.

The first part of the night had been a waste. It had been far too late to question any more of Billingsgate’s servants, and the few of the man’s terrified former lovers he’d found could shed no light on the killings. But while that particular investigation had provided no new leads, the night had improved in a seedy, little tavern by the dock. If the information he’d discovered was accurate, it was worth far more than a night’s sleep.

Madeline sat behind the desk, the first clear sunlight in days greedily clinging to her.

She looked clean, fresh, and altogether delectable. He, on the other hand, had barely time enough to change out of his filthy clothes from last night and scramble over here in time for their meeting.

Their eyes met as he approached, and for a brief moment, awareness of last night simmered in her expression. He knew it must be in his as well because it was impossible not to remember his lips on her body, the imprint of her nails on his shoulders as he drove her to ecstasy.

Or to remember the way she flaunted herself at the ball afterward. But it had been too late. He’d seen her stripped of everything, clothing and defenses. He meant to have her. Just as he meant to finally learn the truth.

Whether or not her two dubious friends agreed.

Gabriel nodded briefly at Campbell and Maddox, who stood flanking the desk. Campbell observed him with barely disguised dislike and Maddox with fascinated amusement.

Had she decided not to tell him? Was that why she’d brought in the reinforcements?

Madeline drew in a deep breath and met his gaze, the heat now extinguished. “While I was in prison awaiting my execution, a man came to me. He offered me a choice. I could hang or I could work for him. For the past ten years, I have been in the service of His Majesty’s government as a spy.”

A spy.

Given her talents, Gabriel had expected something of the sort, but hearing her straightforward confession was a bit staggering. The revelation tumbled about his brain for a few moments before he began to grasp the ramifications.

With her beauty, there was no question about how they would have used her. She would have been a valuable resource. His gut clenched.

Hell. How old had she said she was? Fourteen? “Why did they choose you?”

She glanced down at her scanty bodice and the abundance of curves spilling over the top, then gave him a pointed look.

“But there must have been other girls—women—he could have selected.”