The Lady Gambles (17 page)

He also had no intention of allowing her to become in the least involved in the reckoning that Dominic had
every intention would shortly descend upon Nicholas Brown; Caro was impetuous enough, reckless enough, to place herself in danger if she believed it was necessary to avenge Ben.

No, Dominic had every intention of dealing personally with Mr Nicholas Brown…

Caro still looked slightly ill. ‘I cannot conceive of anyone doing something so…so heinous, as to have deliberately started a fire.’

Dominic was only too aware that Brown was reputed to have done much worse things than that in the past. Just as Dominic was now aware—too late to save Ben, unfortunately—that after the attack on Osbourne two nights ago, and despite Drew’s assurances that he was quite capable of taking care of himself and his own family, including Ben, Dominic should have insisted on more safeguards being put in place. The reason he had not was because he had been so distracted by the need to protect Caro that he had given little thought to anything else…

A danger that now seemed more immediate than ever; Dominic had thought to make Caro safe by offering her his protection, by moving her as quickly as he could to the obscurity of Brockle House. But Brown’s visit to the gambling club this morning had exposed Caro, if not as the masked singer, then certainly as a closer acquaintance to Dominic than the cousins they claimed to be. Now he feared the man might even know that Caro resided at Brockle House as from this morning…

Dominic shared Drew’s eagerness to confront Nicholas Brown, to ensure that he paid for his crimes—in
fact, at that moment, he knew he would enjoy nothing more than personally strangling the man with his own bare hands—but his explanation to Caro, when she had previously dared to question his honour, was also true. A soldier, an officer, did not confront his enemy until he had all of his troops in place.

And Nicholas Brown was now most certainly Dominic’s enemy!

‘Caro, I believe it would be best if I were to stay at Brockle House tonight.’ He looked at her from underneath lowered lids.

Her own eyes widened. ‘I believed we had both made our feelings on that subject perfectly clear—’

‘I did not say it was with any intention of sharing your bed,’ Dominic cut in impatiently. ‘Only that it might be…safer, perhaps, if I were to stay at Brockle House tonight.’

Caro’s cheeks warmed as she realised her mistake. Of course Dominic did not intend sharing her bed again tonight; he did not intend sharing her bed ever again! Something she should feel grateful for. And yet somehow did not… ‘Is it your belief that we are both now in mortal danger from Nicholas Brown?’

Dominic shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

Caro was consumed with annoyance at Dominic’s reticence, his refusal to share his thoughts and feelings with her. He had to be the most self-contained man she had ever met—and that was including her father, who had become so shut inside himself after their mother had left them all to go and live in London ten years ago, that he had never mentally been completely with his three daughters again. As far as she could tell,
Dominic shared none of his thoughts and ideas with anyone.

Least of all a woman to whom he had only offered marriage if
by some mischance
, as he’d put it, she should find herself carrying his child!

‘If you feel it is necessary, Dominic, then of course you have every right to spend the night in what is, after all, your own property.’ She gave a cool inclination of her head.

Dominic breathed heavily through his nose. ‘In that case, until this situation has been resolved to my complete satisfaction, I feel it best if I spend all of my nights at Brockle House.’

Caro’s eyes widened. ‘Are you not going to find that a little…restricting?’

He scowled darkly. ‘In what way?’

She shrugged. ‘Would such an arrangement not…limit your own freedom to come and go as you wished?’

Dominic drew in an angry breath. ‘Caro, if you are once again suggesting that I might have a mistress set up in another house in London somewhere, and with whom I might wish to spend my nights, then let me state, once and for all, that I do not now, nor have I ever, had a mistress in the accepted sense of the word!’ He eyed her coldly.

‘No?’ Her brows rose. ‘I would be interested to know why not.’

‘Then it is an interest I am afraid you will just have to continue to endure,’ Dominic growled. ‘After only a few days of having you as a permanent fixture in my life, of feeling responsible for you twenty-four hours a day, I am more convinced than ever that my decision
never to be tied down by such an arrangement was the correct one.’ He meant to be insulting, and he knew he had succeeded when he saw the sparkle of anger in the deep blue-green of Caro’s eyes.

A spark of anger that Dominic had deliberately incited…

‘That situation can be rectified any time you choose to let me leave both your home and your company,’ she came back challengingly.

‘Unfortunately, it cannot.’ Dominic sighed. ‘Not until Brown has been brought to justice. Never fear, Caro,’ he added mockingly. ‘I am sure that Brockle House is large enough for us to successfully avoid spending time in each other’s company, if that is what you wish?’

‘I wish it more than anything!’ There was an angry flush to Caro’s cheeks as she turned away from him to present him with her profile as she stared out of the carriage window.

Dominic accepted that it had been cruel of him to bedevil her in this way when their lovemaking had ended so disastrously earlier today. When she had been present as they pulled Ben’s body from the burning building. His only excuse was that his baiting of her had briefly cast aside her bewilderment and pain over Ben’s death, to be replaced by a little of the usual fiery spirit he so admired and which was such a large part of her nature.

A spirit Dominic dearly hoped would help see her through, what he was sure, were going to be several difficult days…

‘C
aro, when I said earlier that you might avoid my company as much as is possible for the duration of my stay here, it was not with any intention that you would eat your dinner in your bedchamber whilst I am left to dine downstairs alone.’

She was completely unmoved by the impatience in Dominic’s tone as she turned to look at where he stood in the open doorway of her bedchamber.

It had been almost two hours since they had arrived back at Brockle House. Dominic appeared to have bathed and changed out of the soiled clothing of earlier into a black evening jacket and snowy white linen with a meticulously tied neckcloth. Evidence, perhaps, that in the interim he had sent to Blackstone House for both his valet and his clothes.

Caro had spent those same two hours trying to come to terms with the fact that Ben Jackson was dead. To accept that her friend had perished in a fire Dominic
believed had been started deliberately by Nicholas Brown or one of his close associates.

For years she had chafed and fought against the sheltered life she had been forced to lead in Hampshire, with the result that she had not hesitated to put her plan into action once she had decided to run away to London as a means of avoiding the arrival of her guardian and his unwanted offer of marriage. She had believed herself to be thoroughly capable of taking care of herself, and that spending several weeks in London would be an exciting adventure she would remember for the rest of her life.

Nothing about her previous life could possibly have prepared her for such stark reality as she had witnessed today.

She gave a slight shake of her head. ‘I have not eaten my dinner in my bedchamber.’

Dominic scowled darkly as he strode forcefully into the room. ‘In that case, why haven’t you?’

She gave a listless shrug. ‘I am not hungry.’

‘Caro—’

‘Dominic, please!’ She stood up restlessly, also having bathed and changed into the deep rose-coloured gown. ‘How can I possibly eat when every time I so much as think of poor Ben’s fate I feel utterly nauseous?’

Dominic’s expression softened as he realised that, while he’d had some little relief from her tempting charms in the past couple of hours, suggesting they avoid each other’s company had not been particularly beneficial to her; he could see the evidence of the tears she had obviously shed once she was alone in the slight
redness about pain-darkened eyes and the pallor of her cheeks. ‘It will not help anyone if you make yourself ill—’

‘You cannot expect me to eat when Ben is lying dead in the morgue!’ Caro’s voice broke emotionally over the last, and she buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking, as she once again began to sob piteously.

Dominic felt a tightening in his chest as he witnessed her distress, taking the two steps that enabled him to reach out and take her into his arms, her head resting against his chest as she wept. He had never been at ease with a woman’s tears, and, after the intimacies they had shared, he found Caro’s especially difficult to bear. Her close proximity was even more difficult as he felt her arms move about his waist and the warm spread of her fingers across his back…

Dear Lord! Desire, arousal were the last things he should be feeling when she was obviously so distraught. And yet, try as he might, he could exert no control over the stirring, the hardening of his thighs, as Caro nestled the softness of her body against his. She rested so trustingly against him—for Dominic was sure that she shared none of those same thoughts of desire as she continued to sob quietly. His own physical response to that trust was as inappropriate as it would no doubt be unwelcome should she become aware of it, and he grimaced with annoyance at his own body’s betrayal.

As Caro’s tears slowly began to abate she sensed a change in the mood between herself and Dominic. A tension, an intimacy, that invaded her senses with a subtlety that was as insidious as it was undeniable. The
very air around them seemed to thicken, to deepen, and she was suddenly completely aware of the tense heat of his body and the ragged unevenness of his breathing, as his chest rose and fell beneath the increasing warmth of her cheek. She was also aware of the thick length of his arousal as it continued to grow and press against the softness of her own thighs.

Her breath caught in her throat as she slowly raised her head to look up at him, knowing by the glittering intensity of the silver gaze that looked down and met hers that she was not mistaken concerning his present state of arousal.

She moistened dry lips before speaking. ‘Dominic, how can it be that we feel this…this desire after all that has happened today?’ She was utterly bewildered—almost ashamed—by the feelings now coursing hotly through her own body.

Dominic shook his head. ‘I have seen it dozens of times in soldiers following a battle,’ he recalled huskily. ‘I believe it is a need, a desire, to reaffirm one’s own place in the mortal world following confrontation with death.’

Caro breathed shallowly. ‘Is it not shocking for me to feel this way now?’

His expression softened. ‘Does it feel shocking to you?’

‘No.’ The pink tip of her tongue swept across her lips a second time. ‘I— It feels as if, as you say, I have a need to know that we both still live.’

Dominic looked down at her searchingly, a gaze that she met unflinchingly. ‘Will you allow me to make love to you, Caro?’ he asked gently.

Her eyes widened. ‘But I thought you had made it quite clear that we could not, must not, repeat the events of this morning?’

‘Neither will we.’

Her frown was perplexed. ‘I do not understand…’

Dominic gave a rueful smile. ‘There are many ways in which to make love, my dear. Many of them do not involve the penetration that could so easily result in you becoming with child.’

Caro’s cheeks felt hot. ‘I see. And will you…will you show me these other ways?’ Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes fever bright.

But not with awkwardness or discomfort, Dominic noted with admiration, but instead with a curiosity and underlying excitement. He knew he should not allow this to happen, that he should refuse to acknowledge the invitation in her eyes. But as he looked down at her, he clearly saw the same desire in her that now throbbed through his own body, and he knew he would not, could not, walk away from her as he surely should.

He, too, had had time to think since they had parted after arriving at Brockle House earlier. To realise that she could just as easily have gone to visit Drew and Ben at Nick’s this afternoon rather than this morning. To acknowledge that she might have been inside the club with the other two men when the fire began, and easily envisage the nightmare of what might have been—Caro lying in the morgue rather than Ben Jackson…

Which perhaps explained why he had felt it so keenly when Denby had told him a short time ago that Caro had asked him to inform Dominic she would not be joining him downstairs for dinner. Whatever the reason,
no matter how much more it might complicate matters if he were to make love with her again, he knew that it was something he urgently needed to do.

Caro pulled out of his arms to turn her back on him before looking at him over her shoulder. ‘I believe we should start by removing my gown?’

He drew his breath in sharply as he looked at the calm determination in Caro’s expression for several long seconds before raising his hands to begin releasing the buttons down the back of her gown. Only to falter slightly once he had unfastened a half-dozen of those tiny buttons. ‘Are you
sure
you want to do this?’

‘I am very sure, Dominic,’ she murmured even as she tilted her head forwards to reveal the fragile vulnerability of her nape.

It was more than any man could bear—more, certainly, than he could at this moment—to resist Caro’s absolute conviction in what they were about to do. And once he had unfastened the rose-coloured gown, allowing it to pool on the carpet at her feet, before she stepped free of its confinement and turned to face him wearing only a shift that nevertheless revealed the firm thrust of her breasts tipped by those darker nipples, and the silky thatch of golden curls between her thighs, Dominic had no room for thoughts of resistance. His desire blazed completely out of his control as she reached up to slip the thin straps of her last garment down over the slenderness of her arms, before allowing that, too, to fall at her feet and she stood before him completely naked.

Dominic meant to be gentle with her, out of consideration for the discomfort she must still feel following
their lovemaking this morning. But it was a gentleness Caro firmly rejected as she stepped boldly into his arms before raising her head so that her lips might capture his. That kiss became wild, fiercely heated, as she dispensed with his jacket and waistcoat before unfastening his shirt and pushing her hands inside the silky material to caress his bared chest.

Dominic returned the heat of that kiss even as he reached up to rend the material of his shirt in two to allow her better access to his flesh. Caro’s nails scraped over the hard nubbins nestled amongst the silky dark hair that covered his chest, the hard tips of her own breasts pressed against the muscled hardness of his abdomen. He gasped into her mouth as those caressing, confident hands moved slowly downwards to stroke the length of his erection as it jutted proudly against the confinement of his pantaloons.

It did not remain confined for long as Caro easily dispensed with the six buttons at the sides of his pantaloons before peeling that flap of material aside, the fingers of one hand curling about his engorged arousal even as she cupped him beneath with the other.

Dominic broke the kiss, his groan one of aching longing as he felt her dextrous fingers sweep across the sensitive tip before moving down along the length of him. ‘Yes, Caro! Oh, God, yes!’

‘Tell me how to give you pleasure, Dominic,’ she encouraged softly.

His breath caught in his throat. ‘Kiss me there, take me into the sweetness of your mouth!’ His moan was heartfelt as Caro dropped softly to her knees in front of him, that sea-green gaze looking up to steadily meet his
as she slowly and deliberately opened those kiss-swollen lips and took him into the fiery heat of her mouth.

Dominic’s knees almost buckled completely as he looked down at her pleasuring him, his hands moving to become entangled in her golden curls as she continued her delicious ministrations until he knew he was going to lose control. He needed to taste her before that happened, wanted to pleasure her in the same way.

Dominic ignored her slightly reproachful look as he gently disengaged himself and pulled her back up on to her feet. He swung her up into his arms and carried her over to lie her down upon the bed, gently propping her head upon the pillows. She watched him as he first drew off his boots and then threw off the rest off his clothes before moving to kneel between her legs. The darkness of his gaze briefly held hers captive before he lowered his head between her parted thighs to run his own tongue along the length of her opening before rasping moistly over and around her sensitive bud, feeling it pulse with each rhythmic stroke. ‘Watch me, Caro!’ he urged.

She obeyed as he gently parted her golden curls and cried out as he lowered his head once again to stroke that pulsing bud with the hard tip of his tongue, and she felt the pleasure begin to build, to grow, deep inside her. Suffusing her with heat. Turning her limbs to water. Her head fell back against the pillows even as her thighs began to undulate against that marauding mouth and tongue.

That pleasure surged out of control as his hands moved up to cup and capture both her breasts before he rolled the nipples between finger and thumb,
Caro’s release hitting with the force of a tidal wave as he squeezed those roused tips at the same time as his tongue thrust into her time and time again until she lay limply back against the pillows.

Dominic moved up on to his knees to look down at Caro as she lay there, replete and naked against the pillows. ‘My turn now, love,’ he said throatily.

Caro was completely focused on that jutting arousal as she came up on to her knees to move down the bed and kiss him slowly from base to tip, before then taking him fully into the heat of her mouth.

It was too much, Dominic already far too aroused from both the taste of her in his mouth and her earlier attentions, and his hands tightly gripped Caro’s shoulders as he climaxed fiercely, hotly, triumphantly…

Caro’s hand moved in a gentle caress against the unruly darkness of the hair at Dominic’s nape, his head resting lightly against her breast as they lay naked together in the aftermath of their wild and satisfying lovemaking.

She felt no awkwardness, no shame; she knew that they had both needed what had just happened between them, that he had been correct in that they had both needed to reaffirm their precarious grip on mortality, and the silence between them now was companionable rather than uncomfortable.

Dominic raised his head slightly to look at her, that silver gaze guarded. ‘I was not too rough with you?’

‘Not at all,’ she assured without hesitation. ‘Was I too rough with you?’ she added, aware that she had been somewhat less than gentle herself!

He smiled slightly before lowering his head back down on to her breast. ‘Not in any way I would not like you to repeat if, or indeed whenever, the mood should take you.’

Caro’s cheeks felt warm as she recalled the way in which she had caressed and kissed Dominic so intimately. She had no knowledge of lovemaking between a man and a woman other than the things he had shown her these past few days, and yet she had gloried in touching and kissing the beauty of his hard arousal.

‘I no longer feel quite so…empty.’ Her voice was husky with emotion.

‘Nor I,’ Dominic acknowledged softly.

She frowned as a thought occurred to her. ‘Do you know whether or not Ben had any family?’

Dominic’s shoulders tensed beneath the caress of Caro’s fingers. ‘He has a sister, I believe. A Mrs Grey.’

‘She will be deeply saddened by his death.’

‘As we all are,’ Dominic said heavily. ‘Drew was to go and see her as soon as he was able to get away. I have asked him to convey my regrets, and also to tell her that I will call on her tomorrow to discuss the funeral arrangements if that is what she wishes.’