Chapter 10
Ban lay in his comfortable bed and stared out into the heavy night fog that hung over London like a worn woolen blanket.
Though he had a perfectly furnished bedchamber next to his study he chose to sleep in the open chamber he'd had constructed on the wide balcony outside of his study.
As all of his rooms were at the back of the ramshackle Saffron Hill house, the sturdier, almost Moroccan-covered balcony could not be seen unless one actually managed to make their way past the gates and sentries posted at the short drive along the back of the Devil's Den.
He'd spent the better part of the day at his usual table at The Angel awaiting a message from Isadore Fitz-Wilton.
He was not one to wait for anyone. Maggie Church, the owner of the tavern, had remarked upon his presence more than once as she brought him food and ale.
Her constant inquiries as to whom he might be waiting for had pushed him from mildly amused to irritated.
She'd been an ally to the Horsemen in the eight or nine years since she'd taken over the running of The Angel from her late husband.
However, one lesson he'd learned from his brother, Con, was that no one, no matter how loyal should be privy to all of a man's secrets.
Like a fool, he'd waited until midnight and had come home in a foul temper for no good reason.
She'd made him no promises. He certainly didn't need the chaos of her problems when he and his brothers had troubles of their own.
He'd talk to the two young ones he'd rescued from her house and put his mind to solving the mystery of the missing and dying children being used to put the Horsemen in Bow Street's bad books.
He'd shed his clothes as he stormed across his study.
Daisy would give him an earful for that come morning.
He'd stood naked on his balcony drinking French brandy from the bottle and allowing the damp night air to remind him who and what he was.
He'd finally drawn the tent-like curtains around his balcony, leaving the one across the far end of the parapet open so he might see the view of the city.
The roof over the open balcony, his one concession in its construction, was a series of large panes of glass very like those of a conservatory.
He could not sleep unless he could see the sky, the stars, and feel the breeze against his skin.
Despite the comfort of his bed and the sight of the stars, Ban did nothing but toss and turn.
That is when he was not swearing and going over his every conversation with the maddening Missus Fitz-Wilton.
She thought him a disgusting, heartless man.
Why should that bother him? Plenty of women in the Dials had crawled into his bed knowing full well what he was.
They came to him for favors or protection or money. He preferred it that way.
Life was a negotiation, a business. People did not come to powerful men unless they wanted something.
He'd had no choice about trading his body for food or a warm place to sleep when he was a child.
He did not begrudge others doing so. He only knew he'd never do that again. He'd never beg. He'd never--
Crash!
"Bloody bollocksing hell!"
Ban rolled out of bed, the knife he kept under his pillow clutched in his hand.
Someone was in his study. A woman, if he was not mistaken.
He thought he recognized the voice, but he had to be drunk or dreaming.
By the time he crept to the open balcony doors the swearing had not stopped, but the person had lit a lamp or a candle.
"Bugger this," he muttered and strode into his study wearing nothing more than a hole in his shoulder and a knife in his hand.
A floor board creaked beneath his bare feet.
The figure standing before his desk, an oil lamp in her hand, turned and let loose a blood-curdling shriek.
He'd recognize that scream anywhere. In two long strides he took the lamp from her trembling grip, set it on the desk, and clamped his hand over her mouth.
"Prinny's pizzle, madam, do you want the entire house up here armed to the teeth?"
Her eyes wider than he ever thought possible she glanced up and down his body and then did so again. She shook her head violently. He tried to convince himself her heated gaze had not seared a path from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. With little success.
"If I take my hand away, will you cease that bloody racket? I'm the one who should be screaming. You've broken into my house yet again, dammit." She nodded, slowly this time. He removed his hand but did not step back.
"I did not break in this time. I had my coachman set me down at the back door and I knocked.
Benny was kind enough to let me in and bring me to Daisy.
She ensconced me quite comfortably in your bedchamber as she said you never sleep there and the two children are sleeping in the room with her as they don't like sleeping alone, poor dears. "
Ban's head had not spun this much since he's been shot and run over by a beer wagon at the age of fifteen.
He ran his hand through his hair. He glanced about the room.
A teacup lay broken on the floor, knocked from a tray that held the remains of what looked like a half-eaten decent supper.
He stared at Isadore in unbridled disbelief.
"You knocked. You had your coachman set you down and you knocked on the door of the most notorious thieves' den in London."
She blinked and did her best to look anywhere but at him.
"And Benny let you in?"
"Yes, he did, but you must not be cross with him. I told him you were expecting me. He is such a gentle, obliging young man. He wouldn't let me carry any of my bags." She walked toward the hearth where a low fire still burned. "And Daisy said you would not mind my taking your bedchamber."
"She gave you my bedchamber." Even Ban heard how ridiculous he sounded.
"Well, you aren't using it to sleep, are you? It appears you are not using a great deal of anything to sleep." This time she did spare him a cursory glance.
He scrubbed his hand over his face and licked his lips. "You invited yourself. You brought bags? You are taking possession of my bedchamber. What precisely is your plan, Missus Fitz-Wilton? I assumed our business was concluded when I did not hear from you."
"Things have changed, and I am making a few amendments to our agreement."
"I see." Ban propped a bare hip on his desk and crossed his arms. "And those changes would be?"
"In order to be involved in every aspect of the search for my son I will reside here.
I don't trust you, but I will make do with what we have.
My brother-in-law cannot discover what I am about if he cannot find me.
For the present he believes me to be staying with the Duke of Devonshire's daughter.
She will hold him off as long as she can.
" She began to pace around the room. Her hands moved constantly, a sign he'd quickly learned meant she was far more distraught than she allowed.
"With luck," she continued. "By the time he forces the issue, we will have found Jeremy, and I will be on the Continent and beyond George's reach."
"And you assumed I would agree to these terms?
Ban suddenly became aware of the way she was dressed, or rather half-dressed.
Though she wore a rather dull grey dressing gown, he could not help but notice the thin material of her night rail peeking out around her neck and her ankles. Her feet were bare and very delicate.
Damn!
Without a word he crossed the room and swept her up into his arms. He carried her to the chaise before the fire and sat her down.
"Do you never give a thought to your feet, Isadore?
" he asked as he knelt and took one dainty bare foot in his hands.
"I am surprised you are not missing several toes at this point.
" He glanced back at the broken tea cup and began to check her soles for cuts and pieces of china.
His attention was so keen on the task he didn't take in her uncharacteristic silence until her hand sifted through his hair in a gossamer-soft caress.
A shiver swept through him. He raised his head to meet her gaze.
In the light of the single oil lamp her eyes glowed an almost silver, but the heady erotic wave that swept over him had nothing to do with the color of her eyes.
No, the strange fire that burned there, the expression he'd never seen in her before, that is what shook him to his core.
"Isadore?" His voice scraped in his throat, raw and barely contained.
"I have one more request whether you accept my new terms or not," she said softly as she continued to caress his hair and his face. "I will never take another husband. I will never allow another man to bed me and hope to wield that intimacy as a weapon against my heart or my peace."
"Isadore..." Ban didn't know what to say. Oh, his body had much to say. His cock shouted at him, in fact.
"You are the sort of man who beds a woman and never gives her another thought. You don't particularly like me, and I don't particularly like you."
"How nice for us." Did he really just say that?
"Just once I want to have a choice in who I bed.
I want a chance that I might enjoy it, and for some reason, my body reacts to you in a way it never has to any other man.
It is most distressing, but I have decided this is my one chance, and I am going to take it.
" She stopped speaking as if she'd suddenly run out of words or the strength to utter them.
"We've already set the price for my helping you find your son. You don't have to sacrifice yourself fucking a man you don't like." He stood, suddenly angry at her and at himself.
"I understand," she said as she rose gracefully to her feet. "I am not the sort of woman you prefer. My husband was much the same, and I cannot change who I am for either of you." She turned to go back into his bedchamber.
"Stop," he ordered as he caught her arm and turned her to face him. A flicker of pain crossed her features. He looked down at her wrist, engulfed in his large, rough hand. A ring of bruised flesh marked her porcelain skin. "Who did this?"
"It is of no matter. Release me, sir. I'm tired." It was then he noticed the sheen of tears in her eyes.
In one motion he dropped her arm and snatched her into his arms. "You're not tired," he growled.
"But you will be." She slammed into him so quick and hard she didn't even have the chance to gasp.
He captured her mouth in a punishing kiss, poured all of his hurt and frustration into her until her chest heaved against his, and he was dizzy with the taste of her.
With his quick thief's hands, he stripped her of her robe.
She didn't fight him when he did the same with her night rail.
Then she was as naked as he, and for a moment she made a move to cover herself.
He pressed his body against her and kissed her again, plundering her mouth with his tongue and roving her hot flesh with his hands.
He cupped and squeezed her breasts before he captured her shapely arse with one hand and then slid his other hand between her legs.
"You're wet," he murmured against her lips. "I want to see you."
"Wha...Ban, what are you..."
He knelt at her feet and gazed at the glistening moisture of her cunny caught in the lamplight. As he drew one finger up the cleft of her sex he pressed a kiss to her thighs, first one and then the other.
"Oh," she gasped again and again as he stroked her nether lips and teased at her entrance with his fingertips. "What...are you...doing?" she whispered even as her hips began to move against his hand.
"Not enough if you're still talking," he said darkly.
He drew his tongue across her cunny. Her legs shook.
He reached behind her and cupped her arse in his hands to hold her in place.
He glanced up to see her head thrown back, mouth open, and something in him broke.
He feasted on her wet sex with his lips, his tongue, his teeth.
He lapped, sucked, and nipped, each new shudder of her body spurring him on.
Isadore clutched his hair and rocked her hips against him.
Her cries echoed in the quiet room, higher and higher, and still he did not relent.
Her entire being finally locked, and tremor after tremor shook her.
With a last keening cry, she finally went limp.
He shot to his feet and caught her up in his arms to carry her to his balcony bed.
He tossed her gently onto the thick mattress at the foot of the bed, the end open to the night.
The light of the moon and the stars shone down on her.
Washed in that light she appeared as some fairy queen in his mind.
She reached for him. He spread her legs and climbed onto the bed on his hands and knees, the beast coming over the beautiful, mystical creature still glowing in the aftermath of what they'd shared in his study.
He positioned himself and slid inside her welcoming heat. She moaned and arched up to accept him.
"I can't," she muttered and tossed her head. "I can't move." She gasped as he thrust forward.
"You don't have to, love." He withdrew slowly and then entered her again with equal languor. A few more thrusts and she raised her knees on either side of him.
"More?"
"More," she moaned, and caught his rhythm, moving against him harder and faster.
Unable to resist, he bent his head to take one taut nipple in his mouth.
She cried out and brought one hand to the back of his head to hold him there as he licked and sucked.
She reached over his shoulder with the other hand, her nails scoring his flesh as she urged him to go faster and faster.
He sensed they were both close, so close, and released her breast to hold himself up on his hands.
He wanted to see her face in the moonlight as she reached ecstasy.
He wanted that memory forever in his mind when she recalled what a horror she had of him.
He thrust harder and harder until she cried out his name so loudly, he was certain all of London heard her.
If they did, they also heard him shout her name as his world exploded and he collapsed onto her.
What the blithering hell had he just done?