Chapter Fifteen
It took four men to wrestle Ian away from Diana, and he’d only complied because the bastard who held her with his gun cocked against her head also had a grip on her throat. Ian couldn’t see straight from the panic of what could happen if she tried to free herself.
Their captors had tied the knots binding them well and tight. Diana’s were already chafing, marring her delicate wrists, and he silently vowed to take blood from every person who left a mark on her.
The thugs shoved them on board a tugboat, which hugged the coast back to San Sebastian. Then they dragged them through the narrow alleyways of Calle Santa Korda. The street was barely wide enough for the two men to walk abreast as they hauled Ian between them.
Diana handled the capture stoically. Anyone watching closely could surmise from the way Ian watched her she was his weakness, but he couldn’t hide it. Not after she’d confessed her scheme to entwine him in her play to steal the emeralds wasn’t only for his protection.
She wanted him.
After all these years. All the lies he told to make her think he could never want her, and the ferocious reputation he’d cultivated to keep everyone at a distance.
Over time, Ian had convinced himself he’d sacrificed everything to protect her from Il Gioco and his father’s enemies, and she’d kept her promise to marry Jared because she didn’t want him.
But that was the lie he’d told himself.
Diana. Wanted. Him.
Their current dangerous predicament notwithstanding, Ian perseverated over what her revelation truly meant for them. He could accept she considered him a valuable partner in her crimes, whom she also enjoyed kissing. Would she surrender her thoughts and her desires to him, as well as her body?
And what did she want in return? Commitment to her cause, or commitment to her? And for how long?
He wanted to forget all the reasons he couldn’t abandon his own plans for something so long forbidden to him.
The forced march through the old town ended at a townhouse guarded by a strapping sentinel, who waved them inside.
Their captors coerced them through a narrow staircase that held the lingering scents of tobacco, heady perfume, and something sour.
. Voices echoed from the floors above them. Their cries and shouts made Ian cringe.
They’d landed in another brothel. But this one made the Soho bordello appear as plush as Buckingham Palace.
“Si, mi amor, it’s what you think it is,” wheezed the bastard holding Diana. “First time in a bawdy house, fine lady? Won’t be your last!”
Diana glared at Ian in a silent warning against doing anything stupid, which he would have done had he not been bound so tightly.
“Ah, our visitors have arrived.” A rail-thin woman with a painted face, wearing an atrociously ugly red wig, welcomed them. She nodded her head toward a door at the far end of the hallway. “Put them there.”
The men shoved Ian and Diana into a shabby room barely large enough to house a brass bed frame and thin mattress, covered by a threadbare counterpane.
“The bed,” the madam ordered.
One tough poked the barrel of a gun between Ian’s ribs to force him onto the bed. He fixed Ian’s bound hands to the bed frame with precise knots. The filth must have worked aboard ships and knew what they were doing.
They tore Diana’s arms out of her cloak and bound her next to Ian. They tied her hands over the bedpost, for reasons he was too overwhelmed to understand.
One of them pulled Diana’s shawl away with a fierce yank.
A collective hum hit the room. Every eye fixed on the emeralds at her throat.
Not one of their captors made a move to snatch them, and this made Ian more nervous than being without his pistol.
“Whatever ransom you’re expecting, I can pay more,” Diana smoothly addressed the madam.
“The protection Costa offers me is priceless.” The tart grinned a ferocious smile. “From what I hear, you’re trying to destroy the good living he brings us.”
“He is selling women,” Diana volleyed back.
“No different from my trade.”
“They didn’t have a choice.”
“Women don’t have choices.” The madam sneered. “They have options. Some, better than others. Any of those girls and mine would tell you they’d prefer a full belly and roof over their heads to starving on the streets. Some,” she drawled. “Love their profession. There’s no shame in that.”
“When men like Costa control them, they’ll never be safe. Or free to work however they wish.”
“You.” The madam’s attention flicked to Ian. “One more try at those ropes and we’ll start shooting.”
The goons who remained in the room flashed them their holstered weapons.
“Costa is on his way to collect you. Alas, I can’t stay to keep you company.
Duty calls.” The madam batted her lashes.
“But I have a feeling you won’t be alone.
This is a dockside cathouse. Patrons pay to enter, and most take more than their due, especially when the doormen are distracted.
” She nodded at the men with the guns. “And yours are so easily distracted.”
The men trailed her into the corridor. One guard remained outside the partially open door to monitor the hallway.
“Blades?” Ian whispered to Diana.
“Gone. It will take weeks to have another set made,” she complained. “Their knots are excellent. Truly, I would have them train my crew if they weren’t the filth of humanity.”
When footsteps echoed down the hall, Diana turned to Ian. “Good God, she was serious about the patrons? I thought she was trying to intimidate us.”
The tightness in her voice made him redouble his efforts to escape the ropes. “It will take a few minutes, but I can work free of the knots.”
“What if they find us first? We need a ruse to distract them. Can you sing?”
“Have you lost all sense?”
“Yes.” She hiccupped a laugh. “My mind keeps spinning.”
Her voice was drowned out by amorous cries and screams as a couple in the room above them met their climaxes.
Diana’s cheeks turned pink. Her forehead glistened with perspiration, and despite their harrowing circumstances, Ian’s entire body went hard.
He shook it off with a rattle of his head. “As long as you’re wearing the necklace, they’ll keep their distance.”
“Not everyone thinks it belongs to Costa.” Diana frantically tugged on her binds. Dots of crimson blood spotted her porcelain skin.
“Careful,” he cautioned. “The harder you pull, the tighter they tie. You need to loosen the center with gradual movement.”
“Of course. I knew that.”
When her eyes caught his, he read pure terror in her gaze.
Somehow, she’d forgotten that she herself was a force of nature. A champion who rescued women and felled criminals with a toss of her wrist.
A goddess of the hunt.
“Breathe, Diana,” he murmured. “I swear to you, we’ll get out of here.”
A rowdy, drunken chorus heralded sailors in the street below.
“If the guard lets that lot in this room, even the emeralds may not distract them from what they came here for,” Diana hissed. “We have to find some way to stall them.”
As loud footsteps and jeers approached, Ian knew she was right; they needed a distraction to buy them the time to get free of the ropes.
“We will have to perform,” he said in a rush, because to linger on the words would put enough thought into them to make him change his mind, lose his courage. “There’s only one thought on their minds if they come here.”
Her throat bobbed on a swallow. “Ian—”
“Oi, my friend, what have we here?” a slurred voice called out. A man craned his head around the guard. “Looks like a pretty package all tied up for us.”
“Must be a precious gift,” another said to the guard. “How about you let us in?”
“There are no good options left, Di.” Ian moved closer to her. “We will have to pretend. We both know how to put on an act.”
“Not this kind.”
Her voice sounded so unsure; it nearly undid him. “It signifies nothing.”
“It won’t work.”
Ian leaned into her. “Yes, it will. You and I will be convincing. We will make them understand you’re mine for the night.”
Her eyes flared, and for a moment—a sacred half second—he actually believed she was his. And that equally, he belonged to her, and what he was suggesting was the inevitable culmination of Diana confessing she wanted him as much as he’d desired her.
The men outside the door taunted the guard. “Let us in, boy. We’ve paid our fee.”
Diana’s head frantically bobbed between the door and Ian's face.
“Please,” he begged in a whisper. “Play pretend with me.”
With a small squeak, she shifted on the bed and straddled him.
They locked gazes. He couldn’t even think to apologize for his erect cock, because the place where her legs cradled it was absolute perfection. He would have begged her not to move, for fear of spilling himself, but the fear on her face stopped him.
“You’re in charge,” he whispered.
Someone shoved the door open.
Diana’s mouth descended as he surged up to meet her kiss.
She made a small noise, possibly a yelp, that dissolved quickly into a groan as he took her mouth and devoured it like a starving man tasting his first morsel of bread. He’d said they needed to put on a show, but this felt like the most genuine thing he’d ever done.
“She’s a tasty one, is she,” slurred the man who’d burst through the door. He and his friend were too drunk, or too transfixed to move, which was exactly what Ian needed.
Diana moaned again, and he took her mouth with more pressure.
He wasn’t holding back. Neither was she.
She met him stroke for stroke, tasting and nipping.
It was so indulgent, and his blood was high with the danger and anxiety of needing to secure their escape.
The sailors who’d entered the room would not be content to watch for long.
“That’s it,” Ian murmured as he grazed her jaw with his tongue before tracing circles on her throat. She groaned louder, and he wished he knew if she truly liked what he was doing. Or if she was amping up a reaction for their audience to keep them at bay.