Reaching the nearest hackney, he halted, tossed the jarvey a sovereign. “Don’t ask why-just drive, as fast as you can, down Piccadilly. Go!”
The jarvey blinked, but was already lifting his reins to set his coach rolling.
At least the voice of command worked on some.
One glance back showed their pursuers had yet to reach the street. Tightening his grip on Deliah’s hand, he swung her toward the buildings, hurried and harried her into a small alcove before a locked door. He pushed her into the shadows, then crowded in, too, just as the two men came out of the lane.
He looked at Deliah-just as she opened her mouth.
Felt her breasts press against his chest with the breath she’d drawn in.
Seizing her other hand, too, he ducked his head and shut her up.
By kissing her.
Hard.
He shifted into her, trapping her against the brick wall of the alcove. His greatcoat was dark, his trousers were, too, and so was his hair, which currently reached his collar. With his head bent, with her trapped before him, completely shielded by his body, they should be all but invisible in the shadows. Not even her pale face could catch a stray gleam from the smoky street flares.
He hoped, he prayed…
He had to fight the distraction of her lips beneath his, ignore the temptation to taste her, try to blot out the sensation of her exceedingly feminine body pressed along the length of his, and concentrate, focus all his senses, on what was happening in the street behind his back.
Through the sensual storm hazing his brain, he heard the bruisers’ pounding footsteps near, heard them halt, swear at the retreating carriage, then he heard them-yes!-hail the next hackney in line and clamber up, calling orders to follow the other carriage.
He didn’t lift his head when the carriage door slammed, not even when the horses’ hooves rang in the street. He didn’t pull back from the kiss and risk a look until the retreating hoofbeats were fading.
The hackney with their pursuers was disappearing into the murk at the end of the street.
They were safe.
Registering Deliah’s silence, he looked back at her. Despite the shadows, he fell into the dark pools of her wide, stunned eyes. He felt the quick rise and fall of her breasts, mashed against his chest. Saw her lips, lush and ripe, full and parted in the poor light. Beckoning.
He saw the tip of her tongue glide over her lower lip, making the lusciousness glisten.
He didn’t need to kiss her again, yet he did.
It wasn’t a simple kiss but one fueled by anger, and relief. And by something he didn’t understand-that something she and only she evoked, and set pounding in his blood.
Her lips had been parted; he filled her mouth, stole her breath, then gave it back. Deliberately lingered, tasted, explored.
He tightened his fingers on hers, kept their hands safely locked, arms down, even though every instinct pushed him to free his hands and seize her, hold her, bring her close-much closer.
He wanted her, and that want was open, undisguised, there in every bold stroke of his tongue, in the demanding pressure of his lips on hers. In the hard ridge that pressed against her belly. Deliah had no difficulty reading his desire, recognizing it-along with the response that raced through her, hot, instinctive, and strong.
She wanted him, and that was dangerous.
Dangerous with a capital D.
Yet she couldn’t back away, pull back-end this unwise kiss. Because she didn’t want to. Because there was, it seemed, no force within her powerful enough to counter the pull of it, and him.
Once again, Del found himself in the unaccustomed position of having to force himself to end a kiss-a kiss that promised so much more, that left him aching and hungry for much more. A “more” he now was certain he could have, but while this, it seemed, was the right time, it absolutely wasn’t the right place.
Drawing back from the exchange, limited though it had been, was hard enough. Lifting his head, he looked down into her face, at the lashes that fluttered, then lifted, revealing eyes clouded with rising passion. Her lips were lightly swollen, sheening from his kiss.
Stepping back was much harder, losing the elementally feminine cushion of her curves, an evocative softness that had cradled his hard frame. Easing back, subduing his rising clawing need, took more effort than he’d imagined, but he finally moved back, then, releasing one of her hands, he turned and stepped out of the alcove.
After checking they were indeed safe, he drew her out, too, without a word led her to the nearest hackney, opened the door, and helped her in. He looked up at the jarvey. “Grillon’s.”
Climbing in, he shut the carriage door and dropped onto the seat beside her.
He didn’t say a single word on their journey back to Grillon’s-and neither did she.
By the time the hackney pulled up outside the hotel, Deliah had recovered her composure, but her pulse was still pounding.
With suppressed anger, and unslaked passion.
She recognized both, and knew which was the safer to address. While she could understand, even without his explanation, why he’d kissed her the first time, she couldn’t explain, and didn’t want to think about, why he’d kissed her again. The second time.
That second, much more thorough time.
Sweeping into the hotel’s foyer, she regally nodded to the clerk behind the desk, then continued without pause up the stairs and down the corridor to the suite.
Del, of course, followed; she heard his heavy footsteps closing in from behind. Reaching the suite, she threw open the door and swept in.
He strode in on her heels and shut the door with force.
Halting, she whirled on him, temper sparking. “Don’t you dare upbraid me for coming to your aid. I’ll do it again in such circumstances.”
“No. You won’t.” Eyes already narrowed, he walked toward her-only halted when he stood directly in front of her with a bare inch between her breasts and his chest, so she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes.
Eyes that snapped with a temper to match hers. “You will never, ever, disobey my orders again. If I tell you to go on, you will-without hesitation.”
She narrowed her eyes back. “No. I won’t. I’m not one of your subordinates you can order around. Whatever the situation, I’ll do as I think best.”
Del felt his jaw lock. He fisted his hands against a nearly overpowering urge to seize her and shake some sense into her. It was a moment before he could trust himself to speak. “If you wish to continue to be a member of this group-to assist in my mission-you will henceforth do exactly as I say.”
One finely drawn dark brow arched. Maddeningly. “Or what?”
He had to stop and think.
When he didn’t immediately answer-not because he couldn’t answer but because, belatedly, wisdom had caught his tongue, and he couldn’t immediately think of a response it would be safe to utter-her eyes, her expression, hardened, and she went on, “I’m not some flunky, or some private who has to jump to do your bidding. What’s more, if you recall, I offered-only this morning-to step away from this enterprise, but you insisted that, having commenced it, I had to see it through to the end. So I am-I will. However, I didn’t agree to transform into the sort of weak-kneed twit with more hair than wit who runs away and leaves you to deal with not one, not two, but three assailants-one armed with a club, another with a knife!”
She flung up her hands. “Why are you even lecturing me about this? We’re here, we’re safe-isn’t that the important thing? Aside from all else, I’m my own person. I’m twenty-nine, for heaven’s sake! I’ve sailed to Jamaica and back, more or less on my own. I’ve been an adult, my responsibility and no one else’s, for a very long time!”