One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,57

I wonder whether it wasn’t always the plan between them.”

With a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, he thumped the tumbler onto the desk. “And that, your ladyship,” he finished, giving the fleshiest part of her calf a squeeze before releasing her to set both hands on the arms of the chair as if preparing to rise, “is the mostly true tale of how I came to be Major Langley Stanhope, intelligence officer and master mimic known as the Magpie.”

He had skated over a great number of incidents, she felt sure, as well as a promotion or two. But she dared just one question. “And the matter of the knighthood?”

At that, he stood so abruptly, she nearly lost her balance. “A mistake. A misunderstanding on His Majesty’s part.”

“Surely you would not have me believe you so modest as to deny your own heroism?” she said lightly, doubting even as she spoke the words whether it was wise to tease him just now.

“If I’ve ever done anything worthy of being called a hero,” he demurred, shaking his head, “it certainly was not on the occasion in question.” Then another bitter laugh huffed from his chest. “I’m sure old Ben would have liked to hear me called Sir Langley Stanhope, all the same.”

“He’s gone?”

“A little more than three years ago.”

About the same time she had lost her husband, Amanda noted with a strange pang of something like sympathy, though their pain had sprung from such different sources.

“Sophia went first, of a fever. Ben died a few weeks later, of a broken heart—and now I’m spouting sentimental nonsense, aren’t I?”

Slowly, she slid from her perch on the edge of the desk and stepped closer to him, laying a hand on his arm. “No.”

His gaze settled on the place where she touched him. “You’re a smart woman,” he said softly. “And a lady. Surely that story was sordid enough to send you scampering away?”

Her fingers curled tighter, pale against the dark wool of his coat. She made no move to go.

“Amanda.” More plea than warning. Oh, yes. He wanted her.

And she wanted him. Surely a discreet widow might take a lover? There was no great scandal in that.

Well…some scandal.

Recalling her mother’s endless cautions and reprimands, Amanda feared scandal might be part of the appeal.

Her pulse fluttered like a bird in a snare as he trapped her beneath his steady, stern regard. Resistance flared in her, along with a forbidden tingle of anticipation.

For what seemed an eternity, they stood at a silent impasse: cat and mouse, just as he’d said, his eyes raking over her, that hint of a sardonic smile curving his lips. When she could bear the weight of his imperious stare no longer, she lifted her chin, drew back her shoulders, and said, “Well?”

With one swift movement, he switched the position of their hands, so that he now gripped her arm. His other hand settled over her ribs, just beneath her breast. Could he feel her heart race?

“Right now,” he murmured against her ear, his breath stirring the curls clustered there and shooting sparks of awareness across her scalp, “you seem to imagine that you may flirt with danger, dally with it, and still escape unharmed. But the life I lead is not for you. I am not for you.” Once more, he nipped her earlobe, sending a bolt of lust to her core. “What must I do to make you understand?”

“You’re the tutor,” came her impudent reply.

At least, that was what she had intended to say. She rather feared that her words had been lost in an incoherent groan of pleasure as he nuzzled at a particularly sensitive spot beneath her ear.

“That’s right,” he growled. “I am.”

And with that, his lips trailed over her throat, along her jaw, and found her mouth at last, his kiss just as rough as he’d threatened.

Or had intended to threaten.

To her mind, he was merely keeping a promise, a promise to reveal something of her, something to her, something she could not otherwise have discovered. The way the scrape of his bristly jaw along the delicate skin of her neck, followed by the press of sharp teeth—sensations she once would have dismissed as discomfort—made all her skin come alive. She was pure sensation, drunk on his touch.

And perhaps that was his object, to overwhelm her senses, the way one let a child have too many sweets, until he was heartily sick of them.

But her appetite had gone unsated for so long—had never been