The Rakehell of Roth (Everleigh Sisters #2) - Amalie Howard Page 0,44

neck to her swelling décolletage. The rich color made the silver flecks in her eyes glow and the creaminess of her skin seem even more luminous.

“No,” he said finally.

“Why not?”

He led her down another mazelike hallway, this one lit with golden sconces and set with paintings of a distinctly erotic nature. He wondered if she’d noticed. Winter paused in front of a particularly suggestive garden scene by Thomas Rowlandson. He didn’t have long to wait before the sweetest gasp left her parted lips, her eyes arrested on the piece.

A pink tongue darted out to wet her lips before a quivering palm rose to rest on her breast. Her skin turned a delectable shade of pink as he bent forward, his mouth so close to her ear that he could feel the heat of her skin.

“That’s why,” he whispered. “You’re much too innocent, little beauty.”

…

Oh, dear God. Isobel felt so unbearably hot that she was sure she would swoon. Her throat felt dry and her heart pounded against her ribs like a demented thing. The painting in front of her was lewd, depicting sexual congress between many frolicking partners in a public garden, and it was indecent, horrifying, and scandalously arousing. But that hadn’t been the catalyst to set her off.

That had been Winter’s gravelly rasp against her ear that had nearly made her eyes roll back in her head. She’d felt his lips graze her ear, and Lord help her, she wanted to feel his teeth graze over her skin. Feel him suck that sensitive lobe into his mouth as he’d done before near the wishing well.

No, the fire shooting through her body was a direct result of him, not because of filthy art that she and Clarissa had already pored over in scandalous delight. For research, of course. Isobel reached for her fan and realized too late that she didn’t have one. It hadn’t been provided with the dress. Her gloved fingers curled into fists at her sides. She wasn’t that innocent, she wanted to declare to Winter, but her mouth refused to cooperate.

Everything refused to cooperate.

She could only stand still like a rabbit caught in the sights of a very, very hungry wolf. Willing her body to move, she breathed out and wrenched her eyes from the painting, only to fall on another that was twice as bawdy. She snatched her gaze away.

Good Lord, there were filthy paintings everywhere the eye could see, and all she could feel was her husband’s huge frame against her back, caging her in. Her senses were battered on so many fronts—visual stimulation, his body bracketing hers, the deeply masculine scent of him, the rough cadence of his breathing. The only thing missing was taste and the feral need brewing inside of her to turn and seal her mouth to his.

She needed to take control of a situation that was quickly spiraling out of control.

She had to take charge.

Isobel found her voice. “These are interesting. It’s certainly not Ackermann’s,” she said, referring to Rowlandson’s printer on the Strand, The Repository of Arts.

“Indeed.”

She didn’t have to turn to feel his surprise that she was familiar with the artist or his body of work. Score one for her. She needed to retune this game of theirs. Winter’s fingers gripped her elbow and her entire body tensed, but he only meant to lead her down the rest of the eye-opening corridor. Another black lacquered door stood at the end, for which he produced a large gold key and turned it in the lock. It slid open on noiseless hinges.

“Welcome to what we call the Underground, Lady Darcy,” he said.

To the untrained eye, the club looked exactly like the rest of the mansion they had walked through. Sumptuous decor, exquisite furnishings, not a guinea spared, but Isobel felt the difference. The air felt silkier against her skin as if she were walking into a web of sin. Tingles exploded across her body in a rash of gooseflesh as she followed Winter, her own darkly handsome Hades, luring her into the depths of the Underworld.

No, he’d called it the Underground.

Isobel repressed a shiver. Not of fear…of something else. Some intoxicating combination of desire and dread. Panic warred with the promise of pleasure. But as she strolled with Winter past other masked people who paid them no mind, she wasn’t afraid. For some mysterious reason, she trusted him. Foolish, perhaps, but there it was. He wanted her gone, but she felt it deep in her bones that she wasn’t