them in golden pleasure.
Slowly, inexorably, the glow faded.
His arms gave way and he slumped over her, coming down on his elbows, his chest rising and falling like bellows against her back, his breathing harsh by her ear, his body hot, malleable steel curved protectively over hers. His heart still thundered. She felt the evocative beat against her back, felt it where they joined, in the slick furnace between her thighs, in her still clenching womb. He was in her blood, in her bones, had sunk to her marrow.
The beat gradually slowed as they drifted back to earth.
Eyes closed, thoughts in abeyance, her body more his than hers, her cheek pillowed on the coverlet, she realized she was smiling.
She was a mass of contradictions.
Later, once he’d managed to summon strength enough to disengage and lift her, then draw down the covers and rearrange them both in her bed, Del lay back on the piled pillows, one arm behind his head, the other around Deliah as she slept the sleep of the pleasurably exhausted, her cheek pillowed on his chest.
He stared at the canopy and tried to make sense of her.
Not an easy task, given said contradictions.
Her nightgown, for instance. The style was prim and proper, as befitted a deacon’s daughter-her father was a deacon, he recalled. The gown’s fabric, on the other hand, was a testament to tactile sensuality. The Indians understood the arousing properties of silk, its inherently sensual nature. So, apparently, did Deliah.
Touching her through the garment-sliding, shifting silk caressing silken skin-had been as arousing for her as it had been for him.
That contradiction mirrored another-her oftimes prim behavior, her insistence on propriety, contrasting sharply with the experienced wanton she was. Or at least appeared to be.
Which left him with the last of the contradictions he’d thus far uncovered. She hadn’t been a virgin, yet every instinct he possessed insisted that beyond the basics she was-or at least had been-untutored and untried.
He hadn’t been in any condition to think much at the time, but he had noticed. Now he had the leisure to think back…she’d been startled-honestly taken aback, even shocked-when he’d used his mouth on her.
She’d been surprised when he’d lifted her, although she’d very quickly grasped the possibilities.
When he’d had her on her back…
Eyes narrowing, he replayed all he could. Accepted that his earlier conclusion regarding her experience had been wrong.
The heat of the moment, her eager, all but molten responses, had veiled the truth. All of the aforesaid-and doubtless all that had come after, too-had been new to her.
The only way he could reconcile the nascent, latent houri he knew her to be, that she’d proved to be in his arms, with the twenty-nine-year-old non-virgin with barely a sexual encounter to her name, was that somewhere in her past lay what was commonly termed “a disappointment.”
She’d loved some man, had given herself to him, perhaps only once, but for whatever reason-him dying at Waterloo would fit the timing-no marriage had come of it, resulting in her sojourn in Jamaica, presumably to lift her spirits.
He couldn’t imagine her going into a decline, but he hadn’t known her all those years ago. Yet given how tight she was, her last sexual episode prior to him was in her dim and very distant past. She’d been with no other man- been tempted by no other man-until, the previous night, she’d lost her temper with him.
She might be a nascent, latent houri, but she was the very opposite of a light-skirted lady.
That, to him, was no contradiction but a reassuring, potentially useful fact. A highly pertinent piece of intelligence given the direction he intended to have them head in-his “later, after.”
Regardless of having spent no real time dwelling on it, their mutual destination had already taken definite shape in his mind. That being so…
He glanced at her. Spent some minutes simply drinking in the sight of her, softly flushed in sleep, boneless in the aftermath of intense satiation, curled, trusting, against his side.
Her jade-green eyes were closed. Her luscious ruby lips…
Recalling his fantasies involving those sinfully ripe lips, he smiled. Lowering his arm, he slid his hand beneath the covers, found her breast.
Gently fondled, caressed.
And felt her rouse, waken, then sinuously stretch.
Smile deepening, he slid down in the bed.
There was no reason he shouldn’t show her more. Indulge her, and himself, further. Educate the houri hidden inside her, to her gratification, and his.
No reason at all that he couldn’t open her eyes further, couldn’t feed her curiosity.
And simultaneously satisfy his.
Del returned to his room before dawn the following morning in a distinctly buoyant mood. Even though nothing about his mission had changed, he felt significantly more positive.
Entering his room, he closed the door, looked at the bed. Considered its neat, pristine state. Inwardly shrugged. Cobby had been with him too long to cozen; he would guess regardless.
Going to the bellpull, he tugged it, then continued to the dresser to set down the gold pin he hadn’t bothered replacing in his cravat.
Hand poised over the top of the dresser, he froze. Frowned.
Something wasn’t quite right, but he couldn’t pinpoint what was triggering the thought, the gut feeling. Lifting his head, he scanned the room.
When Cobby arrived, he was still prowling, frowning.
Closing the door, Cobby paused, brows rising. “Don’t rightly know which question I should ask first.”
“Don’t bother with the obvious. What’s bothering me is that…” Del looked around again. “I think someone’s been in here-that someone’s searched.” He waved a hand around the room. “See what you think.”
Cobby came deeper into the room, looked. Gradually, he, too, frowned. “Things are not quite the way we leave them-either you or me. Take the brushes on the dresser. They aren’t in any sort of order. Neither of us leave our weapons like that-even if they aren’t exactly weapons.”
Del ran a hand through his hair. “So I’m right. Someone has been searching. Who?”
Cobby pursed his lips. “Haven’t been many hotel staff about up here-just the maids cleaning, and me and Janay usually hang about then.” He darted a glance at Del. “Could it be one of Miss Duncannon’s people?”
“I can’t see how. She’s known them for years, and there’s no way the Black Cobra could have known she and I were going to travel together, that her staff would ever have any chance at the scroll-holder. He wouldn’t have had time to put his usual persuasions in place.”
The Black Cobra’s usual persuasive tactic was to get a family member into his clutches and use their safety to ensure their relative did as he bid them.
“You’re right.” Cobby nodded. “And I have to say they’re a straightforward lot. I haven’t had any qualms.”
“So it has to have been a member of the hotel’s staff. Spread the word to the others-we’ll need to stay alert while we prepare to leave.”
A tap on the door heralded a lad with a jug of steaming water. Cobby received it, then shut the door. He poured a basinful for Del as he stripped. “So what time are we leaving? You didn’t exactly say last night.”
Del considered as he washed. “Let’s say ten on the steps, ten-thirty away.” He towelled his face, then mopped his chest. “Pass the word to Janay. I don’t know how long it’ll take for Miss Duncannon’s household to get ready.”
“Oh, we heard we’d be leaving last night, so we’re ready. All of us. Just finishing up breakfast, the rest are, so as soon as you and Miss Duncannon give the word, we can go.”
“Excellent.” It was early, but Del had a definite appetite. “You can leave my clothes out, then go and rustle up breakfast. We’ll have it in the suite as usual. I’m starved.”
And so, he suspected, would be his charge.
As Cobby rummaged in the wardrobe, Del added to himself, “And then we can start out, and see what the day
