Regency Sins: Pickpocket Countess / Notorious Rake, Innocent Lady

He strode to the low table holding a decanter of his best brandy. He poured a glass, making a mental note to have his valet fill it in the morning. He did not remember drinking so much of it, but apparently he had. The decanter looked to have poured a glass or two.

Brandon headed to bed, tumbler in hand, eager to put the evening behind him. He raised his glass to his lips and halted at the threshold of his bedroom in disbelief.

‘Hello, Stockport. I’d offer you a drink, but I see you already have one.’ Rich tones purred from the bed where The Cat reclined in semi-darkness against the pillows, clad in her customary dark garb.

Ridiculous elation buoyed Brandon. She had come! He tamped down his relief, determined to play it coolly while heat flared within him. ‘Don’t you ever knock?’

‘Occupational hazard.’ The Cat uncurled her long limbs and rose from the bed.

Brandon took a swallow of brandy, trying to ignore the effect The Cat’s sinuous walk was having on him as she crossed the room to stand before him. There was something different yet disconcertingly familiar about her attire, but his jangled mind was too busy focusing on her presence in his bedroom to place it. ‘What are you doing here?’

She held up the small pouch for him to take. ‘That should be obvious. I am returning your ring and something else that belongs to you. You should keep your money in a safer place.’ She patted the breast pocket of her jacket. Only then did Brandon recognise that the coat she wore was his.

His heart leapt in victory. All the chastisements his logical mind had whipped him with as he climbed the stairs faded. She had kept her word to return the ring and she had returned his jacket from the Christmas ball with his money still tucked inside.

Stunned, he stood there, dumb in amazement. The Cat was purring about an affront to her dignity. ‘Should I be flattered that you’re surprised to see me or should I be insulted? Did you think I wouldn’t keep my word?’

‘If I am surprised, it is over finding you in my bedroom. I am not used to women making free with my private chambers. It’s usually the other way around.’

His urbane scolding did nothing to daunt her. She stood mere inches from him, her low voice making him hard as she spun fantasies with her words. ‘I wanted to arrange something special for our last meeting.’

‘Last? Are you leaving?’ He hadn’t thought buying supplies for her needy would drive her out of town. He found he didn’t want her to go. Maybe there was time to cancel the orders.

She gave one of her throaty laughs and he discarded his irrational thought. ‘Of course not! I still have investors who need my particular attentions. But since you fail to play by my rules and announce Stockport Hall has been burglarised, I must spend my time elsewhere on more likely subjects.’ She ran a finger lightly down his cheek along his jaw line where late-night stubble was starting to grow. ‘I need the publicity.’

Her continuation of the robberies did not bode well for his plan to dissuade her from her criminal activities. ‘I thought I’d provided enough supplies for your families to last until spring.’ Brandon was thoroughly confused. He’d believed he’d kept her out of harm’s way with his purchases. Apparently, she was addicted to danger.

‘You did. But that doesn’t change the fact that plans for the mill are still going forward.’

‘No rest for the wicked, eh?’ he said with a flippancy he didn’t feel.

‘None, and I am very wicked.’ She stood so close to him now that the tips of her breasts pressed against his shirt. He wanted to forget the game they played over his mill. He wanted to throw her down on his bed and play an entirely different game, one that didn’t involve clothes or masks or secrets or politics; well, maybe sexual politics, he amended.

Brandon did not believe it was possible for him to get any harder and survive intact. He fully expected it to explode shortly. In a hoarse voice, he tried to turn the conversation down a neutral venue. ‘It’s foolishness to continue at this rate. You must slow down. Do you want to be caught?’

Her eyes glinted with mischief. ‘It depends on who is doing the catching.’ A nail lightly raked his chest where his shirt opened in a vee, causing him to shiver in aroused delight.

She continued, ‘I have no intentions of being caught by silly Squire Bradley and those nabob investors who have ponied up their pounds for the privilege of associating with you, my lord. I certainly shall not surrender to the pompous St John or that young braggart, Witherspoon.’

She smiled coyly at Brandon, making him feel that the cat had already licked the cream. ‘Tell me, my lord, haven’t you ever wanted to be caught? It can be invigorating with the right person.’

‘Yes,’ Brandon managed. They were no longer talking about catching The Cat. One moment they’d been talking about traps of one type and in the next were talking about traps of entirely another sort. An inappropriate sort. The sort that made him want to throw back the very proper damask cover on his bed and take her on the red satin sheets that hid beneath.

He groaned his lust as The Cat ran her nails down his chest. Her deft hands found their way inside his shirt to the hard planes beneath the fabric. Brandon sucked in his breath. Never in his intimate relationships had he been so stimulated and he had yet to remove his clothes.

‘You see,’ she whispered sensually, ‘it is nice to be caught.’

His groin swelled painfully. He wanted her to catch him. It didn’t take long for his thoughts to head in the reverse direction. He wanted to catch her in the manner she’d intimated.

His mind ran riot with all nature of exotic visions. He imagined a primal coupling among his scarlet sheets that would leave them both sweat-drenched and slaked. He imagined her sleeping and rumpled in the middle of his big bed, her dark hair fanned out against the crimson clad pillows. He imagined for a moment that The Cat and all her passion belonged to him alone. If he took her, it could not be otherwise. He was a man used to power and the responsibilities that went with it.

She stepped back and arched an eyebrow that both insinuated a dare and mocked his ardour. With languorous movements, she stepped away from him and took a chair, crossing her long, booted legs. ‘It’s clear from the look on your face, and dare I say “other parts”, that you think you are man enough to tame The Cat.’

Brandon’s blood was already hot. Her insouciant manner pushed him the rest of the way until he fairly boiled. It was time for this impudent wench to learn a lesson about what happened when she played with fire. ‘You need taming badly.’ He advanced towards her, hands on hips.

‘You think you’re that man?’ The Cat queried from her relaxed position in the chair, unmoved by his proximity.

He leaned over her chair, his hands braced on each of the arms. He inhaled. The scent of outdoor air with the tinge of winter on it still hovered about her. She hadn’t been there long ahead of him. ‘Damn right I am.’

‘Many men have tried and most have failed.’

‘I am not most men.’ He was impressed. She hadn’t flinched once.

‘No, you’re an Earl. There’s, what, roughly fifty of you?’ She rose from the chair, her movements forcing him to step back and aside.

She still wore his jacket. She made a great show of taking it off and laying it aside with all the care of a man preparing to engage in fisticuffs. ‘Well, my lord, are you going to come tame The Cat or stand there all night trying to figure out who the other forty-nine are?’

He saw her game and it was over. He would not suffer defeat twice in the same evening, nor would he be cowed into retreating by her brazen tongue.

‘I call your bluff. Consider yourself caught.’ He gripped her forearms and covered her lush mouth with his in a kiss that conveyed the power of his desire—a desire that both transcended the base need to be the sole possessor of such a wild creature and encompassed the primal need to protect what was his.

Indeed, whether she knew it or not, she was his—his equal in wit, in sensual gambits, in passion for a cause. In all the ways that mattered, she was his. His tongue probed the warmth of her mouth and she responded wholeheartedly, giving herself over to a complete embrace and, for once, letting him lead. Her body pressed against his. Her hands twined about his neck to pull him close. Her hips fitted against his jutting erection. At such contact, Brandon knew an elation as old as Adam.

Confident in himself and in her response, he moved his hand to rest in the provocative space between her breast and ribs. She sighed encouragement into his mouth and he cupped her full breast through the cloth of her shirt. Then he was falling backwards onto the bed, taking the weight of The Cat with him. In a flash he found himself pinned, The Cat looming above him, straddling him at midsection.

She changed her grip so that she imprisoned both of his wrists with her right hand. The charming smile on her lips persuaded Brandon to lay still and see where her shenanigans led. If she required the illusion of control, he could accommodate her whim.

With her free hand she pulled his cravat free and wound it around his wrists, her actions compelling her to stretch over his head so that her breasts were mere inches from his mouth. With a flick of his tongue, he could lick the nipples through the linen of her dark shirt. His sense of fair play startled him back to consciousness. He had not mistaken her motions. She was tying him up with his own clothing.

‘What are you doing?’ he inquired, a douse of sobriety cooling some of his ardour. He tried to make sense of the amusement playing across her masked features when she leaned back from her efforts.

The Cat leaned forward to sprinkle tantalising kisses against his jaw. ‘Have none of your other lovers ever invigorated you like this?’ Her hand drifted to his member and grasped it firmly, stroking him through the fabric, her thumb teasing its sensitive head.

‘I didn’t think so.’ The Cat laughed—a deep throaty sound men would pay handsomely to hear in the night. She tugged his shirttails from his waistband and popped the buttons of his shirt open to reveal his bare chest. Brandon knew his nipples were erect with need.

‘Still think you can tame The Cat?’ She took one erect nubbin in her mouth and laved it with her tongue.

Brandon moaned. If this was failure, he’d like to fail more often.

The Cat sat back on her haunches, smiling broadly. She swung off the bed and studied his long legs for a thoughtful moment. Then she began to tug. Off came his boots. Off came his trousers. His member stood at rigid attention for them both to see.

The Cat stepped away from the bed and walked backwards towards the door, her face still wreathed in her grin. ‘Consider yourself caught.’ She used his own words.

‘Where are you going?’ Brandon strained again to sit upright.

‘I’m going home.’

‘Going home?’ The implications slowly dawned on him. ‘Wait. You can’t leave me like this!’