Regency Surrender: Ruthless Rakes: Rake Most Likely to Seduce / Rake Most Likely to Sin

‘Are you cold?’ He shifted in his seat, but before he could shrug out of his coat and play the gentleman, she inched close until there was no space between them on the seat and pressed against him.

‘Just a little, I left my cloak behind. Would you mind if I...?’ She put her hand in the pocket of his evening coat, letting her words trail off in a delicate fade. She tossed him a smile. ‘Thank you, that’s better, much better.’

It was also much more ‘friendly’. The outside pocket of his evening coat proved to be a very intimate location indeed when one was seated. Her hand rested mere inches from a very private part of him that seemed compelled to stir at the proximity of her fingers. In a sense that was good. She wanted him attracted to her. But it was also a reminder of what might be surrendered in order to secure the larger goal.

They rode in silence after that, the Englishman not inclined towards conversation. The night spoke around them in the passing songs of the gondoliers and the laughter of revellers on the canals until the gondola bumped against the pier. The gondolier called out, ‘Hotel Danieli, signor.’

The Englishman extracted her hand from his pocket rather reluctantly, and stepped out of the barque. He passed some coins to the boatman, his words catching her entirely by surprise. ‘Take the lady wherever she’d like.’

Here! She wanted to be taken here, Gianna fought the urge to cry out. Surely he didn’t mean to leave her? Is this what he’d been thinking in the gondola? How to get rid of her? In all of her imaginings it had never occurred to her that he might find the arrangement as distasteful as she did. He was a man, after all, and men were all alike, her mama had taught her. Men were governed by sex.

She’d tried to make herself agreeable. She’d made conversation, to which he hadn’t responded. She’d put her hand in his pocket, to which he had responded. Sweet heaven, she’d almost touched his cock! He was not getting away this easy, not when she’d decided she had plans for him. Gianna bolted into action with a sharp cry. ‘Aspetta! Stop!’ She climbed clumsily to her feet, her hasty efforts hampered by her heavy skirts. She stumbled and got back up, the gondola rocking. She should have stilled and waited for the boat to settle but her mind was fixated on the Englishman. Her plans were not going to be wrecked by two men in one night. He couldn’t set her free. She had plans—admittedly, they were hastily concocted ones built in the silence of the boat ride, but plans none the less, to replace the ones the count had destroyed.

The Englishman stepped forward, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. ‘Signorina, I think you misunderstand. I am giving you your freedom. This is where you and I part ways.’ He said it as if ending their association was a good thing. They were not parting ways, not until she decided it.

Gianna faced him, hands on hips, trying to look dignified in a dangerously rocking boat. She pushed back a strand of hair and tilted her chin in defiance, struggling to maintain her balance. ‘No, signor, you misunderstand. This is the part where I—’

Stay.

The word never left her mouth. The gondolier gave a warning yelp and leapt for the pier. Gianna surged forward to the dock, hoping to escape the inevitable, but she was too slow. The boat tipped. She hit the water.

‘Gianna!’ The Englishman’s voice was the last sound she heard before she went under.

Two sensations hit her simultaneously: the water was dark. No lantern light reached the depths—

someone could fall in and simply disappear without being seen even if their fall had been noted. Second was that it was cold, so very cold. Gianna tried to push to the surface, arms and legs working to propel her upwards, but she had little momentum with nothing for her legs to push off from and an enormous amount of drag from her skirts. She needed more strength than she possessed.

She had no intentions of simply giving up. It would suit the count too well if she died. Everything she had would be his. He wouldn’t have to wait out the next four weeks. It would certainly suit the Englishman who had been so eager to send her away. No one would care except Giovanni. Giovanni was counting on her. But her air was failing, her strength was failing. What would happen to Giovanni?

There was a splash in the water beside her, a hand about her waist, another arm pushing upwards with her now. She lent her own meagre efforts, hurrying them upwards out of the murk. Haste was important now. Spots danced behind the lids of her eyes. If she lost consciousness, her dead weight would drag them both down. The surface at last! Her head broke the water and she dragged in a great breath, the Englishman beside her, his voice filling the night with directions.

‘We’re over here! I’ve got her. Get her up! Someone bring a blanket.’ It took two of them; the Englishman inelegantly pushing her up from behind, his hands on her bum, and the gondolier tugging her by the armpits to the pier. Task accomplished, the Englishman braced his hands on the dock and levered himself up with enviable, easy strength. He took the offered blanket and threw it about her shoulders. ‘Let’s get you inside.’

Gianna was shivering, unable to do anything but let him guide her into the opulent lobby of Hotel Danieli, his arm around her, holding her close to his side. She caught sight of herself in one of the long Venetian mirrors and groaned. She looked exactly like what she was—a soaking wet woman who’d just fallen into the canal. The Englishman, however, managed to look like a prince, all dripping six feet of him. Even wet and dressed in ruined clothing and barefoot. ‘You took time to remove your boots,’ she accused testily. She’d been panicking underwater, facing certain death, and he’d taken time to pull off his boots.

The Englishman laughed, a warm, light chuckle. She had the sensation again that everything was a lark, even death. ‘I assumed you didn’t want us to both drown? Your dress weighed enough without contending with my boots.’ He put his mouth close to her ear the way he had in the ballroom. ‘There’s a reason, Gianna, people swim naked.’

Her cold body went hot at the words, the sound of her name on his lips, the tickle of his breath at her ear. It was a most inappropriate comment made at a most inappropriate time in a most inappropriate place. Not surprising considering how the evening had gone. It fit perfectly with everything else that had occurred: she’d been wagered and lost in a card game by the one man her mother had trusted to look out for her, her plans for freedom from the count were now entirely undermined and her fate was in the hands of a stranger. What else could go wrong? What else was there to go wrong?

Chapter Four (#u74f51329-3077-5fc2-9a52-b93f355dc298)

The room was sumptuous. Perhaps it was safe to assume that the worst had happened. Perhaps her luck was starting to change. His rooms were of the finest quality: furniture upholstered in silk, long curtains with luxurious folds draped the windows like a woman’s ball gown where the rooms looked out over the canal. From here, there was a view of the chamber beyond with its enormous bed strewn with pillows. Even at a distance, that room exuded decadence, a not-so-subtle reminder that what had started this night might still very well finish it. Sex was a powerful weapon when used correctly. Gianna hoped she knew enough to wield it. She shivered and drew the blanket tighter around her.

‘Let’s get you into a bath. Come with me.’ He led her into the bedroom and through a door into the most incredible room she’d ever seen, a room entirely given over to the function of bathing. There was a porcelain tub rooted to the floor. He bent over the handles and turned them, water flowed. Steam rose.

‘Oh.’ She gasped. She’d heard of such features before, but they were non-existent at the count’s house. This was positively divine. The Englishman moved about, laying out plush white towels and a thick bar of milled soap, so intricately carved she almost didn’t want to use it and destroy its perfection.

His hands were at the back of her gown before she realised it. ‘Let’s get you out of this. What a mess.’

There was no sense protesting. She couldn’t possibly take it off by herself. Gianna let his fingers work the long row of tiny pearl buttons at her back. His touch was swift, professional and yet beneath that layer of competence, there was a sensually compelling undertone that suggested his hands would feel good on her skin. Surely that boded well for the next level of her plan?

‘It took my maid twenty minutes to do up the buttons. You’ve done this before.’ Gianna tried for levity, anything to keep her mind off the fact that she was alone in a hotel room with a man she didn’t know and she was there for the express purpose of being bedded by him. Never mind he’d tried to let her go. She’d refused. He would think that refusal was an acceptance of another sort...

He laughed, finishing the last of the buttons low on her spine. ‘Let’s just say you aren’t the first woman I’ve undressed, wet or otherwise.’

She supposed she’d deserved that with her leading question. The gown fell open. She could feel his gaze on her back, a sensation that was provocatively possessive and not without its own thrill. ‘Stand still,’ he murmured at her ear. ‘I’ll have to use my knife.’

His knife? That galvanised her into action. Gianna spun away from him, clutching her dress to her, her eyes rapidly scanning the room for a possible weapon, all sense of flirting, of wanting to lure him with sugar evaporating in the wake of self-preservation. ‘There is no need for knives, I assure you.’ She tried her best calming tones, the tones she used to reason with the count when he was irrational—which was nearly always. Surely she could handle one Englishman.

Gianna snatched up a ewer, brandishing it in self-defence as she edged towards the door. A knife flashed in his hand from some secret place on his person and she knew she was right to have gone on the defensive. Good lord, he’d been armed all along! What sort of man carried a weapon to a party? She’d traded drowning in the canal for being stabbed by a madman in hotel room, who was laughing.

The Englishman held out his arms in a gesture of peace, apparently having found great humour in the situation. ‘Put down the ewer, Gianna. The knife is for the laces. They’re in knots. I’m afraid there’s no saving them. Now, turn around and let me at them. Your bath is ready and you’re shaking.’

Hot embarrassment crept up her cheeks. She’d completely overreacted. But what else was she to think? It was easier to turn around than to let him see her blush. She’d let herself look foolish. ‘You find this funny?’ she scolded. She felt the slice of a sure blade through the sodden laces of her corset, felt the tight garment slide away, felt her body breathe, set free.

His hands closed over the caps of her shoulders, warm and firm against her chilled skin. ‘I think it’s funny that you believe I would go to all the trouble of dragging you out of the canal just to stab you a half hour later in my room.’ His fingers flexed gently against her skin, his mouth close to her ear. ‘What holds no humour for me is why a beautiful woman would have reason to think a man would do that.’

His body was just inches from hers. She could feel the heat of him through his wet clothes, feel the strength of him—it was there in the low rumble of his words, in the remembrance of the arm that had brought her to the water’s surface. This was a very different man than the count. She’d known it at the palazzo, but had not fully understood what it meant until now.

Where the count thrived on cruelty and force, this man did not. However, that mere discrepancy did not make him a saint. She had to be careful not to ascribe heroic attributes to him just because he’d dragged her out of the canal and hadn’t ravished her yet. He was still a gambler and he was a still a rogue—a rogue who was growing more appealing by the moment.

A shiver of a different sort swept through Gianna. She knew danger when she encountered it and it was standing right behind her. It wasn’t the knife in his hand that made him dangerous, it was his manners, his temptations.

He stepped back, releasing her. ‘Take your bath.’

Gianna turned to face him. He’d saved her tonight. He’d looked after her. How long had it been since anyone had done that? He was a complete stranger, someone who didn’t have to do any of those things and yet he had. She didn’t even know his name. She stretched a hand out. ‘You have my thanks, ah...?’ She waited for him to fill in the space left by her words.

A small smile twitched on his lips as he took her hand. ‘Are you asking me my name? It’s Nolan Gray.’

‘I’m trying to thank you, Mr Gray.’ She couldn’t resist a smile of her own, something warm unfurling in her stomach. She imagined he rather regularly had that effect on women. Once more she counselled caution. She didn’t want to like him. She just needed him to get through the next four weeks.

* * *

He just had to get through the night. He had a naked woman in his tub and no idea what to do with her, a most novel situation to be sure. Usually he knew exactly what to do with a naked woman in the tub, out of the tub, on the bed, off the bed, against the wall, out on the balcony with the moon overhead. He had to stop, this was starting to sound like an erotic prepositional exercise or bad poetry. Too bad his tutors had not aspired to such creative lengths—he might have done better in school.

Nolan stripped out of his clothes at last, glad to be rid of the damp and stench of the canal. He towelled dry his hair and slipped into his banyan, feeling warmer, cleaner already, but that raised another point of concern. What was she going to wear? Her gown was beyond use, wet and ruined. It was past midnight. There were no shops open and he didn’t know any shopkeepers to rouse. But he did know a friend... Brennan. Nolan grinned and hurried next door.

Brennan answered, half-dressed and less than half-sober. ‘Do you still have that nightgown, Bren? The one you just ordered.’

‘The one I ordered for my special lady,’ Brennan drawled his correction.

‘I need it, Bren.’ Nolan leaned against the doorjamb, his voice low. If Brennan was home this time of night he wasn’t alone and he didn’t want his business broadcast to all and sundry. ‘I have a situation.’

‘I have a situation, too, as it were.’ Brennan directed his eyes downward meaningfully where his robe gaped.

‘Please, she fell in the canal and has nothing to sleep in.’

Brennan raised a brow. ‘And that’s a problem how? I thought you screwed naked.’