Nicola Cornick Collection: The Last Rake In London / Notorious / Desired

‘When I see something that I want, I go after it,’ Jack said. ‘The gamble just makes the game more exciting.’ He raised one dark brow. ‘Miss Bowes?’

‘Mr Kestrel.’ Sally’s voice was quiet, but as cutting as a whip. ‘His Majesty is in the right of it. I have already told you once this evening that I am not that sort of woman and this is not that sort of club.’

‘Everything has a price, Miss Bowes,’ Jack said. The counters clicked softly as he stacked them together.

‘I am priceless,’ Sally said sweetly, and the King laughed and the tension eased. ‘Your price, on the other hand,’ she said, ‘is ten thousand pounds in winnings and dinner with me, should you choose to accept it.’

‘I’d take it, Kestrel,’ one of the other men said. ‘It’s more than the rest of us have ever been offered.’

Jack stood up and shrugged himself into his jacket. ‘I’ll accept dinner gladly,’ he said, ‘and leave the rest to chance.’

Dan had arrived with the champagne and the caviar and King Edward took Sally’s hand and kissed the back of it with heavy gallantry and said she was a pearl amongst women. She felt a huge relief—Jack’s winning streak had been halted, albeit at a high cost, and the King’s favour retained.

Jack took her elbow as they walked out of the casino together.

‘Are you angry with me?’ he asked softly. His breath stirred her hair.

‘Does it matter?’ Sally said tightly. ‘The disapproval of others strikes me as something that is supremely irrelevant to you, Mr Kestrel.’

He laughed and she saw the brilliant amusement in his eyes. ‘You read me very well,’ he said. ‘You can still win back that ten thousand pounds, you know.’

Sally flicked him a glance. ‘And you read me very badly, Mr Kestrel, if you do not think I meant what I said earlier.’ She turned to face him. For a moment they were alone in the corridor. ‘You want revenge on me for Connie’s behaviour,’ she said, ‘so you think to break the bank and ruin me. That is all that matters to you.’

‘You are mistaken.’ Jack raised his hand and the back of his fingers brushed the line of her jaw. ‘It is you I want, Sally Bowes. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you last night.’

Suddenly the corridor felt airless. Sally took a step back and felt the smooth, cool plaster of the wall against her sticky palms. She knew that the fact they were in public would make no odds to him at all. If Jack Kestrel would proposition a woman in front of the King, he would be eminently capable of kissing her in a corridor and not give a damn who saw them. She felt dizzy and hot.

‘You can’t have—’ she began, but he never gave her the chance to finish her sentence. He leaned in close and kissed her, biting down gently on her lower lip, and the aching need flashed through her and she moaned, opening her lips beneath his. He took her mouth wholly and completely and her body caught ablaze like a lightning strike. She had never experienced anything like it.

They broke apart as a couple came down the corridor and cast them a curious look. Sally turned away from the light. She had no idea what feelings and emotions were showing there, but her face felt too naked, too revealing of the turmoil inside her. Her heart was beating in hard, heavy strokes. She knew she was shaking. Jack took her chin in his hand, as he had done earlier in the office, and turned her face towards the light. He ran his thumb over her full lower lip, where he had kissed her, and the lust slammed through her body and she almost groaned aloud.

‘Sally—’ his voice was rough ‘—where can we go?’

She understood what he meant, but the thought brought the first, cold thread of sanity back to her overheated mind.

‘I can’t,’ she said. She frowned a little. It was hopeless to pretend that she did not respond to him, that she did not want him. Her behaviour had given the lie to that. She tried to be equally honest with her words.

‘You go too fast for me,’ she said. ‘I am not accustomed to feeling like this. I can’t believe we …’

She saw his tight expression ease a little.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘In the heat of the moment—’

‘Yes.’ Sally smoothed the pink gown down over her hips. Her movements were jerky. Her hands still shook. ‘Excuse me,’ she whispered. ‘You must excuse me, Mr Kestrel.’

He caught her wrist. ‘You promised me dinner,’ he said. A smile touched the corner of his mouth. ‘My price, remember. You cannot run out on me now.’

Sally stared at him for what felt like an age. ‘That will have to be all,’ she said.

He inclined his head. ‘Of course.’

‘And you will have to give me a few minutes.’

He nodded. ‘Certainly you cannot go into the dining room looking like that.’ A smile lit his eyes, a mixture of tenderness and satisfaction that made her heart jolt. ‘You look … ravished.’

The helpless desire swept through her again and she saw his eyes darken almost black with lust as he recognised the need in her. He reached for her again, but she wrenched herself away and hurried down the corridor to the powder room. Fortunately it was empty. She shut the door carefully behind her and stood, breathing hard, her back pressed against the panels, eyes shut.

What on earth had possessed her? What possible excuse could there be for her forgetting that Jack Kestrel was a danger to both her virtue and her livelihood, for letting him kiss her with such devastating expertise and for responding in full measure to that kiss? She must have been mad. She had not even drunk a drop of champagne. Her wits must have gone begging.

She must have wanted him as much as he wanted her.

Sally opened her eyes. Even now she could feel the imprint of Jack’s touch on her body and the impossible, melting, uncontrollable warmth that had raced through her blood when he had kissed her. She pressed one hand to her lips. She had been kissed so seldom, and never like that. When they had been engaged, Jonathan, her husband, had kissed her once or twice, a mere respectful peck on the lips that should have warned her of future difficulties if only she had had the experience to realise, but it had never been like Jack’s kiss, full of passion and desire and heated demand. That was the thing that had betrayed her. She had never felt wanted before, never felt wholly desired in a way that made her entire body tremble with sensual heat. When it had happened with Jack she had forgotten everything else in the maelstrom of her emotions.

She sank down on to the little plush red stool and stared helplessly at her reflection in the mirror. Jack had been right. She did look ravished. She wanted to be ravished, seduced. Jack had swept into her life and destroyed all her carefully erected defences in the space of two brief meetings. To experience physical love for the first time at the hands of Jack Kestrel, who could make her feel wicked and wanton and desirable … Just the thought made her burn.

With a little sigh she started to tidy her hair, adjusting the bandeau, securing the pins. She straightened her dress. She looked tidy again, the immaculate owner of the Blue Parrot, as neat and composed as ever. Except something had changed in her face. Her lips were a little swollen from Jack’s kisses and in her eyes she saw a startled awareness and a knowledge, and a wanting. Her needs, her emotions and her desires were awakened now and were clamouring for release.

She glanced at the little gold clock on the wall. A couple more hours and she would be free of Jack Kestrel’s dangerous presence. She could talk to Connie, secure the letters, send them to Jack and the business would be closed. She need never see him again. She could forget this madness that possessed her. This urge to kick aside every careful precept by which she had lived her life for so long was too frightening. She was not at all sure where it might lead her.

She struggled to re-assert her commonsense. She took several deep breaths to compose herself. A few more hours of Jack’s company … then it would be over.

Chapter Three

Damn the woman. How could she look so cool and unemotional when only ten minutes before he had been kissing her senseless? How dared she look so cool when he was burning up with the need to possess her?

Jack watched Sally as she walked slowly towards him. The waiter had installed him at the very best table in the dining room, up on a dais tucked away at the back of the room and surrounded by drooping green fronds of palm. Somewhere, out of sight, a string quartet was playing softly. It was a charming setting, relaxed but extremely stylish. The food smelled wonderful.

But Jack had lost his appetite for food and he did not feel remotely relaxed. Every nerve ending in his body seemed tense and alert, wound up intolerably, waiting. He watched as Sally smiled and paused to answer the greetings of the other diners. She looked regal, untouchable and very, very seductive in the bright fuchsia-pink silk gown. He had noticed it when she had first walked into the card room. Of course he had. Every man in the room had looked at her. The gown fell long and straight to her ankles and flaunted every single one of her curves. Jack felt his mouth go dry and his breathing constrict as he remembered caressing those curves through the slippery silk. Damn it, there was only one end he wanted to this evening, and it involved him stripping that provocative silk from Sally Bowes’s body and taking her to bed. He had never felt so impatient to have a woman in all his life.

Jack stood up as Sally approached the table and she gave him a very measured, very cool smile that acted like a complete aphrodisiac and sent his blood pressure soaring dangerously. He had only just got himself under control from the interlude in the corridor. His body was still in a state of semi-arousal.

‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting,’ Sally said, sounding as though she was not particularly sorry at all.

‘You were not very long,’ Jack said. ‘I do hope,’ he added, determined to shake her out of her apparent calm, ‘that you are quite recovered?’

A shade of colour touched her cheek. She avoided his eyes and made a business of unfolding her napkin. ‘I am very well, thank you,’ she said.

Good. Jack felt a flash of satisfaction to see that blush. She was not as cool as she pretended. He could feel the tension in her. It would take very little to stoke their mutual attraction back to the point it had been before—and beyond. He had every intention of doing precisely that later in the evening, but for now he was going to tread very carefully indeed to avoid frightening her away.

‘I have been admiring the club,’ he continued. ‘You own all this?’

A small, distracting dimple appeared at the side of her mouth when she smiled. ‘I own part of it,’ she said, ‘and the investors own the rest.’

Jack was surprised at her candour. ‘You’re mortgaged to the hilt?’

She shrugged and a shade of reserve came into her eyes and he wondered if she was remembering his earlier threat to ruin her business. She would not want to show any financial vulnerability to him.

‘I own the building,’ she said. ‘That is the important thing.’