The Playful Wanton Read online

  “How droll,” the lady said, then set about searching the room.

  As much of a relief as it was to be ignored while he was in a state, Adolphus had the feeling that his torment had only just begun.

  “There’s an owl over here,” Eliza whispered, rushing to the mantle, where a majestic, stuffed owl resided.

  Adolphus pulled himself together long enough to follow her. By the time he reached the fireplace, Eliza had already retrieved a folded slip of paper from under the base of the owl’s stand.

  “This is such fun,” she said, her smile beaming, as she unfolded the second piece of paper and cuddled up to his side so they could read it together.

  “I serve from dawn ’til dusk, a man of the foot. But at night, I lay my head here with a view of the stars.”

  “A footman’s bedroom,” Adolphus said, deciphering the clue instantly. “One with a window that looks out at the stars.”

  Eliza frowned, clearly caught up in the game. “But I’m certain all of the footmen’s bedrooms look out at the stars. The servant’s rooms are usually on the top floor.”

  “We found it,” the other lady shouted from the opposite end of the room, waving the clue she’d discovered.

  “Hurry,” Eliza whispered, her expression bright with intensity. “We can’t let anyone get ahead of us.”

  Adolphus nodded and took her hand, leading her from the room. “We’ll have to search all of the rooms,” he said, striding out to the hall and toward a door he thought led to the servants’ stairs.

  Two questions pricked at him as they ventured on. Why was he throwing so much energy into a manufactured mystery when he had real work in front of him? And why was he enjoying it so much?

  Chapter 3

  Eliza could barely contain her giddiness as she raced up the servants’ stairs with Adolphus half a step behind her. Solving a mystery was precisely what the man needed to take his mind off of his proper, stoic ways. He’d proven adept at solving clues, although she shouldn’t have been surprised at that. And she wasn’t ignorant enough not to see the temptation in his eyes as she held his hand while searching or stood close to him while reading the clues. Adolphus Gibbon was like dry tinder just waiting for a spark.

  “I do hope Caro and Rufus’s servants don’t mind us rummaging about their rooms,” she said, breathless from all the stairs they’d climbed, as they reached the top floor of the house.

  Adolphus hardly seemed winded at all as they started down the narrow hallway lined with simple, closed doors. “This hall seems abandoned,” he said.

  “Oh?” She paused to turn back to him, trying to catch her breath. That was made harder as she watched him stride to one of the doors, his body fit and moving with feline agility, and open it.

  He hummed as the door opened into a plain room with a simple bed, wardrobe, and washstand. Eliza crept up behind him, gripping his arm and craning her neck to look into the room at his side. All things considered, she felt awkward about invading someone else’s private chamber. But as it turned out, Adolphus was right. Even though the room was fully furnished and the bed made, it was clearly unused. A thin layer of dust hung over everything.

  “The next clue is not in this room,” Adolphus declared.

  Eliza blinked and rocked back. “What makes you so certain?”

  Adolphus stepped back into the hall with a stern, businesslike look. He opened his mouth as if he were about to explain a case to an inferior but paused as his movements brought him flush with Eliza. She hadn’t moved back fast enough, and he was forced to close his arms around her to keep her from falling over. She instantly reciprocated, leaning into him and gazing up into his startled face.

  “I…er…that is….” he stammered, his gaze settling on her lips.

  He shifted just enough to bring the firm spear of his erection into contact with her hip. Shivers of need shot through Eliza, turning her knees to jelly and her sex to a pool of liquid fire. He bent closer to her, his mouth coming ever closer to hers. She slipped one of her hands from his waist to his hip, then inched toward his backside.

  He tensed as though she’d slapped him, which was the furthest thing from her mind, and flinched away from her. He cleared his throat and said, “The dust in the room is undisturbed. If your friends had left a clue in this room, they would have left footprints as well.”

  It took Eliza’s hazy mind a moment to remember what he was talking about. “You’re right,” she said, unsurprised that the words came out in a breathless squeak. “We should keep searching.”

  She cursed herself as soon as those words left her lips, for they prompted him to remove his arms and step away from her. He cleared his throat again, tugged at the hem of his coat—which did nothing to hide the bulge in his breeches—and crossed to the door on the other side of the hall.

  The heated moment passed, though Eliza was left buzzing with unspent need. Adolphus opened the door to another untouched room. Eliza skipped back to the end of the hall nearest the stairs and tried a few of the doors there. Within moments, she’d come to the same conclusion Adolphus had. The hall was unused. The servants currently employed at Hadnall Heath must have lived in another part of the house. But just as she found no signs of habitation, she spotted no signs that a clue was nearby either. At least, until—

  “Eliza.” Adolphus called her name from the last door on the hall. Her name on his lips, without a proper “Lady” attached to it, sent a renewed pulse of lust through her.

  “Have you found it?” she asked, closing the door of the room she’d just peeked in and scurrying down the hall to him.

  He didn’t answer with words. Instead, when she reached his side, he pushed the door he was peering through open all the way. The room he’d been examining was larger than the others with slightly nicer furnishings. A large bed stood against one wall, covered with warm blankets and several pillows. An empty fireplace was nestled in the wall opposite the bed. The room contained the usual wardrobe and washstand, but what marked it as different from the other rooms was the placement of the windows. They did not look out horizontally over the landscape of Shropshire, they faced up, fixed into the slope of the roof over that section of the house.

  “A view of the stars,” Eliza said, repeating the clue they’d found in the parlor. “Yes, of course.”

  “And this room has clearly been occupied recently,” Adolphus said, stepping cautiously into the room. “Or at least someone has been within the room.”

  “To place a clue.” Eliza brightened, sliding past him to rush into the room. She reached the center of the room and turned in a circle. “I suppose this was designed to belong to one of the higher servants,” she said, taking in every detail and looking for a slip of paper that would contain their next clue. “Perhaps the first footman or the butler.”

  “Perhaps,” Adolphus said.

  He sounded distracted, and when Eliza lowered her eyes from the curious window in the slanted ceiling, she caught him watching her. Watching her with pure lust. He was the picture of a man who wanted a woman, and it dawned on her that they were more than just alone, they were alone in a remote part of the house that was seldom visited.

  “Oh, my,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest—partially to still her heart and partially to draw his attention to her breasts, which felt particularly heavy at that moment. “Whatever shall we do next?”

  She pictured him rushing toward her and sweeping her into his arms. Her imagination conjured pictures of him throwing her onto the bed, shoving her skirts up over her hips, unbuttoning his breeches, and taking her like a wild stallion took the mare he wanted. Her skin prickled with the need to be touched, and her sex throbbed in anticipation of being filled and stretched to its limit.

  Instead of fulfilling her fantasy, Adolphus cleared his throat yet again, tugged at his collar, and turned to examine the room. “There are only so many places a clue could be hidden in a room of this size,” he said in decidedly gruff tones.

  Disappointmen
t warred with Eliza’s need to forge ahead, both with the clue and her attempts to seduce him. “If I were a clue, where would I hide?” she asked.

  Eliza opened the wardrobe, but instead of clues she found two warm robes. Something about the sight of them stirred her amorous feelings even more than they’d already been stirred. Adolphus checked the fireplace but found nothing. They both steered clear of the bed at first, but Eliza’s heart began to beat faster as she wondered if the inevitable use of a bed that cozy-looking was what Caro had had in mind all along. She wasn’t fool enough to suppose that she had been paired with Adolphus randomly. From the moment the selection of couples began, Eliza had figured out Caro’s game. Her friend was pushing couples together whom she thought should be together. It would have been just like Caro to throw her and Adolphus together, then to put them in a position where they could not resist temptation. There were advantages to having a clever strumpet for a friend.

  “I cannot imagine where it could be,” Adolphus said, coming away from the fireplace and eyeing the bed suspiciously. “I can only—”

  “There it is!”

  Eliza gasped as a bit of white caught her eye from the corner of the window. It was on the outside, peering in at them against the background of the gloomy sky. Adolphus spotted it as soon as she pointed it out, and the two of them rushed to the window.

  “It should be simple to open the window and—”

  The moment Adolphus unhooked the latch and pushed the window up, buckets-worth of water splashed in on them. Whether it was merely the accumulation of rain or whether the Trickster had sabotaged the window didn’t matter. In seconds, both Eliza and Adolphus were soaked to the bone. The slip of paper flittered to the floor along with the water. Between gasping at the shock of so much cold water and the surprise of it all, Eliza managed to bend over to retrieve it. The paper had been dipped in wax—presumably after the clue had been written—preserving the writing.

  But before she could read it, a peel of male laughter sounded from the hallway and the door to the room slammed shut. A moment later, the click of the lock rang through the room.

  “Bloody hell,” Adolphus grumbled, shutting the window and fastening the latch. The window was surprisingly watertight when closed. He strode over to the door and tried the handle. “Damnation,” he growled. “It’s locked.”

  “From the outside?” Eliza blinked and skittered to his side as fast as she could in her waterlogged dress.

  Adolphus tested the handle again and rattled the door in answer to her question.

  “Who would build a door in a way that would lock its inhabitants inside?” she asked, beginning to shiver.

  “Perhaps we now know why the rooms on this hall are unused,” Adolphus said, wiping water from his face.

  “So we’re locked in?” Eliza’s shivering increased. She glanced at the clue in her hand. “I don’t suppose this matters, then.”

  “What matters is finding the key and getting out of here.” Adolphus pushed away from the door and began a second search of the room. He moved stiffly, clearly uncomfortable in his soaked clothes.

  As she watched him, a slow grin spread across Eliza’s face. Caro was brilliant. She could not have manufactured a more enticing situation if she’d tried. Eliza’s shivering was genuine, but the dangerous chill she felt on the outside was nothing to the heat that grew to towering levels within her.

  “What if we cannot find the key?” she asked, stepping to the washstand and setting the clue aside. She hugged herself, giving free reign to her shivers and praying Adolphus would glance in her direction soon. “What if we are trapped here for days?”

  “We will not be trapped here for days,” Adolphus grumbled, going to the wardrobe and opening it. He frowned at the robes and felt his way along the upper shelf. “Rufus, you devil,” he shouted at the door. “There is no time for this.”

  At last, he turned toward Eliza. She made certain to emphasize her trembling as he did. Instantly, his expression softened, and he marched toward her.

  “You’re cold,” he said, rubbing his hands over her upper arms.

  “One tends to become cold when she is doused with icy water and left in a room with no fire,” she said, realizing the levels of Caro’s genius as she did. Without a fire, there was only one way for her to warm up, one way to avoid the potential disaster a chill could cause.

  Adolphus seemed to sense it too. He muttered something under his breath, twisting to study the room, likely looking for anything that could warm her up. His eyes settled on the bed, and he muttered an even stronger oath.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, knowing the answer full well.

  He turned back to her, his eyes meeting hers and studying her with smoldering fire that looked as though it would burn through the last of his resistance. He swept his arms around her waist, tugging her so firmly against him that Eliza gasped in surprise, then bristled with need.

  “Rufus is the devil,” he growled, splaying a hand across her back and bending closer to her. “This is beyond bearing. I no longer have the power to resist. That bastard knew he could push me to my limits. Even if I wanted to—”

  His fierce words dissolved into a moan of desire as Eliza cupped her hand around his erection and stroked him. He answered her bold move by slanting his mouth over hers and kissing her with such ravenous passion that it made her head spin. He parted her lips with his, thrusting his tongue into her mouth in imitation of what she hoped he would do much more of in short order. It was the most demanding kiss she had ever received, and she was helpless to resist him.

  But he had only just begun. He yanked at the sodden ties holding her gown together, then tugged the soaked fabric over her shoulders, exposing them. His mouth followed, searing kisses across her neck and shoulders. He licked and nipped her skin as well, going so far as to suck hard enough to mark her as he did. His ferocity left her trembling from the inside out, as aroused by his unexpected passion as she was frightened by it. But it was the most delicious sort of fright she’d ever experienced.

  “I want you,” he breathed against her skin as he peeled her gown low enough to tug the laces of her stays. “I want you naked and wanton beneath me. I want your legs spread and your sex glistening with desire. I want you to take me deep and come hard as you scream my name.”

  Eliza could only sigh and squirm with restlessness at his demands. He yanked and pulled at her dress, shoving it down over her hips and practically tearing away her stays and chemise to get to her breasts. Once they were exposed, he cupped them possessively, raking his thumbs over her already taut nipples and sending bolts of sensation through her. He then bent close to her, capturing one breast in his mouth. He groaned in satisfaction as he suckled her, teasing her nipple with his tongue and teeth. It was his teeth in particular that sent ripples of pleasure through her. He was going to devour her whole.

  That scintillating thought was blasted away to no thought at all as he shoved her gown over her hips, sending the whole messy thing to a wet pile on the floor, and cupped her sex suddenly and demandingly. It was such a bold, possessive move that she gasped. Never in the past had a man claimed her so quickly and decisively that way. His fingers reached to the heart of her, and he pushed two of them inside of her as he slammed his mouth over hers in another wild kiss.

  Any illusion she’d had that she would dominate their lovemaking was shattered. He was going to take what he wanted from her in the most commanding way possible. That knowledge left her feeling too weak to stand and desperate to submit to him. Her sex throbbed as his fingers pressed deeper and as the heel of his hand ground against her clitoris. It was as terrifying as it was arousing to know he had her at his mercy and that he was about to do whatever he wanted to her.

  “You want me to fuck you, don’t you?” he whispered against her ear, inching her toward the bed. “You’ve wanted me balls-deep in your wet cunny since the moment we arrived at this party, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” she pan
ted. “Oh, yes.”

  “You’ll take it any way I give it to you, won’t you?”

  “Yes, please,” she answered, almost pleading. Already, she felt as though she might explode from the inside out.

  He maneuvered her toward the side of the bed, then spun her to face it and pushed her forward. She gasped as she caught herself on her arms, then arched so that her backside tilted up to him, knowing what he wanted. She was rewarded by the desperate sound of his breathing as he peeled off his clothes. As each wet piece hit the floor, the ache in her sex grew stronger and she inched her legs farther apart. Her arms shook as she heard the thump of his boots being thrown aside.

  She dared to glance over her shoulder and was rewarded by the sight of him, naked and aroused, striding toward her. His body was as glorious as she’d imagined it would be, with broad shoulders, powerful arms and thighs, a tight abdomen with defined muscles, and a cock that left her whimpering in expectation. He was long and thick. His tip was flared and slick with moisture. He could pretend to be a stoic, serious man all he wanted, but the sight of his enormous erection standing up against a body hardened by physical activity proved that he was a man of flesh and blood and desire.

  He was a man of needs as well, one who wasted no time. No sooner did she feel the warmth of his body flush against her backside than he grabbed hold of her hips and slammed deep into her. She cried out in shock and pleasure at how swiftly he took her, without tenderness or preamble. He was deep inside of her, stretching her almost to the point of pain, in an instant, and good Lord in heaven above, it felt delicious.

  He gripped her hips so hard she was certain he would leave a mark as he jerked and pounded into her. She couldn’t help but cry out desperately in time to his thrusts. She’d never had a man so large before, and the sensations were exquisite. The emotions that came with being taken so rapaciously by such a powerful man were so strong that she started to weep—not out of fear or sorrow, but because it was all just so overpoweringly pleasurable and wonderful.