Chapter 12

It has been so long since we've partaken in the wicked. Dare I hope, we are at last content with only one another?

~ The Duchess of A

S everin watched Raina pace like a caged lioness. She wanted to flee. Not the sights which she'd boldly taken in, but rather, Severin.

She didn't.

The minx was too daft, bold, or courageous for her own good.

As if to reiterate his very thoughts, Raina angled her chin up a smidgeon, and looked him straight in the eye.

"You're afraid," he purred.

She scoffed. "What could I possibly f-fear?" That slight tremble ruined her otherwise impressive attempt at nonchalance.

He slipped slowly towards her. "Did you not sneak off a second time?"

"That you know of anyway."

Cadogan stopped and looked at her a long moment. An unexpected snort of laughter burst from him.

The lady bristled. "You find something amusing?"

"Not something, Princess," he managed in between his amusement. "Your poor attempts at lying."

Raina stuck her tongue out, and that playful display stilled. How, strange. Perhaps it was being with Lady Raina Goodheart was like no other experience he'd ever known or had, but there came a welcome warmth inside, and another laugh slipped out.

It was hard for them to say who was more surprised: him or the wide-eyed beauty across the room.

"Mr. Cadogan," she whispered, a twinkle in her eyes. "Are you—?"

"No." His heart thumped weirdly in his chest.

Her lips twitched. "I didn't say anything."

"I'm not," he gritted out.

She smoothed her features. "You're not what?"

"Laughing," he snapped.

Raina blinked with an overabundance of pretend innocence. "I never said you were , Severin."

"Are you making light of me, Princess?" he hissed.

"I rather believe you're carrying on this entire conversation by yourself."

He brought his eyebrows together. The lady played a dangerous game. The sooner she realized that the safer she—and Cadogan—would be.

"I know why you're here," he whispered in lethal tones.

She wavered. "You d-do?"

Not so confident now.

"You came here to Craven's club because you know everything there is to know about his, DuMond, and Latimer's establishment."

Raina appeared to find her footing. "We've discovered yet another thing you are wrong about, Severin."

"I know everything," he purred, sliding closer. "You are aware Craven caters to those most depraved; that the entertainment featured at his club shocks even the most jaded rakes."

Her skin blanched; she scrambled and tried to put some distance between them.

Cadogan closed it in a second.

"Where are you running, love?" He jeered. "Hmm? Away from me? Away from the truth? Or both?"

Her throat jumped wildly.

He wasn't even close to done. "You also know where Forbidden Pleasures offers those with a proclivity for voyeurism, a more private place to take part in that depravity, Craven's club has every possible sin—and then some—on full display for his patrons."

Raina held his gaze and said nothing.

Lust sent his nostrils into a full flare. God, even with her defying him time and time again, with her spirit and courage, the lady was utterly magnificent.

"You'd be wise to run, Princess," he whispered.

She lifted her elfin chin a notch more, a defiant fraction. "Is that a threat?"

"It is a promise, sweetheart," he said huskily. "If you don't go now, I'm going to do things to you that you'll both love and regret."

Her breath caught on a soft, audible intake—but she didn't leave as she ought.

"I'm not afraid of you, Severin."

Severin .

The sultry way she owned his given name in this moment, sent a wave of lust rushing to that randy organ between his legs. It would bring Cadogan the utmost pleasure to educate her as to why she'd be wise to not provoke him.

"Don't say you weren't warned," he jeered.

Cadogan tugged her into his arms.

Growling, he buried his mouth on Raina's. She went immediately soft and pliant against him.

With an unexpected, but welcome, boldness, she twined her fingers about his nape and kissed him back with all the skill of a maiden and the ardor of a debauched beauty.

The blend of her hesitancy and wild enthusiasm drove him wild, and what'd begun as a lesson in fear morphed into something far more dangerous—for Cadogan.

"Open for me," he demanded.

His defiant princess immediately complied.

Cadogan slipped between her parted lips and plundered the hot, sweet, warmth of her mouth. He buried his tongue inside and devoured her. Consumed her. Until she was moaning and writhing against him, incoherent utterances spilling from her lips.

Mindless with lust as he'd never even been with the most inventive Cyprian, Cadogan darted his tongue repeatedly inside Raina's mouth. Theirs engaged in a violent thrust and parry, over and over, simulating the way he wanted to bury his hard cock hard, deep inside her.

She met him passion for passion.

Breathless, urgent gasps shook her beautiful body.

Grunting like the animal he was, Cadogan sat on the bed. He scooped Raina under her generously curved arse and perched her on his thigh. The wicked scenes unfolding on the other side of the curtains could have stopped and Craven's club emptied out for all Severin noticed.

He guided Raina's hips, teaching her how to ride him in for her pleasure.

Raina's head fell back. "Severin," she keened his name like a prayer.

Cadogan clasped her by the nape and kept her mouth where he wanted it; he swallowed her long, hungry moan.

A chuckle rumbled in his chest. "If you love this, sweetheart, you'd love having my cock buried deep inside you."

He didn't bother to gentle his language. Tender talk during sex wasn't something he'd ever had need of.

Instead of being repulsed, Raina whimpered and rode his thigh with greater intensity; she rocked her sweet quim against him.

Perspiration built at his brow.

In the scheme of the acts he'd performed with and on women, this was as innocent as it came. So why then, was he enflamed in ways he'd never been before this moment, before this woman?

Cadogan consumed the pillowy-soft flesh of her mouth as he'd wanted to do the instant she'd first stepped into the room in her diamond-studded tiara, yesterday.

Ravenous as he'd never been, Cadogan sucked her lower lip, and then lightly bit her.

"I want to fuck you while you wear nothing but that high, haughty crown of yours, love," he rasped in between kisses.

She moaned into his mouth.

The hungry sounds of her desire drove him mad with lust; his ballocks drew up tight and painful.

Cadogan continued rocking his hips against Raina.

A small, mournful whimper eased past her full lips.

Deciding to give her overworked senses a taste of another source of wickedness, Cadogan tugged the bodice of her dress and chemise down and bared her resplendent flesh.

He stopped long enough to work a hungry gaze over the most magnificent breasts he'd ever set eyes—or hands—on in his life; which given the experience he had compliments of his work, was saying a tremendous deal about Lady Raina's attributes.

Her beautifully formed, cream-white breasts and enormous pink nipples belonged on canvas, a visual masterpiece of lush carnality to be memorialized and worshipped for all time.

"Pretty," he growled.

He'd lied for so long in the name of King and Country, that understatement slipped out of Cadogan with an ease. The hardness of his sex mocked him with that understatement. Raina Goodheart was a goddess among lesser humans.

Cadogan cupped the ample mounds, so bountiful, even in his large palms, the flesh flowed over.

"Have you ever had your breasts touched, Princess?" he asked huskily, already knowing his hands were the first to brush the silken, soft orbs.

That wasn't all he intended to be the first to do to them.

Raina whimpered, and, like a bashful nymph, she buried her head against his shoulder.

"Tell me," he purred, wanting her to say the words anyway, wanting her to admit he was the only man who'd touched her, thus far in her sheltered, pampered, life. "I want to hear you say it."

When she still didn't speak, he tweaked her nipples, hard.

The innocent in his arms cried out softly and arched her into his rough play. "You are the first man to touch them, Severin."

He'd not be the last. The very nature of his arrangement ended with her marriage to some fancy toff; a staid fellow who wouldn't pleasure her in all the ways she needed to be pleasured.

An unpleasant taste settled in his mouth, and he thrust thoughts of her with another away. He'd never liked sharing. That's all it was.

"There's something you'll love even more, Princess," he both promised and tempted.

She shivered—with anticipation. He felt it in the way she undulated her hips.

Lowering his head, he hovered his mouth near the swollen tip of her right breast and picked his gaze up.

"Are you curious to know what that something is?"

Flushed like she'd been kissed by the summer sun, Raina nodded frenziedly.

Keeping his eyes directed upward and on her, Cadogan captured a turgid, pink, tip between his lips and sucked deep.

Raina hissed. Tangling her fingers in his hair, she gripped him hard and anchored Cadogan in place.

He alternately licked and sucked the peak, until she was moaning and writhing in his arms.

As the tension began to build in her body, Severin came off her nipple with a wet little pop that he knew would drive her wild.

As anticipated, Raina splayed her legs wider and lifted her hips up in supplication.

"I've been remiss," he murmured, and reclaiming the thrusting point in a more savage sucking, he lavished his attention on the previously neglected, tip.

He caught the crest in his fingers and rolled the flesh—gently at first.

"Severin," his innocent temptress moaned, turning his name, into a plea.

Enflamed by the sultry siren's sound of her voice, Cadogan's cock throbbed to the point of pain, and only the years of training he'd endured prevented him from releasing himself and wrapping her long, graceful fingers about his length.

Strangely, the smug, savage satisfaction found in showing the intermate beauty a taste of sex proved just as gratifying.

Liar. You want to fuck her senseless.

Growling, he pinched the hard tip, at the same time he sucked the other.

A broken gasp erupted from Lady Raina's lips.

Cadogan continued working her nipples, biting them, sucking them harder, until the innocent beauty rocked her hips frenziedly.

She ground herself against his thigh.

Bringing her enormous breasts together, Cadogan simultaneously licked the lady's nipples.

"Mmm," she keened. "Mmm."

Sweat beaded his brow.

God, had he ever had in his arms a woman as responsive as this one?

No.

Cadogan could say with an absolute certainty, he hadn't. All the lovers he'd fucked for work, or just slaked his lust with, had known exactly what they were doing. There'd been no artifice. They'd been women trained in sex and masters of restraint in their own right.

Cadogan lapped Raina. He licked her. Bit her.

She gasped.

"Not all women like having their breasts roughly handled," he said, his harsh breathing at odds with his otherwise, matter-of-factly spoken tone. "Some women love having their nipples squeezed hard, Princess. Some love it harder."

He tugged her peaks gently and then wrenched them both, sharply.

His beautiful spitfire bit her lip and moaned, with a different sort of anguish.

"What of you, sweet?" he teased. "Do you like when I'm rough with them?"

Again, he knew the answer. But would the lady herself own her truths?

"Yes!" She sucked in great, heaving gasps of air which set her chest shaking. "I love it."

"Good girl," he harshly praised and rewarded her by giving her precisely what she hungered for.

He squeezed her nipples and continued tightening his hold until the lady's gyrating hips took on a frenzied, almost broken rhythm.

Cadogan gritted his teeth. His massive erection strained the front of his trousers and challenged his restraint in ways not even the fiercest test with the Home Office had.

Raina bit her lower lip hard; her undulations grew erratic.

"Aww, let me help you, love." Cadogan gripped her hips and continued to guide her up and down. "You crave something hard between your thighs." He rolled the engorged tip of her right breast between his tongue and lips.

"Mmm," she keened, her speech now fully dissolved into the wild sounds of a primordial creature in the throes of fucking.

He arched his hips up in time to Raina's downward thrusts.

Sweat slicked his brow.

This had to stop. It was too much. His senses were afire; his head clouded.

"You're going to come, Princess," he ordered sharply, in between suckling her, preparing her for her impending orgasm. "And from nothing more than having your breasts played with and riding my leg like it's the cock you truly crave."

With a growl, he bit her hard.

That, together with his filthy talk pushed Raina to her peak.

"Severin!" she wept his name over and over; grinding her core against him as she came.

Cadogan kept on suckling her until she went limp as a puddle in his arms.

He caught her as she collapsed against him and drew her body close.

Their chests heaved with a like intensity and time; she from the little death he'd just brought her, and he from the agony of unslaked lust.

"Good?" Cadogan murmured against her damp temple.

Her face still buried against his shoulder, Lady Raina gave a tentative nod, and then inched her gaze up to meet his.

Cadogan found himself irritatingly mesmerized by those irises and a question as to how long it would take, and what things would he have to do to her that would drive the purity away.

The blue of her eyes sparkled with wonderment, but that effervescent light faded out. "I trust if you had doubts before as to my wickedness, we have an answer now," she said softly.

An odd sensation squeezed his chest, one that deprived Cadogan of his usually smooth tongue. When it came to assignments as an agent, words he'd uttered hadn't mattered. Why should they now with this woman?

"Why are you so concerned about whether or not you're wicked, Raina?"

A bitter-sounding laugh spilled from Raina's full lips. "It does not escape my notice you didn't answer the question, Severin."

She discreetly wiped at her eyes.

Oh, hell.

"In fairness, it didn't strike me as a question," he spoke haltingly. "More of a statement?" Why am I struggling here?

Raina gave him an odd look, and then, averting her gaze, she drew herself off his lap and seated herself on the side of the bed.

Cadogan sat shoulder to shoulder beside her.

This is why he didn't deal with virgins because they flagellated themselves for enjoying life's greatest pleasures.

You know it's not that…

He gnashed his jaw. What the hell else would it be, then?

"My parents were scandalous," she confided in quiet tones that penetrated his jumbled musings.

"Were they?" he asked, continuing to tread carefully.

Looking at her lap, Raina nodded. "They were very much in love," she said softly. "But they were notorious for their," her color deepened, "proclivities."

" Proclivities ?"

Raina hesitated. "They would visit wicked clubs where debauched things took place, and from what I've read and heard…" She grimaced and opted to not complete the rest of that revelation. "My mother was often the center of those displays ."

"And this is relevant, why?" he asked, more curious than impatient.

To Raina, however, the query may as well have been the latter. A fresh wave of tears swelled in her eyes.

Tears.

No, Raina's tears. Hers made Cadogan feel strange inside. Weak .

His palms grew damp and—

It was too much.

Sort this out.

Then she'll finally stop running all over London for him to chase.

To put distance between them, he stood and backed away from Raina.

A pair of crystal drops wound a sad little path down each of her cheeks.

Tears were a sign of sadness, which indicated Raina spoke sorrowfully about the late duchess and duke's sordid marriage. But the mother proved the main subject of her recounting.

Then it hit him. "You believe you're like your mother before you." His wasn't a question.

Raina's shoulders came up in a little shrug. "What else am I supposed to believe? I enjoyed the Fight Society just as she did. I love being in your arms, and…"

He froze.

I love being in your arms.

His heart thudded at a sickly beat against his ribcage. This was bad.

"This is why you've been sneaking off," Cadogan filled in for her, neatly sidestepping the part involving him. "To visit the places the duchess frequented?"

She gave a small nod.

All right. This was a good deal safer. Some of the tension left him.

"Raina," he said gently. "If we were the same as all our kin, I'd be a stuffy, pompous, lord with a wife, an heir and a spare, and a mistress, on the side."

"You're speaking about your family," she murmured. "Your father? Or do you have a brother or broth—?"

Cadogan interjected. "And who gives two shites if your mother did enjoy carnal pleasures? Where's the shame in that?" he asked, gruffly.

Raina slid neatly back to the topic they'd been discussing and not his personal life.

"My mother loved my father." She touched a hand to her heart. "She loved him desperately and ached for his love, and he did love her." Her features spasmed. "As he was able. Not enough to not give up his debauchery or other bed partners. My mother believed if she joined her husband in sinning, she'd win his favor and he'd forsake all others."

A half-mad laugh burst from her lips, and he knew it marked the moment she ceased to see Cadogan.

"She yearned for his love and wanted only him." The fight went out of her. "By contrast, the duke found pleasure in sharing the duchess, his wife, my mother , with his friends and strangers."

Raina hugged her arms around her middle. "What do you make of all that, Severin?" she asked, grievously.

Cadogan frowned. What did he make of all that? What did he make of all that?

He didn't couch his language. "What I believe is, you shouldn't revile the late duchess for finding pleasure, but rather the caddish, contemptible, reprobate, duke, who'd share his bloody wife with others," he said bluntly.

At last, his words seemed to penetrate the haze of misery surrounding her.

Raina slowly picked her head up.

He wished she hadn't.

Her features went soft, and her eyes positively glowed with unmistakable adoration, gratitude, and warmth.

Inside, Cadogan recoiled.

First, he'd accidentally revealed details about his life. Then, he'd been caught up in her pain, the same way a sailor did a siren's song. He'd sat silent while she lamented her mother's life and her parents' marriage.

All the while she'd shared her fears and sorrows with him, Cadogan, who didn't speak to anyone about anything not related to work, had sat and listened .

At some point, he'd allowed the same woman he'd been assigned to guard to feel like she could open up to him about her life.

Good Christ.

He needed to put a bloody end to this— now .

"Raina—"

"Severin—"

They both stopped.

She cleared her throat. "You may speak first, my…Severin."

My Severin.

At her accidental ownership of he and his name, a fresh wave of lust rolled through him.

He gritted his back molars. How swiftly she'd shredded his restraint.

"This is the last time you'll sneak off, Lady Raina," he said coolly.

Dismay filled the lady's every feature.

She shook her head. "I…don't understand?"

"Of course, you do. You're clever enough to slip past my guard twice," he said flatly. "You want to know how I can be all business after I had your beautiful breasts in my mouth and your hot cunny on my thigh."

All the color bled from Raina's cheeks. "Why are you doing this?" she entreated.

"As a reminder for you." And me.

They needed a wall between them, and this marked the easiest way to construct that barrier.

" Everything between us," Cadogan slashed a palm back and forth between them, " is business, and the sooner you realize that the easier this arrangement will be."

For both of us.

After a profound and unending silence, Cadogan narrowed his eyes. "Have I made myself clear, Lady Raina?"

" Abundantly so, my lord ."

Hate and hurt warred in her expressive eyes. Cadogan shouldn't give two shites about either. The knot in his chest, however, taunted him with the unpleasant reality that it did .

"Tell me , my lord," she sneered. "Does making love with the women you've been assigned to protect constitute business?"

Cadogan donned the falsest smug grin he'd ever worn in his entire career. "Yes."

Her entire body jerked.

"Didn't expect that, did you, Princess?" He took a stalking step closer, and instead of fleeing as he'd hoped, Raina held her ground. "I've bedded countless women, in service to the Crown."

"How noble of you," she said archly. "Weaponizing lovemaking."

She was adorable when ruffled.

Cadogan lowered his lashes. "You'd be surprised." He hardened his features. "What we did here does not constitute lovemaking , my lady."

Another innocent blush spilled across her cheeks. "Thank you for that inestimable clarification, my lord ."

"I don't make love to women," he said frostily. "I fuck them."

Raina inhaled sharply.

At the sign of her suffering, he clasped his hands behind him and balled them into tight fists.

Her eyes grew stricken.

"Oh, and, Raina?"

She stared blankly at him.

Cadogan dealt the final death blow.

"Next time you have an urge, I'll be more than happy to take that on as another job. Just so you don't have to go dashing about London to get your itch scratched."

When she let her palm fly, he didn't bother to stop the blow. He let Raina hit him, as he deserved.

His skin stung—and, by the way she cradled her fingers close to her chest, her palm smarted.

Still, prepared as he was for that strike, he wasn't expecting the impressive strength she packed.

Silent as he'd never seen her, Raina stared at him with stricken eyes. He made himself meet her stare with an opaque one.

"Have you seen enough, Princess?" He nudged his chin toward the couples engaged in all manner of lewd acts outside the windows. "Or perhaps, you'd like to experience more?"

Her throat wobbled. "I'm ready to leave," she said, her voice thick.

Wordlessly, Severin waited until she'd drawn her hood into place and straightened her skirts.

Then, without exchanging so much as a glance, they quit Lucifer's Lair .