The one person in attendance who’d looked much at him, meaning the amorous young lady with the longing gaze, had disappeared, along with her mama. As to what the girl saw in him, Semyon could guess. It was not thoughts of marriage that addled her brain, but rather his reputation as a lover. He could hardly be considered all that eligible, not with his Russian name and the mystery surrounding his clan, ensconced though they were in a house so near to St. James’s Square.
Their mysterious comings and goings caused no end of whispers. As for the murders that Marko had solved a year ago—it had not helped that one of their number was among the guilty. And the bizarre affair of the tsar’s missing objet d’art, the Serpent’s Egg, had Kyril departing for the far north of Russia—well, even without those two things it was hard enough for a wolfman to hold his head up in London, let alone howl.
No, Semyon, the most English in manner of the three, had much preferred to blend in. Let sleeping wolves lie. No one had come around the Pack looking for trouble in some time and they liked it that way.
He headed down the hall again, where the sole candle was down to a nub in the sconce, flickering as if a wind were blowing through. Yet the air was more still than before. The fragrance of woman was stronger too, assaulting his sensitive nose and making him think of Angelica.
The gold curtain up ahead was still illuminated by the lantern within the space, glowing, drawing him near. There was no silhouette against it now—perhaps she was sitting down. Or perhaps she had left.
He walked the remaining distance to it, letting his boot heels strike firmly on the bare wood floor so that she would hear him coming. No one inside the curtain rose; no one spoke.
Semyon slid a hand between the panels and looked in. Angelica was there.
She was asleep on a pile of coats. There had been too many in the end, he supposed, as more and more guests arrived, and there was no place to put them all.
In her hand was a red rose and she clutched the stem, her fingers moving nervously. It was newly budded, tight and fresh, still with just a trace of sparkling dew on its furled petals.
It seemed to him that she held it to her lips. As if a lover had given it to her.
He felt a furious jealousy that surprised him, and then disgust. Had she let herself be taken against the wall by some man, standing up like a common strumpet, and then collapsed in sleepy lust? There was no divan or chaise in the chamber, let alone a bed. What maidservant would risk being sacked by lying with a man upon the clothes of her betters?
He reminded himself that she was most likely not a servant. Semyon studied her in silence for several moments, sniffing the air and thinking. He caught no smell of sexual congress, he could be sure of that much, but nothing else. Perhaps the rose had been given to her by a male guest as a gallant gesture and nothing more.
Gradually, as his jealousy eased, something else took its place.
Arousal.
Her pose reminded him of the paintings some gentlemen hung in their private rooms. The sort that usually featured a beautiful woman, perhaps a shepherdess with skin like porcelain, her glorious hair a-tumble and her gown half falling off, barefoot, asleep in the hay as a sturdy farm lad happened upon her, agog with surprised desire.
The sort of painting that a new wife consigned to a distant room or sent off to be sold in a London bric-a-brac shop. In the flesh, living and breathing, Angelica was in every particular the sort of woman that would worry an inexperienced young wife. An older one might be grateful in her way for the sort of respite she could provide.
Perhaps she had been a lady’s maid, hired for her good breeding and taste, until some unfortunate event had consigned her to the lower depths of this household.
She had seemed too intelligent to have fallen for the wiles of a master bent on seduction. Certainly the owner of this grand pile of stone in Mayfair, who had danced with someone else’s wife all evening, had a reputation for chasing his female servants, but what of it? So many gentlemen in London did. Had she been forced, then, by a thoughtless and selfish master, and demoted in rank by her long-suffering mistress?
Angelica gave an almost inaudible moan through her parted lips. On the lower one he saw—or thought he saw—a faint trace of the dew upon the rose.
He kneeled beside her. His hand hovered over the sweet curve of one thigh, longing to stroke it, but he drew it back.
Her breaths made her bosom rise and fall in her uneasy slumber and he could not help but look. Such tender flesh. The idea that she had ever been manhandled made him angry.
Invited to touch her in an instant fantasy, Semyon imagined her arching drowsily with pleasure as he caressed both breasts, releasing them from her bodice, then mounding and squeezing the malleable flesh to erotic heights so that the nipples—pink, erect nipples—jutted out.
He would feast upon them, suckling avidly, one hand caressing the low curve of her belly until he felt the tremors of deep feminine arousal begin.
And then—ah, my sleeping angel, he thought fondly, you have no idea what I am thinking or that I watch you. Dream, dream as you lie there on all that fur and finery and I will put it in your mind too.
He would take her hands and place them upon her bared breasts, telling her to continue his caresses while he watched and undid his breeches. Were she wanton enough, and he suspected she would be, her slender fingers would clasp her nipples and tug, then move to cup her breasts and squeeze them in a rhythm that both satisfied her and made her want more.
The thought made his cock spring powerfully upward, constrained by the soft, thin leather of his breeches, which remained buttoned. He did not dare touch the manifestation of his manhood or her, but let his fantasy take over until the sleeping woman before him shimmered in his mind, awakened and wanting him.
He would tell her to lift her skirts, slowly. As the white material was drawn up, and she showed her legs and her thighs, a dainty triangle of curls and a flash of her most intimate, succulent flesh.
He would waste no time in assisting her to fully spread her thighs and reveal the nether lips, neat and plump, to his hot gaze. She, of course, could not see herself in that way, but that did not matter. She would sigh with pleasure when his probing finger slid into her and lift her hips instinctively.
He would bring her a taste of herself, touching his slick finger to her mouth and asking that she lick it.
Then—he leaned upon one hand, looking ardently at the vision of unviolated beauty sleeping before him—his tongue would go where his finger had been. Lapping with just the tip, then thrusting as deeply as she would let him. Teasing the tiny bud that held the most intense pleasure for a lady. Overwhelmed by the sensation, craving more, she would bend her spread legs and clasp them behind the knees to give herself more freely.
An excellent reason for him to raise his head, then, and push her clasped legs gently back against her shoulders, telling her to hold them so that her bottom was lifted off the bed.
Then he would see all, from glistening curls to swollen bud to the flushed lips of her sex, and finally to the tiny puckered hole where a fingertip might stray and stimulate, if she wanted that. Her wanton display would call for further delights. Her plump buttocks he would fondle, perhaps a little roughly, as his tongue lavished her snug cunny with silky-wet strokes and soft penetration.
Completely
