.

Tallie tried to wriggle free, but Nick held her tightly.

      ‘As soon as we are in the house you can have my coat, I promise. No one can see us, we are still too high up. Can you stand for a moment?’

      Without waiting for an answer he set her on her feet, steadying her with one hand while he bent to tug at a trapdoor let into the roof. ‘Damnation, it is bolted.’ He tugged a knife from his boot top and attacked the edge of the trap. The wood splintered with a sound like gunshot and the flap hinged open. ‘Sit down while I investigate—there can’t be anyone sleeping up here or they’d have appeared by now.’ He swung himself into the hole and vanished.

      Tallie sank down onto the cold leads and peered into the blackness below. She was shivering uncontrollably now and it was very hard to focus and to think straight. Nick’s voice came up to her in a clear whisper. ‘Sit on the edge and drop, I’ll catch you.’

      Beyond caring what she was falling into, Tallie did as she was told and was caught neatly and swung to the ground. Nick had already stripped off his coat and began pushing her arms into it like a nurse dressing a clumsy child. It was blissfully warm from his body, but the cold went so deep her very bones seemed frozen and the shivering did not stop.

      Nick forced the door with as much ruthlessness as he had opened the hatch and led her out onto a landing. Peering over the balustrade, she could see the staircase descending into darkness.

      ‘Either all in bed, which seems unlikely, or out,’ he whispered. ‘Come on.’ Tallie took a faltering step and felt her legs go. The next moment she was caught up in Nick’s arms again and he was descending the stairs, step by cautious step.

      When they reached the hallway she was vaguely conscious of him fumbling with the door lock, then they were out on the street and Nick was striding rapidly out of Panton Square, across Coventry Street and into the narrow mews entrance of Coventry Court. Goodness knows what this looks like, Tallie thought hazily, but no one raised an outcry. Nick whistled and a carriage emerged from the shadows.

      ‘All right, my lord?’

      ‘All right, Roberts. Drive us to Upper Wimpole Street, fast as you can.’

      ‘No one there,’ Tallie mumbled against Nick’s chest. ‘All gone … Putney.’

      He lifted her onto the seat. ‘What did you say?’ Tallie made herself focus. ‘No one at Upper Wimpole Street. Gone away on a visit.’

      ‘Hell.’ The carriage door closed and she was vaguely aware of Nick in low-voiced conversation with the coachman. It all seemed a long way away. She wasn’t even very cold any more, just numb and dizzy and very sleepy …

      She was so warm, so blissfully warm. Tallie lay with her eyes closed, letting her sore and aching body relax into the softness of the mattress. Over her there was the comforting feel of linen sheets, the reassuring weight of bedcovers. She nestled her head into the goose-down pillow and sighed gently, letting the memory of why she had so much wanted to be warm, why she seemed to be bruised all over, come seeping back into her half-conscious mind.

      The studio, Jack Hemsley—and Nick appearing just in time to save her. So strong, so reassuring, and he had called her my darling. Tallie drifted back to sleep, dreaming of Nick, dreaming of his arms around her, the steady beat of his heart against hers, his strength and his courage as he got them both safe along that ledge and to freedom.

      When she surfaced again the early morning sunlight was flickering on her closed lids. She was still deliciously warm, wherever she was. This was definitely not her bed, although that was not an alarming thought. She allowed the idea to penetrate her waking consciousness and with the realisation came the awareness that while she might be warm all over, it was her back, her buttocks, her thighs that were warmest. And they were warmest because she was curled up against another naked human being. And the weight over her waist was not the bedcovers, but an arm.

      Tallie’s eyes snapped open onto closed green brocade bed curtains. Whoever she was curled up against was lying very still; their breathing was hardly audible. Tallie made herself relax and concentrate on what she could feel.

      A long arm, still now but promising strength. A long body. A male body. Tallie might never have seen a naked man in the flesh, but she had seen enough drawings of classical nudes in Mr Harland’s studio to have a fairly clear understanding of the male anatomy. And the scent of him. Nick.

      Before she could give herself time to think, Tallie levered herself up on the elbow she was lying on and twisted round to face the man behind her. It was a confused and tangled manoeuvre. Somehow she ended up with both his arms around her and her uppermost leg over both of his.

      It brought them so close together that she had to tilt her head back to focus on his eyes. Those grey eyes with their long black lashes. They held hers and she could not pull her gaze away. Fascinated, she saw his pupils widen, the dark flecks expand until his whole gaze was almost blackly intent on her.

      He did not speak; she seemed to have lost the power to. His breath feathered her lips and she felt them part as though welcoming a kiss. Her tongue touched her sensitive upper lip and she saw the awareness of it in his eyes, knew from the change in the breath caressing her mouth that his lips had parted in response.

      Nick’s arms held her to him, encircling her but not moving. She was conscious of every point where the pads of his fingers rested lightly on her sore, grazed shoulders and the small of her back. The heat and the gentle pressure stung, but it stung with the reminder that she was alive, able to feel pain and pleasure; alive and with her reputation intact only because of the man who was holding her in his arms.

      The embrace brought them breast to breast, just close enough for her nipples to brush the crisp hair on his chest. The sensation was incredible. Their breathing was enough to generate a teasing friction that tormented her nipples into hard peaks of arousal, made her breasts ache and grow heavy, made her want to arch into him, beg him to take her in his hands and caress her.

      Waves of heat flooded through her, down to where her leg lay over his, her soft smooth skin of her inner thigh against his hard muscle. To the place where she was left in absolutely no doubt of just how aroused he was. She saw reflected in his eyes her own shock and excitement, realised just what an effort of self-control was keeping him still. If she in her inexperience throbbed with the need to move against him, draw him to her, surrender herself to him, how was he fighting the instinct to crush her under him, take her, make her his?

      Her eyes stayed locked with his, despite the languorous feeling of surrender that seemed to drag at her eyelids. His breathing was harder, faster, the breath on her parted lips like fierce kisses, demanding, promising. Their breathing quickened. She was aware of the infinitesimal movement of his fingers as he widened his already spread fingers on her back and all the time she was aware of the heat and arousal and sheer overwhelming masculinity of his need for her.

      Only his stillness and his silence kept her from moving, arching into him, urgent, begging for his caresses. Perhaps her own stillness was strengthening his resolve, perhaps in itself it was an incitement. Tallie did not know, could not read the dark grey eyes, hazed with passion. Passion for her.

      Was that what it was? Only passion? Could he love her? Tallie tried to speak with her eyes, tried to fight the clamorous messages her body wanted to send him and replace them with a message of love, of trust.

      She tried to free her mind, fight all her instincts that had taught her to guard her feelings, hide her innermost emotions in case she was hurt, exposed. The heat in his eyes was still there, but something else as well, something she had not seen before, something she could not read.

      Tallie found she had a voice after all. Her lips moved but only the faintest whisper emerged. ‘Nick.’

      It broke the spell of his control. He moved, his breath hot on her mouth. His lips touched hers, his hands tightened on her back. Tallie gasped and arched towards him as though bonds had been released.

      ‘Tallie.’ His voice was ragged, hoarse, the voice of a man who has reached the end of his tether.