The Devil's Match Read online

  The Devil’s

  Match

  The Devil DeVere

  Book 4

  Victoria Vane

  Breathless Press

  Calgary, Alberta

  www.breathlesspress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or

  persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Devil’s Match

  Copyright© 2012 Victoria Vane

  Published by Breathless Press at Smashwords

  ISBN: 978-1-77101-847-0

  Cover Artist: Victoria Miller

  Editor: T. S. Chevrestt

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations

  embodied in reviews.

  Breathless Press

  www.breathlesspress.com

  Dedication

  My heartfelt thanks to my family during the four crazy months of this writing frenzy, and to the great people at Breathless Press, most notably publisher, Justyn Perry, cover artist, Victoria Miller, and my wonderful editor, Tara Chevrestt, all of whom believed in this fabulously fun series and made it all possible.

  Prologue

  Woodcote Park, Epsom, Surrey, 1778

  After hours spent in a restive and fruitless battle with his conscience, he went to her, creeping into her bedchamber in the quietest hours that hovered between the blackest night and the first rays of dawn. When he dropped his dressing gown and slid between the sheets, she reached for him with a wordless moan. He answered with his lips pressed against her warm skin. “You did not come to me.” He busied his mouth on her neck, intent on firing the heat of her lust.

  “I couldn’t. It would not have been decent,” she whispered.

  “Will you turn me away?” he asked, but her body’s response already provided the answer before she spoke the words. “You know I cannot.”

  He peeled back her night rail, giving his hot tongue access to the valley between her breasts. “It was torture thinking of you in bed alone and wanting, no, needing the feel of your body beneath mine, engulfing myself in you as your sweet passage sheaths me. I thought I would go mad.”

  She clenched his hair, urging him to a swollen nipple, arching into him with a sensuous greed he adored. One fierce jerk rent the offending garment, freeing her bounty for his full ministrations. He ravenously feasted on her lush mounds, kissing, biting, laving until she writhed beneath him. “Kiss me, Ludovic,” she cried.

  He possessed her mouth with slow deliberation, their hot breaths mingling and tongues tangling, stroking, and sucking in mimicry of sex.

  The pungent scent of her desire permeated his senses, feeding his hunger. She clutched his head, then his shoulders, and moved to his buttocks. He felt her damp thighs tremble as he parted her nether lips and stroked a finger through her wetness. She reached for his throbbing cock. “Please, Ludovic. I want you.” She moaned, exhorting him to claim her, inciting his need to possess her to near urgency. His heart slammed against his chest with her reply, but still, he held back, relishing the delicious self-torture of anticipation.

  “How?” he asked. “Tell me how you want me.”

  “I want you in my hands. In my mouth. In my sex,” she answered his most decadent wishes aloud, and the words flooded him with a dark and delicious desire, causing his lustful fever to spike another hundred degrees.

  He emitted a husky laugh. “You are a greedy one. But how could I ever deny you that which I also yearn for?” He wanted to fill her in every possible way and be overwhelmed by the sights, scents, and sounds of simultaneous pleasure. He withdrew his hand from between her thighs and stroked that same damp finger over her mouth, watching in fascination as her tongue darted out to taste her own salty essence. He licked away the rest and kissed her again, slow and deep. “The taste of your arousal is the sweetest nectar to me. It fills me with the urge to pound into you and never stop.”

  He skated down over her breasts, capturing a nipple, hard and pink, drawing it into his mouth, and suckling. He guided her onto her side, exploring her hips and belly with his hands and lips, moving in a worshipful caress down her body until reaching her mons. Shifting also to his side, he wrapped her thighs over his shoulders and then guided her head to his straining cock.

  “Now,” he said, his tongue thick with excitement and expectancy, “I’m going to love you with my mouth and drink in the proof of your passion even as you swallow my own.”

  Shuddering at the sublime sensation of her lips enfolding him, he dipped his head into her mound, giving a long, lascivious stroke, parting her dewy folds with his tongue, licking and lapping her juices while she teased and suckled the head of his cock. He blazed a trail with his tongue to the tight slit of her sheath, following with his fingers. He plunged them into her, and she wildly bucked against his mouth while he worked her sensitive bud.

  He wished he could immerse himself in her like this forever, but their time was too bloody short. There was only one answer to what faced them on the morrow, but he forced it from his mind, refusing to think of anything now beyond the mindless ecstasy of mutual gratification and the explosive release already tightening his bollocks. Her wetness, her taste, her sounds of pleasure muffled by his cock filling her mouth combined with the slick friction and sultry, sucking sounds were insanely erotic and sublime. With her first racking shudders came a powerful, vibrating moan from her mouth through his shaft...and he was lost.

  Chapter One

  DeVere House, Bloomsbury, 1783

  Viscount Ludovic DeVere sprawled indolently on his Turkish divan, pulling on a hookah while a voluptuous redhead serviced him with her decadent mouth. Eyes at half-mast, he lazily surveyed the scene of oriental decadence that could have been stolen from an Ottoman sultan’s seraglio—the myriad hues of silk draping the walls and ceiling, the vivid Turkish rugs and cushions that scattered the floor, the writhing shadows created by the luminous glow of brass lanterns.

  Through the purple-blue haze of smoke and incense, his boon companions engaged in various and sundry acts of pleasure with the half-dozen women he’d engaged for an evening of debauchery, and Ludovic realized he was bored out of his senses. He’d been this way for days—restive, edgy, and irritable—as if his life had become suddenly unbalanced. He also recognized with even greater self-annoyance that the marks of his discontent had commenced upon a certain person’s arrival in London, a circumstance that aggravated him beyond measure.

  Although he’d successfully avoided any encounter with Diana in the past sennight, Hew’s apparent interest in her had eaten away at him, a circumstance that had both spurred Ludovic to assist in Vesta’s abduction scheme, as well as subconsciously incited him to host tonight’s fest of carnal indulgence. Deep down, he still carried the obstinate belief that with sensory repletion, the yearning for something more would go away. Unfortunately, neither the drink, the opium, nor the sex, had sufficed to fill the yen that the knowledge of her nearby presence had created. Yet, paradoxically, he still wished to avoid her at all costs.

  “What the devil is it, Winchester?” Lord DeVere snapped at the appearance of his majordomo. “I thought I communicated quite clearly that we were not to be disturbed.”

  The flushing servant diverted his gaze to the ceiling in an obvious effort to ignore the ongoing orgy. “But there is a lady to see you, my lord. She is most insistent.”

  “Another one?” Lord Malden chortled. “By all means, have him send the baggage in. Damn me, DeVere, but you are well supplied.”

&nbs
p; “I am, indeed,” DeVere answered. “It is a most amicable arrangement with Madam Hayes, but I had not requested another.” DeVere gave another long, lazy pull on the stem of the hookah proffered by his scantily clad companion and cast a sadly indifferent gaze at the temptress who enthusiastically sucked his cock.

  The servant flushed. “You misapprehend, my lord. This lady—”

  “Will not be turned away.” Diana stepped boldly into the room.

  Ludovic almost laughed aloud. For there she stood, as if he’d conjured her. Although a black veil obscured her face, he could have identified her proud carriage and sultry voice among a hundred similar women. In all of his six-and-thirty years, he had never allowed a woman to get under his skin, but this one had infected him with an infirmity for which he had yet to find a complete cure.

  Oh, he’d sought balm for his condition, all right. In Paris, he had soothed his raging fever with opera dancers, and in Italy, the finest Venetian courtesans had served as a temporary unguent. Following in the footprints of the ignoble Baron Baltimore, after whom he had capriciously chosen to model his life, Ludovic had sojourned to the East in an endeavor to satiate his sybaritic senses in every possible way. But still, his symptoms—the hollow sensation, the emotional detachment as if he were sleepwalking through life—inevitably returned.

  Though his pulse had quickened at the very sight of Diana, he addressed the woman kneeling between his legs with an air of careless indifference. “Put your playthings away, my pet, for we have an unexpected guest.”

  Stepping closer, Diana addressed him with icy hauteur. “So this is what you have reduced your life to, my lord?”

  “It is fortunate that I don’t give a damn for your opinion, madam,” he answered with a taunting smile. Defiantly, he caressed the bare breast of his would-be odalisque and took another pull on the hookah, blowing purple-cast smoke rings into the air. “Now, to what do I owe the privilege of your queenly condescension?” He could almost see her hackles rise, a circumstance that gave him a peculiar twinge of pleasure.

  “How dare you ignore my messages and compel me to come to this...this...den of iniquity!”

  He could no longer suppress a chuckle. “It was your choice to invade my domain. Thus, it is not for me to concern myself with your injured sensibilities. I already conveyed to you that the girl is safe. There was nothing further to be said.” He gave her a bland lift of his brow, enjoying the hell out of her reaction.

  “Nothing further! Where is she?” Diana demanded. “She was last in your charge and has not returned! I found her maid locked in her room! If anything has happened to her—”

  “I assure you she is perfectly safe in my brother’s keeping.”

  “Hew is involved in this? I don’t believe it. He would never—”

  Ludovic’s mouth kicked up in the corner. “Perhaps I misspoke. It would be vastly more correct to say he is in hers.” The girl was a tiny virago. He almost felt pity for his brother.

  Diana looked befuddled. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “When Vesta revealed to me that she was determined to have Hew, I agreed to lend some small assistance in the matter.”

  “That’s ludicrous! Vesta hasn’t even had her come-out. It is far too soon for her to be thinking of anyone!”

  “Nevertheless.” He shrugged.

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “For the nonce. Conversation is not my chief pursuit at the moment, but should you be inclined to join me...” He surveyed her with a slow and deliberate appraisal meant both to insult and incite. He was pleased to note the rapid rise and fall of her breasts, proof that his power to inspire her lust had not waned in the least.

  “You revile me!” Diana spat. “I will expect your call with a full explanation at nine o’clock on the morrow.”

  “An ungodly hour,” he replied. “I doubt I shall have risen before two.”

  Diana spun toward the door. “You will call, my lord, or you will much regret my methods of rousing you.”

  “I doubt that, my dear,” he replied. “You may rouse me any way you like.”

  The room rumbled with snickers and guffaws.

  She had meant it as a threat, but Ludovic could picture her face behind the veil, the high color in her cheeks, the passion lighting her green eyes, marking her righteous indignation, the very things that had appealed to him four years ago. He had determined the moment he first saw her that he she would be his. She had been a challenge, but he had, indeed, claimed her. Several ways, in fact, but still not enough to satisfy him. She was the only lover with whom he hadn’t grown bored. He told himself it was only the brevity of their liaison. It hadn’t had sufficient time to grow monotonous.

  Though he’d only meant to taunt her further, he felt himself growing rock-hard at the vision of her once again in his bed, proof positive that he hadn’t had his fill of her yet. The notion had sprung from nowhere, but there it was, just as she, staring him in the face.

  “A tolerable, handsome figure,” Lord Malden remarked to her departing back, “but a tongue like a shrew.” He added sotto voce, “Perhaps you can teach her a better means of employing it, eh, DeVere?”

  Oh, he had done that and more. He had taught her many things, and she had proven both eager and wonderfully sensuous, but her education remained incomplete. Unless... He wondered with an unfamiliar stab of something he didn’t care to identify if Diana had taken other lovers in his absence. He paused to examine that question. Would it really matter if she had? In the end, he found it didn’t diminish his desire for her in the least. His brother was now out of the picture, not that he would have allowed that courtship to have progressed any further.

  With one hand on the door, she spun around to confront her detractors. He could almost see her livid gaze penetrating through her veil. “Better a shrew than a sheep, my lord. For hapless sheep are devoured by ruthless wolves.”

  So that is the way of it. He chuckled as the door clicked behind her. He had introduced her to passion and left her to her own devices, and for that, she resented him. He had felt her bitterness as a living, breathing force. Yet, there was no doubt in his mind that this sheep desired nothing more than to be devoured slowly and deliberately by a wolf’s mouth, and he would be only too happy to oblige her.

  Chapter Two

  Upper Grosvenor Street

  At half-nine, Diana thought she would wear down the carpet from her pacing. She had rose an hour betimes in agitation at her impending confrontation with her erstwhile lover, and he had failed to show. Damn his eyes!

  She had no doubt he was entirely to blame for Vesta’s disappearance. She had written as much to Sir Edward, sending a dispatch by private courier late last night immediately upon her return from DeVere’s house. But even with a regular change of horses and riding through most of the night, it would take almost three days for the messenger to reach Thornhill Park and then another three or four for Edward to arrive in London, but arrive he certainly would by the week’s end. And there would, indeed, be a reckoning! A very large man with a slow burning fuse, Edward was a veritable cannon once lit.

  Although he and DeVere were the best of friends, Edward treasured nothing above his daughter. He would be livid at DeVere, friendship be damned. At the moment, the vision of witnessing him pummeling DeVere brought a smile to her face, albeit a smile that was short-lived.

  Having lost patience, Diana was prepared to carry out her own threat, even if it meant bribing two burly footmen to drag his lordship bodily from his bed. In a rising fever of vitriol, she called for the carriage and returned upstairs to retrieve her hat and gloves, but by the time she descended, there he was.

  Garbed in silk and lace and all the sartorial splendor of his exalted rank, he stood in her foyer, staring up at her with his sardonic blue gaze. The footman relieved him of hat and sword stick, and DeVere made her a flourishing bow. “Your humble servant, madam,” he declared.

  “You are late,” she answered his gree
ting.

  His playful and mocking air vanished, replaced by disdain. He replied in a tone matching her own, “You are lucky I came at all, my dear. I am not in the habit of answering to anyone. But given your near fit of hysterics at my house last night, I was inclined to indulge you.”

  “Indulge me? You arrogant bas—” she hissed.

  “Tsk. Tsk, my lady. Such a display of spleen is hardly conducive to civil discourse, especially when I am come at your express behest.”

  Diana was seething inside but recognized the truth of her faux pas. Any show of emotion was disadvantageous with a man like DeVere, who would perceive it as nothing but weakness. Hiding her temper under a frosty veneer, she showed him to the withdrawing room, deliberately seating herself in the middle of the settle, forcing him to maintain a more comfortable distance in a nearby chair.

  “Shall we forgo the niceties, my lord?” she said without prelude. “You must know that extended conversation with you is the last thing I desire.”

  His lips twitched. “Conversation is last on my list of preferred activities.”

  She gave a disdainful sniff in response to his innuendo. “I feel I am owed the courtesy of an explanation. As Vesta’s godmother, she was in my sole charge.”

  “Yet Ned wrote explicitly for me to look after you both while in London.”

  “And she is gone! How can you call this looking after her?” She rose and paced.

  DeVere’s mouth formed a harsh line as he tracked her movements. “I told you she is safe, Diana. My word should have sufficed.”

  “Your word!” Diana spun on him with a derisive laugh. “Pardon me if I have reason to doubt your integrity, as our history has proven you have a practice of secrecy and intrigue.”