[Cornick Nicola] The Last Rake in London(Bookos.org) by The Last Rake in London Read Free Book Online

the right of it. I have already told you once this evening that I am not that sort of woman and this is not that sort of club.’
    ‘Everything has a price, Miss Bowes,’ Jack said. The counters clicked softly as he stacked them together.
    ‘I am priceless,’ Sally said sweetly, and the King laughed and the tension eased. ‘Your price, on the other hand,’ she said, ‘is ten thousand pounds in winnings and dinner with me, should you choose to accept it.’
    ‘I’d take it, Kestrel,’ one of the other men said. ‘It’s more than the rest of us have ever been offered.’
    Jack stood up and shrugged himself into his jacket. ‘I’ll accept dinner gladly,’ he said, ‘and leave the rest to chance.’
    Dan had arrived with the champagne and the caviar and King Edward took Sally’s hand and kissed the back of it with heavy gallantry and said she was a pearl amongst women. She felt a huge relief—Jack’s winning streak had been halted, albeit at a high cost, and the King’s favour retained.
    Jack took her elbow as they walked out of the casino together.
    ‘Are you angry with me?’ he asked softly. His breath stirred her hair.
    ‘Does it matter?’ Sally said tightly. ‘The disapproval of others strikes me as something that is supremely irrelevant to you, Mr Kestrel.’
    He laughed and she saw the brilliant amusement in his eyes. ‘You read me very well,’ he said. ‘You can still win back that ten thousand pounds, you know.’
    Sally flicked him a glance. ‘And you read me very badly, Mr Kestrel, if you do not think I meant what I said earlier.’ She turned to face him. For a moment they were alone in the corridor. ‘You want revenge on me for Connie’s behaviour,’ she said, ‘so you think to break the bank and ruin me. That is all that matters to you.’
    ‘You are mistaken.’ Jack raised his hand and the back of his fingers brushed the line of her jaw. ‘It is you I want, Sally Bowes. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you last night.’
    Suddenly the corridor felt airless. Sally took a step back and felt the smooth, cool plaster of the wall against her sticky palms. She knew that the fact they were in public would make no odds to him at all. If Jack Kestrel would proposition a woman in front of the King, he would be eminently capable of kissing her in a corridor and not give a damn who saw them. She felt dizzy and hot.
    ‘You can’t have—’ she began, but he never gave her the chance to finish her sentence. He leaned in close and kissed her, biting down gently on her lower lip, and the aching need flashed through her and she moaned, opening her lips beneath his. He took her mouth wholly and completely and her body caught ablaze like a lightning strike. She had never experienced anything like it.
    They broke apart as a couple came down the corridor and cast them a curious look. Sally turned away from the light. She had no idea what feelings and emotions were showing there, but her face felt too naked, too revealing of the turmoil inside her. Her heart was beating in hard, heavy strokes. She knew she was shaking. Jack took her chin in his hand, as he had done earlier in the office, and turned her face towards the light. He ran his thumb over her full lower lip, where he had kissed her, and the lust slammed through her body and she almost groaned aloud.
    ‘Sally—’ his voice was rough ‘—where can we go?’
    She understood what he meant, but the thought brought the first, cold thread of sanity back to her overheated mind.
    ‘I can’t,’ she said. She frowned a little. It was hopeless to pretend that she did not respond to him, that she did not want him. Her behaviour had given the lie to that. She tried to be equally honest with her words.
    ‘You go too fast for me,’ she said. ‘I am not accustomed to feeling like this. I can’t believe we…’
    She saw his tight expression ease a little.
    ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘In the heat of the moment—’
    ‘Yes.’ Sally