She ripped her mouth from his and hid her face in his neck, trying to muffle the lascivious sounds escaping her. Vaguely through her approaching storm, she felt him shove up her skirts. Then a blinding pleasure as his hand thrust between her thighs.
He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t kind. His fingers pierced the slit in her drawers and found her. She shuddered in reaction.
She suffocated. She trembled close to bursting into endless flame. She was adrift and disoriented.
He pressed up into her, and every muscle convulsed. The world exploded, replaced by a hot, dark place lit with showers of fiery sparks. She bit down hard on his neck to stifle her scream.
Ripples still flowed through her when his hand slid free and curved around her thigh. His touch was pitiless. She welcomed that. She didn’t deserve the pretense of tenderness after what he’d just done. And something deep inside her responded to his mastery.
She tried to remind herself that she played a part, but the knowledge made no impact against the waves of satisfaction. Ashcroft pulled her leg higher and hooked it around his hip.
She gasped for air, scrabbling for some shred of control, of reason. But both floated out of reach like cinders in a draft.
With one shaking hand, he tore at the front of his trousers. She should help, but she could barely stand after that astounding release. Clinging to his shoulders, she leaned against him, pliant as a reed. Pleasure bubbled in her blood, left her aware only of Ashcroft’s big powerful body and what he was about to do to her.
The burst of salacious laughter belonged to a different world. Terrified, she lowered her leg and flung her head up to meet Ashcroft’s eyes. He looked tense and angry. And frustrated. His hardness against her belly testified to his incendiary readiness.
Trembling with fear and the quaking remnants of her climax, Diana pressed closer to Ashcroft. Stupid to seek his protection even if it felt so natural. But he seemed the only solid object in a world that had become alien.
“By Jove, Ashcroft, take the trollop somewhere private.” The voice was loud, slurred with drink, and unmistakably upper-class. “She must be a treat. You’re not usually so eager for Covent Garden wares that you poke them in the street.”
Diana cringed, and a distressed murmur escaped her. Shame tasted rusty in her mouth. Her stomach knotted with nausea.
Dear heaven, had she gone mad? She’d been ready to let Ashcroft take her in an alley.
“Bugger off, Belton,” Ashcroft growled without turning.
Diana’s heart beat out a wild demand to run. She was desperate to leave, but she couldn’t go while there was a chance the interloper might see her face and remember it.
“Who’s the jade?” Belton, whoever he was, didn’t heed the threat implicit in Ashcroft’s snarl. He continued with a tipsy good humor that lifted gooseflesh on Diana’s skin. “If it’s a fresh wench, I’ll take my turn when you’re done. I’ve got nothing against a buttered bun, and you always have the pick of the doxies. Never rogered one of your leftovers who wasn’t pure gold. You surely know how to warm up a slut.”
Behind Diana, the brick wall was clammy and the stink of her surroundings was rank in her nostrils. She couldn’t blame the unknown Belton for assuming she was a tart.
She acted like a tart.
By all that was holy, what had Ashcroft done to her mind? Except she couldn’t blame him. She’d fallen into his arms like a leaf tumbled from a tree when winter gales blew.
No wonder he was such a devil with the women.
Ashcroft’s hand settled hard behind her head and he pressed her face into his coat. Black filled her vision even as humiliation choked her. She tried to struggle, but she couldn’t shift that implacable hand.
“Belton,” Ashcroft said pleasantly, “you have two choices.”
“Jolly good, old cheese.” Belton’s laugh was thick with anticipation as he shuffled closer. “Her and me? Or you, her, and me?”
“No.” Even through her churning misery, Diana listened to the snap in Ashcroft’s voice.
Belton however was too far in his cups to notice. “Something better?”
“Belton, you can leave now and continue your pathetic life untroubled, or you can meet me tomorrow morning over the barrel of a pistol.”
Shocked disbelief held Diana rigid against Lord Ashcroft. Had he just challenged a friend over her honor? An honor that after tonight she could no longer claim? Her hands clenched in his coat.
“Steady on, old man. Not worth losing a chum over a bit of muslin.”
“So you choose the second option?”
Belton sounded considerably shakier—and more sober. “Good gad, no. I’ve seen you shoot the club out of an ace at Manton’s.”