The Devil's Match

The Devil’s
Match

The Devil DeVere

Book 4

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.”

“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.”