STEAMPUNK ROMANCE: An Innovative Clockwork Steampunk World Adventure: The Complete Collection Boxed Set (Mystery Suspense Romance Short Stories)

by Haven, Rose

  “Rosalie –”

  “I know,” I said impatiently, running my hands over his front and trying to smile encouragingly. “There are a lot of reasons that this should not happen. But… Edmund I’m falling in love with you and I cannot be around you without wanting.” He breathed in sharply and stared at me with wonder in his eyes. “So either keep kissing me or leave and never come back.”

  He did not even hesitate – he leaned forward and captured my lips in a passionate embrace. He pulled me close and wrapped his arms tightly around me, lifting me up in his enthusiasm so that my legs dangled uselessly beneath me. I felt the bulge in his trousers and wriggled against it.

  Edmund groaned and set me down, pulling away completely. For a moment, I thought that he had changed his mind and a dagger of icy dread pierced my heart. But he just turned to my bed, gathered the blueprints I’d placed there into his arms, and set them down in a loose pile next to it.

  “Hopefully those are still in the right order,” he said, turning to observe me sheepishly.

  I stepped forward, wrapped my fingers in his cravat, and pulled him back onto the mattress.

  Chapter Four

  Edmund’s hand was on my hip now, fingers tracing the tender flesh which was hidden by my skirts, making me shiver. My cheeks burned and I never wanted him to stop touching me. How could I have lasted so many days without this?

  I reached down to the front of his trousers. “Let me –” I said.

  Edmund caught my hand before I could make contact and said, “No, no.” His voice was thick and low with lust and something else. Something richer. I couldn’t stop my hips from arching into his touch. Edmund took my hand and kissed the pads of my fingers, one by one. “Let me see to your needs. I am your manservant after all.”

  For a manservant he certainly had a lot of power in all of this. He kissed the centre of my palm before pushing it back onto the pillow above my head. He watched me for a moment. I gasped, “Oh!” when I realised what he wanted and brought the other hand up to meet it. My wrists crossed and Edmund’s breath stuttered. “Like this?” I asked.

  “You have no idea,” he said, his voice still low and thick like sweet caramel sauce. “You are so beautiful. You are perfect.”

  “I am not.”

  He laughed and pressed his lips to mine, then pressed kisses up my jaw to my ear. “Perfect,” he insisted. His breath tickled my ear and made me squirm. “Wonderful. Incomparable.” He kissed down my throat and I felt a shot of heat run from my neck, down my back, to settle in my lower belly. I titled my hips up, desperate for friction, but he pulled away. He kissed me again, moving down my neck and collar bone, down and down. He pulled his hands away from where they’d been holding my wrists down. I kept my hands above my head and watched him as he leaned back to undo my corset and press a hard kiss to the centre of my chest, right over my heart. “I do love you,” he said.

  “And I you,” I replied. My voice was something between a whisper and a moan.

  “Edmund,” I said, because it was all I could say. Part of me wanted to seize him by the hair, haul him towards my mouth, and kiss him until neither of us had breath to spare. Part of me wanted to roll him over until my legs were on either side of his thighs, where I could lift my skirts and show him exactly how warm he made me.

  But most of me wanted to lay back and let him ‘see to my needs’.

  So I left my hands where they were, crossed at the wrists above my head, and did little more than squirm as Edmund pulled apart my corset and the top of my dress. I leaned forward as he bundled the skirts up and pulled them over my head. Once I was completely bare, he sat back on his haunches to admire his work.

  “Breathtaking,” he said. I felt the heat rising in my cheeks again as he stared without shame. Finally, he bent down to kiss the swell of my breast, teasing the sensitive skin there until I was panting. I watched him move lower, hands and mouth exploring every inch of me. I felt like a sculpture being admired by a skill artisan, or a delicious morsel to be savoured before being devoured.

  Edmund kissed down to my belly – pressing his lips to places I did not consider particularly special, but which felt special under his ministrations. My lowest rib, my navel, the soft dip between my pelvic bone and my belly. He moved up to kiss the inside of my upper arm, before dipping down to press his lips and tongue to the sides of my knees and my ankles. He was kissing everywhere but where I wanted him to. Where the heat was building. Where I was craving just the tiniest bit of pressure.

  He nudged my legs apart and whispered: “Is this alright?”

  As if it could be anything else. I wanted to be grateful that he kept checking. That he cared enough about me that he wanted to make certain that I was comfortable at all times. But all I felt was impatience.

  “Yes,” I said, lifting my hips up to bear myself completely to him. “Keep going. Whatever you want. Everything. I’m yours.”

  He swallowed hard, staring down at me for a moment before releasing a sigh. He began to bend over when a thought occurred to me.

  “Wait!”

  He froze. “Rosalie?” he asked, watching me with burning, intense eyes, as his hand hovered inches above the skin of my thigh.

  “Take off your clothes,” I said. It was bold, I knew it, but at that point I thought I could get away with a little boldness. “I want to see you.”

  The corner of his lip quirked up. Fresh heat rushed through me at the sight. He leaned back on his knees and kept his eyes fixed on me as he slowly undid his vest and threw it into a pile with my dress. Then the cravat went. Then the shirt.

  His chest was all hard planes and lean muscles. He looked like a man who ate well and worked hard, but not in manual labour. His pale skin was like ivory, and I wanted to worship every inch of him just as he had worshipped me. But I kept still, with my wrists crossed, and watched him undo his trousers and wriggle out of them.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  He growled and bent his head down to my centre. I groaned as he lavished affection on me, breaking almost immediately as I felt the pent-up pressure in my belly explode like a kettle boiling over. I couldn’t even make a sound. I could only gasp and writhe and finally fall back on the mattress, spent.

  Edmund’s eyebrows rose. He clearly was not expecting that. But then he growled again and kissed his way back up my body, moving much faster than before and bypassing my breast entirely to kiss me hard on the mouth. As his tongue plundered me, I could feel his hardness against my thigh. I couldn’t even feel the mattress beneath me anymore. There was nothing but Edmund – his scent, his weight on me, his fingers trailing up my arms to rest gently against my wrists.

  I hooked my leg over his hip and pushed up, rolling us over so that I was above him with my legs on either side of his pelvis. I quickly seized his hands and brought them up above his head, pinning them down as I had been pinned. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes are black pools of heat and longing as he looked up at me.

  “Rosalie,” he said. “Rosalie, Rosalie, you have no idea – there aren’t words.”

  “Then let’s not use words,” I said, slowly sinking down onto him, feeling him fill me up, and watching as his wide eyes went wider at the sensation. He let his head fall back against the mattress and arched his back. From my position, I could see each one of the muscles in his stomach tensing like strings on a piano. I tightened my fingers around his wrists and ground down. He gasped and pressed up to kiss me.

  I rose up and down on top of him, staying connected to his lips, keeping his hands trapped above his head. Time lost all meaning. I could barely remember my name, or who I was, or why I thought this was a bad idea in the first place. This was a wonderful idea. I could keep doing this for the rest of my life and never tire of it. Edmund pulled away and said: “Rosalie... let me touch you.”

  As if I could deny him anything. I nodded and pulled my hands away, and he brought them immediately down to my hips. His arm muscles bulged as he added his own strength to
mine, bearing me down with an intensity that had me sobbing in moments. He pushed an arm between us and pressed it down against my heat.

  “Oh.”

  I rose on the edge of oblivion. It seemed to take forever for me to fall, and when I finally did I felt my whole body twist and burn with the force of it. Edmund swore – he would never have allowed such words to pass his lips in normal circumstances – and gripped me hard enough to leave bruises. He would apologise for those later. And I would allow him to make it up to me.

  We rode out our respective pleasures before my strength seemed to abandon me and I collapsed in a panting, sweating heap on his chest.

  Edmund wrapped his arms around me, gathering me up and pressing soft kisses to my hair and shoulders. I pressed weak kisses to his collarbone and felt my body beginning to relax. It was as if all of the stress from the last few days had completely fallen away and all that was left was Edmund and his chest rising and falling beneath me. I squirmed a bit to get comfortable and let his fingers in my hair lull me into a deep sleep.

  Chapter Five

  When I woke up, Edmund was still playing with my hair.

  “Good nap?” he asked. I could feel the vibrations through his chest, where my ear was pressed.

  I hummed appreciatively. My body was pleasantly sore and I felt a sudden jolt when I realised that I had – once again – forgotten to take precautions. I wanted to slap myself for the foolish giddiness which filled me at the thought of being heavy with Edmund’s child. I could hardly bend over a prototype with my belly swollen, could I?

  I was not even sure about how I could prevent pregnancy. My father had never seen fit to equip me with such knowledge, and my mother had faked her own death long before I had needed such advice. The only reason I knew it was possible was because I’d heard the maids discussing it. I wondered if Kitty could be prevailed upon to give me some instruction. I thought that I might be able to trust her not to blab my secrets to the rest of the staff.

  Edmund ran his fingers through my hair one final time before nudging my shoulder. “I could stay here all evening,” he muttered. “But I believe the maids will grow suspicious when I do not come down to give them instructions for supper.”

  Reluctantly, I pulled away. Edmund got dressed quickly, and after a moment of admiring his bare backside, I did the same. Outside, the sun had begun to set. How long had I been asleep?

  I took the blueprints he’d removed from my bed and set them down in the proper order on my workbench – a thought floating in the back of my mind that I should keep the bed clear from now on. Edmund gazed out of the window at the gardens. Gardening was one of the few things I knew that he liked. I felt a twinge of guilt when I remembered that he could list several of my likes and dislikes, but I could not return the favour.

  “Tell me about yourself,” I said suddenly.

  “Pardon?”

  “You know almost everything about me, and yet I know virtually nothing about you. What’s your family like?”

  Judging from the look on his face, you would have thought that I’d asked him if he’d ever murdered a man. He grimaced and replied, “My family is not very close,” he said. “We’re very different people.”

  “You seem close to your sister,” I said.

  “She is different,” he replied. He hesitated before adding. “We share a mother.”

  “You – oh.” I thought that he might appreciate it if I dropped the conversation, but I felt compelled to at least try to get to know him better. “I do not mean to make you uncomfortable,” I said slowly. “I just… want to understand you.”

  Edmund grimaced again but it was softer and less defensive. “There really is not much to tell. Mary is my sister, but I have several half-siblings in varying states of employment or matrimony.”

  “Are they all – do they work in the same field?” I almost asked if they were all servants, but I realised at the last moment how utterly insensitive that would be.

  “No,” Edmund replied. “We tend to work to our strengths.”

  “And your father?” I asked.

  “My father is… distant,” Edmund said. “He only acknowledges us if he can offer advice or an improvement.”

  “That is considerate of him,” I replied.

  He hummed noncommittally. “I believe it has more to do with his desire to keep the family in good esteem than it has to do with his children.”

  I ran my hand over his cheek and kissed him lightly. “Fathers are very particular about their families. I would know. Mine has been trying to marry me off for several years now.”

  Edmund’s face twisted into something resembling a wry smile, but there was a shadow of emotion behind his eyes. “Would it be terribly selfish for me to say that I am glad that he has not succeeded?”

  “Not terribly,” I replied.

  There was a pause between us, and I knew that it was being filled with everything that we weren’t saying to each other. That Edmund was my manservant and that my father would never agree to me marrying the help. That I was not even certain that marriage would be something I wanted, even if I could be sure that Father would approve of my choice. That if my father ever discovered us we would both be ruined – my family name would fall into the dirt while Edmund would probably never find work within a respectable household again. That every day we were together was another day that we could be caught, or I could fall pregnant, or some other tragedy could befall us. All of these fears surrounded us, threatening to engulf us, but we did not acknowledge them. Instead, Edmund turned his head and kissed me soundly, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me into his chest.

  “I would marry you tomorrow if I could.”

  I sighed and pressed my cheek to his chest. “I know,” I said, leaving the question of whether I would marry him open.

  He pulled away and gave me a kiss on the nose. He turned away to fix his cravat and I began shuffling blueprints to have something to do with my hands.

  “Perhaps…” He hesitated. “Perhaps we can go on as we are?”

  Turning slowly, I looked over at him. He had his back to me but his shoulders were tense. I realised that, at least for a little while, this was all we could have. Stolen afternoons, sweet kisses in the safety of my bedroom. It was not ideal, but it was probably all we could manage for now. For now. I could not imagine what would change to make my marrying a servant suddenly acceptable.

  “Yes,” I said finally. “That would be good.” He turned and gave me a blazing smile. I had to look away and begin shuffling papers, or else I would have started undoing my corset all over again and we would never have made it downstairs for dinner. “We will need to be discreet, so that my father does not find out.”

  I had my back to him, but I could hear the smile in his voice as he answered, “He cannot get too cross; it’s his own fault.”

  I froze over my work and turned slowly to face him. Edmund, who had apparently not noticed my sudden pause, was humming under his breath and inspecting a pistol we’d bought together that morning. “I beg your pardon?” I asked.

  He looked up and frowned. “Pardon?”

  “You just said, ‘it’s his own fault’,” I said. Edmund’s eyes unfocused as he played over what he’d just said in his head. Then they widened and he rubbed the back of his head in a manner which made me immediately suspicious. “What did you mean by that?”

  “Well…” He set the pistol back down on the bench and looked like he was doing some fast thinking. “He hired me, did he not?”

  “Certainly,” I replied. “But that does not make our relationship ‘his fault’ – he hired you to feed me, not make love to me.”

  “Yes, you’re right – I misspoke.” He was speaking too quickly, nodding too cheerfully, and agreeing with too much candour.

  I felt my eyes narrow without my permission. “I don’t think you misspoke,” I said.

  Edmund swallowed and avoided my eyes. “It’s truly not important –”

  “Ed
mund,” I snapped. “You’re lying to me.”

  He flinched. When he finally met my eyes, I could see a cloud of hesitation and remorse in his expression. “Rosalie, I swear, it’s not as bad as it sounds –”

  “What?”

  A sick, burning feeling of dread settled into the pit of my stomach as I watched him dither over the words which were clearly stuck on the tip of his tongue. He looked so… guilty.

  “Your father might have had an ulterior motive in hiring me,” he said. His voice was so low that I had to strain to hear him.

  “Which was?” I prompted, when he wavered again.

  He licked his lips and ran his hands over his shirt as though they’d begun to sweat. “You – you should know that I was against it… at first. My father sort of insisted.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes.” He grimaced. “Lord Haversham, of Darbyshire.”

  “Lord –” I had to stop for a moment and breathe through my nose and out of my mouth. I’d heard of Lord Haversham, of course. He was well-known in the circles my father ran in, and he was almost as reclusive as I was. Rumours abounded that he had a large brood of illegitimate children. “You’re one of Lord Haversham’s children?”

  He sighed and nodded. “My mother was low-level nobility.”

  “But that – what are you doing working as a manservant?” I asked. “Even an illegitimate child can make something of themselves with the right connections.”

  Edmund nodded ruefully. “Exactly,” he said. “The right connections. Like your father.”

  “I really don’t follow.”

  “Your father approached mine to find you a husband,” he said. “And they settled on me.”

  I know that he was expecting a reaction. I could see him watching me carefully as though I were an unstable prototype on the verge of exploding, but I was too shocked to move. I just stood for a moment, blinking stupidly, before I could finally move my mouth enough to respond, “They settled on you?”

  Edmund shrugged but his hand twitched as though he wanted to reach towards me. “I was in a clerical position, but father thought that I could be… more, I suppose.” He grimaced again, though I could see that he meant for it to be a smile. “Even the unacknowledged children of Lord Haversham are expected to make good matches.”