“Sabine,” he said.
She looked up.
Ever so slightly, he shook his head.
“What?” she said lightly. His denial could mean a hundred things, all of them applicable to this moment, but Sabine hated being told no.
“You don’t want this,” he said.
“Don’t want what?” She could not put specific words to what she might want, but she knew she did not want to stop. Curiosity and something akin to . . . well, it felt like a new stretch of terrain into which she wanted to properly venture, to make note of the landmarks and unique features, to measure and admire and map. He was unexplored.
She slid the cuff of her fingers down his arm, jostled them around his wrist, and grazed them back up again, marveling at the sinewy landscape of his muscles.
“Stop,” he said, his voice agonized.
Sabine narrowed her eyes. She felt her familiar stubbornness rise like a blush. “Am I hurting you?” Her voice was matter-of-fact. In no way was she hurting him.
“Yes,” he said, but he sounded breathless, and not the kind of breathless that came from pain. She glanced at his face.
No, not pain.
Dubiousness had left his expression. Now she saw shock. Bright, excited shock. She sucked in a small breath and smoothed her hand up his biceps and over the hard rock of his shoulder.
Chapter Ten
Jon Stoker prided himself on never being caught off guard.
He anticipated crises and planned for disaster. Every morning he assumed that the world would fall apart.
It made him a proficient captain and an even better rescuer of women and children and dogs and every other wretched soul he’d somehow admitted to—
Stoker drew a ragged breath. One minute they’d been talking about barrels and the next he was prattling on about being an—Oh God, had he really used the term vigilante? What in the bloody hell had he been thinking?
He hadn’t thought; he’d only felt. He’d been swept up in Sabine’s closeness and attention; wanting, just once, to feel clean and pure in living flesh rather than in his mind.
She hadn’t needed to know. Her life could go on forever without the lurid truth of where he’d been or what he’d seen or how he’d survived. The less they knew about each other’s lives, the less complicated their relationship would be.
Not to mention, Stoker’s priority at the moment was locating his bloody brig. He needed mobility, to provision and sail from London as soon as possible; he needed to return to Portugal. If he could also keep tabs on Sabine’s personal vendetta against her uncle, all the better.
There was no time to be caught off guard by her request to touch his bloody tattoo.
The irony was that women had been asking to touch his tattoo for as long as he could remember. It elicited a thrilled sort of reverence from a wide range of women—everyone from rescued prostitutes to old grandmothers and little girls. He’d gotten the damn thing because being mistaken for a gentleman scared the hell out of him. He’d had no idea at the time how many females were invigorated by the notion of . . . of—whatever a gentleman was not. He’d never understand why the tattoo intrigued so many women, but Sabine?
Sabine asking to touch it, her eyes filled with wonder, her cheeks flushed, the notebook containing her precious investigation bouncing to the floor?
He’d been given no choice but to offer his arm. He’d watched her reach out, watched her trace first one finger, then five fingers, down his forearm. When she’d slid her hand around his biceps, he’d stopped watching and closed his eyes. For the first time since he’d regained consciousness, the burning pain in his side left him. The earth shrank to her cool caress.
This is not sexual, he recited in his head.
This is not attraction; this is not even affection.
This is curiosity.
She is curious, and I will go out of my bloody mind.
“Am I hurting you?” she asked softly, breathlessly.
No, he thought, but he said, “Yes.”
“How?” she demanded, her voice still soft, but a demand, just the same. “How is this hurting you?”
By killing me, by teasing me, by offering me something that will not happen.
He said, “This cannot happen.”
“What cannot happen?” she asked. Her hand was gentle on his biceps. Slowly, she began to fan her fingers out, a featherlight touch of unfolding sensation.
Stoker cleared his throat. “You were curious about the tattoo, and now you’ve seen it.”
She looked up, trying to read his eyes. He leveled her with what he hoped was a most intimidating scowl.
She laughed—laughed. “Are you glaring at me?” She did not release him.
“Sabine,” he warned, “you’re too close.”
“I know,” she said softly, the laughter dying away. “I am too close and you are too . . . unclothed.”
She chuckled again, a short burst of disbelieving laughter. “I’m not sure why I haven’t fled the room, except that I hate being told I cannot do something for no reason. And I never flee. This is why Sir Dryden and I didn’t get on.”
Stoker’s eyes flew to her face. “You said Dryden never touched you.”
“Well, he never touched me like I am touching you, but he—”
Suddenly, she snatched her hand away and stood. She gaped at him. “But is this how I’ve made you feel? Do you feel like I’m taking advantage by touching your arm when you’ve asked me not to?”
And for the third time that day, Stoker was caught entirely off guard. He blinked, he opened his mouth, he closed it. “Ah—no,” he said.
The skin on his arm sang where she’d touched him. He lowered it, pressing his palm into the mattress until his wound stung. He wanted to snatch her hand back; he wanted to tug her back to her spot beside him on the bed. He made a strangled noise and closed his eyes, willing his self-control to catch up, to catch on, to resist.
“Oh,” Sabine said, and she returned to her spot beside his hip. He opened his eyes. No amount of self-control could prevent him from seeing her sit beside him.
She said, “I should never want to take advantage.”
“Sabine . . .” he began, struggling to find the correct words. “You cannot take advantage, because the benefit of you touching my tattoo or my arm or any part of me would be entirely mine. So you needn’t worry about taking anything from me or a misbegotten balance.”
“Really?” She looked confused. “The only gain? Because I quite liked it, too. You are very strong, but you are also very controlled. It’s intriguing. I cannot say why I want to touch you, but I do.”
And then to his mounting disbelief, she lifted her right hand and reached halfway to his arm. A question. She raised her eyebrows.
Stoker’s body surged in response, even while he thought no, no, no, no.
This was a woman who refused to convene with him for more than five minutes twice a year to exchange mail. This was a woman who had struggled to drag his bleeding body down the hall because of her great distrust of all men.
“Sabine,” he rasped, “what are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, extending her hand farther. Her fingertips were nearly to him. His skin sizzled with anticipation, the muscle twitching. His body had begun to betray him, part by part. He was weak and voracious at the same time. Failing and surging. Shrinking back and grasping.
“May I speak frankly?” he asked. It was a reasonable question that came out in broken, cracked tones. He cleared his throat.
“Can you?” she challenged.
He narrowed his eyes. And now she would be coy? Without thinking, he reached up and snatched her hand, entwining his fingers. She sucked in a breath and endeavored to pull free, but he held her firm. This was allowed, he thought. This, too, was not sexual. This was a taste of his strength and speed, but it revealed none of his roiling desire.
“Sabine.” He spoke quickly, lowly, a confession. “Forgive me if I make as
sumptions or misread your intent, but the touch of your hand and the look on your face do not feel curious or clinical or even friendly. Do you know how it feels?”
Her beautiful green eyes had gone wide. “Let go of my hand,” she said, and immediately, he released her.
“Forgive me,” he said, feeling panic soak him like a driving rain. That did it. I’ve frightened her, damn it all to hell. I’ve overstepped. I’ve—
“How does it feel?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You asked me if I know how it feels. I don’t know—so tell me.”
“It feels sexual,” he answered immediately. He meant to shock her with bold, coarse talk. It was also the truth. He meant to tell her the truth. “It feels sexual. In nature. Do you know what that means?”
The cream of her skin turned pink and her beautiful lips opened to a pouty O. Slowly, she shook her head. It was one of the most sensual gestures he’d ever seen. His brain leapt, missed, leapt again, trying to catch hold of something he could add to this already brazen statement. Would she make him say it? Would she—
“What?” she demanded, and then boldly, confidently, she wrapped her hand around his forearm.
Stoker’s vision shrank to her fingers. Sensation frothed beneath the skin. His arm buzzed and tingled and radiated warmth.
Of course she would make him bloody say it.
“Are you a virgin, Sabine?” he heard himself ask. It didn’t matter; it wouldn’t matter, but it would inform what he would say next. His mouth went dry. He wondered if he would manage to hear her answer over the pounding of his heart.
“Of course,” she said.
Stoker was pulled under with an undeserved and unaccountable wave of relief. He struggled to catch his breath.
“Of course,” he managed to repeat. He paused, picking around the chaos in his brain for words that might safely end the journey on which they’d somehow found themselves.
“At the risk of explaining something that you already know,” he began, “sex, when you have it, is . . . is like a transaction.” He felt his face go red, but he did not look away.
“A transaction?” She repeated this as if he’d said, “Sex is like a garden rake.” Or “. . . a baby giraffe.” Or, “. . . a bad clam.”
“Yes,” he said. “Sex is something to which women consent in exchange for something they require—such as money or protection or a name or even a child.”
Sabine scrunched up her face in distaste. “Is that what you believe?”
“Sabine,” he sighed, “I, perhaps more than any man alive, have seen the beginning, middle, and end of every part of human desire. It is not my opinion. It is what I have known since I could hear my mother ‘at work’ across the room while I was meant to be asleep on the floor. Sex was a transaction into which she entered, again and again, until it killed her. I have rescued countless girls from a similar fate. I have seen it dressed up in luxury, and diversion, and flower-trimmed romantic trappings. I have also seen it reduced to minutes—nay, seconds—against alley walls. But every time, I have seen the same basic trade—a man’s pleasure for some payment to the woman. It troubles me to assume so much and offend you with my bluntness, but it cannot go unsaid. I hold you in too high esteem to enter into any such transaction with you.”
He’d looked away, unable to hold her gaze. It was too much to hope that she would flee from the room. It was too much to hope that she would slap him. Was it too much to hope that she would say, “Very well, I am grateful to finally know the truth of it”?
He glanced back to her.
Yes, it was too much.
She was staring at him as if he’d just explained that Sunday would not follow Saturday.
“But are you certain that everyone views . . . relations in this manner?” she asked. “That is, not suggesting that I wanted to, er, ‘transact’ with you in this moment, but since you have brought it up.”
He ran a hand through his hair and scratched the back of his neck. And now she would force him to elaborate. And now he must debate the topic.
“Sex,” he lectured patiently, “is viewed in every possible light, I’m sure, but few people have seen what I have seen. As much as I am loath to admit it, I really am somewhat of an expert.”
“An expert on sex?”
“An expert on the motivations and ramifications of sex.”
She nodded and looked at the ceiling, thinking this over.
Stoker tried to watch her, but her pensive expression, so stark in profile, was too beautiful, and he looked away.
After a moment she said, “And what of your business partners? Cassin and Joseph Chance?”
“I beg your pardon?” His voice broke.
“One cannot help but wonder about the Earl of Cassin and his countess, my friend Willow? Or, what of Joseph and my friend Tessa? Willow and Tessa have been quite open with me, and they reported nothing transactional about sex with their husbands.”
Stoker sighed. “I have not discussed it with Cassin or Joseph, but I have no doubt they have managed it with decorum and respect and made the effort very worth it for their wives.”
Now her expression was even more confused. “This is nothing like they reported it to me.”
“I . . . don’t like to speculate on the relations of others,” he said.
She stared at him. He could see wheels of thought turning in her head, but she did not seem embarrassed; she did not seem chastened or threatened. That’s all that matters, he thought. Protect her. The least he could do in return for her care and the stolen thrill of her attention was to protect her.
Now she said, “And so you never . . . engage in the, er, transaction of sex? I mean, your own self?”
And now I will die, he thought. “Sabine . . .” he pleaded.
“What? Surely you cannot mean to demand that I reveal my virginal state but refuse to discuss your own.”
“I am not a virgin,” he said quickly, praying this was enough.
“And you are racked with guilt because of the advantage you’ve taken of the women in your past? Is that it? It all began so innocently—she wished to touch your tattoo—and then it spiraled into fantastical sex, for you, not for her, because she only wanted to touch your tattoo and then earn some reward?”
“Sabine,” he groaned. He wondered how many times he could skate by on simply saying her name.
“I want to know,” she insisted. “You have been so gracious to educate me, and now I am captivated and want to hear all of it.”
“Sex with me never begins innocently,” he said. He couldn’t look at her; he stared at the paper in his lap. From the corner of his eye he saw her agitated posture perk up. Her full attention. Of course.
He wondered why his wound couldn’t begin to hemorrhage? Why couldn’t the doctor return to tell him he had ten minutes left to live?
“So you pay for this non-innocent sex?” she theorized.
“No, never, not in as many words. If you must know—”
“Oh, I must know.”
Stoker squinted at her, working to string together words that would . . . end this. In truth, his assignations with women had been limited strictly to middle-of-the night encounters with partners both sexually aggressive and financially independent. These were wealthy widows, businesswomen of a certain age, the odd bored monarch. He’d never, not even once, entertained young women with aspirations to marriage or a conventional life. He’d never paid for sex, but he was generous with gifts or some security concern he might manage on their behalf. He was racked with guilt after every encounter, but he was a man, just like any other man, and his desire for sex did battle with his self-control. A gnawing hunger that was never fully sated. An emptiness that ashamed him as much as it drove him.
“Stoker?” she prompted.
He sighed. “The women I’ve taken to bed have all been carefully selected to require nothing, expect nothing, and want no part of me after I’ve gone,” he said. “They are generally
older or widowed or both. They are independent beyond traditional standards for most women, so privileged in rank or social standing that they do as they please.”
“And so the transaction is . . . ?”
“I cannot say exactly. It has never been an ideal arrangement. These interludes haunt me, actually, and the reason for this entire excruciating conversation is to avoid anything of the sort for you. You will not be haunted, and I will not have the sin of defiling you on my conscience. We made this deal from the beginning.” He glared at her.
She looked back with a pensive expression. “You find this conversation excruciating, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I quite like it. Although, one thing is unclear. How does my touching your arm have anything to do with sex?” She accompanied this question with a flutter of her cool fingers on his arm.
Stoker’s body surged in response and he made a pained growling noise. “This is what I said from the first, Sabine. You cannot run your hands up and down my arm. You cannot caress and lean in and . . . look at me with wide-eyed . . . bloody . . . wonder. You are too innocent to know it, and I cannot fathom what has come over you, but this is how sex begins. No man could withstand it, least of all me. I’m sorry.”
Sabine crinkled up her nose and fluttered her fingertips again. “And what if I wish to challenge your theory that sex is always a . . . a transaction or an exchange? What if I’m to say this is not what I’ve been told, not at all.”
“Then I would be forced to say that you know virtually nothing about it and I know quite a lot. Again, I’m sorry.”
Sabine sucked in a breath, a flash of anger deepening her features. “I detest being told that I ‘don’t know something.’ Even if I don’t.”
“Well, you don’t, and it’s a gift. Be glad you don’t know.”
She was shaking her head. “Tell me I have something to learn, tell me I’m wrong, but please never say that I ‘don’t know anything about it.’ It’s infuriating. It goads me on, actually.” Her fingers closed around his arm and Stoker ground his teeth.
You May Kiss the Duke Page 10
