A Matter of Indiscretion

by Jackie Barbosa

  Thomas imagined her father would see to her financial security, whether her business succeeded or not, but then, he might also have some very distinct ideas about whom she should marry. The second son of an earl who had signed up with—and then abandoned—the Foreign Service might not be Pitt’s idea of an advantageous match for his daughter. But even if the Honorable Mr. Pitt approved of their marriage, Thomas would be left at loose ends. Plenty of men of his class actively aspired to avoid so much as a day of work, but Thomas wasn’t one of them. From the time he was a small boy, he had known he needed to have some purpose in life beyond the Holy Trinity of the idle rich, these being hunting, gambling, and either drinking or fornicating, depending on personal taste. For Thomas, that sort of life would be a form of torment.

  If he could think of anything he could do with his skill set other than work for the Foreign Service, he would consider that line of employment instead, but he couldn’t see that there would be much call in the quiet surroundings of the English countryside for either his facility for foreign languages or his uncanny ability to talk his way out of sticky situations. The latter was always useful, of course, and had certainly got him out of many a boyhood scrape, but it wasn’t exactly the basis of a gainful occupation outside the diplomatic sphere. He could, he supposed, request a posting inside the United Kingdom—they existed, of course, as liaising with foreign dignitaries on British soil was every bit as important as liaising with them in their home countries—but such positions were generally offered to seasoned diplomats with years of distinguished service in foreign countries under their belts. For an officer such as himself, with zero seniority and no track record, to make such a request was truly unthinkable.

  No, he owed the Foreign Service what he had promised them—his willingness to do the job, wherever that might take him. He had made an oath to serve his country, and he would lose all respect for himself if he reneged.

  With a long sigh, he shook his head. “Not unless I give up my position with the Foreign Service or you give up on having your own business. I will not ask for that kind of sacrifice from you, and I do not know if I could live with myself if I backed out of the promises I have made to the British crown.”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and snuggled in a little closer. The way she fit against his body flooded him with a warmth that had little to do with desire and almost everything to do with the pure rightness of how they felt nestled together. He could see why his parents had fallen into the trap of making a hasty decision they later regretted. “You will be able to come home one day,” she said finally. “And I will be waiting for you.”

  It was a sweet promise, but one he knew she wouldn’t be able to keep. Sabine was young, beautiful, and the daughter of one of the most powerful men in Great Britain. Men would stand in line to woo her, and sooner or later—his bet was on sooner—one of them would sweep her off her feet, and she would realize that waiting for him, a man she might never even see again, was an unnecessarily empty and lonely existence. And indeed, what Thomas wanted for her was a full and joyful existence, even if it meant she fell in love with another man.

  Still, he didn’t contradict her. If believing she could wait for him helped her get through the days and weeks after he was forced to leave, he could not take that small comfort from her. Instead, he said, “Will you wait for me tonight?”

  She lifted her head to look up at him, her eyes narrowing. “I thought you said we could not spend the night together here.”

  He smirked. “That was before I knew I was going to have to have Joubert taken into custody as a possible threat to the British mission in France instead of having to share a room with him. As long as I leave your chamber before dawn, I do not believe anyone will be the wiser.”

  Color rode her cheeks. “Oh, I would like that. Very much.” Then she bit her lower lip and frowned. “What will happen to Bernard? I do not want to think I have put him in danger by telling you what he did. I truly believe he means no harm.”

  “I believe that, too,” Thomas said, “but we cannot set him loose in Paris—or any part of France—when he knows where our safe house is and can identify by sight a half a dozen or more British agents. Ultimately, it is up to Montague to decide how to handle this, but I cannot imagine he will do anything worse than keep the boy under lock and key until he can arrange to transfer him into Duval’s custody. As Duval’s future income rests on his discretion, I think he will provide assurances that Joubert will not be permitted to reveal our secrets.”

  Sabine released a shaky breath. “As long as you do not think Monsieur Montague will kill him, then whatever happens to him is fine with me. Even if he winds up losing his freedom for a very long time.”

  “I do not believe murder is on the table,” he assured her. If for no other reason than Duval would likely take it badly, but Thomas kept that to himself. He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Now you had better go. We have been in here alone so long that tongues may begin to wag. I will come to you after the household has gone to bed. It will be late. Do you think you can stay awake?”

  Her answering smile was slow and sensual. “I can stay awake all night for you.”

  He grinned. “You might have to.”

  22

  Midnight came and went with no sign of Thomas. Determined though she was to stay awake, Sabine’s eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Her choice of reading material—a primer intended for a child of twelve that Margaret Montague had lent to her as a means of improving her English—likely was not helping, but she could not very well go back downstairs to find something more stimulating in the library and risk missing Thomas’s arrival. Between her own halting comprehension and the rather dull content of the volume, however, she was very much in danger of falling asleep before he arrived. She might not have been so drowsy had she not been relegated to reading in bed, but the room was too small to accommodate a chair, so she had no other choice.

  Would he still come in if she did not answer the door? She thought he might, but then again, she thought he might not.

  She dozed off several times, coming back to full consciousness with a start each time her chin dropped onto her chest.

  When the knock finally came, it was so soft, she almost thought she had imagined it. But then it came a second time—a brisk but quiet rat-a-tat-tat that could be nothing but someone attempting to gain her attention.

  Setting down the primer, she rolled off the bed and made her way across the bare wooden floor. When she opened the door, which squeaked rather noticeably on its hinges, she did so carefully in the hopes of minimizing the noise it made. Thomas stood on the other side of the door, clad only in his white shirt and a pair of dark gray breeches. Her pulse stuttered at the sight of him. Would she ever get tired of looking at him, ever become inured to the sheer masculine beauty of him? She doubted it. Whether fully clothed, half clothed as he was now, or naked as she hoped he soon would be, he made her heart sing and her blood heat.

  Without a word, he stepped inside, and she closed the door gently behind him.

  “I am sorry it took me so long to get here. Montague kept me much longer than I anticipated, and I thought he would keep me very late.”

  Sabine did not like the sound of that. “Is everything all right?”

  Smiling, he pulled her into his arms and brushed his lips across her forehead. “Nothing for you to worry about. Joubert will be returned to his uncle as soon as arrangements can be made, and Montague thinks he has found someone from whom he can hire two Percherons to add to our coach, so we should be on our way to Le Havre with Montague and his wife in tow by tomorrow afternoon. I cannot tell you about the rest except to say that Montague was not happy when he discovered Joubert overheard someone discussing the operation. That should not have happened.”

  That thought had crossed Sabine’s mind before, and she nodded. “Not very spy-like of them, was it?”

  “Very unprofessional. Now,” he said, sliding his hands down her back to cup he
r buttocks and pressing her closer so that the ridge of his erection rested against her stomach, “are we going to spend our time talking about proper spy craft, or are we going to go to bed?”

  Her breathing hitched, arousal blossoming between her legs at the feel of him, hard and ready and magnificent, against her body. She glanced over her shoulder at the bed, suddenly a little dubious. “It is a rather small bed,” she pointed out. “I do not see how we will both fit.”

  He let out a low chuckle, filled with heat and leavened with amusement. “By getting very, very close.” Releasing her, he took a step backward and swept his shirt off over his head, letting it drop to the floor beside him. “Take off your night rail and lie down on the bed,” he instructed as he began unbuttoning his breeches.

  Quivering with anticipation, Sabine did as he told her. When she lay naked atop the duvet, she watched him remove his breeches and drawers, her mouth watering as his cock sprang free from its confinement. God help her, how she wanted to taste him, lick him, suck him, make him come. The place between her thighs ached and throbbed, reminding her that she wanted more than that…and that she could not have him in that way.

  Well, the way they could have each other would just have to be enough.

  He stalked toward the bed, caressing her with his gaze, starting at her face and working her way down to her breasts and belly and the mound of her sex. The desire—no, the adoration—in his heavy-lidded gaze was unmistakable. How could she have thought he did not love her?

  The mattress dipped when he sat on the edge, and she waited for him to lie down facing her, but instead, he stretched out alongside her in the opposite direction, his head in line with the apex of her thighs and his cock staring her—metaphorically, at least—in the face.

  “Scoot over a bit and roll onto your side,” he said, switching into English as he was wont to do when they played.

  Grasping what he had in mind, Sabine’s entire body flushed with equal parts embarrassment and excitement, though she could not say why this particular act was any more shocking or erotic than anything they had done before. And yet…and yet the idea of sucking his cock while he ate her pussy was so profoundly wicked, so delightfully scandalous that she thought she might come the second his mouth touched her.

  Once she was on her side, he coaxed her to open her legs and positioned himself between them. Shivering with heat—which made no sense at all—she wrapped her hand around the velvety length of his cock and began to work him in the rhythm she had learned that he liked. When he shifted his hips in response, she adjusted the angle of her head so she could run her tongue across and then around the engorged head.

  “Yes, that’s it,” he praised her, his warm breath teasing the soft, aching knot of need at the apex of her sex. “Just like that, sweetheart. Pay no attention to what I’m doing down here.”

  And then his lips grazed the flesh between her legs, and she groaned, her stroke faltering because she could no more ignore what he was doing than she could flap her arms and fly across the English Channel. But she was determined to give him as much pleasure as he gave her, and so she concentrated on applying the skills she had acquired over the last few days to the task before her. Drawing his shaft into her mouth, she took him to the back of her throat and out again, using her hand in counter-rhythm that made him hiss in approval. It wasn’t easy to maintain her pace when every stroke of his tongue, every thrust of his fingers, drove her closer to her peak, but she could tell she was having the same effect on him, and the equal exchange brought a heightened charge to both giving and receiving pleasure. If sucking his cock until he came in her mouth was exciting—and it was—then doing it while he did the same for her was positively electrifying.

  The first time she came, she did lose track of what she was doing, but at least the presence of his cock in her mouth muffled her voice or she might have wakened the whole household with her cries. When the aftershocks of bliss subsided, she renewed her efforts, and when the second orgasm hit—less powerful but somehow sharper and more beautiful—she did not slacken because she could feel the tension building up in Thomas’s body as he strove to prolong his own release.

  He pressed his mouth softly to her now over-sensitized flesh and withdrew his fingers from her pussy, and she thought with a hint of regret that he was done and waiting for her to finish him. And then she squeaked as he pressed the tip of one finger, slick with her juices, against and then into the most unthinkable orifice. There was a brief, bright stab of pain as her muscles stretched to accommodate the intrusion. She was sure any right-thinking woman in her position would be horrified by such an invasion of her person, but then it crossed her mind that right-thinking women probably would not be in her position, so perhaps she ought not to worry about anyone else’s feelings but her own. And to her surprise, she found that the discomfort quickly subsided and was replaced by a delicious sensation of fullness.

  White-hot lust sizzled to life inside her as if she had not come just moments before, and she bore down instinctively on his finger to force him deeper inside her. He obliged her unspoken demand, allowing the finger to sink in as far as the second knuckle before drawing out and repeating the motion. So bad. So good. If this was wicked, then virtue was wildly overrated.

  Thomas nuzzled the once-again aching core of her sex while continuing the seesawing motion of his finger. “You like this?”

  God, she was nearly mindless with pleasure and she still had his cock her mouth, and he wanted her to speak? “Yes,” she gasped.

  “Good,” he said, a little hoarsely. “Some women don’t like arse play, so I wasn’t sure you would. But if you don’t like this or anything else, you must tell me so.”

  In answer, she cupped his balls with her free hand and said, her words slightly muffled, “I like everything you do to me. Now stop talking and do it.”

  He half laughed, half groaned at her words, and then for quite some time, there was nothing but wet sounds and rapid breathing as he used his fingers and mouth to bring her to yet another climax before surrendering his own. Sabine swallowed the hot spurts of his seed, savoring the way his breath caught in his throat as he came. When he was finished, she licked him clean, every but like the cat who got the cream.

  They lay still for some minutes afterward, both recovering from their exertions, before sitting up and maneuvering into a spooned position on the narrow bed. Thomas draped his arm over her shoulder, one hand cupping her breast as he burrowed his face against the back of her neck.

  She sighed with contentment and snuggled tighter against his broad, muscular chest. “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “From a lover I had when I was at Cambridge,” he said drowsily, not bothering to ask what Sabine meant by the word that. “She was very experienced.”

  The prickle of jealousy that pierced her heart was completely unjustified. After all, Sabine herself had asked the question. Moreover, she was perfectly aware that Thomas had taken women to his bed before her, and she ought to be grateful for the skill he had developed in the course of those affairs. She was certainly the beneficiary of his experience. Even so, she could not help but be jealous of this other woman—or perhaps the right word was “envious”—and all the other women who have ever been with him. Who had ever truly been with him in all the ways a man and woman could be together.

  She knew she should not ask. The answer could only bring her more pain, but curiosity got the better of her. “Who was she?”

  Thomas made a noise low in his throat that indicated he knew the effect his response might have on her. “The wife of one of my masters. He was more than three decades her senior and, according to her, unable to perform his husbandly duties. She was unfailingly devoted to him in public; however, and in exchange, he looked the other way when she took lovers, to the point that he did not even set her aside when, some years after I left, she bore a daughter who quite obviously could not be his. That was when I realized I was probably not the first young buck under her hu
sband’s tutelage whom she seduced, as I certainly was not the last.”

  “Did you love her?” Another question she knew she should not ask, yet could not repress.

  He levered himself up on his elbow and turned her gently so she could see his face. His expression was tender as he gave an emphatic shake of his head. “No, sweetheart, I never loved her. I was enamored with her—or, more accurately, I was enamored with her body and the access she gave me to what every lusty adolescent male wants—but outside of the bedroom, we were practically strangers. It was a mutually satisfactory arrangement, but that was all, and when it ended, we both moved on without looking back.”

  Sabine rolled onto her back and reached up to stroke his cheek, delighting in the raspy sensation of the long day’s stubble against her palm. “That sounds…a bit cold.”

  His smile was rueful. “Oh, it was hot enough—the physical part, anyway. There just was nothing more between us than that.”

  Well, yes. And that was what worried her, now that she had time to consider it. “So how do you know this is more than physical? How do you know you are not merely enamored with my body?” How do I know I am not merely enamored with yours? Because she most certainly was enamored with his body…and with what he could do with it. How did one separate the desires of the flesh from the desires of the heart? Was it even possible to do so?

  Thomas turned his head and pressed a kiss into her palm. “I know because I want to spend every waking moment with you, whether we can be together like this or not. I know because you fascinate me, amuse me, and sometimes even irritate me, and I want you to keep doing all of those things. I know because being with you makes me feel like my best self, like the man I am meant to be. But most of all, I know because I will walk away when the time comes rather than take the risk that you will come to resent me for loving you too much to let you go.”