Beauty Like the Night

by Joanna Bourne

  He said, “I wanted to call forth Eros with the heat and flame of our bodies. I wanted to torment us both into madness. I planned an exquisite seduction. You deserve nothing less.”

  “Let’s try madness now and seduce each other afterward.” She laughed.

  He said, “Turn to me.” With such simple words, it began.

  His hands cupped her buttocks. Consideringly, gently, inquisitively. She put her hands on his shoulders while he lifted her and slid her downward upon him so her legs settled on either side of him. Between her legs she was soft and warm and trembling against him. Against the hardness of his cock, beneath his clothes. He held her rib cage, ran strong, long-fingered hands down her ribs, over the tense muscles that moved with her breathing.

  “I am a descendant of the high chivalry of the land of France.” He might have been speaking to her or, ironically, to himself. “With six centuries of courtly tradition in my veins. I know the love songs of the troubadours. I’ve studied the erotic arts of the East. I have been the lover of many women, given them intricate pleasures. But all of that vanishes when I touch you. You unlace the command I have over my body. You undo me, Séverine.”

  “Deverney—”

  “Raoul.” His voice was husky. “Use my name, for God’s sake.”

  “Raoul.” She could no more stop this loosening of her body, this tidal pouring of herself toward him, than she could fly away. She rubbed herself on him, tightening and throbbing. “You do the same to me.”

  His cock pressed upward, all on its own. His whole body tensed. He muttered, “That is some consolation.”

  He had loosened the ties at the back of her dress, so quickly and smoothly she had not felt him do it. His claim to be a skilled lover of women was not mere boasting. He lowered her bodice and caressed her breasts through the thin linen of her shift. Held them, opening and closing his hands, running his thumb over her painfully sensitive nipples. She twitched when he did that. Every time.

  He said, “Kiss me.” Command and plea and inevitability all at once.

  She tasted him while he gasped underneath her. She felt . . . powerful. It was no small thing to have this man helpless beneath her. She sent her tongue to explore every detail of his mouth. She sucked at the stubble of beard on his jaw, the slanted muscles of his throat, warm and filled with pulse beats. “I like kissing you,” she said. “I—”

  The kiss that ate her words came hard across her mouth, impatient as if he’d been holding it back as a rider holds back an eager horse. Another kiss followed, holding a sound of deep satisfaction. Then kisses were everywhere across her face, stitched together, one to the next, pausing now and then at her lips.

  “Listen to me,” he said.

  She opened her eyes. His face was inches away, very intent upon her.

  “We’re not lovers,” he said. “Don’t think it’s that simple.”

  She had no idea what he meant. She had, in fact, no ideas inside her at all, only enchantment.

  He seemed to look at the words carefully before he used them. “Twelve years ago I was married to a woman I didn’t want to share a city with, let alone a bed. I expected to live my whole life with no true wife, no children of my own, no happy ending, no fulfilled passion.”

  She could only shake her head. She knew this.

  “I created the shadow and pantomime of love,” he said. “A game, but it was an honest game and I had no other. There’s little enough warmth in this world. I gave some to women who needed it and took theirs in return. I’ve shared laughter and a few months of joy with many women, but I’ve bought none. Seduced no innocent. Touched no one unwilling. Lured no one who didn’t understand the limits of what I could offer.”

  “I understand. I’m not an innocent.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, Séverine. Not what I’m asking. I want to explain that this isn’t a game to me. I’m free. This is courtship.” He leaned to set his lips to her breast, through the fabric of her shift. “I thought you should know.”

  His tongue curled around her nipple and he bit down so gently it was a caress. His fingers sought the cleft between her legs. He wrote pages and volumes of his intentions. She could have pushed him away at any time but she did not.

  Thirty-six

  SHE let the rough depths of his voice vibrate in her bones and didn’t try to understand the words. He stroked her body through the barrier of dress and shift, finding the soft places that were hungry for him.

  She said, “This isn’t about marriage. Nothing I do is about marriage.” Raoul Deverney courted her? Not possible.

  “All right, then.” His hands tunneled under her skirt, along her skin. Hands warm on her thigh. On her buttocks. Pushing her clothing aside. He burrowed between them to unbutton his trousers and free the hard column of his cock. It sprang upright, butting against her. He fit his cock into her. Inside her.

  She wanted him. Oh, how she wanted. “I just want to lie with you.” She was babbling. Saying too much. “I’m not going to marry anyone.”

  “Fine. Fine.” He ran a hand across her forehead, across her eyes, and wiped away thought. Brought her with him into a darkness that held only the two of them. He said, “We’ll make love. Good?”

  “Yes.” That was settled then. She nuzzled upward into the palm of his hand. “Now,” she said.

  “As my lady wishes.” He thrust deep. Again. Again.

  Her breath rasped loud and harsh. She matched him, thrust for thrust, with the same strength, the same madness. There was nothing in her mind except this feeling. No words, no thoughts, only this man.

  He whispered, “Take this. What I can give you.”

  For an endless time his hands tightened into her skin. He held her upon him. Held her while the muscles inside her clutched his cock in a tight grip. While within herself, she dissolved away till she was nothing but fire and urgency.

  Her breaths sucked inward in sobs. Came out in cries. She could not hold still. Would not. She gripped handfuls of his shirt and thrust herself down upon him again and again.

  There was no surrender. This was the headlong rush across a battlefield, banners flying, heart pumping, utterly committed. It was hard to get breath in and out of her lungs. Every muscle in her body was strung tight as a wire.

  Time slowed. Joy exploded within her. Filled every part of her being. The moment became vivid, wholly significant, poignant. Her skin contracted and shivered. Her breath was grabbed away as if she fell suddenly from some great height. Shocks thudded through her like the pounding of a great drum. She clutched his shoulders into the muscle and bone of him and cried out desperately and gasped for breath.

  She felt him withdraw and spend himself against her thigh.

  He took long, deep breaths. After a minute he set a long kiss to her forehead and put his forehead down to hers, where he’d kissed. They breathed into one another’s faces. He pulled her against him and held her cuddled to him. It felt like being complete. The lover and his beloved. It was right.

  Her body was a length of satisfaction. Perfectly relaxed in every nerve and blood vessel as well as the major bones and muscles.

  “I can’t think,” she said.

  “We don’t have to. There will be better moments for foresight and logic and rationality. Now we hold on to another minute of enjoying each other.”

  “My common sense has gone to sit in a corner and sulk,” she said.

  “Mine also.” He slid from the entanglement of their bodies and stood up. He smoothed the skirt of her dress into decency. Set damp strands of hair from her face to behind her ears. Quickly pulled together the ties at the back of her dress. Every touch while he did this was a caress.

  He reached down to take her hand and brought it to his lips and kissed it. Kissed again on the palm. Then in a row of kisses down the knuckles. “I will eventually show you my skill and good manners as a l
over,” he said ruefully. “I will impress you with my sophistication and experience. Not today, evidently.”

  Her brain was limping along. Thinking somewhat. “You said, courtship?”

  “It’s not a fearsome threat. Between us, we’ll figure out how it’s done. As I said, it’s new to me.”

  “It’s not possible.” She’d need to think for hours, or possibly days, before she knew what to say. “It’s not necessary anyway.”

  “‘Necessary’ is a grim word. I was thinking delightful rather than strictly required, but you’ll be the judge of that.” He glanced to the corner where the safe stood. “I’ll need ten or fifteen minutes to get the safe open. Maybe longer since my hands aren’t steady.”

  “I’ll carry the crates we’ve filled out to the wagon.” The night air on her face would settle her head, though it was the rest of her body that needed settling.

  Deverney—Raoul—had his lockpicks out. There was a similarity in all such tools, but his set seemed a little more elegant than the ones she used. The flat velvet pouch he kept them in was particularly tasteful and expensive looking. He ran fingers across the metal of the lock in a graceful movement, complex and possessive. That was how he’d touch her body when they came together again. Her naked places. How he’d make her hungry.

  She wished she hadn’t thought that. Really, she was easily distracted. She wanted him again, just as if they had not just made love.

  “Be careful.” Deverney immediately shook his head. “Sorry. I forgot who I was talking to. But don’t trip on the steps going down. It’s dark out there.”

  “I’m always careful.” Her skin felt oddly as if he were still touching her. It was ready to be touched again. Anticipating it.

  He inserted the first of the picks into the keyhole. She didn’t stay to watch him pick the lock because Raoul picking a lock was a sensual and seductive thing that aroused her.

  She arranged his jacket over the back of the desk chair where he would find it and carried her filled box down the hall, past the clerks’ room, and out the front door. She’d been wrong about one thing. The cool night air and exercise did nothing to banish demons from her body.

  Thirty-seven

  THEY left Hayward’s office quite openly. Sévie sat at the back of the wagon beside Raoul, their legs dangling down over the edge, for all the world as if they were farmers coming home from the field with a fine crop of business records. MacDonald drove. Peter beside him. They made good time. The narrow back ways they traveled were empty. These streets might get a few deliveries in the hours near dawn, but for now all these streets were deserted.

  The wagon had carried sand recently. Nice clean sand, fortunately. It was gritty under her hands on the boards. It clung to her cloak, but brushed away easily. Bluebell clopped along willingly enough. He probably preferred pulling boxes of paper and account books to carting sand. MacDonald had picked his wagon well.

  Raoul—it was beginning to feel natural to call him that in her mind—said, “The letters from Sanchia’s desk were in the bottom of the safe.” He reached under the canvas to touch the closest crate. “Here.”

  “Hayward didn’t turn those over to you. You’ll have a worried man of business when he arrives at the office in a few hours.”

  “He has an angry employer right now.” They rolled directly under a streetlamp and she could see his narrowed eyes and cool suspicion. She’d been treated to that expression a few times in their early acquaintance. “What I charge him with depends on what I find in those papers.”

  They sat close together. The wagon offered many fine choices of places to sit, but she chose this one. “You may not have the chance to charge him at all,” she said. “He may leave for a pleasant villa in Italy the minute he walks in and sees the state of his desk.”

  “We’ll look at the accounts when we get to your office.” As they rolled forward lamplight drew a thin, shining line in his hair. “If the numbers are what I think they’ll be, Italy isn’t far enough.”

  “I’ll help you. Peter can make tea. He’s getting good at it.”

  In the front, Peter mumbled something.

  They’d almost come to the corner of Turnwheel Lane where the bun seller made her living in the daylight hours, selling buns and information. The wagon made a wide leisurely turn.

  Her office lay thirty yards ahead, but all was dark. The streetlamp was out. The one beyond that, also. She’d left a lantern hanging on the hook at the warehouse gate. That was out. Ahead, they confronted unbroken darkness that reached down the whole street.

  Too late to turn back.

  They were in plain view here at the corner, under the last working streetlamp. Whoever waited for them in that darkness would shoot the minute they tried to run.

  MacDonald recognized ambush the instant she did. He made some light comment to Peter and kept Bluebell to a steady pace.

  Her heart thumped in her chest so hard she shook with it. Steadily, the wagon was leaving this bubble of light. In the next dozen feet, somebody would shoot at them. At her. At Raoul. At MacDonald. Maybe even at Peter.

  Beside her, Raoul continued to talk, his voice light and easy as ever. But now he said, “Your bowl of porridge was right. We have found that danger he mentioned. How prompt.”

  He was tense as an iron band beside her. He also recognized ambush.

  She said, just loud enough to be heard by all of them. “We jump on the count. Ten . . . Nine . . .”

  In the front MacDonald gave Peter a few words, barely audible. “You drop over the side and lie flat. Roll away and crawl. Wait . . .”

  She said, “. . . Six . . . They can come from either side.”

  Years ago she’d walked the streets near her office, picking out the likely places for an enemy to lurk with intent. Sometimes people wanted to kill her clients. Sometimes her. One of the best spots for ambush was at her front door.

  “. . . Three . . .” She took a second to worry about those street children who were still following the wagon at a distance. She hoped they’d keep well back.

  MacDonald whispered to Peter, “Wait for my word. I’ll tell you when. Wait . . .”

  They’d let the boy go first. She and MacDonald didn’t have to discuss that. They both knew what to do.

  Bluebell ambled his way across some invisible line, into the dark. MacDonald whispered, “Now, Peter,” and there was a little thump as the boy hit the ground.

  Ahead of them, a boot scraped on stone.

  She said, “Go!”

  Raoul’s body slammed into her, hard. Shoved her to the floor of the wagon. A gun flashed in the dark. The crack of explosion slapped her ears. A bullet smacked into something nearby. Raoul grunted. They rolled off the wagon together with her wrapped in his arms. She hit the stones with her hip and her shoulder.

  He barked in her ear, “Stay low, goddamn it,” and levered himself off her and was away. She lost all sound of him. She’d expect that from the Comodin.

  She flipped to her belly and crawled through the dirt and dried mud. She hoped she couldn’t be seen. Since she was still alive, maybe she couldn’t be.

  Total darkness surrounded her. Streetlamps burned in the distance, keeping their light to themselves. Close by, boots hit the stones, striding and angry. The men trying to kill them yelled at each other in . . . Italian, she thought. Four of them? No. More than four. Through it all Bluebell bumped along, placid even with the reins dropped and nobody on the driver’s seat. She could have used that horse in Spain. Good choice, MacDonald.

  She crawled with singular intent toward the darkest of dark corners in front of Merridell Merchandise. She’d hope nobody else fancied the spot.

  A second shot came from ahead of her. The muzzle flash lit up a man’s face. A third shot followed instantly, somewhere off to the left.

  She found a place in the lee of the Merridell stairway, t
ook out her gun, and lay flat. She didn’t even think of shooting. Waste of her bullet till she had a good target. Any shadow in the dark could be friend instead of foe.

  Scuffling and snarls came from her right, and the horrible sound of a man gagging in pain. Death over there, she thought. Knife or strangulation.

  Had Peter got away safe? And Raoul? She’d begun to suspect her thief was not wholly a civilian, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to fight like this, with guns and knives in the dark. She could only hope those two had found safe corners.

  Up above, on a second floor, a window glowed and went bright. The neighborhood was waking up to take an interest. She had them to worry about too.

  And down the street, against the backdrop of a distant streetlamp, a man crossed Turnwheel Lane, running.

  She took a proper shooter’s position, shoulders level, head low, elbows braced in the dirt, and held her fire.

  The outline was someone active, slender, and tall. Not Peter, then, and not MacDonald. She tracked the man with her pistol. Probably one of the emboscados. But he could be one of the men from the warehouse, running out to help. Or someone from the rooms upstairs, being a gallant idiot.

  She had a few seconds. Then the figure was eaten by the dark and her chance to shoot was gone. Her decision had been made, right or wrong. In a little while that one might find her and kill her, in which case she’d made a mistake.

  She held her position. The next man to cross that passage of dim light was no innocent. He wore breeches and a big loose shirt. Seaman’s clothing. The glint in his hand was a knife. No householder. No warehouse guard.

  She didn’t hesitate. She chose the right spot in his path. The optimal point. Lowered the muzzle. Held her breath. It wouldn’t be an easy shot at this distance with a pistol, but this was why she practiced so often.

  He ran into the killing space she’d chosen. She pulled the trigger smoothly, as she’d done so many times. He staggered, twisting, and crumpled, curled limply, to the stones of the street. He didn’t move.