by Nalini Singh
"Major John Harris at your service, ma'am." His voice grated on his ears.
She regarded him without expression, her eyes tarnished gold.
"From the hall," he said since she seemed not to recognize his name. "And you are . . . ?"
"Morwenna."
No surname. A servant, then?
He cleared his throat. He was not accustomed to the company of women. But his years of military service had given him the habit of command and some small store of social conversation. "I saw you from the cliffs," he said.
And promptly plunged down the bluffs like a sailor diving after a mermaid's song.
She would think him mad.
Perhaps he was.
"You were singing," he added. As if that explained or excused anything.
"I was not calling you."
A dismissal, by God. She did not speak like a servant. Despite the absence of gloves, her hands were tapered and smooth. Her dress . . . Well, he didn't know much about women's fashions, but the fabric appeared very fine. Perhaps she was a gentlewoman fallen on hard times.
He should ride on. He could not stay, looming over her like the lord of the manor riding out to debauch village maidens.
She met his gaze boldly, like a woman willing to be debauched.
His blood thrummed. Before he could consider the consequences, he swung from his horse, landing hard and heavily on his right leg. He gripped the saddle and breathed deep and evenly, willing the pain to subside.
"You are injured," she said behind him.
Scarred.
He turned stiffly. "Nothing to signify."
She considered him, those strange golden eyes traveling down to his boots and up again, lingering in places no well-bred woman would look. He felt the stroke of her gaze like a smooth gloved hand.
She nodded. "We had better go to my cottage, then. There is a bed there."
Jack's mind reeled with shock and possibilities. She was a whore.
Or he was still stupid from a lack of sleep and a surfeit of whiskey. She looked nothing like the prostitutes he had seen on London's streets or the camp followers he had known in the army.
Yet she was living outside the village. She had invited him to her bed. Surely he had not misunderstood?
He attempted a smile. "A chair would suffice."
Her face lit suddenly with humor or awareness. "It might suit you," she said. "It would not suit me."
As if--the image fired his brain--he had suggested they engage in sexual congress on a chair.
He shook his head to clear it.
"Come." She smiled at him and turned. "This way."
She glided toward the bottom of the bluff, all billowing skirts and floating hair.
After a moment's hesitation, he stomped after her, alert as if he rode into ambush. His riding boots slipped and skidded on the shale. Neptune plodded behind.
Jack had spent the past week riding over the estate, trying to familiarize himself with his new duties. This was not the first time a cottager had invited him to inspect a chimney or a leaking roof, to listen to a list of complaints or take a cup of tea.
Surely she was offering more than tea.
Or was it only her beauty and his own soul-deep loneliness that made him wish for more?
The cottage garden was bright with gorse and heather. Pink roses nodded by the open door. Jack tethered his horse to the front gate and ducked his head to follow her inside.
The single room was cool and bare and dim. No lantern. No fire. Sunlight leaked from the shuttered windows to stripe the room's wide bed. The covers were tumbled.
He wrenched his gaze away.
A simple plank table teetered in the center of the flagstone floor. He took in the oddly bare shelves, the room's only chair. "You live alone?"
"Yes."
The single word dropped into the quiet like a rock into a pond. He felt the ripples to his fingertips.
But he must not misunderstand her. "There is no husband to help you with your holding?" he asked carefully. "No man in your life?"
Those full lips curved. "Many men. None that I would choose to live with."
Something reckless in him rose to meet the wicked challenge of that smile. But he was never reckless. He had been a careful officer, deliberate in battle, calm under fire, conscious always of the men under his command.
He glanced again at the empty hearth, the lack of furniture, the plain, bare walls. "Then you must tell me how I may be of service to you, ma'am."
She reached behind her back, her hair sliding forward over her shoulders. He watched as her gown fell away from her bosom and rustled to the floor.
Well. His lungs expanded. There was no misunderstanding that.
She was completely naked, her skin pink and white and gloriously bare. No shift. No stays.
The blood left his brain to pool hotly, thickly, in his groin.
He had never seen a woman more beautiful. He forced his gaze from her long, slim legs to the pale thatch between her thighs, up the curve of her belly to her high, full breasts. Beneath the flowing curtain of her hair, her nipples were pink and tight.
She tossed her head and smiled into his eyes, accepting his stunned silence as the tribute it was. "Serve me."
All traces of headache vanished. There was only this need pulsing like fire through his veins. He had almost forgotten the relief, the solace, the sweet forgetfulness to be found in a woman's body. This woman's body, naked and almost within reach. It had been so long. Not since his injury and his inheritance, long before his return to England.
But he was her landlord.
Jack had not been raised in the ways of the landed gentry. A poor relation without the means to purchase a commission, he had joined the Infantry as a gentleman volunteer, fighting with the enlisted men, subsisting on an enlisted man's rations, until an opening was created by heavy casualties in the officers' ranks. He did not know what his cousin, the expected heir of Arden, would have done in the face of such magnificent temptation.
But he did know a man of honor did not take advantage of his dependents.
Even if one of those dependents was a whore.
She lived alone, she had said, without a man to fish or farm for her. Did she fear for her living?
"You are not obliged to do this," he said carefully. "I will not turn you out. If you owe rent--"
"I owe no one. I please myself. Today I choose to be pleased by a man. By you," she said clearly, so there could be no doubt.
Inside him something rigid as a scar relaxed. She desired him. Although a woman in her profession must be skilled at making her clients feel wanted.
Her eyes laughed at him. "Unless you are not willing to offer your services after all."
She must know. She must see. Beneath his breeches, he was hard as a rifle barrel and as ready to go off.
"I believe," Jack said gravely, "I am up for the task."
She sank onto the low rope bed, bare feet flat on the floor, naked knees parted. Still smiling, she reached for him, hooking her fingers into his breeches flap to draw him close between her smooth, pale thighs. His heart pounded.
In a kind of fever dream, he stared down at the top of her head. Her lower lip pouted in concentration as she worked the buttons from their holes, the brush of her knuckles sweet agony. A bar of sunlight slid between the shutters, firing her white blond hair to gold.
A little hum--triumph or approval--escaped her throat as she freed her prize. The contrast between her slim white fingers and his dark, thick cock seared his brain. His erection jerked in her hands.
Jack closed his eyes, absorbing her feather touch as she cupped and explored him. His hands rested lightly on her head. How long since a woman had held and caressed him? He could not think. Like this? Never.
Liquid fire swirled. His eyes shot open. She wasn't . . . She couldn't. . . .
She licked her lips, tasting him. Apparently she had. With her tongue.
Dear God.
His collar and boots felt su
ddenly too tight. His mouth went dry. Of course she wouldn't . . . No woman had ever . . .
His knees nearly buckled as she fit her slick, hot mouth over the head of his cock. She was doing it, sucking him, swallowing him, sliding her full lips up and down his shaft, taking him deep in her throat. His mind blanked. His hips arched instinctively.
He was going to explode. He had to stop her. He would stop her. In a minute.
Or not.
His hands clenched convulsively in her hair. The strands slid cool and smooth as water between his fingers, against his belly. His gaze fell on the arch of her brow, the line of her back, the delicate bumps of her spine. He couldn't see her face. But, oh God, he could feel her. Her tongue . . .
She was naked, submissive, bending before him, totally focused on his pleasure and yet utterly in control.
It was unbearably erotic.
And oddly unsettling.
He slid his hands to her shoulders and pushed her firmly onto the mattress. Levering himself over her, he settled his weight against her, absorbing the damp heat of her flesh, the womanly softness of her body. His erection lodged against her stomach.
She lay back, her hair fanning over the pillow, watching him with half-lidded eyes, a faint smile on her lips. He wanted . . . He didn't know what he wanted. Only her.
Spreading her thighs wide, he mounted her with one strong, deep thrust.
Her sharp inhale echoed his own.
She felt so good, hot and wet and welcoming beneath him. Around him. Lowering his face to the side of her head, he inhaled the clean, salt tang of her hair. She smelled of sunshine and woman, of sex and the sea. For the first time in weeks, he felt he could breathe.
He hunched his back, stroking slowly in and out, feeling her inner muscles clench and quiver in response. But his right knee would not bear his weight for long. With a grunt, he reversed their positions, pulling and lifting her to lie over him while she laughed and rubbed against him like a cat.
He saw the red imprint of a button on her breast and frowned. He should take off his jacket. His boots. Any woman, even a whore, deserved that much courtesy.
But she required no preliminaries. Desired none. Quick as a fish, she straddled him, hot and gloriously wet. Taking him in hand, she impaled herself on his cock. Sensation bolted in a white hot arc from his balls to his brain.
Her name ripped from his throat. "Morwenna."
In the plain, dim room, she burned above him, her hair a wild halo around her head, her white breasts tipped with coral or with flame. Her smooth thighs squeezed his sides. She set a shallow rhythm, rocking herself, pleasuring herself. Riding him. Her head was flung back, her eyes closed as she ground her wet sex against him. He was buried in her as deep as a man could be, intimately connected and yet apart.
He wanted her with him. Body and soul. Cunny and cock.
Grasping her buttocks, he pulled her down hard as he thrust up.
Her startled eyes met his. Her rhythm faltered.
"With me," he said harshly. He pressed up, gripping hard enough to bruise. She gasped and tightened around him.
The connection shot him to the edge.
Grimly, he held on, his blood roaring in his ears, as he drove into her, hammered into her, forging links of loneliness, heat, and need. The wet slap of their coupling filled the room. His lungs labored like a bellows. Her lips parted. Her eyes glazed, golden eyes burning to the back of his brain. Hot. Close. The pressure built in his balls and the base of his skull.
So close. The intimacy nearly shattered him. But he did not want to go alone.
He had never knowingly left a man behind. Or a woman, for that matter.
Teeth clenched, he plunged inside her, clinging to consciousness like a dying soldier on the battlefield, until he felt her swell and surge, until he felt her spasm and shake, until she shuddered and came apart in his arms.
Relief swept through him. A single thought spun with him into the abyss. Thank God.
Relaxing his grip, he let the dark sweep over him and carry him away.
That had not gone at all as she had planned.
Morwenna sprawled over the man's hard chest like seaweed on the rocks, the ripples of her release receding like the tide. Her body floated in delicious languor. Inside, she felt pleasantly tender. Relaxed.
Uneasy.
She raised herself on one elbow. The buttons of his coat were imprinted on her breasts, round red marks like love bites. Morwenna frowned. She was accustomed to wresting satisfaction from her human lovers. She did not tussle with them for control. But this one . . .
She propped above him, studying him in the slatted light from the shutters. He had a pleasing face, she decided, strong and composed even in sleep. His brow was broad and faintly creased, his long jaw shadowed with stubble. A few strands of silver threaded among the brown, reminders of his mortality. With one finger, she traced the air above his face, following the etchings of pain beside his mouth, the lines of laughter lurking at the corners of his eyes.
Not that she actually touched him. Her kind did not. Only to fight or to mate, to demonstrate power or possession.
Yet as she hovered over him, absorbing his strength, breathing his breath, something in her stirred and swayed like kelp below the surface of the water.
His body was broad and solid between her spread thighs. He was still half hard inside her. With very little effort, she could take him again. Warmth bloomed deep inside her at the thought.
No. He had already served her pleasure. She was not a fish wriggling on the hook of sexual desire. Her body was her own. Her life, her own. She would not cede control of either to any male.
Which was why she had sex with humans.
The memory of the man's face as he pushed hard inside her flashed across her brain, his dark, dark eyes, his hoarse command. With me.
She shivered. Definitely not what she had planned.
She slipped from the bed. Scooping the white dress from the floor, she pulled it over her head.
"If you are cold," his voice said, husky with humor or sleep, "I would be happy to warm you."
Blinking, she emerged from the folds of the dress. The man lay motionless on the bed, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes. She felt another inconvenient pull of attraction.
"I do not feel the cold," she said truthfully.
Even in this body, her blood kept her warm. But she smoothed the dress down anyway, a fabric barrier between her and the man, taking care to cover the parts humans usually kept covered. She noticed he made no move to do the same. His heavy shaft lay quiet against his thigh. As she watched, it lengthened and stirred as if aware of her interest.
She raised her gaze to his face. "You should go."
His dark brows drew together. "Go," he repeated.
She met his gaze, conscious of his seed wet between her thighs, the delicious tenderness of her own body. "Now," she said firmly.
He sat up in bed. "You are expecting someone."
Morgan.
With a shock, she realized she had not spared Morgan a thought since leaving the beach. Yet she had called him. He would certainly come.
"Yes," she admitted.
The man's jaw set. "Another client?"
She did not understand his question. "It does not matter. You must go."
"It matters." He stood, the top of his head nearly brushing the ceiling. He tucked himself and his shirttails away, his movements as carefully controlled as his voice. "To me."
He was jealous. Her heart jolted with pleasure and annoyance. Did he believe because he had been inside her body that he owned her?
"I am flattered." She smiled, showing the edges of her teeth. "Or I would be if you had any right to an opinion."
His eyes were grave and steady on hers. "Is it the money? I can pay you."
She was not offended. She knew humans equated value with gold. "I do not want your money," she said. "I laid with you for my pleasure. Now it is time for you to go."
"Come
with me."
Her mouth dropped open. She had not expected that response.
"You don't have to live like this," he continued in his deep, earnest voice. "The hall is open again. I will speak to Watts, my butler. If you won't take money from me, there must be some work you can do."
He wanted to hire her as some kind of . . . servant? The idea amused and appalled her.
"I do not want to work at your hall."
"Come anyway," he urged.
The mad thing was, for a moment she was tempted. He was so very appealing, big and dark, stiff with honor and frustration.
She shook her head. "As what?" Over the past decade or so, she had learned enough about human affairs to know what he proposed was impossible. For both of them. "As your wife? Your mistress?"
He did not answer.
She took pity on him. "I am content as I am," she told him gently. "I will not give up my freedom. But I thank you for your offer."
He drew a short, sharp breath. For a moment she feared that he would argue or worse, try to force her.
He nodded once. "Then may I come to you here?"
She smiled at him in relief and approval. "You may."
Whether he would find her was another matter.
She followed him out of the cottage, watching as he climbed stiffly onto his horse and rode away without another word.
She was not disappointed.
Merely a little letdown.
She had not thought he would give up so easily.
She stood a long time staring out at the bright and restless sea, its surface scrolled by the wind.
A plume of vapor. There.
A round black swell broke the uneven water, its huge dark fin cutting the air like a sail.
Orcas did not swim alone, but she wasted no time searching for the rest of the pod. This was no ordinary whale.
It scythed through the water, too fast, too close, as if it would beach itself on the rocks. Her heart beat faster as the sleek black shape barreled toward the shore, its outlines blurring beneath the water. A wave crested and crashed. Spray shot skyward. Sunlight broke and glittered in a thousand dazzling drops, veiling the barrier between land and sea. The air shimmered.
Morwenna blinked.
A man rose hip deep from the water, tall and leanly muscled, his hair silver white as foam, his pale skin shining from the sea. Water streamed from his shoulders and wrapped his legs, forming itself into the black and silver garments of the finfolk. His chest was bare except for the silver chain and medallion of his office. Tossing back his dripping hair, he waded toward her.
