"My maids," she murmured, "were never quite so thorough."
"I am glad to hear it. I, on the other hand, vaguely recall a valet once, who...well, who tried to be very thorough while bathing me. I believe I broke his jaw and several ribs for the impertinence. Purely an instinctive reaction, I assure you, and not one I would ever repeat if...if you were to ever express a wish to be that scrupulous."
Intrigued by the sudden catch in his voice, she opened her eyes and stared thoughtfully at the flickering shadows of their silhouettes against the far wall. What further sin could he possibly be enticing her to commit now, she wondered? She was naked and wet in his arms, her body no longer flushed with the wickedness of his actions but humming with anticipation for what might yet come. She was no longer chaste, no longer a virgin, no longer ignorant in the ways of a man and a woman. All that remained now was curiosity and a burning sense of urgency to know this man who had so effortlessly turned her world upside down. To know him as thoroughly as he knew her.
Somewhere along the way, Anna had released the dark fall of her hair, much preferring to bury her fingers in his in order to hold his mouth against her throat. Now, with a shallow sigh, she straightened out of his embrace and dropped her hands slowly to her sides as she turned around to face him. Her body gleaming in the firelight, she watched his dark eyes move helplessly down to the proud thrust of her breasts, then lower where water still streaked and glittered softly on her thighs.
She could see that despite the crooked smile and the careless timbre of his voice, bathing her had taken its toll on his composure. There were fine white lines at the corner of his mouth and a tautness in his jaw that belied the too casual stance. His breaths were deep and measured, his hand gripped the sponge so tightly it continued to drip shiny silver droplets onto the floor by his feet. When she saw the effort it took for him to tear his eyes away from her breasts, it sent a second thrill coursing down her spine, for it occurred to her that he was every bit as apprehensive, as tentative as she. There were visible tremors in his arms, shivers in the cambric folds of his sleeves, and the knowledge that he feared she might reject his not so subtle invitation, or even reject him altogether, made her tilt her head and study his face the way a cat would contemplate a canary trapped on a windowsill.
"And just how might I go about expressing that wish, sir?" she asked softly.
He opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again when he felt her hands sliding down his shirtfront, plucking the half dozen buttons free of their bound holes. When it gaped open over his chest, she traced her fingertips through the smooth sworls of dark hair then flattened her palms and explored the powerful display of muscles. She moved her hands down the board-hard plane of his belly, slowing when she came to the waist of his breeches, only allowing her gaze to continue lower to admire the enormous bulge straining against the nankeen. A single button held the front flap closed but it succumbed easily enough to her questing fingers. The row of smaller fastenings concealed beneath appeared at once to be under far more pressure and it was with considerable difficulty--and no small misgivings for her own safety as one of the buttons literally popped off its thread and shot across the room-- that she worked each one free. Once loosened, the gaping vee filled instantly with a hard ridge of flesh, which bucked and jerked when her fingers danced over its shape.
Her hands rose to his waist again and she untucked his shirttails, walking slowly around him in a circle as she did so. She lifted the cambric up over his head then folded it neatly under his watchful and impatient eyes. Adapting the same expression he had used earlier--detached and somewhat nonplussed as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to be doing--she slowly peeled his breeches down past his hips.
Quite pleased with her seduction thus far, she managed to keep her inspection casual enough where it followed the play of firelight on his neck, his chest, the hard tapered waist. She even managed to calm herself with a cool breath before looking lower, venturing into the area that held the most mystery for her and by far the greatest speculation. She already knew he was big. Big and thick and long enough for her to hold him with both hands placed end to end. The thought that she had actually taken something so formidable into her body, and would likely take it again, caused a rush of liquid heat between her legs that had nothing to do with drizzling water.
Emboldened beyond her own comprehension she wrapped her fingers tightly around him, marvelling at the shape and feel, the solid strength of him that grew more formidable with each sliding stroke of her hands.
“I...would not continue doing that if I were you,” he warned on an almost inaudible rasp of breath.
She looked up into his face and saw that his eyes were closed. His teeth were clamped shut, his jaw was a chiselled block of granite. Tiny beads of sweat had popped out at his temples and across his brow, causing the dark hairs to curl tight against his skin.
“Am I hurting you?” she whispered.
“Yes. Yes, you are. You are causing me immeasurable agony.”
“You know--” she moistened her lips and looked down “my nurses always kissed the pain away when I hurt myself.”
His body responded with one great shudder. She watched his adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat as he swallowed, then she leaned forward and placed her mouth over the dark disc of his nipple. His skin was salty and the fine rim of hairs surrounding it tickled her nose, but she caught the tiny nub between her teeth, and suckled the surrounding flesh between her lips, trying to remember exactly what he had done to her earlier that caused her knees to weaken and her sensibilities take flight. When his flesh was thoroughly wet and puckered, she teased his other nipple to a similar tautness and, although she could not be certain what he was feeling in his knees, her two hands were no longer enough to contain the solid, straining length of him.
She curled her fingers tighter around his flesh and marvelled at the pliant give and take in his skin that permitted her to manipulate the full length of him. As her one hand slid up and down, she used the other to explore his chest and belly, then slide down between his thighs to discover even more sensitive areas on his body.
He made a sound in his throat and she looked up. “Shall I stop?”
His jaw trembled. The dark eyes opened and he reached out, grasping her around the shoulders and pulling her up again.
“Not unless I am dead and buried,” he hissed.
His mouth crushed down over hers and with a groan of magnificent desperation he pushed her hands aside and lifted her against his body. She was already wet enough, slick enough that he needed no helping hand to guide himself along the silky cleft, no muffled cry of consent before the heat of her flared around him. Anna took him deep, deep inside, stiffening slightly with the shock of all that flesh impaling and filling her, but now that she had seen him, had tasted him, she revelled the fullness, the pressure, the furrowing heat that seemed to stretch up and touch on the very underside of her wildly beating heart. She was even able, within the span a few forceful thrusts, to obey his hoarse command to wrap her legs around his waist, to trust that he would not drop her, to take the initiative and ride each powerful stroke until the lust for more, for everything he had to give became increasingly violent and ruthlessly urgent.
Emory’s arms, his legs, his entire body was empowered. Hampered by the tangle of breeches around his ankles, he was barely able to turn and stagger to the nearest wall. When he had the support behind her, he surged upward, driving into her with a ferocity that had her writhing frantically with the friction, the heat, the pleasure of each sustained shudder. She had thought she had experienced the ultimate ecstasy back on the tavern floor, but her memory of it paled compared to the incredible, shattering orgasms that ripped through her now. They splintered her body into a thousand bright-hot fragments and caused her to throw her arms wide, to almost tear the nearby draperies off the wall. They made her arch her hips into each of his thrusts so that when she heard the roar of his voice in her ear and
felt the heat of his long, throbbing release, she gripped him as tightly as she possibly could, her own spasms matching each pulse and shudder that wracked his body.
The fury ebbed slowly, leaving them panting together in a frozen embrace against the wall. His hands were clamped around her buttocks, the fingers splayed, the tips pressed deep into the pliant flesh. Her legs were locked around his waist, her feet crossed at the ankles and she did not think she had the strength or dexterity to even unhook them. Nor did she have the desire as she felt his lips move across her shoulder and up beneath her ear.
“I am pressed to wonder,” he gasped, the words fighting with the need to draw a clear breath, “if you are going to ask me if that was my best effort?”
Her smile, and the huskiness of her laugh brought his body pressing forward into hers again.
“I thought perhaps it was,” he mused. “But then again...perhaps not. Since I am rather curious myself to know the truth of it, I am willing to put it to the test if you are.”
Anna’s eyes widened as she felt him shift his hips. He was still thick and pulsing inside her, but her only acknowledgement was a breathless whimper, lost to the heat of his mouth and the breathless promise of his own gentle laughter.
Annaleah squeezed the excess water out of the sponge and dragged it over the glistening surface of his skin, removing the last traces of soap from the washboard belly. As had happened frequently over the last few hours, his flesh stirred and a calloused thumb and forefinger tipped her chin upward.
“It is only water,” she protested faintly.
“Water, hands, lips,” he murmured, “they all seem to have the same effect tonight.”
“Yes, and this is the third...or is it the fourth time I have tried to bathe you, sir, and you are simply not co-operating.”
He smiled and smoothed the dark fall of hair off her shoulder. At some point, while he had drifted into a brief, exhausted doze, she had explored the contents of the two enormous armoires that stood banked against one of the walls. She had found a shirt with long ruffled cuffs and donned it like a nightdress--one he had removed several times already but kept reappearing with an amusing persistence. She was wearing it now, the fine brushed cotton splashed liberally with water, but with her hair a mass of dishevelled curls and her legs peeping long and pearly white below the hem, she presented a more enticing picture than if she had remained naked.
“In my own defence,” he murmured, bending forward to nuzzle her neck, “it must be said you present a fetching distraction I warrant few men in my condition could resist.”
“Your condition?”
“Starved for affection.”
Anna’s gaze flicked to the haversack, all but forgotten on a nearby chair. “Mildred’s biscuits,” she declared.
“That is not the first remedy that comes to mind,” he said, frowning as she pulled out of his arms.
She opened the canvas flap of the haversack and rooted in its depths until she found the biscuits as well as a wheel of cheese, a greasy paper wrapper filled with sliced ham, and wonder of wonders, a bottle of her great aunt Florence’s apple cider.
Emory scooped up the towel and rubbed himself dry as he watched Anna carry her treasures over to the hearth. A picnic with a near naked beauty he had spent half the night ravishing was, he thought, unquestionably the last thing he would have seen himself doing with half the military forces in Torquay searching for him. It was also the only thing he wanted to do right now, in spite of the nagging prickle that kept scratching across the back of his neck.
“Glasses?” Anna asked. “Can you find some?”
He took the bottle she handed up to him and unstoppered it with his teeth, spitting the cork into the fire. He took several long, deep swallows from the mouth of the bottle, then grinned and handed it back. “I am feeling a little heathenish tonight, aren’t you?”
Her gaze flowed down his body, touching on all the burnished muscles, the hard sinews, the rampant maleness he was not showing the slightest inclination to shield from view.
She put the bottle to her lips and tipped it, matching the noisy enthusiasm of his initial mouthful. “Will you eat something with me? You complained as early as this afternoon that you were hungry.”
He stared at the bead of amber liquid that clung to her lower lip and smiled. “I suppose we should eat our fill while we have the chance.”
She patted a spot on the rug and gave him back the bottle when he sat down beside her.
“Biscuit?”
He shook his head and buried his lips in the curve of her shoulder instead. When all she did was sigh, as if she was having to tolerate a recalcitrant child, he set the bottle aside and slipped his hand beneath her shirt, circling and capturing the soft heaviness of a breast.
“If you are not hungry, sir, I am.”
“You have your banquet laid out before you, I have mine.”
“It is very difficult to concentrate with--” she sucked in a small huff of air and dropped the wheel of cheese she had been about to break in two. Emory grinned again and raised his mouth to hers, but stopped when he saw the look of sudden horror on her face. He whirled around to follow her gaze, noting instinctively as he did so that he had left both pistols on a table half the width of the room away.
It had been a stupid act of carelessness and deserving of the harsh, derisive laugh that came between the thin lips of the man who was standing in the doorway--a man whose own guns were in his hands, both cocked, both aimed straight for Emory’s heart.
CHAPTER 17
“I am a patient man, m’sieur,” the stranger said, his voice low and raspy, “but even I grew tired of waiting, though I can see now, the reason for your delay was justified.”
Emory was on his feet with the swiftness of an uncoiling spring. He stared unblinking at the guns, gauging the distance between himself and the door, calculating the likelihood he would even make it half way before having twin holes blown in his chest. The odds were not worth wasting his effort and he studied the man’s face instead, the lean hawk-like jaw, the black glitter of his eyes, the cruel twist of a smile that curled his lips.
Emory knew that face. He had seen it in a half dozen painful flashes of memory. He had also seen the guns before, elegant and distinctive in design with octagonal steel barrels, the stocks made of polished walnut with inlaid silver falcons in full wingspread.
They were his own guns, presented to him as a gift by the Dey of Tunisia. And the man holding them was...
Emory felt a surge of heat flush through his veins, the threat of light and pain behind his eyes, but he savagely blinked it away. With a startling clarity that nearly stripped his breath away, he knew who Franceschi Cipriani was and why he was here.
“How did you find me?”
“I admit it was difficult, my friend. I was almost convinced you were still under the wharf at Rochefort.”
“What made you change your mind?”
Cipriani shrugged. “You are like the cat with nine lives, so it came as no surprise to hear you were still alive. Even so, you were very clever, very artful in eluding the soldiers tonight. In truth, they arrived at the inn mere moments before I was about to visit you myself. It was a small matter--and somewhat amusing--to join the chase and watch their ludicrous attempts to catch you. I only managed to keep you in sight because I was on horseback and could follow you through the woods, where they could not.” He paused and waved one of the guns absently in the direction of a window. “As it happens, it may have worked out for the best anyway, for nothing rouses the chivalrous blood in you Englishmen so much as the thought of a helpless demoiselle in the hands of a bloodthirsty villain. By morning every able-bodied man within a hundred mile radius will be armed and scouring the countryside for you. If I thought they could hold you, I would have led them here, but alas. You are too good for them, my friend, and I cannot risk the possibility of you escaping again.”
“How did you know I was at the inn?”
“Ahh, now
that was sheer luck, m’sieur. Sheer, unbridled luck, I must confess, but then I have the nine lives too, do I not? Once I knew you were here, I simply watched the roads, watched the harbor. As I said, I am a patient man, and today... who should I see riding down the road with a bandage on his head?” He paused and shrugged. “What are the chances, m’sieur? A thousand to one? Ten thousand to one? Or simply fate.”
“But how did you know I was here, in Torquay?”
Cipriani grinned. “Now, now. We must all have our secrets, must we not? Keeping them is what sets us apart, you and I, and you were not very good at doing so.”
The muscles in Emory’s jaw flexed. “The lady is not involved in any of this,” he said quietly. “Let her go.”
The heavy lidded eyes glinted with a trace of amusement in Annaleah’s direction, prompting her to curl her bare legs tighter to her body and pull the hem of the shirt lower.
“Setting the definition of ‘lady’ aside for the moment,” the black eyebrows inched upward, “she helped you elude a garrison of soldiers and has been rutting happily with you here on the hearth for several hours....I would suggest she is most intimately involved.”
Emory’s gaze went again to the table where his guns lay so carelessly discarded and he heard the assassin’s soft chuckle.
“No, my friend. I would not advise such foolishness, not unless you wish the death of your lovely companion to be the last thing you see.”
“Let her go and I will tell you what you want to know,” Emory said quietly.
Cipriani chuckled. “Again, so predictable. So noble. Did I ever tell you where I learned to hone my skills? No? It was in the desert, in Morocco, where my teachers specifically used Englishmen to demonstrate the art of inflicting pain. I was constantly fascinated to see that they could have the skin peeled from their bodies in strips, have their raw bodies then stretched out in the hot sand to bake, and they would not scream out more than curses. But put a fair skinned beauty in front of them and merely touch the tip of a blade to a cheek or a hand or a breast...and those same stalwart heroes would tell you far more than you ever wanted to know.”
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