The Perils of Pleasure

by Julie Anne Long

  She gave him a swat, but barely had the strength to raise her hand to do it. For his part, he tried to laugh; it came out more like a small grunt. They’d thoroughly, thoroughly spent each other.

  “They will think there’s been a murder,” she muttered, somewhat abashed. She meant the people in the inn below.

  “They will think you’ve been properly done.” His voice was a smug murmur. “And I doubt anyone heard a thing. It was such a very little scream.”

  She had been properly done.

  Madeleine did manage the strength then to turn her head to study him. He looked ten years younger, still too thin, sprawled next to her wearing nothing at all but a very faint smile. His lips were curved only a very little, as though producing a complete smile would be too taxing. His eyes were closed. His long lashes lay still against his cheekbones. His hair, dark with sweat, was an absurd riot.

  They would have looped a noose around his throat, and would have pulled it taut and then yanked him off his feet and strangled the life from him, and thousands of spectators would have watched his lifeless body dangle and spin from the gallows tree if one fraction of her plan had failed.

  She snapped upright reflexively, like a trap closing over prey, over the savage pain in her gut. She wrapped her arms around her knees.

  “Mad?”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder.

  “We must leave now,” she insisted. “There’s so little time. We should be—”

  “No,” he said softly. He made it sound reasonable. Somehow, despite his smug lassitude, he’d managed to sit up, too, and his arms, spent though they seemed, crept around her, then closed, his forearms warm against her ribs. A sensual prison. She squeezed her eyes tightly. Her senses turned to smoke at his touch; it seemed fruitless to attempt to gather them again, as she didn’t know where to begin to grasp.

  “Not yet,” he said again, and this time the breath of his whispered word touched the back of her neck, became a caress. And then his lips landed there, traveling the fine trail of hair to her nape. “Not yet,” he murmured, his mouth over her ear. His tongue touched her there, with a connoisseur’s delicacy.

  Damn you, she might have said, had she the ability to speak.

  He knew she had gone boneless and utterly willing; he knew from her peaked nipples and gooseflesh and the pulse in her throat.

  “Like this,” he murmured.

  He tipped her gently, slowly, forward so her forehead rested against the counterpane, sliding the flat of his hands down either side of her spine, tracing her waist, and then cupping her buttocks and raising them.

  One of his hands rested flat at the dip of her back, and he slid the other hand between her legs, along her cleft. She knew he took away drenched fingers. She was already breathing roughly against her arms, which folded beneath her head on the counterpane. The scrape of the rough counterpane against her nipples was as erotic as a rough tongue.

  “God, Madeleine.” He sounded nearly helpless, too. He dipped a single finger between her legs again, so very lightly, teasingly, a slow tracing of the divide, loitering a moment to tangle lightly in her curls.

  “Colin—” She choked the word.

  The hand left her. And then she felt the blunt head of his cock there, and his knees nudged her legs gently wider. But it was there only to tease, repeating what his hand had done. The swollen head of it was dragging, lightly, lightly, through her curls, along the cleft, then—bastard—he took it away from her again.

  She turned her head, gasping. “Damn you—”

  “What do you want?” he murmured almost casually.

  Harsh breaths wracked her body now. “Colin, please. Plea—”

  He thrust into her.

  Her vision darkened; pleasure nearly stole her consciousness. She would have swayed; she clutched fistfuls of the bed for balance instead, and his strong hands held her fast at the waist. He dragged them down the length of her back as he withdrew, leisurely, from her body once more.

  She hissed an oath.

  The rumble he made might have been a laugh.

  Again he did it: that leisurely penetration, the eased withdrawal. And again.

  But she could hear his breathing now, the harsh bursts of air forced out through his nostrils. He was not as in control of this as he liked to think.

  Yet another stroke. Deep, and even, swifter now. Then another, just the same.

  “Yes,” she heard herself urge in approval. “Yes.” Obligingly, the tempo built, in tandem with the pressure and ferocious desire in her, until at last his hips drummed against her and Madeleine braced herself against the force of his thrusts, urging him on with words she hadn’t known she was capable of uttering, dark, mad words of pleading and ecstasy.

  “Oh God, Mad—”

  She didn’t hear him. From nowhere and everywhere it came, cresting and crashing down over her again and again with a terrible, exquisite bliss that bucked her body upward, tore a scream from her that the counterpane took. Her skin felt turned to cinders.

  Pleasure all but incinerated her.

  And then he was still, coming inside her, and from some other world she heard her name called out in a voice scraped raw with passion.

  He withdrew from her, stretched out next to her facedown, silent, slung an arm over her back.

  She turned her head to look at him. “I think you killed me,” she murmured.

  He propped himself up on his side and reached up a languid hand to push her hair out of her eyes.

  Madeleine inched herself closer to him, ducked her head into his chest.

  And then, tentatively, she reached her arms around him. She was, in essence, asking for protection, for safety, for the first time in longer than she could recall.

  Little did Colin know she was asking for protection from him.

  Bloody hell. She was in love.

  So thoroughly in love it seemed she couldn’t recall a time when she hadn’t known him or felt this way. She let the feeling take her for the moment, in all its devastating, glorious entirety.

  Colin gathered her into his arms, closed his arms around her and held her tightly. He kissed her throat, her lips, her eyelids, and then her lips again. And that’s how they lingered, softly kissing each other, for ages or seconds, kisses that didn’t breach the lips, kisses that were more caresses than anything else.

  And then they simply held onto each other for a time. And carefully did not look into each other’s eyes.

  “And now we really do need to leave,” he said finally, quietly.

  And so Colin gave himself a cursory bath, and they dressed without speaking, and they left.

  Chapter 19

  They’d been told Mutton Cottage was a mile or so up the road, and that when they passed the oak sporting a great bump in its trunk they would have gone too far. It was quiet country, and they still hadn’t encountered any travelers, and fortunately, they hadn’t seen the bumpy oak yet, but they passed another with grand knots that didn’t resemble anything in particular.

  “Look at that tree! My profile is like that, Mad. I’ve a bit of a bump on my nose.”

  He turned and pointed to demonstrate.

  “Nonsense,” she scoffed. “You’ve only a wee bump. The tree’s bump is much grander. Your nose is exquisite.”

  “Exquisite?” He laughed. “Now you are being kind, and that seems unlike you and makes me uneasy, so stop.”

  For some reason, his words stung Madeleine almost breathless. She stopped walking completely.

  “What did you say—you don’t think I’m—”

  The bloody man had spent the last few days stripping her back down to her true self, allowing her to be gentle. She thought he knew her. And he thought being kind was unlike her?

  And even as she thought this, she knew it was an overreaction, but somehow everything felt more raw and immediate. Everything he said now seemed more important.

  Colin saw her face. He stopped fast and seized her by the wrist, and his voice w
as low and intense.

  “You know I’m jesting, Madeleine. Surely you know that. Do you have any idea how kind you are, Mad? Any idea?”

  He sounded peculiarly intent, peculiarly…angry. With her, or with himself?

  It was almost like he was saying something else altogether.

  There passed a moment of silence.

  “I do know you’re jesting,” she said finally, gently.

  He dropped her wrist.

  They stared at each other, baffled, uncomfortable, and unaccountably angry, which was the reverse of how they both felt, and they both knew it.

  Doubtless it would be a relief for both of them when this extraordinary journey was over.

  A few minutes later they encountered their first traveler, who was wearing the clothes of a farmer. Perhaps they’d slept in his barn. He was nearly as broad as a wagon but walking at a speed that seemed at odds with the usual pace of the country. When he saw them he stopped, and the next thing he said shocked them motionless.

  “Why if it isn’t…holy God, it’s Colin Eversea, are ye not? Walking plain as day here in Marble Mile! I just returned from London, sir.”

  The man was beaming, ear to ear. He had an enormous head and a face as pitted as the road and a nose the size of an egg. Colin was marveling at it—it was hard not to, really—

  When the man’s pistol came out of nowhere.

  And before Colin could draw his own, the man’s thick arm clamped like a python around Madeleine’s waist and his weapon pointed at her head.

  “And I will be a legend and rich, by God! Good God, I found a penny this morning, I did, and I thought, well, yer due for some luck, Will Hunt, and I wished on that penny, and ’ere ye are, Mr. Eversea.”

  The air Colin drew into his lungs tasted charred and bitter. His pistol hand twitched ever so slightly.

  “You will put your pistol down, Eversea, and come with me, or I will blow a hole through her head. I’ve no qualms, ye see. And to show you just how few I have…” The man’s hand crept upward then lay flat, like a great spider, over Madeleine’s breast. “Rather nice, these,” he approved.

  A deep red haze floated before Colin’s eyes. Everything around him seemed etched in crystal; he saw it with preternatural clarity: Madeleine’s dark eyes brilliant with fear and fury, her skin blanched, her fingers clutching vainly at that hairy snake of an arm wrapping her, her pistol trapped futilely at her side. Time seemed to alter peculiarly, allowing him to assess the situation through the metallic rage that singed the back of his throat.

  This was a brute of a man, a soulless man, and a dangerous man.

  But not a clever one.

  “Oh, by all means, shoot her, Mr. Hunt. But I will at the same time shoot your balls off. I’m sorry. I meant to say I’d shoot your horse.”

  The man frowned, his eyes flew wide and he swiveled his head thinking, no doubt: What horse?

  It was just a split second. But it was all either he or Madeleine needed.

  Colin snapped out his hand for the man’s pistol wrist and twisted it back just as Madeleine sagged hard enough to bite the man’s arm. He screamed at the dual attack, his fingers loosened over the grip of his gun, and Colin took his right hand and yanked the man’s trousers up hard and high enough to cause considerable pain to the man’s testicles, assuming he had them.

  That did the trick. Will Hunt screamed, the gun fell from his grip, and thanks be to God didn’t fire.

  A split second later Colin had his own pistol pressed between Mr. Hunt’s eyes. He still had the man’s trousers gripped hard in his other hand.

  “I have one shot, Mr. Hunt,” Colin said with glacial politeness, “and nothing would give me more pleasure than to use it to blow your head clean from your body. Have you any interesting diseases?”

  “Wha—No! I—” He was gasping, wheezing in pain.

  “Pity. You won’t be any more useful after death than you are in life, then.”

  Colin let the pistol barrel touch the man’s forehead.

  “Mr. Eversea—” Mr. Hunt was quivering, rather gelatinously, everywhere now. Great droplets of sweat traversed the rocky terrain of his face. Colin gave another tug upward of the trousers, and the face went whiter.

  “Would you like to die right now, Mr. Hunt?” He said this casually. As if offering to pass the salt. “Or perhaps a few seconds from now?”

  “Colin—”

  From somewhere in the land of sanity, Madeleine’s voice was calling softly to him. He didn’t hear her. He liked it here, in this haze of rage. He was torturing Hunt now. It felt wonderful. He couldn’t seem to stop.

  “It’s a lot of money, isn’t it, Mr. Hunt? One hundred pounds is. I almost sympathize. But I didn’t kill Roland Tarbell. I would never have let you take me, but if you’d tried to take me honorably, I could almost respect you. But now I’m tempted to shoot you just for sport. How ironic if you should be the one to make a murderer of me. As it is, I’m not certain your death will even plague my conscience. I might even be happy enough to hang for it.”

  “Colin.” Madeleine’s soft voice had gained urgency.

  “Tie his arms, Mad,” Colin ordered her, for all the world as if she were a subaltern. “Put your hands behind your back, Mr. Hunt, do it now, and do it slowly.”

  Mr. Hunt complied, shaking violently.

  And Madeleine, her face taut and expressionless, fished the cords out of the pack and nearly vanished behind the width of the man. Colin saw her elbows jerk out with the force of the rope pull, saw Hunt wince a little.

  How about that: she could tie ropes as well as he could untie them.

  “Now sit down on the ground, Mr. Hunt.” Colin made it sound like a suggestion.

  The man hesitated, which was a mistake. Colin kicked him in the back of the legs, and he went down hard on his knees.

  And then Colin gave him another little nudge to tip him over onto one side, and knelt so the pistol barrel was even with Mr. Hunt’s eyes. The man now had a nice glimpse of the road to eternity.

  “Tie his ankles, Madeleine.”

  “But I’ll…” the man stuttered.

  “Starve? Freeze? Be devoured by squirrels? Someone might find you. In a day or so. Perhaps. Or maybe you’ll thrash yourself free. Maybe someone will come along and fondle your body, Mr. Hunt, while you’re tied and helpless. Don’t even think of twitching. I will shoot you.”

  Madeleine tied his ankles with the other length of cord, too, winding it around and around those thick boots, pulling it taut by pulling back on it.

  And with a sense of unreality, Colin slowly stood.

  He felt himself shaking as he looked down at Mr. Hunt. The man was now bound with the very same cords that had bound him on the way to the gallows.

  “Let’s go, Mad.”

  They strode off, leaving Mr. Hunt trussed and marking their passage like a milestone on the side of the road.

  Colin walked with strides so brutally swift and long that Madeleine struggled to keep up with him. She was almost running. It was though he was trying to outpace something and simply couldn’t.

  He finally stopped abruptly and sat down hard on a boulder at the side of the road. He looked around at the day, as if surprised to find it sunny and bright, and frowned darkly at it. And then he put his face in his hands and inhaled a long ragged breath.

  “I wanted to kill him. I would have enjoyed killing him. I was torturing him, Mad, just for the pleasure of it. I was taking my trouble out on him. And what he did to you…how he touched you…”

  She could see he was actually trembling a little in the aftermath of rage, and horrified at the shame of it. He looked up. “In short, it was a bad moment, Mad.”

  An understatement. He was grasping for the humor that had always sustained him, made everything bearable, and having a difficult time of it. She wished he knew how strong he was.

  He gave a grim little smile.

  She leaned next to him against the boulder, not certain whether he wanted to
be touched quite yet.

  “You may have saved my life, Colin. Again. And you saved your own. You’ve a right to save your own life, you know. There’s no shame in that. And he was…he was horrible. I don’t think what you did was horrible. I quite sympathize.”

  Colin reached out a hand, suddenly, to cup it about the back of her neck, his thumb stroking there. Softly he said, “You’re all right? He didn’t—”

  “Oh, I’m quite sound. It was just a bit of a grope. I shall live. I would have killed him nicely if it hadn’t been for you.”

  Colin gave a short, humorless laugh, and withdrew his hand from her.

  “But there never would have been a ‘little grope’ if it wasn’t for me, Mad. And this…this rage…it wasn’t in me before all of this happened. Prison. Tarbell. Now I’m this…” He made a futile gesture of disgust. “…this person who enjoys torture.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Colin,” she said almost lightly. “Truthfully, I think it’s in all of us. And I imagine it was always part of you…in some way. Maybe we’re born with a full set of qualities, some fine, some not so fine, and none of us knows what will bring out everything that lives within us. And sometimes it’s the fine qualities that cause us trouble, and the not so fine that save us.”

  “Interesting theory, Mad,” he humored. “I’ll tell you when I’ve worked out your meaning.”

  But he was thinking about it, and she knew he understood.

  “I think it’s interesting,” she said mildly.

  He smiled at her. And then the smile faded. “But it means I could have killed Roland Tarbell.”

  She recoiled as if he’d uttered blasphemy. “You could never have killed Roland Tarbell,” she said fiercely. “You didn’t kill Roland Tarbell.”

  And this, at last, won a genuine smile. “Why, Mad. You don’t think I killed Roland Tarbell?”

  “No.”

  “How long have you thought that?”

  “Always.”

  “Liar.”

  She smiled.

  He continued to smile at her.

  “Ah, Colin. I think you’re extraordinary.” Madeleine said it so softly, she half wondered if she actually had said it, or merely thought it yet again. She tried to make it sound like a jest. But she couldn’t say it and also look at him, so she’d turned her head away to look up the road.