He jerked his arm out from her grasp. “If I want to pump water for you, regardless of whether my hand is raw or not, you have no say.” He shoved past her.
Jumping toward him, Georgia forcefully ripped the pail out of his left hand, and flung it aside with an echoing clang against the nearest wall. “You’re done.”
He narrowed his gaze as he rounded her to go get the pail.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Gritting her teeth, she grabbed him hard by the linen of his shirt with both hands and used every ounce of her strength to shove him hard against the wall behind them. Tipping her full weight into that muscled mass, she made him stumble back against the wall with a solid thud.
His hands jumped up to steady her and keep her from altogether falling aside and onto the floor.
Georgia glared up at him, disregarding that she was draped against him like some wanton in need of a quick dollar. “I’ve been doin’ this all my life,” she rasped, tightening her hold on his linen shirt to balance herself. “Long before you and your gentlemanly ways ever came along, and as you can see, me and my hands are still here. There’s no need for you to puss up your hands in some stupid effort to prove yourself to me. You want to prove yourself? Do so by havin’ some respect for your hand, because that’s all I want and that’s all I need from you right now.”
His eyes darkened. “Let me tell you what I want and what I need, and I can assure you, it doesn’t involve water.” He grabbed her hard by the waist and forcefully spun them around so fast, her heart popped.
He shoved her back against the wall, making her gasp.
Pinning her solidly into place with his body, he lowered his gaze and methodically watched his own hands trail up her waist and round up to her breasts, before sliding up to the curve of her throat. He sensually grazed her skin with his knuckles before sliding both hands into her knotted hair.
She could barely breathe against the feel of his hands.
Tightening his fingers against her hair, he tilted her face toward his. His chest rose and fell heavily against her own heaving bosom as he pressed her harder against the wall. “My hands matter not to me. You matter to me. Do you understand? You. If I wish to make my hands bleed to ensure that your life is a bit easier, allow me that. Or, by God, I will rip all of your clothes off in an effort to make you feel half of what is pounding through my veins here and now. Do you understand?”
She swallowed, her heavy breaths mingling with his in the quiet narrow corridor. Her world faded knowing that this incredible man desired not just her body, but her mind and her heart. Georgia Milton. From Orange Street.
The erotic tension in his muscled body that held her dominantly in place and the way those strong fingers dug into her hair made her want to rip his clothes off. “If you want to rip off all of my clothes—” she breathed out “—then do so. But you’re not goin’ back to that pump.”
He lowered his chin. “You would let me rip off all of your clothes?”
She swallowed, unable to breathe or think or care about anything but physically embracing this raw, carnal passion pulsing between them. “You wouldn’t have to. I would willingly take them off.”
He held her gaze for a long, searing moment. “Are you telling me that you want this?” He pressed even closer to her, so that she could feel all of him. “Tell me you want me, Georgia. I need to hear you say it.”
She felt herself growing wet in response to his unashamed grinding. She tilted her face up toward him despite the strong hold he had on her against the wall. “I want you.”
His hold tightened, those fingers digging into her. “You are supposed to tell me to desist, Georgia. For God’s sake, tell me to desist, before I ravage you here and now. Don’t think I won’t. ’Tis all I’ve been able to think about.”
He was such a gentleman in the most inconvenient of times. “You haven’t done anythin’ yet. Do somethin’, already.”
He stared her down before lowering his mouth to hers, crushing it against her lips. Shifting his body against hers, he pressed his erection into her corseted stomach and demanded more of her mouth, never once pausing as he tilted his head to mold and remold himself against her. They kissed more and more ruthlessly, their tongues battling and their heated breaths mingling until they were both gasping against each other’s lips. She felt herself physically unfolding to the point of trembling.
Blindly sliding her hands down his firm chest, she rounded his muscled thigh and rubbed it. It had been four long years since she’d known passion. She never thought she’d be able to cradle it again. Until now. Finding the rigid length pressing against the flap of his trousers, she achingly rubbed at the rounded tip of his hard cock, trying to feel him through the smooth wool.
His fingers tightened their savage hold, tugging on her hair, making her scalp burn. He broke their kiss. “Georgia.” His breaths were ragged as he sensually moved against her stroking hand with the slow, even roll of his hips. “Not here. Upstairs. I want to lay you out and count every freckle.”
She rubbed him through his trousers again. “Whilst counting the freckles would be fun, every man drags a woman off into bed. But you’re not every man, Robinson, and I’m not every woman. Which is why we’ll do it here and we’ll do it now.”
He captured her gaze, his hips pausing. “In public?”
She paused from stroking him. “Have you no sense of adventure, oh, Salé pirate of mine? This here be the high seas I speak of.”
“It isn’t the adventure or the high seas I’m worried about.” He glanced toward the closed door leading out into the street and pressed into her. “What if someone walks in?”
“Then they do.” She frantically unbuttoned his flap, shoved his undergarments aside and slid his warm, hard length out. A shaky breath of disbelief escaped her as she slid her fingers around that velvety hard length. She couldn’t believe that she was touching him like this.
He searched her face and tightened his hold on her. “Georgia, you can’t be bloody serious.”
She paused and drawled up at him, “You’re spoilin’ the mood, you know. I kind of feel like Eve arguin’ with a priest over what to do with an apple.”
“You mind that tongue.” He pressed her back against the wall and growled out, “You may be Eve, but I’m no priest.” He fisted and jerked up her skirt, whipping it up past her thigh. Forcefully sliding his large, warm hand up between her thighs, he spread her with his fingers. “Something tells me I should start here. What do you think?”
She gasped as he used her own moisture to rapidly flick her. She could barely breathe as his finger rubbed faster and faster.
He intently held her gaze. “More?”
“Yes. More.” Her chest tightened, her breaths coming in jagged takes as sensations rippled up her stomach and down past her thighs. She trembled and pushed her hips against that hand, desperately needing more. Gripping his arms in an effort to balance herself, she held his fierce gaze, feeling her moisture slowly slather his fingers as he flicked and rubbed, flicked and rubbed.
Georgia bit down on an anguished moan and felt herself being pushed toward that incredible edge of bliss.
Her body quaked at his heated movements. It was as if she was unleashing the man buried within. It made her feel incredibly powerful and feral knowing that she was penetrating that soul with her own passion.
“Do it,” she whispered.
Releasing her wetness, he grabbed hold of her thighs with both hands. With a wince, he yanked her up and onto his hips, straddling her around his waist.
She paused. “Your hand.”
“I’m not thinking about the hand.” He shoved her skirts out of the way and draped them back, the tensing of his long, muscled arms holding her against the wall and himself. “I’m thinking about this.”
The ache and burn within her exposed upper thighs increased as she tightened her straddle, widening herself to him.
Positioning the tip of his cock at her wetness with a quick hand, Robinson savagel
y thrust himself into her so hard, her back and body slammed against the plaster, vibrating the entire wall.
She gasped, her core threatening to ripple and burst against his rigid length as he slammed into her again and again and again, heightening each ripple to a throat-clenching crescendo.
He pounded into her, knocking the breath out of her with his large, muscled body. His wide chest rose and fell with each seething breath as he quickened each ram with the bang of his hips.
Although her back and shoulders pinched against each unrelenting thrust, sending her repeatedly into the plaster full force, it only seemed to erotically punctuate the pleasure raking through her overwhelmed senses.
Feeling herself edging and edging into her own climax, she clung to him, reveling in watching that rugged face flush against his impending pleasure. His upper lip beaded with perspiration as his square jaw tightened in desperate control.
She could feel his shoulders flexing, tensing and growing tighter beneath her hands as she frantically fisted his linen shirt, trying to remain coherent.
“Georgia…” he gritted out between each breath and thrust. He lowered his head and dug his chin into her hair, readjusting his hands on her waist. “For God’s sake, do it. Do it, before I—”
She panted for breaths she could no longer take, racing to finish upon his command as an unrestrained moan burst through her lips, unleashing the rippling pleasure she’d been grasping for. She gave in to the trembling core between her thighs and the sensation of her body tightening in pleasure. She cried out and cried out again, bucking against him and grinding down on his length, unable to believe she was still climaxing.
When it ended, she rested her head limply back against the plaster, letting Robinson feverishly jerk in and out of her wetness.
She had never had it last so long. It was unreal. “Pull out when it’s time,” she rasped in between fading, heavy breaths.
Robinson slowed his thrusts to a mere in and out as he captured her gaze with lust-heavy eyes. Holding her more firmly against the wall, he dug rigid fingers beneath her thighs and masterfully stroked in and out, in and out, holding her gaze the whole time as if showing her who was in command. Suddenly, he slid himself out of her, dragging her body off his waist and thighs. He settled her booted feet back onto the uneven wood floor, pushing down her skirts to fall back into place.
Pinning her against the wall, he stared at her mouth as his hand jerked between them. He tensed. “I want you to swallow me,” he rasped. “Will you?” He closed his eyes.
Sensing that he was near release, Georgia dragged herself down his muscled body and took his rigid, velvety length as he had asked. Using her hands and mouth, she stroked him rapidly.
Seething out breaths, he stilled, his muscles tensing around her possessively as he grabbed her hair and trembled from his release, the warmth of his seed spurting into her mouth. He groaned and groaned again as she sucked and swallowed him until there was nothing left.
Releasing him, she slowly rose back onto her feet and somewhat shyly leaned against the wall, hoping that it had been just as incredibly marvelous for him as it had for her.
He grabbed her and collapsed against her; his muscled chest heaved beneath the linen of his shirt. He nuzzled his face into her hair. “Georgia,” he breathed out. “Marry me. Marry me so we can be together always.”
She drew in an astonished breath. Oh, dear God. She had seduced far more than his body. She had already seduced his soul. And it was wrong. It was so bloody wrong and not in the least bit fair to him or her.
Reaching down between them with trembling hands, and after pushing him back into place, she buttoned the flap. “I can’t marry a man without a name. It wouldn’t be legal.”
“Then give me a name,” he insisted against her hair. “I will take any name you give me.”
“It still wouldn’t be legal.” Reaching up, Georgia cupped his face and kissed his nose and then his forehead and then the bruises still covering the right side of his jaw and cheekbone. “You and I must wait. We must wait until your family comes and decide then.”
“And what if no one comes? What then?”
Then her dark wish would be hers to keep and kiss and hold. “I’ll not make an orphan out of a man unless he truly is one.”
He leaned away out of her grasp. “Why would you give yourself to me in so intimate a manner, only to take yourself back the moment I asked you to be mine? Do you think that because I have no name, I also have no heart?”
She swallowed back the anguish he was forcing her to feel and stepped toward him. “Oh, Robinson. Cease this. No one has more heart than you.”
“And yet it isn’t enough. Is it? You require a name, and a man with a past, over this mere heart.” He shifted his jaw and stepped farther back, his gray eyes boring into her. In a low, harsh tone that was almost eerily not his own, he bit out, “How many men have you allowed to touch you in the way I just did? I want to know.”
She stared. “I don’t do this sort of thing on the hour, Robinson.”
He leaned toward her and narrowed his gaze. “Is that supposed to be your answer? Or perhaps there are far too many to count. Is that it?”
She stumbled back. There was a cutting razor edge that was slicing its way out of his naive soul. Was this who he really was? A man who had been bruised to the core by other women?
She narrowed her own gaze. “One. There’s your damn number. One. And that one was my husband, mind you. Now I ask you, cease belittin’ me, considerin’ I’d venture to say, Mr. Crusoe, given your remarkable performance, your number’s probably well above my mere one.”
He glanced away, his flushed features softening as he lowered his gaze. After a long moment of silence, he closed his eyes, placing shaky fingers to his forehead, and choked out, “I didn’t mean to… I…” He reopened his eyes and met her gaze, tears streaking them. “Forgive me, Georgia. Forgive me for suggesting that you…” He winced, rapidly blinking as if a headache was overtaking him. “I’m ruining this. I’m ruining everything. I’m…stupid.”
She stepped toward him, her heart squeezing seeing his panic in having wronged her. “Shh. No, you aren’t. I’m fine. I just don’t want you talkin’ to me like that. It isn’t fair given that I only want what is best for you. Don’t you understand that seizing you for myself whilst you have yet to belong to yourself isn’t right?” She leaned toward him, wagging her fingers toward his hand. “No more pride, please. Show me.”
He quietly held it out, unfurling it, palm up.
The entire width of his large palm, just below his fingers, had been scraped clean of its skin, welted with crusting blood. “Oh, Robinson,” she whispered, grasping it gently. “Don’t suffer like that for me again.”
He leaned toward her, his features twisting. “I suffer more knowing that I just accused you of—”
The entrance door banged open, making them jump away from each other in astonishment.
Matthew casually strode in with a wool sack draped over his broad coated shoulder and a folded newspaper in his bare hand. He jerked to a halt, scanning them. “Am I…interrupting something?”
Georgia’s cheeks burned as she tried to remain indifferent. Thank God he hadn’t walked in moments earlier. “No. I was merely…lookin’ at his hand.”
Matthew paused. “Whatever the hell is wrong with it?”
“He injured it.”
“Did he?” Matthew dropped the sack onto the floor, slapping the folded newspaper into Georgia’s hands, and strode toward Robinson. “Hand it up, Brit. I’m good with wounds.”
Robinson edged toward the staircase, setting it behind his back. “A man has his pride, you know.”
“Not whilst he’s living in the Five Points.” Matthew stepped toward him and forcefully grabbed his arm out from behind his back. Pulling it upward toward himself, he shook his head. “Damn. You scraped off half the skin. Hold it up.”
Digging into his patched waistcoat pocket, Matthew retrieved a
small bottle and uncorked it with his teeth in one solid pull. “Chant with me now,” he said enthusiastically with the cork still wedged between his teeth. “Pain is ever so beautiful and divine. Why? Because it means you’re still breathing. Now hold still.”
Georgia bit her lip hard, her fingers crinkling the newspaper Matthew had given her to hold. She watched with a half squint as Matthew poured the entire contents of his whiskey onto the open wound.
“Christ.” Robinson swung away, hissing out a breath through bared teeth as he repeatedly shook his hand against the effects of the liquid dripping off. “It burns worse than the damn wound itself.”
“It always does.” Recorking his empty bottle with the pop of his palm, Matthew tucked it back into his waistcoat. “So. I just got back from Wall Street. The clerk over at the bank informed me he’ll have a name and address those notes were issued to in as little as eight days.”
“Eight days?” Robinson met her gaze.
Georgia’s heart dropped. Though he wanted her now, yes, the moment his family came and paraded him back to his lavish lifestyle, reintroducing him to who he really was, it would all come to an end.
Matthew grabbed the newspaper from her and snapped it open, smacking the back of his hand against the extended page. “Congratulations are in order, Crusoe. You are officially the latest in frenzied gossip to have hit this city. Even the damn clerk at the bank knew all about you, which is why he was exceptionally helpful. The New-York Evening Post is rather popular within business circles.”
Georgia leaned over and grabbed the newspaper from Matthew. She held it up, scanning the framed words.
British Gentleman in Dire Need of Assistance
The article gave a small but accurate description of his appearance, right down to the clothes he had been wearing when he first appeared at the hospital, and asked anyone who recognized him to call upon Dr. William Carter at the New York Hospital for further information.
She lowered the paper, handing it off to Robinson. “Bless that bastard’s beating heart. That was impressively quick. He must have high and mighty connections.”
Forever and a Day Page 12
