He placed himself face down on the bed, supporting his forehead with his arms. His backside was delectable as he lay there, distracting. She just wanted to touch it, to…to bite it.
Her eyes went wide at that thought, and just at that moment, there was a knock on the chamber door. She jumped, blushing, and rushed to cover Jack’s backside with a blanket before she moved to answer it. A servant stood there, holding a tray with cold meat, vegetables, cheese and bread, as well as a bottle of wine.
“Thank you,” she said, taking it. “That will be all.”
She could see the curiosity on the footman’s face, but she ignored it as she kicked the door shut and moved to the table by the window. She set her burden down and moved back to Jack.
“Is that my food?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered, taking a place perched beside him and pressing her hands against the curve of his shoulders. She began to knead the tight muscles there, first gently, but then harder. “Would you like to eat first?”
“A moment ago, I would have said yes,” he groaned. “But that is magical. This first. That later.”
She bit back a laugh and continued to massage his shoulders. As she did so, she examined his broad, muscular back. Like on his arm, she saw scars there. A few larger ones that looked like slashes, but some smaller, as if they had come from burns. She traced them each with a finger as she moved her massage down his back, smoothing the muscles and warming the flesh.
“Ouch!” he grunted as she dug in a little harder on a knot in his muscles.
She laughed. “The great Captain Jack, complaining about the hands of a woman?”
“Not complaining,” he said. “Just thinking I should hire her to torture anyone I capture who has information they don’t want to willingly share.”
“It hurts a little now, but it will help later,” she promised.
“Ah, ah.” His voice grew more relaxed. “Oh, I see. Yes, that’s much better. How did you learn to do that?”
She frowned. “Noah taught me,” she whispered.
He was silent for a moment and his muscles tensed a fraction before they relaxed again. “Noah.”
“We couldn’t connect in the way…the way you and I did a few days ago,” she said. “But we did share some intimacies. He would do this for me from time to time, through my gown, of course. Eventually, he taught me to do the same for him. I think he hoped that perhaps my touch would eventually inspire a reaction.”
“I should not be troubled with jealousies over a man who couldn’t even bring himself to touch you as a husband should,” Jack said, his voice muffled by the bedclothes. “But I will admit to you that I am.”
She bit her lip at that admission. “You have no cause to be. After all, you know I could never rouse his interest. But if learning this from him helps you now, then I am not sorry to have the talent.”
He let out a low moan as she worked her fingers against his lower back, just above the blanket she had draped over him. “You have the talent all right.”
She moved her hands back upward, reworking the muscles, gentle when she needed to be, hard when a knot required it. Jack lay still, allowing her to attend to him.
“One of my men lost a leg this week. He may yet die,” he said after the silence had stretched between them.
She hesitated a fraction of a moment to let that horrible image sink in, then continued to massage him. “I’m sorry. Does he have a family?”
“Just us,” he said. “Most of my men only have each other as family. We’re a lost lot.”
She looked again at the pattern of scars that flicked and flared its way across his skin. Scars gained through violence and near-death experiences of his own. She shivered at the thought of Jack in such danger.
“How did you become who and what you are?” she asked.
He stiffened. “You are too fine a lady to want to know that answer.”
“I asked the question,” she said, pressing her fingers into his skin. “I want to know. Because judging from what I’ve seen and experienced when I’m with you, it is difficult for me to picture you ruthlessly running an underground enterprise.”
“Hmmm,” Jack murmured. “You don’t know me, though, do you, Letitia? You don’t know how I grew up.”
“Then tell me,” she insisted, watching in fascination as his muscles contracted beneath her hands. How were there so many of them?
“I grew up on the street, my dear. My mother was a whore. Due to that fact, I never knew my real father. She flitted from man to man, letting them sell her wares and drinking away most of what it brought them. Her last lover was a bastard who beat me and my younger brother. He nearly killed War. I knew that day that I had to get him out of there, no matter what the cost of such an action.”
She flinched. She was all too familiar with the drive to take care of a younger sibling, even if their circumstances were almost polar opposites. “Where did you go?”
“I’d been pickpocketing two years at that point. Since I was eight. And I’d gotten the attention of a man called Longfellow. He was a low-level thief, but to me he was a god amongst men. He taught War and me the trade and let us sleep on his floor, out of the cold and rain.”
Tears stung her eyes as he told the story. “So you were only ten?”
He nodded. “Old enough to make a living. And I did. It didn’t take long to move up the ranks of the criminals in the underground. When I was sixteen, War and I went out on our own. Started our gang. We’d taken over the underground before I was twenty.”
“You sound so matter-of-fact,” Letty said with a shake of her head. “As if it was easy. Like it didn’t affect you.”
He sighed. “You want a confessional, Letitia? You want me to reveal my heart to you? My soul?”
“You know how deeply I was hurt by Noah’s actions, how much it shamed and damaged me,” she reminded him. “Could you not trust me just a little with the whole truth?”
“I was desperate when I dragged War away from our mother,” Jack said after a long pause. “I thought that man would kill him and I wanted to protect him. For years I hardly slept, waiting to be killed, to be found, to be destroyed. When I was able to get some rest, I had nightmares about War dying. Me dying. It was god-awful, Letitia. As bad as you can imagine, and worse. But I had no other choice, no other life. I became good at what I do because I had to. Because the alternative was to sink down and surrender, to wait for death to find me. I couldn’t do that.”
She heard the strain in his voice, the pain there that he kept so well hidden. “Are you happy, Jack?”
Silence greeted her. It stretched for a long time. Long enough that she knew the answer. She knew it all too well.
“I don’t know,” he finally said.
She was surprised at his honesty, for she hadn’t expected it. A flippant remark? Yes. A dismissive flirtation? Perhaps. But this raw honesty touched her.
She began to hum softly as she returned to attention to rubbing his back. He had given her enough today. She would back off and let him concentrate only on this pleasure. And ultimately, the deeper pleasures to come between them.
She stroked his skin for a while longer, as lost in the rhythmic movement of her hands over his smooth skin as he seemed to be. She was ready to suggest he roll over so she could continue her massage in a much naughtier way when she heard a sound that shocked her.
Jack let out a deep snore.
She climbed down from the bed and moved to the head of it. He had turned his face toward the fire and his eyes were shut. It was obvious he was sound asleep. Disappointment briefly flooded her before she thought of what he’d said to her a moment before.
He’d had trouble sleeping before thanks to his dark past. She wondered now if those troubles remained. Either way, he obviously needed the rest. She pulled the rest of the blanket up over him gently. He didn’t stir at the action. and she smiled.
“Sleep,” she whispered before
she pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Dream of sweet things.”
Then she crept from the room to find a servant who could call for her carriage.
Chapter Fourteen
There was blood everywhere. Jack saw it around him in torrents, in rivers, it gathered in gruesome lakes. He glanced down, but found he was unharmed. It was someone else’s blood. He blinked hard, trying to get oriented, but it was almost impossible. The world felt like it was tilting. There was smoke in the air and faint screams from all sides.
He was looking for something, someone, but he couldn’t remember who. He only knew that the person was hurt, a person he cared for. Was it War? No, no, that wasn’t it. War was safe now. He remembered that in the fog of his mind.
It was someone else then, and he strained to recall. And then it came to him in a blinding rush. It was Letitia he was looking for in the carnage around him. He opened his mouth to scream her name, but no sound escaped his lips.
He turned and caught a glimpse of a blue gown splattered with blood droplets, and ran toward it, knowing who it was. Praying she was unharmed.
But he couldn’t get to her. The faster he ran, the farther away she became, the more he reached for her, the more out of reach she was.
“No!”
Jack sat bolt upright, his heart racing and sweat covering his body. Panic rose in his chest, turning his stomach and forcing convulsive shakes through his entire body as he made the harsh transition from dream world to reality.
He looked around in the dim chamber and blinked in confusion. Where the fuck was he? Not in his lair, but…
It came back to him at last. He was in the townhouse he’d bought, the one where he’d been meeting with Letitia. He recalled their night together, her questions, which had inspired honesty in him, her gentle hands on his skin…
When he got up the blanket around him fell away. He was naked, but the lady was not here. With a frown, he grabbed for his shirt, crumpled on the floor at his feet. He slung it around his shoulders and moved to the fire. He stoked the flames until light returned to the room and looked around.
There was no sign of Letitia, though a plate of food sat on his table. His stomach growled, and he moved to it and began to eat.
Memories of his dream haunted him, even as the food filled his empty belly. He’d had the dream before. The streets of blood, the lost person he so desperately sought, the fear—they were all common to his slumber, especially when there was trouble in his life.
But in the past, it had always been War he’d been looking for. War who was injured, maybe dead, in the carnage of Jack’s life. Even when War had gone away, Jack had still dreamed of his younger brother’s death.
But tonight, his dream self hadn’t been seeking War. War was safe. It had been Letitia in the fog, Letitia covered in blood. Letitia he couldn’t reach no matter how he tried.
What did it all mean?
“That the woman is a menace,” he grunted as he dragged a last chunk of bread through the remaining juices on his plate.
He pushed away from the table shoved on his trousers, then left the room. He entered the hallway and came down the stairs to find a maid dusting some of the furniture.
“You there,” he said.
She jumped as if she wasn’t prepared to hear his voice, then turned to him. “Yes, sir?”
Her gaze swept over him from head to toe and she smiled flirtatiously. Jack considered his options. He could take a tumble with this girl. That would burn off the unresolved desire Letitia had left him with.
But he didn’t want this nameless chit. He wanted Letitia, frustrating as that fact was.
“Lady Seagate, did she leave?” he asked, ignoring the young woman’s all-too inviting stare.
“Yes, sir,” the girl said, sidling closer. “A little over an hour ago, sir.”
She drew out the last word as she smiled at him yet again. She was pretty enough, but she did nothing to stir him. Odd.
“Will you have someone bring my horse around?” he said. “Thank you.”
He turned his back on the now-pouting maid and went upstairs to pull himself together. Letitia had come here tonight with promises of passion and pleasure between them. He had every intention of keeping his word.
And it had nothing to do with just how much he wanted to see her, to make sure she was unharmed by touching her. Nothing in the slightest.
Letty stared at the letter before her, but the words all swam before her eyes. She’d been working on this note to an old friend for the past half hour since she’d changed into her nightgown, but had made no headway.
Likely because her mind kept turning on Jack. Tonight she had come to him looking for passion. Instead, she’d found connection to him as they spent time together. She felt for his past, was impressed by how he’d brought himself up, made himself strong physically and intellectually.
“Stop being an idiot and go to bed,” she muttered to herself, folding her abandoned letter before she picked up her candle and took it to her bedside table. She pulled the covers back and was about to blow out the flame and climb in when she heard a sound.
She lifted her head and looked around, uncertain from where it had come. When all was silent a moment, she went back to preparing her bed. And there it came again. This time she heard it clearly. It was a tapping.
From her window.
She grabbed the candle and proceeded cautiously to the drawn curtains. It was likely only a confused bird, but her heart still pounded as she drew the curtain back and lifted the light to the glass to see what was causing the sound.
There was nothing there for a moment—and then Jack’s face appeared on the other side.
She bit back a yelp of surprise and staggered backward, nearly depositing herself on her backside.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He gave her a look and pointed at his ears, indicating he couldn’t hear her through the glass. She huffed out a breath and unlatched her window, opening it so he could step into her room from the ledge.
“What are you doing here?” she repeated, watching as he turned to latch the window and draw the curtains once again.
“Good evening to you too,” he said, grinning as he faced her.
“Jack, what in the world?” she gasped. “What is going on?”
He moved toward her a step, and her hand holding the candle began to tremble. “You left me tonight before we even started.”
Her lips parted in surprise at both that statement and the smoldering look in his eyes when he said it. He reached out to take her candle and gently set it back down on her escritoire.
“I—you were asleep,” she explained. “I thought…”
She trailed off because he was staring at her so intently that she lost all ability to form words.
“I’m awake now,” he said, his voice so soft it barely carried. He moved toward her, sliding a hand into her hair, which had been twisted into a braid in preparation for sleep. He tugged through the locks, freeing them as his mouth came down on hers.
She jolted in pleasure as his tongue breeched her lips, melting her bones and setting her on fire from the inside.
“Jack,” she murmured against him, bringing her arms around his neck and molding her body to his.
His hands stole down her back and he cupped her backside through the flimsy cotton of her night rail, lifting her against him, grinding the hard cock beneath his trousers against the apex of her legs as he carried her toward her bed.
She strained to meet him as if her body had been trained to do so. He grinned as he lowered her onto the coverlet and braced his arms over her.
“I think I should punish you for leaving me naked and alone.”
“And sleeping,” she reminded him. “I thought it better to leave you to your dreams when you were obviously exhausted.”
A flicker of emotion passed over his face. “I don’t like my dreams as much as I like this reality,
” he drawled. “That is a very pretty nightgown.”
She glanced down at the white cotton and then back to his face. “It is plain.”
“It is see-through when you stand in front of the window with the fire behind you,” he said with a laugh.
Heat flamed in her cheeks. “What?”
“I liked the show, my lady, don’t worry. But I want no barriers between us anymore, so…” He pushed the nightgown up and over her hips, her stomach, and plucked it over her head. Now she was naked, half pinned beneath his weight, her body shaking with anticipation.
“But you’re not naked,” she said, shocked by how bold she sounded. “Not exactly fair.”
“Says the enchantress who stripped me bare-ass and put a sleeping spell on me not three hours ago,” he said. “But I would not want to make you feel at a disadvantage.”
He pushed away from her and stripped out of his clothing in a few movements. She propped herself up on her elbows, unable to keep from licking her lips as he showed her his naked body for the second time that night. Once again, she wanted to do such very inappropriate things to him.
“Where is that naughty book of yours, Letitia?” he asked.
Her blush darkened as she got up and padded to her escritoire. She opened a drawer and dug underneath all the papers, where she had shoved The Ladies Book of Pleasures upon her return tonight.
He held out a hand, beckoning her to give it over, and she did so, refusing to meet his stare as he flipped it open.
“I have heard of this little book,” he said, paging through it, his eyes widening at some of the images inside. She wondered which ones caught his attention. “But never seen it. You ladies are a mystery, pretending not to be interested in such things while you pass this around.”
“I never pretended not to be interested,” she said, sidling over to him and trying to peek at the page.
He pulled the book away with a grin. “Nosy little thing, aren’t you?”
“Is it nosy to want to know what you desire?” she asked. “You seem to read my own desires easily.”
Seduced Page 13
