The Unraveling of Lady Fury

by Shehanne Moore

  She pressed her lips to his face, to his chest, his heart pounding beneath them, barely able to wait as his fingers started on the lacing of her corset. The scent, the feel, the impassioned look of him sent such cascades of pleasure through her, as if all those times in the last week hadn’t existed. This, his breathing and his gaze upon her, was all that did.

  He slid her chemise over her head. The breeze from the harbor cooled her heated skin, which boiled at the thought she was finally naked. He slid his hands down her arms, as if he wanted to touch every inch of her.

  What spiraled out of control in her center was already so heated, she hardly needed him to.

  “Please.” She moaned, tangling her fingers in his hair as he bent to kiss her breast. “I can’t…I can’t bear this. You have to… We can do all this later, I swear. I promise.” Her voice shook. “I just want you.”

  He creased his lips. Tilting her head back, so he could fill her mouth with his tongue, he drove into her, taking her beyond frustration to a place so full of pleasure, she gasped in relief.

  She wasn’t even at the edge. That place she used to think she would die on, it was so exquisite.

  No sooner had she done so, than he did it again. Heat exploded and it was what she wanted. To feel every inch of him like this, pleasing her, so she couldn’t stand any more. So her body rippled and she gasped, as sweet pleasure pulsed, hot and wild, through her. And she believed she stood at heaven’s gate, where she had ascended to.

  It should always be this way. Always.

  For a second she lay, feeling the stupidest of stray details filtering into her consciousness. The shouts of laborers working on the quay. The wind blowing through the open shutters. But most of all feeling him come to completion. Feeling it all the way to her toes so her whole body was liquid warm.

  She curved her lips inanely. It had always been like this between them. No wonder she’d been afraid when experiencing him, what she just had was everything and nothing she’d tried to prevent. She’d not only plummeted from the tightrope stretching the gorge, but been obliterated in the firestorm sweeping it.

  What was one more set of pins beneath her nails though? An awful lot better than seeing the man lose faith in himself. Than seeing him walk away from her.

  What she did, she did. Life was composed of moments. Why shouldn’t she have had this one? The time would come for her to put this back. Tomorrow or the next day.

  Especially now the mattress shuddered as he collapsed on his back in that way he always did when sated.

  She curved her lips further. Actually, it wasn’t half bad. She had a lot to thank those two whores for. To think today could have been like any other.

  “Fury.”

  She didn’t raise her head. Truth be told, she loved the way his voice came from deep inside him. At least she loved it when his arm didn’t edge beneath her shoulders like this.

  “Yes?”

  Except there couldn’t be any harm in it. It wasn’t as if he were the kind to want a cuddle or anything like that. He wasn’t the embracing sort. After the way things had been he probably wanted her to press her lips to his chest or something. Why not? Her toes still tingled with the remnants of the pleasure he’d given her. And his chest was a work of art, his skin warm beneath her lips.

  “About…about Storm. I just don’t understand why you never told me. Didn’t you think I had a right to know?”

  She lifted her head. He was so beautiful, late afternoon sun and shadows playing across his face, she was glad her heart was already broken. And there was nothing to lose further by kissing his lips. Or letting him squeeze her closer.

  In terms of what existed in her heart for Flint, he was dangerous. But only if she let him be. In some respects Flint was the safest man to be with, now she’d removed the barricades. Because he didn’t want her, she thought, edging her lips free. And if he looked at her as if he did, it was because she’d ceased breaking his balls. But desire her? Oh, dear God, no.

  Everything had spiraled out of control because of these rules. She realized that now. She probably had realized it then. Now he understood her reason for having them, even a man proud as Flint would behave. Give her his seed. Leave when the time came. Ask no questions. If there was one thing Flint had an astonishing head for, it was business.

  If she didn’t have Storm it would be different. She’d be back in that place she had been seven years ago. But Storm’s future was at stake. Fury was the only one who could guarantee it.

  And Flint wasn’t exactly father material. Just look at him. It made him even safer.

  “No, you didn’t have a right and I couldn’t let you know.” She set her head on his chest. “In case you hadn’t noticed it was a bit difficult since you were sailing your boat out the harbor at the time.”

  “You still could have told me. Where is she?”

  What was this? Even his voice sounded troubled. And what the hell did he think he was doing teasing tangles from her hair? Flint never teased tangles. He caused plenty.

  “She’s in England.”

  He wasn’t disappointed, was he, that Storm wasn’t here in Genoa? How could she be? Next to the fact Fury wasn’t Celia, Storm was her best-kept secret.

  “Susan’s sister has her. There are governesses and teachers who I pay for. But I want her to go to school properly.”

  He stilled his hand. “You meaning for young ladies?”

  “I want her to have the very best. I know that’s something you understand. Schools, Europe, clothes. All the things I’ve not been able to give her, because so far I’ve had to hide her away. And I’ve had to siphon money everywhere I could, using it for that and one or two other things.”

  Like blackmail.

  “Were it ever to come out I had her or that I wasn’t Lady Celia, I’d have been finished. I realized that the moment I married Thomas. Probably the day Susan rescued me from that quay and took me to her brother’s lodging house. It was her idea in a way.”

  “What’s Storm like?”

  She bit her lip. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Why do you think? So I can feel like a worthless piece of shit, leaving you and her on that quay.”

  She jerked up her chin. She could of course deny it; his grin was certainly cocky enough. But she wasn’t quick enough.

  She passed her tongue around her lips. She had to get control of this, didn’t she, so things would revert to what they both knew of the situation? His seed, his freedom. Because this wasn’t like keeping him away from her body, or staying away from his, with a few scribbles on a piece of paper. The contract hadn’t been invented that would solve this. “What would you have done with a baby?”

  He tightened his fingers in her hair. “Well, I—”

  “My bet is you’d have made it take its first tiny steps along the plank.”

  She sat up. Had she honestly thought at the time Flint had left her, her life could get no worse? She was wrong. She didn’t understand what he was thinking. Or what she’d read in his eyes. But she knew she must find her stockings, her chemise, get out of here now, before it was too late.

  Reaching down she tugged on a stocking. “And what’s more, you’d have keelhauled it for dribbling down its chin or yours.”

  He fidgeted on the bed. “You could have given me the—”

  “Marooned it on some island for dirtying its napkins, or peeing on you, or just doing all the hundred and one other things babies do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.” She pulled her chemise over her head. “As for whom Storm is like, well, she’s got your eyes and your attitude.” Fury kept her gaze fixed on him. “But the rest is quite all right.”

  It was the cheapest poke she could take. But it had to be done.

  It didn’t matter that the feel of him inside her had been even more delicious than she remembered. That it had felt right, perfect, as if they should always be joined that way. That the hoarse cry he’d given when he gave hims
elf up to her, made her soul, never mind her body, convulse.

  It didn’t matter what existed in the very fiber and chambers of her heart for him.

  Flint was not a man who would ever love her back. He was only a man she would want. She would only hurt herself again to believe otherwise.

  The door shut behind Fury, and Flint sighed. He wasn’t angry. Even if she was wrong about some of the things she’d said. He wouldn’t have marooned a baby on an island for peeing on him. He’d have keelhauled it for that. She was still right.

  A baby and all the baby things, like peeing and dribbling and dumping a load in a napkin—he’d have torn his hair. And crying, now. Crying. He’d sooner cut off his ears than listen to crying.

  And babies seldom came alone. No. Babies were strange apparitions that way. Advance guards. For entire battalions. Armies of little brother babies and sister babies that came uninvited. Just marched right in. Each, a separate entity, requiring the kit of a field marshal. And the elastic pockets to pay for it too.

  The falderals he’d seen processing in Fury’s wake along Fishside Wharf might not have been hers at all. They were probably baby falderals. Which was another thing.

  The space they took up, it would have been a miracle on a par with the five loaves and fishes had there been room for him on the Calypso, even after he’d just heaved Celie’s trunk off it, if he let Fury and that baby on board.

  Heaven-sent gifts? Whatever ignoramus thought that up didn’t know the right word for millstones.

  Or maybe he did? The world would grind to a halt if a man realized that was his reward for screwing.

  Flint conceded all that. He even conceded there was a method in her pointing his thousand and one deficiencies out to him. So why was conceding it and accepting it two different things? Especially the amount of pride this last year had eroded.

  He just should have known that having her want him once wouldn’t be enough.

  Chapter Ten

  Flint arrived at the villa at nine the following morning in the carriage he had insisted on, just as he had insisted on keeping the room at Frau Berthe’s. Even as he paid the driver, he spotted the reason he’d insisted on keeping that distance, spreading a white cloth over a large garden table, and thanked God for his foresight.

  Only she could wear a scarlet dress at this time of the morning and get away with it too.

  Maybe not just she. Women of his acquaintance could and did. But here was someone he didn’t think of as that. Someone for whom the kick of arousal was instant.

  Instant? It was worse.

  For a second, as he dallied through the trees, he wished he could retreat. Turn right around and run. She was so damn beautiful. He just prayed, as a twig snapped beneath his boot and she glanced up and saw him there, she didn’t see his signs of confusion. Because it was starting to mount in an unmanly way about this. And the flame of her there in the scarlet dress made it worse.

  “Flint.” She edged her hands down her gown. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  He canted his jaw. “Well, you know the bad doubloon, sweetheart.” He forced a smile. Just. Actually she smelled delicious. As for her hair, pinned at the nape of her neck, he had the strongest urge to loosen that. “Always about somewhere.”

  She had attempted yesterday to reinstate businesslike barriers. It was just difficult when an image of her writhing beneath him in the throes of ecstasy swamped his mind for him to do the same. He swore he could even hear her moans.

  “What’s all this?”

  She pushed a stray tendril of hair back from her forehead. His palms sweated in that second.

  “I was going to eat here in the garden. The villa is so stuffy this morning. But we can go indoors, if you want. It’s not a problem.”

  Now, here it was. The conundrum. Why he felt so discomfited, sweat lay along his palms. If he didn’t do this, then it meant Storm would never have the things she wanted for her. The things she hadn’t had herself. Never mind the things, what he’d sussed yesterday of this whole sorry situation, Storm would have nothing. Not even a roof over her head. Or a sock to call her own.

  What kind of father was he to let that be? He already knew the answer to that.

  He’d go indoors. They’d have sex. Just like yesterday. What he was here for, right? What he wanted? Right? More than anything, to satisfy the unbearable itch in his balls. For her. In that dress, then preferably, without it. Her honeyed skin and those pretty eyes and her pliant body, all there for his touch. And this incredible sexual current that always seemed to exist between them.

  She would get pregnant because they had had sex…wrong.

  Because then, she would walk out his life. And he would never make love to her again. He would never do anything with her again.

  “Whatever you’re offering, sounds good to me.”

  Fury hoped so. She wasn’t prepared for this encounter. However, the grin and the close way he stepped reassured her. What steamed between them tortured her. But she’d far rather it was torture than what she had to do yesterday because she’d never thought to see the day she might have to seduce James Flint Blackmoore.

  And just for a second there, the discomfited way he’d lowered his gaze and tried to step back into the bushes forced her to wonder if the lure of the ocean was so potent, he couldn’t wait to escape.

  He crooked his mouth into a lazy grin. “I’ll take coffee. Or whatever.”

  She tried to keep her own discomfort hidden. Close like this, as if there wasn’t any distance between them, she couldn’t prevent the answering smile that came to her lips. He was wicked when he looked at her like that. As if he knew exactly what the whatever was going to be. Well he did know, didn’t he, which was why the tiny hint of sensual tenderness she also glimpsed beguiled her so.

  She could barely pour the coffee straight with what steamed in her veins, though, and that concerned her. It would be better to go indoors and take what she could of him, while he was like this, as opposed to having to seduce him.

  But if she felt unable to pour a cup of coffee straight right now, how was she going to do more?

  Breakfast, particularly breakfast out here, made them like a couple. What unwelcome things might she glimpse if they sat down in such congenial settings? More talk about Storm? Susan might join them and that would be worse, to see him sitting in the basketwork chair, smiling, white teeth flashing in that incredible way, his long legs bent so you could barely keep your hands off, further building her anticipation.

  It was still the lesser of two evils.

  “I’ll leave it up to you to choose.”

  Nice of him.

  “Coffee, then since I’ve poured myself a cup.” She strolled to the end of the table. “You always liked it black from what I remember.”

  He held up his fingers. “With just a hint of cinnamon.”

  “And demerara sugar.” She tilted the steaming silver pot. Like the business with the floor, Susan would be furious at the slopping mess on the white cloth.

  “A pinch of that too.”

  “But no milk.”

  “You remember.”

  Grasping the tongs, she was very aware of him studying her. Weighing her up against the white cloth. She didn’t like it. His words were accompanied by a disarming grin. She supposed she hadn’t seen how much like a sailcloth it was.

  Well, it was like a sailcloth till she blobbed coffee on it. And splattered a whole sugar lump into his cup when what she’d meant was to pinch a grain the way he liked it.

  She saw him tighten his mouth. Then she heard his long, exasperated exhale of breath. She tightened her hand on the tongs as he strode toward her.

  After yesterday, she shouldn’t be astonished to find him wanting to kiss her. But out here like this, a full open-mouthed devouring, as if he could not wait?

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?” He eased back. “Then we can have breakfast, sweetheart. Won’t that be nice?”

&nbs
p; She looked at him. Appalled. What if Susan came outside? Or worse? What if Malmesbury arrived and saw Flint running his hand down her leg like this, trying to reach the hem of her gown? To edge her buttocks onto the table, so he could get between her legs?

  But it was one way, she supposed, if she couldn’t put the rules back. A way that avoided yesterday’s mishap.

  * * *

  Fury sat down at her gilt-framed mirror. It was early evening and she wanted to restore some semblance of order to her tangled hair.

  Flint in the copper bathtub wasn’t what her eyes should dwell on right now. All the same they did.

  “Oh, for goodness sake.” She threw the brush down. “Will you please just…” She reached for the jar of cream. “Do something about that.”

  He lifted his head, his gaze colliding with hers, as the jar splashed into the tub.

  “Hell,” he protested. “What the blazes are you doing that for?”

  “What do you think?”

  He glanced at her for a second, feigning ignorance.

  “Your back.”

  He reached down into the water and fished up the jar. “So this is your solution?” He drew his brows down. “Cu—”

  She jumped to her feet. “That’s what it is, so it should be suitable for you then.” She felt her skin redden. “Now you may do as you choose with it.”

  “Then I will.” He plunked the jar down on the tiled floor. His eyes shone with that little feasting spark, his lips set in that sardonic little smile he liked to keep, she had started to think absurdly, for her alone.

  “You’ll get blood poisoning. From that cut,” she added, before he could say anything so offensive she was forced to tell him to leave. “It’s not my affair. Just don’t do it before I conceive the heir. Because I don’t want to have to explain to Storm why her father couldn’t take the help, the perfectly good and sensible help that—”

  Oh God. What was she doing? Sweeping forward? Bending down and grasping the jar? No wonder he froze.