by Conkle, Gina
A shiver skipped her spine.
Was it possible a man’s hostile stare could keep a woman in place?
Jonas was a good twenty paces from her, and she dare not venture any closer. Not that she could. A horrible stitch pinched her side.
“Please. Don’t go.” The heel of her hand pressed the cramp. “I, I want to talk with you.”
Starlight touched Jonas as he put one long leg in front of the other, making his way to her. Heaven help her but, she cringed. His forbidding glare, the gold earring gleaming like a sharp point…Jonas could be a landlocked pirate bearing down on her. He stopped a few paces away, his breath huffing clouds.
“About what?”
She rubbed the pained spot harder. “I want, I want…to be with you.”
“Why?”
She shut her eyes at his icy voice. Never had she known him to be this abrupt with her. She understood the distance. He was hurt. So was she. In a matter of days, years of childhood friendship sailed full speed ahead into exciting, choppy, mysterious waters.
“Because I have feelings for you, and making sense of them is easier if we have a decent conversation.”
“I’m sure your betrothed wouldn’t appreciate that sentiment.”
“I’m sorry about that. It’s an unofficial arrangement. Nothing legally binding…more of an understanding.” The words tasted like paper in her mouth, bland and silly. Jonas wouldn’t quibble over the status of her arrangement. The distinction of unofficial or not didn’t matter; the fact of another man did.
The whites of his eyes were wide. “You weren’t honest with me.”
Wincing, she stopped rubbing the cramp at her waist. She deserved the pain. “I know.”
“We were always honest with each other. Always.” Jonas turned his face to the field. “Never, as children, was it necessary to spell out the need for telling the truth.”
“Because we simply were.”
“Then what changed?”
Gentle laughter rolled out of her. “Everything. Surely you see that? Ten years you were gone with hardly a word to those you left behind. And what happens your first night back? You kiss me!” She exhaled, blowing a wisp of hair out of her face. “I understand being your friend, at least what we had as children, but things have changed. We’re different.”
His mouth firmed. Light snapped like blue fire in his lapis lazuli eyes. Jonas advanced on her, dirt and snow crunching in the silence. He kept coming until she had to tip her head to keep eye contact.
He was a handsome man in daylight, the quiet, gentleman grandson of a furniture maker. Definitely the kind of man a woman could bring home to have tea with her mother. At midnight, Jonas devastated. Night caressed his features…his freshly shaved jawline, the width of his utterly kissable mouth, the sin-black hair falling around his face. He was an adventurer, dashing in a stoic fashion, a man of secrets and foreign places.
“I should’ve told you everything when I was in your bedchamber,” she said, forcing her arms to stay at her sides. Otherwise, she’d touch him.
Saying aloud when I was in your bedchamber had an erotic effect, teasing the skin between her legs. Jonas’s brows arched. Were the words an aphrodisiac to him?
“But you kissed me and that changed everything.” Her voice was a wisp of sound on the empty road.
Jonas chuckled low and slipped his hand along her jaw. Black lashes hooded his beautiful eyes as his palm cupped the side of her neck. She sucked in hungry breaths. She needed him to say something, but Jonas was a man of few words, seemingly content to touch her.
“And then I kissed you when you came to my tower. An awful kiss. I was embarrassed,” she said, staring at his chin, her breath hitching. “I thought you had satisfied whatever lust or curiosity about me the first night, and well…my kiss was bad.”
“No it wasn’t.” His hand curled around her nape, warm and comforting. “Even a bad kiss with the right woman is heaven to a man.”
Oh, that melted her…those words said in his deep voice as his strong hand caressed her neck. Pleasure shot to her toes. Her body was flush to his.
He chuckled again and the rumble stroked her insides.
“That bad kiss? I made myself not respond. I had to know what was happening with you.” He kissed the crown of her head. “It’s my fault. I touched you when I had no business doing so.”
Waves of gooseflesh spread under her stays, the tickle skipping like pebbles down to her inner thighs. Words stuck in her mouth. Jonas’s fingers slipped into her hair before tracing her spine with painfully good slowness to the middle of her back. Her forehead rested on his velvet waistcoat, and she gripped the open ends of his outer black wool coat.
How far down would his hand travel?
Jonas stroked her velvet cloak, the hush of his hand the only sound on the empty lane. She pushed up on her toes, all the better to drink him in. His shirt smelled faintly of cedar, likely from his cedar-lined sea chest. An exotic soap-scent clung to his smooth jawline. She was lost in Jonas, his hand on her body, the still road, the excited flutter in her heart that he might…might—he did palm her bottom cheek.
She sucked a lungful of air. His big, beautiful hand rested right there.
Where else would he touch?
Jonas hugged her and spoke above her ear, his voice thick. “I want you to listen carefully to what I’m going to say. Know that whatever you decide, you will always be my friend, one of the best memories in my life.” He paused. “Give me a sign you understand what I’m saying.”
“Uh-huh,” she mumbled, nose deep in his cravat.
“I want to undress you. I want to kiss every inch of your skin until your voice is hoarse from crying out with satisfaction. We won’t think about the future or the past. We’ll be a man and a woman for—”
Chapter Seven
“Take me to the tower,” she said.
“—for one night.”
Heat flooded his nether regions. He pushed Livvy’s shoulders back, needing to see her face. Did she know what she agreed to? Copper-colored lashes drooped over exotically tilted eyes. The full bow of her upper lip tempted him, the middle nub of her top lip inches from his mouth. He’d suck on it. Gently. And taste her…though he dare not say that. There was a hint of innocence in all her sauciness.
Yes, Livvy needed a thorough kissing, begged for it, her body swaying against him like a shameless tart. A definite yes.
But her answer was too quick.
Logic and lust warred inside him. They were friends. Nor could he ignore that Livvy had consumed mulled wine tonight, and she was promised to another. Unofficially, of course. His mouth opened and shut, the chance for words crumbling when Livvy’s hands slipped inside his coat. She rubbed his chest, the whisper of skin on silk the only sound between them. Teeth clenched, desire surged hot and fast when she pushed his wool coat wide open. She took stock of his clothed chest, devouring him.
“Livvy…you’re sure?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “About the tower?”
Curious hands traced the dip between his heavy chest muscles. “There’s little room for interpretation when a man says ‘I want to undress you’ followed by a promise to kiss every inch of my skin.”
Fingers digging into her velvet clad shoulders, he stifled a smile. He was a cad twice over for propositioning a promised woman on a country road. His stay in Plumtree would soon end. He had no prospects, no will to stay, and he was jealous to boot. He wanted to crush the man who asked for her hand.
What he wanted made no sense, but he was in no position to fish for motive and reason. His brain absorbed lust for a certain redhead the way a sponge soaked water.
“What I said was pure desire of the flesh.” His voice was strained. “I didn’t think.”
“I don’t want you to think. I want you to feel…to speak freely with me.”
Speak freely? When he was always guarded? His carnal proposition had popped out, spoken from his heart or, more accurately, from his loins.
&nbs
p; “A true gentleman would see you safely home to the bosom of your family.”
Livvy’s smile curled like a sated cat. “The tower is closer.”
He groaned. Pleasure numbed his brain and shot straight to his stones. He breathed in her fragrance, a hint of vinegar from her toils and rose-scented soap. Did her skin taste like rose petal jam? She was supple against him, her shoulders pliant under his greedy hands rubbing her. The velvet teased his palms; her bare skin would be softer.
Two of Livvy’s fingers drew a painstaking line down the middle of his waistcoat. “One…two…three—”
“Have you considered that the mulled wine has dulled your better judgment?”
Silky brown eyes smirked at him. “We can stay out here in the cold or you can trust me. It’s your choice,” she said. “Four…five…six—”
“What are you doing?”
“Counting the buttons I must undo to get you out of your waistcoat.” Her hand stopped above his navel and her gaze met his. “Will you believe me when I get to your breeches and count the buttons on your placket?”
His stones heard that. They clenched inside his smalls.
Laughing low, he turned around and crouched low. “Get on my back.”
She jumped on and slipped both arms over his shoulders, her voice light. “You’re carrying me to the tower.”
Jonas hooked both hands under her knees and began the hike. He’d carried her home in the same manner when she’d twisted her ankle chasing a butterfly. Was she eleven years old then? Twelve?
Livvy nuzzled his ear. “I was hoping you’d toss me over your shoulder. It’s what a pirate would do.”
His step faltered on a rut. Her voice, rich as warm chocolate, tickled him. She wiggled, pressing her breasts against his back, and his traitorous brain flashed images of a man’s shirt stretched across sumptuous breasts when Livvy was in his bed his first night home.
“I’ll pretend you’re a lusty pirate, then,” she said, oblivious to her effect on him.
He forced himself to focus on the toes of his boots. “Sorry to disappoint, but I was an honest sailor. If it helps, I did grow a beard and braid it in three parts for a time.”
“I would have loved to have seen that.”
“It was a passing fancy.”
“And your employer, the Earl of Greenwich, tolerated such an appearance?”
“Lord Edward isn’t your typical nob. Doesn’t care about appearance or status,” he said, trudging up the road, the flesh heavy between his legs.
Plumtree was pristine and white, a wintry purity. Livvy was warm at his back, a welcome burden. Would it matter to her that he’d never captained a ship? Or that the highest position he’d achieved was man of business in service to an earl? He’d seen the world as a law-abiding man, worked with his hands, the same hands he’d use to pleasure Livvy.
Bed sport leveled a man and woman…two naked bodies lost in hot, grinding sex.
He hugged her knees tighter. Being with Livvy would be nothing of the sort, and it scared him, made his heart thud. He’d tupped women, but this night with Livvy wasn’t a tup. Slow, deep tenderness or frenzied passion, there was much to explore with her—and this one night for it.
Her lips moved against the shell of his ear. “Why did you go by the name Jonas Bacon after you left Plumtree? Were you a naughty man in London?”
Quivers danced on his nape. He could get used to her whispers.
“Not much to tell.”
Cold-hot sensations rattled inside him. He put one muddy, snow-covered boot in front of the other. Livvy wanted more than fleshly pleasure. She wanted his secrets. What she asked came with torturous emotions, the kind that ripped a boy’s heart in two and molded him into a stoic man. He was good at keeping people at arm’s-length, a skill he’d first mastered when slurs followed him as a boy, spoken behind his back.
Bastard. Mongrel. Baseborn.
Followed by Big Ox. Big Oaf. And Brainless Beast said to his face.
The roof of Halsey Tower rose in the distance. He pushed onto the side of the road and stood before an elevation. There was no fence marking the Halsey meadow save the slight rise in the soil.
“Your family’s property.”
“Jonas?” Livvy slid down his backside.
He stepped over the rise and, turning around, he waited for Livvy. She stayed on the roadside, midnight bathing her set chin and wide-open eyes. He knew the look. It was common to the fair sex when they required a man’s answer.
“Are you avoiding answering me? Why did you go by the name Jonas Bacon in London?”
Snow lightened the darkness around them, the frozen bits sparkling like diamonds. London was a byword on his journey since leaving home. In it was the answer to his past and his future. London’s ships took him far away. Plumtree hemmed him in.
Except for Livvy. She was freedom itself with her copper hair and forward nature.
Her head tilted at a gentle angle. He caressed her jaw, the fur of her hood tickling the back of his hand.
“You’re not content for sex alone, are you?”
She cupped her hand over his. “I would have you.”
Throat dry, he swallowed hard. Her tenderness healed the edges of his sadness.
“What did you find in London?” she asked.
Denying a woman’s request for intimate knowledge was one thing. Denying Livvy was another. She was a friend, a childhood memory come to life as a woman full grown who knew and saw too much, a woman who could read unspoken words in his eyes. But, she wanted him to rip out his heart and give it to her. She’d be content with nothing less.
His hand fell away from her. “You won’t budge until I give you something.”
Until I give you all of me.
Her silent nod was his answer. From his side vision, he spied faint smoke streaming from her tower. The squat turret was easily a hundred paces, yet the distance could be forever. Chill air braced him, cooling his ardor.
“When I left Plumtree, I was never going to come back. My mother was shamed, and the Braithwaites were upstarts.” He sucked in a deep breath. “Setting fire to the Captain’s furniture shop—”
“Was an accident. You can’t keep blaming yourself for that. The Captain doesn’t. I know that for a fact.”
“It was still fuel to the fire that I was the ne’re-do-well Braithwaite. Jacob was at St. Mary’s College by then. I was Big Ox, remember?” He met her fixed stare with a hard one of his own.
“Big Ox bothers you. When we were children, you’d toss a jest back at them or turn away. But, tonight, you stood there and took it. Why? You could’ve told Will Halsey not to call you that.”
“Because the Will Halseys of the world aren’t worth the effort.”
“You mean to keep it all in,” she huffed. “Be a man, endure, and all that folderol.”
He smiled when she stepped into the meadow, using the Captain’s favored word.
“I am a man of few words. Jacob did most of the talking when we were lads. You know that.”
She toed a chunk of icy snow. “Who talks for you now?”
“I do well enough.”
It’d be easy to admit his size spoke for him. How often did he step into a room to men sitting up taller, shifting in their seats? To women giving their appraisal of his size? Might spoke when it was needed. Or he spoke rarely at all.
Speaking his heart and mind…he wasn’t fluent in that language. The idea was akin to wearing a poorly-sewn coat, the fit awkward.
“To be a man of few words has its merit.” Livvy linked her arm with his. “But sometimes, a man must speak what’s in his heart.”
“Other parts of me want to have their say tonight,” he teased.
Livvy bumped into him, her giggle sweet in the chilly air. They strolled through the meadow, their boots sinking ankle-deep in snow. Lust was a low hum between them. Comfortable, casual, at ease, this conversing with a woman he’d undress in a matter of minutes. Was this what happened when a man was a
bout to have sex with a woman he counted as friend? Moments ago on the road, carnal need consumed him. His cock was heavy, hidden behind his placket, hungry to slide between Livvy’s thighs.
He could be happy, too, walking and talking at her side.
“But, why Jonas Bacon?” she prodded, her voice a gentle nudge. “The Captain knew the fire was an accident. You didn’t have to change your name.”
No. He didn’t. He’d run off one day, leaving the briefest of notes for his grandfather. Jonas shook his head at the choices he’d made. The Captain had been his anchor in childhood, and Jonas had left him.
His heart heavy, they rounded the tower. The window was dark overhead.
“I took the name Bacon because it was my father’s name.”
“Oh Jonas.” Her voice wobbled. Eyes shining up at him, Livvy twined both arms around his bicep.
“I was in London before I went on to the colonies where I spent much time…too much, it would seem. My speech changed. People thought I was colonial when I returned to England. I didn’t correct them. I wanted nothing to do with Plumtree or the Braithwaite name.”
Livvy’s brows pinched together. He’d hurt her, but it was true. It was on the tip of his tongue to remind Livvy that she wanted this confessional; instead, he opened the tower door, the iron hinges singing a light squeak as they stepped inside.
“I’d journeyed to London to find out what I could about him. The Captain would never speak of the man. Nor did my mother.”
“And what did you find?”
“A man named Mr. John Dean who’d sailed with him. Found him in a tavern near Wapping Wall. He choked on his ale when he saw me. Said he thought he was seeing a ghost.” He touched his nape. “Years I thought I had Braithwaite hair, but my father’s locks were just as black.”
“Was this man you met able to give your heart some peace?”
There she was going on about his heart again. Did she want him on his knees, baring his soul?
