A Thief in the Nude

by Olivia Waite

  He paused when only her black stockings remained then knelt and traced reverent hands up the side of her calf. “God, Jones,” he murmured, “do you know how these have tortured me?”

  Hecuba squirmed beneath his regard, even in the moon’s mild illumination. “They’ve been darned half a dozen times over, and they’ve got ladders enough for all of Jacob’s angels,” she demurred.

  Rushmore merely laughed. “Perhaps,” he allowed, shaking his head as if this were the most trivial of objections, “but Jones, they’re yours.” His eyes were as bright as the moon when he looked up at her. “Do you think I’d somehow be more overwhelmed if they were brand-new, hand-stitched and straight from Paris?”

  Hecuba had no answer for that.

  Rushmore leaned over and pressed a kiss to her thigh. His fingers, meanwhile, insinuated themselves beneath the band of her garter. Slowly he slid the old silk down her legs, his dark head bent, his breath warm on her skin. A jolt of power went through Hecuba, a frisson of something potent and energizing.

  When she was naked, he looked up at her again with a smile. She reached to pull him up from his knees, but he stopped her, brushing her hands aside.

  She could feel that smile still curving his lips when his mouth reached her clitoris. He tongued her delicately, teasingly, his fingertips resting gently on her hips, holding her there as though ensorcelled. Slowly his tongue slipped deeper as he drank from her body, the dark rhythm he set spiraling through her causing her to spread her thighs wider to give him better access. He groaned and pressed closer, the white sliver of his shirt gleaming against the darkness.

  Hecuba reveled in every flick of his tongue and movement of his lips, but it soon became clear to her that this steady pace would make climax elusive and unattainable. She tightened her hands on the collar of his dark coat, pulling his head up from between her legs. His amusement was evident in the arch of his eyebrows and the quirk at the corners of his mouth.

  That mouth sparked some rebellious flame in her soul, stirred up by unsatisfied arousal and the determination not to let him have it all his own way. She sank down to the floor with him, straddling his trousered hips and thrusting her hands beneath the cloth of his black coat. Her mouth claimed his and kept him occupied while her hands pulled the coat from his shoulders, down his arms to his wrists. She arched her hips in a teasing stroke and felt him gasp into her mouth; at the same time, she twisted the fabric of the coat tightly in one hand, effectively pinioning his arms behind him.

  Rushmore realized what had happened and went still—except for his cock, which twitched even beneath the fabric layers that separated them.

  Hecuba smiled, though the shadows were deeper down here than they’d been when she was standing. She knew very well Rushmore could break her hold if he truly wanted to, but he didn’t. His every muscle was tensed, thighs taut beneath her, his breath a harsh sound against the soft night air. Hecuba’s pulse ticked slightly upward. This was new, and very interesting.

  She leaned in to brush her lips against Rushmore’s ear, while with her free hand she began unraveling the knot at his neck. “That’s two of your cravats I have now,” she said, pulling the linen free.

  “Where is the other?” Rushmore asked.

  “In my trouser pocket, wrinkling itself to death,” Hecuba said, her hand busy on the fine gold buttons of his waistcoat. She pressed her mouth to the side of his neck and admitted, “I didn’t dare to ask the servants to clean and press it.” He gave a low moan that turned to a gasp when she scraped him with her teeth. “What on earth would I be doing with a gentleman’s cravat?”

  “For one thing,” Rushmore said, low and intense, “you could tie it around my wrists instead of the coat.”

  Hecuba looked at his face, shrouded in darkness. “Would that please you?”

  “Would it please you to have me at your mercy?” he countered.

  Hecuba slid her hand down and squeezed his cock where it tented up from his trousers. Rushmore made a strangled sound as his head fell back.

  “Aren’t you at my mercy already?” she teased.

  In the darkness, with the light behind him, it seemed he moved more swiftly than humanly possible. In one breath he pulled his hands free of the coat and her grip, heaved her up from the floor and tumbled her onto the bed. Hecuba barely had time to gasp in surprise before she was pinned facedown beneath him. Another moment after that, he’d pulled the cravat from her clutching fingers and knotted it firmly around both the bedpost and her right wrist.

  A roaring filled her ears and the blood surged in her veins. Danger, she sang to herself and was surprised to feel an echo of that word throb between her legs. She could feel that greedy part of herself growing even wetter at the tension in her bound arm, the feel of the sheets against her bare breasts and the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck. It made her shiver deliciously.

  Experimentally she pushed herself up with her other hand, only to stop when her bare back met his semi-clothed chest. “You missed your chance to be in command,” he said, and, dear heavens, when he bit lightly at the back of her neck she felt it in every inch of her body.

  “I won’t be so lax in future,” she breathed. He chuckled briefly in response before a wash of cold air told her he’d moved away. A moment later she felt the second cravat—not around her other wrist, as she’d half expected, but encircling her left ankle. She tugged on her bonds and found that a limited range of motion was possible—if she moved lower on the bed, she could tuck both her knees beneath her, though the position required her to stretch her right arm to its full length.

  Fabric sounds caught her attention and Hecuba turned to watch over her shoulder as Rushmore began to shed his clothing. His black trousers fell away like husks from some late-blooming flower, his white shirt and smallclothes luminous in the silver light. Soon those garments too were cast away and he stood in nothing more than his own gleaming skin.

  Hecuba realized this was the first time both of them had been completely unclothed. But it was difficult in the low light to fix his image in her mind as intensely as she wanted to. “Could you do me a favor and light a candle, Rushmore?”

  “The prisoner should be wary of making requests,” he replied in low tones. “Every favor comes at a price.” Instead of reaching for the nearby taper, he walked to the fireplace and prodded the sleepy embers into a proper flame, his tall form a shadow against the ruddy light.

  Hecuba’s mouth went dry. Suddenly she was forcefully conscious of how many muscles it took for her body to pull in a breath. She felt every one of them seize and stiffen at the easy power and dark grace of her lover’s silhouette.

  With unhurried ease, Rushmore moved away from the hearth, and the shadow became a man once more. Firelight gilded the planes of his chest and the muscles of his flanks as he found a sheath and pulled it onto his cock. Hecuba’s fingers twitched with the remembered feel of him, hard and hot against her palm.

  Provokingly he stopped by the side of the bed, just out of reach of the hand she’d stretched out to touch him. “Oh no,” he teased. “You’ll have to be patient, Jones.”

  Hecuba tamped down a growl of frustration. “You have more than enough patience for both of us,” she said. “And you’re wasting the hours of the night.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted at her sharp tone, but he did not laugh. “It does feel like we’re perpetually running out of time, doesn’t it?” Hecuba steeled herself against the dismay in his voice, which was too near an echo of her own secret fears. He stepped behind her, where he could reach her but she couldn’t return the caress. Hecuba opened her mouth to protest again but was soothed when he threaded his fingers into her hair, pulling it free of its confinement and letting it cascade down her shoulders. His mouth followed, tracing a leisurely path on the skin of her back. Hecuba sighed, then groaned when one hand slid around her hips and his fingers found that throbbing, aching place where she needed his touch most desperately.

  Rushmore moved
behind her on the bed, knees to either side of her hips. His naked chest blanketed her, sending warmth through her every nerve and fiber. His hand never paused in its rhythm. “I could spend hours like this,” he murmured as she arched into the stroke of his fingers. “Teasing that lovely cunt of yours, toying with you, seeing just how damn wet and hungry you can be.” Hecuba’s left hand grasped his knee and held it, firm as an anchor.

  She could hear his smile as he continued. “Eventually I’d slide into you, inch by inch, drawing out every tiny mote of pleasure. Seeing how many times I could make you come, losing count and starting over again.” He slid one finger into her body and curled it just so. Hecuba gasped and bucked against him. Rushmore made a strangled sound in his throat and nipped at her shoulder then smoothed over the bite with a kiss.

  But the mask had slipped. All the teasing speeches in the world couldn’t hide the heaving breaths that shook him, or the racing of his pulse where his flesh met hers. Hecuba knew he was as close to the brink as she was. All she had to do was push him just a little.

  Without hesitation, Hecuba raked her nails over the skin of his thigh.

  Rushmore cursed and lost control.

  He slipped his fingers free and drove her forward and down, her bound left leg stretching taut, her right leg splaying wide. His weight kept her pinned, his breath hot on the back of her neck. Hecuba cried out as his cock pushed inside her, sliding along her inner walls, hitting that same spot his finger had found earlier. This—this—was what she’d needed. The deep drive forward, the long pull back, the way he sped up when her body clenched down on his shaft.

  Hecuba wrapped her bound right hand around the linen and held on tight.

  And then Rushmore gave a cry and surged forward, his cock throbbing, his every muscle rigid, choked sounds wrenched from his throat as he came, the warmth of his seed palpable even through the sheath. When he stopped shuddering he slid from her body and untied the cravats. Hecuba, empty and puzzled, turned to watch as he pulled off the soiled sheath. “I’m so sorry, Jones,” he said, shaking his head. “You were completely right—I moved too slowly and denied myself for too long.”

  Every bit of Hecuba’s body was still pulsing so she tilted her head at him and asked, “Do we have to be done?”

  Rushmore looked up at her, his eyebrows arched in surprise. “I suppose not,” he admitted as though the idea were a novelty. Hecuba’s legs shifted restlessly and his gaze sharpened. “Not at all, in fact,” he said, promise lacing his voice like poison in wine.

  And that was how Hecuba Jones found herself flat on her back in the bed, with Rushmore’s mouth hot and hungry on her cunt again.

  This was not the gentle, semi-worshipful experience from before. There was something fierce and feral about it, a long wild note that found its resonance and echo deep inside Hecuba herself. She arched her hips up hard from the bed and twisted her fingers in his hair, begging shamelessly for more. He responded by plunging two fingers into her channel while his lips closed around her aching clitoris. He held nothing back, and before she knew it her body was clenching and coming in endless, wrenching waves.

  Slowly she drifted back into herself, languid and glowing with satisfaction. Rushmore wrapped the blankets around them both and Hecuba curled lazily into the warmth of him. “Stay with me for a while?” he asked.

  “Just for a moment,” she agreed and closed her eyes against the fading firelight.

  Chapter 8

  Rosy light, warm skin and hair like fire—John filled his hands and pulled Hecuba smoothly on top of him. She smiled and mumbled something sleepy as she leaned down and kissed him, her fingers sliding down his chest, then lower, her smile as luminous as the morning sunlight...

  Morning. Something worrisome ate at the fuzzy edges of his thoughts, undermining his pleasure.

  A discreet knock sounded on the door—Vickery, the valet, punctual as ever.

  Both people in the bed came shockingly awake. Hecuba dove for her scattered clothing while John lunged for the door just as it began to swing open. He caught the corner and held it firm while the valet blinked owlishly through the six-inch gap.

  “Vickery,” panted John, “I must insist that you close your eyes.”

  “Of course, sir,” the man murmured and stood calmly with eyes screwed shut while Hecuba yanked on her shirt and trousers.

  Thank God his bedroom was only one story higher than the ground. John wrenched the window open and helped to lower Hecuba as far as he could before she leapt lightly to the garden path below. She took the time to flash him one mischievous grin before she vanished around the corner, toward the servants’ gate and the alley beyond.

  John was left behind like Rapunzel in the tower. He shut the window and, just in case, pulled shut the curtains. “Thank you, Vickery,” he said. “You may open your eyes again.”

  The valet shut the door behind him and began to lay out a set of clothing: buff trousers, red waistcoat and dark brown jacket, John was relieved to see. The valet’s former employer, the Marquis of Berthet, had been a confirmed dandy, and every so often John had to reject a color combination as too risky or eye-catching. He preferred to display bright hues in his paintings rather than on his person. “I did not realize that you had taken to hosting visitors so late, sir,” said Vickery while John pulled on socks and smallclothes. “Please do not hesitate to ask me if you should need refreshments on such nights. Your guest’s identity would of course remain a guarded secret.”

  John fumbled the shirt he was pulling over his head and had to fight his way through the neck. “Really?” he asked. A suspicion rose within him like smoke. “Was Berthet in the habit of hosting such entertainments?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t say, sir,” Vickery murmured.

  “So,” said the earl, “who is she?”

  John swallowed a mouthful of egg and goggled at his brother, who wore an irksomely knowing grin. “I beg your pardon?”

  Simon laughed and slid into the nearest chair at the breakfast table. “The woman who’s lately bewitched you of course. Don’t pretend there isn’t one.”

  John simply stared, fork tilting down in his slack fingers.

  Simon leaned closer to press his point. “One, you’ve barely ventured out of the house,—not to your club, not to the opera, not even to the homes of your bohemian friends. Even at last night’s dinner party you vanished before midnight. Two, despite this newfound domesticity, you look like you’ve forgotten how to sleep. Circles beneath your eyes, sentences trailing off unfinished, a constant air of distraction. Three, you’ve had paint beneath your fingernails every day for a fortnight.” The earl sat back in his chair, smugness rolling off him like mist. “It’s plain as a pikestaff,” he said. “You’ve found a muse.”

  John’s breath escaped him in a rush of relief. A muse—but not a lover. “I can’t tell you who she is.”

  The earl quirked one aristocratic eyebrow. “Because I wouldn’t approve?”

  “Because she wouldn’t approve,” John returned.

  The earl chuckled. “And now I’m imagining you in thrall to some ancient duchess: imperious, dignified, and sharp of tongue.”

  John had a blinding vision of Hecuba at sixty, clad in violet, glaring at someone with that narrow-eyed gaze of hers and pursing her lips in suspicion. That bright hair threaded with gray, her skin papered with lines, each one a testament to the experience of some thought, some moment, some deed. He ached to think he’d never see her like that. “Maybe someday.”

  An elbow in his side broke into his thoughts. “But more likely it’s someone a little more succulent, eh? Some luscious young tart pouting and preening while your cock all but punctures the canvas in front of you.”

  John pushed his plate away, his appetite abruptly gone. “It’s not like that,” he said, though he could feel a betraying flush warming his cheeks.

  Simon shrugged this denial aside. “It must be convenient to have such a means of seduction available to you—the rest of us
have to use shiny rocks and winning words to lure women into undressing. You just wave a paintbrush at them and the clothes vanish.”

  John ground his teeth together and managed not to respond. But he could feel a coldness creeping into his bones, washing away last night’s glow. For a moment he even thought that he could hate Simon for this—but the thought burned out before it was more than half-lit and left only ash behind.

  The earl stuck a piece of bacon in his mouth and chewed jauntily. “When will you show us the new paintings?”

  “Why would I show them to you, of all people?” John retorted. “You’ve hated every brushstroke of every painting I’ve ever done. You’ve disagreed with every goal I have as an artist.” He rose from the table with a barely controlled shove. “These are some of the best and most personal works I’ve ever done—why would I torture you with art you despise, and torture myself even worse by making room for your disdain?”

  He ignored the flash of regret on Simon’s face, and strode out of the room.

  When he heard the front door open and shut a few minutes later, he knew his brother had left the house on some social errand or other. Relieved, John hurried up the stairs to the attic. The morning sunlight was rosy and warm, and John desperately hoped it might chase away the melancholy that shadowed him.

  He prepared his pigments and removed his jacket, throwing a smock over his real clothes to forestall the wrath of Vickery. Then he dragged his easel closer to one of the windows, and set on it a canvas whose background was a swath of creased cream sheets and thick red curtains. It had always made him nervous to paint from memory rather than from life, but this time his brushstrokes were clear and confident. As though his hands knew what he needed even though his brain did not.