Finally he broke contact. She looked as dazed as he felt. He wanted one more thing from her. He tipped her chin up with his index finger and bent down, flicking his tongue along her throat and collarbone, tasting her fresh, slightly soapy, slightly salty flavor along with that of his own damnation.
“Say ‘Please, Jack,’ ” he whispered.
“Jack.” There would be triumph in his gaze. She didn’t know why, she was beyond thinking, but she’d expected triumph. He wanted to hurt her, that much was clear. But there was no triumph. There only was pain. He flinched at the sound of her entreaty.
“Please.” She bowed her head, feeling stupid and frantic and desolate, struggling to give him whatever he wanted so he would end this torture … for both of them.
He lowered his head to her bare breast and tongued her areola with deep lush strokes, finally taking the nipple into his mouth and suckling until she was lost in the rhythm. His head shimmered like molten gold against her white skin. Even the cool silky texture of his hair chafed her oversensitized skin.
“Please.” Her body felt as if she were staked in the center of a delicious conflagration, conscious thought burned to an ash, her very will swirling away in a maelstrom of want. “Jack?”
“I’m here.” His hands and mouth flowed over her, touching areas she didn’t have names for, moving with shattering intimacy and devastating knowledge. And when he took them away she thought she would dissolve, sucked down into an endless vacuum of need.
“Don’t stop!”
“I’m not going to stop,” he reassured her. He sounded almost gentle. Ever since he’d begun this, though his touch had been excruciatingly gentle, his tone had not.
He lifted her skirts, bunching the crumpled red-violet silk around her waist, exposing her to his impartial gaze. He looked up.
No. Not impartial. Something burned deep behind the glacial coolness, like the fluid heart of a volcano beneath a lake of ice.
“Why are you so damnably beautiful?”
He couldn’t tease her anymore, couldn’t torment her with promises.
He could.
He lowered his head between her thighs and harrowed her a thousand ways. Each flick of his tongue stoked the fire that threatened to consume her. Each brush of his lips turned pleasure into exquisite pain. Everything he did to her promised, none satisfied. Her breasts felt swollen, her nipples ached. Every inch of her flesh felt abraded and tender.
She bit her lip. She did not want to sob. If she had any pride, any decency, she’d get up. She’d leave. But her limbs were liquid and impotent; all her energy was concentrated on what he was doing to her with unimaginable skill.
That was what this was all about, wasn’t it? she thought. A demonstration of his power and her powerlessness.
“Give in to it, Anne.” Sorrow laced his seductive voice. Sorrow and regret. “You aren’t accountable.”
His tongue flickered over the threshold to her body, swept within the folds of her femininity, and touched the heart of the ache. A small strangled sound rose from somewhere. Her own throat, she realized dimly.
His breath was warm, a sigh that stimulated. “Just take the pleasure and leave the rest behind.”
But that wasn’t what she wanted. That had never been what she’d wanted, despite what he thought. She wanted him. She tried to find the breath to form words between her shallow pants.
“Please.” She reached down and grabbed fistfuls of his silken hair and forced his head up. He stared up at her with the face of a fallen angel.
“Be there with me, Jack,” she pleaded. “Don’t make me do this alone.”
He wouldn’t be able to do it.
One look into her stricken face and he felt himself breaking apart, his every intention destroyed and shredded in the face of her need. No matter what he knew, how many deceits and crimes he could prove in a thousand ways by a thousand witnesses, he loved her.
His heart had performed an act of sedition, a revolt against reason, a mutiny against a lifetime dedicated to his own survival. He was powerless. She’d only to offer the plea of obsidian eyes and he shattered before her.
“Please,” she whispered again.
He groaned and surged to his feet, scooping her up into his arms. Her body was as light and tempered as an épée. Yet strong as she was, he could kill her without any effort. Her fragility confounded him. Her strength abashed him.
He carried her the few feet to the desk and lowered her to its edge. She clasped the edges of his torn shirt and peeled it from his shoulders. She stroked his arms and his chest with a shaking hand, as if she were afraid he would stop her and she needed to collect as many sensations as quickly as possible.
She needn’t have worried, he thought, his mouth twisting. He wouldn’t stop her if a gun were held to his head.
He pushed her bodice down around her waist, a little too rough in the execution of the act, tearing the sleeves. A little eager, Jack? he taunted himself. He needed to go slowly, to be gentle. He had to make it good for her.
Lord, he should be used to restraint by now. He’d become a disciple to perpetual arousal, disciplined to months of unappeased longing. It didn’t seem to matter.
She touched him, her fingers fumbling inexpertly at his trousers—sweet agony-dealing incompetence—and closed about his erection with unskilled ardor. Her touch unleashed upon him a torrent of sensation.
“Jack,” she whispered, nearly undoing him. Her eyes were closed. The pale lids looked brushed with light, like a mist of pearls. “Jack?”
There was that lost sound again. He knew better than to believe in it. But there was nothing left for him to believe in and, God, at least he could choose his illusion.
“I’m here.”
He hooked her legs around his waist, planing his palm down the long, smooth line of her thigh and calf to the delicate arch of her foot. She wriggled, trying to get closer, desperate for the climax.
“Please, Jack.”
When had the words meant to punish her become a benediction?
He rucked up her skirts, cupped her firm, rounded bottom in his hands, and lifted her.
Her arms twined about his neck, pulling his head to meet hers. Her body shuddered, raked with need. He reached between them to give her the end she sought.
Her eyelids drifted open. Beautiful eyes. Tragic eyes. “No!” she whimpered. “Please, Jack. With me.”
His mouth came down on hers and he enveloped her in his arms, holding her body as close as he could—breast to breast, belly to belly, each inch of flesh struggling to absorb her.
“Jack?”
“I’m here.” There was nothing he would deny her.
And then he was inside her, drowning in her embrace.
He moved with violent elegance, a big man, a strong man. She clung to him, absorbing his thrusts, passion tumbling her like a pebble caught in the ocean’s undertow. Wave after shattering wave rolled through her body, each one pitching her higher than the last.
“Jack?” She sought him now, needed him now more than ever. She clung to the anchor of his big body. Pleasure seared her. Not yet there … not yet …
“Please, Jack!”
“Anne.” Her name on his lips finished her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Anne rolled over in the bed and opened her eyes. She was alone and the perception left her bereft. She was in Jack’s room.
She recalled her shattering climax and the slow spiral back from ecstasy. Three times the entire cycle had begun anew with the touch of his lips. Finally exhausted, finally sated after years of thirst, she’d drifted on a warm sea of languor while strong arms had cradled her and the sound of a heart beat steadily beneath her ear.
Too exhausted to open her eyes, she’d murmured a protest when he’d lain her on the bed. The last thing she remembered was the warm wall of Jack’s naked chest beneath her head and the soft fur covering his chest tickling her lips.
She wanted to see Jack. Now. She had to see him. S
he believed she—her brow furrowed in an expression of pain—she loved him.
A sliver of light outlined the single window. She raised herself up on her elbows and the thick blanket slipped from her shoulders. Cool air streamed over her bare flesh. She shivered and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
A dress hung neatly over the end of the bed. Hastily she donned the soft wool gown and had just finished rolling her stockings on when there was a knock.
“Madam?” a muted male voice on the other side of the door called.
“Yes?”
“The colonel said as how you’d need breakfast. I brought it.”
“Oh.” She slipped on a shoe. “Will he be joining me?”
“No. He’s gone.”
She slipped the other shoe on and stood. “When will he be back?”
“Didn’t say.” The man sounded impatient now. “Shouldn’t expect the colonel, if I was you. You’d waste a good part of your life if you did.”
Jack had left her. Well, what had she thought? As much as her body pleased him, there could be nothing else of her that he would want. “Come in,” she said listlessly.
The handle turned and Griffin backed into the room carrying a tray laden with food: steaming, fluffy biscuits and a jar of honey, fragrant rashers of bacon and fried kidneys, a pair of boiled eggs and a pot of coffee. A dark shape darted between his legs, nearly upsetting him.
It was the gray cat from the park. Jack had given her a home after all. The sight of the small, undernourished feline filled her with unaccountable gladness.
“Ah, she’s dear,” she exclaimed as the little cat approached her with fey and unwise confidence. It butted its tiny head against her skirts and slithered sinuously around her ankles. “What’s her name?”
“No name,” Griffin said gruffly, setting the tray down on a table before the hearth. “Just ‘Cat.’ ”
He held a chair out for her. Gladly, she took it. She’d not eaten much in days. Her mouth watered. She broke open a biscuit, slathered it with honey, and had devoured half of it before she realized that Griffin still stood there—like a guard.
She set the partially eaten biscuit on her plate. “Am I allowed to leave?”
“No, ma’am,” he said impassively. “The colonel hasn’t changed his orders since yesterday.”
“The colonel.” She cracked an egg against the side of her plate. The gently cooked yolk wobbled in the center.
“Aye, ma’am.” The Scottish burr did little to mask his animosity. “Your husband, such as he is.”
“You’re not a valet or a butler, are you, Griffin?” She scooped out the rich, golden yolk and plopped it on her teacup saucer.
“No, ma’am.”
“Where are the servants?” She set the saucer on the floor. The gray cat darted from under her skirts and settled like a tiny glutton over the plate, noisily devouring the egg.
Griffin clasped his hands behind his back. “The colonel doesn’t employ many except the maid and Cook. No need for more. No need for a valet.”
“Why is that?” she asked.
“The colonel doesn’t own a house. Or carriages. Or horses. Or anything besides the clothes on his back, for that matter.” His pleasant smile related anything but pleasantness. “You’ve not married a man of property this time, madam.”
“I see.” Jack owned nothing. The implication troubled her, but she couldn’t identify just what it implied or why it bothered her. “Where does he live when he isn’t in town?”
“Wherever he’s sent.”
“Sent?” she echoed.
“Wherever his skills are most useful.”
Terrible things. The words spun through her thoughts. She reached for her half-finished biscuit and thought better of it. She’d lost her appetite.
“What skills are those?”
The smile hardened on Griffin’s face. “Whatever no one else has the guts to do, whatever no one else can do. Whatever, almost certainly, will get a man killed.”
She couldn’t seem to take a deep enough breath. “Who does he do these things for?”
“Jamison, mostly,” Griffin said without expression. He bent over the tray and dusted the crumbs into the napkin. “You done here, madam?”
Sent by his father?
She’d realized before that Jack was a stranger to her but not to what extent. “What sort of man sends his own son into one potentially fatal venture after another?”
“A monster, madam.” He straightened and eyed her with ill-concealed amusement. “Nice family you’ve married into, ain’t it?”
“Why does Jack do it?” The words were out before she could recall them.
“Because that’s what he’s been trained to do, ma’am. That’s what he is, that’s what Jamison made him. He took that boy out of a workhouse.” With each sentence his voice grew thicker and his expression grew harder. “He took him and set to tempering him in the furnace of his own blasted heart. He set his hammer to him and struck each soft part of that child until nothing soft remained. And when he was done”—he stopped, his lips compressed into a line of anger that only the need to speak could pry open—“when he was done, he’d wrought himself a weapon to set at the throats of his enemies.”
His words struck at her with the force of a heart blow. Dear God. That poor child. That poor little boy.
“That’s not the worst Jamison did to him.”
She swallowed and shook her head in negation, against Griffin’s revelation or against Jamison, she could not say.
“He made the boy think he was damned. Consigned to hell for the crime of having been born. The colonel believed it just as strongly as you and I believe there’s earth beneath our feet. I’m not sure he still doesn’t.”
“Why would Jamison do that? Why would you do that to your own child?”
“Because he could. With a man like Jamison that’s all the reason you need.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, wanting to stop her ears against any further horror. “Why?”
He didn’t answer her, only fixed her with a black look and went on. “The colonel isn’t a devil. He saved my life and the lives of four other men, men he didn’t even know, willing to sacrifice his own to do it.”
He moved closer to her, his voice intimate, his eyes hard.
“We were all working for Jamison then,” he said. “Not that we knew it. We gathered information on the inside, information against Napoleon’s troops, relaying it through different channels back to London. We got caught”—he shrugged—“and the Frogs made plans to string us up as spies. Jack heard about it and he offered them a trade: His life for ours.”
Griffin smiled. “Oh, they leapt at the chance, let me tell you. Jack Seward had been a thorn in their sides since day one. There was a reward on his head that would have ransomed a prince.” The pride in his voice made her flinch.
“So they agrees to terms and Jack has it worked out that they can’t crib on the deal, and in he walks and out we walks.”
“What happened next?” she asked.
“They hung him.” The insouciance disappeared from his voice. “They hung him. We couldn’t get through that damned front gate fast enough. One hundred fifteen men against twenty and we couldn’t bleeding make it through fast enough.” He stared at her as if she held the answer to that mystery and deliberately withheld it.
“Why?” he demanded. “They knew they were outnumbered. They planned to surrender all along, and yet they strung him up anyway. Didn’t you ever wonder where your husband got his interesting ‘accent’? For two bloody minutes he hung there before I cut him down.”
His teeth bared in anguish. Only the sound of her own shallow breath filled her ears.
“Why am I telling you this?” he threw back her question. “I’m telling you as fair warning. Jack Seward has somehow managed to hold on to his humanity. There’s something decent in him that his father couldn’t kill, couldn’t touch, no matter how hard he tried.
�
��I think you could, though,” he said, his eyes hardening on her. “I don’t want anything more taken from that boy. And if you do, ma’am, I’ll kill you myself.”
Ever since Griffin had hurled down his threat and walked stiff-legged from the room, Anne had been beset by horrifying images: a man choking on the end of a rope, a boy brutalized by an adult’s mad schemes.
Dear Lord, to call what Jack had lived through “childhood” was an abomination.
Fate or chance or mad design had wed her to a stranger, and no matter how short-lived she knew this marriage was fated to be, she wanted it. She wanted it for as long as she could hold on to it. And Jack’s past held the key to her future.
She moved restlessly about the room. The gray cat lying on her pillow watched her with knowing golden eyes. She held back the heavy curtain, peering anxiously outside. A grim specter flashed through her mind: Jack, hurt and alone, lying in an alley.
That way lay madness. He wouldn’t be hurt. Far more likely he’d dispatch anyone sent against him as easily as he’d dealt with that ruffian last night.
She let the curtain drop and looked around the room. For the first time she realized how lacking it was in personal possessions. On the bedside table lay a short stack of books. A tortoiseshell brush and comb occupied the marble-topped dressing table along with a neat, unpretentious shaving kit. A few pieces of good, moderately expensive jewelry lay inside a velvet-lined box: several stick pins and a set of ivory collar stays. On the wardrobe shelves were stacked well-cut, unexceptional clothes.
There was nothing else that proclaimed the character of the room’s occupant and when these few items had been packed away, there would be nothing to suggest Jack had ever lived here at all.
When Jack left her would he carry any sign of their association? Would she affect him, or was she like this room—a way station in his life, another empty room he left behind?
The idea plagued her and she fought it as an unworthy thing. She would carry the memory of Jack for the rest of her life. And she wanted him to remember her as more than just a thief and a liar and a good tumble in bed. She wanted to be important to him. She would not examine why.
All Through the Night Page 22
