The Black Hawk sl-4

by Joanna Bourne

  She’d gone motionless, the way you do in an alley when there’s men hunting you. Or maybe like she was afraid she’d shatter apart if she wasn’t careful. “Are you saying no?”

  Not on your life. “Just pointing out some of the complexities. You’re an enemy agent, for one thing, which is a complicating factor of some magnitude.”

  He settled back on his heels, digging into the knot of his neckcloth, thinking. She’d been hurt so bad.

  He never understood the way some men treated women. Himself, he never got tired of the marvel of them. The sounds they made when they felt good. When you made them feel good. There was nothing in the world like it.

  Maybe they could outrun her ghosts. “I should have sense enough to let you be . . . but you’re so damn beautiful.”

  Twenty-one

  HIS KISS—THE FIRST ONE—WAS COOL ON HER FOREHEAD. It felt like he said hello to her body in this way. It reassured her.

  He leaned back. She saw that his eyes had gone vehement and dark, as if he deliberately laid aside a layer of civilization along with his neckcloth. He tossed it, without looking, up onto the chintz-covered chair.

  Three buttons held his shirt closed at the neck. He was fast, getting them undone. One button. Two. Three. She appreciated the speed. It would be best to get this over with as quickly as possible.

  He said, “You’re going to drive me mad. You know that?”

  “It is not my intention to—”

  “Well, it’s too late, innit? Set the damn cup down before you drop it.”

  She had been holding it protectively between him . . . and her. She put the cup down into its saucer on the hearth.

  He reached to cradle her chin in long, clever fingers. “Let’s try this.” He kissed her mouth.

  I do not like the kissing part. It’s not the worst, but I . . .

  She lost the thread of that thought as he nibbled upon her lips. Nip, nip, nip, traveling from one side of her lower lip to the other. He licked her upper lip as if he reveled in the shape of it against his tongue. Her mouth opened to him and he plucked at her lip with his teeth and sucked. He was not tentative.

  It tickled. No, not tickled. It was little shocks that made her want to turn away. Or move closer, somehow.

  She put her hand up to her face. Not to stop him. To touch . . . her mouth. His. The joining of the two.

  He had already drawn away.

  “Right.” He did not sound entirely calm. “All the parts in working order. We get our clothes off next. Give me a minute.”

  Some men liked to take off her clothing. Some wanted her to do it herself, while they watched. The fichu kerchief she wore, crossed in front, was tucked into her bodice. She eased one end free, touching the curve of her breast as she did so. Teasing. She had done this many times—

  “Stop it,” he snapped. “Just undress. And stop goddamned thinking about everything.”

  “You are very bad tempered. I do not stop thinking because you order it.”

  “Then think about me.” He unbuttoned his cuff and shook his arm so the sleeve loosened. He was scowling. “I’m going to risk getting kicked out of the Service, taking you to bed. You bloody well be here, body and soul, when I do it.”

  Body and soul. He wanted to touch both her body and her soul. No. That would not happen. That was not what she had planned.

  He pulled his shirt over his head in ripples of white linen, and came out, still frowning. He crumpled the shirt in his fist and tossed it behind him and stood up, making it one continual motion. He reached both hands down, wordlessly, to take her hands and pull her up to stand beside him.

  He skimmed his breeches down and kicked them away and he was naked. His cock was upright and large, which he continued to ignore. She had made many compliments to men in this regard. Now, when she might have spoken sincerely, she said nothing and resolutely looked elsewhere.

  He was the same brown everywhere. That was from being in Italy. She had seen the boys and young men, naked as fishes, swimming in the heat of the day, in the harbor between the boats or beside the bridge of a river, and envied them that freedom.

  He was so thin. The British gave him no peace and no rest. They used him as a courier when he was not set to more serious work. His ribs showed, each one separate and defined. The muscles of his belly, his shoulders, his arms, were stark as rocks jutting from a hill, smooth as peeled wood. He was a fierce and violent simplicity, like a force of nature. There was not the least softness upon him anywhere.

  She would be able to put her hands upon him. She could do this. She could do it now.

  She watched her own fingers draw the line of his collarbone. Warm skin overlaid the unyielding hardness of bone. The line of muscle in his throat was just as hard. His pulse beat very fast. She could see that in the valley at the base of his throat. She could feel that under her palm.

  His cock . . . She should stroke his cock. She thought of touching him and no horror descended.

  She felt empty inside. The fear was not there. She did not know what to feel instead.

  “I’m proud of that. We’ll admire it together, later on.” He nudged her in closer to him. Set his mouth against her hair and breathed in. “You smell of the fire. You smell . . . domestic-like.”

  “I made you tea. I am very domestic.”

  He talked more, rambling on about the cottage. He had stayed here for a month last winter, healing up from a fall. The year before that he’d learned to ride the damn horses in the stable at the great house. Doyle was teaching him to sneak through the woods like a bloody great rabbit.

  His voice poured warmth over the cold inside her. He knew what she was. Knew what she had done. There was no condemnation in him. He had done terrible things, himself.

  He kissed her eyelids, closing her into the darkness with him. He was there with her. In the heat and solidity of his body. In his breath on her face. In kisses on the corners of her eyes, that did not hurry. He went deep into her mouth. When men kissed her in that way, she must—

  “Stay with me, Owl.” His fingers closed tight around her face. “Me. Not the damned ghosts.”

  He tangled his fingers into her hair and held her while his mouth took hers. This time, he was not careful and gentle. He came to her, dark and overwhelming. He was the Mohawk of the alleyways when he kissed her. The street rat, not the gentleman. All the brutality of his nature, all that he controlled and denied and tried to tame, revealed itself.

  He said, “What do I taste like? Tell me.”

  “You are very stupid.”

  “Oh, I am. This is the stupidest thing I’ve done in a long time. Tell me what I taste like.”

  “You taste like darkness.” Cautiously, she stretched upward and explored that flavor in his mouth. That possibility. “And tea. And . . . oranges.”

  “You taste like ghosts.” Even while he kissed her, he was suddenly taking her clothes off, clever and fast as a man playing music on strings. “Stop negotiating with them. Leave ’em be. There’s just me. I want everybody else out of your head.”

  There was no more time for calculation or uncertainty. She had not felt the buttons fall undone, but he was pulling her sleeves down her arms, so it must have happened. She heard the slither of her stays unlaced. Felt them open and fall free. When he kissed her shoulder, he pushed the sleeve of her shift away with his lips. The undercurve of her neck, the top of her breast, the hollow behind her collarbone . . . everywhere he kissed was bare and sensitive.

  She had thought he would seduce her slowly. She had imagined a long, slow journey, dogged by nightmares. Instead she was whirled from one moment to the next. She stood, barefoot, with one of her breasts quite exposed and all of her filled with perplexity.

  “Right.” He pinched up a fold of the linen of her shift. “Next, I get you out of this.”

  She was shaking. Not fear. Not distaste. The trembling of a racehorse at the start of the course. “You are not so great a lover as your reputation.” She had not meant t
o say that. One did not say such things to men. “You hurry.”

  “No point giving you time to think. Do you please yourself? With your own hands?”

  “What do you mean?” But she knew what he meant.

  “In bed, alone at night, do you give yourself pleasure with your hands? Do you stroke yourself here?” He touched, lightly, to her shift where it covered her lower belly.

  He was without shame. She had not thought it was possible to make her blush.

  He said, “Good, then. We couldn’t do this if that nubbin between your legs didn’t make you happy.”

  One does not speak of such things. “You lack subtlety.”

  “I’ll get to it, one of these days. Subtlety. I got a whole list of things I plan to learn.”

  He was pulling her shift down her body, and his eyes were deep wells, mysterious and contained. He did no more than brush her skin when he took her last clothes away. So fast. So matter-of-fact. She might have been alone, removing her own clothing, except that she felt his fingers through the cloth.

  She was naked. He was naked and aroused. I am not ready for this. I need time to think. I need—

  Hawker lifted her from her feet, into his arms. She held on. There was only his skin beneath her hands and pressed to her side and holding her. The world swept by in a rush of confusion. He was the most real of all realities. Alive, solid, unyielding, sure of himself. He was perfectly, absolutely made of strength.

  Fear struck through her. Memory of—

  He did not carry her to the bed. He kicked the door of the cottage open. They were outside in the light, in the rain, in the sound of wind.

  Rain fell into her face, across her breasts and belly, shockingly cold. His body shielded her from the worst of it. Ten paces and they were under the loose cover of tree branches. Under the beech tree that stood in front of his cottage.

  “Don’t you dare change your damn mind. Understand me?” He set her to stand and pushed her bare back to the tree. The bark poked long rough lines and ridges against her. Her feet slipped on the cold, soft cushion of moss. She was warm only where their bodies met. Where Hawker was hot and dense against her belly and thighs.

  “Close your eyes,” he said. “Do it!”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Listen.” His voice fell like a stone through the buzz of rain. “What do you hear?”

  She heard sharp taps, thousands of them, becoming one muffled note that rose and fell with the wind. The rain rode that wind in sideways to where they sheltered, sneaking under the leaves, pelting Hawker’s bare back that protected her. Little drops worked their way through the leaves above and fell onto her shoulders.

  He said again, “What do you hear?”

  “I hear a madman who has brought me out to freeze in the rain.”

  “You hear rain. It’s making a wall around us. Nobody can get close. We’re alone.” His mouth closed over her mouth. He was heat and flavor and demand. His body was the only warmth in the world. “What do you smell? Tell me.”

  He crushed mint, carrying me here. I smell that. And rain. Cool, gray rain that is clean and washes everything away. “I am cold and you are entirely mad.”

  “But you’re with me, aren’t you?” Knuckles persuaded her chin upward till her mouth was an inch from his. “Every freezing inch of you is here with me. Kiss me back. It’s your turn.”

  Rain slanted in past him and hit her face with little cold darts. Drops slid down her forehead and cheeks, into her mouth.

  He said, “Don’t think about it. Just do it.”

  When she kissed him, he tasted like rain. She sucked it off his tongue and his teeth. She drank him in. A column of energy built in her body, beginning where their mouths joined, that spun and twisted inside her.

  Still kissing, he muttered, “Oh, yes. My God, yes,” and bit down on her lips. Response jerked inside her, pulled her loose of all control. She could feel herself shaking.

  “What do I taste like?” he demanded into her mouth. His hands took her breasts, shaping them, gentle, gentle across the nipples. He brushed them with the side of his thumbs and her blood jangled in her veins.

  “Rain.” It came out a whisper. It was hard to get her breath. She put her arms around and him and pulled close.

  His voice. “Taste me. Be here, with me.”

  She tasted soap on his lips and the stubble of his chin. Harsh soap. No perfume. Not like the others. He was compounded of simple flavors—tea, rain, soap, smoke, flame.

  Under everything, she smelled Adrian himself. She had not once imagined the smell of his skin. It dragged her to him, like fingers pulling at her skin. She stretched upward and filled her mouth with his hair. Set her teeth into the texture of it and tasted. Sucked the rain from it.

  He nuzzled her aside to get to her ear, biting, licking, filling her mind with his breath. “Feel this,” he said. “And this.” Somehow his lips, his teeth, found her breast with its goose bumps and the pucker of cold. So sensitive. He warmed her nipples with his tongue. A hum, deep in his chest, appreciative, vibrated on her there. The words, “So good,” were in there somewhere. The hint of his teeth sent frantic, nervous energy to pluck between her legs.

  She squirmed with it. Not away from him. Toward him. His hands spread wide on her ribs, to hold her. His arms hardened to steel. He lifted her off her feet and slowly let her slide against him as he brought her down to earth.

  They were slick with the rain, chilled, almost shivering. But there was no cold where they were together. His cock was the center of all that heat, hard and insistent on her belly.

  A man. The edges of her nerves flicked and twisted like leaves in a high wind. He was very much a man. He would—

  “None of that.” He lifted her upward again. Let her glide with agonizing slowness down the architecture of his body. A thousand shocks pricked where every part of her was against every part of him. Surface to surface. One to the other. Complexities interwoven.

  He said, “Look at me. Who am I, Owl? Who’s here with you?”

  “’Awker.” His name was a talisman. Hawker did these things to her. Rain fell in her face, washing everything away. All the past. All other hands, other men, all the smudges on her soul. The dark cloud of them dissolved, and the rain carried them away. Ghosts, washed away. Gone. Leaving her clean.

  Hawker was real. Nothing else. She gripped her hands on his shoulders and leaned to him. Yes. She opened her legs around him, to hold him to her, to make her warm.

  Cold roughness at her back. More kisses to her breasts. She was gasping now. His hands soothed downward over breast and belly till he stroked between her thighs, then upward to the joining of her legs. Skillful and sure, he found the fold there and touched inside. She cried out.

  “Just my hand, giving you pleasure. That’s all. You and me. Pour le plaisir.”

  Him, touching her. Only pleasure. Dark, secret pleasure, like the night. Dark fire. She rocked against his hand.

  “I want to be inside you,” he said. “I can’t hold out much longer. You ready for this?”

  Anything. It did not matter, if only he would keep touching her. She nodded once, jerkily.

  He slipped his hands around her. Brought her to him. At the end of the long caress of his skin against her skin, he was inside her.

  They hurt me there—

  He bit down hard on her earlobe, and she lost the thought. Rough bites to her lips tore every dark memory away before it took hold. He was a storm contained in a body. He swept over her. He kissed deep and she whimpered into his mouth, overwhelmed.

  He thrust. The pang of it shot through the tension inside her. She was the center of a thousand sensations. Shock upon shock as he eased outward. Entered again slowly. Fully.

  He was still talking to her. She didn’t try to understand the words, only heard the tone of his voice. Determined. Unrelenting. His hand found her. Was between them. Caressed, so softly, so skillfully, rhythmic, following her as she twisted and gasped.

&nb
sp; Faster now, he thrust deep, driving against her. She tried to climb him, while her legs slipped and slid on his thigh. She throbbed and could not escape, she was so unbearably open. Did not want to escape. Offered herself and gloried in it. Heat swept through her, down every pathway of her body, sweeping decision and fear ahead of it.

  She dug her fingers into his back. Opened her mouth and bit his neck. Braced her feet on the ground, arched backward, and drove herself toward what he gave her.

  He was everything she needed. Unceasing. Steady. Sure of himself. He knew exactly what to do. She released the last restraints in her mind and trusted him.

  She was seized and tossed by the climax. Grabbed and shaken as by a great fist. Inside, she closed around him again and again, and every time was a new beat of pleasure. She heard herself cry out in a sound like pain.

  He was pleasing himself now, with rough, quick thrusts inside her. Absorbed. Drinking his own pleasure. Lost in her.

  He has done so much for me.

  She gave back to him, as she knew how to do. Rose to reach for him. Took his hair strongly with her fingers and pulled his mouth to hers. Licked, teased, played with his mouth. Used all her knowledge upon him. Gloried that she knew so much.

  Below, she clenched herself around him, where he was within her. Squeezed him tightly. She knew the muscles to use. Had practiced and practiced. She contracted against the hardness inside her.

  This, she could give him. This, she knew how to do.

  But this time it was no indifferent service. This was beyond words different from anything before. She had not known, could not have imagined, how the tension twisted and exploded. Joy came from everywhere and gathered there, where she held him. She tightened and tightened and felt him move and was struck with ecstasy. Breathless with it. Dizzy.

  He was no careful and controlled expert. Not any longer. He had become wild, pounding into her. He was beyond thought. Mad. Consumed. A cry rasped in and out of his throat. His body shocked and stiffened.

  His last thrust withdrew. She felt him shudder in her arms and spill himself against her thigh.