Romancing the Past

by Darcy Burke

  One rap meant something non-threatening: a blockage of the road, a problem with one of the horses or the carriage itself, and so on. Two raps meant military or gendarme. Three meant anyone else Joubert judged to be a possible threat—whether highwaymen or private retainers Etienne might have hired to search out Sabine. Four meant people who represented no threat. For options two and three, Joubert would wait several beats before tapping out the number of people, thereby ensuring that the signal for one military man could not be confused with the signal for two highwayman or private retainers.

  One rap.

  Shit.

  Thomas waited a beat to be sure Joubert did not amend the signal, but silence ensued.

  He breathed a small sigh of relief. There was almost no chance that a single officer was actively looking for Sabine. This was mostly likely a random encounter with someone who would have no idea who they were.

  But that didn’t mean it was safe for that officer to get too good a look at Sabine’s face or for the encounter to last any longer than strictly necessary. Thomas had to think of some way to prevent either from happening. The idea that came to his mind in those precious seconds before the officer reached the carriage door was unspeakably wrong, but he had no time to conjure a better one.

  As Sabine secured the bonnet beneath her chin, he told her, “Get on your knees in front of me, between the seats.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You will have your back to the carriage door so he can’t see your face. And you are going to pretend to be sucking my—” He broke off, searching for the right word to use in French when the word in his head was cock and he had no French equivalent for it and was not even sure Sabine would know if it he did. He finally settled on verge, which he thought was both reasonably clinical and common enough for her to understand.

  Her eyes widened. “Why would—?”

  He cut her off. “No time for questions now. Just work with me. With any luck, the officer will be so embarrassed at what he thinks he has interrupted that he won’t linger or wonder what you look like beneath that enormous bonnet.”

  She pressed her lips together, her features etched with confusion, but she scrambled off the bench and into position between his legs, which he spread to foster the illusion. Undoing the placket of his breeches, he freed his shaft, which was, thanks to nothing more than the thought that she was going to be pretending to suck him off, already half-erect. And his arousal made him feel even more of a cad for exposing himself to her like this, but if anything happened that caused the officer to notice that Thomas was still completely buttoned up, the ruse would be for naught and suspicion would ensue.

  “Bend over me and bob your head up and down,” he told her, his voice low and hoarse. “That should be enough to give him the idea.”

  If she was shocked by the sight of his penis, she hid it well, though he could see her rolling over the idea of taking him in her mouth with a combination of curiosity and skepticism. This did nothing to relieve his excitement; if anything, it exacerbated his problem. With a quick nod, she did as he asked, the brim of her bonnet shielding the side of her face and his exposed penis from the carriage door.

  He was expecting the knock, but he twitched anyway at the sound. “Rather busy in here,” he called out in a gruff tone. If they were lucky, that might be enough to send the man packing.

  They weren’t lucky.

  “Sorry, sir, but your coachman insisted I consult you,” a slightly high-pitched but unquestionably male voice replied. The handle jiggled, and then the door flew open. Into the opening poked the head of a man wearing the tall black hat characteristic of the Gendarmerie Nationale. He looked to be just out his teens, with a smooth, pale complexion and thick, dark eyebrows that almost met in the center of his forehead. His youth was, Thomas hoped, to their advantage, and indeed, when the officer took in the tableau he and Sabine had staged for his benefit, the young man’s cheeks reddened with embarrassment.

  Also, Thomas thought darkly, he was going to kill Joubert. What could the boy have been thinking to send the officer back here? If Thomas hadn’t been quick on his feet—or his arse, as the case might be—a member of the gendarme might very well be getting a damn good look at Sabine’s face at this very moment.

  These thoughts made it easy for Thomas to produce a suitably irritated glower to fix upon on the young officer. “What is France coming to that a man cannot teach his bride how to suck him off without interruption anymore?” he demanded querulously. “Hurry it up, then, man!”

  The officer’s mouth worked open and shut several times, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously before he managed to squeak out, “It’s the road, sir. The rains last night washed out the bridge about a mile on. You will have to take another route, but your coachman did not know which alternative you would prefer.”

  Thomas gritted his teeth. Sod that idiot boy. Could he not have got rid of the officer first and then consulted Thomas afterward?

  And then his eyes nearly rolled back into his head because Sabine chose that moment to gently wrap her hand around his cock and…holy Mary, mother of God…lick the crown. He shuddered, his thoughts instantly scattered as his shaft stiffened and expanded in her palm so that her grasp became firmer and even more stimulating.

  Christ, he was going to lose his mind. What was she thinking to touch him like this when he needed his wits about him?

  He tried to refocus on the officer, who was watching him with a mixture of fascination and apprehension, and said, “Very well, then. What are the options?”

  She slid her grip down to the base of his cock, and it was all he could do not to buck his hips against her hand in a silent entreaty for her to hand-fuck him. Instead, her tongue touched the underside briefly before her mouth closed over him.

  Oh, sweet heaven, just like that.

  What was he thinking? No, not like that.

  But there was no way he could tell her to stop what she was doing without spoiling the show, so he fixed his gaze on the officer’s mouth as the poor young man explained the situation. Thomas only got bits and pieces of the actual words, but the gist was that they could either go back seven miles and take a different road to the north or they could turn east at the junction before the washed-out bridge. Either option would take them close to fifteen miles out of their way.

  Which, coupled with the early stop last night due to the rain, would put them a full day off schedule to arrive in Le Havre, a thought he somehow managed to put together in spite of Sabine’s warm, wet mouth encompassing his swollen cock. Reflexively, he tilted his hips upward, pushing his shaft a little further between her lips, and then relaxed so that he slipped out again. She understood the unspoken direction—which he had certainly not intended to give but could hardly take back—and took over the effort for him. Her hot breath caressed his groin, an additional pleasure. An additional torment. The sweet tension of an impending orgasm coiled in his loins. If he didn’t stop her soon, he was going to explode in her mouth, and there was no way she would be ready for that.

  He needed to get rid of the officer, for more than one reason.

  “I will think it over,” he ground out. “Now, if you do not mind, close the door so my wife and I can complete our business.”

  The young man—whose embarrassment had not remotely abated—nodded and backed his head out of the door, banging the top of his hat against the frame so that he had to reach up with one hand to steady it before shutting the door behind him.

  As soon as he was gone, Thomas grabbed Sabine’s bonneted head and arrested her movements in a not-entirely-gentle fashion. “I am going to—” Damn it. He didn’t know if the word “come” had the same two meanings in French as it did in English. An English speaker of French would know what he meant, of course, but he wasn’t sure a native French speaker would or that Sabine would understand the second meaning even if it was the same. “I am going to spill my seed in your mouth if you do not stop.”

  At the words, she release
d him and turned her face up to his. Her irises were thin shards of deep blue surrounding black, bottomless pupils. “Would that displease you?”

  Hell no. He could only think of a few things that would please him more, and those were equally profane. “No,” he admitted, “but it would probably displease you, especially if you were not prepared for it.”

  God, if he came in her mouth right now, he would probably choke her with the force of his eruption.

  He hadn’t had anything but his own hand for company in almost a year, when the woman he’d been seeing in London—the young widow of an enlisted soldier who had died, not in battle, but of a mysterious stomach ailment—had announced she was moving back to Manchester to be closer to her family. Sarah Gardener was a beautiful woman and an enthusiastic bed partner, and he had liked her a great deal, but neither of them had held any illusions that they might fall in love and marry. That depth of emotion simply didn’t exist between them. Even so, he had initially felt rather heartless for missing the comforts of her body more than her companionship, but within months of her departure, he received a letter from her in which she announced she had met a lovely sheep farmer, fallen in love with him, and would be getting married by the end of the year. Apparently, she hadn’t missed his companionship terribly much, either. At least she had found a better replacement for his body than he had found for hers.

  Still kneeling between his legs, Sabine looked up at him with those wide, desire-dilated eyes and said, “I don’t think it would displease me at all. I think I would like that as much as I liked the rest.”

  Thomas’s breathing hitched, and it took all his willpower to deny her. To deny himself. “You know I need to talk to Joubert. Determine which route to take.” He slipped a hand under her arm and helped her up and back onto the bench beside him. “That was meant to be a ruse. I was not expecting you to actually do that.”

  Her mouth—God, her mouth, so recently on him, looked plump and slightly swollen, and it was all he could do not to force her head back down to finish what she’d started—quirked up at the corners, and her eyes followed suit. “I know, but I was curious. When you asked me to pretend to suck you…well, I was surprised. I did not know that was something a woman might do for a man, let alone that he might like it.” She glanced down at her lap, her cheeks coloring. “Or that she might like it, too.”

  Bloody hell. His cock, which had just begun to relax enough that he thought he could tuck himself back into his drawers and button his placket, leapt against his hand, swelled with renewed interest. He swallowed hard. “You should not say things like that at a time like this, or I might break my promise.” I might let you finish what you started.

  She tilted her head, a thoughtful expression putting an adorable little crinkle between her eyebrows. “Would you be breaking your promise, though? I may be a maiden, but I breed horses. I understand what is required to get a mare with foal, and I cannot imagine it is any different for humans. This…sucking your penis…” She seemed to roll the words around on her tongue, as if tasting them—or perhaps quite literally tasting him—and Thomas stifled a groan. “It cannot get me with child. I feel quite certain of that.”

  He forced his still-straining cock inside his drawers and began buttoning his fall with fingers that were none too steady. This talk was giving him ideas he knew he shouldn’t have.

  But she was right, of course. Sucking him off wouldn’t lead to pregnancy. Neither would using her hand to bring him to completion. And there were ways he could pleasure her, too. So many ways. They all flashed through his mind, the images vivid and carnal. His fingers strumming the crest of her sex. His tongue between her legs, stroking her, his fingers inside her pussy or perhaps her arse. And if she liked that—having his fingers in her arse—then perhaps she would like being fucked that way, too.

  The truth was, he could have her in every way but one without ruining her future.

  It would still be wrong. You will still be debauching the premiere’s daughter.

  With a shudder that was half self-loathing, half anticipation, he got to his feet and pushed his way out of the carriage. “We will discuss this later,” he told her before he went to talk to Joubert.

  Chapter 16

  Well, that had been…hmm…

  Sabine searched for a word that could adequately describe the riot of emotions and sensations she had just experienced and concluded there was no single one in the French language. Which meant there certainly wouldn’t be one in English, a language where a person couldn’t even call a breast by its true name.

  Her body vibrated with an electric combination of arousal and power and…yes, joy. Feeling Thomas’s penis stretch and stiffen in her hand and then in her mouth as though wakening from slumber had made her feel hotter, achier, and needier than their kiss had. She loved the way his skin there was soft and silky, like a newborn foal’s coat, but became thick and rigid as steel beneath that delicate exterior. The flesh between her own legs had swelled and throbbed in response until she thought she might go mad with the frustration of it, and yet, she would far rather experience that frustration than any other sensation in the world. Giving him pleasure—for there had been no mistaking the hitches in his respiration or the raggedness of his voice or the hardening of his shaft as anything other than signs of intense physical enjoyment—was, quite simply, fun. Also exciting, empowering, and so…wicked, but in the most glorious way.

  She wanted more of that feeling. And she was damn well going to have it now that she knew she could without risking any of the dreadful outcomes Thomas feared. She was going to suck his penis every night from here to England, and no one was going to stop her.

  Well, unless Thomas still refused. It would, of course, be wicked in an entirely inglorious way to force him to accept her attentions if he did not want them, but really, he had no good reason now that he had admitted such an activity could not result in pregnancy. Based on the way he had reacted when she put her hand and then her mouth on him, she thought she could bring him around to letting her have things her way if she was persistent enough. And Sabine was nothing if not persistent. Her Papa had always said she had a will of wrought iron.

  The carriage swayed as Thomas opened the door and climbed back inside. “We are taking the easterly route,” he said gruffly as he sat down beside her. “Even though it is a bit farther, I could not bear the thought of going back to that inn and having to eat that abominable stew again for lunch.”

  “I think that is…wise,” she agreed, remembering the stew with a grimace of distaste.

  “No guarantee that what we will get at the next stop will be any better, of course,” he went on, his words seeming to trip over each other in his rush to fill the silence. “But in this case, I think it is better the devil we do not know than the one we do. We will be a day late to Paris, but that would be the case either way, and I think good nutrition is important to keeping up a journey like this.”

  He went on in this fashion for several more sentences, remarking on the trivialities of the situation, and she realized with a start that he was…embarrassed. Well, that was curious, for she could not imagine what he had to be embarrassed about. She was certainly not embarrassed in the slightest. Not only had they managed to get rid of the gendarme officer quickly, which had been Thomas’s intention, but she had been gifted with a revelation of truly epic proportions. Men and women could pleasure one another in ways that had no repercussions.

  When he finally subsided, she placed her hand gently on his knee and announced matter-of-factly, “I would very much like to suck you until you spend your seed in my mouth. As soon as possible.”

  His leg twitched violently, and then he let out a short huff of laughter.

  “What is funny?” she asked suspiciously as the coach lurched forward.

  He shook his head. “I am, I suppose,” he said. With a sigh, he reached up and began untying her bonnet, his fingers moving with practiced care beneath her chin. When he pulled it off, he set i
t on the seat beside him and eased his body closer to hers so that the outside of their thighs touched. “I keep trying to do what I have been taught is right, instead of what I know will be good.”

  Her heart accelerated slightly. “And what is that?”

  Lifting her hand from his knee, he brought it to his mouth and laid his lips against her palm. “Letting you suck me until I spend. As long as you will allow me to do the same for you, of course.”

  Every nerve ending between her thighs went taut. The idea of him putting his head between her legs, pressing his mouth to her there… It was intoxicating. And yes, a little embarrassing. Perhaps she understood him better now. “You would want to…do that?” she squeaked.

  “Sweetheart—” he used the English word, but she caught its meaning despite her limited vocabulary, “—I would love to do that. I have been thinking of doing that, and a thousand other things just as wrong, since the day we met.”

  She let out a shaky breath. Her cheeks felt a little hot. So did the rest of her, come to think of it. “I did not know there were a thousand things people could do to pleasure one another.”

  “Perhaps I exaggerate,” he admitted with a shrug. “But there must be a hundred, at least. And I am sure I do not even know all of them. Some of those are things we cannot do, however.”

  “Like mating,” she clarified.

  He nodded. “You are correct. We cannot complete the act of love. And though I shudder to imagine the consequences if anyone ever found out what I am planning for us to do together—for if anyone did, you would be every bit as ruined and in need of marriage as if we had mated—what happens in France, in our room, in our bed, can stay in France and our room and our bed. If that is truly what you want, that is.”

  Her mouth went dry, because the tone in which he asked the question was so deadly serious. He was still giving her the chance to beg off, to change her mind. She licked her lips and swallowed. “It is.”