Price of Desire

by Goodman, Jo

  She nodded slowly. “I thought that when no one came for me quickly that the Romneys may have taken it upon themselves to protect me. It never occurred that there might be another reason for their silence.” She searched Griffin’s face. His expression held no urgency that she accept any of the things he’d told her. She was free to examine what he’d said, free to discredit or embrace all of it. He had no compelling need to convince or coerce her. It was enormously liberating and unlike anything in her experience.

  “What is to be done now?”

  “Nothing except wait on the confirmation that the man you thought was Rawlings is indeed the same gentleman found hanged at university. It ends there, Olivia. It must. For everyone.”

  She understood what he was saying. Whether the hanging was coerced, done by his own hand, or staged to hide evidence of a murder, the inquiry ended with the fact of his death. “The identity of this man, that is what Mr. Gardner is trying to establish?”

  Griffin nodded. “He is engaged in a search of the London hells, looking for the foursome who appeared here. He has a description such as I was able to give him, and he expects to be successful. The four of them are bound by what happened that evening, and it makes them easier to find than if they’d scattered.”

  “You have done so much,” she said softly. “Given so much.” How had she not known? she wondered. How had she not known from the very first?

  She lifted one hand and laid it along the side of his face. Her thumb made the lightest pass down his scar. “I do love you, you know.”

  His smile was gentle. “So you have come to it at last.” He turned his head and caught the heart of her palm with his lips. He pressed his kiss, then folded her hand around it. “That is quite something indeed.”

  “It is good of you not to be smug.” She felt as if what she held in her fist had substance. She settled it between her breasts. “It is disconcerting how often you are right about a thing.”

  “I am going to treasure you said that and keep it close for all the times I am wrong.”

  Olivia drew down his head and raised hers a fraction. “Will you have me now, Griffin? I think I should like that very much.”

  Their mouths closed that infinitesimal gap. Heat blossomed the exact moment their lips touched, and their need was mutual and immediate and powerful.

  Olivia tore at his stock and linen until she had her hands splayed across his chest. Her fingers curled a fraction, and she lightly scored him with her nails. His flesh was warm and taut and responsive. He anticipated her touch, prepared for it, and sucked in a breath just as she would have dragged her hands across his flat belly. Her fingers dipped unerringly into the small space he gave between his abdomen and his trousers.

  He groaned against her mouth as she clutched him. His fingers fumbled with the fastening to his fly. She released him long enough to deftly manage the thing herself, then took him in hand once again. He was hot and hard and thick in her fist. She could feel the coursing of his blood, the steady pulse that matched the one in his throat and was set to the beat of his heart.

  Griffin caught her hand and held it still. “Not yet. Not just yet. I want…God, Olivia…you can’t…” He covered her mouth hard with his as she squeezed her fingers ever so slightly. He throbbed heavily in her fist. He pushed his tongue deep in her mouth, ground his mouth against hers, then ground his hips equally hard.

  Olivia arched, pushed herself against him, dug one heel into the mattress for purchase, and all but slipped under his skin. There was a brief struggle, and for a time they were equally matched, but she lost ground gradually as he drugged her with long, slow, deep kisses that left her boneless and pinioned under him.

  She looked up at him, her darkening eyes vaguely unfocused, her lips swollen and damp. Her wrists were caught in his hands and held in place on either side of her head. Odd, but she did not feel as if she’d lost, and the gradual appearance of her slightly wicked siren’s smile underscored her satisfaction with the turnabout in their play.

  Griffin gave her wrists a little shake that only had the effect of deepening her smile. “You are maddening,” he said, his throat tight of a sudden. “And I thank God every day for it.”

  That pleased her, for she hadn’t the least idea how she might go about being anything else. The knowledge that he wouldn’t ask it endeared him to her, and she thanked him in her own way. To the extent that she could move under him, she did so. The press of his body on hers made it provocative in the extreme. “You will not make me wait overlong, will you?”

  “I should,” he whispered. “But it will kill me.” He bent his head, kissed her again, ran the edge of his tongue under her upper lip and sipped. He made a feast of her mouth, then placed kisses at the corner of it. He dipped his head and found the curve of her neck and shoulder. His teeth caught her skin, bit down gently, worried it, then laved it as though licking a wound. Her whimper, the hitch in her breathing, provoked him to do more of the same.

  He released her wrists, but only because he needed his hands to open her robe. He fairly dragged it off her body, then applied himself to the problem of her nightgown.

  The thin, delicate batiste was a modest barrier at best. Griffin made damp circles at the tip of her breast. The pink aureole was visible through the fabric. The nipple rose like a bud. He took it between his lips and sucked.

  Olivia’s fingers plowed through his hair, folded, and held fast. Slender ribbons of heat curled in her belly. She closed her eyes, squeezed them, really, and felt nothing so much as the rhythmic tug of his mouth on her breast. She arched, wanting more, still more, and he frustrated her by moving his attention to her other breast and beginning again.

  Her hands slipped out of his hair and found his shoulders. When he lifted his head, she tore at her gown herself and made a knot of the ribbon that closed the neckline. He had the nerve to laugh, though the sound of it was so darkly wicked that she was aroused by it rather than offended.

  “Let me,” he said, pushing her hands aside. His fingers were only marginally more skillful than hers, but the frustration of the exercise merely added to the heat. He spread the material wide, laying her breasts bare to the glow of the candlelight and the gleam in his eye. “Touch yourself.”

  Olivia’s mouth parted, but no sound emerged. The tip of her tongue appeared, and she licked her lips.

  “Go on,” he whispered. “Touch yourself.”

  She lifted one hand, quite uncertain it was done of her own volition, and slid it gently across her right breast. The budding nipple caught in the vee between her index and middle finger. The touch of her own hand excited her. The sight of it excited him more. She closed her fingers gently around the nipple and tugged and knew a corresponding tug in her womb. He pushed himself against her then, rubbed his cock in the cleft of her thighs.

  Her fingertips grazed her flesh, circled her breast, and finally cupped the underside and offered herself up to his mouth. She bit into her own lip when he took it, suppressing all but a mewling cry at the back of her throat.

  He imagined the taste of a sugared rose, the petal softness, the sweetness of dew. He felt the break in her breathing, the change in the tension of her slender frame. Her head was pressed back into the pillow, her chin lifted and her neck arched. Her throat worked convulsively.

  He thrust against her, the sheer folds of her nightgown taking the place of a virginal barrier. She was as deliciously frustrated by it as she was aroused. He gave her the hot suck of his mouth again, and this time he tore the shudder from her body and a cry from her throat.

  He made neither of them wait now as he lifted just enough to yank at the hem of her nightgown. She scrabbled at it with as much purpose as he until it was bunched at her hips. Her thighs parted, knees lifted, and she cried out a second time as he pushed himself into her.

  Olivia’s hands slipped under his drawers and palmed his buttocks. He was seated in so deeply that she knew nothing but the heavy fullness of him pressing against her. He was still
now, as she was also, and they held themselves in just that manner until their breathing calmed.

  “Go on,” she said, nodding faintly. “You should not be made to wait, either.” And to make certain he did not, she contracted around him, squeezing as she’d done earlier with her fist. This was far more complete, infinitely more intimate.

  Not proof against her heat or her urging, Griffin began to move. In moments his need outstripped his calm, and he rocked them both to the edge of crisis and then beyond it.

  Olivia was aware of Nat’s grave regard across the small table that separated them at breakfast. Griffin was still soundly asleep on the floor below, but Olivia did not think his absence had anything to do with Nat’s curious study of her. The child was absently fingering one of the tin soldiers that he’d placed around the butter dish, and as the soldier had his bayonet aggressively thrust forward, she wondered if it was the same fellow who’d stabbed her foot the night before.

  “What is it, Nat?” she asked. “Have I grown horns, a third eye? I am no stranger to your table, so what is it that has caught your attention this morning?”

  He stopped fiddling with the soldier but didn’t reach for his spoon. His porridge had already grown cold. He shrugged.

  “Nat,” she cajoled gently. “You may say anything. Do I have crumbs on my chin? A cocoa mustache?”

  A smile came and went as he shook his head. “You look that same,” he said, “but different.”

  “Do I?” As an explanation it was not in any way precise, yet Olivia thought she knew precisely what he meant. For her, though, it went more deeply than appearance. She’d awakened this morning the same, yet different. Her reflection in the mirror above the washstand had revealed nothing to her, but the boy across from her was perhaps more accurate than a looking glass. “I might be different,” she said. “It’s a different day, after all.”

  He tipped his head to one side, nodded, and began swinging his legs under the table as he picked up his spoon. “Your face is soft.”

  “Oh.” Olivia took a bite of toast. “How is it usually?”

  Nat used his spoon like a shovel and dug a hole in his porridge. “Just different. Awake.”

  There was an apt description. She’d gotten very little in the way of rest in what was left of the night. Every time Griffin reached for her she went to him eagerly, and when he swore he would never be able to move again, she was pleased to show him how wildly wrong he was. She supposed she did look soft and sleepy, though having a yet-to-be six-year-old child remark upon it was disconcerting.

  “Did you come to my room last night?” Nat asked.

  Olivia was grateful for the change of subject. “I did. I was attacked by one of your infantry. Quite possibly that soldier with the bayonet. What battle were you planning?”

  “Marathon.”

  “I don’t recall that the ancient Greeks had bayonets.”

  “Spears. They had spears.”

  “Of course.” If Nat could imagine his floor defined the plains of Marathon, then he certainly could imagine spears. “Lord Breckenridge came to see you also. Did you know that?”

  He nodded. “He scattered a great many of my men about, but he left something for me.”

  “He did?”

  Nat stopped swinging his legs and stood his spoon upright in his porridge. “Would you like to see?”

  “I would, yes.” How like Griffin to never mention it. She watched Nat scoot down from his chair and quickly cross the room to his bedside. He reached under his pillow and drew out a small velvet bag that fit neatly into the palm of his hand. He carried it back to the table and placed it beside Olivia’s plate. “Perhaps you should open it,” she said. “I shouldn’t like to be speared a second time.”

  He thought that was amusing. “It’s not a soldier.”

  “It isn’t?”

  Nat shook his head. He spread the drawstring and opened the bag, then tipped it so the contents spilled into his open hand. “I hope you will not tell him that I should have liked a soldier better. I would not have him think me ungrateful.”

  Olivia stared at the square-cut emerald set in its bed of twenty-one diamond chips. She touched the ring with the tip of her forefinger, nudging it a bit across Nat’s open palm.

  He misunderstood her wariness and offered the sage observation that it would not bite her.

  Olivia was not as certain. “I’ve seen this ring before,” she said. “That you have it seems quite odd to me.”

  Nat bristled. “I didn’t steal it.”

  “I didn’t think you did,” she said gently. “How do you know it was his lordship who gave it to you?”

  “Who else could it have been?”

  Who else indeed. She did not answer Nat, but she was certain it had not been Griffin who’d clumsily crossed Marathon last night. “Will you be terribly disappointed to learn that a mistake’s been made? I think perhaps this ring was meant for someone else. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if there is not a velvet bag just like this somewhere in his lordship’s room with a splendid major general inside.”

  “Do you think so?”

  Olivia smiled at the hopefulness of his expression. “I feel certain of it. May I take the ring?”

  “Oh, yes. Have a care, it’s a weighty thing.”

  Once again, Nat had put his finger on it exactly.

  It was Foster that Olivia entrusted with the task of finding the perfectly turned-out major general. She settled enough money on him to buy Wellington’s entire army but made the major general the first order of business. She also gave him the velvet bag to place the commander in.

  She watched him hurry along Putnam Lane until he turned the corner at Moorhead Street before she returned to the house. Somehow she must have imparted the importance of the mission because she could not recall the footman striding so purposefully in any direction.

  Olivia found Griffin in the dressing room. He was toweling his hair dry and droplets of water scattered as he shook himself. Mason was setting out his clothes and trying to avoid the spray.

  “Will you leave us, Mason?”

  The valet hesitated, but not for long. Griffin’s head came out from under his towel and looked from Mason to Olivia and back again. He did not bother to grant permission as his valet was already excusing himself. “If you are going to make a habit of directing Mason in his duties, you really should marry me.”

  “What nonsense. What does one have to do with the other?”

  “Not a thing, I suspect, but after your declaration of last evening, I find myself compelled to put the matter of our unmarried state before you.”

  “Our unmarried state suits me.”

  “Yes, well, we are at odds there.” He tightened the hitch of the towel around his waist. “I am hoping to change that.”

  Olivia set her mouth in a disapproving line and handed Griffin his robe. She waited until he put it on before she took the ring from her pocket and thrust it forward, displayed in the palm of her hand.

  Griffin stared at it, then at her. He cocked one eyebrow. “Is it your brother’s ring?”

  “The very same. Go on. Take it.”

  He plucked it from her palm and made a cursory examination. When he would have returned it, he saw she’d already dropped her hand to her side. Uncomfortable with the idea of putting it on his own finger, he slipped it into the pocket of his robe. “How did you come by it?”

  “Nat gave it to me at breakfast. He thinks you put it under his pillow last night.”

  Now both of Griffin’s eyebrows lifted to attention. “Why would he suppose that—” He stopped as the possibilities presented themselves. “You think your brother was here?”

  “If there is another explanation, I should like to hear it.”

  “He lost the ring, remember? At Johnny Crocker’s hell. In a rigged game.”

  “Yes, but when I stayed with Alastair, I asked him about the ring and whether or not he thought he could get it back. He said he could.”

&nbs
p; “But why would he?”

  “Because he needed to. It is a matter of self-respect.”

  “That is a seed you planted and nurtured, not something that came to him on his own.”

  “You had some part in it also.”

  “How is that?”

  “Alastair likes you. More to the point, he respects you. And, pray, do not say it is my imagining that makes it so. He told me. That he returned the ring speaks more to your influence than mine.”

  Griffin snorted lightly. “He is yet a child. Nat has more in the way of good sense than your brother.”

  Olivia did not disagree, nor did she feel obliged to defend Alastair for form’s sake. “However it came about, you now have the ring. The debt is well and truly settled.”

  “It was settled already, Olivia. When your brother left you in my care, it was settled, and God’s truth, but I got the better part of it.” He pointed toward the bedchamber. “Join me at the table. I’ve yet to have a cup of coffee or a bite of toast.”

  Olivia led the way out. She poured his cup for him before she sat and slathered strawberry jam on his toast while he drank. She nudged the plate forward until it rested directly in front of him. “If there is more you wish to say about the ring,” she said, sitting back, “I am most desirous of hearing it.”

  Griffin took a large bite of toast and rather a longer time to chew it than was strictly necessary. “That was something a wife might do, you know. Pouring my coffee and spreading the jam.”

  “Really? It seems to me it is most capably done by a nanny.”

  Griffin’s mouth twitched. He raised his cup in a vague salute, conceding the point. His argument had not been well conceived, and he appreciated that she had not stated the obvious, namely that his wife had never once attended him at breakfast. He washed down the toast with coffee, then set his cup in its saucer and regarded Olivia frankly.

  “I heard some time ago that Mrs. Christie came into possession of the ring. She is known to frequent Crocker’s establishment and may have entertained the notion that he would make her his partner. He is completely untrustworthy, of course, but then, so is she. I imagine on this occasion, she was able to get the best of him.”