by Alyssa Cole
It helped that he couldn’t see her and she couldn’t see him. Henry had eyed her greedily in the throes of passion, and she had confused his insatiability for love. Daniel’s hands moved carefully, as did his mouth, but the rest of his body was still and she knew that he held himself back. He wasn’t using her to slake his desires. He was touching and listening and waiting.
She pulled her mouth away from his.
“It’s all right. I’ve already . . . I’m not a . . . You don’t have to be gentle.”
Daniel knew she’d had a lover, but perhaps he’d forgotten with the way his hands caressed her like she was fragile porcelain.
He was quiet for a moment, and she jumped at the intake of breath before he began to speak. “Do you want me to be?”
His question was as soft as his hands on her body, and that he had even asked filled her with equal parts lust and happiness. It was bittersweet, this joy at a man considering her feelings, because she’d never realized it was something she could ask for. Something she deserved.
“Yes, please.”
“Good.” His voice was a whisper that grazed her ear as his mouth moved toward her neck. “I need you to be gentle with me, too.”
Then the warm softness of his lips brushed down the column of her neck. He was barely touching her, but the friction of their skin and the caress of his breath sent a shiver of pleasure through her body. When his mouth hit juncture of neck and shoulder, he suckled and she gasped as sensation exploded through her body. His slow, soft touches shouldn’t have sent heat racing through her veins, but there was something indescribably arousing in the way he treated her with such care.
And she wanted to return the favor. Daniel was a large man, and strong, but she would take him at his word—he needed care, too. She pressed the sweetest of kisses to his temples, ran her hands over his neck and the ridged scar there, then splayed them over his muscled chest.
“I want to feel your skin,” she whispered. “Against mine.”
His pectorals tightened and released beneath her palms and she felt the evidence of his approval of her plan surge against her apex.
“You can unbutton my shirt,” he said. His fingertips slid to the front of her wrapper and pushed it down her shoulders, then returned to her loose-fitting sleeping gown, which she pushed down as well. She pulled her arms free and settled the material around her waist before feeling for his buttons with trembling fingertips.
Daniel had been still before, but now his hips rocked up against her, his trousers sliding against the hair at her mound, and his hardness pressing into the sensitive flesh within her folds.
Desire cloaked her, along with the darkness, and she moved her hips to meet his restrained thrust. Finally, she spread his shirt wide and ran her hands over his furred chest. He groaned when her palms slid over his smooth, flat nipples, so she retraced her path and he groaned again.
She slid her hand down over the ridges of his abdomen until her fingertips hit the clasp of his trousers. She paused.
“Do you want . . . this?” she asked. Her voice was husky and it trembled because her body was trembling, too.
“I want you, Janeta. All of you.”
Relief flowed through her, the urge to thank him so strong she had to swallow it before speaking. It wasn’t like that between them. He wouldn’t want her to be thankful to him or any man, and that was why she cared for him. “I want you, too, Daniel.”
“Not all of me,” he said, and she knew that he would pull himself away from her if he was given the opportunity. She pressed her mouth against his, kissed him until he released a shuddering breath against her lips and opened for her.
“I want any part of you you’re willing to share with me,” she said. He kissed her hard then. Not roughly, but with an excess of emotion that he couldn’t convey with a brush of lips. His palms slid over the bare skin of her breasts and stomach, and he groaned with the pleasure of just those touches.
Then her hands went to work at his trousers, and they both shifted and arranged themselves until his erection was wrapped in her hand, a few inches from her opening.
“Take me,” he growled into her neck. “I’ll give you everything. All of me.”
For a moment she considered that these were the same empty promises Henry had whispered to her. Then his doubt spoke again, reminding her that he was as vulnerable as she was in this situation.
“I can only hope it’s enough.”
She didn’t answer him, or soothe him with words. She couldn’t make him believe how she felt with a well-turned phrase. Instead, she slid down onto his cock, taking him into her deep and fast, and when they both cried out in pleasure it was muffled by their joined mouths and dueling tongues.
He filled her so completely she almost fell apart at that first stroke, but then he took over. His hands at her waist held her steady against the deep, steady thrusting of his hips. She cursed the darkness now—feeling him was wonderful, but she wanted to see him.
She did the next best thing. She leaned her body forward, her breasts brushing the hair at his chest. She threw her arms around his neck and pulled their bodies closer. She took his mouth and when they kissed this time, it was a clash of warmth and heat and pleasure. Her sleeping clothes bunched between their stomachs, forcing a bend at her waist that increased the friction and slide of him inside of her.
“Janeta,” he growled, turning his face into her hair. His breath came in heavy huffs that tickled her scalp. “Janeta.”
His arms wrapped around her, trying to pull her closer. His entire body strained as if he would make them one.
“Janeta.” There was pleasure and pain and hope and longing in the way he exhaled her name, and her climax took her without warning, seemingly compelled by the need in his voice. She clamped around him and he hissed his own release as he wrapped his arms more tightly around her.
They sat wrapped around each other, breathing heavily. Through the window she could see the first traces of dawn. They wouldn’t be in the shadows for much longer.
“I suppose we should leave,” Daniel said eventually.
Janeta drowsed with her head on her shoulder. “We have to wait for the meeting,” she said.
“Look at you. A dedicated detective.” He chuckled and she felt it all through her body. “I meant we should leave the library.”
She felt a pang of disappointment until he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“My room is closer than yours.”
There was a playful desire in his tone, and it sparked a corresponding heat in her body.
“Then I’ll follow you there, Cumberland.”
They stood and rearranged themselves in the dark, but when her hand searched out his, there was no fumbling or groping. It was right where she expected it to be, even though she couldn’t see it, and that was another surprising joy.
“Let’s go,” he said. They were both still for a moment and she realized he was waiting for her to proceed. She started walking, and so did he, and she hoped they were both leaving the darkness of their pasts behind them.
CHAPTER 21
“What will you do today?” Janeta asked, running the tip of her nose along Daniel’s collarbone before nuzzling against his neck. It had only been three days since their time in the library, and it still shocked him how quickly he’d gone from avoiding touch to reveling in Janeta’s.
But, perhaps better than the touch was the talking. Sleep was still somewhat elusive, and the dark voices hadn’t loosened their grip on him entirely. But instead of lying alone with his own pain, Daniel could now roll to his side and find the glint of Janeta’s eyes in the darkness. They whispered of things silly and serious, and when he heard the panic or pain she tried to mask, he reassured her as best he could.
That was all people could really do for one another, he supposed. Take care of each other during the bad times—and there would always be bad times—and make each other happy during the good. Would there always be good, though? Her question re
minded him that he had come here with a plan, and it had not been lazing in bed with her.
He kissed the top of her head and moved from the bed in her room and began pulling on his clothing.
“The meeting may be taking place soon,” he said, then halted. “The Sons of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis . . .”
“Ah, sí,” Janeta murmured. “You know, I imagine I could get some information from Henry if I wrote to him. In retrospect, he was not a very bright man, though he managed to fool me. But perhaps that would be safer than whatever it is you have in mind?”
He could imagine her raised eyebrows though he couldn’t see them.
“That might be helpful,” he said. “Though you should check in with Dyson on that before making contact, lest he think you’ve changed sides again?”
“Again?” she asked carefully.
“I wrote to him before you confessed to me and told him that I suspected your sympathies had never been very strong, and were now firmly for the North.” He’d also written to Elle—not out of some misguided pining, but because she was his friend, and he had a very specific goal in Enterprise, one that perhaps meant he would never get another chance to write to her again.
“You trusted me that much.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, Sanchez. Now you just have to trust yourself.” He tried to sound jaunty and flirty and not like a man throwing up a distraction. He walked over to the bed and dropped a kiss onto her mouth. “I’ll be working in Roberts’s office.”
“I thought I might try to check in on Shelley and Moses and Jim and Augustus,” she said. “Maddie said she’d help me arrange some things they might need while setting up house and have Michael bring them over.”
Daniel smiled. “Make sure you send a big walloping stick for Moses.”
She laughed. “I hope we can see them before we leave.”
Daniel didn’t answer this time. He kissed her knuckles and strode out of the room. Lying had never been his strong suit, but silence certainly was.
* * *
Daniel sat at the desk in Roberts’s office that had become his working space over the last few days and read through the final letter, another from this Lord Russell, who had been managing Secretary Seward’s ego from London and attempting to make the man see reason where it came to the consul in Mississippi.
After days of going through the correspondence with government officials, he was frustrated. The men entrusted with the future of the country were stubborn, pigheaded, and shortsighted, often working at cross-purposes fueled by their own political ambition. Daniel had thought greed was their worst vice; it was unsettling to truly understand that petty squabbling and sheer ignorance were just as dangerous.
“I used to think America’s youth was an asset, but we’re not even one hundred years into this republic as you reminded me, and look at us,” Daniel said.
Roberts laughed. “If you think that age improves the temperament of governance I invite you to visit Parliament sometime. Grown men coming to blows on the floor of government. I once saw a lord get battered over the head with a chair. Perhaps once you’ve ascertained your position as a lawyer it would make for a good research visit.”
Annoyance flared that Roberts should mention this as if it were something so easily achieved.
“That dream is dead,” Daniel said carefully. He’d told himself the same thing a thousand times over but now somewhere in his mind a voice whispered, What if it isn’t?
“Well, what will you do when this war is over, then?” Roberts asked, and the question amounted to the same as a bucket of freezing water being dumped over Daniel. He didn’t know what he would do. He’d stopped planning on a future, even after one had been presented to him by the men who had freed him. Even though he’d been granted life and liberty, to some extent, he’d forever ruled out the notion of happiness.
Could he ever live a normal life? Go to work, come home to a wife?
Janeta’s image flashed into his mind, the feel of her warmth in his arms.
He blinked the memory away; he wouldn’t deny that he cared for her, more deeply than he’d imagined possible, but though she had an admirable inner strength, she was a woman, not a foundation. She couldn’t support the weight of his entire future as well as her own, and he shouldn’t expect her to. He’d have to figure out whether he was capable of living before he thought about whether he could live with her. He certainly couldn’t live for her. He’d already walked down that path once and it had led to self-pitying despair.
She also wasn’t even American. Would she stay in this country now that she saw all the ugly cracks in the façade of freedom? Could he ask her to?
“I’m not sure,” he said, shifting the letters around on his desk. He picked up the letter he’d sealed that morning, a second missive addressed to Ellen Burns just in case the other never reached her, and tapped a pointed corner with his fingertips. “I’ll have to see how this war shakes out before I make any plans.”
He expected Roberts to make a wry joke, but the man nodded gravely. The few days in the home with lavish amenities and stocked with food made it easy to forget that this war was not yet won, and that the South very well might take the day.
Michael entered the room, jogging over to the larger desk.
“A message come for you,” he said, handing Roberts a slip of paper. Roberts’s brow creased and he stood abruptly. When he looked at Daniel his gaze was serious.
“There’s been a change in plans. President Davis was supposed to head down farther South and then circle back, but the railroad tracks got pulled up down the line. He’ll be arriving here this evening.”
Panic knotted the muscles in Daniel’s neck. He hadn’t forgotten about Davis’s arrival, but he no longer relished it as he had when the Russians had first made his travel plans known. Back then, Daniel had thought that he had nothing to live for. Now he wasn’t so sure.
He looked to Roberts. “I imagine you’ll have to prepare.”
“Indeed. There’s also the fact that he will be bringing company with him. I will talk to you and Ms. Sanchez later about how we are to handle things.” He gave Daniel a weighted look, but said nothing further before turning and stalking from the room.
How to handle things.
Daniel had been sure of how he wanted to handle Jefferson Davis—with the sharp edge of his blade. Even now, the thought of Davis traveling in the grandest style while Negroes had to constantly fear being stripped of their possessions, family, and freedom made his blood heat.
He tried to shake off the tension and anger as he left the office and searched the house for Janeta, finally finding her in her room. He was no stranger to her chamber, but he put on an air of distant professionalism as he knocked. He didn’t know why he bothered; any 4L detective could tell you that servants saw and heard all. Everyone in the house likely knew of their dalliance, and that was the least of his worries.
The door to her room opened, but she didn’t greet him with the enthusiasm they’d shared for the past few days. Her expression was somber and her eyes were rimmed with red.
“Have you heard?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s sooner than we expected, and I realize I haven’t told you what I intended to do once he arrives.”
Because he’d avoided telling her.
Was this still his plan? Before he’d been focused on the possible benefits of ridding the world of Davis. He hadn’t thought of the possible negative outcomes. He hadn’t thought about surviving, or even wanting to.
“Arrives? What do you mean?” A ridge formed on her brow. “I’m speaking of Moses.”
Daniel’s blood iced over at the hushed way she said the child’s name. He gripped the door frame.
“What’s happened to him?”
He remembered Winnie tracing her letters in the dust, proud of her work. He’d shown Moses his letters, too.
“The overseer at the farm tried to hit Shelley, or maybe something worse. No one really knows. It was
the middle of the night, and Moses said that he was trying to stop the monster.”
Daniel brought his other hand to his stomach, pressing in against the nausea that roiled there. No, not the letters but something else he had said mindlessly. “This is my fault.”
“No, it is mine.” Janeta pulled him into the room and shut the door. “Michael found out when he tried to deliver the package to them. Augustus and Jim interceded before the man could harm Moses, but they were all taken into custody. They’re in the jail now, and there are strangers in town starting trouble and saying the only way to teach them a lesson is to ‘string them up.’”
Daniel resisted the urge to clutch his throat, to feel the ridge formed by the rope that had slowly strangled him for hours while wearing away his skin. He doubted Jim and Augustus would be subject to that slow torture, but who knew what would happen to them before then.
It seemed that everyone he encountered met a bad end. He’d harmed Winnie and the other slaves, who’d suffered Finnegan’s wrath. He’d done his fellow Loyal League detectives a disservice by fighting with anger instead of the hope he was incapable of. And if he stayed with Janeta, she would meet a terrible end, too.
You are poison, the ugly voice in his head reminded him, and nothing could drown it out, not even Janeta standing before him. Poison has one purpose.
Janeta stepped closer to him, her expression distraught. “We have to go to Meridian. We can go by cover of night and—”
“And what?” The coldness of his voice shocked even him. In his mind, his thoughts were scattered, scrambling and trying to find shelter—they sought refuge in the familiar darkness that had been with him since his capture.
He wanted to hold Janeta. He wanted to help Jim and Augustus and Moses. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t help anyone because he was selfish and a coward and a fool, and a bit of love wouldn’t change that. Pretending otherwise would only lead to pain, and to Janeta being hurt, too.