by Tracy Sumner
“Do you remember the Marston Ball? The first, that…my season. After my father’s passing?” He heard her cup settle on the saucer, leather squeak as she shifted.
He edged a line, used the tip of his finger to shade. He needed to keep his hands occupied with this discussion pelting him like rocks, bruising his soul. He recalled more than she imagined. “Yes.”
“A rainbow hit me when I entered that ballroom…” Her words died, and he wondered if she was chewing on her thumbnail as he’d seen her do of late. Another effort drawing his gaze to her mouth was not needed. “I wasn’t a good reader of auras then, not yet. And I understood no specifics of these people’s lives, or very little, which helps me pack them away in a valise of sorts. Everyone parroting each other, looking the same on the outside but strikingly different in my eyes. Violent slashes of red. Yellow, pure, and golden. Black.” Her foot dropped into his range of vision, the toes slim and lovely, his gaze focusing on the delicate arch he’d tried all morning to put on paper.
What would it feel like to start kissing there and not stop until I hit her mouth?
“It was disconcerting, jarring. I felt like I knew things they didn’t,” she added.
“And…” He darted a glance at her, arousal beginning to gnaw at his restraint, when she likely had no plan to send him into a fever pitch.
“I couldn’t be there.” She wrenched forward, her bottom nearly sliding off the sofa. “I can’t be there.”
“You don’t have to be there. You never have to be there. I’ve made sure you and Finn are beholden to no one. I can’t protect you from society’s censure, but I can protect you from being destitute.”
“But when you marry I—”
“That isn’t going to happen, Yank.” He stared at his sketch, wondering what he’d done to deserve this conversation. “We’ve discussed this. Many times over the years.”
She was silent, but he felt her gathering courage. His strokes gained in speed and intensity, preparing for the onslaught.
“Does Marianne Coswell visit you here?”
The pencil tilted in his hand, an unplanned contour going wide. “And this is your business, why?”
Her teacup clinked when he guessed she’d finished what he’d poured long ago. Feeling like a boy entering a headmaster’s chamber after wreaking havoc, he found her hands joined tensely in her lap, fingers linked. And the look on her face…
She wasn’t going to quit until he answered.
“Never here,” he said on an irritated gust.
“But—”
“Harbingdon is my life, Piper. London is my duty.”
“Well, your dutiful mistress mentioned you.” She pressed back against the sofa, her throat pulling on a deliberate swallow. “At the reading.”
“Brilliant,” he whispered and raked his hand through his hair. He threw the pencil aside. Fine. Let her bludgeon him with his errant behavior. Beat him about the head and face with it. Just bloody fine.
“She said if you married, she would not deem to be your piece on the side. I believe that was how she phrased it.” Piper rested her chin on her hand with a challenging look, sleek brow rising so faultlessly he bet she’d practiced in the mirror until she got the move just right. “And the ton calls me vulgar. She asked me to ‘see’ if you were wedded. In the future, that is.” Her lovely mouth twisted in contempt, those magnificent eyes doing a languid roll to the ceiling. “If you had the chance to look into your future, gain true answers about life, would you waste it on that absurdity?”
Julian denied the urge to squirm as she gazed at him in expectation of what he had no clue, his temper starting to spit from being chastised over what was an entirely ordinary state of affairs for a man of his station. Guilt was not an appropriate emotion, even if guilt nipped at his heels. Thus, he took the familiar path like men the world over. “It means nothing.”
“Means?”
“Enough!” He threw the sketchpad aside and rose to his feet. “You wish me to speak to you as I do Humphrey and that isn’t going to happen.” He crossed to an unfinished painting of the village green he was completing for the owner of the Blowing Stone Inn. He would, of course, funnel the proceeds back into the village. The main road needed assistance, and soon.
It gave him a sadistic thrill to imagine his father’s reaction to the ninth Viscount Beauchamp selling a piece of art he’d created. An unflinching blow to the face, he knew without searching hard. Julian frowned and touched the painting. He had gone too dark in his interpretation of the sarsen stone in the green. Without looking at her, he grabbed a detail brush from the rusted can holding them, uncapped a tube, and set paint to bristle. “I’d have to have a stronger attachment for anyone to be anything”—leaning in, he lightened the stone with the most minute strokes—“on the side. Also, I’m careful not to transfer my gift to another generation.”
He’d made that vow to himself years ago, and he damn well meant to keep it.
“Careful with your favors. It seems like an apt plan.”
He grunted in lieu of comment as this was going nowhere.
“Thank goodness you’re with Lady Coswell for the right reasons.”
He stilled, turned to find Piper standing by the window, light cascading over her to settle in a butterscotch puddle on a floor dotted with a thousand colorful spills. Even in a crumpled gown that wasn’t the best fit and her hair an utter mess, she was so beautiful, so flawless, he took a helpless step back. “This is beginning to feel like a lover’s quarrel.”
Her shoulders lifted and sank beneath wrinkled silk. “I wouldn’t know, Jules.”
Although he’d guessed as much, her comment sent conflicting emotions through him. He looked away before she witnessed them. Jealousy; possession he had no right to feel. And absolute, cold, hard relief. “Reasoning has no play here, Yank. It’s basic, goddamn need. A small part of me is there. The rest is elsewhere.” He stabbed at the canvas as if the brush was a weapon, drops of paint splattering his fingers. “I’ve never given more, and I never will.”
“Small part there, the rest elsewhere,” she murmured. “Like your visions. A partial investment.”
He frowned, this having never occurred to him. He had prodigious control in some areas, little in others. But there was always an element of restraint, examination. He never let go. He needed her gift greatly to do so, but he had sacrificed to protect her.
He was without options. Move forward with help, stumble back alone.
“My waistcoat. By the door, I think.” His hand trembled, and he withdrew the bristles from the canvas. “Could you please…the money clip in the left pocket?”
He heard her cross the room, bare feet a soft tap over wood, carpet, then back to wood. When she got close, her scent overwhelmed the formidable one of linseed oil, turpentine, paint. Circling, ensnaring, making him question spilling his life like an open bottle of brandy at her feet.
Wordless, she waited, her gentle breaths mixing with the sound of his pounding pulse.
“I need your help. I don’t want to touch that”—he pointed an elbow to the clip she held in her hand—“without you.”
“Are you trying to make me angry? Jules, you don’t have to ask.”
Cleaning the bristles with a stained rag, he placed the brush back in the can. “Come. The sofa. Or the floor. Not here.” He shook his head. “Not near the paintings.”
“Julian?”
Her eyes were an extraordinary mix. Dark green, a patina you’d find in the most remote part of the forest, but upon keen inspection, dappled with enchanting specks the color of cinnamon. He doubted he could recreate them to even half their beauty if he tried. As he stood there deliberating, imagining a brush in his hand and her eyes unfurling beneath it, the gash in his shoulder began to thump in time to his heartbeat, pulling him back.
“Tell me,” she urged, her fingers curling around the clip. It was an expensive piece, a lion etched in silver on its front. Possibly a family crest. Humphrey had left t
he runner with the bills contained within, so they had not stooped to beating and robbing him.
Except of the clip.
“The League receives items from our contacts in various locations. I read them to ascertain whatever I can.” He dropped the rag to the floor. “I need to do that with this piece, but the visions are getting stronger. Or my gift is.”
She flipped the clip between her hands, her gaze drilling into him.
“I’ve lost consciousness twice, once hitting my head rather hard on the hearth in my study. Scared the life out of Finn, although he knows head wounds bleed like the very devil. I woke to find him retching in my rubbish bin. Pathetic nurse, that one.” With a crooked smile, he touched a faint mark on his temple. “My new motto: better to read in an open space.”
She pressed her lips together, struggling to gather her words as her cheeks flushed a lovely pale pink. “If you don’t tell me everything, Julian, so help me—”
“I’m getting trapped,” he said in a rush.
She lifted her hand, the money clip glinting in the sunlight. “Trapped?”
“I’m easily able to step into the otherworld. The problem is—”
“Stepping out.”
Leaving her, he went to one knee before the sofa. “Sharp edges and gifts”—he indicated the table as he shoved it aside—“are not a good match.”
She followed, lowering herself to the carpet. “Being trapped in a dashed vision isn’t cause for mirth, Jules.”
Ahead of what he suspected might follow, his gut started to ache, his hand to tremble. Closing his fingers into a tight fist, he settled back on his heels. “If you start to see something, something I’m seeing, damn it, cut it off, let me go.” His gaze met hers, defying her to look away. “If the experience transfers, I don’t care how lost I am, let me go.”
When she didn’t respond, he grasped her arm and pulled her close. “Do you understand?”
“Yes”—she yanked her arm free—“yes.”
He released a fast breath. “Okay.”
It was a simple thing to take the clip from her, the metal warm from her grip. He closed his eyes as the vision tore through him, swift, powerful—and insistent he step inside.
With a harsh entreaty, Piper reached for him, tried to pull him back.
But he was already gone.
The room he entered was cavernous. High ceilings, tapestry-covered walls, hefty furnishings. A masculine chamber. Julian breathed in Frankincense on his first full breath, onerous, cloying. Choking. In one corner, a man huddled over an immense roundtable stately enough to have been Arthur’s. Books were stacked on every surface, volumes discarded topsy-turvy on the floor. The man turned pages rapidly, searching with an urgency born of terror. Julian felt the fear, pulsing as intensely as the wound on his shoulder. He moved closer, his gaze locking on a signet ring on the man’s pinky. A ruby centered on the crest of a lion with bared teeth.
The Duke of Ashcroft wore just such a ring, Julian recalled and curled his fingers around the money clip. If he could just get a good look at the man’s face. Piper shouted to him, beseeching. Along the narrow tunnel of his vision, he saw her, ghostly, an apparition.
“Go back,” he screamed, but no sound traveled from his lips.
Julian watched in fascination as the man held out his hand, a tiny flame flickering to life a digit above his open palm. It wavered like flames caught in the wind, then ruptured with a wondrous, sparking burst.
Against his will and with it, Julian stepped closer, entranced, mesmerized.
Piper ripped the money clip from Julian’s hand and tossed it aside. His eyes fluttered as the hint of an odd fragrance filtered to her, then he broke their connection, shoving her from the otherworld.
A tear traced her cheek, sorrow she scrubbed away. He wasn’t denying her that effortlessly.
Leaning over him, Piper cupped his jaw, a touch as gentle as if he were made of glass. The abrasion from his unshaven skin sent a dizzying rush through her, reminding her what she risked by touching him in this way.
He was not hers to caress, to want, to love.
But he was hers to protect.
His heat seared at each touchpoint where skin met skin, the slide of air from his parted lips a tantalizing sweep across her cheek. She fought a cascade of emotion, none stronger than yearning long contained. “Come back to me,” she whispered, running her thumb along his whiskered jaw. “Come back, Jules.”
Frantic as the silence drew out, she tilted his head and pressed her mouth to his. Her entire focus centered on him as their long-ago kiss roared through her mind. Potent, sweet memory. She recalled how Julian had touched her in exceptional detail, however brief, and the extreme pleasure born of his touch. Having little experience to draw on, she mimicked what she remembered, placing her tongue at the corner of his mouth, tracing the seam, moving her lips over his, begging for entrance.
Begging him to return to her.
He grasped her shoulders, his lids lifting to reveal irises gone so dusky they edged to black. His aura radiated molten gold, as if she stared directly into a sun blistering her to her core. The wound on his shoulder had bled through the bandage and left a crimson trail down his arm.
Her heart broke, doomed with love.
“If this is how you’re healing others, Yank, I have to object.”
Somehow, she found the courage to ask: “Are you going to object now?”
His gaze lowered to her breasts, straining with each urgent breath against the bodice of her gown. Then he murmured one word—no—threaded his hand through her hair and brought her to him. She fell, a mad tumble, but he knew how to find the perfect fit. A skillful roll and he was atop her, pinning her in place. His other hand went to her cheek to still her movement as his lips covered hers—a rough invasion.
No gentle foray, no polite request, his need rolled over her as powerfully as a wave over the shore, ripping her feet from beneath her and plunging her into a chaotic, sensual sea. She accepted his challenge, opening like a flower beneath him. He tasted of mint and tea and felt like the answer to a prayer.
To deny him never occurred to her—and if it had—she would have rejected the offer.
With a throaty sound of pleasure, he settled between her legs, which with no hesitation, sprawled wide to give him better access. He adjusted his body, a subtle hip shift, once more, then, oh, yes, there. Her nipples instantly peaked, scraping against fabric, so pleasurably sensitive she sighed as the air left her lungs and entered his mouth in a sharp burst.
Desire poured through her; ablaze, covetous, she seized each new sensation. “Jules,” she gasped, her head falling back. “More.”
In impatient fistfuls, he yanked her skirt high as he found her lips, bringing her back into the kiss. Their bodies melded beautifully, naturally, pelvis to pelvis, each peek met with a contrasting valley, hot flesh separated only by thin, damp layers.
Unlike their sweet encounter long ago, this was a frantic, erotic battle. His tongue engaging, delving until she had no choice but to match his rhythm. She arched into him, the swollen weight of his shaft pressing against her thigh. She should have been repelled, when instead, she realized a wild urge to grasp his solid length, memorize each single, stiff inch of him.
This is madness.
It was the last coherent thought to funnel through the carnal haze surrounding her.
Her arms rose to encircle his neck, her hands diving into the silken strands she had imagined touching in a hundred wicked dreams. The scent in the room—citrus, man, paint—lit her nose and her senses to a peak. She liquefied, melting into the wooden planks beneath her, pliable, mastered by his touch. His lips trailed her cheek, her jaw, a diverse seduction she couldn’t record or prepare for.
Her pulse had centered to a relentless thump between her legs. Never, never had she felt this reckless, this consumed by need, raw, urgent, indescribable.
It was an onslaught as he took complete and utter possession of her mind and body.
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“God, Piper, I want,” he whispered on a rough exhalation. His lashes fluttered, revealing frantic, glazed eyes gone deep slate. “I want…”
“Then take,” she answered against his cheek. Following his example, she nipped his jaw, then laved it with her tongue, deciding his skin tasted like ambrosia.
His harsh oath evaporated in the sensual mist surrounding them as he trailed his fingers along the nape of her neck, a teasing dance over her shoulder. Along her collarbone, where he dipped his calloused fingertip inside the lace edge of her gown. Her breath too frayed to speak, she bumped her breast against his palm. With a low hum of approval, he curled his fingers around the sensitive mound, taking firm possession.
His thumb brushed her nipple, once, twice, then stayed to circle, over and over until she began to lose the battle, a familiar defeat. She had touched herself in the darkness of her bedchamber many times while thinking of Julian, wanting the sensations she created to come from his fingers, not her own.
Now, maybe her dream to break apart in his arms would be fulfilled.
She expressed her hope that it would without saying a word.
Seeking a resolution to the delirious wonder of his hard length pressed against her thigh, she slid her hands down his back and helped direct his movement. His shirt was free from his trousers, her fingers tracing bare skin before she realized what she was about. His hair fluttered about his face as he pulled back to stare at her, silken strands brushing her cheek in a charged touch.
Cheeks flushed, breath ripping from his lips, he looked bewildered and famished, his gaze so savage she marveled she was able to hold it.
“Is this how you look when you lose yourself in a painting?” she asked, as his pupils flared the color of a stormy sea.