by Tracy Sumner
“Jules,” she whispered, her thread of yearning pitching her voice high, “please.”
He drew back to kiss her upper lip, her cheek, a tender spot beneath her jaw. Gentle, teasing nips, each sending her heart in a race against her ribs. The sound of a clock in the hallway, his breath in her ear. The taste of his skin on her tongue. His body shifting as she tugged on his coat sleeve. Imaginings were running riot like the blood in her veins as she sought to collect them.
He moved so purposely while she was frantic. “Quit tormenting me.”
“Maybe this will help,” he murmured against her neck. The same stimulating chill assaulting her lower extremities hit her chest as Julian adjusted the neckline of her gown just enough to free her nipple from her corset. Her head fell back, arms going behind to support her body, the position one he used to his advantage. Circling her nipple with his tongue, it peaked, a rigid point he then laved so tenderly it was nothing but the most extreme pleasure of her life.
“Just like that,” she said in a voice that did not sound hers, an answer when there had been no question.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, she wrapped her legs around his hips and urged him closer, seeking to join—nothing to do with experience and everything to do with intuition.
He lifted his head, her nipple trailing across his stubbled jaw, sending another sizzling pulse through her body. A hum of desperation climbed from her throat. In response, he palmed her breast, set his thumb to the moist tip in a teasing, insistent rhythm. He was not going to offer mercy, a respite. He glanced down at their bodies, intent and focused, calculating even, so like Julian, her heart lurched.
“You are flawless,” he said, his words torn, ragged. “Magnificent. But not quite where I want you to be.”
Issuing whispered commands against her cheek, he slid her forward and shifted his hips until the unbelievably hard length of him met her pulsing center, chaperoned by nothing more than the thin layer of her drawers. The height of the desk pure kismet, it brought their bodies together in a most beneficial way. High desk, tall man. He rolled his hips as he claimed her mouth, the rhythm of his tongue set to their bump and grind as she picked up the challenge and met him, beat for beat. She released her hold on the desk and tunneled her hand into the tufts of hair hanging over his shirt collar. Tightening her legs around him, she helped drive the movement, showing him exactly what she wanted.
What she loved, what she needed.
Her skin tingled, a recognizable buzz filling her ears. The heady sensation of an orgasm calling to her.
“I’m close,” she murmured. “Don’t…stop.”
He stilled, his mouth falling from hers. Even in the muted light, she could see the color drain from his face, his aura sparking at the edges. “How…”
Her hand dropped to his shoulder. Oh. Was this something she was supposed to conceal? She understood men touched themselves with predictable regularity. Were women not supposed to? Or not supposed to talk about it if they did? This predilection came from her indecent American roots, not the proper English ones. Out of step, as she had been in the ballroom two floors beneath them. As she had always been.
The pieces falling into place, she realized from his stone-faced expression that he’d misconstrued her statement. “I touch myself, Jules.” Dash it. She may as well tell him the whole of it what with her skirt wrapped around her waist and her naked breast pressed to the rough brocade of his waistcoat. “I touch myself…and I think of you when I do.”
He sighed gustily and dropped his brow to hers, his breath a harsh symphony over her cheek. His thumb resumed its exploration of her nipple, barely-there circles, which allowed only half her mind to focus on the conversation. She trembled beneath his touch, a groan of delight flowing like a sluggish river from her lips. After a moment, where the only sound was their labored struggle for air, he laughed raggedly when she wanted his mouth somewhere, doing something. She arched, nudging her sensitive core against his hard shaft.
Here, Julian, here.
“You don’t have to encourage me. I could come just by looking at you. In my trousers like a schoolboy. But I’m not going to let you go so easily,” he growled, then settled his mouth to hers and initiated a kiss which startled her with its force. He demanded, and she complied, meeting him with equal enthusiasm. She wanted him, begged for it, her plea taken in on his inhalation. The tender touch at her breast changed, his fingers twisting, a light pinch that drilled directly into the essence of her.
She nearly laughed at the thought: his touch was leagues above what she did to herself.
She finally understood how one could throw away everything for passion, make deals with God or the devil to possess it, as she would this very night. She wanted Julian enough to destroy reason, intention. This knowledge validated the scandals summarized in sitting rooms each season until she experienced true kinship. Sympathy. For her to feel so much when she couldn’t, in the end, have him...
“Don’t think. I do enough of that for the both of us,” he whispered against her lips, his hands journeying over her body. One higher: along the nape of her neck, a deliberate slide into her hair, where his fingers tangled in the strands, tilting her head back just enough to deepen the kiss. One lower: over bunched silk at her hip, across her belly. His palm felt as hot as a brand, the pads of his fingertips calloused, creating delicious friction. He nudged her thigh with his hip, hand going to the opening in her drawers, wide enough to allow access without untying the drawstring closure.
A minor amount of convenience in an otherwise absurd sartorial trap.
She whimpered when he began his exploration, his touch light, skilled, focused. Never again would she curse Julian’s devotion to detail. Hoping to help him, she inched forward as he stroked, circling the nub that provided the most pleasure. Once she got used to the pace, he changed it, slowed to a crawl, driving her to the brink. “Julian.” She broke the kiss, his name drawn out until it sounded like a hiss.
“So wet, so tempting.” His gaze found hers, his eyes stained smoke. He studied her like he would one of his paintings, his thumb pressing harder. His fingers sliding along her folds, delving, seeking.
“Inside.” Her head fell back, her body bowing like a strap of leather snapped between two fists. He caught her, his fingertips digging into her scalp. Her lids fluttered. She couldn’t. The way he touched her, the hungry look on his face.
She couldn’t gaze upon that and survive. If this were a battle, she would lose.
His lips trailed the nape of her neck, to the fleshy pad of her shoulder, to her waiting, wonderfully exposed breast. His mouth assaulted not just the nipple but the rounded slope. Below, with a subtle shift, he slid a long finger through her folds and gained entrance.
She gasped as he angled his hand side-to-side and glided fully into her, the heel of his palm resting at her throbbing center. Then he did this delicious curl with his finger, and her vision splintered. Calm and oh-so in control, he stroked her with murmured words of passion, then reassurance as he brought another finger to join the first. His hips moved in cadence, and she understood his cock, hard and pulsing against her thigh, would someday replace his finger.
Imagining that brought her to the brink of climax.
“Next time,” he breathed, “my mouth. Right here.” His thumb gently circled her nub as he thrust from fingertip to knuckle.
A moist sheen covered her body, a twist in damp silk. It was too much. Uncontrollable, the feeling, her body clenching around his hand, her legs drawing him to her. When she crested, she would have released a harsh cry had he not covered her mouth with his, welcoming the sound of her pleasure. Her toes curled as the sensation traveled, making a complete tour of her body, then spilling out like light through a thousand pinholes.
He brought his hands to her face, cradling, and kissed her once more, lingering as if he did not want to leave her.
She shuddered in his arms, helpless to do anything else.
; With a glance around the room, he brought his cheek to hers and gathered a ragged inhalation through his teeth. “I must be insane.”
She gazed at him, her heart overflowing with unrevealed emotion. His aura sparked crimson and gold with an unyielding cobalt border. He was dazzling, absolutely wondrous.
Her favorite person in the entire world, should she ever have the courage to tell him.
But, no, she could not tell him—not part of the agreement, her obsession.
“Insane,” he repeated hoarsely. But still, he held her, his hands flexing on her shoulders.
“Insane, but wickedly talented.” She traced her nail along his jaw, trying not to imagine how he’d honed his skills. When he made a truncated sound of pleasure and tilted his head into the touch, she marveled that she was hungry for him so soon after release. One night would never be enough—but she would take it, nonetheless. “I will say this was much better than doing it myself.”
A smile crossed his face, so ridiculously pleased, masculine satisfaction sharpening every feature. “Hmm, do tell,” he said and twisted a strand of her hair around his finger.
She swatted his hand away. “You’re making me admit all kinds of things a lady leaves unsaid.”
Without comment, he straightened her skirt, his trembling hands letting her know he felt it, too. He leaned to kiss the slope of her breast before working her corset and gown into place. “Imagining you touching yourself is the most arousing—” His head lifted, his gaze blistering. “I want you to touch yourself while I watch. And”—he gestured to the short distance between their bodies as if this spoke volumes—“if you come as easily as this, I’m overjoyed in advance.”
“So, this didn’t count.”
He smoothed his coat, his hopelessly wrinkled cravat. “Are we counting something?”
“Our night,” she said, her gaze hungrily recording his weak effort to adjust the impressive bulge in his trousers. “This didn’t count against it.”
He hesitated, running his hand along the hard length, considering. With a deep exhalation, he looked up to find her staring. Their gazes locked, and her heartbeat stuttered and tripped. I want that.
I want him.
He took her in, a detailed examination as moonlight rippled over his face. She wanted to know what his naked body pinning her to a feather mattress felt like; how pleasure shaped his features when he came; what he liked best, what he loved.
“The way you’re looking at me makes me want to take you right here, in the Duke of Ashcroft’s damned torture chamber.”
She shrugged, her well-loved nipple scratching against boned stays and sending another whip of heat through her body. “I don’t know how”—she swallowed, having told him so much already, exposure of the highest measure—“not to want you, Jules.”
He laughed, his head lowering with it. Dragged his hand through his hair until it stood in dark twists about his head. “I don’t know how, either. God help me.” Footsteps tapped down the hallway, and he turned, throwing the most fantastic admission over his shoulder, “And I’m not leaving this world without making love to you, so no, this didn’t count against our night.”
Three light taps, followed by two more, sounded on the door, bouncing off the gothic tapestries papering the walls. Finn, letting them know they needed to leave.
Julian held out his hand, invitation and directive. “You must go.”
She slid to the floor, her legs unsteady but holding. “Not without you.”
His lips flattened, and she understood they were set to quarrel. “No negotiation, Yank. Ashcroft knows I’m here. Likely knows exactly where by now. I have to bloody well wait him out.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You, my lovely partner, are leaving with Finn.”
“But—”
“I’m guessing Humphrey is in the carriage.”
Of course, he was. No need to go there.
Julian stepped in, her skirt brushing his knee. “You’re going to leave with Finn because I need my mind, every trace of it, for the conversation with Ashcroft. I can’t”—he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, let his fingers linger as they traced her jaw—“I won’t have you here. For your safety and my own. I shouldn’t have allowed this in the first place. Not here.”
His aura flooded the color of a flawless pearl. Compassion.
“You’re going to help him,” she breathed.
“He needs help. Isn’t that what my life is all about?” He crossed to the desk and came back with the velvet bag clutched in his fist. He frowned, rotating the package as he tried to solve the puzzle. “Perhaps he’s part of the League, and we didn’t even know it. Your grandfather recruited others long before he rescued me from the rookery, and you came back from America. I’ve been trying for years to marshal our community, find those he contacted, but I’m still learning. In any case, I mean to discover how much he knows. And how we can help each other.”
His eyes when they found hers had softened to the color of a lake in winter. An endless stretch of crisp color hiding astounding depths. Seconds passed as they stared, spellbound. With a sudden shift, their lips met in heartfelt exploration. He clutched her to him, the crystal pressing into her back. Not the first hard object she had encountered this evening, she thought with a smile that shaped their lips and sent a shiver through her.
“I’ll come for you when I return to Harbingdon.” There was a plea hidden in his words, desperate and unsure, one she hadn’t the heart to deny. “One night, then you must promise to let me go. And I must promise the same.”
She drew his request in on a halting breath and offered agreement in its weakest form—a slight nod when the comment would not come.
Because, she could promise, but she would never in her heart agree.
Ashcroft’s medieval chamber lost its consequence the moment Piper stepped from the room, her gaze capturing his until the door between them snapped shut. Julian’s champagne euphoria had also departed, leaving a steady drumbeat in his skull and a slight tremor in the fingers wrapped around the earl’s crystal.
Or was his unsteadiness a tangible remainder of pleasuring Piper? He lifted his hand to his lips, the scent of her clinging sweetly to his skin. Watching her crest had been the most gratifying experience of his existence.
He would base a thousand solitary future orgasms off just one of hers.
She’d clutched him as if letting go was a test and whispered four heart-wrenching words before departing. Your promise, one night. Because she knew he always kept his promises, even ones that pledged to separate him from the love of his life.
“I’m beginning to understand why my runner disappeared without a trace.”
Julian flinched, the soul catcher shooting a vibrant prism over the desk as he bobbled the stone in his hand. The Duke of Ashcroft lounged against the doorjamb, his smile enigmatic, but his eyes glowing. They were exotic eyes in a predictably English face, an unusual hue, neither brown nor amber, and reminded Julian of the fires the man was reputed to start, which was strangely ironic.
All at once, he understood the game had begun.
Reclining against the desk, he mirrored Ashcroft’s nonchalance even as blood pulsed through his veins. Rarely had he offered membership to the League in this manner—and never to someone of Ashcroft’s station. “A position in Wales fitting his skillset, your runner. No shallow grave in the forest, should that be your concern. Feasibly, he’ll even be of assistance to us, with an appropriate amount of encouragement.” He caressed the crystal, noting the way Ashcroft followed the movement, his stance having gone rigid. The stone meant much to the man, Julian realized. “I returned your money clip. I’m guessing the bastard pocketed that as additional payment. No thank you is necessary.”
“The fires started when I was a child. Literally, in leading strings the first time I recall my fingertips getting hot. Then, later, the dreams. Unbelievable prophecies. Forests aflame, the world one fierce, glowing ember.” He stalked to a sideboard Julian had not
had time to search. He’d been too busy exploring the depths of Piper’s eyes as she came around his questing fingers.
“A firestarter. That’s what the earl called your gift in the chronology,” Julian finally said.
The Duke’s hand quivered, splashing brandy across his boot before he inhaled and resumed pouring a generous amount in the tumblers he’d set before him. “Firestarter.” A rough laugh slipped past his lips. He grabbed the glass and threw back the contents. “Unfortunately, an apt categorization.”
“We might help each other,” Julian offered, seeing no need to tread lightly. “There are others. More than you would think possible.”
Ashcroft laughed again and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Bowing his head, he pressed the tumbler against his temple as if this would soothe. He gasped, and a spark shot off the hearth’s brick. “Wait,” he breathed and held up his arm when Julian would have crossed the room to him. In the next moment, the fireplace roared to life with a pop that sounded like a champagne cork releasing in the ballroom below.
Julian bumped against the desk, sending it skidding back, wadding carpet beneath his feet.
“Quite a fabulous parlor trick, isn’t it? If only it didn’t exact such a high price for the entertainment.” He tossed back the rest of his drink. “Now, if you’ll give me the fluorite, which helps me control my curse, though I have no idea how, I’ll try not to burn down my ancestral townhouse when half of London’s elite stands between its walls.”
Julian crossed to the sideboard, exchanging the soul catcher for the tumbler. The brandy trailed a restorative path down his throat. “We thought the stone a myth, though it’s mentioned in the chronology.”
Ashcroft’s gaze caught his, then skipped away. “Years ago, the earl sold it to me to save one of his properties. Quite a handsome sum I forked over. The bastard was interested in my gift but not overly sympathetic to its challenges. I suppose you’re proof there is a clandestine group, one I’ve heard whispered about in foul places no one will admit they’ve been. Your name connected to each rumor as the opium swirled high above my head. The earl wouldn’t admit it. My lofty title made me suspect in his eyes, as I recall.” His hand closed possessively around the fluorite. “I should have asked you for help from the start. Saved a hundred pounds on Bow Street.”