“You would not.”
“I would. Do not doubt it. She is my sister and I will stop at nothing.”
His fingers balled into fists as he looked away from her. How he needed to hit something—pound anything at the moment. Openly defiant to his wishes. Once more, she thought she could do a better job at finding her sister than he could. How in the bloody hell had he let this woman into his life? This maddening, irrational, fool woman that would not listen to reason.
She wouldn’t listen to reason. So Fletch was going to have to keep her safe in a much more dangerous way.
They rode in silence for five blocks, Talia avoiding his stare as Fletch debated his plan.
“Then I am coming as well, Talia.”
She jumped at his words, her eyes whipping to him. “You cannot.”
“Ask me what I am going to do the moment after you escape from the townhouse in your maid’s costume.”
She sighed. “What are you going to do, Fletch?”
“Follow you. You will not even know I am behind you until you see me in whichever brothel you find yourself in. I can hover about a whorehouse as well as the next man. And I can keep you safe. Heaven knows you need it.”
“Or maybe I just need you.” She smiled sweetly—far too sweetly.
Fletch knew instantly Talia had just manipulated him to get her way.
He heaved a sigh.
She would be the death of him—if he wasn’t already on his way there.
~~~
“Here.” Fletch walked into Talia’s chambers and flipped a dagger into the air, softly catching the blade end of it. He held out the handle to her, dark green jade entwined with wraps of thin silver cords.
She stared at it, her nose wrinkling as she twisted her darkened hair about her head, sticking in pins to hold strands in place. “What is this?”
“If I am going to allow you to go into this brothel, then I want you to have a blade on your person as well. I want you to be able to defend yourself—at least until I can reach you.”
“Fletch, I do not know how to use a blade.” Sighing, Talia set the handful of pins on the dresser below the silver-encased mirror, even though her hair was only half pinned up. She turned to Fletch, noting he had changed his clothes. Not quite rags, but not his usual impeccably tailored clothing. Rumpled in the down-on-his-coin look of a foxed dandy. “I am much more likely to cut myself than to cut someone attacking me.”
“Then I will teach you.” He waved the handle to her. “Take it, Talia.”
“Look at me, Fletch.” She pointed to her head, the darkened hair wet down so it looked greasy and unkempt, then to her face where she had splotched a mixture of dirt and charcoal. “I am gloriously unattractive right now. I look like a ragamuffin twelve-year-old boy in a dress. No one will pay me any mind. I do not need the blade.”
He stepped toward her. “All I see is you, Talia. And you—unfortunate for where you are determined to put yourself—are beautiful.”
She couldn’t hide a smile, even though she recognized he was still trying to sway her not to go with obvious pandering. “You are looking beyond the dirt, Fletch—and you already know exactly what is under my chest bindings.”
He licked his lips. “I do. And I mean to protect all of that.”
He picked up her hand, wrapping it around the hilt of the blade. “Do this not for yourself, then. Do it for me. Do it because I am asking my wife for this one small request.”
She sighed, her fingers folding around the handle. The feel, the weight of it was awkward. She had never held a dagger before. Cutting knives, yes. But never a blade such as this—one meant to harm. “Fine. But you will need to teach me what to do with it.”
Fletch smirked. “I will go retrieve a blunt-tipped blade for instruction.”
She looked down at the shine of the sharp blade. “And I will alter my sleeve so I can conceal this.”
“It cannot go about your waist—under your apron?” He lifted the side of her apron, bending to the side to see behind it. “It will be easier to hide in here.”
“No. Too many patrons brush by my waist—or grab me there. I do not want to arouse any suspicion, and a lowly maid slopping chamber pots does not carry a fine dagger such as this.”
Fletch’s jaw tightened. His mouth opened, but then he clamped it shut, turning to silently walk out the adjoining door to his chambers.
Talia stared at the closed door.
Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the handsy patrons to Fletch.
But better that he know what was coming, so he could keep a proper distance from her in the brothel. That was imperative.
He couldn’t overreact at the first hand to slap her backside.
Talia turned back to the mirror, picking up the pins.
As much as she wanted the protection of Fletch within reach, she prayed he wouldn’t interfere in finding Louise.
She had already failed her sister for too long.
{ Chapter 10 }
The Oak’s Pleasure was the smallest of the three brothels and the furthest from the docks. Talia wanted to start in that establishment, partly because she hoped its size and proximity meant it was the least depraved of the three, and partly because she still held out hope that Louise was not in the nastiest of nasty places.
Once darkness had fallen, begging for a job from the barkeep had gone well in the back alley, especially at the ridiculously low price she had named for her services. Five hours into hauling chamber pots and scrubbing ancient spit from the ragged front wood of the bar, Talia bent down to the floor behind the chair Fletch sat in to clean up a glass that had shattered. Shattered by her husband, for just that very purpose, she guessed. Setting the chamber pot she had been carrying onto the floor by her black skirts, she started picking up the shards of glass, angling her head to be close to the curved wooden slats along the back of Fletch’s chair.
“Anything?” Fletch asked, his mouth hidden behind a tankard of ale.
“Nothing,” Talia whispered loudly enough for him to hear with the off-key pianoforte clanging out a tune across the room. “And I have seen all the rooms except for the ones on the third floor above.”
“We only have an hour left, maybe less. It is getting too raucous in here, and I will drag you away if I have to.”
Talia stifled a sigh, tossing glass into the pot. She dragged her forearm across her face, hiding her mouth. “I am attempting to make my way up there now.”
Fletch gave a slight nod, setting the tankard in front of him on the small square table. He raised his hand to a barmaid, waving her over.
Talia dropped the last few shards of glass into the chamber pot, happy she only cut her fingers twice. Wiping the two lines of blood on her apron, she picked up the chamber pot and began to snake her way through the small, closely bunched tables to the back door.
Two tables away from Fletch, a drunkard tossed his arm out, capturing Talia around the waist. She spun, sending liquid from the pot splashing onto his arm. It made no difference to the louse. The weight of his arm went heavy on her belly, dragging her down onto his lap.
She shoved at his arm, trying to twist away while not sending the contents of the entire pot onto her clothes. Blast it. The drunk was already waving his hand at the main procurer.
Talia had identified the brothel’s procurer early in the night. Smartly dressed with a keen eye on the room, he was the one that made the deals, completed the transactions for the prostitutes working the floor. And if the drunk clamping her down, grinding her into his lap was waving at the procurer, it only meant one thing.
She squirmed harder, trying to escape the drunk before the procurer made his way across the wide room. Five tables away. Three tables away. One table away.
“Three shillings. She be gross—a wretch smelly and dirty ‘er be, but it be all I got,” the drunk clutching her to his lap shouted out past her shoulder.
A hideous blast of his breath, straight past his three black teeth, sent her head sp
inning.
Talia attempted to not be offended by the cur calling her gross—that was what she had intended with her appearance—but the man’s own level of disgustingness gave him little right to judge.
The procurer stopped at the edge of the table just as Fletch stepped in front of him, blocking Talia from his view.
Fletch leaned forward, talking into the procurer’s ear. The procurer leaned to the side, looking Talia up and down, and then quizzical, he looked back to Fletch.
Fletch nodded, then leaned forward to say something else Talia couldn’t hear.
With a shrug, the procurer stepped around Fletch, grabbing Talia’s arm and wrenching her away from the drunkard and to her feet. “You’re to go with this one, wench.”
“But oye—oye—oye be clean’r, sir. No more. No more.” Talia dropped her words into her thickest gutter accent, clutching the chamber pot to her chest in feigned fright.
“She will do.” With a nod, Fletch handed the procurer a sack of clinking coins.
Tucking the coins into an inside pocket, the procurer grabbed the edge of the pot Talia held, ripping it from her as he shoved her toward Fletch. Talia sprawled into Fletch with a terrified squeal, clawing at his clothes to catch herself before she fell.
“Room fourteen, third floor,” the procurer said.
Fletch gripped Talia’s upper arm, forcibly pushing her out in front of him as he weaved them through the maze of tables. She squirmed and twisted, making a show of wanting to escape his grasp.
They made it past the door that led to the stairs and Fletch loosened his grip on her. He wrapped his arm about her shoulders, drawing her into him as he ushered them up the skinny flights of stairs.
“You could have acted faster.” Her accent dropped with her harsh whisper as she glared up at him.
“I wanted you to fully understand what an asset having your husband accompany you to a brothel would be.”
She smacked his chest. “That was a lesson? You ogre. You saw how that drunk was manhandling me, and you just let it happen.”
“You were in no danger.” He squeezed her shoulder. “And he got most of that pot spilled onto him, which was well done by you. You knew what you were doing, and I knew what I was doing.”
“You are an arse.” She stomped up the next three steps next to him and then glanced up at him. “But thank you. What now?”
Fletch shrugged. “We go upstairs and have sex, I suppose.”
Her eyes flew wide. “No.”
Fletch didn’t curb his smirk.
Moments later, they slipped into room fourteen. A bed, neatly made with a shiny, blood-red coverlet commandeered the middle of the room. In front of the bed sat a backless bench, half the width of the bed, upholstered in red and black stripes with the sides swooping upward into Grecian scrolls. Draperies matching the blood-red coverlet lined the far wall.
Talia glanced up. A large mirror was attached to the ceiling. She had seen it in many of the brothel rooms, yet still wondered at it.
Fletch freed her shoulders from his arm.
“This room is much nicer than the ones below,” Talia said. “Cleaner, as well.”
He moved to face her, leaning in, his mouth next to her ear as he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Speak softly. There are always holes in rooms like these.” He stood straight, his voice normal. “When one pays for the whole night, one gets better treatment.”
Her look flew around the room, looking for holes. She went to her tiptoes to reach his ear. “All night? How long is it expected that we stay in here?”
Fletch slid his hands down around her waist, burying his face in her neck. “I imagine for at least a few minutes. I look virile, after all.” His nose rubbed the handkerchief that wrapped over her ear. “I hate this blasted wrap on your head.”
His fingers moved up and started to slide under the edge of it, but she caught his wrist. “Leave it. I still have to check the rooms on this floor.”
He dropped his hand back down to her buttock, squeezing it.
She smiled into the side of his face. “You can take it off when we get back to your house. And you can unwrap my bindings as well.”
“You liked how I did that the other night?”
She nodded into the heat of his neck, her lips grazing the dark stubble lining his neck. “I did. You did it so slowly, your fingers slipping along my skin. I both wanted and did not want you to be the gentleman you were.”
“Do not tempt me with visions of your naked body, Talia, or I will strip you down right now and take what I paid for.”
She pulled slightly away from his neck. “You don’t think to actually—”
“They have peepholes everywhere, Talia.” Both of his hands slid down, tightening his hold on the curve of her backside. “We have to make this look real.”
She looked around the room. “The bed?”
“No. You are mine, Talia. I am not about to let a lecher see you. Not about to let the slightest bit of your skin show.” Fletch moved backward, lifting her slightly and dragging her on her toes along with him.
For all she didn’t care for Fletch’s constant manhandling, she couldn’t deny the way her chest tightened when he staked claim to her. Raw and male. A primeval lust awakened in her core, teasing to the surface.
Reaching the scrolled bench at the foot of the bed, he sat. “Here. Straddle my lap. Your skirts will cover you and we can mock the motions.”
His hands still clutching her backside, he drew Talia forward and split her legs, making sure her skirts still covered her legs down to her tall boots. She dropped to sit on Fletch’s lap, the heat of her nestled onto the bulge in his pants.
His hand came up, fingers slipping under the back of the handkerchief covering her head, and he pulled her down to him, his lips meeting hers. They were creating a farce, but the kiss was the furthest thing from false. Fletch plied her lips, his teeth running along the swell of her bottom lip. His tongue plunging up, seeking to taste her deeply.
Her hips started moving on their own volition. Circling, gyrating slowly on his hard shaft as his tongue swept long strokes into her mouth.
What had been contained when she sat on Fletch’s lap was quickly spinning out of control. Her core throbbed as she grew to despise the flap of fabric on Fletch’s trouser that kept their bodies apart. Kept him from entering her.
If she had learned anything about herself in the past few days, it was that she was wanton, through and through, and she wanted Fletch deep inside of her at any opportunity.
His lips left her mouth, his hand shifting her head to the side as he traced kisses down her neck. Talia leaned into it, her eyes closing as her body demanded more. Her knees went wide, bracing on the bench to leverage herself harder onto him.
Her hips swung with force against the fabric of his trousers, his cock granite against the pulsating swell of her folds.
“Why do you do this to me?” Her voice came out in a raspy whisper, foreign to her own ears. “Make me want this, make me feel this when all I want to do is concentrate on finding Louise.”
His lips did not leave her skin with his words. “I do this to distract you, Talia.”
Her hips stopped circling and her eyes opened to look down at him. “Distract me from finding my sister?”
He held her in place with his left hand on her backside, his right hand dropping from her neck to dive between them and under her skirts. Invading the heat of her, his fingers found her pulsating core and he twisted his forefinger around it. Talia jerked from the sensation ripping through her—both fighting and wanting to succumb to his manipulation.
He nipped her neck, then ringed the spot with his tongue. “To distract you from your worry. It is destroying you, and there is nothing else we can be doing at the moment than this very thing.”
His fingers flicked through her folds, and Talia curled onto him, clutching the back of his neck.
She dropped her head, her words in his ear. “This is too much, Fletch. I am th
robbing. I need you in me.”
His fingers stopped. “Damn, Talia. No.”
“Yes. My skirts will hide everything.” She reached down, pulling her skirts higher up to hide his abdomen before her fingers worked fast along the line of buttons on the front flap of his trousers.
His lips never left her neck. Denied her nothing.
His shaft free, jutting up, Talia went up onto her knees on either side of him, lifting herself and then guiding him into her depths as she descended. He filled her, massive, stretching her, but her slickness was her ally as he slid up into her, reaching so deeply within that she wondered at the ability of her body to accommodate him.
Her arms went wide to grab the tops of the side scrolls on the bench as Fletch gripped her hips, his thumbs digging into the flesh around her hip bones.
He lifted her slightly, rocking her in circles as he let her slowly descend. Torture. Her body met his and a scream escaped, catching in her throat as she buckled, burying herself tighter to him. He let her gyrate for a breath before lifting her again, taking the same cruel path downward with her body.
Her fingers nearly cracked the wood of the bench when he landed her fully onto him. He swiveled under her, the pressure on her core too much as her body ripped away from her conscious thought, the eruption gripping her every nerve, contorting her body as she ground wave after wave into him.
Gasping for breath, the rolling sparks of climax still seizing her body, she felt herself being lifted, losing his shaft from her body as he dropped her onto his thighs. A growl into her chest, and she could feel Fletch’s body shudder violently under her, wetness suddenly smearing onto her thighs under her skirts.
Her mind only half aware, she realized he had just climaxed not inside of her. But outside.
She froze in place, her arms still wide, her chin curled over the top of his head, trying to comprehend what he had just done. Again.
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