Lord Regret's Price: A Jane Austen Space Opera, Book 3

by Joely Sue Burkhart

  Using the flail on herself had been titillating. Turning it on Sig…

  Lifting her arm for the strike made her heart pound and heat unfurled deep in her abdomen. Bringing the leather down on his back, even lightly, almost made her moan out loud. The slapping thud on his skin made her shiver. The way his muscles tensed and flowed in his back and shoulders made her want to stroke and lick every inch. He might tend to dress like a dandy with his fine lace and tight breeches, but tight power coiled in his body. He was lean and sleek like a tiger, and surely just as dangerous.

  Heady power filled her. She controlled the tiger. He’d curbed his energy and strength to allow her to do this to him. She’d wager no other woman had ever convinced him to try this. To trust her enough to let her tie him up, take away his control and, now, warm his back with stripes.

  “Harder,” he growled. “Make me feel. Something. Anything. Harder!”

  She complied, gaining confidence with each strike. Even hitting him with force didn’t make him flinch or scream. His skin reddened, but he groaned and twisted his grip on the post. He braced his forehead against the wood and widened his stance, as if begging her to explore his entire body with the flail.

  Dropping the blows in a slow dance down his back, buttocks and the backs of his thighs, she concentrated on bringing that same lovely pink everywhere. Sweat broke out on her skin and her breathing was heavy, her arm and shoulders beginning to ache. She’d definitely have to work to increase her stamina.

  Assuming he let her do it again.

  Heavens above, I hope he will.

  Her insides were coiled so tightly her muscles ached. If he strained to keep his hands on the post, then she fought to keep from slinging herself against him and moaning out her desire. Heat pulsed in her groin, need slicked her thighs. Every cell in her body demanded release, to be filled by him. Every breath, every thud of her heart—agony because he wasn’t inside her. A live wire connected her breasts, lighting up her entire body with thousands of volts of electricity. She was surprised her hair wasn’t standing on end, that her muscles weren’t convulsing with the force of energy building inside her.

  The harder she hit him, the more she ached for him. The more he groaned and sweated, the more her thighs slipped together. Her nipples throbbed, her breasts so full and tight, and they ached deliciously as they swung with her arm movements, each slight shift tugging on the chain and the clamp.

  Now it was a duel of endurance. Which one of them would beg first? Would she sling the flail aside and throw herself against him so hard they both collapsed upon the bed? Or would he snarl like a beast and whirl to drag her down beneath him to the floor? Both options appealed.

  She moved to his side so she could see his arousal. So thick and swollen, his erection jerked with her every stroke of the lash. The sight made her redouble her efforts, to see if she could drive him to release with the flail alone. He had to be close. Sweat dripped down his chest, shudders racking his body as he fought to keep control. Her arm felt like it weighed as much as HMS Dreadnought, but she managed another hard strike to his upper thigh.

  One that finally made his eyes flare open. He jerked his hands away from the pillar as though it’d electrocuted him, and whirled toward her. Eyes blazing, he slammed into her, pressing her back to the wall. She met his attack with open mouth and hungry hands, clawing at his shoulders to lift herself high enough to get him inside her. Something crashed to the floor but neither of them paused to see what priceless Imperial artifact they might have destroyed.

  He thrust deep, driving her into the wall, over and over, grinding so hard and deep into her that she had the distant thought of bruises. Not that she cared in the slightest.

  Even though Gil had managed to avoid most of the alcohol and certainly all of the carnal activities at the brothel, he still staggered into their guest quarters at dawn. He’d practically carried the Emperor back to his ship, still shocked that the young man had managed to leave Xuanyuan without any guards or at least an acquaintance—other than himself—to make sure he got home.

  Did no one care if the young Emperor made it home alive? Why hire the infamous Lord Regret to assassinate the Emperor when it’d be easy enough to shoot him as he stumbled out of the brothel?

  I can’t wait to hear Charlotte’s take on all this. Their politics just don’t make any sense to me.

  However, it might be quite some time before he could discuss the matter with her, he decided, looking about the room with a little awe and a lot of jealousy. A vase had shattered on the floor, another was tumbled over with flowers strew about the room. Pictures hung askew. The massive and surprisingly very proper bed was so torn apart with blankets tangled and dangling from the mattress that it looked like an orgy had happened without him.

  Here he’d been trapped at a brothel and had come home untouched, while she’d remained in their room and had had quite the wild encounter. It hardly seemed fair.

  The new flail she’d purchased lay at the foot of the bed, and it all suddenly made sense to him. However, another search through the tangled bedclothes revealed only the luscious curves of Charlotte.

  Regret was already gone.

  Gil sat down long enough to strip off his boots, and then he straightened enough of the bedding so he could lie down comfortably and draw her into his arms. She nuzzled deep into his embrace, shivering enough that he pulled a blanket up over her shoulders and tucked her close. She made a low, pleased hum that made his cock stir despite his tiredness.

  “You smell like smoke. Not tobacco smoke, though. Different. What is it?”

  “There was an opium den next door.” He sighed, already starting to sit up so he could change and bathe, but she clung to him tighter. “I probably got a contact high from the smoke.”

  “Later,” she whispered. “Next door to what?”

  Despite his innocence in the matter, he still tensed until he could hear her reaction. “The Emperor took me to a brothel back in Bei-Jing.”

  She smothered a laugh against his neck. “Oh, poor Gil. Does he go there very often?”

  “Evidently,” he grumbled, relieved that she wasn’t upset. “He went there alone, outside of Xuanyuan. No guards. He was so drunk I had to carry him back to the ship. Does that make sense to you?”

  She leaned up so she could look into his face, bracing an elbow on his chest. “You mean, why hire an expensive assassin to kill him when it’d be so easy to not only kill him but embarrass the entire Imperial family by having him assassinated at a brothel?”

  Gil nodded, reaching up to push some of her heavy hair out of her face. She preferred to braid her hair most nights so that it didn’t take an hour to brush it out in the morning, but he always relished the nights she forgot so he could play with the tumbled locks. He loved her silken tresses spread out across his pillow so he could bury his nose in the sweet scent.

  “You’re right. That doesn’t make sense at all. Unless it’s someone in the royal family who doesn’t want the embarrassment. It might be much better to have it done quietly where they can control the exposure. Or the Emperor isn’t Sig’s target at all.”

  “Has he heard who the mark is?”

  She frowned. “Not that he mentioned.” But then her lips quirked with heated remembrance. “Not that he had much of an opportunity to discuss it with me. I haven’t pushed for details for fear he’ll leap to the conclusion I’ll try to keep him from it.”

  “So he wasn’t as opposed to the flail as you first feared?”

  Her eyes clouded, losing some of that sultry heat. “Oh, he definitely feared it, but it was like the shopkeeper told me. Not because he was truly afraid he would hate it, but because he was afraid he’d like it too well. That, and his other fear that he might hurt me.”

  Gil spared a glance around the disheveled room. “It does look as though things got a little…wild.”

  A slow heat pinkened her cheeks and began to flood down her neck and breasts. Many things might be said of Charlotte, b
ut she wasn’t shy or prudish. No, the color in her cheeks was the flush of passion.

  All of Gil’s weariness leaked away, but he couldn’t even think about making love to her with the stink of the evening clinging to his skin and hair. He sat up, ignoring her clinging hands. “Come join me in a bath, then.”

  Grumbling, she let him assist her upright. “It is a very nice bath, though I regret only having a few hours of sleep.”

  “At least you had some sleep. I’ve had to endure the agonizing moaning of an overgrown teenage boy who’s never had a life of his own.”

  “Ah yes, I remember hating that age well, and I didn’t even have a mother like Cixi trying to control every aspect of my life.”

  “Did she tell you that he’s ill?”

  Charlotte paused in the middle of pulling her wrap on. He thought it was concern for the young man, until he saw that she was staring at something in the pottery shards. Reaching down, she pulled out a small black circle, no bigger than a pea. “They bugged our room. Good thing I set up a disruptor, though each evening we ought to ensure no one’s tampered with my device before we talk too much.”

  “Who would care what the foreigners were talking about? Perhaps no one was actually listening and the bug was planted when the room was created.”

  “They were trying to listen,” she replied grimly, shaking her head. “The question is who. Who tried to kill me? Who contracted Sig? How much time do I have to unravel the secrets, discover the connection between the dragon and the Emperor, and get the hell out of here before Majel arrives with a dozen warships?”

  “So you think there is a connection between the Emperor’s illness and the dragon?”

  She blew out a frustrated breath. “Let me think things through. I’ll take my handy-dandy disruptor so we can talk freely without concern for who’s listening. Perhaps the heated water will release a few thoughts that aren’t quite making sense.”

  Now that was quite the admission for the brilliant Lady Doctor to make. If she was confused and off track, then they had no hope of escaping alive.

  Gil followed her into the next room. Tiles covered the floors and walls in a soft jade. The room was warm and humid, so much that he immediately broke a sweat. It felt like a jungle. Potted ferns and orchids added to the lushness of the room, making it feel like they’d stumbled into a secluded island retreat.

  In the floor, a pool ran the length of the room, deep and wide enough he could swim laps if so inclined. Steam rose from the rose-petaled water.

  “Wow,” he finally said, “too bad Regret doesn’t have one of these on his ship.”

  “Definitely a perk to planetside—or this time, space-station palace—living.” Charlotte set the small box she called a disruptor on a convenient bench, slipped off her wrap and slowly worked her way into the water using a set of stairs.

  Gil moved to join her, too quickly. Damn, the water was hot, almost to the point of the unpleasant feeling of being cooked alive. He slowed down, working his way up to his waist. He followed her to the side where benches had been built along the wall. It took a few tries for him to get fully seated, bringing the scalding water nearly up to his chin, but it was worth it when she began washing his hair. Her fingers kneaded his scalp and he sagged deeper into the water.

  “Why would she go to the trouble of showing me the dragon and asking for help, but not directly ask me to evaluate the Emperor’s health? I have eyes. I can certainly tell he’s not well, even if I hadn’t heard the rumors.”

  “He said she couldn’t ask for help because the Emperor should never be seen as weak. If news got out that he was ill, there’d be a panic.”

  “Hmmm, he does have a point. When…” She started to say something but paused so long that Gil opened his eyes to search her face. She looked a thousand miles away, her brow furrowed, her lip caught between her teeth. When she noticed him looking up at her, she smoothed her face into a smile. “What are his symptoms?”

  He repeated what the Emperor had told him, even though his chest ached with a hollowness that caught him unawares. There was so much of her past that she’d never shared. Couldn’t share. Did Sig know? Or did she keep secrets from them both?

  “I’m assuming I won’t be allowed to examine the Emperor if he can’t even tell me in person that he’s ill. So how am I to run any tests and see what the issue is?”

  Gil swallowed the lump in his throat so he could speak. “Is there anything I can do? He seems to like me well enough, and I had alone time with him last night. If I can do it again, tell me what to do.”

  “I’ll give you a scanner, already programmed to run a few quick tests.” She settled on his lap, straddling his thighs so he could see her face. Solemnly, she gazed into his eyes. “You know I love you.”

  “As I love you.” He stroked her back without trying to pull her closer, his voice ragged with emotion. “Yet you have secrets you cannot share. I understand.”

  “It’s because I love you so very much that I can’t tell you. It’s safer for us all.”

  “I understand,” he repeated, trying to keep the dull ache out of his eyes. “Sig has his secrets too.”

  She cocked her head slightly. “You don’t have any secrets?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation. “I had my great secret when we first met, but my life and heart are now an open book.”

  She propped an elbow on his shoulder and casually draped against his chest, trailing a finger up and down the line of hair leading down his belly. “I don’t even know where you were born, who your parents are, why you became a marshal. Nothing.”

  “None of that matters. There’s no great secret to be had there. I was born on Americus. My parents were colonists. My mother was from Eire and my father was a Britannian sailor who fell in love with her on the trip to the new planet. They settled in Bostonia. My father continued to work on the ships coming to and fro ports all across the galaxy, but he always came home to Mama. She was a seamstress and raised me and four other children before she died.”

  Sudden emotion tightened his throat and he had to pause. Charlotte was silent, her fingers lightly tracing whorls through his chest hair, helping to settle his mind. “She was killed before the Revolution by a small gang of drunken Britannian soldiers. They caught her leaving the shop alone, late at night. I wasn’t there to protect her and she fought back. So they killed her. I joined the rebellion the very next day and after the war, I was given an appointment as a marshal.”

  “An open book,” she whispered against his ear, her voice a gentle balm. “You’re a good man, Gil Masters.”

  “Would a good man have abandoned his brothers and sisters so he could fight for the cause, even if it was a good one?”

  “How old were they?”

  If he closed his eyes, he could still see his siblings on the front steps of their tiny home as he’d walked away. “Martha was eighteen, the twins, Thomas and Matthew, were fifteen, and Sarah Elizabeth was only six.”

  “And how old were you, Gil?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Only a baby,” she breathed into his ear. “Don’t let guilt cut you any longer, dearest. Your sister was a woman grown and your brothers nearly so. Where was your father during the war?”

  “His ship was shot down somewhere over the Bahamas asteroid belt before the war even started. I was the head of the household and I left them. I abandoned them while I went off on my white horse to avenge Mama without a care for how they’d survive.”

  “What provincial thinking.”

  The wry cut to her voice broke through his self-loathing and he focused on her face. Her eyes sparked with fire, even though she still lay against his chest.

  “I know life was different in Americus, but your sister was more than capable of making a life for your family. I was head of House Wyre at the age of seventeen, commanding our estates and managing at least a thousand people’s livelihoods. By the ripe age of twenty-one I was already appointed Queen’s Physician. Majel hers
elf began ruling all of Britannia when she was only sixteen years old, even if she was only Regent until her mother’s passing. I’m sure your sister managed very well in your absence, but I do take you to task for failing to contact them, if for no other reason than to make sure they knew you were well.”

  He didn’t drop his gaze, although his face burned like he’d stuck his whole head in the hot water. “I wrote at first. She does know I’m well and she always insisted they were fine too. I told myself she was merely lying.”

  “But you haven’t seen them in quite some time. That’s not the same as a letter.”

  His heart gave a painful wrench, a hard tug toward Bostonia. “As soon as you’re safe, we’ll go back. I want you to meet them.”

  She smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Perhaps they could come meet us somewhere instead. I fear I’ll never go back to Americus.”

  When he’d left home, he’d had a whole family waving good-bye to him. It’d been his choice to leave and not return, and nothing prevented him from going home to see them, except danger to his lady. What family had she left behind, knowing she’d never be able to return as long as Majel ruled? “Who…?”

  She laid a finger across his lips. “I can’t ever go back to Wyreton, if it’s even still standing. Majel probably leveled the entire estate. I can only hope that all our precautions over the years protected our people and gave them time to escape to safety before she unleashed her wrath.”

  “Do you ever try to contact them?”

  “No. I mustn’t. I’m sure Majel has planted bugs on everyone and everything I ever knew, just in case they were to hear the slightest news about my whereabouts. Trust me, dearest, for the most part I have no close connections with which I yearn to converse. She who knew me best is the one who would kill me. The rest know me well enough to know I’m well and it’s best to pretend they never knew me at all. I had no siblings, just a distant cousin who might have taken over Wyre if Majel allowed the Duchy to remain.”