I Kissed an Earl

by Julie Anne Long

  “You’re pale.”

  “I was born pale. It’s a family trait.”

  She could have predicted the tilt of his lips. You’re everywhere pale, he was thinking, she could tell. Your throat, your breasts, your long, long legs. But his smile faded the longer he watched her. To be replaced by a tiny vertical dent between his brows, the precursor of a genuine frown.

  Every bit of Violet’s strength was required to not only meet that gaze evenly, but to also get a piquant eyebrow up. As if she were playfully basking in his scrutiny.

  A woozy light shivered on the wall, bounced from the water below through the window.

  Asher turned away to look out over the sea, magnetized as always to it.

  And then he sighed, and stretched his arms extravagantly, which nearly brought his fingertips in contact with both walls of the small room. He pulled out his watch and reviewed the time, glanced toward the door as if contemplating leaving, sighed and tucked his watch back into place…then wandered a little too nonchalantly to the little table next to the bed.

  Well, why wouldn’t he? She’d bloody been staring at it.

  She took a page from his book of nonchalance and sauntered to the window and peered out, saw endless water, feigned meditative contemplation. As though that rosewood box hadn’t sent up a veritable screech of awareness in her mind. She watched from the corner of her eye.

  Asher almost whimsically lifted the candle. Hefted it, placed it down again. Right next to that box.

  Violet tensed.

  “Cold,” he said wryly. “Scarcely burnt. So he didn’t snuff a candle an instant before our arrival and bolt.”

  She produced another weak smile and gave a half turn, to watch.

  He dragged a thoughtful finger over the top of the rosewood box.

  Her stomach turned to ice. Her limbs followed suit.

  “Do you recognize this box?” he asked absently.

  “No,” she managed. It was only one syllable, after all.

  When he tried the lid, she bit her lip hard to send the blood back into her head. A little preventative against fainting.

  The lid resisted his tugging.

  She knew him well enough to know it was too soon to be relieved.

  “Is it locked?” She sounded admirably, calmly curious. But in her ears, her voice had a peculiar echo, as though it had traveled from a long way away to exit her mouth.

  He didn’t look at her. “Seems to be. Doubtless I can get it open with a hairpin, however. Can I prevail upon you to loan one to me?”

  “Violet?” He turned to her swiftly when she didn’t answer. Whatever expression he saw fleeing her face caused him to go strangely still and very stiff. As though a sudden movement might jar some old injury.

  “Of course,” she said finally. She thought her face might crack from the effort of nonchalance. “Just…just allow me to find one for you…”

  It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for her brain to communicate the message “find a pin” to her hand, and her hand seemed peculiarly ungainly and ineffectual, once she got it up into her hair. As if it didn’t belong to her at all. As if she’d borrowed it for the search.

  He moved to her. Two tentative steps. When he stopped near she decided then the scent of him, so uniquely masculine and intoxicating, would bring her to the point of swooning until the very day she died. She’d recognize it, find it blindfolded in a room of thousands of men. And as he stood there in all casualness she breathed him in as if it were the last time, because for all she knew it was.

  She gave up and dropped her hand from her hair.

  His face betrayed nothing of his thoughts, but his eyes were as usual searching her face. She was suddenly violently resentful of his cleverness; it was as invasive as it had seemed liberating. But if he drew any conclusions or magically deciphered the run of her thoughts, his expression never betrayed it. His hand just came quickly up.

  She blinked, but managed not to flinch. He stroked it into her hair, and his expression subtly moved as he braced himself against whatever rushed his surface when he touched her. Feelings he would always beat back, never give voice to.

  He found a pin, naturally.

  And then drew it from her hair gently and too slowly, watching her face the way he’d watch for threats on a distant horizon.

  Oh God. He knew something was amiss.

  “Thank you,” he said ironically. “Didn’t muss a hair, either. But don’t sneeze or it might all come down.”

  And then she was forced to stand and casually wait while he turned his back on her and inserted the hairpin into the keyhole of that box.

  The next few moments were a hell of anticipation accented by the scritch scritch scritching sound of Captain Flint, the Earl of Ardmay, attempting to pry into the secrets of yet another Redmond. Though he didn’t know yet this was what he was doing.

  Until at last the earl removed the hairpin, stood back, and stared at the box.

  Hallelujah! He’d failed! And she most certainly didn’t intend to volunteer to pick the lock while he stood there.

  But Flint cast a look at the line of lengthening shadow between them drawn by the lowering sun. “It’s growing late. I think perhaps we ought to just take the box with us and I’ll try again later.”

  He didn’t wait for her reply. He tucked the box beneath his arm, turned and said politely, “Thank you for the loan of your pin,” held it out to her, and she reached for it.

  He seized her hand between his.

  A trap! Damn him.

  She was certain he could feel her pulse rabbiting away inside her wrist.

  “Your hand is ice cold, Violet.”

  The intelligence behind those blue eyes probed away at her. Has he memorized my face the way I’ve memorized his? Does a twitch of a lash tell him something about my thoughts, the way the slightest change in light in the sky over the Sussex Downs hints at the coming weather?

  She was fairly certain her face gave him nothing. Because Violet had lately learned what she capable of doing in order to protect the people she loved, and if this meant shooting a man to death to save her lover’s life or cultivating a gaming table face in order to save her brother’s life, so be it.

  “Fatigue,” she said lightly. With a one-shouldered shrug that curiously caused him to frown faintly.

  He held her hand a moment longer, tightly, as though she were a skip that would bob out to sea if he released her. Tension gathered in his face; she thought he would speak. Then his eyes flicked away from her. And perhaps the shadows were painting everything in the room with more drama and shade than they could rightfully lay claim to. But for the span of a breath she thought she saw something lost, something resigned in his face. There and then gone as if it had never been.

  He dropped her hand.

  They stared at each other a moment.

  “Flint?” she asked tentatively.

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you tell the crew to make sure they were familiar with Plaza de Mina before tomorrow?”

  “Why do you think, Violet?”

  She watched him. Then gave a short nod.

  He arched a brow, and motioned gracefully for her to precede him out of the room.

  Chapter 25

  Torture for Violet resumed that evening after a meal taken in a suite of rooms the earl took for himself at a similar, though more comfortable inn, farther along the Plaza. The crew, led by Lavay, were exploring all the pleasures Cádiz had to offer by night, and getting the lay of Plaza de Mina, while Violet confronted a dinner of chicken and peas and rice all swimming in a dark spiced sauce and washed down with what she was told was a good Spanish wine. She could barely swallow any of it. The earl devoured his.

  After he’d pushed his polished-clean plate away, Flint set to work avidly on the box with a hairpin, like a man with a whittling project, whistling.

  Whistling! The bloody man whistled while he worked.

  And thus, it a state of suppressed hysterical
hilarity and terror she was forced to listen to a medley of sea chanteys while she waited to learn whether the box would yield up proof of Lyon’s perfidy.

  To a man, her brothers would have said she deserved every bit of torment she was experiencing now. That she had brought it all upon herself entirely.

  When the box lid finally gave way with a POP, she could have sworn it was the sound of the top of her head flying off.

  Asher peered into the box. Then upended it and gave it a hard shake.

  A few sad flakes of tobacco rained out. The stale tobacco scent trapped inside soared out and quickly mingled with the lingering aroma of devoured chicken.

  “It’s empty,” he said.

  So you think.

  Though perhaps it was indeed. But knowing Lyon, she doubted it sincerely.

  Absurdly, for a moment, she was disappointed on Flint’s behalf. And then exhausted again to feel like a wishbone between her brother and her lover.

  He was unnervingly gentlemanly about turning his back and allowing her to slip into her night rail. He was then unnervingly matter-of-fact about stripping down to nothing as per usual and climbing into bed as though that first eyeful of his nude rugged beauty didn’t club the breath from her entirely and prevent her from moving for a few solid seconds. He pulled the blankets up to his chest, crossing his arms behind his head, and after she unpinned and brushed her hair smooth, wordlessly she did the same, wondering if this was how wives or mistresses behaved: climbing into bed with men as if it were the natural conclusion to brushing one’s hair or cleaning one’s teeth. If she’d somehow entered the territory of “kept” or “fallen” and whether there was a protocol she ought to be aware of.

  She punched a pillow to soften it, and let her head sink into it, knowing there would be no sleep for her at all tonight as long as the rosewood box sat in the next room. It seemed to swell, that box, taking on grail significance.

  It was only after he doused the lamp that she wondered why he hadn’t bothered to seduce her. On what could very well be their very last night together.

  And five minutes after the lamp was doused, she learned she’d wondered too soon.

  He rolled over onto his side and looked down at her. Touched a finger to her lips, drew it softly along them to the line of her jaw. His eyes glinted in the shadows.

  For the past two days, he’d reached for her like a man certain of his welcome, or a man who didn’t care whether she welcomed him at all because he had a world of faith in the powers of his persuasion.

  But his touch was strangely tentative.

  He touched her now as though she’d become a stranger.

  He suspects something.

  She caught his hand as he was tracing her ear. She held it fast for a second or two. Both to tease him with indecisiveness, and to remind herself of his strength. But even as that rosewood box consumed her thoughts, her body knew what it wanted. She dragged her fingernails down his sinewy furred forearm, to flatten against the hot hard planes his chest, halting when she found the hard thump of his heartbeat. His lips impatiently found hers which welcomed him, as his hands impatiently pushed up her nightdress, waited while it snagged on her chin, pulled it off with an oath and flung it to the ground as though it had attacked him first. How she didn’t recognize herself: She wanted to unfold like a bloody flower when he touched her, wrapping her arms and legs around him, glorying in the opportunity to give, to take.

  Good God, what a poor thing she’d been before, a half person. She didn’t know what this made her now.

  At the very least, it was definitely wanton to want him even as she might need to betray him.

  Suddenly he covered her so swiftly, so nearly angrily she stifled a gasp.

  He held the heat and weight of his body just above her like a threat: I can possess you however I please. She slid her arms up his chest, clung to him, arched up to brush teasingly against his swollen cock, to tell him she would surrender willingly, to let him know he could take her how he pleased, hard or quickly. Appeasement. She wanted quickly; she wanted him, but she also wanted him asleep.

  He knew it.

  He wasn’t to be appeased.

  He sat up again abruptly instead, straddling her thighs with his full weight, peeling her hands abruptly from him. And then with another swift move that made her gasp he knelt between her legs, lifting her calves over his shoulders. Then he laced his fingers through hers and pressed her hands flat above her head, pinning them. Imprisoning her. Forbidding her to touch him.

  He seemed to have a plan.

  He positioned himself between her legs, teased her where she was damp and aching. She swallowed a gasp; her flesh pulsed its protest, its yearning.

  Damn him.

  And then he did it again, until she arched for him, urging him on, and the need surged and ebbed, then surged again, a thing with claws.

  He denied her.

  “Asher…” she begged.

  It was what he wanted to hear. And this time he breeched her, but slowly, so achingly slowly she had no choice but to experience as if for the first time the thick heat and power of him, to recognize how tightly they joined, how right it felt. So slowly want and anticipation rippling outward everywhere in her body, pressing against the very seams of her being, a dam in danger of dangerously breaking.

  See me. Feel me. Only me.

  This was his intent.

  He pulled back, and slowly moved again.

  “God…” she whimpered. “Please. Faster.” She choked the words shamelessly.

  And he shifted slightly. A strategic shift to be sure, because his next swift precise thrust sent pleasure arcing through her like a lightning strike, so total and shocking it nearly blacked her consciousness.

  So this was a sensual attack, a conquering. She struggled silently with her thoughts: This is just pleasure, and pleasure is temporal, and needs are met, and I can live without him.

  But he moved again, in just the same way, against the same place inside her. And again. And then again. So slowly, until a long primal groan tore from her, half pleasure, all agony of want.

  She was lost; he’d won. There was only Flint and what she needed from him.

  She begged, with his name, with threats, to give her release. He gave a short dark laugh. She thrashed her head back, fought with him for her hands so she could claw him into doing her bidding, pummel him, urge him on.

  He kept her trapped. He wanted her to feel only where they were joined.

  He gave her no mercy.

  He knew how intense the pleasure could be. He would allow her no less.

  He moved again, and now she moved with him, taking him deeper than she knew possible. And again.

  And again.

  She heard him fighting against his own need to drive himself home, his breath shuddering now, his palms hot and slick with sweat with the effort of his restraint. His body shaking.

  And still it built and built in her, a crisis of pleasure.

  “Asher…God…I’m going to…I…” She was frantic, careening toward an edge from a height she’d never dreamed existed.

  He growled then, and unleashed himself and plunged, all but slamming into her like a man outracing death, fighting for his life or for hers, and her release at last crashed through her. She screamed the white-hot bliss of it as though she was being murdered. As though she were being born.

  Quiet, perspiring, nude, dark.

  Impressions flicked on like fireflies around her. She was sated. Limp. Killed and possessed and humbled in the most pleasant of ways. She’d actually screamed.

  Asher.

  Rosewood box.

  Oh damn.

  “Violet.”

  “Mmm?”

  “You would tell me if aught were amiss?”

  Her heart stuttered. She was fully alert now.

  “Aught? The weather, the food, the accommodations, your attentions to my body, things of that nature?”

  “Yes. Or your health. Things of that nature
.”

  His delivery was light. But the question was not.

  And at first she doubted it was the question he truly wanted to ask. Perhaps he hoped he’d made love to her until she was his senseless slave, and thus helpless not to answer his questions. She considered it likely the beginning of the interrogation she’d feared all night; that he would ceaselessly pelt her with little questions until he jarred loose the big secret throbbing in her conscience.

  He was concerned for her health? Touching.

  But…

  Ohhhh. Her health.

  She was a woman, a pampered one but less sheltered than her mother would have preferred to believe, and she knew precisely what indiscriminate lovemaking could lead do. And so did he.

  Bastard children.

  In an instant she was grateful for the dark, because she was certain she was scarlet everywhere. Her skin glowed with the heat of self-consciousness. From wanton lovemaking…to motherhood? Inadvertently she inched a little away from him. Space in which to think of what this might mean.

  The price of recklessness. Of slipping her family tether. Of learning who she truly was.

  But she wanted a family.

  And he wanted a dynasty.

  But between them it was impossible, because tomorrow likely meant the end of this.

  “I would tell you if aught was amiss.”

  Which was tantamount to a lie, because she wasn’t certain this was true. Even if she were with child, she might or might not tell him, for his sake as well as her own.

  But it was what he wanted to hear.

  Conversation ceased.

  A moment later he drew his finger slowly, lightly down her spine, tracing each pearl of it. Tentatively. Almost whimsically. It was affection. Possession. Entreaty.

  It changes nothing, she thought, and she knew he knew it, too.

  He will undo me, she thought. Her felt heart swollen in her chest.

  He was asleep soon after.

  When he was sleeping soundly, snoring with an abandon and respiratory variety impossible to fake, she slid out of the bed and crept into the next room, where the fire still burned with some life.