by C. J. Archer
"Yes but anyone can buy them," she said in a brittle voice. But even as she said it, she knew he was right. She must be a suspect, if not the main one. Her fingers closed around his hand and she held on tightly to the only solid object in a room suddenly spinning around her. "What shall I do, Nick?"
He brought her hand to his lips and tenderly kissed the knuckles. "Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise."
The knot in her stomach loosened a little. Nick was a knight now, he had influential friends such as the Earl of Ashbourne and he never made promises he didn’t intend to keep. The rush of relief made her lean forward and embrace him. "Thank you," she whispered.
He pulled her close. His hot breath grazed her ear and his hand stroked her leg beneath her skirts. Higher up, her inner thigh pulsed in response and she grew moist in anticipation of his next move.
"You can thank me properly in the bed chamber," he said, a smile in his voice.
She smiled back, the tension inside her easing even as another sort of tension rose deliciously within her. "Not until you do something about that awful smell." She drew away, wrinkling her nose. "When you said you chased the attacker to the river, I didn’t think you meant the Fleet."
"I didn’t." He sniffed his sleeve and made a face. "I stink." He rose and bowed. "Excuse me while I change into something more appealing."
She smiled as she waited in the study, thinking about Nick dressed in something more appealing, and then thinking about him dressed in nothing at all. She liked that image best.
But after a few minutes either the effects of the wine began to wear off or she came to her senses some other way because she realized the afternoon was heading in a very foolish direction. A direction she didn’t want to go in. Not again. Not after their last encounter had left her heart aching more not less, and her body hungrier not sated.
She hurried across the room and snatched her coat off the hook. She had one arm in a sleeve when the door to the bedchamber behind her opened. She froze.
"Where are you going?" he asked in a thick voice.
She turned. And gasped. Nick stood before her, completely, magnificently, naked.
CHAPTER 6
The last time they’d made love Nick had kept his clothes on. There hadn’t been an opportunity to compare how much his body had changed in six years. So on seeing him naked, Isabel couldn’t help but stare. The glow from the fire tinted his smooth skin with light and shade, accentuating his powerful arms and legs. As if she needed her attention drawn to them. As always, the sight of his body was too compelling and she couldn’t look away.
He’d always been well-formed with wide shoulders and long legs, but he’d filled out across his chest in the intervening years. Not fat, just thick with compacted muscle beneath the scattering of dark hairs.
And then there was his manhood. Now that was as magnificent as ever.
Isabel stepped towards him, her feet moving of their own accord. The room seemed to fade around her leaving only Nick, big and handsome near the doorway.
"Is this better?" he asked, hands loose at his sides.
His words roused her from her stupor. It took her a moment before she realized he was referring to her earlier comment about his odor. "I, um, can’t smell you from here."
He moved closer until they were only an arm’s length apart. "Now?" Even in the poor light she could see the twinkle in his eyes.
She folded her coat over her crossed arms. "Stay where you are."
He moved forward again. "Why? Does my nakedness make you nervous?"
"Nervous?" she said, trying to lower her voice so it didn’t squeak. "Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve seen that," she nodded at his manhood, "many times. It looks a little..." she cocked her head to one side as she studied it, "different than it used to."
He frowned. "Bigger?"
"No, not bigger."
He looked down. "Smaller?" he asked, sounding concerned.
"I wouldn’t like to make a guess as to what it is," she said, enjoying his discomfort a little too much perhaps.
He glanced up and his frown deepened. "You’re joking, Isabel. I can tell by the flush of your cheeks that there’s nothing wrong with it."
"It’s the heat from the fire," she said, backing towards the door.
He shook his head, matching each of her steps with his own. "You want me, Isabel. Admit it. We’ll save a lot of time if you stop stalling and just go straight to the part of the script where you shed your clothing."
"Script?" She stopped and glared at him. "Script! This is not a play, Nick. The end to this meeting hasn’t been written."
"No?" He gave her a lazy smile. "Then why did you come here? You could have gone home and enquired after my wellbeing in the morning."
He was right and they both knew it. There was no point denying it any longer. She squared her shoulders. "Very well. I did come here to...relieve my urgings. But that has all changed. My urgings have vanished."
His smile turned wicked. "No, they haven’t." He removed her coat from her arms and threw it on top of the chest next to his. Then he leaned down and brushed a light kiss across her lips. "In fact, I think your urgings are more inflamed than ever." He kissed her chin, moving down to her throat and Isabel’s traitorous mind thought Thank goodness I’m not wearing a ruff to get in his way.
"But I have the perfect remedy," he murmured against her flesh. "You see, I’m very skilled at curing this type of ailment. In fact, you could call it my specialty."
She shouldn’t have tipped her head back to expose more of her throat but she did. It seemed she wasn’t in complete control of all her body parts. Some of them even quivered. "I am well aware," she said, breathless, "of where your skills lie. And I believe I do need some of your particular remedy after all." Forcing herself to focus, she pushed a hand against his chest until he stopped kissing her. "However it is only for tonight. Do not think this changes anything."
He looked at her through hooded lids, his breathing uneven. "You said that the last time."
She teased a curl of his dark chest hair between her thumb and finger. "Yes and nothing has changed, has it?"
"Nothing. We are still husband and wife. In every sense." His tone had gone from playful to dark, ominous.
Her fingers stopped twirling. "I meant—"
"I know what you meant." He took her hand and kissed her palm, his lips soft. "And I don’t care. That is a discussion for another day. For now, I want only to see you naked." He unpinned her cuff, dropping the strip of lace onto the rushes, and pushed her sleeve up, kissing the exposed skin. When he reached the inside of her elbow he looked up. "Six years is a long time for a man not to gaze upon his wife’s loveliness."
Her heart flapped like a caged bird and her head began to spin again. He still thought she was lovely? Even though the freshness of youth had faded after working as a shop assistant for six years?
She stood still as he unfastened her bodice and the extra one she wore underneath for warmth, and unpinned her partlet. He threw them to one side, she didn’t care where. She helped him remove the skirts and they slithered to the floor with a rustle, bunching around her ankles. His fingers fumbled with the laces of her chemise and he cursed.
"Too many clothes," he muttered. He finally got the chemise off, exposing her breasts.
When she kicked off her boots, she stood in only her hose, having removed her hat when she arrived.
His hungry gaze grazed down her body. Her nipples tightened in response and her pulse thumped an erratic beat. Far from being embarrassed, she relished the way his attention made her feel—womanly, beautiful, hot. Very, very hot. He didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t even appear to be breathing. He just looked. And then he responded in the most basic, manly way. He grew hard.
"Sit," he said, nodding at the chair near the door. She sat. He knelt in front of her and sucked a nipple into his mouth, circling the other with his thumb. She gasped as her body throbbed in response. But he stopped
—too soon!—and turned his attention to her left foot, massaging it before working up to her knee. Then he drew down the hose slowly, as if it were made of the most delicate silk, his knuckles caressing her flesh. She blew out a jagged breath as he repeated the sensual task on her right leg. "Do you think you can make it to the bed this time?" he asked, a wobbly grin tugging at his mouth.
She nodded, not trusting her voice. When she stood, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her into his bedchamber. He lay her gently on the large bed, leaving her legs dangling over the side, then knelt on the floor at her feet. Slowly, interminably, he kissed his way up her leg to her thigh then...
Oh my! It seemed Nick had learned a thing or two in the last six years. A very, very good thing she thought as she floated away. The tide within her rose, filling her from head to toe. She hovered at the brink in excruciating bliss, waiting, wanting to spill over the edge but not yet, not yet. Until finally the dam burst and she bucked into him, her gasps filling her ears.
When her breathing returned to normal and her body ceased twitching, Isabel opened her eyes to see Nick stretched out alongside her, smiling like he’d just found the key to a treasure chest. He rested a hand over one breast as if it was the most natural place for it to be, and said, "Now that was interesting."
"Very." She rose up on one elbow and gently shoved him onto his back. "Now let me return the favor." He groaned as she slid down, kissing a trail from his hard chest to his thick erection. He tasted clean and a little like the neroli he must have used in his washing water. Delicious. She reach down and under, cupping him in her palm. She massaged and concentrated on stroking his shaft with her tongue. His moans intensified when she switched from licking to sucking, growing louder and more primal.
I’m causing that reaction.
His body tensed beneath her and his fingers dug into the coverlet, scrunching it in his fists. With a loud, long grunt, he jerked once and exploded into her mouth.
She moved slowly up his shuddering body and built a tower with her fists on his chest, resting her chin on top. She watched his face change from flushed pink to its natural tan and the softened features regain some of their form. When he opened his eyes, she smiled at him.
"Also very interesting," he said to her, his voice laced with something she couldn’t define.
"Very," she said, her body still humming from her own release.
He sat up abruptly, dislodging her ungracefully.
"What did you do that for?" she said not hiding her annoyance. She’d just done for him something she never thought she’d do and he treated her like a...whore.
"Where did you learn to do that?"
She shrugged, confused. Then it suddenly occurred to her—he was jealous. No, not jealous. Possessive. He was afraid she’d learned that skill on someone else. She’d actually learned it from Meg and Meg’s friend Anna. Some of their conversations had been very...detailed.
But Isabel was in no mood to enlighten him. She didn’t have to make him feel more secure in their relationship. They had no relationship. It had ended years ago and sometimes, like now when he was being arrogant and dull-witted, she wondered if that wasn’t such a bad thing. "Perhaps I learned it the same way you learned your little trick," she said, getting up and storming out to the study and her clothes.
He followed her. "What does that mean?"
She sat down in a chair and put her hose on before she answered. "It means you just ruined a pleasant experience," she said, reaching for her underskirts.
"Ruined? Pleasant?" He stood in the center of the room, his arms crossed. "It was better than pleasant, my sweet."
"If you think so." She pulled her chemise over her head and stepped into her first underskirt. "And I’m not your sweet anything."
"Definitely not," he said, his voice flat, making her glance up at him. His face had hardened, his mouth a thin, white line. The fire had died so it was too dark to see his eyes but she’d wager they were as tumultuous as stormy seas.
She pulled up her other skirts and put on the bodices, fastening the ties, and shoved her feet into her boots.
"You can’t walk back to Bucklersbury Street alone," he said. "It’s dark now."
"I’ll be fine." She stuffed her partlet into her skirt pocket then picked up her coat and threw it around her shoulders. Thrusting her fingers into her gloves and clamping her hat on her head, she strode for the door without looking back at him.
Somehow he reached it first, blocking her exit. He looked like a Roman gladiator, ready to do battle, except his only weapon wasn’t as sharp as it had been although it still looked dangerous. She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Stay," he said gently, suddenly looking more like a puppy than a gladiator. "I’m sorry I implied...what I did."
She wondered if his hesitation meant he wasn’t sorry or if he wasn’t sure what he’d implied. Being a man, it could be either.
"Please move out of my way," she said.
"Stay, Isabel."
"No. It was foolish of me to come here and it was foolish to do what we just did, but it would be worse than foolish if I stayed tonight. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Nick, and as I said earlier, it doesn’t—"
"Mean anything. I know."
She swallowed but never took her eyes off his. Being firm was the only thing that would get her out of this mess.
"If you insist on going," he said, "then at least wait until I get dressed so I can escort you."
"I managed to get here without an escort."
"That is not the point." He moved away from the door slowly, as if he expected her to rush through it as soon as relinquished his position.
She decided that pressing her point would only end in another argument, and she hated arguing with Nick. It usually didn’t get her anywhere because he was as stubborn as an ox. Besides, she didn’t want him getting suspicious if she protested too much. She knew she was safe on the streets after dark—that awful episode with his mother had shown her what she was capable of—but he didn’t. Best to allow him to think he was protecting her.
The walk back to Bucklersbury Street seemed to last forever because neither spoke a word. She couldn’t be sure if his silence was due to his simmering anger or his concentration on their surroundings, listening for footpads. With his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, he looked prepared to do battle with anything that emerged from the shadows. It wasn’t until they reached the shop that she felt she should say something.
"Thank you for the escort," she said at the front door.
"Any time, day or night." His voice sounded like a rumble coming from deep within his chest. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness but she knew he was looking at her, could feel his entire attention focused on her.
She shifted her weight and wondered whether it was proper to kiss estranged husbands you’d just had a liaison with on the cheek, the mouth or not at all. A bitter wind blew her hair back from her face and she shivered. It was too cold to be deliberating etiquette on the front porch, even with a warm man standing so close she could smell their recent encounter on him.
"Good night, Nick."
"Isabel," he said, tugging her coat tighter beneath her chin, "I want to see you again."
"Yes," she said, almost continuing with I want to see you too. But she stopped herself in time and instead told him, "I know." And left it at that. In truth, she didn’t see how she could avoid him anymore. They seemed to have started something, something out of her control like a boulder hurtling down a hill. It was exciting, thrilling and yet stupid and dangerous. That boulder could crush her but she felt completely incapable of getting out of its way.
***
After he left Isabel at the Bucklersbury Street shop, Nicholas had spent the remainder of the night wondering who was trying to kill him because it was easier than trying to work out whether Isabel wanted to see him again or not. Her response outside the shop had been non-committal although her body’s response to his touch had been
a resounding yes. Towards dawn, he fell asleep without an answer to either mystery.
When he awoke, he decided to return to Bucklersbury Street since whoever wanted him dead was most likely linked with his current investigation and the apothecaries’ street seemed to be at the center of it. Besides, Isabel was there, and he couldn’t allow a day to pass without seeing her.
She glanced up when he opened the door, as did her customer—the woman he’d seen there the day before. A whore going by the large circles of vermilion on her cheeks and extremely low bodice. Too scrawny and tired looking to be a good one though, which probably accounted for the patched-up rags she wore and the tattered marigold wig. She sat on a stool opposite Isabel who stood behind her workbench, no open jars in front of her, no weighing scales nearby, no scoop in hand. Apparently the whore had come for conversation, not a remedy. Isabel would be good at dispensing advice with her no-nonsense practicality and a bluntness he’d found himself the target of lately.