Taste for Trouble (Blake Brothers Trilogy)

by Sey, Susan

  “Bel,” he said. “Bel.”

  She speared her fingers through his hair and brought his mouth back to hers with a greedy purpose. She didn’t want to talk. She’d had enough talk to last her whole life. Now she wanted action.

  Because she’d seen James in action, seen him back up all his words with an enormous act of courage and strength. And now she wanted it all for herself. All that courage, all that strength, all that loyalty and determination and goodness. She wanted it in her arms, in her bed, in her heart. In her life.

  He loved her. He’d said so. And she loved him. For better or worse. She wanted to bind him to her now, before they talked and things got complicated. She wanted to give him her pledge in the most ancient and primal way possible. Not with words, but with her body. With her heart and her kiss.

  She wanted her mark on him, and his on her so the entire world would see them and know they belonged to each other. That no matter what fate threw at them, they would weather it together.

  Hunger like she’d never experienced ate at her, sharp and cruel. A hunger that she somehow knew nothing but his skin under her hands would satisfy. She pushed at his coat, shoved it off his shoulders with an impatient jerk. He wrestled out of it, dropped it to the crushed shells underfoot while she tugged his shirt free of his waistband.

  Her hands found the warm skin of his back and streaked upward, greedy to discover all his edges and angles, to explore the supple muscle and smooth skin. She’d denied herself even wanting him for so long. To have him now hot and alive under her fingers had a soft purr of pleasure humming in her throat. He was so real—all this bone and blood and breath, trembling under her touch. Trembling with desire for her. For her.

  Her lips curved in satisfaction and a whippy excitement crashed into her system. Had she ever made anybody tremble before? Doubtful. It was a new experience. One she could get used to.

  “Bel.”

  His hands slid up her arms and across her shoulders, his thumbs dipping down to flirt with the neckline of her dress.

  “Yes?”

  She brushed her lips across his cheekbone, then moved on to explore the shell of his ear.

  “Bel, are you sure?” His hand drifted down to trace a path of tingling fire across the edge of her bodice. Her thoughts fell to her feet and blew away.

  “About what?”

  He dipped a finger into the hollow of her cleavage and limned the inside curve of her breast. Her nipples tightened to an aching awareness and the breath left her lungs. “About this.”

  That finger dipped again into the cleft between her breasts. Bel’s spine went to warm honey, her shoulders rounded and her lips parted on a soft, silent oh. Her bodice gaped slightly and the night air flowed cool and forbidden across the exquisitely sensitive skin of her breasts.

  “Um, yeah,” she said, breathless. “Pretty sure.”

  His clever fingers slid warm and sure into the hot velvet of her dress to cup one breast in his palm. He dragged a slow, deliberate thumb over her nipple and an electric shower of sparks exploded low in her belly.

  “God, James, I—” She broke off, catching the words before they fell out and ruined everything. The way they always did.

  “What?” His voice was a low rumble, amused and urgent, against her neck where he’d pressed his lips. “You what, Bel?”

  She forced her eyes to open, to focus on the precisely trimmed hedge silhouetted against the night sky. I love you, she thought. God, I love you.

  “Nothing.” It was already perfect—this night, this man, this decision. There would be time to define it later. For tonight, she wasn’t going to talk, wasn’t going to think. Tonight she was going to just let herself ride out the thrilling, crazy, buoyant storm inside her.

  She arched into his hand, and her bodice snapped tight again. His palm, trapped hot and hard against her exquisitely sensitive skin, sent a knee-weakening surge of liquid heat into her belly, and a small moan escaped her. But James seemed to be breathing through his teeth, so Bel let embarrassment slip away like her thoughts.

  “Jesus, Bel,” he said. “I want—”

  He broke off to drag his mouth, hot and open, up the side of her throat and she dropped her head back to allow him better access.

  “I know.” Her laugh was rich and full with the jittery want streaking through her, but it cut out when his arm came around her waist like a steel band. He jerked her off her feet and bowed her into him and suddenly her world narrowed to only what she could feel.

  His mouth, hot and open and demanding on hers. His fingers, clever and maddening on her breast, his heartbeat, strong and unsteady against hers.

  His leg slid along hers, caging her between long and powerful thighs, and his desire pushed hard and strong against her belly. A brilliant, blinding streak of light shot through her, settled low inside her, screwed the blind, seeking hunger in her a notch higher.

  She arched herself into him mindlessly. Closer. She wanted to be closer. She wanted to draw him into herself, to take all this heat, this desire, this power inside her body. She wanted to take and take and take, let him fill her until there were no empty spaces left, nothing cold or abandoned or untouched.

  “More,” she said into his mouth. “Please, James. More.”

  “Anything you want,” he said. “I swear to God, I’ll give you—”

  “You.” Her fingers dove between them, flew fast and clever into the waist of his breeches, worked the buttons there with feverish haste. “Just you. Please.”

  “Holy mother of—” He sucked in a harsh breath as she yanked open the last of the buttons, took him in her shaking hands. His hands fisted in the lush flow of her skirt, then danced impatiently up the back of her dress. “I can’t...there’s no—ah, screw it.”

  He gave up what Bel assumed was a search for buttons or zippers or what have you at the back of her dress and instead simply hooked his fingers in her neckline and jerked. The dress—already precariously balanced on her corset-induced cleavage—gave way without protest, and her breasts popped free.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” James said, staring. Bel had a look herself and was astonished. Her dress pooled dark and rich around her waist, her skin glowed pale and pearly in the moonlight. Her breasts spilled ripe and full—as full as a modest B cup would ever get—over the lacy edge of her corset, as if served up on a silver platter for the guy industrious enough to free them from the confines of her neckline. And James—lucky, lucky Bel—was that guy.

  He plunked her down without ceremony on the wide marble edge of the fountain, dropped to his knees and cupped her with reverent hands. The cool night air flowed over her, broken only by the heat of his hands. Her skin pebbled, her nipples peaked and James slowly lowered his mouth to one aching point.

  “Oh.” Her head dropped back, too heavy suddenly to hold upright. She speared her fingers into all that golden hair and arched into him, into the glorious tug of his mouth, into the delicious molten glow it banked deep inside her.

  One wide hand splayed over her back, holding her steady against him. As if she were going anywhere, she thought, a strangled laugh lodging in her throat. A laugh that died when he circled her ankle with long, clever fingers. Fingers that slid up her calf, danced over her knee and stole slowly up her inner thigh. Oh God.

  His teeth dragged lightly over her nipple, and a pleasure lanced through her so intense it bordered on pain. His tongue laved gently, immediately soothing the sting into a punishing, achy want. A want that spun higher and tighter with each inch of her thigh he conquered with those clever, questing fingers. He toyed with the frilly edge of her vintage pantaloons for one eternal moment, then finally, finally, slipped inside.

  A black heat filled her mind, scoured away all rational thought, leaving nothing behind but the primitive want pulsing through her entire body. A want that drove her relentlessly toward her goal. Toward him. Toward having him, marking him, taking him.

  “James.” She gripped great handfuls of his fine, linen shir
t. “Now.”

  He lifted his head from her breast and the want inside her only burned brighter at the sight of an answering hunger in his face.

  “Right.” He leapt to his feet. “Now.” He drew her to her feet and applied himself with vigor to the elaborate array of knots and buttons and pins holding her dress in place.

  “No.” She shoved him down on the wide marble slab she’d just vacated. “Now.” She wriggled out of the funny little Miss Muffet pantaloons and kicked them aside. She stuffed half a dozen yards of skirt under one arm and straddled him, the marble cold and unforgiving under her knees.

  “At least the corset, Bel.” He smiled, his eyes hot on hers. “You’ll die of oxygen deprivation.”

  “Then I’ll die happy.” She settled against the hard length of him with a sharp, indrawn breath. An answering emptiness ached inside her, throbbed for something. For fulfillment, for satisfaction, for him. For this.

  She rocked into him, against him, took him into her by slow, agonizing increments until he was seated deep inside her and her breath came in sharp pants. Until his hands found her hips and clamped there, shaking and strong and urgent. The need to drive herself onto him, to slake this vicious, twisting hunger lifted her and brought her back down. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t—

  “Lie back,” she said. She twisted and he fell back across the curved edge of the fountain, one boot on the ground, the other stretched across the marble lip. He propped both elbows on the wide rounded edges, and clamped his hands onto her hips. She wrestled her skirt high onto her thighs and shoved most of it behind her. Then she put one foot on the ground, the other in the shallow water and rode him.

  She rose and twisted, lifted and fell, climbed with the light and the heat and the hunger inside her until everything spiraled up, higher, brighter. Until there was nothing between them, nothing unspoken, nothing unsolved. Nothing broken in her, nothing empty inside. Nothing holding her back from that wicked, knife-sharp edge. She hurtled heedlessly over and pulled him behind her.

  James dragged himself hand over fist back into consciousness. He didn’t really want to, because the dream he’d just had was too good to leave behind. Bel. Warm, open, touchable. Her lips curved in welcome, in humor, in love. Her dark eyes narrow and glittery with heat, want, desire. All of it centered on him.

  Then he realized the contented warmth wasn’t coming from that dreamy, happy place he’d just visited. It was coming from Bel. She lay across him, her dress twisted around her waist, her hair tangled over his shoulders. And—sweet baby Jesus in the manger—he was still inside her.

  He jerked awake and clamped his arms around her before she could escape. He needed to reorient himself and didn’t want her to run away while he was getting his bearings. Plus if this went the way he figured it might—lots of recrimination, second-guessing and dear-lord-what-have-I-done-ing—he didn’t want this part to end any too soon.

  A wheezy chuckle wafted out of her. “Okay,” she said, “you may have had a point about the corset. Can’t...breathe...”

  “Oh.” He forced himself to ease up the grip. “Right. Of course. God. Are you all right?”

  “Better than.” She lifted her head and the smile she gave him arrowed straight into the cotton-candy center of his heart. “You?”

  “I’m, ah...” He smiled back at her, totally on autopilot in the face of that smile of hers. He touched one of those silky maple-syrup curls still pooled on his shoulder. “I’m sort of confused.” He closed his eyes. Nice one, James. The girl he loved had just screwed him into literal unconsciousness, and instead of thanking her profusely and begging her to do it again for, oh, say, the rest of his life, he tells her he’s confused? “I’m good, too,” he said hastily. “Really, really good. Thank you for that, by the way. I’m just, well...kind of surprised, too.”

  She reached up and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. He fell into that kiss—God, who wouldn’t? Mouth like hers?—and time sort of warped into something indeterminate and circular. Though clearly more for him than for Bel because when he surfaced, she was already squinting at her watch.

  Then she leapt straight off him, leaving him feeling way too abandoned for his liking. “Okay, time to get dressed,” she said briskly. “You hear that?”

  James cocked an ear. And suddenly, he did hear it. People. Voices. Footsteps. The auction must have wrapped up while he and Bel had been, ah, otherwise occupied. And now their guests were flowing out of the house and into the gardens. “Right,” he said. He leapt into action alongside her and in a disappointingly short amount of time, his lovely, wanton, deliciously disarrayed Bel was perfectly respectable again.

  He had no idea how she did that. He himself felt wrinkled, rumpled and completely, bonelessly satisfied. But there she was, fresh, pressed and glowing like some kind of tidy flower.

  He didn’t know if he’d ever loved her more.

  “Hey, Bel?”

  “Yes?” She gave him those wide, dark eyes, her hands folded primly together in front of her skirt.

  “You’re really something else, you know that?”

  She smiled at him, full speed ahead on the dimples and his heart did one of those Grinch things where it grew about three unexpected sizes. He wanted to say more but just then a couple strolled through a break in the hedge circle. Bel gave them a polite nod and James offered her his elbow. She took it and they began their own slow circuit around the fountain, as if they were seeing it for the first time.

  “So,” Bel said. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  A guilty start rolled through him. “Oh, hell. Yeah, I did.”

  He stopped, took both her hands. “Listen, Bel, there’s a person here tonight, and you’re not going to like hearing who it is.”

  “All right.” Her eyes went wide and wary. “Who?”

  “But I’m not going to leave your side for a second, so everything will be fine.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “But who is it?”

  “Just do that stiff upper lip thing you’re so good at and we’ll get through this no problem.”

  “James.” She narrowed her eyes. “Who?”

  He sighed and wished Ford the ex-fiancé to the depths of the ocean with all his heart. Because, come on. He and Bel had just taken their first, tentative steps toward a future together. Okay, so maybe mind-blowing sex in the great outdoors wasn’t exactly tentative but it was a step in the right direction. A big one. Was it too much to ask that the guy Bel had almost married not crash the moment?

  He pulled in a deep breath but before he could force himself to spit out the name, a new voice soared through the night air. It was sweet and clear, like a small, expensive bell and it said, “Belinda! Darling! I came as soon as I heard!”

  James watched the animation drop out of Bel’s face like somebody had switched off a light inside her. She turned slowly to face a tiny woman in violet silk flying over the path toward her with quick, graceful steps—not a run exactly but certainly faster than walking. The woman threw herself at Bel and squeezed her with frantic hands. “Oh my darling, my dearest. My poor, poor lamb. Don’t worry, dear heart.”

  Bel’s hands stayed at her sides, curled loosely into the fabric of her skirt though her spine was as rigid as a two by four. The woman didn’t seem to notice, just clasped Bel to her corseted bosom, rocked her side to side and crooned, “Mummy’s here, now, darling. Mummy’s here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Bel’s eyes met his over her mother’s head, a stark question in them. You knew?

  James shook his head quickly. God, no. But, geez, poor Bel. Her ex-fiancé and her mom, with whom James knew she wasn’t exactly close, at the same party? His girl was taking it on the chops tonight.

  “Oh sweetheart.” Bel’s mother drew back to gaze at her daughter. Her hands flew up like tiny birds to pat Bel’s cheeks. “You’re so thin! Why didn’t you call me?”

  James stepped back, the better to watch the impromptu family reunion taking place under hi
s nose. He’d known Bel had a mother. He just had never pictured her quite like this. She was a good head shorter than Bel, to begin with. And where Bel exuded that quiet correctness that started with impeccable posture and ended with imperturbable calm, her mother—so far—was all about the dramatic flourish.

  “Call you?” Bel asked with the same tone she might use to inquire about the freshness of a cabbage. “About what?”

  “About what?” Her mother blinked in astonished horror, one little hand pressed to her frilly bosom. “About what? Dear lord in heaven, Belinda! Your faith in mankind was abused most cruelly. And on live television?” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I cannot imagine. But you—you poor, poor dear—you simply gritted your teeth and bore up under the humiliation. My sad, strong, darling girl.”

  She clutched at Bel, trying, James supposed, to bend her into a sad, darling girl. He smiled into his collar. Not exactly Bel’s style. He could see how Bel had characterized their relationship as difficult.

  Her heart seemed to be in the right place, though. And she was here. That counted for a lot in James’ book. The balance of family duty, as he knew from vast experience, lay in simply showing up. Just being there through it all, whether your presence was wanted or not. Nobody with family—any decent family anyway—suffered alone. It simply wasn’t allowed. Your family sat there with you in your misery, propping you up, renting DVDs, serving snacks and making bad jokes until you were ready to venture out again on your own wobbly legs, blinking against the sunlight.

  Bel disentangled herself from her mother’s arms and stepped back just as Bob and Kate strolled into the fountain enclosure. Kate, one hand threaded through Bob’s elbow, chatted easily with a gossip columnist from the Washington Post. But her eyes landed sharply on Bel.

  “Vivi, please,” Bel said. “I didn’t call you because I didn’t want you here.”

  Vivi? James felt his eyebrows heading for the sky. She called her mother by her first name?