Hope Tarr

by Untamed

  His voice was a warm rumble against her fevered cheek. “Sweet Kate, Katie mine. Dinna fash, I’ll ease you. I’ll do anything you want. You’ve only to ask.” He dragged the rough pads of his thumbs across her nipples, raising her shiver and a hot liquid ache.

  She smoothed a hand over his chest, palming his pectorals. “What I’d most like is to see you, too. All of you,” she added, lest there be any doubt.

  “That eager, are you?” He grinned, but his expression turned wary.

  Her face warmed, but she didn’t look away. “I’ve never even seen you without your shirt. I’m beginning to wonder what you might be hiding, dragon’s scales perhaps?”

  She’d been in his arms enough times to imagine that beneath his shirt he must be splendid, spectacularly muscled in all the proper places. But she was no longer content with imagining. She wanted to stand skin to skin. She wanted to suckle his flesh and feel his bones.

  He fixed her with a stark gaze. “Some things are best left to the imagination.”

  “You’re my husband. I want to see you—all of you.” And then she said the single word he liked hearing from her above all others. “Please.”

  Candlelight flickered over his face. His resigned expression told her he would deny her no longer. “Very well, Katie, but mind afterward, you were the one who pressed, not I.”

  Fixing his gaze on her face, he started down the queue of buttons fronting his shirt. Though it might have been a trick of the shadows, she thought she caught his hands trembling.

  She reached up to help. “Let me.”

  He dropped his arms to his sides and let her. Crisp hair teased her fingertips as she made short work of the line. She unhooked the last button and slid the shirt from his shoulders—his beautiful, broad shoulders. He was pale as she was. A smattering of freckles dusted his shoulder tops. The same dark reddish hair she’d glimpsed from the dropped uppermost button of a shirt collar matted his upper chest and dusted his pectorals, narrowing to that tantalizing queue she’d glimpsed the other day. There was a tattoo on his left bicep, some bird of prey it was too dark to clearly see. His belly was flat and rippling with muscle, his trouser front tented. Remembering what he’d looked like there, she palmed him.

  He bucked against her hand. Smiling, she kept it there. There would be time enough later to learn the touch and taste of him. For now, she brushed the back of her hand over the flat disc of one brownish nipple and, leaning forward, sucked the nub into her mouth.

  Rourke jumped as if she’d burned him. She drew back and smiled. “You’re beautiful,” she said, both because she suspected he might not know and because it was entirely true. “No dragon scales, as far as I can tell.”

  He shook his head, his arms still down at his sides. “No, Katie, you were right the other times. I am coarse and a beast, not nearly fit to touch someone as fine as you, though my wife you be.”

  “You are not coarse, and you are most certainly not a beast. What you are is tense. Here, let me help with that.”

  She slid her hands over his shoulders and back, marveling at what lovely skin he had, especially for a man. Not that she’d ever touched a man’s bare chest before, but she couldn’t imagine they were all made in so perfect a fashion. Her hands found the back of his neck. He was tense, she could feel it, and the flesh there wasn’t quite so smooth, but rather ridged.

  When I was a lad, I was tied to the whipping post, mind. Fifty lashes with the scourge, Kate.

  “Oh, Rourke.” She drew her hands away and stepped back.

  He grimaced. “Satisfied?” He reached for his shirt to put it back on.

  “Don’t.”

  Kate stepped behind him. The webbing of thick white scars put her in mind of the intricate spiderweb she’d seen hanging from the hallway rafters on her wedding night. She reached out to touch a particularly deep cross-hatching.

  He flinched away. Turning back to look at her, he grimaced. “Mine isna a gentleman’s back anymore than these are a gentleman’s hands. And yet you like them well enough in the dark, don’t you, Katie? They may be coarse, ugly even, but they’re the same hands that tease and toy with you until you cry out and beg me to let you come.”

  The anger in his voice took her by surprise. When he’d been courting her, she’d used the calluses on his hands to taunt him. She’d lashed out by seizing on what she’d sensed would hurt him the most. His hands hadn’t bothered her even then, not really, but his self-consciousness of them, always shoving them into pockets and hiding them inside gloves, had told her they bothered him. Now seeing his poor scarred back, she’d never felt so thoroughly ashamed. Her shrew’s tongue had cut him as surely as the whip that someone had wielded to lay open his back, and only actions and not words would heal the rift and salve the hurt.

  “I don’t find your hands ugly or your back, either, for that matter.”

  To prove it, she leaned in and laid her lips upon his shoulder. Rourke sucked in a heavy breath. “Oh, Kate.”

  She opened her mouth and laved one angry mark with her tongue. His skin was slightly salt-flavored and scented with bay rum and mint soap, and his own special musk. Kate moved to kiss his other shoulder, deliberately dragging her nipples along his back. Ah, lovely. Who would have thought that in giving pleasure there was such a bounty returned, too?

  He turned about. “I think you must be a brownie or some other fairy folk.”

  She made a face. “Because I’m so small, I know.”

  He shook his head. “Nay, it’s no your size of which I speak. There’s a magic about you, Katie. When I’m with you, it’s as though everything has a sparkle, a glow. Now kiss me, Kate. Kiss me as a wife who loves her husband would kiss. Pretend if you must, only kiss me. Kiss me as if you mean it. Kiss me as if you can’t not kiss me, and give all that thinking a rest for now.”

  Kate rose up on her toes, wrapped her arms about Patrick’s neck, and matched her mouth to his. Tongues met, tangled, and twined. Bottom lips were nibbled, traced with gentle fingers, and abraded ever so lightly with fingernails. Corners of mouths were kissed and probing digits licked and laved and suckled. And throughout, deep in her heart, Kate owned the truth she didn’t dare say.

  She loved him. She didn’t have to pretend.

  His hands found her waist, and he lifted her off the floor. Kate wrapped her legs about his torso. Without breaking the embrace, he carried her over to the bed and laid her gently in the center of the counterpane.

  Patrick turned away to finish undressing. When he turned back to the bed, he was fully, gloriously naked. Kate rose up on her elbows, gaze running over him from broad shoulders to powerful thighs, amazed to think that such a splendid male was her husband, all hers.

  He straddled her. “Open your legs for me, Kate.”

  Kate opened her legs. Denying either of them was a notion she was no longer able to contemplate. He spread her inner lips with his fingers, sat back on his haunches, and looked at her—there.

  “Kate, beautiful Kate, it’s so pretty you are there and everywhere else. Another time we’ll take a hand mirror to the bed, and I’ll show you just how lovely you are, but for now tell me what you want, Kate. What happens in this bed is between you and me and no one else.”

  Lying back against the banked pillows, Kate wasn’t sure how to answer. In her eight-and-twenty years, she could count on the finger of one hand how often she’d been asked what she wanted.

  He slid a finger slowly inside her and then drew it just as slowly out. “You’re so small, I can scarcely credit how it is I fit inside you.” He lifted his gaze from her open thighs. “And you feel like warm, wet velvet.” He traced her labia with a single slow-moving digit. “And I’ll vouchsafe you taste delicious.”

  He slid down to the bottom of the bed, his head disappearing between her raised knees. He kissed the inside of her thighs, stroking and caressing her buttocks. And then he found her with his mouth, touching that part of her where his fingers had played.

  Kate’s head shot
up from the pillow. “Oh, Rourke.” She reached for him, her hand sifting through his hair, her hips lifting.

  He looked up, grin lopsided and eyes aglow. “You taste of oysters shucked fresh from the shell and tangy from the sea. I could suckle and lick you all the night and never grow weary of your texture, your scent, your taste. I just may.”

  Kate wasn’t sure what to say or how to respond. Until now, pleasure—happiness—was a scarce commodity that must be measured, doled out, and above all, held back in storage for a future rainy day. Never before had she known such a bounty of bliss, such a feast of feeling. It was almost overwhelming. It was overwhelming. And frightening. And exhilarating. And … wonderful beyond words.

  “Tell me what you want, Kate.”

  Kate lifted her head from the pillow. Meeting Rourke’s heated gaze, she reached for boldness that before now she’d buried beneath scolding, shrewish ways. “I want you, Patrick. I want you to make love to me with your mouth and your hands and finally with your big beautiful cock. I want all of you, Patrick, and I promise to do my utmost to give you all of me in return.”

  Kate had called him Patrick, not only once but several times.

  It was late. They’d made love for hours. He should be tired, exhausted. He wasn’t.

  He couldn’t seem to get his fill of his beautiful wife, and that included looking at her.

  Kate lay on her side, her back pressed against his chest. Her eyes were half-closed, her lips sweetly parted. Like as not, he should leave sleeping wives lie, and yet he had to know.

  He lifted his head from the pillow. “Happy?”

  She hoisted the lid of one eye and mustered a lazy nod. Even with one side of her pretty face turned into the pillow, he could see the half smile broaden. “Hmm, I like it here.”

  He tamped down his disappointment over not receiving the hoped-for response. “Scotland can take some getting used to, the winters especially, but it boasts some of the most beautiful scenery on earth. When spring comes, I’ll take you north to the Highland country.”

  Her eye, the one he could see, opened the rest of the way. “No, I meant I like it here with you … in your arms.”

  “Oh.”

  He thought about that a moment, not certain of what he should say in return, if anything. Odd how in business his instincts were fair near impeccable, he always knew what to do, but in his dealings with his wife, he was very much a ship cast adrift from its anchor. Lost, hopelessly lost.

  He leaned over and touched her shoulder. In the dying candlelight, her skin looked like alabaster. “Kate?”

  No answer.

  He levered himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. A soft purring, a ladylike snoring, but snoring all the same, confirmed she was asleep.

  He smiled. It was just as well. Declarations of love, or at least the hope of hearing that sentiment returned, would keep for another day. It wouldn’t do to push.

  He lay back down and slid an arm about her waist, drawing her close. Her bottom pressed into his middle so that they lay stacked like two contented spoons. Even now that he’d memorized every square inch of her, it amazed him how neatly her slight frame fitted to his big one.

  Closing his eyes, it occurred to him that though he’d been with other women, some of whose names he couldn’t recall, none of those encounters could begin to compare to the joy of bedding his beautiful firebrand wife. It wasn’t in his nature to give up easily or at all, but drinking in the sunshine fragrance of her hair, he conceded that taming his wild Kat might well be a lost cause. Against all reason, he’d fallen in love with his headstrong wife—and without altering a single thing about her. Well, mayhap one …

  She called me Patrick.

  Smiling, Rourke fell asleep.

  The week that followed was a honeymoon in truth. Rourke and Kate spent most of it behind the bolted door of their bedchamber. They made love in every way Kate had ever imagined—and a few she’d never even considered. If her husband had any inhibitions at all, she’d yet to discover them. By the week’s end, there was no part of her he hadn’t touched, tasted, or otherwise explored. Every time she thought she’d sampled the entire platter of carnal delights, he found some new way to please her.

  Lying abed one morning, Rourke’s head tucked into her shoulder, she traced the outline of the bird tattoo on his bicep. In the light of day, it looked to be a rook. “What does this tattoo signify?”

  Her husband turned his mussed head and looked up at her with lazy-lidded eyes. She loved his eyes, but then she’d come to love everything about him—the scars, the big hands that seemed more gentle than coarse, the Scot’s burr. But beyond any physical trait, what she loved most was the brilliant, good-hearted man beneath.

  “The crow was Johnnie Black’s. Black’s Boys was the rookery I belonged to.”

  “Rookery?”

  “A flash house, mind. I snitched purses and stole from street vendors anything I could get my hands on and hide in my pockets. Anything that wasn’t nailed down was fair game in those days, and we had a weekly quota to fill. Any boy who didn’t pull in his share was subject to punishment, to be decided by the group. It was dog-eat-dog, and I did whatever it took to stay fed and alive, but I never murdered anyone nor inflicted hurt for the sport of it. I’m not proud of my past, but I’ll no lie about it, either.”

  She pressed a kiss to the crow’s beak because she loved kissing him anywhere and everywhere, but mainly because she wanted to show him it was all right. “How did you escape getting caught?”

  “I didn’t. I was brought up three times on charges—vagrancy, thievery, and robbery. Robbery is with a weapon, mind. The last would have meant prison for me. Only the man I’d stolen from spoke on my behalf.”

  She’d started down this path because she’d grown to love the sound of his voice with its Scot’s burr and deep timbre, but now she found herself wanting to know the rest of the story. “That sounds noble of him. Surely that can’t be usual? Who was he?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.” Trust me.

  She ran a hand through his hair. The auburn locks falling through her fingers weren’t coarse at all, but wondrously soft.

  “William Gladstone.”

  She angled her face to his, wondering if he might be joking despite his solemn tone. “You robbed the former prime minister!”

  “Aye, I stole his money clip, but he was wise to me, and in getting away, I accidentally knocked him out. There was even talk of adding treason to the charges.”

  “And still he testified on your behalf.” Kate had always had a fine feeling toward “the People’s William,” as Gladstone was known. From what she’d read of him, he struck her as a principled man, hard but fair. Now she found herself liking him even more.

  “More than that, he put up a thousand-pound surety on my behalf and had me sent to Roxbury House instead of jail. It was the first time anyone ever really believed in me. Of course, once there I met Gavin and Harry—Hadrian, I mean—and Daisy.”

  “And you’ve stayed friends all these years.”

  How ironic that she, born to the upper crust with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, would find herself in awe and envy of a quartet of orphaned ragamuffins, but she was. She envied them their wits and their street smarts, but mostly she envied them their genuine, no-holds-barred friendship. Because of the nine years separating them and the maternal role Kate had been called to play, Bea was more of a daughter to her than a sister or confidante. She hadn’t had anything like that in her own life, and dear Lord, how she envied it.

  He nodded. “We lost track of Daisy for fifteen years. It wasn’t until we three happened upon her in the Palace music hall that we found her again, but the other three of us were never out of touch for more than a few years.”

  Kate traced the curve of a crescent-shaped scar on his brow. “Getting back to mapping the terrain, what about this one?”

  “One of the bobbies who collared me was
overzealous with his wee club. Gave me several good cracks, did Officer Taggert. My one eye wasna ever quite the same.”

  Kate drew back, outraged. “That’s awful. Did you press charges, at least? Was he punished?”

  He snorted. “He had the law on his side, and betimes no one fancies a rat.”

  Small wonder he must find her quaint, shallow, a snob. “And this one.” She touched a gauge atop his left shoulder, not a whip mark, or at least she didn’t think so. The scar was deep but not terribly long.

  His smile flattened. “The buckle of my da’s belt.”

  A hard hand had my da.

  Kate shivered, her heart aching for the brave, lost little boy he once was. Other than the small scar on her cheek, all her scars were on the inside.

  He stroked a hand down her arm from shoulder to elbow. Dear Lord, how she loved the way he touched her, gentle yet firm. “I’m hacked like an old badger, but you, my beauty, are smooth as porcelain, only warm, not cold.”

  Not cold at all, but warming by the moment and very much looking forward to making love again. Kate smiled. “You most certainly are not hacked, as you say. You’re quite perfectly beautiful.” She leaned over and pressed a kiss atop the bump on his nose. “And I love your nose. It’s a fine nose, a noble nose. I can’t imagine a more handsome nose on any man. In point, I cannot imagine a more handsome man—period.”

  He cupped her face in his palm. “Handsome, am I? I think my bride must have donned an invisible pair of rose-colored glasses, or else she needs glasses.” He grinned.

  “No rose-colored glasses are required, sir, nor spectacles of any sort. I but speak the truth as I plainly see it, and you, Mr. Patrick O’Rourke, are a beautiful man. Beautiful everywhere.” Feeling positively wicked, she slid a hand beneath the sheet.