by Anne Renwick
She shrugged a single shoulder. “You missed your chance for lace and candles and a scattering of rose petals last night.”
With that flippant comment, Cait reached for the rungs and pulled herself from the saddle. She hitched up her skirts and climbed, treating him to flashes of tantalizingly bare skin. “Coming?” she called.
Soon, he hoped.
Jack dropped to the ground, snatched up a nearby blanket as a concession to comfort, then, stiff with need, followed.
Sunlight streamed through an open window in the loft. A gentle spring breeze stirred the air and sent dust motes dancing. And, though winter had depleted the stores, more than enough hay remained to serve as a mattress.
Most importantly, they were alone. For the first time, his fading peripheral vision was welcome, for Cait was all he wished to see. Tossing the blanket onto the hay, he hooked a finger over her belt and dragged her close.
“If I must lose my weapon to another agent,” he slid the leather straps of his holster from her shoulders, lowering it carefully to the ground, “at least it was to my wife. Perhaps the only acceptable outcome.”
“Wife?” Cait asked, a teasing note in her voice as she rose onto toe-tips and nipped at the edge of his chin in challenge. “You mean partner.”
“Both.”
His mouth came down on hers, expecting soft sweetness, finding instead hot desperation. Her fingers, equally impatient, tore at the buttons of his waistcoat, of his shirt, pushing the fabric away on a greedy quest for bare skin.
There would be no slow exploration. Not this time.
That suited him.
A fusion of bodies. A melding of shared desires and goals. A final pledge to irrevocably join their futures.
With the flick of his fingers, he released the clasps of her belt, tugged the soft cotton blouse from her waistband and yanked it upward.
He shucked his own garments, all the while admiring the view. Cait in a hayloft, bare to the waist, her breasts on glorious display. But enough looking. He bent to claim the hard gem of a single tip.
Blood thrummed through his ears at her gasp and deep in a dark corner of his mind, a feral voice growled.
His.
Reason told her to wait until they found an inn, to wait until the fever sparked by the venom released Jack from its grip. But forced proximity and her husband’s wandering hands conspired to drive her mad. Add to that the frustrations of an uncertain union during an investigation requiring trust and teamwork…
Well, when a viable solution presented itself in the form of an empty barn, Cait seized opportunity. Better to address such distractions now.
The tug of his mouth at her nipple shot molten heat straight to her core. Upon the clockwork horse, the tease of his lips and fingers had made reasoned thought difficult. Here, complex thoughts resisted organization and flat out refused to coalesce.
More, her body cried.
Hands buried in the thick mass of Jack’s hair, she held him tight to her breast. Head thrown back, she could only gasp, breathless, as his tongue and teeth worked magic, concentrated pleasure teasing forth tortuous need.
Cool air met the wet tip of her breast as he straightened. She opened her mouth, but any objection died in her throat when his fingers dug into her hips, spinning her around with a gentle—if insistent—push toward a waiting pile of hay.
She bent, grabbed the blanket, spread it wide. Behind her, two thumps sounded—boots landing upon boards. Cloth whispered. Not wanting to miss another moment of her husband stripping to his skin, she turned to watch.
Wide shoulders. A tapered waist. Ridges upon his stomach that made her mouth water. Features she’d admired while he wore a towel, leaving only the lower half of his body to her imagination.
His hands were at his waist, but she stayed their movement, pushing them aside to allow herself the pleasure of unfastening his trousers, of sliding her hands inside his undergarments to cup—if only partially—the stiff, throbbing rod that rose beneath.
Air scraped past his teeth. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Then, as she gave a gentle squeeze, a groan ripped from his throat and a desperate eagerness filled his eyes.
Muscles rippled across his shoulders as he caught her wrists, tugged them free to wrap her arms about his neck. His mouth clamped down on hers, all while walking her backward. Memories of the pump house balustrade, of its stone wall surfaced, but this time no interruption threatened. Not a single barrier remained.
Drawn to him in a grim morgue, fascinated by his easy acceptance of her presence in a coroner’s office, captured by his willingness to operate outside of society’s strictures. His ability, his readiness to live in the moment had sealed her attraction. Conducting interviews in a Covent Garden pub. Sweeping her from a London gutter. Pulling her back from near death in his own bed. Marrying her on a moment’s notice for both expedience and love.
Love?
No, not yet. But there was passion and devotion. A corner of her heart belonged to him.
And in that corner a tiny niggle worried. Was this no more than the effects of the venom?
No. They’d spoken their vows with clear minds and full commitment. Such worries had no place tossing such melodramatic obstacles between them.
She brushed them aside.
A hayloft suited them.
Jack lowered her onto the blanket, tossed up her skirts, gathered fistfuls of her ruffled hem about her waist.
On his knees, he spread her thighs, dipped down between them. She’d read of such things before, wondered, but—she cried out as the flat of his tongue stroked and teased—written words had failed to capture the blinding pleasure.
Yet two days of unsatisfied desires had already pushed her to the brink. She didn’t want caresses or slow, measured strokes. Not today. Hands fisted in his hair, she shoved him away.
With ragged breaths, he met her eyes. “No?”
Control. She wanted to shatter his. “Inside me. Now.”
“Cait, I’m balanced on a knife’s edge.”
“Let go and give in, I’m begging you.”
With a growl, he pushed his trousers to his knees. Cait caught a brief glance of impressive girth before he was devouring her mouth, swallowing her cries, all while hooking arms beneath her knees, opening her to a most welcome invasion.
His stiff erection brushed across her curls, slipped lower, thrust inside. Deeper and deeper. Tight. Full.
Satisfaction and delight ripped through her.
Complete. Perfect in every way.
Save he wasn’t moving.
She dug her hands into the hay, seeking purchase, finding none.
Her eyes few open. Caught a dark flash of uncertain anguish in his gaze.
“Stillness as torture?” Her body cried out for friction. Her voice pleaded, “Stop holding back.”
“As you wish.”
His first thrust was long and deep. But slow. His second, only a fraction quicker.
“Harder.” A demand, not a request. “I’m not made of spun glass.” Her hands found a post, wrapped about them. She arched her back. “Faster.”
She watched his face as relief transformed into a concentrated fierceness. Dark eyes looked back at her, revealing depths never before divulged.
When he moved again, all gentleness was gone.
“Vixen.” There was a sharp nip at her neck as he shifted, released a knee to plant a hand beside her shoulder. Then his thrusts came faster. Each gathered more momentum, driving her deeper into the hay with each relentless plunge. Over and over.
Heel dug into the floor, she pushed, lifting her hips to his, absorbing his strength, urging him onward.
A roar tore from his throat as he surged impossibly deep, then notched himself higher. An angle she’d yet to experience. One that dragged his length over her most sensitive peak.
“Aether.” The word a hoarsely whispered keen. “Jack.”
Another shift. A slight tilt. And a new summit with unexpected heights approached
. Sounds escaped her throat, not words, as tension gathered, coalescing in the space between heartbeats, then snapped free, spiraling upward and outward as a delicious pulsing exploded between her legs.
“Cait!” A shout. A heaving thrust. Once, twice more, as his own pleasure detonated, a turbulent wave that swept him over, then under into sweet oblivion.
Still pulsing inside her, Jack gathered her close and rolled onto his back. Her limp weight landed atop him as their chests heaved, fighting to satisfy the demands of heart and lungs for air.
Slowly, sense and reason returned. She’d never felt so very alive. Satisfaction washed over her and with it a kind of peacefulness and inexplicable connection.
His fingers brushed aside fallen and tousled hair. “I trust you won’t be delivering a negative report of my performance to the duke.”
Laughing, she gave him a pinch. “I won’t be reporting anything and you know it. What happened in this barn, stays in this barn.” She propped herself up on an elbow. “Did that wear off the effects of the venom?”
“Don’t belittle this moment.” Jack stroked a finger down the side of her face, one that delighted her skin. The light in his eyes was soft. “That was more than scratching an itch, Cait. There’s not another woman I’d prefer to call my wife.”
Not exactly an endearment. Their lives had only just begun to intertwine. True, the bond between them was stronger now. Forged first by ambitions, tempered by mutual pleasure. But it was too soon for saccharine declarations.
“And partner.” She pressed a kiss to the hollow of his throat, and felt his cock throb against her hip. “So soon?”
“I credit the beauty of my bride, not the lingering effects of the venom as the cause of a certain urgency and resilience reminiscent of adolescence.”
She pushed upward, straddling him. Enjoying the bright look that lit his eyes, the pulse that jumped at his throat.
“Are you suggesting…”
“We are newlyweds.” As she bent to kiss him, his adept hands, once again, demonstrated mad skill.
Sometime later, sprawled atop warm wool and crushed hay, Jack stroked his hand over the curve of his wife’s waist, over the flare of her hip. At long last, the effects of the venom were behind him. Six hours of potency, by his estimation.
Beneath shadows cast by the barn’s roof and nestled in scratchy hay beside a woman he was lucky enough to call his wife, deep satisfaction wrapped around him. When was the last time he’d felt so relaxed, so untroubled?
He couldn’t recall.
“I must know.” He lifted her hand, smoothed a thumb over the black stone of her poison ring. “Is there anything inside?”
“A piece of orange fungus. Poisonous, I’m told. Once it glowed a blue-green color at night, but that faded over the years. Now it’s nothing but a relic of my natural father.” She shifted. “Your turn. Tell me about your family,” she prompted. “You’ve dropped hints that worry me. And forewarned is forearmed.”
His mother and brother alone were a lot to swallow.
“All my life I’ve dealt with lies and half-truths,” he began. “My father worked hard to indulge his addictions, hiding behind a veneer kept polished by my mother. At the end, his death was more relief than tragedy. When she wasn’t making excuses for her husband, my mother executed calculated schemes designed to install her son among the ton’s elite—all while he resisted with deceitful and dishonorable behavior.”
“What of Angela, your sister?” Her voice was a whisper.
“Ten years younger than me, her birth was a surprise. Mother mostly ignored her, but I kept close watch. At some point, we became a unit, spying on our own family, exchanging information about the truths and lies that shaped both our private and social lives. Marriage was her exit plan. We had a list, carefully vetted. Then…”
“She upended it all with an unexpected choice, shattering your confidence in her decision?”
He sighed. “Her letters indicate no regret.”
“Then trust her to know her own mind.”
“I’m trying.” He pulled her close, kissed her forehead. “Back to our situation. Is it possible for a snake to kill itself with its own bite?”
“No.” Cait’s fingers danced over the hair upon his chest. “They’re immune to the venom of their own species. A fact consistent with the venom gland in Ceyda’s mouth as a functional implant.” Faint lines appeared between her eyebrows. “An odd choice for a host. A reptile to human biograft is unlikely to be sustainable.”
“Yet in keeping with the seductive illusions presented by the Menwith Spa.” He agreed that the woman’s body, but for her death, would eventually have rejected the implanted tissue.
Same for the woman he’d all but caught in his brother’s library who still stalked London’s streets. Unless that venomous creature was real?
Cait was an agent now. And his wife. There was no need to keep her in the dark and every reason to enlighten her. “Still, there’s one other possibility. Has your brother ever mentioned CEAP?”
“Seep?” Her head rocked upon his biceps. “No.”
“It’s an acronym. C.E.A.P. It stands for the Committee for the Exploration of Anthropomorphic Peculiarities, a shadow board seeking to study animals with human-like characteristics, creatures such as selkies or cat síth.”
The appearance of creatures long-thought imaginary or extinct—kraken, pteryforms and dragons, to name a few—had spawned the field of cryptozoology. Why wouldn’t the same processes and evolutionary principles apply to humans? Cryptobiology, really. Not that he had any firsthand experience with such humans, but Cait’s sister-in-law was rumored to be half-selkie.
“Or is it the other way around?” his sated and well-tumbled wife suggested, accepting the concept without argument. “Humans with animalistic traits? In Hindu mythology, there are mythical beings, naga and nagini, who are half human, half cobra. But they are usually benevolent, not murderous.”
An interesting perspective that sent a shiver down his spine. “Henceforth, I shall sleep wearing my holster and weapon.”
He stood, offering his wife a hand. Wife. When they returned to London, every aspect of their lives would be turned upside-down and given a good, solid shake. Chief among them, their expectations.
But all that must wait.
It was time for them to be about their task. First things first. They had a rented clockwork horse to turn in and a floating circus to investigate.
He pulled on his shoulder harness, slid the TTX pistol into place.
“You’ll not let me keep it?” She winked, pulled up her blouse, righted her skirts.
“A woman immune to the bite of snake-women would rob me of my only defense?”
She smiled, satisfied on an entirely different level. “There’s that.”
“Though I’m certain plenty of non-venomous threats lie ahead. Given the alacrity with which Ceyda ended her own life, Dr. Thrakos is unlikely to be cooperative or forthcoming. So we stick together, work as a team.” He locked eyes with Cait. “No unnecessary risks.”
“I’ve no death wish.” Cait moved to the ladder, began to descend. “But if there’s venom involved, I’m going in first.”
A loophole he was certain she would, given the chance, exploit at the first opportunity.
Chapter Fourteen
They joined a small, gaping crowd meandering past a handful of colorful tents dotting the edge of the field. Each canvas-clad, striped structure promised a wonder within. Peer at a five-legged goat. Shake hands with a towering giant. Watch a man juggle sharp-edged sabres. All a tantalizing taste of what one might expect to find floating overhead.
“Tug the bearded lady’s goatee!” a sign offered.
For the real attraction hung in the sky, suspended by a motley collection of colorful balloons. Some were striped. Some fringed. Round, peaked or oblong. Cait tipped her head back, admiring the complicated confusion of buildings and baskets that bobbed and swayed from ropes and nets lashed to th
e various balloons.
“See your fortune in a crystal ball!” declared a placard.
Connected by a maze of ladders, stairs and rope bridges, platforms of varying heights supported structures of dubious, haphazard construction. A large propeller jutted from one side of the combined assembly. Crooked chimneys sprouted from roofs. Windows glinted in the fading afternoon sunlight. Many of them would be exhibit halls. One an engine room. Others living quarters. The whole of the assemblage was secured to the ground by ropes too numerous to count.
“Catch the two-headed snake by its tail!” a banner proclaimed.
Only one tether mattered to visitors. A sturdy cable ran from the lowest platform of the floating circus to the ground. Attached to it was a basket with a modest hot-air balloon and a dedicated winch. The only obvious route into—or out of—the floating circus. Cait watched as the wicker shuddered, as an engine puffed smoke, heaving and hauling its cargo upward. Both excited and fearful, its passengers gripped the edges, some hollering with delight, others losing all color as the ground receded beneath their feet.
“Tonight only!” cried a man wearing a red-sequined tailcoat and a towering top hat. In his hands, a roll of tickets. “Unparalleled phenomena await above!”
Including, she hoped, one Dr. Thrakos, the surgeon who worked in the clouds. Worry knotted her stomach. A man who would create the likes of Ceyda would not be on display, only his creations. She and Jack would need to seek him out.
Finding him was their primary objective, for he would possess the answers to many of their questions. Understanding the what and how of these venomous women was critical, but not for one moment did it slip Cait’s mind that Dr. Thrakos might also answer Jack’s burning questions about the astonishing procedure used to remove the pituitary gland of that poor woman left for dead on Holywell Street.
Nor had she any intention of leaving before speaking with any snake-handlers. Not just about Ceyda and her ilk, but about a certain snake charmer known to have traveled through Scotland and England some twenty-some-odd years ago.