“Tsk. Tsk. Such language. And in front of a lady, no less. I think a reprimand is in order.” Sweeney turned to an ogre of a man standing beside him, a hoodlum standing a good six-and-half feet in height with hands the size of mutton chops. “Jem, would you do the honors?”
In the blink of an eye, four of the gang members seized Mick’s arms, holding him immobile while the giant smashed a fist into the side of his face. Mick roared like a wounded bear as he struggled in vain to free himself. Once he’d been “reprimanded,” the four men who held him captive shoved him onto a wooden chair, holding him steady while a fifth man tied his hands to the ladder-back.
Incensed, Lettitia charged forward.
“How dare you! I demand that you untie him at once.”
“Pike it!” Sweeney roared, having instantly shed his veneer of civility. “I’d do me balls for a proper bit of frock like you. So would any of me men. Probably pay as high as twenty-five Jimmy O’Goblins for the privilege. So unless you want me to turn you over to the highest bidder, you best be seen and not heard.”
“Tisha, do as he says. Keep quiet,” Mick ordered.
Lettitia nodded, realizing that Mick had been correct: these savage hoodlums had but one law—might is right. Predators of the lowest sort, they preyed on the weak and innocent.
“Now back to the matter we were discussing before the lady interrupted us,” Sweeney said as he nonchalantly strolled back and forth in front of Mick’s chair. “Sir Charlie wants ’is file back and ’e ain’t taking no for an answer.”
“I told you. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mick replied, sounding surprisingly self-composed for a man who had a trickle of blood running down the side of his chin.
Sweeney turned to the giant standing to the right of Mick’s chair. “Jem, perhaps you can offer some proper inducement.”
Seeing the behemoth ball his right fist, Lettitia hurriedly opened her reticule, not about to let any more harm come to Mick. As her hand curled around the wooden grip of her Uncle Phidias’s old service revolver, she suffered a momentary panic. Although that didn’t stop her from yanking the revolver out of her bag.
“Halt, I say!”
Worried that her shouted command might not be enough of an inducement, Lettitia cocked the pistol, the sound causing every man in the room to suddenly freeze.
Staring at the macabre tableaux vivant, Lettitia had no idea what to do now that she had their undivided attention.
“Whoa. Serious fire power,” Mick uttered with a drawn-out whistle. “I’m glad we’re playing on the same team. Where did you get that thing?”
“It is Uncle Phidias’s service revolver from the Crimean War. After what transpired at The Golden Dragon, I thought it best to take precautions. One never knows where one’s investigation might lead.”
Smiling approvingly, Mick nodded his head. “You gotta be impressed with a lady who thinks ahead, hey guys? Now, I’m no expert on relic firearms, but that thing looks like it could take off a man’s head.”
Hearing that, Lettitia’s stomach muscles painfully cramped.
From the chorus of muttered grunts, she surmised that the remark had a similar effect on nearly every man present.
“Is that bloody thing even loaded?” Sweeney demanded to know, eyeing the monstrously large revolver with obvious trepidation.
“Of course it is loaded,” she snapped, thinking the man a simpleton. “Why would I go to the trouble of aiming an unloaded gun at you?”
Clearly amused, Mick swung his head in Sweeney’s direction. “The lady makes a valid point.”
Humph! Easy for him to smirk and snicker. He was not the one who would have to pull the trigger, quite possibly severing a man’s head from his body.
Slipping his hand inside his coat pocket, Sweeney extracted a sinister-looking knife. He tossed it into the air, deftly catching it by the carved handle. He then took a menacing step in her direction.
Lettitia had hoped that reasoned talk would prevail. Her hopes, however, were instantly dashed the moment Sweeney drew his weapon.
“Sir, you would be wise not to accost me,” she warned. “Furthermore, if you take one more step, you will not live to tell the tale.” She added the last bit of braggadocio to let the brigand know that she was in earnest.
Sweeney came to a halt. “You can’t shoot all of us. At the most, you’ve only got six bullets.”
“True enough,” she readily agreed. “Which means that two of you shall not feel the excruciating pain of a deadly bullet ripping through his tender flesh.” Having made her point, she gestured with her revolver to the company of men spread before her. “Whoever wishes to remain unscathed, I suggest he leave the premises now.”
To her utter surprise, six of the hooligans departed posthaste, leaving only Jem and Sweeney to contend with.
“If I did the math right,” Mick remarked, “that leaves three bullets apiece.”
“Shut your bloody mouth!”
“I do not like your tone, Mister Sweeney.”
“And I don’t like some Mayfair bitch threatening the likes of Bill Sweeney,” he countered belligerently. “In fact, I’m beginning to think that you’re all bluff.”
“Think what you will. Unless you release my companion, you shall soon discover the truth of the matter.”
Digging in his heels, Sweeney stubbornly shook his head. “Sir Charlie will ’ang me by me balls if I was to come back empty ’anded.”
Lettitia worriedly gnawed on her lower lip, the man’s obdurate refusal to untie Mick presenting her with a true dilemma. As she pondered her options, a bolt of lightning struck in the near vicinity, instantly followed by an earth-shattering boom of thunder. Startled, Lettitia gasped, at which point Sweeney seized his chance and rushed toward her, his knife blade threateningly pointed at her heart.
With a terrified shriek, Lettitia pulled the trigger on the revolver.
The moment she did, Mick rose to his feet. Still bound to the wooden chair, he spun on his heel, forcefully slamming the wooden legs of the chair into Jem’s backside. The man crumbled to his knees under the force of the blow.
“The bloody bitch just shot off the top of me ear!” Sweeney hollered, dropping his knife as he slapped both hands to the side of his head, blood spurting between his fingers.
Wailing like a banshee, evidently afraid that she might pull the trigger yet again, Sweeney ran for the door. His minion, staggering to his feet, did likewise.
Wasting no time, Lettitia picked up the knife so that she could cut Mick free. The instant the chair crashed to the ground, he snatched both the gun and the knife out of her hand.
“You, Lettitia Merryweather, are one dangerous lady. Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Grabbing her by the arm, Mick raced toward the door.
Outside, the rain came down in blinding sheets, soaking them to the skin. As they ran through a maze of alleys, the sky detonated with a brilliant burst of bright light, and the buildings around them shook with the thunderous encore. The wind, the rain, the lightning… Under any other circumstance, Lettitia would have been terrified by those elemental forces. But for some reason, here, with Mick, it was exhilarating.
Panting, Mick came to a sudden halt at the intersection of two alleys. Gesturing to the right, he hollered, “It’s this way!”
“No, it’s this way!” Lettitia exclaimed, pointing in the opposite direction. “I’m quite certain that—”
“Trust me.”
“Always,” she affirmed, placing her hand in his.
Hand in hand, they hurried to Dorset Street, Lettitia laughing with joy as they raced to the carriage.
Once inside the vehicle, she couldn’t stop laughing. Seized with a giddy euphoria, all of her senses were enlivened with an urgent sense of excitement.
Unthinking, she flung herself at Mick’s chest. “Kiss me,” she ordered, throwing her arms around his neck.
Chapter 12
“You’re just saying that because of the adrenaline rush. The th
rill of the chase has got your hormones in a tailspin.”
“I have never been so thoroughly and deeply thrilled!” Lettitia exclaimed, not understanding a word that Mick had just uttered.
“Me either.” Grasping her by the nape of the neck, Mick savagely kissed her.
Moaning into his mouth, Lettitia reveled in the passionate onslaught, heedless of the time or the place. All that mattered was the feel of Mick’s tongue plunging into her mouth, his kiss fueling her burgeoning desire. Making it more palpable. More frantic.
Overcome with brazen desire, Lettitia abandoned all rational thought as she suckled Mick’s tongue, eliciting a manly groan from him. The deep rumbling thrilled her, empowering her with a newfound courage.
Barely able to draw breath, she yanked off her wet gloves and flung them onto the floor. With her hands now bare, she sank her fingers into Mick’s hair. As she did, Mick hauled her onto his lap, yanking her skirts to her waist as he pried her thighs apart and wrapped her legs around his waist. Palming her buttocks, he pulled her tightly against him, flexing his hips as he did so. His rain-soaked trousers abraded her sensitive flesh, exposed through her gussetless drawers. It was a sensation so acutely pleasurable that it bordered on pain.
“Wonderful… so very, very wonderful,” she moaned incoherently, rubbing herself against him as coils of heated tension tightened in that secret place between her legs.
She needed Mick. Needed him to touch her. Kiss her. Fondle her. But more than anything, she needed him to debauch her. Thoroughly and utterly debauch her. To finish what they’d started yesterday on that damask divan in the middle of her uncle’s study.
Taking her hand in his, Mick pressed her palm against the front of his trousers. Molding her fingers around his rigid member, he moved her hand up and down the iron-hard length. When she tightened her grip, he grimaced; the muscles in his jaw visibly clenched.
“I’m begging you, Tisha… please let me make love to you.”
“Y-yes,” she panted, marveling at the hard, vital feel of him, remembering how his swollen organ had looked covered in her blood.
No sooner did she give her consent than Mick unbuttoned his trousers. From the golden glow of passing street lights, she watched as his manhood jutted free from the gaping folds of his undergarments.
Cinching his left hand around her waist, Mick urged her to lift her hips. He then grasped his erection in his right hand and guided it to the slitted opening between her drawers.
“Can’t wait,” he murmured huskily. That said, he shoved her downward, impaling her upon his turgid shaft.
“Mick!” The strangled cry caught in Lettitia’s throat as she grabbed his shoulders, waiting for the onslaught of searing pain.
Instead, she experienced only a tight fullness, a certainty that she would die from the pleasure of having her body stretched wide open, completely filled by him.
“Ride me,” he hoarsely ordered, grasping her by the hips as he urged her to move against him.
Instinctively she pumped her lower body up, then down, the descent so intensely pleasurable Lettitia could not silence the moan that escaped her each time he slid his organ into her. As the carriage swayed back and forth on the cobbled streets, she could feel Mick swaying beneath her as their torsos bumped and pressed together.
“Faster,” Mick urged through clenched teeth.
Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she bucked and writhed against him, striving with all her might to reach that attenuated moment of shattering, incomparable release. With each passing second, the tension built. She was so close. So excruciatingly close.
Just when she thought she might shatter, the carriage hit a rut in the road, the force of the impact thrusting her upon Mick with an ardent force, the pleasure so intense that she screamed.
For several seconds she was suspended there, and Mick held her steady as she shuddered with ecstasy.
Then, almost roughly, he yanked her off of his body. Snatching her hand in his, he wrapped her fingers around his erect organ as he began to spasm. Lettitia, stunned, watched the pulsing eruption of seminal fluid spew up and onto their joined hands.
Several seconds passed. The only sound was of their deep, hoarsely drawn breaths as each of them struggled to pull air into their lungs.
“Babu definitely needs to be given a raise,” Mick rasped in between breaths. “That was, without a doubt, the best carriage ride I’ve ever had.”
Lettitia bit her lip, trying not to laugh.
“I’m sorry about the, um, the mess,” he said sheepishly. “I didn’t want to come inside of you.” Reaching for one of her discarded gloves, he wiped the warm substance from her hand, studiously avoiding her gaze.
Taking the glove from him, Lettitia gently moved the glove over his member, wondering what her embarrassed lover would do if she were to bring her fingers to her mouth and taste his essence. Afraid he might recoil in horror, she refrained from doing so.
Finished with her task, she rolled the glove into a ball and deposited it in her reticule. Silently, they each went about the business of straightening their clothes. Not certain what one should do or say after having shared so intimate an experience, Lettitia settled herself on the opposite carriage seat.
“Please tell me that when we get home, instead of lecturing me on the necessity of living a moral and decent life, you’re gonna let me spend the night with you.”
Lettitia smiled, thrilled to think that Mick would want to share her bed. “I wouldn’t dream of lecturing you.”
“Tisha, I gotta know—” He stopped mid-sentence. Clearly baffled, he shook his head and said, “Why?”
Why had she let him make love to her? That was what he wanted to know.
Leaning toward him, Lettitia gently caressed Mick’s stubbled cheek with the tips of her fingers.
“Because we only have three days left.”
* * *
At the stroke of midnight, a knock sounded at Lettitia’s bedroom door.
Seconds later, her heart beat a rapid tattoo as she turned the knob; she knew full well who stood on the other side.
Mick, attired in a white shirt and a pair of dark trousers, his feet bare, stepped across the threshold. The moment she closed the door he took her in his arms. By mutual consent, they’d agreed to rendezvous at midnight, after the household had retired for the night.
“I’m not gonna lie, Tisha. I’ve been counting the hours.”
His voice, his smell, his very presence caused her woman’s place to pulse with excitement.
“As have I,” she confessed somewhat breathlessly.
Holding her at arm’s length, Mick stared unabashedly at her, his gaze roving from her unbound hair to her slippered feet.
“God, you’re beautiful. How did I ever get so lucky?” he asked, his voice resonating with desire. “And that nightgown you’re wearing… man, oh, man, it’s practically see-through.”
Unaccustomed to such fervent praise, Lettitia was pleased that her attire met with his approval. The diaphanous silk foulard gown and matching cream-colored peignoir had been purchased as part of her trousseau, to be worn on her wedding night. Quite impulsively, several minutes before the clock struck midnight, she’d hurriedly exchanged her serviceable cotton nightdress for the more revealing garment.
Uncertain how one went about conducting an illicit love affair—Should they first converse? Should she offer him a seat? If so, where? The bed? The velvet-covered side chair?—Lettitia stepped away from Mick and walked over to the window, in need of some fresh air. As she began to shove aside the heavy damask fabric, she suddenly realized that it was probably not a very good idea to do so.
Just as quickly, she pulled the drapery closed.
Mick joined her at the window. Standing behind her, he wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Have I thanked you yet for saving me from the evil clutches of Bill Sweeney and his henchmen?” he murmured as he rubbed his freshly shaven face against her cheek.
Amused, one side of her mouth quirked upward. “Once or twice as I recall. Indeed, Uncle Phidias was immeasurably pleased to hear that I put his old service revolver to good stead.”
Mick chuckled. “Without a doubt, that had to be the ballsiest move I’ve seen in a long time. Talk about grace under pressure. And what a shot. I had no idea you were such a markswoman.”
“I’m not,” she hastened to inform him, uncomfortable with his sensational recollection of the incident. “When Mister Sweeney rushed toward me with his upraised knife, I reflexively pulled the trigger, giving no thought as to where the bullet might ultimately land.”
“Then he’s lucky you just nicked his ear.”
Not wishing to dwell on that near-fatal escapade, she purposefully changed the subject. “I was stunned to learn that Sir Charles was behind that bit of treachery. If he suspects you took the police file, why didn’t he handle the matter through Scotland Yard? Why send a Whitechapel thug to retrieve the file?”
Unhooking his arms from around her waist, Mick began to slowly pace, a brooding expression stamped onto his face.
“First of all, Sir Charlie isn’t the first, and he certainly won’t be the last, police commissioner to have ties to the criminal underworld,” he said, still pacing back and forth in front of the window. “And secondly, he doesn’t want to publicize our little theft at Scotland Yard because it will then be revealed that he purposefully misidentified Emmaline’s body. Right now, with the whole of London in a frenzy over Jack the Ripper, Sir Charles is under the magnifying glass. With that type of public scrutiny, he’s not about to make any false moves. Particularly if he suspects, as I do, that Emmaline may have been the Ripper’s first victim.”
“If that’s the case, Sir Charles may know the Ripper’s true identity.”
Mick came to a standstill. “Maybe. Maybe not. That’s why I need to question your father, if for no other reason than to eliminate him from the suspect list.” He quickly raised a hand, forestalling her objection. “I promise, Tisha, I’ll go easy on him. No ‘brash overtures.’ No ‘crude insinuations.’ I’ll just stick to the facts of the case. Okay?”
A Love For All Time Page 17