by Elsa Holland
Elspeth looked up at his face, the angles suddenly more beautiful than even that first time; and his eyes, dark black pools conveying nothing. She tilted her mouth up to him.
She would regret this later but right now, the calming sense of being safe, of being held and wanted, for whatever reason he wanted her, moved her to ease up on her toes to kiss him.
He moved his head out of the way.
Her lips hit his chin.
The hiatus of thought lifted and humiliation at her rejection burned her cheeks. Clarity eased back into her mind, the panic now gone. Her lips tingled from the soft abrasion of his chin.
“It’s alright, I’m not angry.” His voice strangely soothing.
As her senses returned, she realized the warmth of his body, the steel of his arms and all they promised, were simply perfunctory. Elspeth pushed away from him. His eyes had shown nothing behind that mask—not shock, not surprise and certainly not shame—when she saw him downstairs. Her anger boiled over.
“Let me go.”
He slowly released her, gently holding her arms to make sure she was steady.
She had kissed his chin.
Mortified she closed her eyes.
That was it.
The whole proposition was, from the outset, outrageous. Now it was unthinkable. She had come on this outing to honor her bet, to placate the Hurleys and to try to keep her job. She had done her duty.
She looked at him.
His hair was mussed, most likely from pulling the mask off, his breathing had returned to normal. And of course his face showed no contrition.
“You’re not angry with me? Is that what you think I was worried about?” She poked at his chest. “I never want to see you again. You depraved excuse of a man.”
“Depraved?”
He stalked closer and an idiotic flare of want moved through her, the tension between them palpable.
The contents of the shop, the chase, being caught, flared through her body even as her mind ran in desperate circles to close it all down.
It all got mixed up with the humiliation of him pulling away from her lips, with the fact that he didn’t really want her, and yet he was planning on purchasing her. How impossibly humiliating would it be to be the acquisition of a man you were susceptible to but who was indifferent to you?
“Yes—a vile beast,” she taunted.
He stalked closer and she backed up against the door.
“I kissed you to stop you breathing—raised carbon dioxide levels still panic. In lieu of a paper bag it seemed a good alternative.
“When I stopped you were light headed, and I am not so desperate as to steal kisses from befuddled governesses. I am trying to ‘rub along.”
“I was light headed.” Her hand came up and fluttered at her chest. Her mind gravitated to the possibility of an excuse. Yet she’d wanted to kiss him. Damn it if she didn’t still.
Maybe it was the circumstances. That she wasn’t thinking straight—steal kisses from a befuddled governess—her brows drew down.
“We will never rub along well.” She pulled her shoulders back.
“Never?” His hand tilted her chin up.
“That’s right.”
“Because I’m depraved?”
A flurry of nerves ran through her. She nodded. Blackburn leaned in, a blanket of heat across her chest.
“A vile beast?” he continued, in a dangerously soft tone.
She nodded, what else could she do? He was so close. Blackburn moved forward those last few inches, his body a blatant taunt. It was as if fire ran through her body. It wanted him, her mind didn’t but, yes, her body did.
His face was so very close. His eyes and that hard, unreadable gaze eating up all of her space. She closed her eyes, unable to look at him any longer. His lips rubbed softly over hers. Her breath shuddered out and she screwed her eyes shut, wanting and not wanting all at once.
“Open your mouth, Elspeth.” A guttural whisper.
But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t get the warring sides of herself to decide. His fingers tugged her chin down and she opened. His tongue slipped deep into her mouth. A hot, thick surge of warmth that swirled around her mouth. Touched her intimately, glided over her tongue and along her teeth.
Her hand rose, the tips of her fingers finding the lapel of his jacket and clutching onto it. He nipped her, taking little bites of her lower lip, then angled her head and slipped back deep into her mouth. His tongue was so intimate, her sex pulsed with want as it moved in her mouth.
With every glide and touch of him, her skin awoke. The damp heat between her legs crying out to be stroked, the panting of her breath, an embarrassingly eager call of want.
Slowly, he stopped. He moved his palm to cup her cheek, then moved it away as he stepped back. Blackburn looked at her as he wiped his thumb over his mouth.
Immediately she felt the damp on her and did the same, wiping away the telltale shine as she scanned his face for his reaction.
There was nothing, no flush, no shortness of breath, no softness in his eyes or pleasure in any feature. Just that unrevealing gaze that told her he had made his point.
Suddenly, the events of the day hit her with great force. The confectioners, the memories of her mother, the depraved yet strangely alluring shop, the chase and panic, the fool she’d just made of herself and now the kiss. A kiss that would mark her forever as it was her first.
Nothing was falling into any kind of place she knew the meaning of.
Blackburn looked down at his clothes and her eyes followed; pressed against his trousers was the hard, long length of him. Her breath stuttered.
Elspeth spun around.
Excitement and want warred with confusion, with outright rejection of him, of what her body wanted and what she didn’t.
Elspeth burst out the door and back into the bookshop. The balding Mr. Howard gasped as she rushed past him and headed straight for the front entrance, the blasted bell clanging as she threw the door open and took off down the street in solid strides.
There were no clear thoughts on direction, only on putting as much distance between them as she could.
And then there was the matter of her body.
Her lips burned and her skin was alight. Her breasts were sensitive and tight against her bodice, and her petticoats, as they moved over her legs, were a thousand hands.
She ached.
And his tongue . . . it had the taste of caramel still, those traces teasing her mouth as he’d pressed it in, moved it around in a way that felt so immensely carnal. That kiss, the way it had traveled through her whole body, was as if it had plundered her maidenhood and taken every secret she had. And there would certainly be no thoughts of the shape in his trousers. In fact, there would be no reason to think of it ever again. Any of it.
She may have let the beast kiss her, may even have loved every lurid moment of it, but she was going home and putting an end to this whole ridiculous situation.
Chapter 6
Blackburn’s jaw tightened. He ran a hand over his face and hair as he stood in the dimly lit landing. His heart still pounded and the taste of her coated his tongue in something far more delicious than those damn caramels. His body hummed from the chase through The Velvet Basement. It hummed with the residue of predatory elation on catching her, of pinning her to him. Every muscle in his body was wound and waiting for a release that would not happen anytime soon.
Certainly not with the help of the surprisingly passionate Miss James.
The clang of the cracked bell at the bookshop’s door heralded her exit. Blackburn straightened his clothes and moved out into the bookshop after her, watching as she marched outside into the flow of pedestrians and past the front window, skirts swishing and elbows swinging.
An odd sensation sat with him, something that tugged strangely on the inside. He pushed it aside. He didn’t need to examine sensations like that; any sensation that didn’t aid in getting what he wanted was a distraction, and a weakness h
e would not indulge. Certainties were what he focused on, certainties and the probabilities of success.
The investigations he’d done were clear about her mother’s confectionary talents and the sad demise of the family. He’d wanted to take her somewhere familiar, somewhere he could get clues to how she felt about her life, what history she may be bringing into the arrangement as his Painted Sister.
The pain of that loss ran unexpectedly deep.
“Everything alright sir?” Mr. Howard asked coming to stand next to him.
Blackburn kept his gaze on the wayward Miss James.
“What do you think, Mr. Howard? Does it look like she is alright?”
Blackburn felt a push to head after her, to go out and hail a cab for her, but he was sure the sight of him coming out of the shop behind her would upset her more than the gallantry warranted. Instead, he watched as she hailed herself a Hansom cab from down the street, climbed in and rode away.
Stay quiet, stay quiet. What did she mean?
The odd sensation refused to be pushed down and moved restlessly in his chest as he watched her.
Have you ever been with a man? She’d been mortified at his question and horribly embarrassed that she wasn’t as cosmopolitan as her world would allow.
“I don’t know how she slipped by me, sir. She was at the shelves, happy as you like. I didn’t even see she was gone.”
Blackburn dropped his gaze to Mr. Howard.
“You didn’t even see . . . ? You are employed to ensure customers can come and go and not undergo what I just went through. This is your first and last warning, Mr. Howard. Any breach and you will be finding work of which you are more capable.”
The Hurleys had said they would encourage her to accept his offer, but he had to win her over. After today, Blackburn understood their soft approach. However, he now had a few more useful facts about both the Hurleys and Miss James and the next step was obvious. Though he was adept at getting people to do what he wanted, he had no time to woo a woman he was purchasing as an asset. Cash, he was sure, would ensure the Hurleys would step back from their sentimentality over Miss James and do the job for him.
Blackburn walked back through The Velvet Basement as if looking through Miss James’s eyes. She’d done remarkably well to make her way through the full length of the shop without so much as a blush in her cheeks.
It might be possible to steer her gaze away from the cabinets, lit to highlight all manner of items; however, on the wall at the end of each bookcase corridor hung a framed work of striking, if perhaps depraved, art. Women tied, men in cages, couples in unusual sexual acts; it wouldn’t have mattered which row she’d walked down, some erotic image was at the end of it.
The black leather wolf mask lay on the floor in front of him. Blackburn bent down and picked it up, turning the mask in his hands. He remembered the flare of her eyes on seeing him wearing it. He’d felt a colossal lightning bolt of hunger at the sight of her, at the shock in her face, at the very clear flash of desire she probably didn’t even realize was mixed in with the expected mortification.
Yet he’d seen it.
Seen the sign of her corruptibility.
He’d almost been tempted to keep the mask on, let her get a full fright for coming down after him. But what he would have done had he caught her while wearing it may have been far less restrained.
Evie knew better than to ask questions of him when he came back into the stockroom.
“The mask Baron Ulyanov commissioned needs to be stronger. And the ears,” he flicked them irreverently, “make it look like a puppy; have Karl make them more pointed. It’s a wolf . . .”
A woman with the face of an angel, Evie managed the shop and facilitated men to choose the items that would make their fantasy irresistible. She listened studiously, making notes.
“The lower jaw needs more movement, Ulyanov wants to be able to actually bite while wearing it.” God, he would want to bite if he was wearing it and chasing down the woman he wanted to fuck.
The frantic swing of her sweet candy-striped yellow skirts, a shimmer of sunshine racing away from the threat of devouring shadows.
“We could try a version with no lower jaw?” Evie suggested.
He was that shadow. He was the only thing threatening Miss James in her safe, feminine world.He nodded at Evie. “Have a couple of versions made up; we can sell what Ulyanov doesn’t want. He wants it for St John’s Eve but I intend to give it to him at an event I am holding in a few weeks’ time.”
“I’ll have other options ready for you shortly.” Evie placed the mask aside.
“Raise the price as we discussed before you send these on to the other shops.” He gestured to the dildos.
“Edinburgh is doing well. They want more postcards, manacles, spreader bars and a custom face brace,” Evie said.
She lifted the custom piece, a beautifully tiered headdress of semi-precious jewels, silver filigree and a facial frame that strapped on, with a mouthpiece designed to keep the mouth open.
“A Collector?” he asked.
“Ivan McGregor . . .” Evie replied.
The brace was rather tame for McGregor, an underworld collector.
Blackburn had found out very early in his foray into business that fantasies sold well, sexual fantasies sold extremely well and taboo sexual fantasies were worth a fortune. If you catered for that niche underbelly, and did so cleverly, you could become very wealthy.
And influential.
There was something about knowing the secrets of wealthy, powerful groups of men. They started with throwing you tidbits and ended up feeding you off their plates, as long as you stayed silent and kept feeding them what they needed.
However, there were limits.
He would not, nor would the stores he owned or had sub-contractual arrangements with, deal in items for children. Anything to do with children which came across his path or the path of his staff was anonymously presented to police, and the same position was taken by all of his stores. In addition, he heavily subsidized a wing of the police force that privately dealt with such matters.
He knew what living on the streets could mean for those too young to fend for themselves: the many and varied sexual predators that stalked them. He had been lucky to escape it. Yet he’d seen the victims of that perversion, those he had been helpless to protect. Meredith. He would not be part of facilitating it now.
Blackburn finished his business with Evie, and made one more stop before returning home and changing. Four hours and a good deal of money later, he was pulling up at the Hurley’s.
In the foyer of their house, a house to rival the size of his own, Blackburn was satisfied to see the black glossy dressmaker’s box on the sideboard as he entered and waited for his visit to be announced to the Hurleys.
Looking at the box, it struck him as humorous that setting up a mistress had never taken so much effort, and in those cases he had at least had received some physical benefit. As much as he wanted to slip between those firm thighs, Miss James’ was being purchased for a different purpose altogether.
A Painted Sister was for power; power and advancement. That was her role in his life, nothing more.
“The Hurleys will see you now, Mr. Blackburn,” the butler announced, stepping back and indicating the direction they were to walk.
Blackburn was ushered into the Hurley’s library; a room which housed rows of standing bookshelves and a small seating area which flowed onto a terrace, accessed through French doors. Late spring flourished through the glass as the last of the sunlight lit the tops of pink peonies and clusters of hydrangeas waiting for summer to flower.
“Mr. Blackburn, sit, sit.” Aiden gestured to a seat.
“Or lounge,” said Sissy.
Blackburn sank into the glossy, burgundy leather tub chair between the two facing sofas that housed the Hurleys.
“High drama, we’re told.” Aiden’s eyes surreptitiously scoured over him for clues, though Blackburn made sure there wer
e none.
“The fencing room was a hive of activity,” said Sissy.
“And the front door shook the whole house,” said Aiden, waiting for a response.
“That it did, that it did,” said Sissy.
Blackburn looked them over. Inseparable twins in his and hers outfits, they’d been rejected by London Society within a matter of hours at their coming-out, or so the story went. None of that mattered to him, however; they were extremely well connected and highly influential in all the spheres that counted in his world.
What people rejected in public was often sought out in private. He knew that as well as the Hurleys.
“So everything . . .” began Aiden.
“. . . went well?” finished Sissy.
He raised an eyebrow at them and crossed his legs, resting his clasped hands on top of them.
That the two people in front of him even thought to describe Miss James’s apparent behavior on arriving back at the house, as ‘going well’ was at the root of the delays in getting Miss James to sign his contract. They were being too obtuse, too circumspect in the way they were handling Miss James and viewing the progress of her becoming his Painted Sister.
“The deal’s off,” he said.
They both sat up in unison.
“She’s ideal,” Aiden’s thin frame leaned forward.
“Perfect,” Sissy followed suit reflecting her brother’s posture, “the best yet.”
Blackburn held up his hand. “Tell me another Collector who is required to court his Painted Sister?” He casually adjusted a fold in his jacket. “All of this coddling is doing Miss James a great disservice in her future role, which will require aptitude and a commitment to my best interests and my agendas.” He made sure his voice displayed the right amount of boredom as he continued, “I am finding it hard to imagine those requirements being met by Miss James.”
They nodded in unison.
Influence and direction was a theatrical art, one he had learned as soon as he could speak in order to talk those more fortunate than him out of their valuables. He refolded his hands on his lap and waited a few seconds before continuing.
“I undertook today’s outing out of respect for yourselves and the office you hold as the founders, and only source, of Painted Sisters.