by Suzi Love
“Yes, and close by, I think. In this wall, there’s a door. Disused, but a door nevertheless. I’ll clear a path in front of it. These crates look undamaged.”
“Come, guide me to you. I’ll shift the crates.”
She led him, with great care, to the back wall and placed his hands on crates so that, between them, they tugged and pushed and exposed the door.
“I can unpick the lock, I think.”
At her words, he put his ear flush against the wood and relayed any movement. “Yes. I can hear it starting to move. Keep turning the drop piece to the left. You’re doing beautifully, my sweet. A little more to the right. Slowly. Yes, it’s moving.”
He placed his hand over hers on the knob. “Please be careful, sweetheart.”
Another fleeting brush of her lips over his cheek before the door scraped. He reached for her hand, waited. But the only sound was the scratch of rodents’ claws on hard ground.
“I can smell produce. Vegetables. Perhaps wine. I can’t see much. Oh, barrels along each side of what looks like a tunnel. My nose tells me there’s air, fresh air, somewhere at the end.”
“If we’re going to escape that way, we need light. Dawn.”
“Yes. “He heard her deep sigh. “The tunnel’s dank and dark. And I don’t fancy rats nibbling on me.”
“No. Better to make our way out at first light.”
She tugged out his pocket watch and he imagined her squinting in the pale moonlight to read it. “Good. Still working.”
“Do you have your spectacles?”
“Yes. We’re fortunate. Your watch and my spectacles remained intact. “Another deep sigh from her. “If only your eyes hadn’t been hit.”
He reached for her hand, squeezed. I’m sure it’s only temporary. Besides, it didn’t prevent you from venting your spleen on me for not informing you.”
“Nothing will prevent me from informing you when you make mistakes, my lord. Nothing.” He chuckled as she took his hand and led him into their nest, and fussed around to make him comfortable.
“I found a couple of coarse rugs we can sleep on.”
“So, four or five hours until we can see to escape.”
“Here.” She pushed an apple into his hand. “Our gourmet meal is served, my lord. And I’ve a bottle of wine, if you’ve your knife to uncork it?
“Of course, dear lady,” he replied formally, happy to join her game if it would ease her fear and pass the time. “Always happy to serve a gentlewoman her wine.” He extracted his knife from his boot and opened the bottle. “After you, little one.”
He listened to her long swallows, squirmed when she slurped on the mouth of the bottle, and imagined those same strong throat muscles performing the same motions on him. On his mouth. On his body. He squirmed even more and blessed the lack of light; blessed the dark hiding that body from her inquisitive eyes.
“Ah, yes.” She touched his hand to push the bottle into his fingers and he jumped. “One of the best vintages I’ve ever tasted.”
Like her, he drew long and strong on the bottle’s neck, until she reached back again and tugged the wine from his grip.
He listened to her take several more swallows over the next five or ten minutes. She interspersed her drinking with short lectures on his stupidity in thinking she was the sort who would panic under this sort of pressure. For believing she wasn’t as capable as him. She stopped only when she hiccoughed, loudly.
He chuckled. “I think, little love, that may be plenty for you for now.”
A slight tug of war ensued, until, not wanting to hurt her fingers, he released it. More gulps, more rapid swallows, sounding very loud in the peace of their temporary haven. Once again, he covered her hand and used more force to retrieve the bottle.
“Oh, no. No, it’s wonderful. I want more.”
“Sweetheart, drinking more wine won’t magically make your surroundings light. But I’m here, with you, and I swear I’ll keep you safe from everything terrifying about the darkness.”
“Even rats?” She hiccoughed again.
“No rodents will dare come near us, I promise.”
He moved his courageous accomplice closer, tucked her under his shoulder and wrapped his hand around his arm. Her fears hung between them, unspoken, but hopefully his presence would be enough to damp down her anxieties until daylight. Her body rocked as hiccoughs popped up, several times in succession, and then her body slumped heavily into his side. Wine, fright, and exhaustion had taken their toll.
Her murmured words were almost too low, too slurred, for him to catch. “…wanted my own knight in shining armor… Cayle… to Becca.” She sighed, a deep inhalation that lifted her shoulder under his arm.
“… never thought I’d have …strong …”
Her words faded as she drifted deeper into slumber, though it’d surely be an uneasy one. Hard ground and two prickly rugs laid between crates didn’t make for a comfortable sleeping chamber. By using his jacket, he created a makeshift pillow for their heads and then, with her in his arms, he slid down to a full recline. They needed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep, so they’d have their wits about them if they encountered anyone on their escape route.
When he woke, he estimated an hour or two had passed, and her even breathing indicated she’d fallen into a deeper sleep than his. Her hair tickled his nostrils. Her curves molded, flush against his side, and despite the boy’s clothes she wore, every rounded arch reminded him she was pure woman. A very desirable woman.
Beneath the blanket, she wiggled her bottom, shifting backwards in search of warmth, and pressing into his groin. His erection jumped into full awareness, long before his mind caught up.
He groaned. Bloody hell. Recite something; poetry, something long-winded. Anything to shift his mind from the unbridled lust he felt, the ache of unacknowledged and unacceptable want always lurking just below his senses when he was in her presence. Each and every time her delectable rear end, those soft pillows of flesh, pushed against him, he was forced to grit his teeth.
If not for the regular in-out motion of her chest beneath his taut arm, he’d swear the minx was wide awake and deliberately tormenting him. Punishing him, driving him insane.
Under his breath, he started to hum the first ditty springing to mind.
There once was a barmaid named…
No! Sailors’ songs about prostitutes and whoring would make it far worse. Though now his mind had fixed on women with pendulous breasts, women with figures ripe to be used as models for ships’ mastheads, plus all the things drunken sailors sang about. The pleasurable things they did with these women.
Not helping.
He eased back his thighs, retracted the muscles in his groin, desperate to ease the throbbing pressure. But Laura, following his most heated part, kept backing into him. She wriggled, circled and nearly sent him screaming. He clenched his jaw. Surely she would awaken soon. Surely he could allow her a little more warm repose.
Listing his stock portfolio distracted him briefly, long enough for his tense body to relax, for the cramps in his muscles to ease. She moaned, and in her sleepy state moved one hand arm. Without sight, he was helpless to see what troubled her, and he wasn’t fast enough to soothe her back to sleep. If she awoke now, with him as randy as a paddock bull, her quick mind was likely to recognize his predicament. She had two brothers and two scientifically astute sisters. Not to mention a great-aunt whom, he was certain, neglected nothing in educating her extremely inquiringly-minded girls about marital relations.
“Sore shoulder,” she muttered.
After an inward sigh of relief, he reached across and walked his fingers up her arm until he reached the spot to rub, the spot her hand lingering hand indicated.
“Ummm. Nice,” she purred in a pampered-kitten voice.
Before he’d registered her intention, she rolled. A complete roll ending face to face, her front pressed tightly into his taut body. He hauled in a breath, stilled, tried to shift back, away from her, as
much as possible in the confined space. Her uppermost leg lifted and hooked over his, anchoring him in place.
“Northern Railways. Two hundred and twenty-five shares. East Manchester Mining Company. One hundred and thirty shares. Middleshire Coal–”
“What are you muttering about?”
“Keeping my mind active. Reciting my shares.”
Soft fingers touched his cheek and he flinched. “Is there something I can do to help you relax?”
Her innocent question, accompanied by drifting fingers down his face, to his neck, and coming to rest over his heart, sent a myriad of erotic images on a mad race through his head; a dozen different solutions to relieve his excruciating tension; ideas leapfrogging over one another in the hurtle to the finish line and gain the honor of being acted out by Luscious Laura.
Lord help him! No way could he survive another half-hour of this torment, not without following the lead of this building and exploding from within. A lazy hand drifted across his chest, toyed with his vest buttons, and then breached the defensive wall of heavy brocade to dip beneath. To delve further, to tiptoe under his linen shirt. Every muscle tightened. Despite the chill, beads of sweat broke out across his forehead.
“You…are…the devil incarnate.” He gripped his shirt, held the tails to his trousers, and shoved her hand away from bare skin. He swallowed. “A temptress. Sent to dissolve my vows about not touching you. You, my love, are trying to shatter my promises to the men in your family. Those same chaps who vowed to rip the arms off any rake caught within breathing distance of their sisters.”
With her nose buried in his chest, she giggled.
“Proving my point. Only a girl who is naive–” She nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “Very well, through your readings of medical and anatomical articles, you consider yourself well-informed about matters of the bedroom. But if you continue trifling with me here, in our very intimate position, which I’ll hasten to explain to your aunt wasn’t of my doing, but something born of necessity–”
A hand covered his mouth. “Richard, you’re babbling. You appear to be rather over-excited.”
“Listen, little she-devil. My nerves aren’t the only part of my anatomy overexcited. You’ve been rubbing up against me, touching me. I’m not made of stone, you know?”
Silence, and he didn’t need light to know she would be frowning, pondering the matter. Head tipped slightly to the right, a tiny pucker between her brows her lips would be pursed in the delightful position which always reminded him of kissing.
“Ooh.”
“Yes, ooh. Now, if you’ve any intention of arriving home with your virtue intact, you’ll roll away from me. ”
“Hmmm. What if I don’t?”
He moaned. “Take pity upon me. I’m barely able to cling to gentlemanly behavior. To not fall upon you in a fit of lust. But I’ll not last–”
Her lips touched his, robbed him of words, and his last remnant of manly resolve. Gently caressing, her mouth rubbed his, allowed him to feel the wet plumpness of her lips, absorb her sweet taste. Without lifting his mouth, he moaned, quieter this time. The moan of a man whose will had been sucked out of him by a tempting mouth, whose surrender was inevitable when a willing woman was kissing any protests away.
More licks and sips, more brushes of petal-soft lips on his mouth, and his body shifted, changed, readied. Flight no longer seemed an option. Fighting impossible. Widening his mouth, he took back control of their kisses, lifted and spread himself until she lay beneath him, pliant, willing, and learning from the master.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
His head pounded, his blood rushed, the beat like jungle drums. A relentless rhythm, over and over. The kiss became hungry. He wanted to devour her, nibble, gobble and eat her every way possible. Taste her every taste, feast from her body as he already adored feeding on snippets of information she hand-fed him from her fast-whirling mind. With his lips, his hands, his senses, he opened himself to her and tried, at least in his humbly physical way, to demonstrate his need for her. A craving that ripped apart his carefully-built defenses, leaving him exposed and raw with wanting.
Their kisses were endless, on and on and on, as they tried to shift even closer, so close they ended wrapped together like clinging vines. Impossible to tell where one started and the other ended.
He ran his hands up and down her body, feverishly, memorizing her dips and valleys, wanting to fix her luxuriously rounded flesh into his senses to be brought out and remembered time and again. For no matter how good this was, they both knew it wouldn’t stand the test of daylight, society, family stresses and their own hard-held notions of marriage. Better to savor the moment, remember it, and be able to recall it later.
His mouth moved to her neck, remembering the swathe of pure white skin he’d glimpsed earlier when he’d collected her in his carriage and she’d bent forward to descend. Her graceful neck, bountiful bosom…oh, hell…he wanted it all. Wanted to declare aloud that same refrain….
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Her warehouse-breaking-into outfit was an eclectic mix of her brother’s out-grown clothing, yet it had looked anything but boyish on her. He tugged away the knotted kerchief she’d worn, pulled aside the two collar pieces. He could recall in exquisite detail the slash of white skin dipping into her ball gowns, and now he ran his tongue down, traced the path he could find unerringly, even blind, and felt the twitch in his groin, the extra hardening in response.
“Your skin is so white, here.” His tongue flicked down the enthralling dip, then licked a path back up each side to nuzzle the underside of her neck. “And here.”
His teeth nipped at one earlobe, and beneath him, she shivered, arched, and made a breathless little sound of arousal prettier than any bird’s song. When he tongued the inner shell of her ear, she lifted from the floor and pressed upwards, pushed against his length, made tiny movements back and forth until he throbbed so hard he was certain she could feel it through their clothing.
Until he moaned aloud, though not attractive sounds, but raw, needful, agonized noises of a highly aroused male. While he busily expressed his adoration for each new part of her anatomy he exposed, she, not being a complacent sort of female, decided to return his attentions. And not in a passive way. Oh, no. His little minx didn’t understand the meaning of passive. Her busy fingers tugged so many times his shirt came loose and, with her normal impatience, her fists gripped the hems and jerked, wrenching his shirt with utter disregard for the cost of fine linen up his chest. Not that he wanted to stop her. Breaking off his work around her neck and head, he lifted and hauled his shirt up and over his head. He tossed it behind him, not caring where it landed. Only caring her sweetly caressing hands returned to touch his bare skin, finished their exploration, put him out of his misery.
“Laura, Laura, Laura.” As her palms slipped up and over his chest, and hesitated at his nipples, he chanted her name and, by flattening his palms over hers, showed her how to circle over his tiny, but tight-pulled, nipples.
“So much smaller than mine.”
He gave a low raw chuckle. “And yours will be even more sensitive when I touch yours. Yet, the feel of your hands on me, there, is exquisite torture.”
Another little hesitation, another pondering silence. “Really. You like it?
He groaned, dipped to kiss the back of her hand where it lay on his heaving chest. “More than like it, love. You can bring me undone with one finger.”
“And will you touching my–mine, have the same effect?”
Using instinct for direction, he bent to her lips. Another long, languid kiss. More sweet little pants, more nails digging his neck, gripping tightly, holding him in place. He almost laughed. He’d lost all will to run. Lost the urge to back away, act in a gentlemanly fashion. Having gone this far, he’d die without at least a taste of her. Without the chance to keep her next to his body for a short time.
“If you enjoy kissing, sweetheart, when I touch your breasts,” he reached b
etween them to lay an open palm over her swollen breast, undone by the sharp pointed- nipple already protruding, already begging for his touch. “When my fingers rub your sensitive nipples, your body will come alive in ways you’ve never imagined. You’ll know what it’s like to want, you’ll begin to crave things the same way I hunger for you.”
She kissed him again, lightly, then leaned back to consider. “But I already do. Want more. Want whatever you can show me.”
An inner battle raged, but fell defeated. Telling himself he’d stop soon, very soon, he vowed to give her a simple taste of passion. No more. Not because she didn’t want it. He knew, had heard, felt, inhaled the signs. The scent of arousal filled the air around them, from him, from her. Inhaling deeply, he drew in her intoxicating odors. To know her acute response was to kisses, or his hands, thrilled him beyond belief.
The drum beats grew louder, stronger: claim her, claim her. She’s yours.
Choice was ripped from his hands when she pushed onto an elbow and pulled her shirt from her trouser waist, using the same frantic action as when she’d stripped him. When she lifted her arms, he grasped the shirt and pulled it skyward, to fling it away in the same uncaring fashion that he’d discarded his clothing. All that mattered was baring their bodies for each other’s enjoyment.
His fingers felt lace, the neck of her chemise, a feminine flimsy garment that would be glaringly at odds with the masculine coverings she’d worn. The disparity struck a boxer’s upper-cut-knockout-blow to his already strained senses.
His fingers curled around the ties of chemise, gripped, argued, “Stop. A gentleman would stop. Because going any further…with you…” A dozen scenarios raced through his head regarding him, with her.
... Most likely an innocent—despite her adopted air of worldliness.
…One whom he…admired—oh, so very, very much.
…The sister of his friends--who’d challenge him to a duel.
…Related through his cousin--who’d kill him, without the duel.
Therefore, a cowardly retreat seemed the sanest option. “Laura, I can’t—”