“Like this one?” Annabelle interrupted, bringing him back, temporarily, to this place and time.
He shook his head. “No, not quite. The Donville Masquerade is a high quality establishment, I pride myself in its cleanliness, its safety and its reputation. But the club where I met them wasn’t any of those things. It was a gaming house, and there was always a fight happening. It was owned by a bastard named Jack Quill. He was a drunk and a skinflint and he took whatever opportunity he could to steal from the clientele.”
“And my father went there?” Annabelle said, her voice filed with incredulity.
Marcus shrugged. “You know how your father was. He liked to game and Quill paid odds well. Probably because he knew his patrons would rarely win; they were so sauced they were all practically crossed-eyed.”
“And where did you fit in?” she asked.
He hesitated a long moment. Here was the difficult part. “I worked for Quill.”
She tilted her head, and he could see she didn’t fully understand. Of course she wouldn’t. At fourteen, she was still in the schoolhouse, reading her books and sewing and playing pianoforte. She had no concept of the desperation of the street.
“So that was how you met my father, at the gaming club.”
“And your brothers,” he said. “Your father brought them along, despite their tender years.”
He expected Annabelle to be shocked by that fact, perhaps even horrified, but instead she merely shook her head. “Oh, Papa. So predictable. And were they the youngest gamblers in the place?”
He smiled. “Indeed, they were. Though your father didn’t let them game often. I believe Quill’s establishment was a bit of a lesson for them in how far a man could fall if he let drink and cards and bad company mix.”
Annabelle pursed her lips. “For all the good those lessons have done Crispin.”
“Only recently,” he said softly.
She nodded, but the pain lingered in her dark eyes. “So there they all were, in your father’s club…”
“He wasn’t my father,” Marcus snapped, stiffening.
She leaned away from the sudden sharpness of his tone. “I’m sorry.”
“Quill essentially owned me,” he said, bitterness in his voice that he couldn’t contain even after all these long years. “And he never let me forget it. He forced me to slave for him, steal for him, do his bidding, and when I didn’t do it right, or when he’d had a bad day or when he felt like it because it was Tuesday or Friday or Sunday…he beat me. Sometimes with his fist, sometimes with a stick, sometimes with a hot iron if he was truly angry.”
Annabelle gasped, and in that sound he felt, again, the disparity of their childhoods. Annabelle who had been raised with such love, he who had been nearly drowned like an unwanted kitten once, who had been beaten until he couldn’t move, who had been reminded daily or even hourly that he was trash.
“Marcus,” she whispered, and now it was her hand that reached for him, covered his, squeezed with such small, but meaningful comfort. “I’m so sorry.”
“One night Quill was enraged. He had asked me to empty a barrel in the back. It was filled with…” He flinched. “You don’t want to know what it was filled with. But it was so heavy and I was hardly more than a child. I couldn’t lift it, I tried dragging it, but it wouldn’t budge. Quill came in and he started screaming at me. Just screaming and screaming. And then the screaming stopped and the hitting, punching and kicking began.”
Annabelle made a pained sound in her throat and her hand tightened on his. It was odd, for the pressure of her fingers seemed to help him as he fought through the layers of memories, the nightmare of pain that always accompanied thoughts of that night.
He swallowed. “It all becomes foggy after a while. But Quill flipped the barrel’s disgusting contents onto me while he beat me. He told me that was what I deserved. And then he told me that if I was so worthless, he wasn’t about to keep me around. He said he was going to kill me and toss me into the river with the other boys who couldn’t do their jobs.”
Next to him, Annabelle covered her mouth with the hand that wasn’t clenching his.
“I don’t know if he would have done it or if he had done what he claimed before. But he was kicking me over and over and I was certain I would die. I almost welcomed it, just to get away from him. From his boot, from his hand, from the life that wasn’t a life at all.”
“But something stopped him,” she whispered. “Because you are here.”
Marcus swallowed hard, fighting the emotion that mobbed him for a moment. “I remember the kicking stopped and I looked up and there was a man, lit up like an angel and he was pulling Quill away, tossing him aside like he was nothing. And even though he was a gentleman, that much was clear in his dress and his smell, he picked me up, covered in shit and piss and God knows what else, and he carried me away.”
“Who?” she breathed. He met her eyes, held steady, and watched as they widened. “My father.”
He nodded. “Crispin had snuck out of the hall and saw what was happening to me. He told Rafe and together they rushed to your father. He never hesitated a moment to come to my aid, despite not knowing me.”
“You were of an age with his beloved sons and no one deserves what you went through.” She shook her head with a soft smile. “Of course he would do so. Flawed but wonderful, my father.”
“Indeed.”
“And that is why you feel you owe my family.”
He nodded. “That night and what happened after. I woke in a clean bed three days later, my wounds tended to, including the one that gave me that scar you examined so closely the first night we were together.”
She flinched. “My God.”
“There was a woman there, sitting by my bed. Calliope Rivers. She and her husband, Oliver, ran this place. Your father had taken me here. I suppose he knew what they would do.”
“Wasn’t Quill enraged? He believed he owned you, you said.”
Marcus laughed. “He didn’t give a damn. After all, your father bought and paid for me. Paid him handsomely, I learned later. Far more than I was worth.”
Annabelle lunged for him, covering his cheeks with her soft hands, drawing him closer. “Never say that again, Marcus Rivers. Never, ever claim you are not worthy. My father made a good bargain, whatever the price, and I’m sure he would tell you the same if you could ask him.”
He covered her hands, lost for a moment in the fervent passion of her expression. She was shaking with indignation at both the circumstances of his childhood and the way he dismissed himself. He ached for how much she seemed to care, for the feelings that true connection stoked in him. He knew their names and how foolish they were under the circumstances.
He could not love Annabelle Flynn.
“What happened with Mr. and Mrs. Rivers?” she asked, drawing back as if she read his mind and knew distance was required as he did.
“They took me in, healed me. The first chance I had, I tried to run away.”
She gasped. “Wh-why?”
“Because I’d spent my life like an animal in a cage. I acted as such,” he explained. “I ran ten times in that first year. I also shouted at them. And I stole from them twice.”
Her lips parted. “What did they do?”
“Quietly and kindly broke me, like the skittish colt that I was.” He smiled. “They brought me home and spoke to me compassionately. They could have sent me to the workhouses or even had me transported, I suppose. I was old enough for either. But they didn’t. And after a year, I began to calm. They offered me their name and I took it. They offered me education and I drank it in. But mostly, they offered me love. And I soaked in it.”
“They sound like amazing people,” she whispered, blinking at the tears that shone in her eyes.
“Calliope is remarkable. Funny and free. Oliver was the most decent man I ever knew. He died ten years ago and left me the club. I doubled its profits in a year and tripled it in two. I wish he could have seen th
at.”
Annabelle smiled. “I’m sure he does, Marcus. I’m sure he sees it and they are both proud of you. You should be proud of yourself.”
“But now you see why I owe your family so much. Without the intervention of your brothers, intervention on behalf of a boy they shouldn’t have given a damn about, without your father taking matters into his own hands, I would likely be dead.”
She gazed up into his face, understanding on her features. “I’m so glad they were the men they were and saved you so you could become the man you are.”
He blinked, once again caught up in her beauty. Then he shook his head. “He came by to see me often, you know. Your father. First man to sign up for lifetime membership to the club. Your brothers soon followed suit, and with them came more and more.” He shrugged. “They were my patrons, I suppose.”
“I think they would say friends,” she whispered.
“And I have repaid them by seducing their sister, his daughter,” he said.
She cocked her head. “Is that what you are doing? Seducing me?”
“Didn’t I?” he asked.
She got up slowly and moved to his chair. As she lowered herself into his lap, she shook her head. “You and I both knew exactly what we were doing when we started this affair, Marcus Rivers. I’m no shy wallflower, that is certain, and I do what I desire. That much of me, at least, is a Flynn.”
“Annabelle,” he whispered.
She gently covered his mouth with two fingers. “Please don’t tell me why I should walk away, Marcus. Or what I should do or don’t do. Right now I don’t want to hear it. Right now I simply want to be in your arms. I want to feel your body against mine. I want you.”
He shivered as she pulled her hand away and replaced it with her mouth, driving her tongue against his, demanding what she believed he would withhold.
Except he hadn’t been about to deny her. Instead, she had interrupted him in a far greater folly. He had been about to tell her that he loved her.
Because that was the truth that burned in his heart, his blood, his soul. And only her desire had saved them both from its destructive power.
Chapter Nineteen
Annabelle trembled as her hands found Marcus’s jacket. She slipped them inside and she reveled in his warmth. It was proof he was alive, he was here with her. Knowing that he very nearly hadn’t been, that he had likely only been saved because of her family…it struck a fear in her that was far more than mere empathy for an abused child. The very concept of Marcus not existing was…
Horrifying.
She pushed the jacket from his shoulders slowly, allowing herself to feel every inch of his shoulders, his arms, as she did so. He stared up at her, his green eyes dark and filled with desire and…and something else. Something deeper and richer, utterly terrifying.
She blinked and returned her focus to tugging his jacket out from the chair behind him. She tossed it aside before she moved on to his shirt. But she continued to feel his stare as she worked on every button. Continued to be surrounded by warmth that had to do with far more than body heat.
She had to get her head out of the clouds. Marcus Rivers couldn’t care for her. Want her, certainly, but anything deeper had to be a mistake. It had to be a case of her overlaying her own strange feelings onto him. She simply had to forget those feelings, pretend they didn’t exist. It was the only way.
Her fingers moved faster over his shirt, pulling it open, nearly popping the buttons free as she struggled to strip him down and find the passion between them rather than the emotions she didn’t want to face.
He didn’t move as she did so, he didn’t stop staring at her face, and finally she made herself look at him.
“Annabelle,” he whispered, lifting his hands to cover hers. “There should be no desperation here.”
She caught her breath, watching how their fingers intertwined. His hand was bigger than hers by far and yet it looked so right closing around her flesh. As if they fit in ways she didn’t want to comprehend.
She shook her head. “There will always be desperation, Marcus, in something so temporary.”
She’d said the words as much for herself as for him, but she saw them hit the mark. His bright eyes dulled a fraction and his mouth tightened. He slowly released her hands and pushed to his feet, making her stand with him so she wasn’t deposited on her backside on the floor.
“Yes, a good point,” he said, his voice as strained as his face.
He caught her elbow, and suddenly she was being rushed out of his office, through his chamber door. Only then did he spin her around and strip the buttons along the back of her gown open with no effort. He tugged her dress off and kicked it aside, then followed suit with her chemise.
He turned her to face him and looked her up and down. She felt no shame in his frank appraisal, only desire for him. Desire for his touch.
“Lay down on the bed,” he ordered.
She cocked her head. “Will you not remove your clothing?”
For a moment his lips pursed, as if he were considering not doing so. But then he pointed to the bed. “Lay down and I will.”
She did as she had been told, settling onto his pillows as she watched him finish taking off the shirt she had unbuttoned. He sat down on one of the chairs in his bedroom to remove his boots, and his trousers followed after that. She sucked in a breath.
It was amazing to see this man naked. Every time it took her breath away. She stared at every curve of muscle, every stretched inch of skin from his chest to his stomach to his hard cock. Then she reached for him. He obliged her silent order by coming to stand beside her.
She dragged her fingers over his stomach, his hip and around his back. There she found the scar. When she first saw it, she’d been surprised and curious. Now she touched the ridge of hard skin and flinched at what had almost been lost.
“Don’t worry, love,” he whispered as he leaned over, covering her, pinning her to the bed with his weight. “It doesn’t hurt now.”
She closed her eyes as his mouth slanted over hers. She wrapped her arms around him, clinging to his as he kissed her until time melted away and everything in her world was reduced to his tongue touching hers. She lifted into his kiss, reaching for more. And he gave it, his hands gliding down her body until he cupped her breasts and began to gently glide his thumbs over her distended nipples.
She gasped at the electric zing of pleasure that rocked to her sex. It clenched at emptiness, waiting for him to fill her.
But he wouldn’t. That was their bargain, at any rate. She would never feel him flexing inside of her. At the moment, that fact was as painful as if he had taken her breath.
But she ignored the loss and instead focused on the pleasure. She slid her nails against his back, eliciting a chuckle from his lips that was lost as he began to glide along her body with his mouth. She tensed as his tongue replaced his fingers on her nipple and his hand moved lower until he covered her sex with thick fingers.
He spread her open, smoothing his index finger at her entrance. Then, slowly, gently, he pressed inside. She jolted and he looked up from her breasts.
“If I am gentle, I won’t breach your barrier,” he explained as he began to pump his fingers in and out in a smooth rhythm.
She found herself lifting into his hands, turning her head at the stretching of her body for him. But it still felt so empty. She wanted what she’d seen in books over the years. She wanted his cock filling her. His cock driving into her even though it seemed impossible that he could fit inside.
She grunted her dissatisfaction and he stopped moving. Slowly he withdrew his fingers, licked them clean and then rolled to his side next to her.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Then why the unhappy face, Annabelle?”
She pressed her lips together. She had been the one to set the boundary for him that he would not penetrate her. It would be unfair if she were to change the rules now. So she l
ied.
“I only want to touch you too, Marcus,” she said.
He licked his lips. “Do you remember what we saw when we looked through the peephole to the lovers one of the first nights you were here?”
She nodded and understood completely. “You want to do what they did?”
“Pleasure each other at the same time.” He nodded and lay back. “Will you straddle me as that lady did her lover?”
Annabelle blushed as she turned to face the foot of the bed and then draped her leg over Marcus. His cock was just below her, and she took him in hand, focusing on him instead of her own slight embarrassment.
She stroked over him, brushing the head of him against her face. She felt Marcus stiffen beneath her, his breath sucking in, and smiled. It was always a pleasure to make him shudder. With gusto, she took him into her mouth and began to plunge him deep within her throat.
She smiled around him as his hips lifted toward her. But the smile faded as he buried his tongue deep into her sex behind her without warning or preamble. She gasped as he stroked her, driving her toward orgasm with relentless tasting, teasing, sucking that had her grinding her body against him.
She dove into her own work to center herself, and they fell into a similar rhythm as they pleasured each other. Their strokes began to match, as if they were truly joined in the most intimate way. Annabelle shuddered as her orgasm built, built, and finally as Marcus sucked hard on her clitoris, she exploded. She cried out, his cock falling from her lips, riding him hard as he brought her through the wild tremblings of her release, forcing more and more pleasure on her until she begged him to stop, begged him to continue.
She fell forward as the tremors began to fade, panting.
“God, I want to be inside of you,” he murmured.
His words made her open her eyes. She stared down at his still-hard cock and once again her fantasies took her to places where she could not go. But it seemed Marcus could read her mind, for he shifted suddenly, sliding from beneath her and curling his body around her from behind. She felt his cock against the slippery entrance to her body, and it took all her self-control not to simply back up against him. She was so wet, she had no doubt he would slide in without trouble. And then she would be his in every sense of the word.
The Scoundrel's Lover (The Notorious Flynns Book 2) Page 17