by Shana Galen
At her movement, his finger slid deeper inside her and then out again. She could feel her own slickness between her legs and the wetness on his finger as he swirled it over her. Her feet seemed to go numb, and a white-hot heat curled low in her belly. His finger, or perhaps it was two now, entered her again, stroking her until she could not help but move with him.
“You are so tight. So wet. Do you have any idea how much I want to be inside you?” he asked. He was watching her now. His eyes were dark as they searched her face. She felt as though she should be embarrassed that he watched her, but she could not manage to feel anything but the pressure of his fingers and now his thumb as it circled that sensitive nub at her very center.
“Then take me,” she said, her voice rising as his thumb moved faster. “Flynn, please.”
But he only kissed her again, dragged another slick finger over her, and said, “Let go, Emma.”
How could she refuse him?
She let go. Pleasure spiraled through her and seemed to tighten every muscle in her body. She reached for him, held him close as the whirlwind swirled around her and through her. And when she could finally breathe again, think again, she opened her eyes and he was smiling down at her. She loved his smile. She wanted to take this moment—this moment when she held him and he touched her—and hold it forever. Even if she was lying in some sort of hovel and would probably be murdered when the sun rose, she would not have traded this for anything.
“I love you,” she murmured.
He stiffened. “That’s the pleasure talking.”
“That is me talking.” She didn’t allow him to pull away. It occurred to her that perhaps no one else had ever told him he was loved. His mother loved him, in her own way, but Emma knew the viscountess, and she was a formal, severe woman. Had she ever told her son she loved him? “Flynn,” Emma said, looking into his eyes. “I love you, and nothing you can say or do will change my mind.”
He looked at her as though she had just escaped Bedlam. “I don’t know what to say.”
She wanted to laugh. She wanted to say, I love you too would be nice. Instead, she said, “Perhaps one day you will.” She knew he felt something for her. Lust? Assuredly. Affection? She hoped so. Love? She dared not even hope.
He began to pull away, and she murmured, “Stay.”
He shook his head. “If I stay, I fear you will prove too great a temptation for even my meager scruples.” He held up a finger. “And yes, I realize I have just admitted I have scruples. Meager scruples.”
Emma sat and watched as he backed away from her. The candle flame wavered and flickered, and she realized it would soon go out. They would be trapped in the dark. “I don’t want your scruples,” she said. “I want more of you. All of you.”
“In that case, I will save you from yourself.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “How romantic.” Just then the weak light in the room dimmed further. Flynn turned as the candle went out, and they both watched as the red wick went black. In the darkness, Emma straightened her gown and wished she had done so when she could see what she was doing.
“Perhaps I can find something else to light,” Flynn said. She heard his feet shuffle on the floor as he searched for something that might do. Emma wrapped her hands about her knees. In her wildest dreams, she had never thought she would spend her last hours in a dark room in the slums of Bath with the Viscount of Vice. And, most distressingly, the Viscount of Vice was too much a man of virtue to take her maidenhead. She was going to die a virgin. How terribly unfair.
Somewhere in the distance a board creaked, and she heard the sound of boots. “Flynn?” she whispered.
“Here.” He was beside her in an instant, though she did not know how he had maneuvered through the dark room so easily. She reached out, touched his leg and then his outstretched hand. He pulled her to her feet and then against his warm body. “Stay close to me,” he said.
She wanted to ask exactly what he thought he could do to protect her, but she did not want to think of what was coming. She wrapped her arms about him and buried her face in his shirt, where she could still detect the faint scents of sandalwood and leather.
Footsteps neared the room, stopping outside the door, and then something heavy moved against the door. Light crept in from the crack under the door, and Emma looked at Flynn. It was still too dark to make out his face, but she thought she could at least detect the outline of his features.
“I have you,” he whispered. Emma realized she was shaking and clamped her teeth together to try and steady her nerves. If she was going to die, she did not want to die a coward.
With a creak, the door opened. She squinted against the sudden light from the lantern and then heard Flynn say, “What do you want?”
Emma blinked as the man stepped in the door. “Robert?” she whispered.
“We don’t have much time,” he said. “I’ve come to rescue you.”
Emma started forward, relief surging through her, but Flynn held her in check. He gave a low laugh. “You came to rescue us? You’re the one responsible for our current imprisonment.”
“And I’m the one who is going to free you.”
“Or you’re the one I’m going to knock to the floor and step over on my way out. I don’t need you to rescue me.”
“Flynn,” Emma said in a warning tone. She was of the opinion they actually did need someone to rescue them—or at least open the door.
“Fine. If that’s what you want to do, go ahead. Be quick about it. If we stand about talking all night, Satin will return, and we’ll all be dead.”
“Flynn,” Emma whispered, “let’s go.”
Flynn didn’t look at her. His gaze remained locked on his sibling. Finally, he nodded. “Lead the way, Brother.”
Emma did not know how much time passed or even how they escaped. She was sandwiched between Robbie Flynn in front and the viscount behind. They moved through dark streets and ducked into dirty alleyways as men rushed past them. She trusted Robbie, but she could feel Flynn tense every time they came close to a group of men. He expected his brother to betray them. She was not so naïve as to think Satin had allowed Robbie to go, which meant he was in as much danger as they were. At any other time, she might have pointed out that fact to Flynn, but she thought it more prudent to keep her mouth closed and concentrate on escaping.
At every turn, she was certain Satin or one of his thugs would jump out and kill them all, but finally, she recognized small landmarks—Kingsmead Square, Monmouth Street, Old King Street. When they neared the area close to the Royal Crescent, where her sister and Lady Chesham resided, Emma began to believe she might actually survive.
As if by some unspoken command, the three of them paused outside Queen Square, which was dark and abandoned at this late—or rather, early—hour. “What now?” Flynn asked his brother. He was holding Emma’s hand, keeping her at his side. “I suppose you want some form of payment.”
Robbie shook his head. “I don’t want anything. If you offered, I wouldn’t take it.”
“Then why did you help us?”
Robbie shrugged and shook his dirty hair. “I never had a brother before.”
Emma bit her lip to keep from hugging the man. Couldn’t Flynn see how much his brother wanted a family, wanted a place to belong? He hadn’t chosen this path, but only Flynn could open the door to a new one. “What will you do now?” Flynn asked.
“I’ll go back,” Robbie said.
“No!” Emma cried, unable to stop herself. “He’ll kill you.”
Robert shrugged. “I don’t have anything to live for anyway.”
“If you have nothing to live for,” Flynn said slowly, “then you have nothing to lose.” He seemed to study his brother, and Emma held her breath. Would he now turn his back on his own flesh and blood, the man he’d mourned practically all of his life? “Do you want to come home?”
Robbie shrugged. “I don’t know what home is.”
“I don’t either, but if you’re willing to fight, I’ll find you the best doctors and the best care. I won’t leave your side. We can figure out home together.”
“I don’t know if I can do it.”
Flynn raised a brow. “You can always go back to Satin, though I might persuade him Bath is too dangerous for him and his gang right now. You’d be safe with me. But you have to fight.”
Robbie stared at his brother, then nodded slowly. “I’ll fight.”
Flynn nodded. “Follow me then.” But instead of leading, he draped an arm about his brother’s shoulder, his other hand still clamped on Emma’s hand. The three of them started off together.
“Where are we going?” Emma asked.
“Home.”
Eight
Robbie held himself together long enough for Flynn to ensure Emma was escorted home and Lady Chesham was introduced to her lost son. His mother had known her younger son at once. For perhaps the first time, Flynn had seen tears stream down her cheeks as she took Robbie into her arms. Robbie wept as well, clutching her tightly. Flynn stood and watched the two of them, feeling awkward and out of place. And then his mother had held her hand out to him, inviting him forward, and he’d joined the circle.
The family was whole again. Flynn felt whole again.
The joyous reunion had been short-lived. Flynn had barely summoned Doctor Emerson when Robbie began to shake from violent tremors. Derring accompanied the doctor and explained to the viscountess how he’d been investigating Satin in London and followed the crime lord to Bath. Once in Bath, Derring had encountered Robbie, and after talking with the man and several paid informants, determined Robbie was very likely Robert Flynn. Robbie’s memory of the brooch his mother had worn when they were children was all the proof Flynn needed.
Flynn offered to attempt to retrace their steps from the night before and lead Derring to Satin’s flash ken, but Derring’s reports put Satin back on the road to London. Derring called Satin an opportunist. With Robbie, Emma, and Flynn out of his reach, he would move on to easier game. Derring intended to follow Satin to London, though there was little likelihood of finding the man among the sprawling masses there. Flynn left his mother to hear the doctor’s report and to thank Derring privately. Doctor Emerson was not optimistic.
The first day Robbie began suffering from chills and nausea, and he could not seem to sit still. After the ordeal of the night before, he should have been exhausted—Flynn was—but Robbie could not sleep. The doctor said insomnia was typical at this stage of treatment.
Now, after days of unrest, Robbie had finally fallen into a fitful sleep, and Flynn had stumbled out of his brother’s room, feeling bleary-eyed and disoriented. He had no idea what day it was or how much time had passed. He only knew his brother was more of a fighter than Flynn ever would have been had they traded places. His mother and a bevy of doctors were within. Flynn’s uncle and several of his cousins had traveled to Bath as soon as his mother sent word. The family had rallied, and Flynn knew his brother was in good hands.
He could finally take care of the one item that had been on his mind from the moment he’d stepped through his mother’s door—making Emma his wife. On the way to his room, Flynn asked a footman for the day and time and was shocked to learn two days had passed. He cursed and had to restrain himself from leaving that instant. He hadn’t wanted Emma to suffer any repercussions from the night she was abducted. But instead of preventing them, instead of protecting her, he’d bloody well left her to fend for herself for two days. He didn’t want her to think she was simply one more in a long line of his women.
He had to show her she was the only woman.
And still, as much as he wanted to go to her immediately, as much as he needed to go to her instantly, he could not do so in his current state. One did not ask a woman to marry him with vomit on his clothing and a scruffy beard on his cheeks. Flynn would have to bathe and change. She deserved that much.
When he finally emerged from his room, clean and dressed in his best, his mother was waiting for him. “How is he?” Flynn asked.
Her thin lips tightened. “Much as he was earlier. No worse, though I am certain worse days are to come.”
“Awake again?”
She nodded.
“I should go to him. I told him I would not leave his side.”
Her hand on his arm stopped him. She was a small, slight woman with dark hair streaked with gray. He still remembered when it had been fully blue-black. Her features were sharp, and though she had once been beautiful, she was too thin now to be called as such. She might still have been attractive if she smiled. Flynn knew this because, wonder of wonders, he had seen her smile several times in the first hours Robbie had been home. “He will understand a few hours’ absence. You have somewhere more important to go at the moment.”
“I have to see Lady Emma before her brother comes to kill me.”
“He did come, actually,” his mother said. Flynn gaped at her. “This morning. I sent him away. I do believe when he heard your brother’s howling, he was more than persuaded to return at a more opportune time.”
Flynn laughed bitterly and shook his head. After all of this, how ironic if his life ended with a pistol ball in his chest on the dueling field.
“I assume you are going to ask the girl to marry you.”
“I meant to go sooner.”
“Good. That is, if she will have you.”
His head jerked up. “If she will have me?”
The viscountess raised one thin brow. “You are not exactly a paragon of gentlemanly behavior.”
Now his mother was chastising him? He’d brought her son home to her, rescued Lady Emma—more or less—and had stayed at his brother’s sick bed for two days without rest. And she still had the gall to bring up his murky past. “Many of the stories about me were exaggerated,” he said, his tone surly.
“I am glad to hear it. The one about you and Lady Maxwell? Was that exaggerated?”
Flynn frowned. “No, but—”
“And that one about the drinking contest at the coaching inn. Was that exaggerated?”
Flynn glowered.
“What of the one where you gambled away the Chesham estate and land? Was that exaggerated?”
“I won it back.”
“I see, and what of—”
“Mother, I take your point. But I am certain Emma will look beyond all of that. It was in the past. It’s not the future.”
She laid a hand on his arm, and he looked at her in surprise. “I am glad to hear it. I’ve worried about you so.”
He blinked, not certain he had heard her correctly. She’d worried about him? Was this her way of saying she loved him? He did not know, but he knew of one woman who he could be certain loved him. One woman who would probably cry tears of gladness when he but mentioned the word matrimony.
“What are you waiting for?” his mother said, shaking him out of his thoughts, which had turned from Emma’s elation to her tears of joy.
“Nothing. I—”
“Be on your way then. And Henry? Be prepared for a fight.”
* * *
Emma sat in the front parlor and tried not to listen to her brother and sister arguing in the drawing room above her. They were speaking about her, of course. They’d done nothing but speak of her from the moment Andrew had arrived from London yesterday afternoon. The topic was the same—she was ruined, she had shamed the family. Emma wanted to laugh at the snippets she overheard. She had been taken against her will. How was that her fault? But she was still a virgin—unfortunately. Some ruination!
In the past quarter hour, her siblings’ conversation had turned to her exile. She’d soon be sent to Ravenscroft Castle. She supposed it could hardly be considered exile when she enjoyed the castle and
its grounds so much, but she had enjoyed London and Bath as well, and now she supposed she would be an old woman before she would be allowed to return or be seen in any sort of society.
That was if her brother and sister had their way, and she could see no reason they would not. Emma rose and parted the curtains of Katherine’s rented house to watch the procession of carriages taking the wealthy out for an afternoon ride or to make calls. She desperately wished she could escape the sound of her sister’s condemning voice for an afternoon. Emma supposed she could hardly blame Katherine for being cross with her. After all, Emma had disappeared from under her nose at the assembly ball and then reappeared the next morning, disheveled and being driven in one of Viscount Chesham’s carriages. It didn’t help that Mrs. Emerson had sent a hysterical note surmising that Emma had been abducted by Chesham’s younger brother, and explaining that the viscount had gone to rescue her. Her sister had assumed rescue was a euphemism for something far worse, considering the man doing the rescuing.
Sir Brook had certainly attempted to salvage her reputation, but what could he do other than corroborate the basic story? It had not been her fault or her choice, but she had been alone with the Viscount of Vice, and she was ruined.
Predictably, Flynn had made no comment at all since they returned. If he’d denied it, no one would have believed him, and if he’d admitted it, it would have only made her situation worse. She might have hoped for some word from him, some private letter or smuggled note, but he was silent. Andrew and Katherine thought he had washed his hands of her, but Emma had faith in him. He had his brother to think of now. Robbie needed him. She had heard the Chesham family planned to return to London to seek expert medical care. And since she would probably never be allowed in London again, she supposed she would never see Flynn again. Perhaps she would read of him and his notorious deeds. Or perhaps it was better if she did not. Perhaps she should simply content herself with her role in life: aunt to her sister’s and brother’s children. She rather thought the role of spinster aunt suited her. She enjoyed running around with her niece, and she could help the Duchess of Ravenscroft with the new baby.