by Moira Rogers
His shirt was still hanging open, and he started to button it as he stepped back. “How delicate can it be?”
She slipped past him, then took the few necessary steps to put space between them. “It was about the new moon.”
He drew up short, still, his gaze intense. “Grace, tell me.”
She did. “I sat with Doc during the new moon, especially toward the end when his… Well, when his mind started to go. He fretted about Diana. About what it did to her, having such unforgiving needs.” A polite, careful way to describe the sexual madness that claimed a bloodhound when the moon went dark. “He told me the Guild leaders had brought it on themselves, being so impatient to get their hands on a weapon that they accepted reckless side-effects. I thought he was simply a confused, tired old man…”
Archer let out a ragged breath. “What was his name, again?”
No one had used it. Sometimes Grace wondered if most people remembered it. “Thomas Beale.”
Archer repeated it softly and frowned as he shook his head. “I don’t know that name, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have worked for the Guild at some point. Do you think Diana knows for certain?”
“Perhaps.” Leaving the torch lit had been a mistake. Darkness might have been more intimate, but the shadows played across his face in the most intriguing ways. “Diana doesn’t betray confidences. She wouldn’t have told anyone unless she had good reason.”
His brows drew together even more, shadowing his eyes. “Grace.”
Had he caught her admiring him? His voice seemed caught between warning and something lower. Warmer. Her heart thudded too fast. “I’m sorry if I woke you over something trivial.”
He took the torch from her and set it on its end on the low table by the door. The light bounced off the ceiling, reflecting down around them in deep shadows. “You are not sorry.”
Grace curled her fingers toward her palms, desperate not to reach for him. But holding back her body couldn’t stop the words, raw and stripped of even the pretense of respectability. “Celibacy is more easily endured by virgins, I imagine. Three years of it has made me foolish.”
“I could take you.” He brushed a lock of hair back from her forehead. “But I don’t think you really want me to.”
Laughter fought its way past the knot in her throat. “You’re not terribly perceptive when it comes to women, are you?”
“You want me to now,” he clarified. “Tomorrow morning, you’ll feel differently.”
It was her turn to frown. “What happens tomorrow morning?”
“You’ll wake up in bed with a broken-down hound and the sun shining through the curtains,” he said simply.
So simple. So sad. She reached out to touch the scar on his cheek, the one barely visible in the shadows, the one she’d memorized already with too many furtive glances. “Undoubtedly the finest sort of man I’ve ever woken up in bed with.”
He cupped the back of her head. “You say that because you don’t know me.” He bent his head as he spoke, until he almost cut off his own words by slanting his mouth over hers.
How long since she’d been kissed? Years, to be sure. Longer still since she’d been kissed by a man who saw her, not the role she happened to be playing. Too long since her lips had been claimed with intent and hunger and skill, all firm pressure and warmth and wildness, so overwhelming she barely had the wit to kiss him back.
Archer hitched her up on the table with a growl, knocking over the handtorch. She clutched at his shirt as he leaned over her, deepening the kiss, and only his hand at the back of her head kept it from bumping against the wall.
She’d bedded men. Bad men, criminal men, but never a bloodhound. Exhilaration flooded her, edged with the tiniest thread of fear. He surrounded her, covered her, a beast in the shape of a man, and as careful as he was, there was no mistaking the proprietary command in the grip of his hands.
She was meant to melt. To yield. And even as her body obediently did the former, sheer madness drove her to deny him surrender. She closed her teeth on his lower lip instead, licked it and loved the taste of coffee for the first time.
He groaned and nudged her chin with his thumb, demanding access. Entrance. Grace gave it to him, parting her lips as she slid her hands up to tangle in his shaggy blond hair.
He settled between her thighs, and his erection pressed against her belly through their clothes. A moment later, he dragged his mouth to her cheek. “Yes or no, Grace? All you have to do is pick one.”
To have a man over her. Inside her. A pleasure beyond that of the flesh. Comfort and warmth in a hopeless world. “Yes,” she whispered, already fumbling for his pants. “Yes, please.”
Archer slid one arm around her, lifting her as he spun toward the bed. “No promises,” he murmured, “and no regrets.”
“I don’t believe in either,” she whispered, working her fingers between them to brush his erection.
He lowered her to the bed and stripped off his half-buttoned shirt. “Neither do I.”
“Then we’re perfectly matched.” Except for the way the balance of power skidded toward him when he bared that beautiful chest. She twisted to her knees and stroked her fingers over the coarse hair, then trailed lower to the button on his pants. “Have you ever had a sweet border schoolteacher wrap her lips around your cock?”
He hesitated for a breath too long. “No?”
Of course he had. All he had to do was flash that wicked smile and nuns would break sacred vows for a chance to grasp at the pleasure it promised. “Liar,” she whispered as she pressed a kiss to his chest. “Don’t lie to me, not even to be kind. I haven’t taken a man to bed without lies in longer than I can remember.”
“The honest truth is that I don’t remember.” He slipped his fingers into her hair. “I’ll remember this.”
The words stole her breath, so she kissed him again, pressed her mouth to the firm ridge of one scar and traced it down as she eased his pants open.
His hands tightened as a shudder ran through him. “Look at me, honey.”
With his fingers twisted in her hair, heating her blood, she couldn’t help herself. She obeyed, and found him studying her silently, his gaze tracking over her face.
Then he brushed his thumb over her cheek and sighed. “Beautiful.”
Control slipped through her fingers like smoke. She couldn’t manage a man who could kiss her like he meant to devour her in one breath and touch her like something fragile and precious in the next. Tenderness didn’t belong to a night like this, one with no promises and no future.
Her traitorous body disagreed. It heated, melted into liquid need, and she turned her face to his hand with a shiver. “Touch me?”
He dropped to his knees beside the bed and urged her nightgown high on her thighs. “Open up, honey.”
“What are you—” She held her nightgown stubbornly in place, her knees pressed tightly together. Unfair, when she’d been preparing to claim the same intimacy, but the thought of exposing herself so completely to his gaze set her cheeks ablaze. “You don’t need to do that.”
Archer flattened his hand on her ribcage, pushed her back to the bed and loomed over her. “You said yes. Are you taking that back?”
Why wasn’t she afraid? He was enormous, solid and hard, and pressing her hands to his bare chest gave no respite because he was unmovable too. His skin burned hot against her palms as she stared up at his shadowed face. “No. No, I’m not taking it back.”
“So don’t tell me what I need to do.” He tugged her gown up. As soon as the garment cleared her hips, he bent his head and nipped at her stomach.
Grace bit her lip to keep the cry from spilling free, but it barely helped. She sank her fingers into his hair and arched her back, unsure if she wanted him to address the pulsing ache between her thighs, or the way her nightgown rasped over her too-tight nipples. “You’re accustomed to obedience, aren’t you?”
“Accustomed to getting my way,” he corrected with a wicked smil
e as he moved lower, easing her legs apart.
Anticipation fought nerves. She twisted on the feather mattress and hated how loud her own breathing sounded in her ears. Short, hitching gasps, almost as frantic as her pounding heart. “Archer?”
He licked the inside of her thigh. “Mmm?”
“I haven’t—” Lord, what if the truth made him stop. She clutched at the strands of his hair curled around her fingers. “I’ve never let a man do this before.”
His beard rasped as he rubbed his jaw over her skin. “Why not?”
Because a woman was vulnerable in enough ways without letting a man strip her bare of all defenses. “It’s very…intimate.”
He laughed, low and hoarse. “But fucking isn’t?”
“Not always.” She tangled her other hand in the sheets and closed her eyes. “Besides, few enough men have seemed interested. I assumed they found it unappealing.”
Archer didn’t answer. He laid his hand over her, one finger slipping over her clit. Then he parted her wide and his breath blew hot over her aching flesh.
Need grew sharp enough to cut, pulsing inside her until she caught herself tugging at his hair, trying to force him to end the torment. “Please, Archer—”
His tongue touched and retreated, returned in a long, slow lick surely meant to explore. To learn as much as tease or satisfy. And she couldn’t hide anything from him. Any skill she’d had at dissembling had vanished with his first kiss, turning her gasps and moans and tiny, hungry movements into a map he could follow straight to the heart of her.
And follow it he did. Light touches turned firm and then back again, ebbing and flowing along with the tide of desire inside her. An expert performance, as dedicated as any she’d given on her knees. This must be how her marks had felt, the foolish men who handed over anything she wanted because she knew how to play them with the promise of more.
When Archer flicked the tip of his tongue over her clit in time with the frantic rocking of her hips, she thought she might follow him over the edge of a cliff for a chance at release.
It wouldn’t come. It rarely did, even with a considerate sort of man, and frustration clawed at her when the next twist of pleasure rose almost to the edge before fading away. “Fuck me,” she begged, pulling at his hair. “Just fuck me.”
He turned his mouth to her inner thigh. “You’re gonna have to learn to trust me, Grace.” His fingers rubbed over her again, and one slipped inside.
Deep and slow, stroking places that hadn’t been touched in too long, and Grace pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth to keep from moaning too loudly. “M-more?” How tiny her pleas had become, how shaky and desperate—but she did trust him.
“More,” he whispered. He licked her again, caressing her with his tongue as he eased another finger into her. The twisting pressure of release began to build again, every rock of his fingers spinning it tighter. A slow build, inexorable, until she was gasping and shaking with it. Then—
Almost. Almost. Her muscles tensed, pleasure sparked, tripping up her spine as she froze, toes curled, neck arched, heel digging against the mattress. She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare breathe, too afraid to lose the moment. Disappointment would savage her this time.
He crooked his fingers, growled and sucked her clit into his mouth.
Release smashed into her so fast and hard that she bit her wrist trying to hold back a scream that would have brought Cook and Cecil running from the opposite side of the saloon. It felt so good it hurt, shivering sensation pulsing from the core of her being to her fingertips. So good, so sweet…
And oh Lord, it wasn’t stopping.
And then suddenly he was over her, naked and settling between her thighs. He caught her mouth in a hungry, ardent kiss, his tongue slicking over hers. She tasted herself, and it was obscene and beautiful and so hot she moaned and tore her lips from his.
She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t take him like this, staring up at him as he drowned her in pleasure or smothered her in kisses. Nothing about it would be no promises, and she tried to twist beneath him. “On my stomach? It feels better that way.”
Archer pulled back with a groan and flipped her in one smooth motion. “Fuck, honey. I’ll make you come hard, I promise.”
Of that she had no doubt, not with her knees too wobbly to hold her. She pressed her forehead to the sheets and shifted her hips up, an invitation so blatant it should have shamed her. “So take me.”
He did, working into her inch by inch, so slowly she couldn’t hide from the starkness of his possession. It had been so long she’d forgotten the way the first thrust stretched her. She felt too small, as wet as she was, as hungry as she was, and for a wild moment she wondered if it would work at all.
It would have been less torturous as one hard thrust, and less intimate too. By the time his hips bumped hers she felt cheated of the discomfort that would have given her distance. Even on her knees, face buried in the covers, she could feel that tender focus in every deliberate movement.
And that was before he eased one hand under her and lifted her to his chest. His free hand tangled in her hair, and he tugged her head to the side, baring her throat for a soft, lingering kiss.
She was trapped. Pinned against him with no leverage, nothing but blazing skin and a wicked mouth and his cock buried so deep inside her that every squirming movement made her pant for breath. “You can fuck me,” she promised, clinging to the arm braced across her chest. “I’m ready. I want it.”
Archer laughed as he moved his lips to her ear and dropped his hands to her hips. “I’m going to.” He lifted her and held her in place as he thrust up into her.
Lightning. Like the wild storms that swept the plains, like when she’d shocked herself trying to fix the light in her schoolhouse. It crackled through her every time he drove into her, not release in itself but a pleasure almost too intense to handle. Her head lolled back against his shoulder as he hit the spot again and again, eliciting a stifled moan from her lips.
His growl raised goose bumps on her arms. “You like that, honey? When I fuck you right—there?”
She tried to answer. Tried to speak, but the sharp angle of their hips, the way their bodies fit together—alchemy. Magic. She choked on a plea when he thrust into her again, past thought or reason, and turned to muffle her gasped moans against his throat.
“Say it, Grace.” Almost a grunt, effort and restraint and desire rolled into one. “Tell me what you want.”
He made her name an obscene caress, and she loved it. She parted her lips against his neck, tasted salt and shuddered. “To come. I want—” Another thrust, and she whimpered.
She was close again, so close—but not like before. Not like release wrested free with frantic fingers circling and coaxing. This built slow and dangerous, boiling up and up until she couldn’t wait for him to push her over the edge.
She reached down and touched herself, slicked her fingers over her clit and bit Archer’s neck to hold back the keening noise that ripped through her as tension shattered her into a thousand pieces.
Archer groaned his approval and rode her orgasm with two hard, uncontrolled thrusts. He came with another muffled sound that rumbled in the back of his throat and shivered through her.
Without his hands spanning her waist, she might have slid bonelessly to the bed. Panting, she clutched at his forearms, dug her fingers into the impossibly tense muscles and strained for the sound of hurried footsteps, anything that might indicate that they’d been heard.
But the night was silent save for the ever-present whisper of water through pipes, running in endless circles to and from where the boiler sat behind the kitchen, the beating heart of the building.
Trembling fingers smoothed her hair, and Archer’s voice broke the quiet. “Tired?”
“Very much so.” What did one say, when a man had stripped away any pretense of civilization? Everything felt awkward and foolish. “That was…very enjoyable.” And now she sounded like he’d taken her t
o see a particularly interesting play at the theater.
His laugh blew hot over her ear. “Thank you very much too, Miss Linwood.”
Shivering, she smoothed her thumb over the inside of his arm. “Aren’t you growing tired of holding me upright like this?”
Instead of answering, he released her slowly and sank down to the bed with a yawn. Grace followed him because she didn’t have a choice. Her arms and legs seemed no steadier than those of a newborn colt. She imagined climbing from the bed in an attempt at unconcerned sophistication and ending up in a tangle of naked limbs on the floor.
It drove a laugh from her, even as she stretched out on the sheets. “I don’t believe I can walk just yet.”
He smiled, slow and lazy. “My job is done, then. You’re not supposed to be able to walk.”
That was the smile, the one that set her heart to pounding. “Even if it means you can’t be rid of me yet?”
“Bed’s big enough for two.”
Her nightgown was still tangled around her waist, but she settled it in place with a few moments’ squirming. A little more and she tucked herself against his side, already drowsy. “You’re very warm,” she murmured, a convenient excuse for pressing close.
“Bloodhounds are,” he mumbled. “Or didn’t you know?”
Sleepiness made her reckless. “I avoid bloodhounds. People say they can spot a liar. That they have a truth sense.”
He wrinkled his nose. “That’s bullshit. Most wouldn’t know a bald-faced lie if it shot ’em in the ass. No more than anyone else, anyway.”
That didn’t seem right. “You did.”
“That’s me, not the hound.” He opened one eye and peered at her. “Always could smell a lie.”
Tired as she was, danger shivered up her spine. “I’m not lying to you anymore. Not much reason to, with the world all but ending.”
“I know that.” He wrapped his arm around her. “I know, Grace.”
It was comfort, affection, and it felt like more than two bodies taking what they could in the dark of night before going their separate ways before dawn.
This was why she needed to leave. She’d let him under her skin, too close and too quick, and stupid girls who opened their hearts to too-charming men deserved the pain of being discarded like the fools they were.