She caught her breath. Beneath her Jack slept and dreamed and plotted her capture and her capitulation. He was too much involved with her, she thought grimly. He pursued the woman and the thief, and now he’d pay for that error.
A vague premonition tightened her mouth with pain and challenged the feral light in her eyes. She shivered, breaking free of its petrifying hold. Hadn’t she always taken what she wanted? Well, now she wanted Jack Seward.
She crept to the edge of the roof and hung over. Directly below a window gleamed blankly, its ledge no wider than a man’s hand.
She snaked over the eaves, balancing on her hips, and released one hand to search the top of the window frame for a hold. Mortar crumbled beneath her fingertips. She dug into it and pivoted out and over, swinging onto the ledge.
She peered in on an empty room as she wiggled a thin sliver of metal between the casements and loosened the catch. Then she slid the window open and slipped inside, looking about. She was in the bedroom of a small town house, like hundreds of its neighbors, neither character nor charm distinguishing it, merely convenience. She’d been in its like before.
Through the open door to her left would be one more bedchamber and a dressing room beyond that. Below this would be a formal dining room and a salon, maybe a library, and on the ground floor the kitchen and pantry and servants’ quarters.
She moved cautiously to the open door and peered in, giving her eyes time to adjust to the darkness. She was right. It was a bedchamber—Jack’s. She could just make out his long body stretched over a narrow bed. She moved into the room, cataloguing the contents.
It had to be something mocking, threatening. Something to make him aware of his own exposed position, to make him feel anger, frustration, and loss. Something to make him renew his efforts to find her.
She searched among the impersonal collection of toiletries, books, and unassuming possessions that lined his bureau. There was nothing except …
The idea took hold of her imagination, refusing to be shouted down. It would be so easy, so perfect. And afterward he would hate her, rising to her provocation like a hound to the scent.
He would become single-minded in his pursuit of her and thus—oh God, she nearly laughed with the bitter humor of it—his attention turned once again toward the thief, the widow would fight free of his fascination. That’s all she needed. A bit of space. But first he had to lose his composure, be provoked beyond his ability to resist giving chase …
With a small sleek hiss of steel she pulled his ceremonial sword free of its ornate sheath. To use his own weapon against him would be a good start.
Jack’s breathing hitched, but in this man’s dreams such a sound was a boon companion. Steel, the smell of gunpowder, the call of dying men, all were too customary to call him back to the sentient world. She recognized the truth of her intuition beyond question and the recognition stopped her. He was no longer a stranger to her. She knew him.
And he thought he knew her. Fool.
The slender sword still in her hand, she padded to the window. Carefully she drew back the drapes, letting in a weak illumination. She peered down, frowning at what she saw. His window backed against a cramped alley thirty feet below. Black with soot and unadorned, there were no easy handholds. A brick watercourse no more than a few inches wide was all that broke the sheer expanse.
She leaned farther out. One other window gave out from his apartments. Set catercorner six feet below and four feet over, it was too far away to be useful. She returned to his bedside, lifting a light wooden chair on her way and carrying it with her. She set it down beside his bed, keeping her eyes averted from him. A man like Jack would feel himself being watched even in his sleep.
She swung a leg over the chair, settled lightly on the edge, and lifted his sword. It glinted in the moonlight. She pointed its tip directly at Seward’s throat and, taking a deep breath, nudged the bed with her foot.
He came awake without movement, only the sudden silence that his exhalation should have filled alerting her that he was conscious.
“Yer awake, Cap. Dinna take me fer a fool,” she whispered roughly.
His eyes opened, clear and so utterly alert she wondered if he’d ever been asleep at all. His pupils reflected back a darkness as clear and brilliant as any color.
“My thief.” The soft, rich tone held a greeting. His gaze traveled to the point a few inches from his neck. Even in the shadows she could see the bitterness in his smile. Without asking her permission he sat up. The bedsheet slipped to his waist. The collar of his nightshirt had come unfastened during his sleep and twisted. The opening was pulled wide across his upper torso, exposing his chest, shoulder, and upper arm. The sight brought the blood racing to the surface of her skin.
The muscle of his biceps bunched. Gilding him like a statue in moonlight, what light there was clung to the powerful swells and tensed, flowing lines.
“Put yer arms up. Yer not thinking to pitch yerself at me, are you? I’d pith you like a toad.”
“Would you?” His tone was no more than curious, but his muscles relaxed and he eased fractionally back into his pillow.
She trusted his relaxation less than his tension.
“And why wouldn’t I? Yer become problematic-like and yer interferin’ with me lay.”
“Lay.”
“Me job. Me scam. Me livelihood.”
“Forgive me for importuning you,” he said. “But all you have to do is give me back the letter you stole from Lord Atwood.”
What letter? she wondered. Atwood had no letter. He—
Jack edged forward and her attention snapped back to him. The movement had further exposed his chest. Not that it mattered to him. He took no more account of his partial nudity than if he’d been fully clad. She was not so fortunate.
His bones carried the weight of his heavy musculature with clean and elegant ease. His skin looked dark against the white sheets, taut, fine-grained, and smooth. A light furring of dark hair glinted on his chest and a night’s worth of stubble further shadowed the hard angle of his jaw. Lying recumbent in the dim room, he looked incredibly, hypnotically masculine.
Latent sexuality stirred in the air between them. She could nearly feel his tongue against the seam of her lips, his hands on her …
She did not want to be overpowered by this. Too much in her life had already overpowered her, left her spirit scattered on an ocean of regret. She was in control now. She would have mastery here.
“You’ve annoyed me!” Her voice sounded weak and petulant, mewling like a weak, spineless creature.
“Once more, I’m sorry.” The whiskey-smooth apology mocked her, yet uncertainty kept his gaze vigilant.
How far would she go? he was asking himself. Of what was she capable?
She needed him to be more than uncertain of what she might do. She wanted him to think she was capable of committing any crime, any act. And wasn’t she? Didn’t she shed the widow’s fretful life when she took to the rooftops?
He’d hounded her thoughts and her person. He’d followed her into her dreams and into her world. He’d harried her and cornered her and now she’d turned on him.
And she wanted to do this. She wanted to own all the power he represented.
“ ‘Sorry’ won’t do, Cap. Maybe I should just ends it now. With you out of me way, I’d have a fair clean go of things.”
“Murder? My, what a wee bloodthirsty thing you are.”
She cocked her head. “I wouldna ’ave to sully me immortal soul with murder, now would I? I’d just have to cripple you like.” With a short, savage stab, she speared the sheet, pinning it an inch from his side. He emitted a sharp, involuntary hiss. She smiled.
“Fascinatin’ feelin’, ain’t it? Not knowin’ if the next minute will be yer last. Knowin’ yer enemy holds yer fate in ’is hands and there’s naught ye can do about it.” She leaned close enough so that she could see him breathe in her scent, trying to place it and name her. Even now, even here, he still
pursued her.
She drew back, furious she’d been unable to instill in him any of the fear he awoke in her. “ ’Ow does it feel bein’ the ’are rather than the ’ound?” She jerked the sword, wrenching the sheet off him.
He surged forward, his face breaking free of the shadows, for a moment clearly illuminated in the light from the window. But she’d already swept the sharp tip of the sword back, denting his dense pectoral. “Sit back!”
For a second a nerve twitched beneath his fine, clear eyes then he slouched back into the murky half light. His chest rose and fell in deep controlled measures. Heat and a tingling abrasive sensation rode over the surface of her skin, into her belly and breast and thighs. She’d stopped him. She’d bent him to her will.
For a long minute they stared at each other.
“Up, Cap,” she said, and rose from the chair. She pulled the pistol from her belt, holding both the sword and gun level on him.
“And if I refuse?”
“Ever seen a stallion gelded, Cap?” The sword tip dropped, lightly flirting with the linen covering his groin.
Their gazes locked for the space of a heartbeat. Without a sound, Jack backed away from the implicit threat and hefted himself from the bed. He was tall, so much taller than she was, and yet—dark sensuality shivered in her veins—she had power over him. Even at the distance of two yards, he stood towering over her, his stance relaxed, his gaze watchful.
She returned his sword to the level of his throat, refusing to back even an inch from him. A fragrance of sleep and musk and something indefinable and stimulating filled her nostrils.
“And where do we go from here?” he asked.
She indicated the chair. “ ’Ave a seat, Cap.”
“Before a lady? I think not.” He bowed, mocking her yet again.
“I’m no lady. I’m a thief. Your enemy. But tonight you’re mine.”
His gaze sharpened, his face set in lines of intense concentration. Too late she realized she’d spoken without the masking benefits of her father’s accent.
“Sit, damn you!”
He sat, his shrug declaring her small victory a matter of the most banal import. She moved behind him and pressed the barrel of the pistol to the side of his throat.
“ ’Ands behind yer back, Cap,” she commanded hoarsely, slipping the rope from her shoulder. He submitted and she grasped his crippled hand first, unwillingly noting the painful assemblage of knuckle, tendon, and sinew.
He’d sustained damage. He’d been wounded. God knows how many times, and yet he’d fought on. He’d survived it. More important, more fascinatingly, he’d survived his own actions. If only she could make such a claim. She hesitated.
“I’ll catch you, you know,” he said, turning his head and slanting a vicious look at her.
She noosed his wrist, snapping the rope tight before catching his other wrist and lashing his hands together. She circled back in front of him and raked his trussed figure with an insolent gaze.
It had no noticeable effect on him.
“And now?” he asked.
“Now I play with you, Cap. Like you been playin’ with me. And you gets to wonder, ‘Is this where I buy it? Is this me end?’ ”
“You won’t kill me.”
“Won’t I?” Her voice was harsh, demanding. “If it comes to choosin’ between me life and yores, I’ll choose mine, Cap. Have no doubt about it. I done it before. I’ll do the same today.”
“You’ve killed a man?” he asked, watching her carefully.
“Yes!”
“Well, if that’s your intention, please do so quickly. I don’t wish to spend my last minutes trading confessions with a thief and a murderess and a cowardly, masked one at that.” He evinced not a shred of fear, not hauteur or disdain. He simply stated a fact.
“I don’t care what you wants,” she spat out. “I care what I want. Don’t you know that about thieves, Cap? They only wants what they can’t have and once they gets it, they only wants more.”
“You don’t want to kill me. You want me to stop hunting you. But I won’t. Not now. And you know it.”
“Shut up!”
He cocked his head, his gaze speculative. “You might have had freedom if only you’d waited a bit longer. But you didn’t. Why?” The question was sharp, intent. “Why, when you must have suspected that you only needed to lay low for a short while longer and I’d be recalled, why did you do this now?”
His words pounded at her, threatened her. “Because I wanted to!”
“Do you know what I think?” His voice was cool and remote and tempting.
“No.” She jerked the sword up and placed the point against his breast. Ruthlessly she ran the sword tip down his chest until it caught at the end of the nightshirt’s collar. She did not stop there. She sliced through the linen material, exposing the hard ladder of his flank, nipping each rib as she drew the blade down over his corrugated belly to the jut of his hipbone.
She’d found a way to make him stop talking.
His gaze fixed on her face with regal imperiousness. Only the darkness suffusing his throat and jaw betrayed that he felt anything. That and the retribution promised by his soul-eating eyes. They gleamed in the shadows like a wolf’s.
She would not swallow. She would not stop. She’d begun this. She would finish it. And this, after all, is what she wanted, had wanted from the first. This was the reason she was here, no matter what lies she told herself tomorrow. Because this was all she would ever have of him.
And she’d steal it, too. Even against his will. She sliced through the last of his nightshirt.
“Well, now you’ll have to kill me, thief,” he said, his tone conversational, his eyes branding her. “Because I won’t stop until I find you. I won’t stop until I have you. No matter how long it takes me, no matter how far it takes me.”
She dropped the sword. It clattered against the hardwood floor. Her heartbeat thundered in her throat. Deliberately she stepped between his knees.
“Yes,” she said. “But right now, I have you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
He worked his thumbs into the small easement he’d made in the bonds when she’d strapped his wrists together. A few more minutes and he’d be free. Fury fanned his resolve with a white-hot flame.
He should have called her bluff, but this was not the same woman who plagued his dreams. His thief had changed. She wore desperation like a mantle and walked some thin line of self-control. “Beauty—a deceitful bayte with a deadly hook,” Lyly had written, and so she was.
He’d seen its like before in men who’d pushed their own limits too far and finally left them behind. She had their look. It declared itself in brisk, inelegant movements and in the sweat trickling down her throat and soaking her dark shirt. Her smile cleaved her face with razor sharpness, dying only to be reborn seconds later as if in answer to some taunt only she could hear.
And looking at her, reckless and cursed, he realized they were as mated in spirit as fire and ash. Anne Wilder was a dream, an aspiration, a portrait of what love should be. The thief was his reality.
At their first meeting—perhaps even before, perhaps when she’d challenged him with her cunning and her audacity—he’d taken her like a bullet in the chest. And like that bullet, the right touch could remind one of its potentially fatal presence.
“I have you,” she repeated in that tough little whisper, nudging herself between his thighs in a parody of a lover’s more intimate stance. He could barely make out her features in the darkened room. He heard her breathing and felt her warmth. Awareness skittered over his skin …
Abruptly he realized what he had sensed in her from the moment he’d opened his eyes. Sex. It rolled off her in waves: carnal, potent, and intense.
He named it and like tinder to a sea of grass, her arousal set him on fire. Swift and hard, his body stiffened with readiness and a familiar, violent longing.
He wanted her. Not her capture or the damn letter. He wanted to be in
her with a desire so intense that it felt like need.
“You know what’s so bloody funny, Cap?” She leaned close to him. Her words pattered like warm rain on his mouth.
Her eyes glittered from behind the black mask. He couldn’t speak. He wanted too much. She’d tied him to this chair and forced him to taste his lust as well as his powerlessness. But worse, in a life singular for its lack of illusion, she’d made him cede the one illusion he wanted to believe in. She forced him to cede Anne Wilder.
“I don’t even ’ave yer bleedin’ letter,” she said, her voice raw, her lips inches from his. “You did this to us for nothing!”
Her mouth came down over his. She clasped the back of his head with one hand and spread the other flat against his chest. Her tongue stroked the seam of his lips with dark, warm intoxication. A river of sensation swept down his body, pooling in his groin. Dear God.
He forgot freedom, forgot revenge in the face of this far greater need. He heaved himself forward, straining against the ropes holding him, seeking a more intimate contact.
She gave it to him. She moaned deep from the back of her throat as his tongue came alive in her mouth. She crumbled between his knees, clutching at his shoulders. Her hands played down over his chest to his stomach, her nails lightly raking his belly and moving lower.
He squeezed his eyes shut. The back of her fingers brushed against his swollen member. He ground his teeth together, refusing to give her the victory of his gasped pleasure, and then her hand closed over him with white-hot delicacy. A sound of pleasure rose from his throat. His neck arched, his hips lifted.
Desire burned to a cinder all of his plots and strategies and tomorrows. One thought drowned him with its imperative: He wanted what she alone offered—she alone of all the women he’d ever known offered: an end to longing.
Whatever price she demanded, he’d pay.
She trembled against his chest while her hands hungrily explored him. He angled his head to kiss her again. Her eyes were closed.
“Open your mouth.” He instructed in a hoarse whisper. “Give to me. Let me—”
All Through the Night Page 13