She had to say something. He unnerved her.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Yes. I wanted to see you.” Only his lips moved. A brand popped in the hearth and a shower of embers reflected against his clear gray irises. A fanciful mind might think they revealed a fire deep within the man. She was not of a fanciful nature. She swallowed.
“Why do you do it?” he asked.
It would be futile to pretend she didn’t understand the question. But how could she explain what she didn’t understand herself? So, as she didn’t have any answer, she gave him the thief’s flip retort.
“Haven’t you ever stolen anything, Cap?”
She was unprepared for his response. He surged forward then jerked to a halt as if caught on the end of a barb hook. She backed away. Her pulse kicked into double time.
An evil smile crept over his lips. “Nothing compared to what you’ve stolen.”
She knew he was speaking of the night she’d tied him up and done the unimaginable.
His smile became knife sharp. “I see you understand me. Did you think I was bluffing when I promised I’d have you? Or did you think that when I discovered that the woman who fondled my body with such enthusiastic eroticism was the modest and dignified widow, I would renege? I won’t. I never break a promise.”
Her knees went rubbery and her hand shot out, searching for support. He rose, coming to her as gracefully and attentively as a court swain to his lady’s aid. He took her arm and led her to the small, straight-backed chair she occupied earlier.
“Here. Sit by the fire.” He held it for her. Confused by this combination of suitor and enemy, she obliged. He took a position looming unseen and silent behind her.
“I think I deserve a little compensation for that evening, don’t you?” he asked softly.
His hands came down on her shoulders. She jerked half out of her seat. He pressed her back down.
“Easy,” he murmured, as if gentling a horse. “You’re cold. Your hair is still damp. Let me help you.”
His voice rippled over her like rough silk. He threaded his fingers through her hair and slowly separated the thick mass into dark strands, spreading it like a net over her shoulders and breasts, his knuckles brushing lightly over her bosom as he worked. His hands were beautiful. Even the ruined one had a certain tortured grace.
It disconcerted her, having him standing behind her, as she was unable to see him. He touched her familiarly, almost casually. She wanted to read his expression but could not bring herself to turn. It would be too intimate.
More intimate than this? She caught back a burble of laughter. Her head swam with fatigue and increasing tension.
He ran his thumb lightly along her neckline and dipped it beneath the laced edge. She went as still as a hind in a woodsman’s net. She shivered. He’d sworn he’d have recompense. Fear added its unique flavor to her tumultuous emotions.
“You really are exquisite.” He might have been a sightseer commenting on a particularly nice vista. His voice was detached. Idly he pushed down her gaping neckline, revealing her breasts nearly to their tips.
If he heard her slight gasp, he ignored it.
“One cannot help but wonder how someone so exquisite, with so many advantages, decides to take up thievery as a pastime.”
She could barely think. His hands flowed down over her. The heat from his broad palms penetrated through the silk, warming her flesh. He cupped her breasts and massaged them, testing their texture and weight with ruthless gentleness.
Tongues of firelight flickered over her skin, bathing her in stripes of light and shadow. He scared her. She couldn’t remember a time when her body had been caressed so deliberately and with such obvious intentions.
“Was it boredom?”
“What?”
His thumb had found the peak of one breast beading beneath the tissue-thin silk. “Was it boredom?”
“No.” She sounded breathless. She was breathless. She started to rise but he abandoned his languid fondling of her bosom to push her down into her seat again. She began to turn but he braced her head gently between his hands, keeping her facing forward and away from him.
“Stay there,” he whispered, his warm breath rushing over her ear. She could judge nothing from that soft, rasping voice. “A few touches. Surely you had more of me.”
He set her hands carefully on the arms of the chair and covered them with his own. “Hold on. You aren’t required to do anything, to acknowledge anything. Just feel.” His low voice hypnotized her with unspoken promises of a dark knowledge she longed to share; it sucked her will from her.
She looked down. His dark hands were casually fiddling with the satin loops decorating her neckline, his knuckles rubbing artlessly against her nipples.
“Well, Anne? Why do you steal things? Just blood running true?” His voice held a trace of amusement or pain, impossible to tell which one.
“No.”
He quit playing with the satin decoration. Disappointment and relief flooded her in equal portions until she heard him move. He’d knelt behind her chair. She stared straight ahead, unsure and apprehensive of what he planned.
He reached around her and slid the back of his hand down her skirts to her knee. Slowly, incrementally, he crumpled the material in his fist until he’d exposed her calf. His fingers slipped behind her knee, making small, delicate little circles on the too-receptive flesh.
“Relax,” he whispered in her ear. “There was a night when you wanted me. Do you remember? I do.”
Her face and body flushed with mortification. “I’m sorry.”
His hand stopped for a heartbeat. Then he began touching her again. The laughter fanning her cheek held no amusement. “Liar. You are not. But I am.”
“Please.”
He drew lazy designs on the soft downy flesh inside her thigh. “You never allowed me to participate. Unkind. One might say discourteous. I would have been happy to oblige you. Service you. But you know that.” For an instant an edged note penetrated his languid tone. “You demonstrated quite clearly just how willing I would have been.”
Yes. Her eyes fluttered shut, reeling beneath the casual assault he made on her body. Yes. She’d wanted him. Wanted to control all that masculine power and sexuality. From the start she’d been drawn to his strength, his power, his control. It had been such a contrast to her own lack of power, her own lack of sexuality, her own lack of control.
“I want to oblige now. Let me pleasure you.”
Pleasure? The concept beckoned her. She’d never been allowed pleasure for pleasure’s sake, uncomplicated and in its rawest form. No man had ever done things to her just to gratify her senses. The idea enticed her.
She wanted him. Like a moth to fire, his ability to destroy her bewitched her. His free hand lifted her heavy mantle of hair and swept it aside. She felt his open mouth on the nape of her neck. Her head fell back, her throat arched, offering itself to his exploration. Warm lips brushed feathery kisses at the corner of her eye and on the curve of her chin.
“Let me service you.”
“Yes.” She breathed the consent in surrender. She no longer cared what he sought from her, revenge or shame.
She felt his smile against her temple. “First, explain to me, Anne,” he said. “Tell me why you stole.”
She started to lift her hands in a gesture of defeat. He caught her wrists in midair, returning them to the arms of the chair.
“Keep your hands there.” His voice held no cajoling note, and for the first time she understood that in teasing her, he teased himself. The thought occurred and disappeared, drowned in sensation: moist kisses and featherlike caresses, darkness and heat, an unseen figure pleasuring her with casual disdain. She clenched the rounded knobs ending the chair’s arms.
“I’m waiting, Anne.” His hand moved higher and higher up between her legs. Her pulse raced. Her nerve endings felt charged with an electrifying jolt as his fingertips brushed between her legs.
&nbs
p; “Well?” he asked.
She didn’t have an answer for him. She couldn’t explain it herself. She fumbled around, trying to find the answer he wanted. Anything. She shivered, stretched on tenterhooks of sensation, needy and gasping.
“They deserved it,” she said at last, gulping.
He laughed gently in her ear, a warm and unconvinced sound. “Try again.” His fingertips returned to the juncture of her thighs and lightly caressed the swell of female flesh.
She gasped, heeling back. His teeth nipped her ear, a salt of pain seasoning the growing pleasure. “Why?”
“I needed the money for the Home.”
“No.”
With one hand he clasped her knee and spread her legs wide. Without strength, her thighs fell apart, allowing his careless exploration. With his other hand he dipped beneath the swell of her right breast and lifted it above her neckline, freeing it from her bodice. She looked down at herself: legs wide, Jack’s hand fondling her sex, one breast pulled above her bodice that his other hand might play with her nipple.
She tried to find the will to move but couldn’t.
“Pretty Anne,” he murmured.
He withdrew his hand from her breast. She made a sound of protest. She heard a sleek suckling sound and then his hand was back, tanned and strong against her white skin, and he was stroking the areola of her exposed breast, anointing it with the moisture from his mouth.
The firelight glistened on the dampened tip. His breath grew deeper, harsher. Idly he rolled her nipple between thumb and forefinger. “A pretty thief and liar.”
“I’m not,” she whispered hoarsely, arching into his touch, her bottom lifting from the chair to afford him better access.
Uncomplicated pleasure? There was nothing uncomplicated about this.
“A thief? Or pretty? I disagree.” He nuzzled beneath her ear, his tongue drawing a slow moist line down her throat. Her head rolled to the side.
“I’m not a liar,” she whispered.
He ignored her. “I have my own theory, you know. Would you like to hear it?”
God, how could he sound so unaffected, so casual? Her body ached with tension, quivered like a bow strung too tautly.
“Would you?” he asked.
He sucked gently on her earlobe. His fingers between her legs worked as delicately and thoroughly as a watchmaker’s. She closed her eyes and heard herself moan.
“May I take that as a yes?”
Her heart trip-hammered in her chest. Waves of pleasure rolled through her like distant thunder, centering at the point between her legs that he teased.
“You do it because you enjoy it.” His voice was as smoky and seductive as vice, so low it seemed an extension of her own thoughts. “All of London spread beneath you. No skirts binding you. No restraints. Nothing to tie you to the past or the future.”
Warlock. Sorcerer. His words echoed in her mind with an opiate’s allure while he played with her body, searing her with need. She turned her face and his silky, fine hair rubbed against her cheek. “Jack—”
Abruptly he slipped a finger deep inside her, stretching the tight closing. She bucked against the sudden invasion. He looped his arm around her waist, imprisoning her against the chair as his finger toyed with the opening to her body. Slowly, purposefully he eased another finger in. Surely she would die. She gulped. “Please—Jack—”
“Quiet.” A fine note of tension had crept into his voice, a razor’s edge of steel. “You steal because it excites you. Don’t you?”
His fingers within her flexed. The heel of his hand rubbed hard against the mound. “Don’t you?”
“Yes.” The admission came on a sigh.
He stopped. She would go mad. “Please.” He withdrew his hand. She sobbed, wrenching her head around.
For the first time since he’d begun his tormenting seduction, she saw his eyes. A few inches away from her, they blazed, afire with pain and desire, stark and brutalized with need.
“Wrong,” he said savagely. “You did it so you would be caught. Because you wanted to be punished.”
She stared at him, stricken by the anguish in his voice.
“Tell me, Anne, did you imagine I would be punishment enough?”
She shook her head so violently her hair flailed his face and spilled over his hands and arms. He caught her by the shoulders, stilling her.
“Well, madam,” he said grimly, “let’s find out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“You were never my punishment,” she said in that naked voice, and he wanted to believe her. Too bad. What he wanted made not the least bit of difference.
“No?” he said carelessly, as if her words couldn’t matter to him, didn’t mean pain or pleasure. “Well then, perhaps you’re mine.”
She just stared up at him, damn her pretty eyes. She looked so uncomprehending, so lost. Her hair fell in a dark cloud about her shoulders; her one breast swelled sweetly above the tight edge of her neckline; her long legs had fallen apart in sumptuous relaxation.
He could feel his careful, monumental detachment crumbling as he stared into her blue-black eyes. He resented the fact that though she looked like a lovely, sated demirep she still inspired such tenderness in him. Touching her was like touching a raw, exposed nerve. Yet—God help him—he couldn’t leave her alone. Just as he couldn’t let anything happen to her, had to keep her safe from Jamison.
But who is going to keep her safe from you? He ground the thought down. She didn’t need saving from this. She wanted this. She sought sexual pleasure like an addict seeks its opiate. She melted into each stroke, arched into each caress, quivered for the release he withheld.
He strove to regain some control. The control she’d stolen from him in that upstairs room, tied to that damn chair, sobbing with desire for her.
“Isn’t this what you want?” he asked. He rounded to the front and loomed above her. She gazed up at him helplessly.
He wanted her frightened.
He wanted to make love to her.
She angled her head up. Her hands still clenched on the arms of that damn chair, just as he’d told her. Damnation, it was like looking at a child’s flip-book: the thief merged into Anne, Anne became the thief, both mingled together until he could not say what was real and what was a construction.
“What?” She sounded disoriented. Her pupils were dilated. She looked heartbreakingly vulnerable.
“Moments existing alone,” he replied tonelessly, “unconnected with one another. No guilt. No consequences. Just sex.”
He knelt down before her. Heated by the fire, the perfume of her arousal filled his nostrils. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, opening his lips just a little to taste her spice.
Dear God, he must have her. He would do whatever was necessary to seduce her. He would offer her respite from whatever demons plagued her, promise her pleasure without accountability. Pretend he raped her if that’s what she needed to enjoy this.
“Freedom is an illusion, Anne,” he said. “You can truly separate yourself from your actions only if someone else accepts liability for them.”
He’d begun stroking the side of her face and throat with his knuckles, unable to keep from touching her. She shivered uncontrollably.
At least her body possessed a certain honesty. Even the most consummate actress couldn’t feign responses like these. It was the only advantage he had in a wholly mismatched encounter.
“I’ll accept the liability,” he said, slowly rolling her skirts up her lax legs. “I’ll take the blame. But that means that I take control.”
He dipped his head down and pressed little kisses along the inner curve of one breast while his hand slipped up along her thighs. Smooth, firm muscle lay beneath the silky skin. The legs of an athlete. No, a thief.
He roved higher and, finding her heated core, began lightly fingering her. Her breath hitched … as did her hips. He withdrew his hand. His fingertips gleamed.
Holding her gaze, he slowly lifted his f
ingers to his mouth. Languidly, deliberately, he lapped the moisture from his fingertips. Her eyes widened in shock. He sucked the tips of his fingers, letting her see how much he enjoyed her taste.
There. He saw the suggestion blossom in her thoughts, disturbing her, shaming her, and exciting her. She wanted him to taste her, deeply and completely.
He would happily oblige. But not yet. Not until he had her complete submission.
His gaze feasted on her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, all her concentration centering on hoarding the sexual sensations. He eased two fingers into her. Her face lifted and her lips parted as if in supplication.
Others accounted him a powerful man, yet he’d never felt it so. He’d never felt strong until now, when he had the ability to bring Anne to climax. He stretched his fingers a bit within the sleek, heated channel. Her breath hitched again.
“Think of it,” he whispered against her velvety throat. “Perfect freedom. Unaccountable. Exempt from whatever happens. An innocent bystander. My victim.”
He scraped his nail against the sleek nub. She moaned. Her eyelids trembled.
He withdrew his hand. Her eyes flew open and she stared at him in pained accusation. She reached out, grasped the edge of his shirt in her fists, and ripped it open. Lust jolted through him.
“Keep your hands on the arms of the chair,” he said, struggling for a dispassionate tone. “You can’t be victim and villain, Anne. Only one role per person.”
He wouldn’t be able to continue if she touched him, wouldn’t be able to wrest from her some small portion of what she’d taken from him. And that was important.
He clung to the concept, unsure now why, only knowing he wouldn’t give this to her too, when he’d given her so much. He had to keep some small part of himself inviolable.
Hesitantly she complied. “But—”
He leaned over her and stopped her words with a deep, rough kiss. He lined the seam of her lips with his tongue.
“Open your mouth,” he muttered. She complied like the good girl-child she looked, and his tongue swirled deep within, feeding on the sweet taste of her.
She gave to him willingly, too willingly, arching up trustingly. He pushed the self-loathing away, clinging instead to the sensation of her mouth pressing against his in a long, passionate kiss.
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