He moved toward her a step, closing the distance that separated them in the tiny room. She caught her breath as she looked up at him and the chamber shrank all the more. He realized he had to touch her again. He realized what that would do.
But he did it anyway. Slowly he caught her elbow, his fingers folding across the soft fabric of her gown as he met her gaze and held there with difficulty.
“If you are set on this course, I won’t argue,” he said. “I hear the rain letting up and we can likely make at least a small portion of travel today if we leave within the hour on your horses. But if you question this decision to leave some part of yourself behind here in this village, I’ll go down and do everything in my power to get that necklace back for you.”
Her lips parted and then she shook her head. “I’ve left a part of me behind everywhere I’ve been since the moment I ran from my fiancé’s home, Rook. At least this is my choice. And it will help me get home. I think of it as atonement.”
“Very well,” he said softly. “I’ll go down and get everything set for our departure. Meet me in front of the inn in half an hour and I should be ready to depart.”
She nodded. “I’ll arrange a bit of food for the road.”
He turned to go, but she reached out, resting her hand on his chest, right above his heart. The warmth of her touch immediately permeated all the layers of wool and linen, like her skin was against his even though it wasn’t.
“Rook,” she whispered. “Thank you. I know I’ve said it before, but I must keep saying it, I think, for your kindness seems to know no bounds. And your support for what I know is a foolish plan is much appreciated.”
He frowned, for what he wanted to do was sweep her into his arms and carry her to that bed and take away the pain for a few moments. Quiet the desperation even a fraction with his mouth and his cock.
But he couldn’t do that. Not for her sake, not for his own. So he merely tipped his head and stepped away from her touch. But as he exited into the hallway and away from her, he couldn’t help but ponder her desperation further. It endangered her. It already had. And so did he, when he came to the truth of it.
He had to be careful from now on. And remember that Anne Shelley wasn’t his to kiss. Or comfort. Or anything else.
Chapter 10
As punishments for foolish decisions went, having to ride a horse in the misery of Scottish rain was fairly high on Anne’s list. The storm had ultimately eased about an hour into their ride. There were even pockets of time when the rain ceased entirely and there was gray, filtered sun that hit the muddy road before them.
But as the afternoon faded and the evening grew near, the cold was not put off by the layers of cheap but serviceable wool Rook had purchased for her at the village before they left.
“About half an hour and we’ll make it to our stop,” he said, as if he could read her mind. Or perhaps just the shiver she hadn’t been able to control when it wracked her body.
“Good. I suppose we haven’t made much progress on the road, have we?” she asked, already guessing the answer from the slow gait they’d had to utilize in the horrid weather. “Dreich is truly the word for it.”
He laughed at her quip and the sound of it warmed her briefly. “No, but better than staying behind and waiting two to three days to get on the road,” he reassured her and then he grew serious again. “I will do everything in my power to make the sacrifice you made for the horses be worthwhile in the end.”
She smiled at the vow. But it made her wonder about this man who seemed to have some honor, a great deal of it, actually.
“You and your cousin are so different,” she mused. “It seems so odd to me that you would work together at criminal endeavors.”
He tensed on the horse, a subtle movement that she noticed but doubted anyone not so focused on him would. He was very good at hiding his heart, his emotions. “I told you, it was a rough life,” he said, obviously through clenched teeth. “We did what we had to do to survive it.”
“But you left,” she said softly.
“How do you know I left?” he asked, tossing her a wink and using that same tone he’d used with Mr. Talon in the carriage the day before. False and bright and not like the Rook she knew at all.
He was hiding from her with that gregarious attitude. Playing at being someone and something he wasn’t. Which meant he wasn’t comfortable with the truth. But did she respect that boundary he had erected or push it?
“I think you must have left,” she said, unable to do anything but push, just as she’d done all her life. “Why else would you sequester yourself on an island in the middle of nowhere, whittling beautiful things with your knives instead of throwing them, and reluctant to aid Ellis when he asked?”
“Not so reluctant,” he muttered. “I did it, didn’t I?”
“I suppose. But you seemed to take no pleasure in the action, at least at first.”
“Some pleasure,” he corrected with a quick glance. “More than perhaps I should have taken.”
He meant their kiss. Her body tightened at the reminder of his mouth on hers. His hands on her. That tingling, fluid feeling he created in every muscle and bone and nerve in her body with just a brush of his fingertips.
And yet that reminder was another wall, not an open door. She pursed her lips. “You certainly don’t have to tell me anything. I owe you far more than you owe me.”
He was silent for a moment, his gaze focused straight ahead on the road. Then he sighed. “I’m not sure that’s true. Look, Anne…”
He trailed off and she felt him gathering himself, fighting for words. She leaned forward as she waited for them and they came at last, halting and pained.
“Ellis is four years older than I am. He was on the street before I was. He was already in the life before he dragged me in to…” His voice hitched. “…to save me.”
“Save you?” she repeated, leaning to look at him better, frustrated when he turned his face so she couldn’t.
He shook his head. “He needed a tool. I was that tool.”
“His rook,” she said softly, the truth of him and that nickname coming clear.
“Yes,” he said. “Ellis was raised by the street and so was I, but he knew strategy and the game and a lot of other things that people of your lofty class don’t give mine credit for. He taught himself to read with my help. He studied and beat the street accent out of us both. He forced us to find a way to fit into worlds where we didn’t belong so we could strip them of their valuables. But his favorite thing was chess. People recognize the importance of the queen in the game, but some underestimate the rook. Underestimate a man like me. He counted on it.”
“You were the piece he used to protect the king,” she mused. “To protect himself.”
“Yes.” There was something to the hesitation in his voice that told her that there was yet more to this tale that he still held back.
“Did you like that?” she asked.
“No,” he admitted. “Not always. Not toward the end. You said I left, and I…did.”
“Why?”
He was silent for what felt like an eternity, and she fought every instinct inside of her to allow him to be silent. To remind herself that she wasn’t owed this story. She wasn’t owed anything.
At last he said, “He went too far.” She was going to press for more detail when Rook pointed toward the horizon. “There is the town we’ll stop at. They’re already lighting the lamps for dusk. Come, let’s ride harder to get there before whatever little sun we have left vanishes.”
He didn’t leave room for her to argue, but dug his heels into the horse to urge it forward. She followed with a nicker to her mount as they trotted toward the village and the future, leaving the past he had revealed behind in the mud.
But she couldn’t forget he’d shared that past with her. Or that by knowing him better she only wanted what he had to give all the more. No matter how dangerous the prospect. No matter how terrifying. Because she was runnin
g out of anything to lose with surrender, and if she didn’t, she would always wonder what if.
Once again, Rook and Anne had shared a meal together at a small roadside inn that was part of a tiny village along their road. She had talked about books she liked, music, about the weather and the roads.
He had felt her desire to put him at ease after his confession. The one he’d never intended to make. And yet with Anne, the words had spilled from his lips, the memories burning his brain. Thoughts of the life he’d led on the street. Thoughts of the reasons he’d abandoned his cousin at last.
Things this woman could never know without coming to hate him, fear him.
He didn’t want that, not when their affiliation was meant to be so brief. He wanted it to remain sweet. And so he pulled away before he said or did too much.
She’d gone up to ready herself before him, just as the night before. There would be no hot bath waiting for him tonight, as there had been in the last inn. But the innkeeper had offered one tomorrow if they decided to delay their ceaseless march toward the inevitable parting.
He sighed as he mounted the stairs. He could only imagine the room tonight would be even smaller than the one before, for the inn was smaller. It might not even have a settee, and that would be a challenge.
He knocked, she told him to enter and he did so, his heart racing like an out of control phaeton. She stood before the mantel in her nightgown, her hair down around her shoulders. The light from the fire outlined the silhouette of her naked body beneath, and everything in him clenched as he shut the door behind himself and stared at her.
She smiled, faint and nervous, but also welcoming. And he couldn’t help himself or stop himself or check himself. He moved across the room toward her and gathered her into his arms before he dropped his mouth to hers for the kiss he’d been longing for the last twenty-four hours.
Anne had known Rook would kiss her from the moment he stepped into the room. His expression had burned too hot and fierce for it not to happen. But when his mouth met hers, it was still a surprise at how sensation ricocheted through every part of her being. He was fire and danger and monsters under the bed, only she wanted all those things despite everything she’d been told all her life.
Perhaps because of what she’d been told and how she’d bucked against rules from the moment she could stand on her own two feet. She was the wicked triplet, and she wanted wicked things tonight.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted to get closer, rubbing her cotton-clad breasts across the linen of his shirt, hissing out pleasure as his hands settled, one on her lower back and one on her hip, where his fingers dug into her flesh and left a tattoo of his desire in their wake.
She wanted the mark there. She wanted to have a reminder that she was his, even for a fleeting moment.
She’d thought of nothing else since he first kissed her, and those thoughts had gotten louder all through the day today. She wanted him. She needed him.
So when he pulled away at last, his breath short, his trousers straining against what she knew was called his cock, her heart sank. He would deny her a second time. Too much honor, despite being a thief, for her to convince him with her lips.
“I can’t,” he said.
She shook her head, stinging from the rejection. “Why? Is it for lack of wanting me?”
He bit back a bark of laughter that had no humor to it. “Look at me, Anne.” He motioned to his trouser front with a scowl. “If it was just about wanting, you would be on your back right now.”
She shivered at the crass, direct words and the way they made her nipples tighten even if they were meant to frighten her back in line. “Then is it a lack of respect for me? That you think I’m a wanton?”
He rolled his eyes. “You are not a wanton, no matter what you tell yourself about the last six months of your life. Even if you were, wanting is natural. Needing to be touched and pleasured is natural. You should want and find a man who revels in providing your pleasure. But it isn’t that.”
She threw up her hands, as frustrated as she was drawn to his acceptance and withdrawal balled up in one. “Then what? If you want and you think I should want as I do, what keeps you from putting me on my back, as you put it?”
He rubbed a hand through his hair and then down his face with a loud exhalation of breath that sounded very much like a muffled curse of the highest order. “You know what I told you today, even if I shouldn’t have,” he snapped. “That is why I shouldn’t touch you. Won’t.”
She caught her breath. He kept away from her to protect her, not to protect himself or because she had something lacking in her. But she didn’t want to be protected. Not from him. Not from the heat that gathered between her legs or the tight need that coiled in her stomach.
She knew what she wanted. And it had always been her nature to take it.
She stepped toward him, shaking from head to toe as she tried to find some confidence. Normally it didn’t take this much effort, but months of self-doubt had crushed it. Still, she stopped in front of him, watching how his eyes widened and his hands trembled at his sides.
Then she took a deep breath and slid the straps of her nightgown down her arms. The entire garment pooled at her feet with the barest shimmy of her hips and she was naked in front of him.
“Fuck,” he muttered beneath his breath as she struggled not to cover herself in embarrassment.
She’d heard that word before. Rook had said it after he kissed her. She’d read it in that book of her father’s. She knew what it meant.
“Yes,” she said with a shaky smile. “That’s the idea.”
His pupils dilated until his gaze was almost entirely black, and he reached out and caught her wrist. When he dragged her forward, it was rough, and she collided with his chest as she lost her balance. His mouth covered hers again, but this time there was nothing gentle to it. Nothing he held back.
He lifted her against him, grinding their bodies together as he carried her toward the bed along the back wall of the room. He tossed her there and then stepped back to unbutton his shirt and tug it over his head. He toed off his boots and shoved at his trousers, and then he was as naked as she was.
Her breath caught. Once again, books did not do truth justice, even the most scandalously illustrated ones. This man’s body was…well, it was unlike anything she’d ever seen or imagined. He was built of stone. His broad, defined shoulders were crossed with scars, but they were also firm with muscle and sinew. There was a beauty to the rippled, toned stomach that put her to mind of sketches of the David. And then there were the trim hips and strong thighs, between which his cock rested.
Only it wasn’t exactly resting. It was erect, hard and proud as he stared down at her.
“You look frightened,” he drawled, a hint of a smile in the corner of his lips. “Do you want me to stop?”
There was a brief moment when every inch of propriety that had ever been screamed into her by members of her family and exasperated governesses came back to haunt her. Their words echoed and her fear at what would happen next bloomed, and she thought of saying no.
But then she looked at that smirk and realized he was challenging her. Trying to turn her back by being rough and passionate and too big and too…too everything.
She scooted back on the bed to give him room and crooked her finger.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she whispered.
There was a flash of sadness in his stare. “Perhaps you should be. But not this.”
He dropped to his knees on the bed, bowing the thin mattress with his weight and sliding her toward him an inch. He grinned and then he caught her legs, his fingers closing on flesh that no man had ever seen, let alone taken in hand. He dragged her toward him before he caged her with his arms and dropped his mouth again.
She opened to him, drowning in his taste and the feel of his tongue swiping over hers over and over. She arched up against his bare chest, her hard nipples rasping against the sprinkling of chest
hair there.
He pulled back and smiled down at her, still wicked, still something between her quiet, serious protector and the false game he played in the carriage. Then his mouth dropped, but not to her lips. He pressed kisses along her jawline, her throat, her collarbone.
She gripped at the coverlet with shock at the sensations he caused with those kisses. How could her whole body feel alive like this? How could the brush of his stubble or the stroke of his tongue over her shoulder make her body shake with anticipation?
He licked lower still, settling his head between her breasts. He kept eye contact with her as he lifted them, squeezing them together gently, stroking his thumbs over the peaks until she gasped out a cry in the quiet room.
His grin broadened and became more possessive as he sucked one nipple between his lips. His tongue rolled around the nub and then he sucked, not gently but not too hard. Her head lolled back as sensation unlike anything she’d ever felt before rolled through her. Her legs clenched helplessly, her body felt loose and liquid, and she dug her fingernails into his bare shoulders as she clung for purchase on this rolling sea of desire.
Just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, he moved to the opposite breast and repeated the action, drawing her to the heights of pleasure and need, then moving his mouth away as she groaned in disappointment and pleasure mixed.
She expected him to return his mouth to hers, to open her legs like she’d seen in those drawings and take her. But he didn’t. To her surprise, his mouth glided down her stomach, his teeth nipping gently as his fingers massaged her hips. She shut her eyes as his hands settled on her thighs, fingertips grazing sensitive skin and making her hiss and jolt with sensation.
He did push her open then, making a wide space between her legs for his shoulders. Her eyes flew open and she stared down her body at his dark head between her legs. The stolen book hadn’t shown this. Hadn’t allowed her to expect that a man would be eye level with her most private of places. She felt exposed, more so when he brushed a finger along her length and looked up at her to gauge her response.
A Reckless Runaway Page 11