Katherine O’Neal (8 page)

“I doubt you’re going to find it out here,”
he said.

She laughed. “Nonsense. I’m an optimist, Mr.
Archer. I believe we all get what we deserve in the end.”

She smiled with secret delight as she took
his arm and headed off at a purposeful pace to follow the smug
thief. While pretending to comb the ground for her jewelry, she
kept a sharp eye on the figure ahead, waiting for her opening. She
didn’t worry about him getting away. Experience had taught her that
sooner or later the perfect opportunity always presented
itself.

Once, she saw him stop, take out the wallet,
count its contents, and give a startled jerk. Because he saw to
much of the business of running the
Globe-Journal
, Blackwood
often carried large sums of cash. She guessed there was as much as
a thousand dollars in the billfold. Watching as the loafer pocketed
it once again with a supreme air of satisfaction, she renewed her
determination that he wouldn’t spend a penny of it.

They walked along the elm-ridged Mall and
came out upon the Esplanade with its stately stone staircases
leading to the Bethesda Fountain below. There were people
everywhere, enjoying the breeze off the lake, the afternoon sun,
the melodies of the brass band drifting from the bandstand. Out
across the lake, rowboats with striped awning covers made their way
lazily across the water. People strolled along the banks, the men
mostly in dark suits, the women in muted walking suits as befitted
afternoon. Swans glided over the surface of the lake. Children
squealed with laughter from the carousel, from goat wagons or
saddle donkeys. A camel pulled a lawn mower across a distant patch
of green.

And still she awaited her chance.

Finally, it presented itself. They descended
the stone staircase, hot on Shabby Suit’s heels. While craftily—so
he thought—casing his next victim, the pickpocket wandered over to
the black iron water fountain that offered drinking water cooled by
blocks of ice in a pit below.

“Ah!” she cried. “Here’s my earring! Didn’t I
tell you I’d find it? My, but I’m thirsty after that brisk walk. Do
wait, won’t you, Mr. Archer? I won’t be a minute.”

Arching a questioning brow, he watched her
go.

This, she knew, was the tricky part.
Blackwood was watching her like a hawk. If she made one obvious
move, he’d notice it. The challenge was not so much in returning
the wallet to his pocket, but in doing so undetected.

They had to wait as a nanny with a group of
children held each one up to the cascading flow of water. As the
man finally bent to drink, she moved up behind him, waiting her
turn in line. He was so distractedly pleased with himself that he
didn’t even bother to look behind him. He walked off, and she drank
from the fountain, then returned to Blackwood with her hands behind
her back and a smile of triumph on her face.

“Thank you for waiting, Mr. Archer. I’m so
happy to have found the earbob. I should have died if I’d really
lost it. It means so much to me because Winny gave it to me.”
Slyly, she slipped the billfold into the pocket of her skirt. She
was certain from the bored look in his eyes that he hadn’t seen
her. When the opportunity presented itself, she’d replace it
without his knowledge.

“Then I’m happy to oblige.”

“But you wanted to talk to me, Mr. Archer.
Did you perchance have something—pressing you wanted to say?”

She smiled her most dazzling smile. Her eyes
were alight with the knowledge of what she’d just done. It never
ceased to thrill her—to make her pulse drum in her ears, to send
the blood rushing through her veins. Her mind was racing, already
plotting ways of replacing the wallet in his coat pocket.

He looked at her a moment, saw the seductive
triumph gleaming in her eyes. Unexpectedly, he took her hand and
pulled her back behind a tree. Winston, with his interest in
horticulture, would have known what kind of tree it was. All she
knew was her heart was pounding a vicious rhythm, and that
Blackwood, pressing into her, was hard against her thigh. The
unexpectedness of it warmed her like whiskey flowing through her
veins.

“You’re sensational,” he rasped. Taking her
lips with sudden ruthless abandon, he kissed her deeply, shoving
her back against the tree. “Christ, what you do to me. You’re like
a melody pounding in my head, like someone I’ve known all my life.
You’re the last woman on earth I’d ever want. But I think
sometimes, if I can’t have you, I shall go out of my bloody
mind.”

He was frighteningly convincing. As if the
pretense was abandoned, and he was speaking from his heart. His
hands moved over her with unquestioned skill, wrenching her mind
from her plot as his mouth nibbled her cheek, her ear, her neck.
His blatant masculinity overpowered her. She felt her breath leave
her in little gasps as she closed her eyes and began to float
beneath his touch. He dipped his dark head and kissed her with
unchecked passion, plunging his tongue into her mouth until she,
breathless now, kissed him back with a rashness of her own.

Then, her body on fire, she opened her eyes
and saw his face. The hated Blackwood face with the swarthy
features, the heavy black brows, the piercing midnight eyes above a
mouth so blatantly sexual, it should have been against the law. But
she was never one to revere lawful commandments. The obscure, the
forbidden, those were the realms of her soul. She was as undeniably
drawn to that illicit mouth as she would be to a priceless necklace
locked in the most impenetrable vault. Not for any wish to possess
it. Just for the fun of knowing she could.

That’s all it was, she told herself. The
danger. The reckless flaunting of all she’d held dear. But Bat’s
words came back to haunt her.
You're falling in love with this
Blackwood
... this
Blackwood
...

“Unhand me,” she cried, shoving against the
hard-muscled planes of his massive chest. Slipping past him, she
hurried away from the nearby crowd. It wouldn’t do to be seen
kissing Winston’s best friend in a public park. But then, she
realized belatedly, that was what Blackwood wanted. So the story
would get back to Winston, the wedding called off. And Blackwood
free to steal the
Globe-Journal
from under Winston’s
unsuspecting nose.

He joined her, easily matching her frantic
pace with a leisurely, long-legged stride. “You surprise me.
Blushing protestations?” His voice dipped lower. “After last
night?”

“This is highly unorthodox, Mr. Archer,” she
said stiffly, clinging to the safety of her role.

He threw back his head and laughed.
“
Unorthodox?
Since when does a woman like you care about
conventions?”

“You presume too much in assuming you know
what a
woman like me
does or doesn’t care for. You, don’t,
after all, know much about me, do you?”

“Don’t I?”

It was times like this when she thought he
knew it all. She stopped walking. They were in a grove of secluded
trees, off the main path. It was cool and shady in the leafy
hideaway. She wondered what deviltry had brought her to this spot,
far away from prying eyes. Was it to shield herself from his
manipulations? Or was it because she hoped, in the sequestered
thicket, that he’d take her in his arms and make her feel all the
wondrous sensations she was trying so hard to deny?

“I know a woman like you can’t be happy with
a commonplace life,” he told her, speaking to her back. “I know
that deep inside, you chafe against conventions and man-made laws
just as I do. That you have a restless, wandering soul and an
appetite for adventure that no mediocre existence can fulfill. That
the thought of presiding over afternoon teas and charitable bazaars
is enough to send cold shivers down your spine.”

He traced a solitary finger from the base of
her neck down the length of her spine. She did shiver, but not
because she was thinking of bazaars.

“I know you’re a rebel.” He put his mouth to
her ear, where she could feel the warm intemperance of his breath.
“That you were born more clever than all the rest. That you’re a
woman who’d rather make love in a barn than a bed. That you haven’t
met the man who can take you in his arms and make you forget all
you’re after in the sovereignty of his kiss.” He drew her closer,
so her back was pressed against him, and slid an arm around her
waist.

She swallowed hard. She felt weak and trembly
as she leaned back against him. His erection swelled as her bottom
brushed against it, making her loins tingle with unwonted need. Yet
her mind savored his words the way a dying man might relish his
last drink. How did he know all that? He’d touched at the secrets
of her soul, the very fringes of the thoughts that haunted her at
night, when she thought about a life with Winston. Then she
chastised herself for being such a fool. He’d said it himself, in
language cloaked by his disguise. It was a con artist’s job to read
people, to understand their strengths and weaknesses. The best of
the breed could discover truths in a single conversation that a
person’s friends might never learn in a lifetime. Oh, he was good.
There was no doubt about it. Words were his weapons, and he wielded
them like a well-honed sword. She’d have to keep on her toes to
remain ahead of him. But she had armaments the others didn’t. She
knew his words for what they were.

“A pretty speech,” she retorted in a shivery
voice. “Do you deliver it to all the women you’re trying to
seduce?”

He stilled. She thought for a moment that he
might move away. Instead, he slowly slid his large, possessive
hands up to her breasts and asked, very softly, “If you wanted to
know what I was like in bed, why didn’t you just ask?”

A jolt of excitement shot through her body
and settled in the moist, steamy heat between her legs. She could
feel the danger of her situation. But that, of course, was the
pleasure of it. On the heels of an afternoon of playing society
hostess, she felt blissfully alive.

“You can hardly blame me for being curious,”
she replied as casually as she could manage. “I wondered, if you
must know, if your protestations were genuine. If a man like you
ever really means what he says.”

The greatest lover in Europe
, she
thought.
Why wouldn't I be curious?

“Does this feel real?” He took her hand and
brought it behind her, held it against his crotch. He bulged
beneath her palm, straining against his trousers like a demon
battling for release. The size of him was intoxicating. This prince
of darkness she’d hungered after the night before, this god of the
underworld who’d haunted her dreams so she could no longer
decipher, in the dead of a sleepless night, if she’d experienced or
imagined the terrible beauty—this unholy serpent, was not, after
all, the stuff of legend. He was real. He was human. And he was
hers for the taking.

His other hand left her breast and brushed
the curve of her mouth. Her lips parted, and he thrust his thumb
inside.

“What do you want from me...
Sarah?
”

She closed her eyes. What did she want? She
wanted to drop to her knees and free him from the prison of his
clothing—to take him on her tongue and pull him deep inside. To
fill her mouth with him and feel him swell against her moist
flesh... Her throat was so dry, she knew if she spoke, her voice
would come out in a croak.

His thumb was moving in her mouth, so she
abandoned the effort and sucked on it instead.

“Tell me,” he commanded softly.

The temptation was overwhelming.

Since she didn’t, he took charge. Crushing
her hand against him with one hand, inserting his thumb slowly in
and out of her mouth with the other, he spoke in a harsh
whisper.

“Do you want me to keep playing this game? Or
would you prefer that I strip away your defenses as I could so
easily rip away your clothes? To take you in my arms and make you
admit that—in spite of everything—in spite of who we are and what
we’re after—you want me every bit as much as I want you?”

“What do you think I want?” she gasped.

“I think you want me to lift up your
skirts—and come inside you—and haul you up against that tree—and
make you scream—”

She was insensible to his movements. Without
her realizing how, he’d dropped his hands and worked her skirt up
her legs, sliding it up her thighs. As he spoke, his hands sought
the waistband of her silk drawers and slipped inside. He found the
curls between her legs and sank his finger into the moist,
welcoming heat.

“So I was right.” His finger moved inside her
with such skillfully probing penetration that she felt her breath
burning her lungs. His other hand grasped her neck and pressed,
keeping her from collapsing completely. She was overcome by a
heavy, somnolent, simmering yearning, his voice and the drift of
his words as hypnotically seductive as his fingers playing with her
control. Her mouth, parted now with the urgency of her breath,
hungered to answer him in kind. “Do you like my finger inside you?
What about two? Or three? What if I rub you with my thumb, like
so?”

She moaned aloud. Her juices soaked his hand.
She wanted him so badly, she could easily have wrenched off her
clothes and taken him, in the middle of a public park, wrapping her
legs around him and inviting him with hot words to slam her up
against the nearest tree.

“Does Winston make you wet the way I do?” he
growled.

Winston’s name on his lips made her stiffen
in his arms. She’d forgotten all about Winston. She’d forgotten
about Sarah Voors and Archer. She’d forgotten all she was after.
Who this man was and what he represented. She’d forgotten
everything in the rapturous torture of his touch.

As she stilled, his fingers ceased their
probing. He lifted his mouth from her ear and rested his forehead
heavily against the back of her head. As if looking at her was too
much, as if it might weaken him beyond his facility to cope.