Seduced (18 page)

He sighed. “You want a confessional, Letitia? You want me to reveal my heart to you? My soul?”

“You know how deeply I was hurt by Noah’s actions, how much it shamed and damaged me,” she reminded him. “Could you not trust me just a little with the whole truth?”

“I was desperate when I dragged War away from our mother,” Jack said after a long pause. “I thought that man would kill him and I wanted to protect him. For years I hardly slept, waiting to be killed, to be found, to be destroyed. When I was able to get some rest, I had nightmares about War dying. Me dying. It was god-awful, Letitia. As bad as you can imagine, and worse. But I had no other choice, no other life. I became good at what I do because I had to. Because the alternative was to sink down and surrender, to wait for death to find me. I couldn’t do that.”

She heard the strain in his voice, the pain there that he kept so well hidden. “Are you happy, Jack?”

Silence greeted her. It stretched for a long time. Long enough that she knew the answer. She knew it all too well.

“I don’t know,” he finally said.

She was surprised at his honesty, for she hadn’t expected it. A flippant remark? Yes. A dismissive flirtation? Perhaps. But this raw honesty touched her.

She began to hum softly as she returned to attention to rubbing his back. He had given her enough today. She would back off and let him concentrate only on this pleasure. And ultimately, the deeper pleasures to come between them.

She stroked his skin for a while longer, as lost in the rhythmic movement of her hands over his smooth skin as he seemed to be. She was ready to suggest he roll over so she could continue her massage in a much naughtier way when she heard a sound that shocked her.

Jack let out a deep snore.

She climbed down from the bed and moved to the head of it. He had turned his face toward the fire and his eyes were shut. It was obvious he was sound asleep. Disappointment briefly flooded her before she thought of what he’d said to her a moment before.

He’d had trouble sleeping before thanks to his dark past. She wondered now if those troubles remained. Either way, he obviously needed the rest. She pulled the rest of the blanket up over him gently. He didn’t stir at the action. and she smiled.

“Sleep,” she whispered before she pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Dream of sweet things.”

Then she crept from the room to find a servant who could call for her carriage.

There was blood everywhere. Jack saw it around him in torrents, in rivers, it gathered in gruesome lakes. He glanced down, but found he was unharmed. It was someone else’s blood. He blinked hard, trying to get oriented, but it was almost impossible. The world felt like it was tilting. There was smoke in the air and faint screams from all sides.

He was looking for something, someone, but he couldn’t remember who. He only knew that the person was hurt, a person he cared for. Was it War? No, no, that wasn’t it. War was safe now. He remembered that in the fog of his mind.

It was someone else then, and he strained to recall. And then it came to him in a blinding rush. It was Letitia he was looking for in the carnage around him. He opened his mouth to scream her name, but no sound escaped his lips.

He turned and caught a glimpse of a blue gown splattered with blood droplets, and ran toward it, knowing who it was. Praying she was unharmed.

But he couldn’t get to her. The faster he ran, the farther away she became, the more he reached for her, the more out of reach she was.

“No!”

Jack sat bolt upright, his heart racing and sweat covering his body. Panic rose in his chest, turning his stomach and forcing convulsive shakes through his entire body as he made the harsh transition from dream world to reality.

He looked around in the dim chamber and blinked in confusion. Where the fuck was he? Not in his lair, but…

It came back to him at last. He was in the townhouse he’d bought, the one where he’d been meeting with Letitia. He recalled their night together, her questions, which had inspired honesty in him, her gentle hands on his skin…

When he got up the blanket around him fell away. He was naked, but the lady was not here. With a frown, he grabbed for his shirt, crumpled on the floor at his feet. He slung it around his shoulders and moved to the fire. He stoked the flames until light returned to the room and looked around.

There was no sign of Letitia, though a plate of food sat on his table. His stomach growled, and he moved to it and began to eat.

Memories of his dream haunted him, even as the food filled his empty belly. He’d had the dream before. The streets of blood, the lost person he so desperately sought, the fear—they were all common to his slumber, especially when there was trouble in his life.

But in the past, it had always been War he’d been looking for. War who was injured, maybe dead, in the carnage of Jack’s life. Even when War had gone away, Jack had still dreamed of his younger brother’s death.

But tonight, his dream self hadn’t been seeking War. War was safe. It had been Letitia in the fog, Letitia covered in blood. Letitia he couldn’t reach no matter how he tried.

What did it all mean?

“That the woman is a menace,” he grunted as he dragged a last chunk of bread through the remaining juices on his plate.

He pushed away from the table shoved on his trousers, then left the room. He entered the hallway and came down the stairs to find a maid dusting some of the furniture.

“You there,” he said.

She jumped as if she wasn’t prepared to hear his voice, then turned to him. “Yes, sir?”

Her gaze swept over him from head to toe and she smiled flirtatiously. Jack considered his options. He could take a tumble with this girl. That would burn off the unresolved desire Letitia had left him with.

But he didn’t want this nameless chit. He wanted Letitia, frustrating as that fact was.

“Lady Seagate, did she leave?” he asked, ignoring the young woman’s all-too inviting stare.

“Yes, sir,” the girl said, sidling closer. “A little over an hour ago,
sir
.”

She drew out the last word as she smiled at him yet again. She was pretty enough, but she did nothing to stir him. Odd.

“Will you have someone bring my horse around?” he said. “Thank you.”

He turned his back on the now-pouting maid and went upstairs to pull himself together. Letitia had come here tonight with promises of passion and pleasure between them. He had every intention of keeping his word.

And it had nothing to do with just how much he wanted to see her, to make sure she was unharmed by touching her. Nothing in the slightest.

Letty stared at the letter before her, but the words all swam before her eyes. She’d been working on this note to an old friend for the past half hour since she’d changed into her nightgown, but had made no headway.

Likely because her mind kept turning on Jack. Tonight she had come to him looking for passion. Instead, she’d found connection to him as they spent time together. She felt for his past, was impressed by how he’d brought himself up, made himself strong physically and intellectually.

“Stop being an idiot and go to bed,” she muttered to herself, folding her abandoned letter before she picked up her candle and took it to her bedside table. She pulled the covers back and was about to blow out the flame and climb in when she heard a sound.

She lifted her head and looked around, uncertain from where it had come. When all was silent a moment, she went back to preparing her bed. And there it came again. This time she heard it clearly. It was a tapping.

From her window.

She grabbed the candle and proceeded cautiously to the drawn curtains. It was likely only a confused bird, but her heart still pounded as she drew the curtain back and lifted the light to the glass to see what was causing the sound.

There was nothing there for a moment—and then Jack’s face appeared on the other side.

She bit back a yelp of surprise and staggered backward, nearly depositing herself on her backside.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He gave her a look and pointed at his ears, indicating he couldn’t hear her through the glass. She huffed out a breath and unlatched her window, opening it so he could step into her room from the ledge.

“What are you doing here?” she repeated, watching as he turned to latch the window and draw the curtains once again.

“Good evening to you too,” he said, grinning as he faced her.

“Jack, what in the world?” she gasped. “What is going on?”

He moved toward her a step, and her hand holding the candle began to tremble. “You left me tonight before we even started.”

Her lips parted in surprise at both that statement and the smoldering look in his eyes when he said it. He reached out to take her candle and gently set it back down on her escritoire.

“I—you were asleep,” she explained. “I thought…”

She trailed off because he was staring at her so intently that she lost all ability to form words.

“I’m awake now,” he said, his voice so soft it barely carried. He moved toward her, sliding a hand into her hair, which had been twisted into a braid in preparation for sleep. He tugged through the locks, freeing them as his mouth came down on hers.

She jolted in pleasure as his tongue breeched her lips, melting her bones and setting her on fire from the inside.

“Jack,” she murmured against him, bringing her arms around his neck and molding her body to his.

His hands stole down her back and he cupped her backside through the flimsy cotton of her night rail, lifting her against him, grinding the hard cock beneath his trousers against the apex of her legs as he carried her toward her bed.

She strained to meet him as if her body had been trained to do so. He grinned as he lowered her onto the coverlet and braced his arms over her.

“I think I should punish you for leaving me naked and alone.”

“And sleeping,” she reminded him. “I thought it better to leave you to your dreams when you were obviously exhausted.”

A flicker of emotion passed over his face. “I don’t like my dreams as much as I like this reality,” he drawled. “That is a very pretty nightgown.”

She glanced down at the white cotton and then back to his face. “It is plain.”

“It is see-through when you stand in front of the window with the fire behind you,” he said with a laugh.

Heat flamed in her cheeks. “What?”

“I liked the show, my lady, don’t worry. But I want no barriers between us anymore, so…” He pushed the nightgown up and over her hips, her stomach, and plucked it over her head. Now she was naked, half pinned beneath his weight, her body shaking with anticipation.

“But you’re not naked,” she said, shocked by how bold she sounded. “Not exactly fair.”

“Says the enchantress who stripped me bare-ass and put a sleeping spell on me not three hours ago,” he said. “But I would not want to make you feel at a disadvantage.”

He pushed away from her and stripped out of his clothing in a few movements. She propped herself up on her elbows, unable to keep from licking her lips as he showed her his naked body for the second time that night. Once again, she wanted to do such very inappropriate things to him.

“Where is that naughty book of yours, Letitia?” he asked.

Her blush darkened as she got up and padded to her escritoire. She opened a drawer and dug underneath all the papers, where she had shoved
The
Ladies Book of Pleasures
upon her return tonight.

He held out a hand, beckoning her to give it over, and she did so, refusing to meet his stare as he flipped it open.

“I have heard of this little book,” he said, paging through it, his eyes widening at some of the images inside. She wondered which ones caught his attention. “But never seen it. You ladies are a mystery, pretending not to be interested in such things while you pass this around.”

“I never pretended not to be interested,” she said, sidling over to him and trying to peek at the page.

He pulled the book away with a grin. “Nosy little thing, aren’t you?”