Seducing the Rake (Mad, Bad and Dangerous Heroes) (32 page)

But he didn’t. His fantasy … her fantasy.
Theirs,
blending together with flawless sweetness.

He heard her give a ragged laugh and gritted his teeth as he felt her touch him. “You’re so—big. Are you always—that way?”

Her fingers traced him lightly, teaching him new meaning for words like
heaven
and
hell.

He gave a raw laugh. “No, thank God, I’m not. But all this talk, these unbelievable things you’re doing—it’s making me
very …
responsive. Did they teach you torture at that monastery of yours? I hear the Chinese are masters at it.”

Instantly she released him. “Oh! Am I …
hurting …
you? Is that why—”

“By heaven, you’re hurting me! And if you even
think
of stopping, I’ll murder you, my beautiful little witch.”

“Oh.” Slow, nearly audible comprehension. “Then…”

She smiled. Morland felt that smile as it settled over his turgid, hungry flesh, against the heat of her lips.

Catching at his heart, her slow smile wrapped its heat around him, pulling him down ever deeper into mystery. Until he came close, so close to losing every shred of his control.

With a groan, he stiffened. Not quite gently he caught her cheeks and pulled her up against his chest.

“But why—”

“Because I want you, Chessy.
Now.
With nothing held back and nothing left to give. With your long legs clinging tight while we find forever. That same forever we swore to all those years ago in the middle of a silver Chinese sea.” He moved over her before she could protest, his body big and hot. He delighted in her instant shudder and in the sweet heat that told him she was ready, more than ready for him.

Her eyes were huge. “Tony? Do you want—”

“Yes. Oh, yes. Though I’m a fool and a perfect bastard even to—”

“No, you’re perfect,” Chessy whispered recklessly. “Just perfect.” Her bare sole stroked his tensed calf. And then she smiled up at him tremulously and he was lost.

“It won’t—hurt this time. I’ll be careful. You’ll probably be a little sore, of course, but nothing more. And if I do anything that you don’t like, Chessy, anything at all, just tell me and I—”

“Tony?”

“Yes, my heart?”

“Be
quiet
.”

He was. And he gave her what she wanted then. He gave her now—and forever, easing deep into that place he’d always wanted to be and groaning when he felt her stretch softly to take him.

The amazing heat of it. The utter, sweet
pain
of it…

Deep, then deeper. The faintest tugging as those sweet petals moved and heat met clinging heat.

Soon the rich dark rustle of bed linens was the only sound left in the room.

~ ~ ~

At length the great, ferocious beast called London began to awaken.

The first light spilled dim through narrow, smoky streets. Flower vendors called their wares and link boys trotted gray-faced and exhausted toward home. And the great city shook and growled and shuddered back to life.

But in the upper room at the front of Number 12 Half Moon Street, the light of dawn was soft and caressing. The air was heavy and very sweet.

And somewhere in that soft, dreaming dawn the Earl of Morland coaxed the woman he’d always loved beneath him again, while her eyes were still full of sleep and her body full of glorious surfeit.

Her cries were soft and husky. There were no words between them this time, nothing but a dark slide of flawless friction. He made it slow and endless for her, just as he knew the rest of their time together could not be.

But
this
at least he meant to make last. This, he wanted Chessy to remember.

Always, just as he would.

Even after she left, which he knew she surely would. As he pulled her close against him, the Earl of Morland tried to tell himself the future didn’t count. That
now
was all that mattered, the now of thigh against thigh, of wrist pressed close to wrist.

Of heart to reckless heart.

Oh, yes, he tried hard. And the wonder was that he almost succeeded.

 “It’s time, Chessy. Time to talk.”

Rain drummed softly on the window. The candle had guttered out hours ago, and dawn was nothing but a memory now.

Morland was braced against the headboard, staring down at her. In the dim light his face was a study in bronze and amber, his hair alive with a dozen shades of gold. “About tomorrow. About yesterday—and about those letters you never answered.”

“L-letters?”

“Letters. The ones I wrote to you for months. I think you owe me an answer.”

Chessy thought for a moment of denying she’d ever received those thick vellum sheets. It was a miracle they had ever found her at all, crumbled and tattered, stained with the dirt of a dozen outposts at the edge of the British Empire.

Calcutta. Cairo. The Punjab.
All the places Tony had gone after leaving Macao. Much later had come the other names.

Badajoz. Ciudad Rodrigo. Salamanca.
A string of other dusty, war-torn towns in Portugal and Spain.

Like a strange foreign song, the names still echoed in Chessy’s mind.

She’d opened the first letters with infinite care, crying as she studied every line of flowing script. She hadn’t been able to read them, of course, but she’d engaged a tutor in the vain hope that she could learn fast enough to manage it.

But she’d failed. Only two weeks after Tony’s departure, she and James had moved yet again, and a thousand responsibilities had fallen on Chessy’s young shoulders. But the letters had kept coming. Finally, in desperation, she’d asked a Eurasian friend to read them to her.

Chessy felt tears gather in her eyes, remembering how mortified she’d been at her ignorance. It had been excruciating to hear Tony’s words coming from someone else’s lips. But Chessy had hung on to every one of those words.

And then she’d tied the letters up tightly, locked them away in a rosewood box, and never glanced at them again. It would have been too painful.

He had been goading and bland, mocking and angry by turns. All his keen wit had been there, along with his sharp eye for detail and human nature. They had left her feeling she walked beside him as he toured the chaos of marketplace and shipyard and raced under tight canvas on scudding seas

But the hurt had shone through in every line, even in his lightest moods.

Chessy knew that hurt well, for she felt it too. But her hurt was keener, since it had been her first taste of love and she had had no other experiences to soften it.

She had cried each night after Wu Mei had read her a new letter, holding the sheets tight to her chest as she thought about some hair-raising adventure Tony had had. Through those dark days Morland’s letters had been bitter pain and sweetest pleasure, a constant reminder of all she had lost when he’d left. But they had also taught her a bittersweet lesson. Life went on—for her just as it did for him. Even when they were half the globe apart. In the end that knowledge had saved her sanity, perhaps even her life.

Chessy had never wavered about answering them. That would only have opened her to more pain. By then, she knew that she’d reached her limit.

So she had gone off to Shao-lin. Her father had suddenly turned favorable to the idea after two years of strident refusals. Chessy knew he was worried about her, seriously worried. Only that had brought him to such a desperate course of action.

At least at Shao-lin there were no letters to weep over. At Shao-lin she had had other things to think of, secret training and physical challenges that had kept her too exhausted to worry about anything else.

That, too, had saved her. And Chessy had not returned until she was whole enough to face Tony’s letters again.

Now as she looked at him, she remembered those bitter months and fought to keep the pain of that remembering from her face. “I-I received them.” Her voice was flat, expressionless.

Morland’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. “I received them’? That’s all you have to say? Just like that—no explanation?” He frowned. “I wrote you more than forty letters, Chessy, but I never had a single reply.”

She stiffened and tried to pull away.

“No, stay. Talk to me. There had to be a reason.”

“Would it have mattered? You were gone. There was nothing more to say.”

“It mattered to
me.”

She sighed. “I was—busy. You know how my father can be when he gets a new scheme into his head. We moved twice that fall, and—”

“I was busy too. Fighting a war.” His voice hardened. “Burying my best friends in rocky passes in Portugal and Spain. Trying to keep the rest of my men alive.”

“I’m—sorry. So sorry.”

“I don’t want your apology, Chessy! I want the truth. Why didn’t you answer?”

“I … couldn’t.” Tears were stinging her throat.

“There were ways. Even then ships crossed the ocean every week. You could have found some way to—”

“No.
I
couldn’t
answer. Not then and not now. Because—” She swallowed, feeling shame wash through her. “Because I can’t—I can’t—”

Dear heaven, she couldn’t say it! Even now the humiliation was too great.

Tony went very still. “Because you can’t read?” He looked stunned.

Chessy could only nod. She tried to pull away, but he held her fast. “Even now?”

She shook her head and scrubbed furtively at her eyes.

“But why didn’t that ramshackle father of yours arrange a tutor for you?”

“He tried. But we were always on the move, searching for some new treasure he’d heard about.” She took a deep breath. “And it would have changed nothing, don’t you see? We were knee-deep in your own problems. And I…” She laughed bitterly. “I was nowhere that mattered. Somewhere digging in the dirt on a hillside in Nepal. Or perhaps on an island in. The South China Sea. What difference would
my
letters have made?”

Morland shook his head slowly. “You could have let me decide that. Even one letter would have meant the world to me.” He saw that Chessy’s face was red where he had abraded it with his beard-rough cheek. He stroked the skin gently, cursing himself for his haste.

In so many things.

He remembered her hair, framing her cheeks, her eyes dancing like starlight as she tossed him a piece of fish, still hot from the cooking fire         

He remembered the bawdy songs he’d taught her as they worked at the rigging, songs that she’d instantly mastered and sung back to him in a clear, delighted soprano.

How she had made him laugh all those summers ago! How
quick and alive
she’d been. And how he’d yearned to stay and watch her grow up into a woman.

How wrong he’d been about so many things.

Chessy saw the darkness and regret slide into his eyes. “No, don’t.” She ran her hand over his. “I want you to know that—whatever happens—I’ll never regret this.
Us.”

He pulled her back against him on the bed, his eyes smoky. “I’m very glad to hear it, my beauty. Because I mean to exact my payment for those forty letters. In fact. I know
precisely
what sort of retribution I’ll demand.”

Chessy ran her tongue along the crease of her lips. “Retribution? Surely not—forty?”

His eyes filled with heat. “At the very least, my sweet.”

A knock sounded at the door.

“Go away, Whitby!” Morland pulled Chessy down onto his chest and buried his fingers deep in her midnight hair. “Come back tomorrow.” As he stared at her parted lips, he groaned. “Next month.”

Whitby’s voice rose, stiff and embarrassed. “My apologies, your lordship, but—” He cleared his throat. “That is, I require a word.”

“Next month, Whitby. Not a day sooner.”

“But—five messages have come already, your lordship.” Whitby’s voice was agonized. “This last one makes the sixth.”