Lady of Desire (9 page)

He urged her lips apart, hungrily plundering her mouth; she gave eagerly. He tasted of wine and smoke and male, his bare chest pressing against her like sun-warmed steel in the V where his shirt hung open in the front. She moaned softly against his lips and wrapped her hand around his nape beneath his dark gold mane, pulling him closer, drinking him in yet more deeply. She kissed him in sheer abandon, knowing she would never see him again—knowing that, with this reckless kiss, she fired her maiden salvo over the bow of convention and picked up her mother’s battle flag for liberty.

After all, the duchess Georgiana’s first illicit lover had been a rough, low bruiser, the champion prizefighter Sam O’Shea, the Killarney Crusher. Mama would have thoroughly approved of Billy Blade.

Jacinda eagerly slipped her hands inside his shirt and caressed his velveteen skin, marveling over the breadth of his shoulders and the sculpted iron of his arms while his hands gathered her hair, gently dragging her head back. His hot, wanton mouth left hers and moved down her neck. His hands, so clever and sure on her tingling skin, found the fashionably low-cut neckline of her gown and slipped it down over the curve of her shoulder. She writhed, helping him to free her breast. Fascinated, barely able to believe that she was doing this, she watched him kiss her nipple.

The initial reverence of his lips at her breast dissolved as the seconds passed, and turned into greedy suckling. The pleasure of it and his low sounds of relishing enjoyment overwhelmed her. She closed her eyes and rested her head on the hard, wooden chair back; a hot, silken vortex of bliss stole over her senses, turning faster and faster as her desire for him took on a dangerous life of its own. She needed more.

“Billy,” she whispered faintly, petting his hair, his elegant cheekbones, running her hands down to the sweeping planes of his muscled shoulders. Her insistent touch summoned him.

Kissing his way back up her throat to her mouth, his eyes aflame, he nuzzled her mouth; then, not asking permission, he lifted her in his arms and carried her to his sensuously draped tent-bed. For a heartbeat, she protested, her voice hoarse and feeble, but then she was distracted by the voluptuous perfume of exotic spices wafting up from his mattress as he laid her down. Bracing himself on his hands above her, he eased his muscled body atop her. The white silk of her skirts enfolded the sturdy black cloth of his trousers as he coaxed her legs apart with a gentle nudge of his knee. Jacinda wrapped her arms and legs around him. Every point where their bodies met pulsated with fiery need. The mad, wild thrill of his kiss, the feel of his firm weight on top of her made her body burn, her heart race. Her hand trembled as she stroked his long, sandy hair.

He gently captured her hand and linked his fingers through hers. The intimacy of holding hands as he moved against her sent a wave of even deeper longing through her. She could feel his steely hardness chafing against her, stroking her pleasure center with every undulant caress of their bodies. She lifted her hips, arching in time with his slow, intoxicating rhythm. Her heart was racing; her skin was on fire. Blade was shaking. He tore his mouth away from her kiss.

“I have to be inside you.”

“No,” she panted, sweeping her eyes open in hazy alarm.

“I’ll make you ready,” he soothed her. He moved onto his side next to her, sliding her gown up over her thigh.

“Blade,” she whispered in the frailest of protests.

“
Shh
.” As his lips hovered feather-light upon hers, he ran the lightest, most beguiling caress right up between her legs and with exquisite delicacy pressed into the heated wet core of her womanhood.

“Oh, God,” she moaned, squirming with delight. She kissed him like she would consume him as he stroked and pleasured her with his marvelous hands, his fingertip rubbing her wetness liberally over her pulsating center. He drove her mad with want. Her legs spread wider with a will of their own; her body arched in shameless hunger for the intoxication of his touch. She was on the edge of some blissful cataclysm when he abruptly stopped, reaching with trembling hands to unbutton his trousers. With a helpless whimper, she came up onto her elbows, reaching for him.

“Please—”

He glanced at her in surprise, but as he looked into her eyes, his expression softened incalculably. “Oh, sweeting. It’s all right.” He obeyed her shameful plea, pressing her back gently on the bed. With unbelievable tenderness, he kissed her eyelids and abandoned his own pleasure to fulfill hers.

The throaty endearments he breathed in her ear ruled her senses. When he told her to let go, she could do naught but obey. His strong, warm fingers finished the ravishment she craved, penetrating her with a depth that could only have satisfied a virgin like herself. In the throes of ecstasy, her fevered body convulsed. All the while, she felt him watching her with an intense, savoring stare, drinking in her surrender, until, at last, she collapsed on his mattress—spent, shocked, panting, and blissful.

It took several moments for her pounding heartbeat to slow to normal. She felt wanton, free, and joyously alive in his arms; she nearly laughed breathlessly as his kiss softened, nuzzling her mouth. His hand gently cupped her breast. Caught up in sensation, she was still floating on a pink cloud of euphoria, ignoring with a will the dark thunderhead of guilt she sensed in the near distance.

“Blade, I’m sorry—I didn’t know. I couldn’t—”

“Hush,” he whispered, kissing the tip of her nose then her cheek. “ Feel better? ”

She could hear the smile in his voice.

“ Better ? It was
divine
.” With a velvety laugh, she gave a catlike stretch beneath him, holding him loosely. “I never imagined such splendid sensations.”

“You don’t say,” he replied in amusement.

“
Ahh
,” she sighed, snuggling deeper into the mattress with a mischievous smile, “now I am ready for France.”

He laughed and kissed her forehead. “Absurd, lovely creature,” he said, his voice low and husky. “Relax and enjoy it.” He withdrew from her arms and rose, walking away from the bed. For a moment, she gazed dreamily at him. His broad back was to her, the dark outline of his phoenix tattoo visible through his thin white cotton shirt. Then she closed her eyes with another happy sigh and cast her forearm over her brow, savoring the lingering lights, tones, and glimmerings of her newfound heaven and stubbornly refusing to think one moment into the future.

In this state, she was blissfully unaware of Blade lifting her satchel by its strap and carrying it over to the chest of drawers, where he opened it and began riffling through her things.

“Where are you, my pretty fellow? Come back to me, Billy-boy,” she murmured after a moment, amused at the scratchy purr of her own voice. Growing impatient to kiss him again, she dragged her eyes open and gazed at him from across the room. For a moment, amid the delicious haze, what she saw did not quite sink in.

Then she noticed some of her belongings strewn out upon the chest of drawers, and her senses came crashing back.

She gasped, jolting upright in his bed. “You
cad!”

“Not at all, Cumberland,” he replied smoothly. “I’m only looking out for your best interests. What sort of man would I be, after all, taking liberties with a young lady when I don’t even know her name?”

Jacinda scrambled out of his bed and marched after him in shocked fury. “That was a despicable trick. Despicable!”

“You seemed to enjoy it.”

“I demand that you give me back my belongings
this instant!”

“No.”

At the sharp note of warning in his voice, she stopped a few feet from him, incensed, her heart pounding with her frantic fear of discovery. She felt helpless to stop him, for he was far too physically powerful for her to overcome. “I trusted you.”

“If you trusted me, you would have told me your name.”

“Don’t do this, Blade. What does it matter who I am?”

“Let’s just say I’m curious to know exactly how far above my touch you are.” He reached into her satchel again.

Jacinda pressed her hand to her forehead, realizing her fate hung upon his illiteracy. Her traveling documents were in that bag, and if he could read, he would indeed learn her name and almost certainly send her back to her brothers.

She folded her arms tightly across her waist while he made a pile of the loose coins she had thrown into the bag from the grimy alley. Next, he tossed aside her hairbrush and combs and her extra pair of gloves. Reaching into the satchel again, he pulled out her neatly pressed handkerchief, shook it open, and studied her initials embroidered on the corner.

“J.M.K.,” he read aloud, eyeing her askance.

So, he knows his letters
, she thought with a gulp. But that didn’t mean he could form words. She met his taunting glance with a defiant mask of indifference.

“Hmm.” He regarded her skeptically, but made no comment. “What’s this?” He pulled out her book and thumbed through it like an amiable savage.

She strove for patience. “That is
The Corsair
by Lord Byron. Please don’t damage it—”

He merely snorted and started to cast it aside; then her traveling papers fell out from between the pages. “What-ho?” he murmured to himself, picking them up.

His find snapped her into a renewed assault. “Give it back this instant, you heathen!” She closed the distance between them with a few swift strides, reaching to snatch the papers out of his grasp, but he switched them to the other hand, laughing at her ire. “Give it back right now, I say, or I shall go to Bow Street! I promise I will!”

“No, you won’t,” he taunted. “You’d cry for days if they hanged me.”

“Odious man!”

He held her off with one hand planted on her midriff. With the other, he shook her passport free of its neat folds and squinted to read it at arm’s length by the light of the nearby candle. Dread trapped her words in her throat. She could only stare at his chiseled face, trying in vain to interpret his reaction as he examined her papers.

For a very long moment, he was silent. He dropped his hand from her waist and grasped the document in both hands, poring over it closer to the candle’s flame.

He can’t read; he can’t read
, she thought, willing it to be so, but by the candle’s glow, she saw his face turning pale.

“Oh, my God,” he said hollowly. “You’re Lady… Jacinda Knight.”

She closed her eyes briefly.
Blast
!

“You treacherous…
brat!
” he roared, spinning to face her with a shocked look. ”You might have warned me! You accuse
me
of a despicable trick? I never would have touched you if I had known who you are,
my lady
. If I had known you were Lucien’s sister—good God, are you trying to get me killed?“

“I am
trying
to keep you out of it.” She snatched again for her papers, but he lifted them over her head, out of reach.

“Well, I’m in it now, aren’t I? I don’t believe this.”

“You—of all people! Lord Lucien’s maiden sister!” He stared at her incredulously, then walked over to the fireplace and braced his hand against the mantel, shaking his head as he stared into the flames. ”Jacinda Knight, running away from home! Are you daft, girl? You’ve got food on your table, a roof over your head. You’ve got a family that loves you and blood that’s nearly as blue as the king’s. You’ve had life handed to you on a silver platter. What more could you possibly want?”

“Liberty!” she cried. “God, Blade, do you really think that creature comforts are all that matter in this life?”

“I think you’ve got
bats
flapping around in your belfry, that’s what I bloody think.” He turned and glared at her, resting his hands on his lean waist. “You have no idea how good you’ve got it. Have you noticed the state of the country, my lady? These are dangerous times. People starving. Poor harvests. Half a million men back from the war, and no jobs for ‘em. Businesses, factories closin’ all over the place. You may well need your famous brothers to protect you, because this whole city could rise up and erupt like Paris did in the Revolution. All it would take is just one spark for the whole powder keg to blow—and your fine lords know it. Aye, every one of ‘em, especially that snake, Sidmouth, in the Home Office. His Lordship’s only got one answer to every problem— build another gallows.”

“So, what, then, Blade? You mean to overthrow the government?” she asked in a long-suffering tone, folding her arms across her chest.

“On the contrary, my lady, I am doing my best to keep order,” he bit back. “Why do you think it’s left to me to fight O’Dell? I’ll tell you why—because the city officers won’t even set foot in our neighborhood. I’m going to be frank with you, Lady Jacinda. O’Dell and a few of his gang raped a thirteen-year-old girl a block away from here last month—forgive me if I offend your sensibilities. Her father went to the authorities, but he’s an Irish Catholic without tuppence to his name, so do you think they’re going to lift a finger to give the girl justice? Of course they won’t. That’s why he came to me—it’s just not worth it to them. But let Lady Sudeby lose a painting,” he yelled, flinging a gesture toward the Canaletto, “and those buffoons will turn the city upside down trying to find it. We’re fighting for our lives here, while your class can think of nothing but whether to furnish the new country house in the Chinese style or the Gothic!”

The room rang with his deep, impassioned shout.

She was silent for a moment, then shook her head. “I know there is injustice, Blade, but if you would use your head for a moment instead of your fists, you could easily see that you are far richer than most people, with your dozens of loyal mates and this place. You don’t understand because you’re
free
. You don’t have a hundred people breathing down your neck, watching your every move, waiting for you to make one mistake so they can throw you to the wolves.”

He was quiet for a second, studying her; then he shrugged. “I am sorry, my lady. Maybe you’re right— maybe we can’t understand each other. But I do know one thing. You’ve got far better chances of surviving in your world than you do in mine.”