Pleasures of a Tempted Lady (26 page)

“Yes.” He sighed and gently disentangled himself from her. “We started building the
Endeavor
almost two years ago, and we were planning to launch her in September.”

“That’s months away yet!” By then, Caversham certainly would have found them.

Will shrugged. “She can be launched early. The ship and engine are in working order now—they’re just making the finishing touches to the hull and the interior.”

“A steamship, Will? I’d never have expected that of you.”

“Steam is the future, Meg. My business won’t continue to be profitable if I stubbornly resist newer and better inventions.”

“How sad to think of all our sleek, quiet, beautiful sailing vessels replaced by those ugly, noisy, dirty steamships,” Meg murmured.

“I know.”

Slowly, Meg nodded. “Well… Liverpool is close, isn’t it?”

“Just over an hour away by carriage.”

She breathed out, her idea sprouting into a thin vine that wrapped around her heart and squeezed.

“When can we go?”

Will thought for a moment. “Well, Stratford said Caversham has only recently arrived in London. Most likely, it’ll take him several days before he realizes you and Jake aren’t there, and another several before he learns where we’ve gone. I’ll need to get the
Endeavor
launched and provisioned with a crew and enough supplies for us to be at sea for some time. I will have to travel into Liverpool every day for a few days to make sure it is all done correctly.” He hesitated, his eyes narrowed as he calculated. “If we start preparing immediately, I believe we can be ready in ten days’ time.”

“It’s risky,” she murmured. “If Caversham were to find us before we left…”

Will shook his head, somber. “He won’t. It’s simply not enough time.”

And she knew what she must do. Her plan had grown and blossomed in her mind, now fully mature. Will might hate her for it, but it was the only way she could keep him safe.

Pain, regret, and love for him swirled within her, and she made no effort to resist any of it. She surged toward him, wrapped her hands around his neck, and pulled him down for a kiss. He kissed her back, then pulled away a little. “Meg—the boys,” he whispered against her lips.

“They’ve gone riding. Didn’t you hear them?”

“Mmm.” This time, he initiated the kiss, and she wrapped her fingers in the silky strands of his black hair and kissed him back. But in a matter of seconds, he pulled away again. “The servants?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Shhh.” Taking his hand, she led him out of the parlor. Molly and the cook were in the kitchen laughing about
something, so Meg turned to go up the stairs. She steered him to his room this time because she knew Molly would never dare enter Will’s space without an explicit order to do so.

She pulled him inside, then shut the door behind them with her foot. She leaned against the door, looking at him through her lashes, wanting him so badly—one more time—that her body vibrated with need.

He was staring at her. “What are you doing, Meg?”

“I want you,” she said simply.

He blew out a breath. She could see the ridge of his erection behind his trousers and knew that he was as aroused as she. And yet he didn’t step toward her.

She kicked off her shoes, then shimmied out of her drawers. Slowly, she lifted the hem of her dress over her stocking until she showed him her bare thigh. “I want you,” she repeated.

He stared at her thigh for a long moment, his gaze raw with hunger, then he slowly dragged his head up to look at her. She saw something else in his eyes, however, something deeper than hunger. Pain.

Her fingers loosened, and her skirt fell to the floor. Her heart swelled in her chest, on the verge of breaking apart. “What’s wrong?” Her voice was a croaking whisper.

“I want you… God.” He pushed a harsh hand through his hair. “But not like this.” He took a deep breath, and when she was silent, he continued, “I’ve told you before—I don’t want a liaison. I want something more. I want a partnership. A wife. Someone who will offer me her love and trust without boundaries or conditions.”

She gazed at him, her eyes burning.

“I can’t accept a partner who doesn’t look at me
as I look at her. Who won’t trust me, share her deepest thoughts and fears with me, and who won’t turn to me first when something is wrong.” He shook his head. “I cannot—I won’t—do it.”

She pushed off the door with her elbows and went to him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her lips to his chest. She peppered kisses to his coat, feeling his pectoral muscle clenching beneath her lips. “You don’t understand. I love you so much. So much.”

“You might feel that way at this moment. But not forever.”

She flinched, pulled away, and looked up at him, holding her hands flat against his chest. “I do want you forever,” she whispered. “I… just… Marriage… it seemed like too much, too soon. Not when I’m running from Caversham. Not now.”

He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes dark. “And when it’s all over with Caversham?”

She pressed her forehead against the hardness of his chest and closed her eyes. Her cynical side threatened to rear its ugly head, screaming,
It’ll never be over! You’ll always be under Caversham’s control! You’ll always be running!
But she refused to heed that voice right now. “We can try to build the partnership you’re talking about.”

“There will always be a Caversham, Meg. There will always be something or someone trying to get between us. There are always challenges. But a real relationship succeeds when partners work together to overcome them.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” But she had. She’d kept everything to herself in a weak attempt to protect him. Why was it that she just seemed to cause more pain
wherever she went, when her only goal was to save the people she loved from pain?

She wanted to be with him. She wanted to have the kind of life they were pretending to live, and she wanted a partnership. But she couldn’t stop herself from thinking it was all one vast illusion, a pretense, a screen temporarily blocking her from the harshness of the real world.

“I want the kind of marriage you’re talking about. I do.” Maybe, just for a moment, she could be a dreamer, like he was.

He pulled away from her, took her by the shoulders, and stared down at her, his eyes dark as coal. “Is that the truth?”

“Yes.” It was a simple word, and she wasn’t lying. One day, when all of this was over and Caversham was no longer a threat, maybe they could marry and have the kind of marriage he was talking about. That would be heaven. Bliss.

He groaned softly and crushed his mouth to hers, his kiss hard, possessive, consuming. After a moment, he pulled back. He didn’t speak, but the question—the vulnerability—was there, deep in his eyes.

She kissed his lips, his cheek, and his chin, his afternoon beard scraping against her mouth. Her hands moved lower, stroking over first his back and then his backside, and her lips moved lower, too, kissing his chest over the linen of his shirt.

There was no time for shyness. No space for being tentative. She had to show him, had to prove that every word she’d said was the truth. Because unless she proved it to him now, when she left him, he’d think she didn’t care.

She was doing it to keep him safe. Not because she didn’t care, but because she did.

She tugged at his shirt, pulling it from the waistband of his trousers. Her hands moved up again, this time beneath his shirt, stroking up and down his back and then moving to the front. He shivered when her palms rubbed over his chest.

Her fingers found the ties of his falls, and she worked them, finally tugging them open and pushing the waist of his trousers down, revealing everything to her as she knelt, pulling his drawers and trousers along with her. When she reached his ankles, she nudged him aside, and he stepped out of them.

When he was free of his trousers, she looked up at him, now naked except for his shirt. Reaching beneath it, she stroked the long, hard length of him, feeling the silkiness of his most private skin beneath her fingers. Slowly, she kissed her way up his legs. Her lips traveled around his hips and abdomen over his shirt, and then she pressed a kiss to his shaft.

He jerked beneath her. “God, Meg,” he gasped. And she knew, with certainty, that this wasn’t only a first for her. He’d never had a woman’s mouth on this part of him before.

That fact gave her confidence to explore further. Nudging under his shirt, she swiped her lips up and down him slowly, learning the shape of him, testing with her tongue. She kissed him all over—small, soft kisses that covered him up and down. And then she was at his tip again.

Pausing, she glanced up at him. His eyes were half-closed, and a look of utter ecstasy softened his features.
Yes
. Sarah had told her that men adored this, that it gave
them extreme pleasure, and now she knew that her friend had been right.

Slowly, she opened her mouth and took him in deeply, as much of him as she could hold in her mouth, pressing her lips against him just as the entrance of her body might press against him. When she had him as far as she could take him, she pulled back, keeping up the pressure, sweeping her lips and tongue over his silky length.

Encouraged by his low groan, she kept moving her lips over him, following with her fingers, rubbing and stroking. Her own body heat rose from the inside out, as if having him in her mouth was sending a message to the rest of her, preparing her body for his ultimate invasion.

His fingers tangled in her hair, coaxing her closer, deeper. She complied, but within moments, he pulled his body away from her with a gasp. Before she could blink, he’d clasped her arms and hauled her to her feet. Drawing her against his body, he held her and kissed her deeply, thoroughly, and she realized he was moving forward and pressing her against the door.

Wrapping one hand behind her neck, he grabbed handfuls of her skirts with the other, yanking them upward. Crushing the fabric between them, he opened her legs with his knee and drove into her.

She hadn’t expected this—not so fast. But her body gave way to his, filling her with such a powerful, exquisite sensation that she cried out. He bent down and covered her mouth with his, muffling the sound.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and wantonly hooked one leg around his thighs, tugging him tighter against her. He thrust into her, pinning her to the door, and pleasure stormed through her, a veritable flood
of sensation. They exchanged mad kisses, covering each other’s faces, their necks, their collarbones, their lips ravenous.

All the while, Will thrust his long, thick length into her over and over again. The friction of his skin against hers sent streams of pressure that built, with every deep penetration, into a torrent.

She gripped him hard, digging her nails into his muscled shoulders through his shirt. Her skirt rustled all around them with their frantic movements. She kept kissing him, wanting to inhale him, to take his masculine, salty essence in and keep it for herself.

His thrusts grew impossibly deeper, impossibly stronger. The streams of pressure coiling inside her built and coalesced. And then the dam burst, and pleasure streamed through her. Opening her mouth in a silent scream, she arched backward, her body undulating as Will continued to move powerfully within her. He held her tight, keeping her safe, keeping her whole, as she tumbled over the waterfall, diving into the warm pool of pleasure that covered her, suffused every inch of her body.

Soon after, Will joined her, tensing as he held her tight, pressing his lips to her forehead as his body hardened all over. And then he released in his own wave of pleasure, trembling as he spilled his seed inside her.

They stayed there, without moving, for several minutes, sweet aftershocks rumbling through them both, neither willing to relinquish the pleasure while it lasted. But eventually the tremors died away, and Meg’s leg lowered from Will’s thigh and her arms slid from his neck. Her skirts fell as he slipped from her body and moved away. She slumped against the door, watching him as he
fumbled for his trousers, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled them on, one leg at a time.

After he’d stood and fastened them, he looked across the room at her and smiled. It was a crooked, boyish smile, something she hadn’t seen from him for eight long years. It melted her. He rose, and she moved into his arms. There they stood, simply holding each other.

Forgive me, Will, for what I’m going to do. You might hate me, but at least you’ll be alive.

Jessica did not want to go to Sussex. It was for stronger reasons than she’d initially thought. She could do without the dancing and the suitors, after all.

She would be stuck at Stratford House in Sussex. Helpless. She’d rather be with David, helping him find evidence against Caversham and the Marquis of Millbridge. She desperately wanted both of them to hang for what they’d done to Meg and Serena.

Not to mention the fact that she very much wanted to stay near David Briggs.

In truth, she couldn’t understand why she’d initially found that scar above his eyebrow so ugly. Now, it struck her as a mark of his masculinity, proof of his bravery, and something that added a great deal of character to his face.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the softness of his lips.

When he came to see Jonathan to discuss the case against Caversham and Millbridge, she hovered nearby, serving them tea, listening to the conversation, and admiring Briggs’s physique. He was neither too brawny nor too thin. He was hard all over, as evidenced by the
firmness of muscle she’d seen when she’d stormed into his quarters and felt when she’d kissed him.

His eyes were a beautiful shade of blue, dark like the oceans he sailed upon, and they crinkled at the edges when he smiled. He had a strong nose and chin, and those lips, oh, how they made her knees wobble. The perfect bow, not thin like so many aristocratic men’s lips, but plump, soft, and warm. And sweet. When she’d kissed him, it felt like honey had been pouring over her lips and straight through her.

He was—somehow—
more
than all the suitors she’d acquired in London ballrooms. More than all of them combined.