The Danger of Desire (34 page)

It was pure, dark, unadulterated bliss, deeply carnal and undeniably pleasurable. He found himself holding her head in his hands, pulling the pins from her carefully arranged hair and trailing his fingers through the soft, fine, short strands, then letting the silk glide through his fingers as she pleasured him. Her soft, sweet mouth was hot and tight; her tongue and teeth pushed his bliss higher and higher until he was forgetting himself, losing grasp of reality. Losing touch with everything but Meggs and the roiling, churning chaos of pleasure ripping through his body.

The first wave of his orgasm was just beginning to roar through his body, when there was a succinct rap at the wooden door to his right.

“Hugh?”

Holy fucking—He swiveled instantly so that his back was to the door and Meggs was hidden from potential sight. His hand tightened against her head, not allowing her to withdraw or move so much as an inch.

“Do not open that door.” He spoke quietly, but there was no question but that it was a command.

“Hugh, I must say this—”

“Go away, Mother.”

“Hugh, this will not do. There are rules, and I know you were raised to obey them. I am counting on you to be a gentleman and behave yourself. Now, get yourself out of that closet immediately, before I have—Just put yourself to rights and get back to the party. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am. Now go
away
.”

He waited until he could hear her footsteps retreating down the hallway. Despite his restraint, Meggs had pulled herself away.

“Sweet Jesus God, I’ll never be able to look at that woman in the face again.” Her voice was shaky and she was clambering to her feet, inadvertently brushing up against him. “I should not have done that.”

“No,” he lied, pitching his voice low. “You shouldn’t.” His hands stopped her from rearranging her bodice. “It was very wrong of you. And I daresay it was very wrong of me, as well.”

“Yes.” But her voice was breathy and perhaps a little unsure. “I should go.”

“You should,” he agreed again, but his fingers were tracing the tight peaks of her exposed nipples, and her breathing fractured into shards. And he was no better, his unfulfilled release still humming through the bones under his muscles. “But you’re not going anywhere,” he growled. “Not with your talk of dirty things and liking to fuck. Not with your breasts so exposed and responsive to my touch.”

Her breathing broke apart, gasping and labored as he continued to caress her. Hugh ran his rough palms up the long slide of her neck, framing her jaw in his hands before he speared his hands through her unruly, disheveled hair. He loved the way it felt sliding through his fingers.

“You got to do what you wanted to do, before we were so rudely interrupted, and now I’m going to do what I want. And what I want is to turn you around so I can bite your neck.” He turned her hips, nudged her a little roughly against the wall, and set his teeth lightly to her nape. It was only a little nip. “To mark you,” he whispered in her ear. “As mine.”

Meggs made a needy, greedy little sound of surrender, and Hugh felt such a welling of almost savage lust, he feared he could not hold it back. But he had gone too far for restraint now. He took up her hands and raised them over her head against the wall.

“Put your hands here and don’t move,” he ordered.

But Meggs wasn’t the sort of girl who took orders easily. “And what if I don’t?”

He pushed his hand into the small of her back, pinning her against the wall. “Clever girl to ask,” he whispered, crowding against her. “What happens if you take down your hands, or move so much as an inch, is that I won’t fuck you.”

“But we can’t—”

“I think we can. I know I can. I think I will.” And he began to gather up the yards of materials that made up her skirts and petticoats, rucking them up, until he could feel her sweetly round bottom filling his hands.

He ground himself into her, bending her like a sail as he reached lower to touch her. His fingers found the slick opening of her body and stroked her until she was wet to his touch and ready for him.

“Yes,” she begged on a ragged whisper. “Touch me. Please.”

He heard the whispered plea, and dark heat consumed him. He did as she bid, sliding himself into the tight, exquisite constriction of her body. She was lush and small and perfect, urging him toward the heathen darkness of his soul with her carnal words.

He should teach her not to talk like that. He should teach her to say other things, softer, gentler words for the beauty of her body.

But not now. Now, he would glory in the dark, forbidden pleasure her whispers brought. He would let go of all the constraints of civilized behavior. He would fuck her as she had asked, as he wanted to, rocking into her, pressing her hard against the wall and stamping her with his possession.

His hands were grasping her hips, holding her still before him, and still she arched back and pushed her sweet arse against his loins, asking with her body for more, for everything he could give her.

She bucked and undulated and whimpered so sweetly, he ground his teeth against the idiotic, paradoxical rush of tenderness. He let go of her hips and rounded his arms around under her upper arms and shoulders, and into her hair. He fisted his hands in the silken strands, tugging her head back so he could tongue and kiss her. To cover her soft mobile lips and fall into the infinite sweetness of her mouth and the clinging velvet of her tongue.

He felt as though he were on fire, flames seeping out of his skin. His clothes were too tight, and yet he would not let go of her to take them off. He could not, for even an instant, forgo a fraction of the bliss pouring through his veins, pumping physical rapture through his body.

Her hands were still over her head, but she pressed them into the wall, pushing herself off as she thrashed back against him. He brought his palms to her breasts, roughly pinching her nipples between his finger and thumb, and she made a soft exultation of unbearable ecstasy as she came. Her womb convulsed around him, and a tumult built within until it became a raging riot of deafening sound and overwhelming feeling. He joined her climax, flinging himself into her with annihilating abandon.

It was many, many minutes before the crescendo of their labored breathing began to abate. Hugh turned Meggs around and gathered her to him. He would help her put her clothes back to rights in another moment or two. But not yet. Not until the last flare of rapture had faded like twilight out of his bones.

“Lass,” he managed as their gasps subsided. “Did I hurt you? Are you all right?”

“No. Yes,” she answered, and her head fell against his heaving chest. “I’ve never been so right in all my life.”

CHAPTER 24

M
eggs wasn’t exactly sure what to do with all the country outside the windows. The other young people seemed to think almost nothing of bundling up and tromping off across a pasture to go to the village, but Meggs was vaguely overwhelmed by all the snow and trees. She had longed for this, to be in the country, for so long, but she had forgotten how ...
real
it was, how quickly one might lose one’s way when one didn’t know the landmarks, or how cold it was when the wind blew hard across the fields unbuffered by building or walls.

And only people who owned more than one set of boots could contemplate such a frigid walk. Despite the fact that she was currently clothed as finely as any of the angelic young ladies and their choir boys, she was not one of them. She could not be. She did not own any of it. She was a thief. And she had chosen to become what she was, and no matter what Hugh so obviously wanted her to become, there could be no turning back. She knew now that she had been foolish to dream of it, foolish to try. She would never be able to wash away the years of crime and misery with a few foolish weeks at a house party.

She wandered back through the house, glad of the solitude. Glad for the time to sift through all the conflicting feelings being there, in a house in the country, brought out. To sort through the memories rising around her like ghosts. Meggs wandered into the music room, drawn by its soothing green color and plush velvet chairs. It was airy and lovely, with a large, floor-to-ceiling bay window overlooking the snowy lawn. Meggs let her fingers glide over the keys of the beautiful pianoforte, lightly so no sound would come out of the keys.

It had been so long since she’d even seen, much less sat down at, such an instrument. She slid onto the bench and quietly, very tentatively, played a single note. The tone bounded out of the pianoforte, resounding and dancing about the room playfully.

How often had she pictured her mother seated thus? She could see her in her mind’s eye, so slight, almost fragile, so beautiful and happy sitting at the pianoforte in the back parlor of the rectory. The light used to come in over her head, from behind, lighting up her hair, all golden in the afternoon light.

Meggs moved her fingers onto the keys and hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she could remember. But she could remember the scales. She picked her way up one, awkward and off time, but she kept at it, warming her fingers up, and then up and down the keyboard she went three times, with increasing speed and agility. How did it go, the song her mother used to play—that beautiful
impromptu
she would play for Father? It had been so long. Meggs hummed along, trying to pick out the notes, letting the tune flow up through her mind, letting the beauty of the music wrap around her and pull her in. Indulging in memories best left forgotten.

Hugh returned to the house through a side door after two hours of tromping through the snow, strengthening his leg and working off his lust. After yesterday’s encounter, it was a wonder he didn’t simply burst into flame any time he saw or even thought about Meggs. His mother could find him by the trail of smoke and dust he left in his wake.

As he closed the door behind him, he heard music, tentative but wending its way slowly through the corridors. But all the bright young things were out—he had seen them across the fields. Curiosity, or instinct, had him following the sound until he pushed open the door to find Meggs seated at a pianoforte. Her head was bent down, gazing in concentration at the keys as she picked her way slowly, but surely, through a passage, and then, with more assurance, began the melody over again.

His heart kicked over at the implication. Meggs was playing. She played the pianoforte. She had had training. She had at one time in her life lived with an instrument. She was playing a piece of baroque music with a delicacy and refinement completely at odds with the position in which he found her. Everything—her rough accent, the speed and efficiency of her larcenous skills. Her unabashed embrace of her criminality. The lack of any sort of moral compass—everything he knew of her was completely at odds with what he was hearing.

And then his eyes moved from her hands, her lovely, agile, quick hands, to her face. As she settled into the piece, she closed her eyes and a smile blossomed across her lips, and transformed her countenance into a beacon of transcendent joy. It was so intimate, so personal a joy, he felt he ought to look away, but knew he could not. Beauty unfolded over him as if she plucked and strummed something, some chord deep within him.

And as he watched, a tear formed in the corner of her eye, a momentary glitter of water that fell in a single drop down her cheek. Hugh was stunned. What ghost of memory had the music called up from her past? If he hadn’t seen it himself—that moment of wistful longing—he would have thought he imagined it. He hadn’t thought she had a wistful bone in her body.

He had pushed off the wall and was striding toward her. “Meggs.”

“Oh! Hugh!” She abandoned the pianoforte and came toward him in a careless rush that made his heart too glad.

“Where did you learn to play?”

Everything open and glad in her face shuttered down in an instant. She turned away and indicated the instrument with a careless shrug. “Here and there. Old Nan’s trick. Good for the fingers, she used to say. Helps to keep them strong and quick. Got an old banger from some gin house, I reckon. Nypers all over Seven Dials tickling the ivories.”

She was lying. However much it might actually be true that old Nan might have gotten ahold of an instrument to strengthen her kiddies’ hands, Meggs was hiding something.

“Meggs. Where did you learn to play?” he repeated.

She darted a glance at him under her brows, at once mutinous and wary. “If you must know, s’pose it was me mum. I remember she were a fair hand.” Her accent slipped back into the cadence of cant.

“Don’t.” He moved closer to look into her eyes. “You don’t need to talk like that.”

A door opened down the corridor. Meggs’s eyes went to the door and stayed there even as she answered him. “I can’t be what I’m not. Not with you. I can’t.”

She was backing away from him. He stayed her with a hand. “Meggs. Please. I beg you.”

She was there in a soft rush, in his arms, pressing her plush lips to his in a bittersweet kiss. But still, he wanted to devour her. He wanted to take her mouth in a way that told her there could be no more half truths and evasions between them. “Meggs, you trust me with your body, why won’t you trust me with what’s in your past?”

“Please,” she begged in a soft whisper, “don’t ask me. Because if I let you, you will break my heart.” And as the footsteps drew nearer, she turned and fled the room.

Dinner was not comfortable. Meggs had been seated next to the earnest local clergyman, the Reverend Mr. Phelps, who seemed to regard her with trepidation. She had hoped to be seated nearer to Hugh so she might try to talk to him. To make him understand the way it stood with her. She had taken great pains with her dress for the evening, hoping her outward appearance would bolster her confidence, but he was staring reproachful daggers at her across the table. She took a quick swallow of claret and vainly searched her mind for suitably innocuous topics of conversation.

“Do you have a particular favorite among the gospels, Mr. Phelps?”