Touch of a Thief (6 page)

“At least my reasons for wanting the red diamond have nothing to do with my own needs.”

He realized suddenly that he was still wearing his greatcoat and the cabin was becoming deucedly warm. Or perhaps it was just because he was in it with a beautiful, barely dressed woman. He shrugged out of the coat and hung it on a peg behind him.

“You didn’t have to resort to thievery to provide for your family, you know. A woman has other options. Marriage, for example.”

“Not if her dowry has disappeared in a blink.” She’d been all ginger sauce up to that point, spicy but not the least sour. The sudden bitterness in her tone surprised him.

“You’re undoubtedly well educated. You might have become a governess.”

“How deliciously lowering. The earl’s daughter takes a position tending a baron’s brats.” She laughed mirthlessly. “The ton would have eaten that for breakfast with a spoon.”

“There’s another choice they’d consider even more lowering, but some women make it.”

Quinn wondered, not for the first time, about her level of sensual experience. She was old for a debutante, probably in her mid-twenties, and hadn’t been under a man’s protection since her father died. When he’d insisted on sharing the cabin with her, she had protested, but not with a virgin’s horror at the scandal of it or with demands that he marry in truth to protect her good name.

And she kissed like a woman who knew what passion was.

“Are you suggesting I sell myself, Lieutenant?”

“As frank a woman as you are, I’m certain you considered it.” He moved closer and realized she was trembling a bit but trying to control it. “You’d cut a wide swath through the demimonde. A gentleman with plump pockets would snap you up in a heartbeat to keep you—”

“As his own private plaything,” she finished for him.

“His cosseted, protected, adored plaything. You could name your own terms. What man wouldn’t want you? You’re wellborn . . . beautiful . . . accomplished . . .” Without conscious volition, he found himself reaching to cup her cheek. She didn’t pull away. In fact, she inhaled a hitching breath when his thumb feathered over her skin. “Passionate.”

“How could you know that?” she whispered, her lips barely moving.

He bent to lower his lips to within inches of hers. “A man just knows.”

Then to his very great surprise, she slipped her fingers under his lapels and stood on tiptoe. Eyes wide open, she closed the distance between their mouths.

I ’m
going straight to hell.

Quinn’s kisses melted her insides so thoroughly, she almost didn’t care.

Her fingers fluttered down his chest, unbuttoning his jacket. Such strong, hard muscles laid beneath that fine lawn shirt. He cinched her tighter to him and she felt a rock-hard bulge in his trousers. Warmth collected between her thighs. She arched into him and rocked her pelvis against him slowly.

He all but growled into her mouth.

That deep ache began to throb in her private place. Hollow. Empty. Needy.

It was wrong for a woman to even have such needs, much less act upon them. Home and family. Those should be her chief concerns.

“Think of the joy a child will bring you and you’ll find you can bear those wifely duties,” her mother had warned her when she explained the expectations a man has of the woman he marries.

The act was something to be endured with gritted teeth and grim determination.

Not sought out with such languid abandon.

Viola might have been born a lady, gently reared and overprotected, but Nature had played a cruel trick on her.

A wanton lived inside her skin.

Quinn’s arms tensed around her. His hands slid down to cup her bum, fondling and lifting. He raised her up, grinding her against his hardness. She hooked an ankle around his leg and moved in rhythm with him.

He lowered her back down and released her lips. His mouth traveled down her neck to the tops of her breasts. She closed her eyes in bliss. Oh, there were his hands, stroking and circling. He parted the robe, unhooking the cord frogs down to her waist. Her nipples strained through the thin silk of her nightgown, aching for him to touch them, to squeeze them.
Oh, please.
To suck.

Quinn thumbed the pearl buttons and her nightgown fell open for him. He plunged his hand into her bodice. She spiraled down into a hot dark place. His mouth followed his hand, finding her taut nipple and suckling it. He nipped her and she gasped at the fiery jolt of need that arced from her breast to her womb.

They moved across the small space, a slow-motion dance of lust leading them toward the bed. It would all happen and Viola was powerless to stop it.

Didn’t want to stop it.

Then suddenly, there was a sharp rap on the door. Quinn’s head snapped up. “Who is it?” he demanded, his voice passionragged.

“Your dinner, sahib. It is ready to be served.”

The Hindu’s words were a dash of cold water.

“Give us a moment, Sanjay,” Quinn ordered.

Viola turned away from Quinn and tucked her exposed breasts back into her nightgown. Her swollen nipples throbbed for more of his rough attention. She pressed her palms flat against both breasts to still the ache.

Quinn wrapped his arms around her from behind and planted a soft kiss on her shoulder. “Are you all right?” Reaching around to rehook the frogs on the robe for her, his heart pounded against her spine.

She took a shuddering breath. “I shall have to be, shan’t I?”

He left her then and opened the door to his servant.

Viola kept her back turned to the men and stared at a knot in the wood of the bulkhead above the bunk. It seemed safer than facing anyone while her heart raced in her chest and echoed between her legs.

She heard the clink of silverware, the snap of fresh napkins being folded just so, the chatter of a cup settling into a saucer. The rich, hearty smell of chowder tickled her nostrils. One of the men eased a cork from a bottle and a faint alcoholic haze wafted toward her.

But none of it cooled the heat in her cheeks.

Could Quinn’s servant scent a whiff of her arousal over the yeasty aroma of bread and cheese? Or hear her blood pounding in her veins?

The servant murmured his salaams and she turned her head enough to catch the narrow-eyed glare he sent in her direction. She jerked her gaze away.

Then she heard the click of a latch. She and Quinn were alone once again.

And the madness was passing.

“He doesn’t like me a bit, does he?” She turned around to find Quinn holding a chair for her. The table was set with gleaming crystal and china.

“Sanjay doesn’t know you.”

“Neither do you.”

“Not yet. I intend to rectify that soon.” His eyes darkened with interest, but he seemed to have recovered from their lusty interlude. Did he still intend on
knowing
her in a manner most biblical?

He swept a correct bow. “Will you dine with me, Lady Viola?”

She swallowed hard and nodded. So formal. Evidently, he needed some distance between them while he decided what to do about what had just happened. Very well. If there was one thing she excelled in, it was distance. She settled into the proffered chair.

“Never say the captain of this vessel knows how to stock a table setting like this.”

“No, this is Sanjay’s doing.” Quinn took his seat opposite her. His face was as flushed as she suspected hers still was. “I’d just as soon travel with a tin plate and mug, but Sanjay keeps reminding me I’ll be a viscount one day. He insists on maintaining certain standards.”

“That makes one of us,” she murmured as he poured bloodred wine for them.

“There is nothing wrong with your standards. Or mine.” Quinn fastened his steely gaze on her, not pretending to misunderstand her. “We have done nothing for which we ought to be ashamed. I have not pledged faithfulness to another. Have you?”

“No.” Not now, at any rate.

“Then no one is damaged by our actions. We’re both adults. We have needs. If we decide to act upon them, it’s no one’s business but ours.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, we were victims of bad timing.”

She sipped the wine, which proved to be an excellent vintage, dusky and plummy with a hint of the oak cask in which it was aged. “Or fortuitous timing. We might have been making a grave error.”

“Do you think so?” Quinn filled each of their soup bowls from the filigreed tureen and set hers before her.

“I should amend that.” She blew on a spoonful from the steaming bowl. “
I
would be judged to have made a grave error. The world is quite accommodating of a man’s needs. It is both ignorant and condemning of a woman’s.”

“I’m not.” Quinn leaned back in his chair, sipped his wine to test its worth, then drained the goblet. A smile lifted his lips. “In fact, I do everything in my power to encourage a woman to acknowledge her needs.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.” She arched a cynical brow. “How very enlightened of you.”

“No, merely practical.” He hitched his chair forward and dove into his soup bowl with gusto. “It’s folly to imagine that the Creator who gave men their primal urges failed to give women similar inclinations to match.”

“A convenient philosophy.” But certainly not one she’d ever heard expounded by her vicar. “Has it eased your way into many women’s beds?”

“Careful.” He scraped his spoon along the bottom of the bowl. “Are you sure you wish to open our past sensual experiences to question? I might ask about the first man you took to your bed.”

Did carnal knowledge leave a mark for the world to read? If so, it seemed her Scarlet A was showing. “Why do you assume there’s been a man in my bed?”

“Your kiss.”

“I may simply be the flirtatious sort who knows her way around a man’s lips.”

“Perhaps, but you aren’t. There’s nothing of the coquette about you.” Quinn removed the lid from the chafing dish and filled each of their plates with bread, cheese, and a slice of shepherd’s pie. “If I were a betting man, I’d stake a considerable sum that you are a sadder, but wiser girl.”

Viola blinked hard and focused her attention on her plate. His assessment was disturbingly accurate.

“Let us say for the sake of argument that I am not the virgin society demands I remain until my wedding day.”

She clipped her words as she chopped the cheese into bite-sized chunks. She didn’t think she’d be able to stomach them, but it gave her hands something to do that would keep her from wanting to scratch his eyes out simply because he was the closest available male.

“Let us imagine that I accepted a proposal of marriage from a fine, upstanding fellow with aspirations to a title and a reputation as sterling as the British pound. Let us further suppose that I was giddy and foolish enough to believe him when he said he would love me all the more if I offered proof of my regard for him prior to our nuptials.”

Quinn’s lips drew together in a grim line.

“Then suppose my intended cried off on our engagement when my father died suddenly and he learned that my generous dowry would not be forthcoming.” She sawed a bite from her pie and speared it with her fork, but couldn’t bring herself to raise it to her lips. “I believe it was Sir Francis Bacon who said ‘Knowledge is power.’ Such knowledge should make me immune to your—how did you put it?—encouraging me to acknowledge my needs.”

“On the contrary. Lack of a maidenhead gives a woman the same freedom as a man.”

Quinn was apparently the sort to rush in where angels fear to tread. He didn’t heed the warning sign she was sure must be affixed to her forehead.

“After the first one, another bed partner more or less”—he sopped up the gravy from his pie with the bread—“doesn’t do any further damage.”

“Then you think I’m damaged.”

“I didn’t say that.” He looked up sharply and seemed to suddenly realize he teetered on the edge of a verbal precipice. She could almost see him dig in his heels to keep from tumbling off. He dragged a hand through his dark hair. “I think we’re all damaged, one way or another. Some types are just easier to guess at than others.”

“Really.” She laid her fork aside. “How are you damaged, Quinn?”

He refilled his wineglass and drained it in one long gulp. “I find excessive conversation interferes with digestion, don’t you?”

“Not particularly.” She popped the bite of pie into her mouth. Now that she had him on the defensive, she found she could eat the food before her with relish. “Would you like me to guess?”

When he didn’t answer, she plowed ahead.

“Since you seem to intensely dislike your sire, I can only assume something happened with your father. A secret. Something no one else knows.” She tried the cheese and found it sharp and crumbly, just as she liked it. “But you know. And it’s eating you up.”

Quinn pulled his napkin from his neck and dropped it across his plate. He pushed back from the table and stood. “I typically take a walk after the evening meal. Please do not feel the need to wait up. If you will excuse me—”

“No, Quinn, I won’t. I won’t excuse you. Why do you expect me to share your bed if you won’t share the least bit of yourself with me?”

He gave a puzzled shake of his head. “If we shared a bed, you may be certain I would share myself.”

“Your body, perhaps.” She rose to her feet. “But that’s not all there is to you.”

“You’re muddying the issue,” Quinn said. “I suppose I can’t blame you, given your history with that cad. He never should have given you those expectations.”

“So you imagine I would bed you with
no
expectations?”

“Of course not.” He came around to her side of the table and looked down at her. “You should expect pleasure.”

He lifted a lock of her hair to his lips and kissed it. “Reams of pleasure.”

His fingertips brushed her cheek, traveled down her neck and feathered along the top of her bodice. “Bliss.”

He circled her nipples with both hands through the velvet and they rose to meet him, aching for his touch. “A full measure of bliss. Abundant. Pressed down and running over.”

He kissed her, open-mouthed, his tongue making love to hers. One hand left a breast and skimmed over her ribs, past her navel and settled on her sex. Then he slipped his hand through the slit in her robe and cupped her vulva through her thin nightgown.

Oh, God
. He’d feel how wet she was.

“You should expect ecstasy, Viola,” Quinn said as his fingers stroked her through the silk, leaving a damp spot. “Not once, but many times. You may plead for me to stop, but I haven’t a drop of mercy in me. I’ll drive you to joy till you’re screaming my name. What do you say? Shall I take you there?”

She closed her eyes, aching to let him. He kissed her again and began hitching her nightgown higher. When his hand slipped under her hem and his fingers invaded her, it took every ounce of strength she possessed to grasp his wrist.

“No,” she whispered.

He flicked a fingertip over her sensitive spot and she shuddered.

“No.” She pushed against his chest. “I can’t do this. Not without knowing who you are.”

“You knew who your fiancé was, didn’t you?” He removed his hand and let her nightgown’s hem billow to her feet. “By your own admission that didn’t end well.”

“No, as it turns out, I didn’t know Neville at all. And I will not make the same mistake with you.”

“I have no intention of marrying, so I wouldn’t offer you a false promise,” Quinn said.

“I don’t need a promise. I just need honesty.”

“What’s more honest than this?”

“Nothing if you think we are no more than what we can see. You won’t offer me yourself. Only your body.” She ran her hands across his shoulders and down his arms. “Magnificent as you are, tempting as you are, that’s not enough.”