Touch of Rogue (10 page)
Authors: Mia Marlowe
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Historical Romance
“I’d kiss you everywhere,” he whispered.
Good heavens ... everywhere!
Her insides churned with warmth and a dull ache. The low throb that had started between her legs when he first began stroking her wrist now had become a determined drum beat.
Her insides churned with warmth and a dull ache. The low throb that had started between her legs when he first began stroking her wrist now had become a determined drum beat.
Even ... everywhere?
“In my imaginings, you enjoy my intimate attentions quite a bit,” he said, tugging off one of his gloves. “Do you think you would?”
Everywhere.
She swallowed hard. She’d had her share of lovers, but no one had ever kissed her ...
everywhere.
“Did you enjoy it?”
She swallowed hard. She’d had her share of lovers, but no one had ever kissed her ...
everywhere.
“Did you enjoy it?”
“More than breathing,” he assured her and lowered his mouth to claim hers in a hot kiss.
C
HAPTER
9
HAPTER
9
T
he carriage rumbled over the cobbles, sending vibrations through the padded seats. How easily they’d fallen into the rolling motion of the coach last time. How easy it would be to do it again.
he carriage rumbled over the cobbles, sending vibrations through the padded seats. How easily they’d fallen into the rolling motion of the coach last time. How easy it would be to do it again.
She couldn’t get enough of him. His tongue teased her mouth, dipping in shallow, then plunging in deep. She suckled him, welcomed him. He scraped his teeth lightly over her lips and her breath hissed in.
Would he kiss her like that
everywhere
?
everywhere
?
She imagined Jacob’s mouth on her there. Kissing, sucking, licking. The thought made her light-headed. Her thighs parted slightly of their own accord.
Then she felt his hand under her skirt and it was no mere thought. He was sliding past her knee, up her thigh, on his way to ...
everywhere
.
everywhere
.
Oh, the wretched, blasted
... His fingers found the slit in the crotch of her all-in-one ...
blessed man.
... His fingers found the slit in the crotch of her all-in-one ...
blessed man.
She should have realized from her days in the theatre this could happen once he started to recount his nighttime fantasies. Every actor knew what the mind imagines, the body makes real. It was why she was utterly spent at the end of each performance. She’d lived a lifetime in the space of a few hours and her body didn’t know it was pretend.
Jacob’s talk of what he would do to her naked on his bed made her body respond as if he had already done it.
“Julianne.” When he broke off the kiss to press his mouth on her cheeks, her closed eyelids, her temple, the way he said her name still echoed in her mind.
It only seemed right for her to respond with his. She murmured his name, chanted it.
He made her want. Outrageous things. Indecent things. Filthy, wicked, lovely things.
His fingers whipped her to aching fury. Her body tightened, coiling in on itself seeking release, as her mind wandered a dark hallway with only one exit.
In her other affairs, she’d held a portion of herself apart, a solid inviolable core no one had ever touched. Jacob wouldn’t allow it. She couldn’t hold back under his relentless onslaught. Bit by bit, little pieces of her dropped away and she was helpless to pull herself together enough to shelter that exposed bit of her soul. A whimper escaped her lips, a helpless needy sound.
Jacob growled in response as he drove her forward.
Harder, faster,
she pleaded silently.
she pleaded silently.
Julianne balanced on the edge, teetering for a few heartbeats, then her body loosened its last hold on reality and she fell headlong into Jacob’s fantasy. His mouth was everywhere and she bloomed beneath it.
She came undone under his imagined intimate kiss. Her inner contractions made her whole body shudder in release. She called out, louder than she should as the coach rattled along, but she couldn’t help it. She practically sang Jacob’s name as her insides continued to pound, all the shattered bits of her flying away.
His kiss and deft touch drew out her climax, extending the bliss far longer than she’d ever dreamed possible. Just when she thought it was subsiding, a fresh wave started and she jerked with renewed inner spasms.
Then finally the madness began to recede and there was only his soft kiss, gentle on her lips now, and his warm hand holding her mound through the thin linen of her undergarment. Her cheeks were damp with tears squeezed from her tightly closed eyes. Somehow, all the pieces of her that shattered during her release had reassembled into a glowing whole.
She was shaken, but perfectly at peace. Balanced, but undone in ways she’d never imagined.
Then Julianne realized with a start that the coach had come to a halt.
“Are we there?” she asked shakily.
“Oh, I think it’s safe to say one of us was there and back again.” Jacob grinned and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “But yes, we’ve also reached Lord Digory’s town house. Don’t worry. We haven’t been stopped here for more than a few minutes.”
A few minutes! Anyone walking by might have heard her cry out
in extremis
. She pushed at his arm so he was no longer cradling her sex in his palm.
in extremis
. She pushed at his arm so he was no longer cradling her sex in his palm.
“It’s all right, Julianne,” he said softly, as if she were a spooked mare. “Take the time you need to collect yourself. All the best people come fashionably late to these sort of things, you know.”
“Whereas I’ve come much too early.” The words were out of her mouth before she thought better of them.
Jacob laughed. “Is that a joke? I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“No, it’s not a joke,” she snapped. He’d invaded her mind with his imaginings and exposed her soul. Why did he act as if nothing of importance had happened? As if only her body was involved? “Why did you do that to me?”
“With you,” he corrected. “Not to you. And I don’t recall you protesting. I knew we wouldn’t have time for more, but it gives me pleasure to share your sensuality, Julianne.”
A curl had escaped her coiffure. He smoothed it back behind her ear.
“This is going to be a challenging evening,” he said softly. “I thought if you could start out feeling relaxed, it would be easier for you.”
Relaxed? In truth, it was more as if he’d primed the pump. Even though she’d experienced a life-changing release, an empty ache still throbbed in her womb. She needed Jacob inside her. If her body had its way, she’d order the driver to take them three times around the park again.
Maybe four.
Then his words sank into her brain more clearly. He seemed to think she was a nervous, flighty woman who must be handled.
“So you did this simply because you thought I ... needed it?”
Something in her tone must have sounded a warning.
“No, no, it’s not like that,” he said. “Hang it all, Julianne, I just wanted to touch you. Why must you make everything so complicated?”
He smoothed down her gown and put his glove back on. When he lifted the coach shades, she saw a steady stream of couples entering Lord Digory’s gaslit double doors.
“If you’re finished being difficult, do you think you’re ready to go in now?” he asked, a rasp of frustration in his tone.
“Of course,” she said, even though she suspected her knees would be wobbly.
Difficult, he says.
She’d show him difficult.
She’d show him difficult.
Jacob usually declined offers to dine because he couldn’t very well pull out his platinum fork at someone else’s elegantly set table. Lord Digory’s silverware had a rich patina, a classic design, and a long memory. Its pealing voice sang in Jacob’s head each time he lifted the soupspoon to his mouth.
He’d have a splitting headache by the end of the night, but there was no help for it. The silver didn’t have anything of importance to share with him, but images of past diners washed over him without relief. He tried not to wince. Julianne was doing her best to keep up the dinner conversation, but he had little to contribute. Jacob would be useless so long as he was fighting the metal around him.
Good thing the replica of the dagger tucked inside his vest was thoroughly sheathed in leather or he’d be in serious distress.
“The thing is, Lady Cambourne, most people have the wrong idea about Druids. We’re not so much a religious order, per se, as adherents to a philosophy,” Lord Digory said after the soup course was cleared and the fish arrived. “There’s nothing the least barbaric or fantastical in our code. We simply believe in living in harmony with nature rather than bending it to our will. Mark my words. Steam power will be the ruination of this age.”
Jacob was close enough to the head of the table to hear the conversation with their host and near enough to keep an eye on Julianne. She was seated to their host’s left with Jacob kitty-corner across the broad table from her. Lady Somerset, a portly, but pleasant matron with a distracting ostrich feather nodding above her turbaned head, was on Lord Digory’s right, Jacob’s left. It was an ideal arrangement, and if he’d been able to bring his own tableware, he’d be enjoying himself hugely.
Except for the presence of Sir Malcolm Ravenwood directly across from him, Jacob was well pleased with the situation. He couldn’t place his finger on it, but something about the silent, brooding man made his hackles rise.
“Do you mean to say that your Order condemns progress, my lord?” Julianne asked.
She studiously avoided meeting Jacob’s eye. Still miffed at him, he supposed, though why she should be was a complete mystery. He’d pleasured her without thought of taking his own. What more did the woman want from him?
He ate a bite of bread that accompanied the fish, thankful to set the silver aside for a bit.
“One must have a care for the common man. How can one call it progress when all these machines throw countless laborers out of work?” Lord Digory said, waving his soft hands loftily.
Given the lack of calluses at the base of his lordship’s pudgy fingers, Jacob would lay odds Digory had never engaged in labor of any sort.
“So you’re rather like the Luddites of a generation ago, then,” Jacob said. That movement had turned violent when unemployed laborers destroyed the new machines that had replaced them. The government responded to the Luddites’ vandalism with fierce repression and more than a few executions for machine breaking.
“Oh, no!” Digory exclaimed. “We’re not a bit like the Luddites. We eschew violence. Reason is the cudgel with which we shall effect change.”
Sir Malcolm’s lips twitched before he lifted his glass of pale pink wine to them. The man might be Lord Digory’s right hand within the Order, but Jacob suspected Ravenwood would be much more at ease with violence than reason.
Jacob swiped his mouth with a napkin and caught a faint whiff of Julianne’s intimate scent still imprinted on his hand. He drew a deep breath and the niggling residual pain from his contact with the silver receded.
Why did women spend so much on expensive fragrances when no smell devised by perfumers went to a man’s head as quickly as the scent of a woman’s healthy arousal?
He sent her a wolfish grin and a becoming flush crept up her alabaster neck. Did she realize he could still smell her sweet musk?
She must, for she shot him a withering glare and turned to Ravenwood. “Is Lord Digory’s goal of peaceable change your aim as well, Sir Malcolm?”
“His lordship is head of the Order, Lady Cambourne,” Ravenwood said.
Not a straight answer,
Jacob thought.
Jacob thought.
“My late husband was quite a student of Druid history, though he didn’t embrace its teachings.” Julianne directed her speech to their host once again. “I gathered from him that the Romans made Druidry illegal back when they occupied the British Isles.”
“Quite true,” Digory said.
“I confess to a bit of confusion then. Since there haven’t been any practicing Druids for hundreds of years, how do you know what the philosophy entails? Oral traditions are strong in many cultures, but I’ve never heard of any Druid folk tales,” she said with a disarming smile. “Is there by chance ... oh, how shall I put this without seeming blasphemous? ... a Druidic equivalent to written scripture?”
Lord Digory was quaffing the wine in his green-tinted goblet and sputtered in surprise at her question.
He must know of some sort of manuscript,
Jacob decided. Whether it was the second half of Julianne’s text remained to be seen. A scowl flashed over Sir Malcolm’s features, but he recovered quickly.
Jacob decided. Whether it was the second half of Julianne’s text remained to be seen. A scowl flashed over Sir Malcolm’s features, but he recovered quickly.
“This is far too serious a subject for such lovely company,” Ravenwood said.
Julianne was determined to worry the issue like a terrier with a rat. “But Sir Malcolm—”
Jacob overturned his wineglass in a seeming accident, sending the rosy liquid across the gleaming damask tablecloth toward Sir Malcolm. Ravenwood leaped to his feet to avoid the spreading stain.
“Well, that was clumsy of me. So sorry. Seems I’m always bumbling where I shouldn’t,” Jacob said, shooting Julianne a warning glance. They’d learned what they needed to know. Pushing for more now would only put Lord Digory on edge. While the servants buzzed around the table trying to sop up the mess, Jacob turned to Lady Somerset. “Seems to me I heard your daughter Honoria will be making her come-out next Season. Am I misinformed?”
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