He strode down the long second-floor hall, past bedroom doors and those Persian miniatures and something new—a procession of little brown pots marching in a line against the wall. “Next time, I’ll let you try. That’ll be amusing. When you collapse, I’ll step over you.”
Then it was up the back stairs, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. The last flight to the attic had a narrow turn in the middle. He went through sideways. Didn’t even pause. That was the good balance he’d learned at sea, climbing the rigging. He kicked the door to her bedroom open. It slammed back to the plaster. Made a hell of a clatter.
Then he laid her on the counterpane so careful she could have been made of glass. Complicated as hell, the Captain.
She sat up fast, jerking the bedclothes loose. After a minute, the room didn’t spin anymore, and he was standing over her, waiting. It was one of those moments with a lot of possibilities for what came next.
Hard to say what Kennett would do if he was Cinq. Strangle her maybe. Or he might strangle her even if he wasn’t Cinq, just from sheer irritation. A woman with a modicum of common sense would get up and run for the door.
“Look at me.” He gave one tap to her chin, almost perfunctory. “That’s right. Now, hear me well, Miss Whitby. What you’re planning to do in this house isn’t going to work. You can hide a mountain of evidence in the corners, and nobody will believe it. Scheme you ever so wisely, charm you ever so well, you’ll fail.”
“I’m not—”
“You stay under these conditions.” Oh, but he was angry with her. Not that he’d been all beer and skittles up to this point, but now he was particularly scowling. “You will behave yourself while you’re under my roof. No more lying to my aunt. Keep away from Quentin. And don’t spar with Claudia. You will lash down that lively tongue of yours when you talk to her.”
“Civil as a nun’s hen. That’s me.”
“I should boot your pretty arse out of here so hard you bounce on the front steps. You’re part of a foul business, Miss Whitby. You’ve brought it into my house, touching my family. But there are men out there, waiting to swallow you whole. I can’t send you back to that.”
“I’m perfectly—”
“I know exactly what you are.” He slipped his fingers to the back of her neck, twining into her braid. It gave her a shiver all up and down her spine, feeling him delving deep in her hair, warm and intimate, and not even thinking about it. They seemed to have skipped a couple steps in getting to know each other. “This room belonged to the governess in the old days. It’s quiet and private up here. The door has a bolt. My aunt keeps the women here, the ones she takes off the street, because they need to feel safe. Do you know why I put you all the way upstairs, Miss Whitby?”
“You’ve run out of guest rooms downstairs? Always makes me feel so crowded and inhospitable—”
“You’re as far from my bedroom as you can be, with the whole house between us. No matter how tempted I am, I’m not going to come sneaking along, knocking on your door in the middle of the night. You can sleep easy, knowing I won’t come to get you. If you’re an honest woman, this is your fortress. But you’re not an honest woman, are you?”
Nothing she could say to that. She’d never had the luxury of being honest. It was too late to start now.
“My bedroom is two flights down, fifth door on the right. How long before you come to me?”
“A century or two.” She licked her lips. Wrong thing to do. She knew it as soon as she did it. He was looking at her mouth. “Never.”
“And there’s another lie from you, Miss Whitby. There’s not a speck of honesty in you, is there?”
He left his hand nestled loosely in her hair. It had plans for her, that hand. She could feel it begging to slide down her back and slip over her, everywhere.
“I don’t like you touching me.” But she didn’t pull away, did she?
“I don’t like any of this. It’s vibrating across the room between us right now. Me wanting you. You wanting me. My hair’s standing on end there’s so much lightning built up in here.” His fingers, just the tips, stroked the outer curve of her ear. The warmth between her legs went answering back. “Don’t pretend you don’t feel it. You’re no innocent.”
She wished she was innocent. She’d have given a lot, right then, not to understand him.
She’d wondered, sometimes, if she’d ever find a man she wanted to bed with. She never had, not in all these years since Ned. She couldn’t count the nights she’d spent, tangled in the sheets, twitching, climbing a pillow, pretending there was a man touching her. She’d met a parade of bankers and merchants and handsome young soldiers, with hot smiles and insinuating hands they tried to sneak over her when they could get her alone.
Not all of them were after her father’s fortune. Some of those men she’d liked. Not a one of them she wanted to wrap up close to her and take inside her.
Tonight, in bed, her dream would have Sebastian’s face. She’d finally met a man who got her teakettle whistling. One of those cases of being careful what you wished for.
Light, light, he stroked down her neck and her body played a chord of music for him.
He whispered, “Remarkable. You are remarkable. Did you know that? Last night I thought I’d netted a mermaid out of that muddy alley. Something magical.” Black fire writhed in his pupils. If she relaxed, even an instant, she’d slide right down into him, into all that fire, and get burned up. “You came to the Lane to throw a net around me, using your eyes and your hair and that wet dress sticking to your skin. By God, you caught me. But you caught yourself, too. That wasn’t part of your father’s scheme. You didn’t plan on feeling anything, did you?”
“There’s no limit to what you’d do, following his orders. You’d risk your neck on Katherine Lane. You’d connive and blackmail yourself into my household.” He put both hands on her now, tilting her head to look at him. The touch was gentle, but his voice was hard as iron. “You’d lay on your back right now, as sick and hurt as you are, and let me have you, if it would give you a place under my roof.” He held her head, and his thumbs ran along the underside of he cndeet r jaw where the skin lay thin over the bone, sensitive. “Not a magical creature of the sea after all. You turn out to be someone who’ll crawl into my bed whenever that old bastard tells you to.”
“My father is not—”
“When you come to me, make sure you come with hunger in your belly. I want you to ache for me. Everything else between us is a lie, but the wanting is real.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.” His whisper was liquid music, trickling through her body, pooling between her legs. “You’re doing it now. Wanting. See how easy it is?” That frightening, focused intelligence studied her, inches away. Slow as if he were moving through water, he picked up the long braid from her shoulder and ran it between thumb and forefingers. “Do you wonder what we’ll be like, the two of us?”
He wrapped the braid in his fist, oh so gradually, and wrapped and wrapped like he was taking up towline. “Two flights down. Fifth on the right. You’ll open my door. I’ll be waiting for you, thinking about what I’ll do to you. You’ll slip out of your nightclothes, out of every stitch on you, and come to my bed. You’ll be hungry and needing, and I’ll be on fire for you. We’ll neither of us be able to stop it, once you walk through that door.”
He pulled, slow and persuasive, reeling her in a little closer, a little closer, using the length of the braid, till his hand rested next to her throat. A sailor’s hand. She could feel it there where she breathed, hard as deck wood along his knuckles, smooth as polished teak.
“You’ll lean to me, and you’ll ask me to touch you. You’ll tell me what you need. I’ll do it all. I’ll do everything.”
His voice sent a tremble up her spine. It wasn’t fear. It was anticipation. Stupid, stupid, body she had.
Gently, the back of his fingers stroked the path that carried her heartbeat. He was caressing her pulse, there at her throat. “See how your breasts are crinkled up already. They’re imagining my mouth on them, the way it’s going to be. That’s how strong the pull is between us. Your body is already thinking about me.”
“I—”
“We’ll be magic. We’ll turn into gold. Slippery gold fire, melting into each other. Hush.” That rasping, velvet voice crawled right under her skin. “We both know what’s going on.”
His eyes were black wells of infinite possibility. She got fascinated, looking in. Probably this was how those fish felt when men came after them, night fishing, with lanterns. They hung in the water, staring and dazzled,
