words right out of her mouth as she spoke them. She might as well have kept quiet. She shook her head back and forth. It didn’t budge his hands any at all. They just played across whatever was going by—cheek, lips, hair. It all worked fine for him, whatever part of her he touched. “It’s not going to work. I’m not going to make love with you.”
“Some people enjoy just kissing.” He breathed it warm into her ear, casual and innocent, as if he didn’t know how that felt to her. He was going much, much more slowly, just like he said he would.
“I don’t want to enjoy it.”
“You are, though, aren’t you?”
She was meshed up in what he was doing to her. Burning, every place he put his hands on her. He was so wise with her body, there didn’t seem to be any way to stop him. He must have done this to a hundred women. Velvet, his lips were, all over her face.
“I’m a damn fool.” She said that because she was sucking on his hand, where he’d set it to her lips. That was worse, somehow, than kissing him, this wanting to know what his hands tasted like. “I’m not going to bed with you, Sebastian, no matter how well you’re seducing me. Remember that.”
“I’ll remember that.” He spoke down into her hair.
“You didn’t expect to get me all the way upstairs like this, did you?” she said. “I’d have got my senses back somewhere in the front hall probably. Or on the stairs at the latest.”
“Certainly on the stairs.” His smile sank into her bones. He did it on purpose. “My very dear Jess, I’m not trying to get you to my bedroom. We have all the time in the world. There are many, many things to do before we go to bed.”
“I don’t want to do any of those either.”
“You don’t even know what they are. You don’t know anything.”
She shivered for him. He watched her do it and his eyes turned to black, hot lava.
“You liked seeing me do that, didn’t you?”
“Immensely. Don’t be so nervous. When we go to bed together, you’ll want it as much as I do. I don’t take anything by force from women. Not even a kiss.”
“You talk them into it. It’s more fun that way.” He’d ask nicely. So very nicely . . .
“Much more fun.” He said it like it was an old joke between the two of them. “Since you’re not going to end up in my bed tonight, you can just relax and see what happens next.”
“I don’t want to relax. Can’t anyway.” She wanted to unbutton his shirt and put her cheek on his chest and smell his skin. She wanted to taste him. That was what came of not being innocent. If she’d been innocent, she wouldn’t know about naked chests.
“You’re waiting to see what happens next, aren’t you?” He ran his hands up and down her back, all friendly. “Maybe you’re curious.”
“I doubt that’s it.” She swayed into him, where he was touching her. Sort of putting herself into his hands. It felt wonderful. “Dunnoh why I’m letting you do this. Generally I have more backbone. I think it’s being terrified for an hour straight. Loosens you all up inside, somehow. Makes everything hit harder afterwards.”
White teeth flashed in his dark face. Oh, but she was amusing him, wasn’t she? “When you brush up against death, you want to couple afterwards. I found that out years ago. I didn’t know it worked the same with women. Does it?”
“Does this time,” she said frankly. “Mostly I was real young. And the last couple times I was so seasick I didn’t want to do anything but curl up and die. I’m glad Lazarus didn’t kill you.”
“I’m glad he didn’t kill either of us.” The Captain seemed to find that funny, too. Outside, in the hallway, somebody clopped rapidly down the stairs.
“It would have been a great waste.” She slipped her hands under his jacket, on his shirt. “Do you know, you are the most alive person I’ve ever seen. I can’t explain it. I was looking at you back there when I thought I might be going to die, and it was like there was fire everywhere inside you.” Wherever she touched his body, the fire crossed through their flesh, till she was burning with it.
She didn’t drop her hands away. She held on.
He must have seen the pleading in her eyes. He kissed her then, giving her what she’d wanted. When she kissed back, her lips and tongue scraped on that stubble of beard along his jaw. She got rubbed sensitive by it. He ran his tongue over her lips then, and there was hardly any skin between them. Just feelings brushing against each other.
She’d go upstairs with him in a few minutes and they’d make love. When they couldn’t stand this kissing anymore, they’d stop lying to each other and get into bed. That was where this was leading, and they both knew it.
“Ah, there you are.” Standish stood in the doorway, looking pleased to have found them.
The Captain’s mouth lifted from hers. “Yes. Here I am.”
“I wish you’d be more careful of the pots, Sebastian. That’s a Minoan dolphin beaker next to your elbow. Eunice says, will you please go get the midwife for . . . Dear me, I’ve forgotten her name.”
“Oh my God,” Sebastian said.
Had to happen sooner or later. “Flora. That’s her name. Lazarus must have really liked her. He cut this one close.”
Twenty-five
DOYLE WAS EXACTLY WHERE HE WAS SUPPOSED to be, where she’d arranged to meet him. He was standing on the bridge, a fishing pole out over the canal. Jess stopped two feet away and set her basket on the footpath.
“Nice day for ducks, miss,” he said respectfully and pulled at his cap.
She grinned and leaned her elbows on the stone rail and looked down at the ducks so nobody could see her lips when she spoke. “Hello, Mr. Doyle. How’s the fishing?”
Doyle peered down into the water and twiddled with his line. “Good enough, me not having any particular need for fishes today. We got ourselves what you might call a special agreement, me and the fishes. I don’t put anything on the hook, and they don’t bite it.” He was frowning like he had bad news to deliver, but he didn’t spit it out. Instead he said, “You’re being followed. Four men.” He looked up the road, the way she’d come, then, casually, back along the canal. “British Service. They’re being sloppy.”
“They aren’t trying to hide. They’re intimidating me with their official demeanor. Makes me feel like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, leading a pack of rats around.” They were ugly ducks in the canal, patched up from a couple different lines of ancestry. When they saw her, they swam over quacking, raucous, milling around and nipping at each other. Cockney ducks. She’d brought bread. She started tossing bits at them.
“The Service put a couple of men to watching you, right from the first. Adrian wanted you safe.” Doyle twitched the fishing rod. “Safe as you could be, all considered.”
And that was the bad news. She thought it over, trying to decide how she felt about it, and tossed more bread into the water. Wherever it landed, the same ducks always got it. There was a lesson in that, she thought. “The men watching me . . . you were the first of them.”
“With orders to keep you safe. Give you the information what you asked for. Give you advice, if you’d take it.” He glanced at her, sharp, quick, humorous, tough. “Adrian told me to keep you outa trouble.” The scar on his cheek creased. “Not likely.”
She didn’t seem to feel anything. Not anger. Not betrayal. She’d got used to the world falling down around her ears. Maybe she didn’t have any more shock left in her.
Doyle was British Service. Adrian had sent him to her. To protect her.
She rolled it around in her mind, and nothing changed. He was still Doyle. If sea monsters climbed out of that canal, this minute, he’d put down the fishing rod and fight them off with his penknife, telling her to “hop it.” He’d do the same for the fishmonger’s daughter. Working for the Service was irrelevant to the likes of Mr. Doyle.
“Adrian wouldn’t just do it straightforward and have me followed. He has to be sneaky about it.”
