Page 39 of Thief of Shadows (Maiden Lane 4)

He folded his waistcoat and placed it on a chair. “But then I did meet you and everything flew out the window, including, it seems, all of my rules of behavior, which, I think, is entirely your fault.”

That outrageous remark prompted Isabel into speech for the first time since he’d entered her bedroom. “My fault?”

He nodded, as somber as a judge. “Indeed. Let us look at the facts. You joined the Ladies’ Syndicate for the Benefit of the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children and immediately began a campaign of taunting me.”

She sat fully up, fascinated both by this line of thought and the fact that he was now removing his shirt. Really, his chest might be her favorite thing in the entire world.

Not that she was about to tell him that. “Taunting?”

“Taunting.” He folded the shirt as well, the muscles in his arms rippling in a quite distracting manner. “The little quips, the sly looks letting me know you’d once again thought yourself quite clever as you shot a dart at me, the low, provocative bodices—”

Isabel involuntarily glanced down at her bosom. “My bodices aren’t provocative!” Well, not all the time, certainly.

He glanced at her sternly. “Provocative.” He flicked open the buttons of his fall, and she nearly forgot what they were talking about. “And that doesn’t even take into account the later double entendres, the lessons in flirtation, and the dancing lessons in which you took every opportunity to touch my buttocks.”

“I never, ever”—hardly ever—“touched your buttocks. On purpose.” She opened her eyes as wide as she could and cast a look of shock and innocence at him that would’ve melted a Spanish Inquisition priest’s heart.

He lowered his brows into a thunderous glance and stripped off both his breeches and his smalls, revealing an erection that stood nearly vertical and stretched to his navel.

“You,” he said softly, menacingly, as he advanced to the bed, “are a wanton seducer of innocent young men, too unworldly to escape from your whiles, even supposing they wanted to.”

He was up on the bed, looming over her so suddenly, his heat beating against her, that she squeaked.

He braced himself on one arm and ran his other hand down from her throat, between her breasts, over her belly, to her mound, where he spread his fingers wide in possession. For a moment he simply stared down at his hand covering her femininity.

Then his gaze rose to hers and she saw that all teasing had left his eyes. They had gone so dark they were almost black. “How could I help falling under your seduction? How could I help succumbing to your lures? Is it any wonder at all that I’m here tonight?”

She swallowed, for she’d never seen him in this mood. She realized now that his earlier joking had hidden the fact that he almost seemed to resent her and her “lures.” “What do you want?”

His eyelids drooped as he examined her mouth. “Oh, you know very well what I want.”

He didn’t wait for answer or permission. He simply took her mouth, opening his own wide over hers as if he could swallow her.

As if he could make her his.

He licked and nipped at her lips, never letting her draw him in more deeply. Controlling and guiding their lovemaking. She could feel his naked chest under her palms, the strong, excited beat of his heart. His heat and tension were all around her, yet she could not get him to lie upon her. To seduce his tongue into her mouth.

She whimpered under his teasing onslaught and she thought she heard him chuckle.

That made her yank her head back and dig her fingernails into his chest muscles.

“No,” he said firmly as if to a child. “I am the one in charge tonight, my lady. I am the one who holds the reins.”

He rose over her, athletic and quick, and grasped her hips to flip her over.

“Oof!” She struggled to get her hands under her, but now he had chosen to lay his entire length over her, pressing her into the mattress. “Winter, let me up.”

“No,” he murmured in her ear. His hot breath stirred the hair on the side of her head as he gently brushed back the locks. He stroked her hair as if he had all the time in the world.

As if his thick cock weren’t pressing firmly into her bottom.

She wore only a thin silk chemise to bed, the fabric as delicate as tissue, and no barrier to the feel of his body on hers. In fact, it seemed to heighten the sensation, allowing him to slide against her with exquisite friction with every movement.

“I adore your hair. Do you know that?” he whispered. “I used to dream about it in my lonely monk’s bed, long mahogany locks twining themselves about my limbs in my sleep. I’d wake aroused and aching and cursing you.”

He tilted his hips into her bottom, his cock sliding sweetly against her, as if to emphasize his words.

She felt her center go hot and liquid, yet she licked her lips and challenged him. “I don’t believe you. I’ve never heard you swear, even when you were in great pain.”

“I consider it a sin to take the Lord’s name in vain,” he said as he smoothed aside her hair, baring her neck. “Yet you drive me to sin.”

His mouth was on her skin, at the tender place where her neck met her shoulder. He licked her there, as if he would taste her essence, as if he was experimenting. Then suddenly he bit, his teeth sharp and hard, and she gasped.

“Do I hurt you?” he asked against her skin.

“No,” she said shakily, for no matter his aggression, he didn’t. He was always gentle with her, always aware of his greater size and strength.

“You hurt me,” he said conversationally. “Daily. Hourly. Second by second.”

“I’m sorry.” She tried to turn, tried to take his face in her hands and tell him that she didn’t mean to, truly. She only did what she thought best for them both.

But somewhere along the way, he’d finally lost his infinite patience.

“No.” He bit her again, like a stallion chastising a mare. “We do it my way.”

He ran his hands down over her sides, sliding over the silk, until he found the hem of her chemise. Then he drew it up, slowly, inch by inch, teasing her with the feel of each bit of her skin being exposed to the night air.

For a moment his hips lifted from hers as he palmed her bottom, his hand hard and hot. His thumb found the crease of her cheeks and he ran it down, lightly, almost tickling, sending all her senses on alert. He paused where her bottom met her thighs and then swiftly thrust his fingers between her legs.

“You’re wet,” he said, and although his words were light, nearly conversational, he couldn’t disguise the deepening of his voice.

Her arousal aroused him. The animal taking over the human body. Except animals felt no love. No regret or sorrow.

She wouldn’t think about that right now. His fingers were teasing her from behind, making her lift her hips in supplication. She felt wanton as he inserted a finger slowly into her sheath. The fit was tight from behind, and she thought of how tightly his cock would be in her from this angle.

She bit her lip, closing her eyes, feeling as his finger slid in and out of her, her passage as slick as the silk of her chemise. For a moment his hand abandoned her.

“I like this scent,” he said, his voice whispering against her ear. He placed his hand on the pillow near her face and she smelled it as well: her wetness. Her arousal. “Your scent. Exotic, secret, purely primal. My cock wants it. I lose my mind when I smell you.”

She moaned. She was growing wetter with his words. Why didn’t he simply turn her over and take her? She wanted him as well.

But his hand trailed down again, leisurely almost, moving to the side of her hip. “Lift for me.”

She obeyed and he slipped his hand under her, finding her from below. He spread his fingers, thrusting through her folds.

“Wet, so wet,” he muttered.

He urged her thighs apart with his knees settling between them so that she felt his cock, insistent and hard, at her entrance. She wasn’t sure he could even manage it from this angle. She was nearly flat on her belly. But he pushed and she felt him breach her, the big round head parting her folds relentlessly, the stretch of her muscles so sweet.

He paused as if considering and then thrust again, pushing inside, making a place for himself within her warmth.

She gripped the pillow by her face, wanting to rise up on her knees and push back. To hurry this along to its inevitable conclusion.

But he was too strong, too stubborn. He gave her no leeway. He flexed again and another thick inch slid inside her.

She thought she heard him groan, but it was drowned out by her whimper of need. He opened his mouth against the back of her neck and suddenly thrust hard, seating himself fully.

She nearly came around him.

Carefully, delicately, he found her clitoris with his fingertips and simply held his forefinger on her. He didn’t have to do anything more—her own weight and his on top of hers pressed her down against his finger. She tried to circle her hips, to move against that one finger, but she was impaled from behind, held immovable but by his wish.

“Now,” he whispered, and withdrew his cock an incremental amount. So tiny, less than an inch, surely. So small it should hardly matter at all.

But when he thrust back inside her, quick and hard and nearly brutal, the movement sent her hips grinding against his hand, trapped between her and the mattress. Sent her gasping for breath as the sensation spurred all her nerve endings to a nearly painful pleasure.

“I love you,” he whispered as he thrust again. And again. Each movement controlled. Each small movement devastating in its effect. “I love you.”

She lost all concept of time. She lost her place and surroundings. She couldn’t remember who he was—who she was. She lost her mind.

Because the pleasure/edge of pain was so sweet, so infinitely divine, nothing mattered but that it continue. She’d been seduced, enthralled, drugged by his lovemaking. At this moment it was all that mattered in the world to her.

And he didn’t stop. He was panting now, his breath sawing roughly in and out of his lungs as he thrust in and out of her, his movements becoming jerky.

“Come, damn you,” he growled in her ear. “Drown my cock in your liquid.”

And the earthy demand was too much. She convulsed, trapped between his fingers and his cock, utterly in his power as he continued his unending thrusting, beyond hope and dreams and human regard.

She was a being of feeling and nothing but, shimmering pleasure sparking through her veins, making her heart beat, making the soles of her feet tingle. She was everything and nothing and it was all because of him. He was drawing out her orgasm, making it last, and it seemed he would never stop pumping into her.

But he was only mortal after all. She felt it when it overwhelmed him, too, this wondrous sensation. He jerked against her, his finger pressed hard against her as his cock slammed all the way into her passage, and he simply held himself there, twitching, as his seed flooded her.

He muffled a shout against her shoulder.

And then she drifted, liquid and soft, nearly insensible from bliss. He was heavy on her back, slumped against her, his breath hot on her ear, but she didn’t care. It was almost comfortable, and a mad idea rushed into her brain to ask him to stay the night. What matter if the maids found him in the morning? It was her house, after all, and she a widow. Surely—

He rose off her in one lithe movement, and her body immediately became chill without his covering heat. Wordlessly, he pulled on his breeches, scooped up his clothes, and picked up the candle.

And left her room.

WINTER SLID THROUGH the night like the Ghost he was. It was long past midnight now, and the streets of St. Giles were grim and black, but he hadn’t been able to sleep after leaving Isabel. He’d thought that he’d try again to find the rumored children living in an attic. He’d followed such rumors before—again and again—only to be disappointed, but that hardly mattered. Tonight he needed physical activity. Tonight he needed to forget.

lded his waistcoat and placed it on a chair. “But then I did meet you and everything flew out the window, including, it seems, all of my rules of behavior, which, I think, is entirely your fault.”

That outrageous remark prompted Isabel into speech for the first time since he’d entered her bedroom. “My fault?”

He nodded, as somber as a judge. “Indeed. Let us look at the facts. You joined the Ladies’ Syndicate for the Benefit of the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children and immediately began a campaign of taunting me.”

She sat fully up, fascinated both by this line of thought and the fact that he was now removing his shirt. Really, his chest might be her favorite thing in the entire world.

Not that she was about to tell him that. “Taunting?”

“Taunting.” He folded the shirt as well, the muscles in his arms rippling in a quite distracting manner. “The little quips, the sly looks letting me know you’d once again thought yourself quite clever as you shot a dart at me, the low, provocative bodices—”

Isabel involuntarily glanced down at her bosom. “My bodices aren’t provocative!” Well, not all the time, certainly.

He glanced at her sternly. “Provocative.” He flicked open the buttons of his fall, and she nearly forgot what they were talking about. “And that doesn’t even take into account the later double entendres, the lessons in flirtation, and the dancing lessons in which you took every opportunity to touch my buttocks.”

“I never, ever”—hardly ever—“touched your buttocks. On purpose.” She opened her eyes as wide as she could and cast a look of shock and innocence at him that would’ve melted a Spanish Inquisition priest’s heart.

He lowered his brows into a thunderous glance and stripped off both his breeches and his smalls, revealing an erection that stood nearly vertical and stretched to his navel.

“You,” he said softly, menacingly, as he advanced to the bed, “are a wanton seducer of innocent young men, too unworldly to escape from your whiles, even supposing they wanted to.”

He was up on the bed, looming over her so suddenly, his heat beating against her, that she squeaked.

He braced himself on one arm and ran his other hand down from her throat, between her breasts, over her belly, to her mound, where he spread his fingers wide in possession. For a moment he simply stared down at his hand covering her femininity.

Then his gaze rose to hers and she saw that all teasing had left his eyes. They had gone so dark they were almost black. “How could I help falling under your seduction? How could I help succumbing to your lures? Is it any wonder at all that I’m here tonight?”

She swallowed, for she’d never seen him in this mood. She realized now that his earlier joking had hidden the fact that he almost seemed to resent her and her “lures.” “What do you want?”

His eyelids drooped as he examined her mouth. “Oh, you know very well what I want.”

He didn’t wait for answer or permission. He simply took her mouth, opening his own wide over hers as if he could swallow her.

As if he could make her his.

He licked and nipped at her lips, never letting her draw him in more deeply. Controlling and guiding their lovemaking. She could feel his naked chest under her palms, the strong, excited beat of his heart. His heat and tension were all around her, yet she could not get him to lie upon her. To seduce his tongue into her mouth.

She whimpered under his teasing onslaught and she thought she heard him chuckle.

That made her yank her head back and dig her fingernails into his chest muscles.

“No,” he said firmly as if to a child. “I am the one in charge tonight, my lady. I am the one who holds the reins.”

He rose over her, athletic and quick, and grasped her hips to flip her over.

“Oof!” She struggled to get her hands under her, but now he had chosen to lay his entire length over her, pressing her into the mattress. “Winter, let me up.”

“No,” he murmured in her ear. His hot breath stirred the hair on the side of her head as he gently brushed back the locks. He stroked her hair as if he had all the time in the world.

As if his thick cock weren’t pressing firmly into her bottom.

She wore only a thin silk chemise to bed, the fabric as delicate as tissue, and no barrier to the feel of his body on hers. In fact, it seemed to heighten the sensation, allowing him to slide against her with exquisite friction with every movement.

“I adore your hair. Do you know that?” he whispered. “I used to dream about it in my lonely monk’s bed, long mahogany locks twining themselves about my limbs in my sleep. I’d wake aroused and aching and cursing you.”

He tilted his hips into her bottom, his cock sliding sweetly against her, as if to emphasize his words.

She felt her center go hot and liquid, yet she licked her lips and challenged him. “I don’t believe you. I’ve never heard you swear, even when you were in great pain.”

“I consider it a sin to take the Lord’s name in vain,” he said as he smoothed aside her hair, baring her neck. “Yet you drive me to sin.”

His mouth was on her skin, at the tender place where her neck met her shoulder. He licked her there, as if he would taste her essence, as if he was experimenting. Then suddenly he bit, his teeth sharp and hard, and she gasped.

“Do I hurt you?” he asked against her skin.

“No,” she said shakily, for no matter his aggression, he didn’t. He was always gentle with her, always aware of his greater size and strength.

“You hurt me,” he said conversationally. “Daily. Hourly. Second by second.”

“I’m sorry.” She tried to turn, tried to take his face in her hands and tell him that she didn’t mean to, truly. She only did what she thought best for them both.

But somewhere along the way, he’d finally lost his infinite patience.

“No.” He bit her again, like a stallion chastising a mare. “We do it my way.”

He ran his hands down over her sides, sliding over the silk, until he found the hem of her chemise. Then he drew it up, slowly, inch by inch, teasing her with the feel of each bit of her skin being exposed to the night air.

For a moment his hips lifted from hers as he palmed her bottom, his hand hard and hot. His thumb found the crease of her cheeks and he ran it down, lightly, almost tickling, sending all her senses on alert. He paused where her bottom met her thighs and then swiftly thrust his fingers between her legs.

“You’re wet,” he said, and although his words were light, nearly conversational, he couldn’t disguise the deepening of his voice.

Her arousal aroused him. The animal taking over the human body. Except animals felt no love. No regret or sorrow.

She wouldn’t think about that right now. His fingers were teasing her from behind, making her lift her hips in supplication. She felt wanton as he inserted a finger slowly into her sheath. The fit was tight from behind, and she thought of how tightly his cock would be in her from this angle.

She bit her lip, closing her eyes, feeling as his finger slid in and out of her, her passage as slick as the silk of her chemise. For a moment his hand abandoned her.

“I like this scent,” he said, his voice whispering against her ear. He placed his hand on the pillow near her face and she smelled it as well: her wetness. Her arousal. “Your scent. Exotic, secret, purely primal. My cock wants it. I lose my mind when I smell you.”

She moaned. She was growing wetter with his words. Why didn’t he simply turn her over and take her? She wanted him as well.

But his hand trailed down again, leisurely almost, moving to the side of her hip. “Lift for me.”

She obeyed and he slipped his hand under her, finding her from below. He spread his fingers, thrusting through her folds.

“Wet, so wet,” he muttered.

He urged her thighs apart with his knees settling between them so that she felt his cock, insistent and hard, at her entrance. She wasn’t sure he could even manage it from this angle. She was nearly flat on her belly. But he pushed and she felt him breach her, the big round head parting her folds relentlessly, the stretch of her muscles so sweet.

He paused as if considering and then thrust again, pushing inside, making a place for himself within her warmth.

She gripped the pillow by her face, wanting to rise up on her knees and push back. To hurry this along to its inevitable conclusion.

But he was too strong, too stubborn. He gave her no leeway. He flexed again and another thick inch slid inside her.

She thought she heard him groan, but it was drowned out by her whimper of need. He opened his mouth against the back of her neck and suddenly thrust hard, seating himself fully.

She nearly came around him.

Carefully, delicately, he found her clitoris with his fingertips and simply held his forefinger on her. He didn’t have to do anything more—her own weight and his on top of hers pressed her down against his finger. She tried to circle her hips, to move against that one finger, but she was impaled from behind, held immovable but by his wish.

“Now,” he whispered, and withdrew his cock an incremental amount. So tiny, less than an inch, surely. So small it should hardly matter at all.

But when he thrust back inside her, quick and hard and nearly brutal, the movement sent her hips grinding against his hand, trapped between her and the mattress. Sent her gasping for breath as the sensation spurred all her nerve endings to a nearly painful pleasure.

“I love you,” he whispered as he thrust again. And again. Each movement controlled. Each small movement devastating in its effect. “I love you.”

She lost all concept of time. She lost her place and surroundings. She couldn’t remember who he was—who she was. She lost her mind.

Because the pleasure/edge of pain was so sweet, so infinitely divine, nothing mattered but that it continue. She’d been seduced, enthralled, drugged by his lovemaking. At this moment it was all that mattered in the world to her.

And he didn’t stop. He was panting now, his breath sawing roughly in and out of his lungs as he thrust in and out of her, his movements becoming jerky.

“Come, damn you,” he growled in her ear. “Drown my cock in your liquid.”

And the earthy demand was too much. She convulsed, trapped between his fingers and his cock, utterly in his power as he continued his unending thrusting, beyond hope and dreams and human regard.

She was a being of feeling and nothing but, shimmering pleasure sparking through her veins, making her heart beat, making the soles of her feet tingle. She was everything and nothing and it was all because of him. He was drawing out her orgasm, making it last, and it seemed he would never stop pumping into her.

But he was only mortal after all. She felt it when it overwhelmed him, too, this wondrous sensation. He jerked against her, his finger pressed hard against her as his cock slammed all the way into her passage, and he simply held himself there, twitching, as his seed flooded her.

He muffled a shout against her shoulder.

And then she drifted, liquid and soft, nearly insensible from bliss. He was heavy on her back, slumped against her, his breath hot on her ear, but she didn’t care. It was almost comfortable, and a mad idea rushed into her brain to ask him to stay the night. What matter if the maids found him in the morning? It was her house, after all, and she a widow. Surely—

He rose off her in one lithe movement, and her body immediately became chill without his covering heat. Wordlessly, he pulled on his breeches, scooped up his clothes, and picked up the candle.

And left her room.

WINTER SLID THROUGH the night like the Ghost he was. It was long past midnight now, and the streets of St. Giles were grim and black, but he hadn’t been able to sleep after leaving Isabel. He’d thought that he’d try again to find the rumored children living in an attic. He’d followed such rumors before—again and again—only to be disappointed, but that hardly mattered. Tonight he needed physical activity. Tonight he needed to forget.

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