Page 14 of Go, Rogue

“Stay still,” he growls, but she can’t.

Her senses are far too heightened for stillness. She’s not made of marble, not like him, and she can’t help but react. She can feel him.

And it’s too much, this strange, fiery sensation gathering in her core. One that only grows stronger as his hands work at the ties on her waist and hips. She shimmies and shivers, feeling some delicious blend of excitement and embarrassment and liberation and warmth.

She’s so, so warm, despite the bitter cold wind at her face.

Is it possible to feel everything all at once?

And then whack!

“What in heaven’s name?”

The man spanked her. Not hard. But hard enough to be felt.

“I told ye to stay still.”

Her rear end burns, which only adds to her list of sensations.

More, she thinks as his hands work away at the ties. More.

And then, Is he taking longer than necessary?

She knows the underneath of a woman’s skirts, especially a woman’s wedding gown, has a confounding number of knots to undo, but she’s not naive enough to believe he’s never had cause to undo them before. If Janet, her lady’s maid, can undo her crinoline in less time than it takes to make tea, Andrew McGann can too.

She gives another shimmy, just to check.

Whack.

His hand hits her bottom again and she makes a little gasping noise, which he returns with a strangled groan.

Well, then. Perhaps there’s more to him than marble after all.

But no. As soon as her mind articulates the thought, his hands freeze along her waist, and the same thing happens that always happens.

Drat it all.

Andrew McGann pulls away from her. And then his rough fingers speed into action so quickly that in only a moment more, her crinoline is undone and he’s removing it from her body. She steps one foot off the ladder and then the other so that he can pull it away with a whoosh, and she’s free.

“There,” he says stiffly, and she can move again.

She climbs the ladder and emerges on deck, fully into the sun.

Ah…at last.

It feels so good, breathing in the fresh air despite the cold. She’s done it. She’s made it here. And she will have a proper discussion with McGann eventually about how she ended up on this boat. And why she caught him lurking about the church in Surrey when he was meant to be seventy miles away in Kent, launching The Elphame.

But that can all come later. For now, she turns her face to the sun and feels the wind at her back. London is gone and with it goes Lady Catherine West, daughter and cousin of earls, fiancé of a peer. Whoever she will be now is a woman of her own making, and she feels nearly delirious with the thought.