After the Kiss (16 page)

“It does trouble me, Sullivan. Tell me.”

He stopped directly in front of her, Zephyr behind him. “I was here at the appointed time, and I’m able to train your mare as per our agreement. Why should anything else concern you?”

“Because it does.”

“It shouldn’t.”

“And you ‘shouldn’t’ be arguing with me, and we ‘shouldn’t’ have kissed,” she retorted. “We’re friends, Sullivan, and I want to know—”

“‘Friends’?” he interrupted. He grabbed the front of her dress in his fist and yanked her up against him. “Are we friends, Lady Isabel?”

Her heart hammered so hard he could probably hear it. “Y…yes, we’re friends. You—”

“Are you shunned when you embrace your other friends?” he broke in again, his voice deepening to a low, sensuous growl. “We talk in secret. We kiss in secret. Any suspicion of even friendship between us gets you slighted and me pummeled.”

Desperately Isabel tried to follow the conversation rather than the heady rush of her blood beneath her skin. “Someone beat you because I hugged you? That’s—”

“I’m not worth the trouble as a friend, Tibby,” he murmured, the sound of her nickname lingering intimately in the air between them. “You have friends. Friends who don’t cause you trouble. So do I. I’m not here for friendship.”

If her heart beat any faster she was going to faint. “No, you’re here because I’m blackmailing you.”

He shook his head, pulling her a breath closer. “I’m here because I want you. Your touch. Your body.
That
is what I would take a beating for.”

Oh, goodness
. “Sullivan, I want—”

“Before you finish that, consider what rumors of an innocent embrace did to you. And if you’re going to say you want to be my friend…” His voice shook as he spoke those words. “If you want us to be friends, friends don’t do this.”

He brought his mouth down over hers. Hard and ruthless, stealing her breath and the strength from her bones. Oh, she wanted to sink into him, to climb inside him and never emerge until she’d figured him out. Her seeking tongue tasted salt; his blood, probably from the blow to his chin.

She moaned, grabbing his shoulders, the back of his neck, into his wild hair with her hands. The taste of him excited her beyond words. It was the most intimate thing she’d ever felt. And he wanted more. More, when just this could destroy her.

With the fist still wound into the front of her dress, he abruptly pushed her away. “Consider all of that before you answer me,” he said brusquely, releasing her to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth. “Consider all of the ruin I could bring to your reputation and your future, all of the peril I could bring to your heart, because you and I both know that this leads to nowhere but ruin.”

Brushing her back another step, he led Zephyr forward. “And when you’ve considered,” he went on in the same heated, barely controlled tone, “if it’s damnation you want, then I’ll see you inside this stable at midnight tonight. If you have any sense at all, I’ll see you in the morning when I come to tend your mare.”

“But—”

“But right now if I set eyes on you again, I’m liable to wreck both of us. So go inside your house, Isabel, where you’ll be safe.”

She wanted to argue, to protest that he wasn’t allowed to order her about.
She
was the one who dictated to
him
. Isabel watched him leave the stable, caught her breath, and waited until the heat she felt in her cheeks faded.

He was right; she needed to consider what she wanted very carefully. And so she gathered her skirts and ran back into the house. He’d been wrong about one thing, already. Knowing he was just outside didn’t leave her feeling safe at all.

Isabel flipped open the cover of the pocket watch she’d borrowed from Douglas. That was to say, if and when he missed it she would claim that she’d borrowed it.

Ten minutes until midnight. Sullivan had picked a good evening for his ultimatum: Parliament had an early morning session tomorrow, so no late-night events had been scheduled. By now the house was quiet, and as far as she knew, everyone had gone to bed.

She’d put on her night rail, but that had been because Penny was there to help her dress for bed. The maid would have been suspicious if she’d announced her intention to sleep in her gown. She’d blown out the candle on the bedstand, again just as a precaution against any of the footmen on their way to their quarters seeing that she remained awake.

At the same time, she hadn’t crawled beneath the covers
of her very comfortable bed. In fact, she still sat at the dressing table, where she could eye Douglas’s watch every two minutes as midnight crept closer. And one thing had become clear: Sullivan Waring knew her better than she expected.

From the moment she’d begun ordering him about, he’d probably realized that she had more than revenge or blackmail on her mind. He’d kissed her first, but since then she’d looked for every opportunity to kiss him or to be kissed by him again. And yes, the only conclusion to this would be her ruination. At the same time, this seemed the most likely and logical step in her…growing up, in the opening of her eyes that had happened to her since they’d met.

She checked the pocket watch again. Six minutes. If he’d been reconciled to his father and the Sullivan family, then a connection between them might have at least been imaginable. As it was, with him climbing through noblemen’s windows and getting shot at in order to recover a handful of paintings he couldn’t even show anyone, he was very likely going to end up dead. And if anyone saw them together, she would wish herself dead.

Clearly she wasn’t going to marry him. He wanted to…to fornicate with her. And she wanted his hands on her, his mouth on her, in ways she could only imagine. Would it be worth the risk? The loss of her virginity? She supposed that would depend on who she married afterward. Oliver was definitely interested in her, but the more she saw how he treated Sullivan, the less she wanted to spend any time with him. She’d begun to think she only did so to keep him from suspecting just how much she liked Sullivan. Obviously once she gave her purity to Sullivan, Oliver would want nothing more to do with her. And she honestly didn’t care. If she even wanted to marry, she supposed there would be men
who would overlook her lack of chastity in exchange for a generous dowry.

But it was more than her purity that would be lost, and she needed to consider that, too. Until last night, she’d been one of Society’s favorites—their darling, always mobbed at soirees, never without friends or dance partners. Until last night, she hadn’t realized how tenuous a thing that popularity was. It brought up more questions for her. Did her popularity make her who she was? What would happen to her if she lost it? And was she willing to risk that?

Four minutes. “Damnation,” she muttered, clicking the watch closed again. All she had to do was stay where she was, and she would be safe. Not safe from wanting Sullivan, from being interested in him, but safe from his kisses and from being ruined by him, and from having to answer those questions.

She dropped the watch into a drawer and stood to pull on her thin dressing robe. She’d spent the past two years dancing through ballrooms and flirting, because that was what young ladies of good name did. She didn’t believe in love at first sight or fate or any silly thing of the kind. But once Sullivan Waring had entered her thoughts, he’d never shown the least inclination to leave them again. And she didn’t think he ever would. Not until she went to where she wanted and needed to go.

Taking a breath, she slowly opened her bedchamber door and slipped cautiously into the hallway. She could still change her mind. She could still stop in the kitchen to get herself an apple and then go back upstairs to bed. That had been her plan the night she’d stumbled across Sullivan robbing the house.

She hesitated at the door to the kitchen. Sullivan Waring was a wrecked, angry lawbreaker who worked with his
hands to make his living. And she was being pursued by a wealthy viscount who would one day be a marquis, and who actually bore a very close physical resemblance to Mr. Waring. Hm. So if she could pass by the temptation of Sullivan, she could still have someone she didn’t want, but who looked just like him.

Temptation
. Yes, she wanted an apple, but not one from the kitchen. Tonight she felt hungry for the very one the serpent had given to Eve. And she would probably lose her paradise, too, as a result. Because for all his similar physical attributes, Oliver did not possess the one quality that drew her to Sullivan: that sense of being alive, which he fought for and earned every moment of his life and the time they spent together.

Practically before she even realized it, she was out of the house and into the murky darkness of the stable yard. With a silent curse she kicked out of her shoes and laid them behind a stone bench out of easy sight. No sense ruining them—or giving anyone a clue that she’d been elsewhere than in her own bed during the night.

The door to the stable already stood open an inch or so. None of the stableboys would have left it that way if they wanted to keep their employment at Chalsey House. Biting her lower lip and making her hands as steady as she could when her heart beat faster than a drummer’s tattoo, she pulled it open another few inches and slipped inside.

Without the pale cast of moonlight, the inside of the stable building was as black as pitch. She could hear the rustling and breathing of two dozen horses, but other than that, nothing.

“Sullivan?” she whispered almost soundlessly. The grooms and stableboys slept in a separate room at the back of the stable, and she had no intention of waking them even if Lucifer himself appeared before her. “Sullivan?”

A hand slid over her shoulder and across her mouth.
“You’re very prompt,” Sullivan’s low voice murmured against her left ear.

Her entire body shivered. Excitement, lust, trepidation—she didn’t know. As he took her shoulders and turned her to face him, she didn’t care. She’d never felt as alive as she did at that moment.

Lifting onto her toes, she tangled her fingers in Sullivan’s hair and dragged his face down to meet hers in a deep, open-mouthed kiss. He wrapped around her like molten fire, pressing her back against the wall as he pulled her hard against him, his mouth as eager as hers.

“Sulli—”

“Don’t talk,” he murmured back, slipping his fingers beneath her robe to pull it from her shoulders and toss it over the railing of the nearest stall. “You’ll change your mind.”

“No, I w—”

He kissed her again, making her moan. As his palms trailed down her bare shoulders and along the arms she had tightly locked around him, she could feel the calluses on the pads of his fingers. He’d said he was no soft-handed dandy, but she hadn’t expected the touch of his skin against hers to be so intoxicating.

As those same rough-edged fingers slipped beneath the narrow shoulders of her night rail, she felt close to losing herself in him. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she managed, breathing in the leather-and-soap scent of him. “And don’t interrupt me.”

He backed away an inch or two. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom she could make out his gaze, aggravated and amused at the same time. “May I suggest that you keep your voice down, then?”

“I am,” she retorted. It was difficult to be quiet and commanding at the same time. Especially when he reached for her
night rail again and slowly pulled the left shoulder down to her elbow, then closed on her for another slow, plundering kiss.

“If it were anyone else…” he muttered, his fingers trailing along her bared shoulder.

“What do you mean by that?”

She felt his smile against her mouth. “Nothing. Give me your orders, Lady Isabel.”

Moaning again, she bared her throat to his kisses. And she realized what he meant. No one else ordered him about. He didn’t tolerate it. Except from her. “Take off your shirt,” she whispered shakily.

He kissed her again, tipping her head back with the force of his embrace. “I want you,” he growled, removing his hands from her and yanking his own shirt free of his trousers. He pulled it over his head and cast it beside her robe. Sullivan tried to close on her again, but she held him back with her hands against his bare chest.

Soft skin met the pads of her fingers, the hard muscles beneath flexing under her touch. Physically she was no match for him, but he nevertheless stopped his advance.

“Changed your mind?” he breathed, his eyes narrowing.

“Put a blanket down,” she countered. “I don’t want to get dirty.”

“You will be dirty,” he returned, stepping over for a handful of saddle blankets and spreading them over the floor of an empty stall. “The kind that won’t wash away.”

“I thought you were supposed to be seducing me.” Uncertain of exactly what her part in this was supposed to be, she followed him into the straw-and-blanket-covered box.

“You’re barefoot,” he announced, his gaze sweeping over her and lingering at her bare ankles and feet.

“I left my shoes behind a bench,” she returned. “I didn’t want anyone to know I’d—”

“Been doing anything naughty?” he finished. “With someone completely unacceptable?”

“I know who and what you are, Sullivan,” she snapped, her voice rising a little before she managed to quiet herself again. “So are you trying to drive me away, or are you frightened of me and you’re just wasting my time in hopes that I’ll leave?”

“Bold words for a good, virginal chit,” he murmured, looking at her with so predatory a gleam in his eyes it made her swallow. He hooked a finger into the neck of her night rail and tugged her closer. With his other hand he pulled the clip from her hair, and the long, honey-colored waves fell past her shoulders. “If you hadn’t come down here, I probably would have climbed into your window to get to you. What do you think of that?”

She shivered as his fingers tangled and tugged into her long hair, as she ran her palms up his warm, well-muscled chest, as the meaning of his words sank into her. He’d said that he’d given her a choice about this, but now she wasn’t so certain. And the idea that he would have pursued her back into her own house aroused her.

“I think you should stop talking so much,” she stated. “Unless that’s all you have to offer.”

“By God, you have a mouth on you.” A brief smile touched his face again. “And now you’ll have mine on you.” Sullivan took two handfuls of the material above her breasts and ripped. The entire front of the flimsy cotton gown tore open from top to bottom. She gasped.

Before she could recover her heated, scattered wits, he slid his hands around her bare waist, pulling her against him again. Then he kissed her once more, his tongue boldly exploring her mouth. Good heavens, he was strong, and sure of himself. One large hand trailed up her stomach to cup her left breast. Her nipple hardened, pebbling against his palm.

Pure sensation flooded her, stealing her breath. Only a useless scrap of clothing hung from her shoulders and down her back, as his capable mouth traveled down her chin and throat, down to…oh, heavens.

Sullivan took her breast into his mouth, sucking and licking her tight nipple. “God,” she whimpered, clutching her fingers into his hair.

Her legs felt boneless. He seemed to realize that, because he lowered her onto the rough blankets, his mouth still fastened to her breast. She felt the tug of his lips all the way down her spine and to the private spot between her legs. She heated and dampened, groaning and lifting her hips helplessly in response.

“Sullivan,” she whispered shakily.

“You ordered me to stop talking.” He moved his attention to her other breast, crouching on all fours over her like a tawny-haired lion feasting on his very willing prey. “If I were to say something,” he continued in a low, sensual tone that rumbled through her where they touched, “it would be that you are breathtaking.”

Breathing hard, Isabel put her hands on his shoulders, kneading her fingers into the hard, taut muscles there. She closed her eyes; everywhere they touched felt heated, silk-soft flames that sank deeply into her, straight through her veins to her fast-beating heart.

When his palm coursed slowly down her belly to her abdomen, her eyes flew open again. Fingers trailed through her light curls and then touched her…there. She gasped.

“I excite you,” he murmured, lifting his head to look her in the eye. “You want me.” Still watching her, he moved his fingers deeper, parting her. Then he slipped inside.

She bucked. Something that sounded like his name blurted out from her lips, and he covered her mouth with his free hand.

“Shh,” he cautioned, glancing briefly over his shoulder before he returned to his exploration.

This was too much. “Sull…Sullivan,” she managed, gasping his name as quietly as she could.

“You’re the one giving the orders, my lady. What shall I do to you next?”

Oh, God, she had no idea.
More
, her body told her. She craved it.
More.
“I—”

“Shall I remove my trousers, perhaps?”

His voice wasn’t entirely steady, either. That realization actually calmed her a little, though not nearly enough for her mind to be of any use. She could barely form words, and he still had clothes on. “Yes. Remove them. Now. And your boots.” There. She still had some control—of herself, if not of him.

He swiveled to sit beside her. It seemed very important to continue touching him, so she sat up and shrugged out of the ruined remains of her night rail. Running her hands down his back and shoulders, kissing the nape of his neck, she tasted the salt of his skin. Intoxicating. As his muscles shuddered beneath her touch, she realized that she did have some control over him. Her touch affected him, perhaps as much as his did her. She wet her swollen lips.

“I’ve changed my mind.”