Mad for Love (16 page)

Because his kiss made her want to close her eyes, the better to feel the extraordinary experience of his mouth on hers. To feel the smooth tautness of his lips, like the fruit of a pomegranate, firm and giving. He kissed gently at first, moving his lips slightly against hers, waiting for her to grow accustomed to the intimacy. Waiting for her to take part. With her whole being.

She could not have said why she did so, but something—something stronger than curiosity and weaker than the fear—compelled her to wrap her arms around his neck to hold him close, and press her lips to his. To let him slide his hands across her back, over her shoulders and up the length of her neck to cradle her jaw, and turn her head ever so slightly, like some strange personal jigsaw puzzle. Because the moment he tipped her head to the side, it was as if she fit him. As if they fit together even more closely.

A tension that was something different from panic started low in her belly and worked outward through her body, until every inch of her felt alive and moving of its own accord. Moving into the kiss. Into him, until there was no space left between them. Becoming almost one.

His kisses reminded her that she was not alone. That whatever terrors remained to be faced, he would face with her. That he had pledged himself to her aid, and would hold himself to her service in more ways than one.

And with that knowledge the darkness receded, and was replaced by the bright light of pleasure. And growing passion.
 

She gave herself up to the kiss, to learning first the texture and then the taste of him—cinnamon and brandy, heady and warm, exotic and intoxicating. Her head spun, as if she had drunk too much sherry. But oh, such a lovely feeling. So very, very pleasurable. A kiss so gentle and sweet and stealthy it stole her breath, and was well on the way toward stealing her heart when he eased his lips from hers.

“The guard”—he punctuated the information with a kiss to the tip of her nose—“has gone. And the lights”—another kiss first to one closed eye, and then to the other—“have been put out.” He pressed a lingering kiss to her lips. “And my plan for us to appear like two lovers who found an out of the way spot to kiss is no longer needed. But I’ve afraid while we were more pleasantly engaged, he’s locked us in.”

Locked in.
 

His voice was everything calm and even amused, but without his kiss to distract her, the air immediately felt hot and thin, and the walls too close. “
Non, non
.
Je suis à bout de souffle.
” She tried to push her way to the door, to give herself space. “Please. I have to leave.”
 

Her voice sounded small and wretchedly weak, even to her own ears, but she had to make him understand the hot press of panic beating in her ears. It was as if she could hear the dull roar of the mob outside her uncle’s house in Paris, and feel the house shake and windows shatter as bricks and cobbles smashed against it. If Papa had not heard her screams, and pulled her from the locked armoire where the treacherous maids had shut her in, she might have—
 

“Shh. Ye’re not out of air,” Mr. Andrews assured her. “Ye’re fine. I’ve got ye safe. Just breathe.”

She was not fine, but she was not alone. And she was no longer in that armoire in Paris. They had escaped, she and Papa, and fled to London, like rats abandoning a sinking ship. And she was in a closet in London because she had a job to do, a task to accomplish.

The cool air flowed back into her lungs, and with it came logic and sanity. “You understood me,” she realized. “You speak French?”

“
Mais oui
.” His voice was all calm breezy assurance. “I lived there, in Paris, for several years as a young man. I know it as well as I know London. Actually, better.” His hand resumed its gentle path across her back. “Keep breathing. Ye’re just fine. I’ve got ye,” he said again.
 

And he did have her. His arms were all around her, rubbing her back, warming her arms, distracting her from her predicament by running his thumb gently along her lip in a way that made her forget Paris and Papa and closets and rats.

In a way that made her want to draw the flesh of that thumb into her mouth, and bite ever so gently down upon it to taste his skin.

Good Lord above. What an idea.

But Mr. Rory Andrews did not seem to think it was a bad idea. He seemed to think kissing and biting gently was a marvelous, marvelous thing. “Shh,” he said as his lips brushed against hers, and his hands slid up to cup her chin. “It will all be fine,” he murmured, as one hand delved into her hair, cradling her skull, tugging on the strands and scattering pins. Drawing her in. Relaxing and distracting her from her panic. Protecting and reassuring her, certainly, but also making her aware of him as a very tall, very well built young man. A very gentlemanly gentleman thief.

Ah, yes. Best to remember that he was a thief. And that they were in a broom closet in Somerset House because she needed him to steal her father’s statue back to keep Papa from gaol, and her from having to emigrate in shame to America.
 

“And we’re not really locked in—we can leave at any time.”
 

“Truly?” His reassurance pushed the walls back, and his lovely strong fingers were smoothing along the tight lines of her shoulders, and gently kneading the tense muscles of her upper back. And it felt quite heavenly to rest there for the moment, with her head against his chest.

“Yes, truly,” he concurred. “But it’s best we wait another moment or two.” His voice was a low hum that vibrated though her, tickling her in the most strangely un-annoying way, making her bones feel soft and pliable. “Lily of the valley,” he observed in an easy, lazy murmur, as if he were reciting a recipe, or an incantation. “From Houbigant on the Rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré. I would know that scent anywhere. How quintessentially French. And delightful. Like ye.”

It was a good thing the closet was dark, or he would see the furious blush heating her cheeks. Because he was still holding her, still slowly drawing his fingers through her hair in that calming fashion, so she did not leave his embrace. Nor remove her head from where it lay so comfortably against the safe wall of his chest.

“I understand.” His lovely articulate fingers played along the nape of her neck, distracting and soothing her all at the same time. “Why don’t we try to sit? I’ll go first.”

He disengaged his arms from their embrace, and immediately she felt the loss of him—the loss of calm and comfort. But he did not leave her entirely—not that he could in so tight a space—he took her hand, and interlaced his strong fingers through her smaller ones until he could pull her down upon his lap. “More comfortable?” he asked as his arm resumed drawing lazy circles in the small of her back.

“Will I not squash you?”

“Not a’tall. I’m perfectly comfortable.” His low, easy voice betrayed not a qualm. “There’s room for my legs to be stretched out under the stair, and ye weigh no more than a featherweight. Or a very lovely paperweight.” He placed another kiss unerringly upon her brow. “Ye might as well lean on me. We need to rest while we can.”

And then he un-shuttered the glim, as he called the small lantern she had not heard him retrieve from the shelf, and silently louvered the tiny doors open enough that the warm, mellow wick illuminated their close confines.

“Does that make it better, or worse?”

“Better I think.” Because she could see him, and see the contented smile he lavished upon her at close range.

“I suppose you must think me silly to be afraid in the dark. I did not used to be. But things, before, in Paris—” She struggled to explain something she had no right to complain about. She and Papa were alive and well, when so many others were not.

“Things in Paris got complicated,” he offered, “and dark.”

“Yes. Just so.” It was an inordinate relief to be understood without the necessity of explanation, or of translation. Her gentleman thief had intriguing depths.
 

“And so we will keep things as simple and uncomplicated as possible,” he assured her.

“But what can be done about the lock?”

“Oh, I have plans for that lock when the time comes, don’t ye worry. Do ye know what someone once told me?”

“No.” She hadn’t the vaguest idea, because his clever fingers were working their way up the column of her spine, and were tracing soft circles just below her hairline in a way that made her want to tip her head back to give him greater access. Even though she knew perfectly well that she ought not. She ought to concentrate upon their problem, and help him where she could.

But he seemed to have everything so well in hand, as it were. And he was murmuring, “A friend once told me that old locks are like maiden aunties—they know how to keep their secrets, so ye have to cozen up to them sweetly.”

“Is that what you are doing to me—cozening up to me sweetly?”

“Is it working?” he asked at the edge of her ear.

“A little,” she admitted.

He smiled, a slow spark that lit in one corner of his eye and spread. “Then I’ll have to try harder.”
 

But he really didn’t try harder—he tried sweeter. He kissed her sweetly. More than sweetly. Heartwarmingly gently. He kissed like an angel, if angels were tall and terrible and handsome, with the most astonishingly translucent blue eyes that went soft at the corners when he looked at her.
 

His hand wrapped around the back of her neck, and his fingers splayed along the line of her jaw to tip her face up to his. To fit them together like two halves of a puzzle she hadn’t known she needed to solve. His lips pressed against hers, gently but insistently, telling her without words that he wanted more from her. More of her mouth. More of her lips. More of her tongue.

His own tongue licked subtly at the corner of her mouth—just enough. Just enough to make her lips part, and make her gasp with astonishment at the abiding sweetness that rose within her as he took her lower lip between his, and softly sucked and worried at her flesh.

She opened to him then, wanting everything of pleasure he had to give, needing more and more of the slippery friction of his mouth upon hers. Her eyes fell closed, and her head fell back. His mouth slid down to the side of her neck, where he worried and nipped against the sensitive tendon.
 

Oh,
Bon Dieu
, he was good at this.
 

“You must do this sort of thing all the time.” Her fingers found a button upon his coat—a crest of some sort—and fiddled with it idly.

“Not all the time.” He kissed in between the words. “I’m very selective, ye ken—I rob only the best, most interesting people, with the loveliest, most interesting daughters.”

“Many daughters?”

His answer was to kiss the side of her neck. “As a matter of fact, ye’re my first.” His mouth slid along the line of her jaw, and pleasure weighted her head. “Normally, I don’t get myself apprehended by lovely young women in their night clothes, or cozied up in a closet with them.”
 

“Do you often work with other thieves, when you work?”

“Never. Ye’re my first accomplice, and therefore also my best.”

She tried not to be pleased, not to smile, so she hid her chagrin by finding his lips—those lovely, strong, firm, clever lips, that kissed her in a way that made her forget about closets, and think instead of night clothes, and how she wished she were not wearing so many layers of clothes right now so she might feel the touch of his hand more directly.
 

And perhaps he felt the same way, because he was untying his cravat, and opening his collar, allowing her to find the hollow at the base of his throat, and kiss him there. His skin was smooth and warm and smelled of citrus and bright sunlight. “Limes,” she murmured, “from Floris, on Jermyn Street. So very, very”—she punctuated her discovery with kisses—“quintessentially”—another kiss that was more of a taste of his taut flesh—“exotically English.”

 
“No one,”—he made quick work of her plain linen fichu—“has ever called the English exotic. And I’m Scots.”

“Oh, you are,” she assured him. “English or British—it is all the same, is it not? Then you are so very, wonderfully British.”

“As ye are so French.
Si belle
. So lovely.” His fingers skimmed across her skin. “
Si douce
. So soft.”

With him, she did not mind being French. She did not mind being locked in a closet. She did not even mind being a thief.
 

Because in return, he have her more of the heady, intoxicating pleasure, heating and cooling her skin, making her forget everything except him, and his mouth, and the infinite possibility of pleasure.

Until he disappointed her, and said, “Oh, Mignon. Please, we must stop.”
 

Chapter Sixteen