[Samuel Barbara] The Black Angel(Book4You) (26 page)

But even with the brace and warmth of his arm around her, the walk seemed very long. The miasmic fog, the flutter of heavy wings in hidden places, the spluttering light at barred windows all spoke of despair and death.

When they were safe in the chaise and clopping home through the dark streets, she felt guilt at her sense of relief. Julian would not be in that evil place if not for her heedlessness. Margaret said this afternoon that she needed to make amends in order to overcome her guilt. How could she possibly make amends to Julian for all he'd suffered? Or Gabriel, who'd been taken by slavers?

Come to that, she could
never
make it up to her father, who died believing his sons had been killed in an uprising in Martinique.

Staring out at the darkened streets, she sighed, gloom once again enveloping her. There was no way to make it all right again. The task was too enormous.

Then a thought made her frown and she turned to Tynan, also lost in his own thoughts. "What power does Malvern's mother hold?"

He made a soft noise of amusement, and cleared his throat. "There are men who like to be… shall we say… dominated."

"I don't understand. Say it plainly."

"All right." He touched his lips. "There are men—and women, too—who prefer to be tied up, even beaten. Abused, I suppose, though they do not view it that way."

"Oh." Adriana's eyes widened as she thought of it. "And she is the sort of woman who does the tying?"

"That's what they say."

"Well," she said without embarrassment, "that does make certain other matters a little more understandable."

"He did not abuse you?"

"Malvern? Oh, not at all." She shook her head. Thinking of the cryptic discussion between her brother and Tynan, she inclined her head and asked, "Tell me of your brother, Tynan. You never speak of him at all."

"What would you hear?"

"I don't know. Whatever you wish to tell me. What was he like?"

In the darkness, he turned to her and smiled. "In memory, I make him into a saint, but he was not that. He was headstrong and stubborn, like my father."

She chuckled. "Nothing like you, of course."

"Well, we did share that quality, though my mother said I was tenacious in the way of a cat, sneaky, while Aiden was a bull, barreling through anything in front of him."

"Did he marry?"

"No. His devotion was… complete." A more ragged edge roughened his voice. "In the end, it cost him his life."

She wanted to know how he'd died, but it was not the sort of question one asked. He would volunteer the information if he wished for her to have it. Instead she asked, "How long has it been?"

"Less than a year."

"You must miss him dreadfully." Without thinking, she reached for his hand, and he accepted her touch, turning his hand over to meet her palm to palm.

"That I do," he said.

"It must be difficult for you to watch me with my own brothers."

"No," he said clearly. "It is a joy."

The quiet, simple statement, rolling from him on that lovely Irish lilt, suddenly seemed to Adriana to sum up the whole of this man who'd come to her so abruptly, disturbing her safe, careful life in unexpected and unwelcome and startling ways. But at the heart of all of it, she knew why her father had liked him. He was a man of honor, a man of his word, and there was a very great river of kindness running through him. She tightened her grip. "Thank you for all you've done."

"And welcome you are," he said, and a hint of teasing crept into his voice. "I am quite certain you'll find a way to repay me." He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her inner wrist. "Will you not?"

She yanked her hand away. "Why are men ever thinking only of one thing?"

He laughed. "Do you not think of it, Riana?" He shifted, and settled an arm around her shoulders. An instant bolt of awareness spiked through her, shooting down her spine and into her belly, and it annoyed her. "Weren't you thinking of kisses outside the Tower?"

His breath whispered over her earlobe, across her jaw, and she closed her eyes. "A moment of weakness only."

"Not weakness—anticipation."

Anticipation. The scent of him enveloped her, and her flesh remembered suddenly the taut moment outside the Tower. The sense of awareness and connection flooded her now with an almost unbearable power. She closed her eyes as he touched her neck with his nose and, with a free hand, loosened the ties of her cloak. She tried to think of some word to stop him, but here in the dark, alone with him as the carriage rocked them side to side, she could not summon a single one.

"I think of kissing you all the day," he murmured, his hand sliding under the woolen cloak to light upon her shoulder. The tips of his fingers were cold and she shivered. "I think about where to land each one I am allowed. Should it be your ear?" He drew a line around the edge of it. "Or, perhaps, your throat?" All four fingers slid from her chin to her collarbone, light as feathers, and a shudder coursed down her spine, though she forced herself to remain still.

His voice deepened to a luxurious caress, the lilt rising and falling and rolling into her ear as his delicately wicked hands followed his narrative. "I wonder to myself which place would drive you mad? Here?" His fingers drifted over her breasts, slipped beneath the demure scarf she tucked into the bodice and, in a sudden gesture, pulled it free. She caught her breath, and knew he could tell she was aroused—her breath was hurried and shallow, and his hands were upon the upper swell of her breasts, so he could feel that. One finger edged along the lowest edge of her bodice, nearly upon her nipples if he but knew it, and she closed her eyes.

"
Ah
," he said, and he, too, was aroused. She heard it in the new huskiness in his voice. "There."

In the dark, rocking closer and closer into the circle of his arm, the cradle of his body, Adriana let go. She did not stop him when he tugged her close and bent her into the curve of his arm. She did not halt him when he brushed the fabric of her cloak away and bent his head over her breasts and pressed his sensual mouth to that low, low place just above the corner of her bodice.

She did not halt him. In fact she found herself arching toward him as his tongue came out and seared a line along the edge of that bodice, one side to the other, drawing a line across both breasts. Nor did she protest when his lips moved, and moved, and moved again, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses over her breasts and her throat and back down. His hair brushed her chin and she made a soft sound, and as if he knew what she wished, he reached behind him and pulled the tie from his hair. It spilled free over his shoulders, around his face, scattered across her throat and touched her breasts.

She raised her hands to it, taking a handful and letting it spill over her arm, silky and rich and gloriously sensual, and it was this, his hair, that sent her reason into some dark closed place and allowed the fullness of her sensuality to spill forth. She touched his hair and his head, trailed her fingers over his eyelids and let him kiss her palm, her wrist, her fingers.

And when he hauled her into his lap, when her hips pressed hard into his member, she shifted more fully, pressing closer, and he groaned in deepest pleasure.

But even this did not make him into a wild beast, as it had often done with… others. Instead his head came up, and his hands, and he clutched her closer, putting his mouth against her throat while his hands tugged at her sleeves, tugging them down over her arms, pulling her bodice lower, lower.

Her breath caught at his intent and for one tiny moment she felt reason begin to invade as her breasts, pushed high by her corset, spilled from the top of her dress.

But his mouth was too quick for the protest to last. Those elegant lips, those deft fingers, captured her, and his fluid tongue, his gentle teeth, his suckling mouth fell to their carnal task. Her hands tightened in his hair and her breath left her, and she let go, let herself fall into the unimaginable pleasure of his swirling and teasing and scraping. A pressure built in her abdomen, and she found herself aching for more, for his tongue in her mouth and his—

The carriage rolled to a halt, and they ceased, frozen in place. She was sprawled over his lap, her breasts exposed, her arms trapped neatly at her sides by the dress. His hair spilled over his shoulders, mussed by her hands, and there was a glazed, lazy expression on his face that she knew was reflected on her own.

He acted quickly, tugging the cloak tight around her, smoothing back his hair and setting her beside him before the footman had even jumped down. With a quick grin at her, he said, "How many kisses did I spend?"

Her body still pulsed and there was something wicked about having her breasts naked beneath the cloak, but no matter how she struggled, she could not quite get her hands in place to fix it. "Help me!" she whispered insistently.

He let go of a wicked laugh. "Must I? It's ever so erotic to imagine that cloak slipping the tiniest bit."

"Tynan!"

"Pretend to sleep," he said as the door handle moved. "I'll carry you in."

There was no time to do anything else, so she complied. He swung her easily into his arms and managed the step to the ground with no trouble. "She's exhausted," he said jauntily. "I'll just take her up to bed."

Bed. She tensed. Was that what they were going to do now? What else had she expected?

"Keep your eyes closed," he murmured. "There're footmen all about."

It felt like her cloak was slipping, and with that covert, hidden part of her, she hoped it was. She hoped he was tortured by a glimpse of flesh he could not touch, to pay him back for this game. With a wicked little wiggle, she managed to get her hands in place to make
sure
a small glimpse of something showed.

"You're a wicked thing," he said on a harsh exhalation as they climbed the stairs. "And I vow you have the most beautiful breasts I've ere seen."

He reached the top and Adriana opened her eyes. "Are we out of sight?"

He shoved open her bedroom door and put her down and pressed her against the wall. "Aye, we are." Even through her skirts she felt the aggressive thrust of his member, and with a fierce sound he bent and put his mouth against her neck, sucking hard as his hands went under the cloak to touch her breasts. "How many kisses have I spent, Riana?" he breathed.

"A dozen at least."

"Too many for one night." His fingers teased her nipples to aching points. "But I must spend two more."

She knew she should reign herself in, but it was impossible. Her blood boiled with want of him, with the glory of the feelings he roused in her when he bent and opened his mouth over her right breast, lingering with heat and swirling tongue. "One," he whispered, pulling away, and moved to her left side. "Two."

He stepped back and covered her carefully. "I must save the rest."

"Must you?"

"A wicked, wicked smile made his eyes glitter. Anticipation," he said, and before she could react, he slipped into the passageway and closed the door behind him.

Adriana, senses in a delicious uproar, slumped against the wall and closed her eyes.

Anticipation. She smiled.