The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (27 page)

“I rather believe they must be,” he said. “Though I suspect we would find that difficult to prove. There must have been others
as well; the quality of the machinery and supplies alone would seem to indicate some considerable monetary investment on the
part of several unknown benefactors. It is not entirely a surprise to us, you realize? After all, normal humans are right
to suspect a supernatural agenda. We are basically immortal; our goals are likely to be a little different from those of ordinary
people, sometimes even at odds. When all is said and done, daylight folk are still food.”

Alexia stopped petting him and narrowed her eyes in mock suspicion. “Am I allied with the wrong side in this little war?”

In reality, she did not have much doubt. After all, she had never heard cries of pain and torture coming from the BUR offices.
Even Countess Nadasdy and her hive seemed more civilized than Mr. Siemons and his machines.

“That depends.” Lord Maccon lay passive in her arms. On full-moon night in human form, he was dependent upon her ability and
her whim for his sanity. It did not sit well with an Alpha. All the choices were hers, including this one. “Have you decided
which you prefer?”

“They did ask for my cooperation,” she informed him coyly. Miss Tarabotti was enjoying having the upper hand over Lord Maccon.

The earl looked worried. “And?”

Alexia had never even contemplated Mr. Siemons's offer as a real possibility. Yet Lord Maccon was looking at her as though
she had actually had a choice. How could she explain to the earl that, quite apart from anything else—including their constant
arguments—
he
had her complete loyalty? She could not—not without having to admit, to herself or him, why that might be the case.

“Let us simply say,” she said at last, “that I prefer your methods.”

Lord Maccon went perfectly still. A gleam entered his beautiful tawny eyes. “Is that so? Which ones?”

Miss Tarabotti pinched him for such blatant innuendo. It did not matter where she pinched, as the earl was a bare canvas of
pinchability.

“Ow!” said the Alpha, looking pained. “What was that for?”

“May I remind you we are in grave danger? I have managed to acquire for us, at most, an hour of grace time.”

“How on earth did you finagle that?” he asked, rubbing the place she had just pinched.

Alexia smiled. “Luckily, your files on me did not report everything. I simply told Mr. Siemons my preternatural powers took
an hour to activate.”

“And they threw you into this cell with me anyway?” Lord Maccon was not pleased in the least by this bit of information.

“Did I not just say that I preferred your methods? Now you know why.” Alexia twitched uncomfortably. She was getting a cramp
in one of her shoulders. Lord Maccon's torso was rather too large to have one's arms wrapped around for an extended period
of time, especially when one was lying on a hard wooden floor. Not that she was about to complain, mind you.

Her evident discomfort made the earl ask, in all seriousness, “I did not hurt you, did I?”

Miss Tarabotti cocked her head to one side and raised an eyebrow at him.

“I mean, when I attacked you just now, in wolf form? We werewolves do not remember much that happens during the full moon,
you see. It is all embarrassingly instinctual,” he admitted.

Miss Tarabotti patted him reassuringly. “I think you realized, almost despite yourself, that it was me you nearly killed.”

“I smelled you,” he admitted gruffly. “It sparked off a whole different set of instincts. I
do
remember being very confused, but not much else.”

“What kind of different instincts?” Miss Tarabotti asked archly. She knew she was treading dangerous ground, but for some
reason she could not resist encouraging him. She wanted to hear him say it. She wondered at what time she had become such
a hardened flirt.
Well,
she reasoned,
one must get something from one's mother's side of the family.

“Mmm. The reproductive variety.” The earl began to nibble her neck with wholly concentrated interest.

Miss Tarabotti's innards turned toward a feel of mashed potatoes. Fighting her own urge to nibble back, she pinched him again,
harder this time.

“Ow! Stop that!” He left off nibbling and glared at her. It was a funny thing to see such an expression of wounded dignity
on the face of such an enormous and highly dangerous man—even if he was naked.

Alexia said practically, “We have no time for such monkeyshines. We must determine a way out of this predicament. We have
to rescue Lord Akeldama, and we absolutely must close this wretched club down. Your amorous intentions are not currently part
of the agenda.”

“Is there a way they might become so, in the not-too-distant future?” Lord Maccon asked meekly, shifting against her in a
manner that ensured she realized the nibbling had affected his outsides just as much as her insides. Alexia was partly shocked,
partly intrigued by the idea that as he was naked, she might actually get to
see
what he looked like. She had seen sketches of the nude male, of course, for purely technical purposes. She was given to wonder
if werewolves were anatomically bigger in certain areas. Of course, she was touching Lord Maccon, so such supernatural traits
ought rightly to be canceled out, but in the interest of scientific curiosity, she shifted her lower body away from him a
handbreadth and peeked downward. She was thwarted by the material of her own skirt wadded between them.

Taking her movement as withdrawal rather than curiosity, the earl pulled her back against him possessively. He slid one leg
between her two, trying to shift multiple skirts and petticoats out of his way.

Miss Tarabotti sighed in long-suffering style.

He returned to nibbling and then nipping and kissing softly up and down the entire column of her throat. This was causing
most distractingly invigorating frissons of sensation up and down her sides, over her ribs, and toward her nether regions.
It was almost uncomfortable, as though her skin itched from underneath. Also, due to his unclothed state, Alexia was learning
ever more about the veracity of some of those sketches. Still, her father's books had not entirely done the situation justice.

Lord Maccon slid one hand up into her hair.

So much for tying it back,
thought Alexia as he loosed it from her hard-won ribbon.

The earl tugged at the black tresses, pulling her head back so as to more fully expose her neck to his lips and teeth.

Miss Tarabotti decided that there was something excruciatingly erotic about being fully dressed with a large naked man pressed
against her from breast to foot.

Since she had not been able to see for herself exactly what the earl's frontal area looked like, Alexia decided to try the
next best thing and began to work her hand around to touch. She was not entirely sure this was the kind of action a young
lady undertook in such situations, but then again, most young ladies did not get themselves into them to start with.
In for a penny, in for a pound,
she decided. Miss Tarabotti always was one to seize the moment. So she seized.

Lord Maccon, and the certain portion of his anatomy now firmly in her grasp, jerked violently.

Miss Tarabotti let go. “Oops,” she said. “Should I not have?” She trailed off, humiliated.

He hastened to reassure her. “Oh no, you most certainly should. It was simply unexpected.” He pressed up against her receptively.

Embarrassed but more curious than anything else, purely scientifically, mind you, Alexia continued her explorations, a little
more tenderly this time. His skin in that area was very soft, and there was hair nested at the base. He produced the most
delicious noises under her tentative touch. She became increasingly intrigued but was also getting more and more concerned
with the logistics of any further proceedings.

“Um, Lord Maccon?” she said finally in a cautious whisper.

The earl laughed. “No choice at this point, Alexia; you simply must call me Conall.”

She swallowed. He could feel the movement under his lips.

“Conall, aren't we getting a tad carried away given the circumstances?”

The earl pulled her head back so he could look her directly in the eyes. “What are you blathering on about now, you impossible
female?” His tawny eyes were glazed with passion, and he was breathing hard. Alexia was shocked to discover her own breathing
was far from relaxed.

She scrunched up her forehead, trying to find the right words. “Well, should we not be abed for this kind of sport? Plus,
they are scheduled to return at any moment.”

“They? Who?” He was clearly falling behind the conversation.

“The scientists.”

Lord Maccon gave a strangled laugh. “Aye, yes. And we wouldn't want them to learn too much about interspecies relations, now,
would we?” He reached down with a free hand and pulled hers away from its questing.

Miss Tarabotti was faintly disappointed. Until he raised it to his lips and kissed it. “I do not mean to rush into these things,
Alexia. You are inexplicably tempting.”

She nodded, bumping his head slightly. “The feeling is mutual, my lord. Not to mention unexpected.”

He seemed to take that as encouragement and rolled so that she was beneath him, and he loomed above her. He was now lying
between her legs, component parts flush against hers.

Alexia squeaked at the sudden shift in positions. She was not certain whether she should be grateful or upset that women's
fashion demanded so many copious layers of fabric, as this was now all that prevented more intimate contact and, she was pretty
certain, sexual congress.

“Lord Maccon…,” she said in her best, most severe, spinster voice.

“Conall,” he interrupted. He leaned back, and his hands began journeying over her chest.

“Conall! Now is
not
the time!”

He ignored her and asked, “How do I undo this blasted dress?”

Alexia's ivory taffeta gown was held together by a row of tiny mother-of-pearl buttons up the length of its back. Although
she did not answer him, the earl eventually discovered this fact and began undoing them with a rapidity that bespoke consummate
skill in the art of undoing ladies' clothing. Miss Tarabotti would have been disgruntled, except that she figured it was best
if one of them knew what they were on about in the matter of fornication. And she could hardly expect a gentleman of over
two hundred years or so to have remained celibate.

In no time at all, he had dexterously undone enough of the buttons to pull down the neckline of her dress and expose the tops
of her breasts where they rose above her corset. He bent and began kissing them, only to stop, rear back very suddenly, and
say in a voice harsh with suppressed need, “What in tarnation is that?”

Alexia lifted herself onto her elbows and looked down, trying to see what it was that had stopped the annoying but unfortunately
delightful ravishment of her personage. However, given the nature of her copious endowments in the bosom department, she could
not make out what it was about her corset that had so taken his attention.

Lord Maccon picked up the shard of mirror wrapped in a handkerchief and showed it to her.

“Oh, I forgot about that. I pinched it from the dressing room when the scientists left me alone for a moment. Thought it might
come in handy.”

Lord Maccon gave her a long, thoughtful, only mildly amorous look. “Very resourceful, my dear. It is at times like this when
I really wish you could be on the BUR roster.”

She looked up into his face, embarrassed more by the compliment and the endearment than she had been by their previous physical
proceedings. “So, what is the plan?”

“
We
are not going to develop a plan,” he growled, placing the mirror carefully down on the floor next to them, out of view of
the doorway.

Alexia grinned at such foolish protectiveness. “Do not be ridiculous. You can hardly hope to accomplish anything more this
night without my help. It is full moon, remember?”

Lord Maccon, who had, outrageously, forgotten the moon, had a momentary shock of terror that, in his absentmindedness, he
might lose proximity with her. Alexia's preternatural abilities were the only thing currently keeping him sane. He quickly
canvassed to make certain they were in firm physical contact. His body reminded him that, yes,
firm
was the operative word.

He tried to keep his head focused on their future non-amorous actions. “Well, in that case, you are to remain tangential as
much as possible. None of those fire-eating antics you are so fond of. In order to get us out of here, I may have to use violence.
In which case, you will need to hold on to me tightly and stay well out of the way. Do you ken?”

Alexia was going to get defensive and angry and explain quite severely that she was practical enough to avoid fisticuffs,
especially when she had no brass parasol to protect herself with, but instead she said, “Did you just ask if I
kenned
?” She could not help grinning.

Lord Maccon looked ashamed of the verbal slip and muttered something about Scotland under his breath.

“You did! I was just kenned!” Miss Tarabotti's grin widened. She could not restrain herself; she did so like it when the earl's
Highland lilt came out. It was currently her second favorite thing he did with his tongue. She leaned up on her elbows and
kissed him softly on the cheek. Almost despite himself, Lord Maccon moved his own mouth toward her lips and turned it into
a far deeper kiss.

When Alexia finally dropped back, they were both panting again.

“This has got to stop,” she insisted. “We are in danger, remember? You know, ruination and tragedy? Calamity just beyond that
door.” She pointed behind him. “Any moment now, evil scientists may come charging in.”