Beauty and the Spy (22 page)

"Like this?" she whispered.

"
God
, yes," he breathed.

She smiled against his mouth.

"No smiling," he murmured. "Only kissing."

Their mouths moved languidly over each other at first, nipping, delving deeply, retreating. And gradually it built to urgency. He rose up over her to take his kisses deeper still, to taste the contours of her mouth, teeth clashing against her teeth, and still it never seemed enough. The sensation was like soaring in place; Kit couldn't feel the ground beneath him, or the air above him; he was aware only of the sweetness of the woman joined with him, and distantly he marveled, he'd never felt quite so lost He tucked his hip in firmly against hers, astounded at how painfully aroused he was.

"Sweet," he murmured, moving his lips from hers to kiss to nip beneath her chin, to draw his tongue down the cord of her throat Her breathing was rushed, and with the rise and fell of her chest be could see the tight darkness of her nipples beneath the fine fabric of her dress. "Sweet" he sighed again, moving his mouth to breathe against her breast; he touched his tongue to her nipple through the fabric. She caught her breath at the sensation, arced up a little to meet him. And as she did, his fingers, five feathers, began to stroke the tender skin inside her thigh.

At first she tensed; the muscles of her thigh quivering, uncertain. But then her legs parted a little more for him.

"Stockings, but no drawers?" he teased, breathlessly. He nudged the neckline of her gown lower with his teeth, exposing her breast, distracting her as his hand glided farther up her thigh, to come gently to rest against the damp, silken curls at the crook of them.

"Too warm for… drawers… but I liked the… garters…" She gasped out the words, and he gave a short laugh before he took her nipple into his mouth. Puckered velvet, it was, the palest, most delicate pink, like her lips; her breast could fill the palm of his hand. He knew because he skimmed his palm over the other one.

"
Kit
," she rasped. "
God
."

"One and the same," he murmured. He heard her gasp something, either a tortured laugh or a word, which may have been "beast," but she stopped abruptly when he took her nipple into his mouth again and drew slow circles around it with his tongue. Her softly sighed "
oh
," her back arching up to meet him, her fingers combing over his head, made him wilder than he thought he could bear.

But he would bear it Today was for her, and today was all there would be.

He settled for tucking his hips closer to her, his aching erection brushing against her. His fingers stroked lightly over the curls between her legs, twining in them. And then he returned his lips to hers, gently, because he wanted to watch her eyes when he slid a finger lightly along her cleft.

He felt her body go taut when he did; she drew in a sharp breath.

His hand stilled. "No?" he said softly.

"Yes," she disagreed on a whisper, touching his face.

He kissed her softly, as his finger slid lightly again, and then again, and at last her legs slipped open wider still, inviting him in. Desire clawed him, a great bird of prey clinging to his back, he could scarcely breathe. With his fingers, he circled her gently, slowly at first, and men insistently, listening to the pulse of her breath, to her soft murmurs, to learn the rhythm she wanted, until her desire drenched his fingers. He touched nearly chaste kisses to her mouth as his fingers played over her, and watched, triumphant, as her pupils grew large, her beautiful, complicated eyes opaque, her breathing become a quiet storm.

"Kit?" she whispered urgently. "I—it's—"

"I know," he sympathized hoarsely. "Move with me now."

And she began to move her hips in time with his knowing fingers, colluding with him in her own pleasure, and he moved his own hips against her, craving his own release even as he knew he must deny it. He covered her mouth with a kiss, a deep kiss, tangling his tongue with hers, and oh the taste of her: honey and velvet, rich as plums. He moved his fingers in time with his tongue, knew by her escalating breathing, the rhythm of her hips, mat it would be soon.

She took her lips from his, her head thrashed to one side. "
Please
…"

"Hold on to me, Susannah." She was utterly focused on her own journey now, and God, how he wanted to go there with her.

At last, her fingers dug into his arms and she bowed up with a soft cry, pulsing against his hand.

And somehow, this seemed nearly as precious as the beat of her heart, and the pleasure he took in her release was so acute it might well have been his own.

Kit gently took his hand from her, breathed in deeply, breathed out again, steadying himself, willing his own need to ebb, and tried desperately to knit back together the frayed ends of his senses.

For so long now, part of the pleasure in making love to a woman had been the mechanics of seduction. He'd always been the master of each step of it, and this, too had been part of the pleasure for him.

But… this pleasure was different. It was in Susannah's breath, warm against his neck in the aftermath of her release. The flush in her cheeks and creamy throat In the scent of her hair. In her lovely eyes going opaque from desire, her hands in his hair. In—

"Did we just make love?" Susannah wanted to know.

In questions like that.

He smiled faintly. "Very nearly."

"There's… more… for you, I know." She said it shyly, and reached out and tentatively covered his subsiding arousal with her hand. He sucked in a breath and clutched her wrist to stop her. And then he rolled over on his back to look at the sky, a distance away from her.

The sky looked different, somehow. Probably the whole world looked different now.

"It's just…" He faltered, after a moment of silence, for he was afraid he'd hurt her with his words. "There will be no going back for you, then, Susannah."

But was that what bothered him precisely? Now that the fever of the moment had passed, a strange panic was welling inside him, and he didn't know how to identify it.

He had a tremendously ungentlemanly impulse to run like the devil.

She was quiet next to him for a moment; a bird trilled its song into the silence and the trees shook their leaves into a welcome breeze.

"Perhaps… perhaps I don't want to go back," she said. Oh, and already he heard the hurt in her words.

He rolled over on his side to look down at her for a long moment "Susannah," he murmured. He traced her lips, swollen from kisses, with his finger, and then kissed them gently. He stroked her hair away from her face, avoiding looking into her questioning eyes. He brushed his lips over her cheek, her brow, then plucked a leaf from her hair, and tenderly straightened her bodice, all while she silently watched him, studying his face, well aware he was refusing to look directly at her.

Finally, he levered his tall frame to his feet, and his arm, which for the past half hour he hadn't felt at all, was throbbing.

"Come. I'll walk you home. I find… I find my arm is aching." He reached his hand down; after a moment's hesitation, she took it, and he helped her to her feet She brushed the leaves from her dress. They set out for home, not touching.

The walk was silent; he left her at her aunt's gate with a bow. It was a strangely formal thing to do, and he saw Susannah flinch a little. But for some reason he needed to impose a distance.

"Hellebore tomorrow then?" she said it brightly. Tinsel bright. It rang falsely in the still of the day.

He'd done this to her, he'd put that falseness in her voice. Still, there was nothing he could do to make her feel any mote certain, because it was possible no one had ever felt as uncertain than he did at the moment.

"My arm." He shrugged apologetically. "Perhaps a day of rest... ?"

Coward.

He'd never before been one for lying. But then again, he'd never before been afraid of the truth before.

Susannah's brightness faltered. "All right I do hope it feels better soon."

"So do I." He tossed the words out lightly, but they sounded awful, jarring, instead. He could have kicked himself.

I
never should have touched her
.

Funny, but a mere half hour ago it didn't seem that he'd had any choice at all.

He gave another short bow, and left her staring after him at her aunt's gate, and noticed as he backed away there was one last tiny leaf still clinging to her hair.

Susannah stood at the gate flanked by her aunt's roses, and watched Kit disappear down the path. A leaf clung to his bright, close-cropped hair. It added a little whimsy to what was otherwise an almost cruelly dignified departure. She remembered traveling down that very same path on her very first day in Barnstable, lured by recklessness, a little bit of despair, a need to test the boundaries of her new life. She'd discovered him on the other end of it stark naked, arms up in the air, roaring a satisfied "
Ahhhh
!" to the elements. He wasn't precisely a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Perhaps a treasure chest instead. The kind one finds at the bottom of the ocean, filled with rubies and doubloons, guarded by snapping crustaceans and darker things that perhaps no one had yet discovered or named.

She considered whether to regret taking that path that morning. She couldn't quite decide yet.

But she'd certainly got what she'd thought she wanted, hadn't she?

The taste of him lingered on her lips; she could smell him on her clothes. It was almost as though he stood there with her still. She put her fingers up to her lips; they felt chafed and tender and thoroughly, properly, used for perhaps the first time ever. A white heat of desire threaded through her veins again; it stole her breath. She closed her eyes.

She knew now what his beautiful mouth could do. It could prod her with sarcasm and truth and wit It could devastate her with tenderness; it could relentlessly build a storm of pleasure in her. It could own her until that storm broke over her.

Oh, and after that, too. Because she couldn't imagine now ever drinking her fill of him.

She wondered, however, if Kit had taken his fill of
her
. He'd rolled over, been distracted and silent and pensive. Bloody
polite
, in fact—which is how she'd known something was terribly wrong. Perhaps she'd been too innocent, or too eager, or too dull for a man like him, a man who'd fought a duel over a woman when he was scarcely yet grown, who'd seen war. Who'd befriended opera dancers. And she—well, before Kit, she'd been kissed by Douglas, twice, and pressed up against his erection once. It hardly counted as worldliness.

No, she'd seen it—Kit's narrow face, homely and beautiful all at once, had been brilliantly open to her in that moment when his mouth had touched hers. He'd been trembling, too. They'd been equal in that moment Both in want… and wonder.

She'd almost be willing to wager the remainder of her wardrobe upon it.

She'd hoped to give herself to him, but that would have been more of a gift to herself, she understood now. She knew now what she really needed to give him: time.

To decide what it was he wanted from her, if anything at all.

And for some reason this seemed riskier, more terrifying, than giving him her body.

Kit stopped in to see to the horses. Since he'd sacked the stable boys, it was his job now until he could find someone else to do it Susannah the new little filly gamboled over to see him, and he had a thought:
I'll give Susannah to Susannah when she's grown
.

Moving slowly with the horses, breathing in their animal scent spending time in the simplicity of their presence, soothed his thoughts, calmed his body; he returned to the house in a slightly easier frame of mind.

He nodded to Bullton as he made his way up the stairs.

"If you'll pardon my saying so, sir, you've a leaf clinging to the back of your head."

Kit halted and swiped an alarmed hand over his hair; a tiny maple leaf fluttered to the ground. He gave Bullton a sharp look, but when Bullton wasn't full of whiskey, he was a butler to his toes, which meant he wasn't about to let judgment or amusement or anything of the sort show on his face.

Kit collected his dignity quickly, began again to head up the stairs, and Bullton bent to pick up the leaf.

"It's a
green
leaf, sir. A very fine color. Green."

Kit stopped and turned swiftly. Bullton's face was entirely enigmatic.

Bullton might just make a wonderful spy
, Kit thought admiringly.

"And you've a letter, sir."

"Oh. Thank you, Bullton." Kit accepted the letter and took the stairs slowly, splitting the seal on his way.

Dear sir

In response to your inquiry regarding the accident in the coaching inn of May the twenty-third.

The conveyance in question was determined to have been in excellent repair. The cause of the accident has been traced to the linchpin on a forward wheel, which was of a size and width inconsistent with the other linchpins, which subsequently unbalanced the wheel and caused it to loosen. This in turn led to the unfortunate incident in the inn yard. A comparison with other coaches in our fleet reveals that this is a singular incident, as no other linchpins of this sort occur anywhere on any other coach.

We regret to inform you that we have been unable to trace the offending linchpin's origin, but we will redouble our efforts to ensure that such an accident does not happen again. In the meantime, we will be happy to sack the employee of your choice, should you feel it necessary, and reimburse you for the cost of the irreparably damaged hat. Do buy another green one.