Desire Wears Diamonds (36 page)

Michael shifted his feet with a shrug of his
shoulders and stepped over Ashe’s prone body. “Does it matter?”

Sterling warily took one small step back.
“You really are a cold-hearted bastard.”

“You didn’t believe me when I told you as
much?” Michael asked. “How stupid are you, Sterling?”

“No need for insults, old friend.” Sterling
almost snarled.

“I agree.” Michael looked around the church,
the candlelight barely illuminating the arches and columns but it
was still enough to touch each surface with a flickering rosy tint
that made it look alive.

Michael pulled the leather pouch from his
coat pocket and emptied it onto the palm of his hand. Even in the
dim glow of the sanctuary, the large diamond glittered and gleamed
with an untold number of rainbows that beckoned the eye. He held it
up so that Sterling could enjoy the sight of the play of beauty and
power in his palm.

“My God!” Sterling exclaimed with a whisper.
“After all this time…there it is.”

Michael tucked it back into the leather
pouch and returned it to his pocket nervously. “Wait, Sterling,” he
said. “Not so fast. Remember your promise. It ends here. No more
blackmail. No further payments for our liberty. Grace is free and
you will leave us alone.”

“Yes! Yes! Damn it, hurry! It’s nearly
midnight and like you, I have an appointment of my own to keep this
very night as well!”

“You swear to hold to your word?” Michael
asked again.

“Yes!” Sterling held out his hand
impatiently, the tip of his tongue darting out to touch his lips.
His hunger for the diamond was palpable and Michael reluctantly put
his hand back in his pocket to pull out the pouch.

His fingers fisted it for a few seconds and
he ground his teeth together in frustration. There was no turning
back now. Slowly, he forced his own hand to slowly open, his
fingers releasing its prize. “Here, then.”

Sterling snatched the pouch from his palm
with an audible crow of triumph, then pressed it to his heart. “At
last!”

Michael dropped his head and watched the man
reluctantly through the veil of his black lashes.

Sterling jauntily tossed the bag in the air
and caught it before quickly tucking it away into a deep inner
waistcoat pocket. “See how easy that was? All this time and it’s
really mine!”

Michael narrowed his gaze, a man in no mood
to be taunted. “Run, Sterling. Take your prize and run to claim
your reward. But if you stand there much longer, I’m the one who
might forget our agreement and snap your neck merely for the joy of
hearing that sound.”

Sterling gifted him with a foul gesture and
turned on his heels to hurry from the church, his footsteps echoing
off the ceiling and walls. Michael stood as still as a statue and
waited.

He waited for silence to reclaim the room
and cleanse any traces of Sterling’s foul presence. He knelt to
check on Ashe, reassured by his friend’s even breathing.

And then stood back up to walk toward the
doors and wait for Death to come.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“
Nipson
anomemata me monan opsin
,” Michael whispered to himself as he
carried Ashe out of the church over his shoulder. “Heard that one,
Blackwell?” he asked the unconscious man. “Darius taught me that
from off of the font. It means, cleanse my sin and not my face
only.”

He shifted Ashe to get a better hold of him
with a sigh. “Prophetic, don’t you think?” Michael raised one of
his hands and signaled the carriage he’d hired and had standing by
one hundred yards from the church’s doorway. “Good man!”

“What have you got there, sir?” the driver
asked with a wary look at the body over his customer’s
shoulder.

“Bit too much gin! I’m sending him home to
his wife who will make minced meat pies out of him. Unless you
think it more merciful to leave him on a stranger’s doorstep? Do
you think they’d be more understanding?” Michael jested.

“Than his
wife
? No doubt of it, sir!
Mine nearly skinned me whole last time I came home after a few too
many,” the driver shared laughing then leaned down. “Do you need a
hand there, governor?”

“No,” Michael smiled. “I’m big enough to
manage and even if I dropped him, I don’t see how he’d complain.
But here, let’s send him to a friend’s for safekeeping.” Michael
handed up a card with an address written on it along with a
generous payment for the fare and then got Ashe inside the cab as
best he could. Michael tucked Ashe’s coat around him and wasted one
sentimental moment putting his hand over his friend’s. “Good-bye,
Ashe.”

He closed the carriage door firmly and
signaled the driver to go.

Michael adjusted his hat and sighed. It was
a long walk home, but he desperately wanted to clear his head. Ashe
would arrive at Rowan’s and he knew that he and Gayle would make
sure his head was bandaged and that Ashe was revived. He expected
Blackwell to wake up with a headache cursing Michael’s name but he
would be alive and intact.

The only permanent damage was the
destruction of Michael’s happiness.

His thigh began to ache where he’d
apparently hit the pew when he tackled Ashe and if he were honest,
a dozen lingering pains began to knit together to eat at his
senses. The cold damp night air made his ribs twinge unreasonably
and Michael readjusted his own coat to ignore them. “A good night’s
sleep and all is cured,” he said aloud.

It was something his father used to say and
it was nonsense, of course. Michael was too exhausted to even
pretend optimism. He limped all the way home to the Grove, his arms
and legs felt sodden, his joints infused with lead.

The east entrance was a welcome sight and he
entered as quietly as he could, not wanting to disturb the sleeping
inhabitants of the inn. He climbed the stairs and unlocked the door
to their rooms, then pressed his forehead against the heavy
oak.

Home.

Waning moonlight through the windows
revealed the details and delicate changes that Grace had already
wrought. There were flowers on the mantle next to his penny novels
and her desk arranged with the day’s handwritten pages under a
purple glass paperweight he’d bought for her. Her slippers were
tucked neatly by the bedside and Grace—his breath caught in his
throat at the sight of her, sleeping with her hair fanned out
beneath her, one hand trailing over the bed’s edge, as if she were
drifting on a raft and trailing her fingers in the water.

My Lady of Shallot, weaving her stories
through the day, confined to her rooms. Except I want to show you
the world, Grace, not keep you from it. I want to lay it at your
feet and take you anywhere your wonderful imagination directs you
to go.

It was over.

He’d kept her safe but at a very high
price.

Michael quietly approached the bed, kneeling
next to it to trail his fingers across her face. Her eyes fluttered
open and even in the moonlight, he could see how blue they
were.

“Is it…late?”

He nodded. “Very.” Without a word he began
to uncover her, unwrapping her like an ethereal present to bare her
slowly to his touch. Moonlight through the diamond paned windows
caressed her skin and dusted her beauty with its silver powers. She
was a feast for his senses and he sat back on his heels to take it
all in.

His beautiful Grace.

Mine.

One last time.

Breathing in her skin, he leaned forward and
began to sample every surface, mapping each contour and savoring
her responses to even this first ghostly foray of his hands across
her body. He kissed the arches of her feet and made her giggle when
he tried to nibble on her toes.

“Michael! I forbid you to suckle my
toes!”

He shook his head, relinquishing her foot.
“I’ll yield the toes if you submit to my next idea no matter
what.”

She looked at him, the last vestiges of
sleep leaving her face, her eyes alert and bright. “That’s a vague
premise.”

“You said you trusted me, Grace.”

“True,” she said. “Very well, if my toes are
to be left intact, then I am your willing slave.”

He smiled. “You are no one’s slave, Grace
Rutherford. But as my mistress, let’s see if we can’t make you
pleased at the bargain you’ve made.”

He stood next to the bed and divested
himself of his clothes, all the while relishing the sight of Grace
naked and unashamed sprawled across the blankets. Once he was free
of every stitch of his clothing, he climbed up on the bed to make a
closer study of his enticing bride. He pushed her soft thighs apart
and made a leisurely study of her sex, ignoring her half-hearted
squeak of modesty.

“Shh. Remember the toes,” he reminded her
playfully and then positioned himself to kneel between her legs.
Her sex was so pink and ripe, glistening with her arousal and the
scent of it was musk sweet and compelling.

“Michael—“

He kissed her and effectively ended the
discussion.

He licked the tight hot bud of her clit and
explored the tender flesh around her channel with his fingers,
circling the core of her need without pressing inside. Her thighs
pressed against his ears but still he didn’t relent. He shifted his
hands away to hold her hips as she tried to buck and wiggle away
from the relentless assault of his tongue. He teased a small ridge
above her pearl and realized that whatever sensations it evoked
were likely welcome as Grace began to keen in ecstasy. Her clit
swelled against his mouth and he knew he had the way of it.

She came against his mouth in reckless
spasms and he drank the dew of her body with the pride of a
triumphant warrior conquering Aphrodite herself.
Mine, damn
it!

“Michael! That was—you have ruined me! I…”
Grace pressed her hands against her eyes. “I have lost the ability
to form sentences…I think…Can a climax injure a person’s language
skills?”

“It won’t last,” he said smiling as he
shifted up to cover her body with his. “You do it to me all the
time and
eventually
I always recover.”

His cock leapt up to press against her
thighs and Grace shifted to accommodate him, eagerly reaching for
him to guide him toward the slippery taut entrance of her body. He
fit perfectly inside her and her muscles immediately gripped the
head of his erection as if her body’s hunger were a separate
being.

He dismissed the urge to drive into her and
give in to the voracity of his appetite for her. He lingered there,
notched up against her with the silken head working against the
sensitive clit.

“Michael, please!”

He shook his head, a sadness seeping into
his bones. He wouldn’t rush it for any price. If this were the last
time that she allowed him to touch her, to make love to her, to
hold her; he would savor every moment.

He entered her so slowly he feared he would
climax before he’d touched her deepest core. She fought the pace,
desperately trying to urge him on, biting his shoulder in her
frustration.

“There, there, dearest. Soon now…”

Too soon, he was there. Melded into her in
an embrace that redefined his soul and then he had to move. He had
to take her and all the divine pleasure that Grace’s body alone
could provide. But this was no frenzied rush to release. Even Grace
had accepted the leisurely build that tugged him along on a
relentless path. Each thrust was measured and complete, every turn
of his rigid member inside her sheath was wrought with a raw
tension that left him breathless.

At last, it was a fever that broke over him
in waves. He came with her in a free fall of give and take, that
made every movement a strange prayer, an homage to the unique
beauty in his arms. She was all that he wanted. There would never
be another to take her place and when the light of love in her eyes
was dimmed to hatred, it would a mortal blow.

Even so, it didn’t matter.

Loving her was all that was left to him. And
he had no intentions of ceasing until the end; not until the very
bitter end.



Michael sipped his morning tea, savoring the
quiet light in the private dining room outside their door. He’d
slept in and found a note from his wife explaining that Maggie had
offered to teach her to use her hands to talk more easily with
Tally. She was downstairs enjoying her first lesson and would
return with lemon biscuits later.

It was just like her, he thought, to be kind
and make the effort for Tally.

And to remember the lemon biscuits.

Michael heard them coming, not that they
were attempting to be quiet. The door to the east entrance
downstairs opened several times and by the sound of the number of
men’s boots coming up the stairs, they’d apparently decided to come
en masse.
Michael set his teacup down and kept his seat.
“Gentlemen, good morning.”

Ashe led the way with a very unhappy looking
band of brothers behind him. Michael noted the bruised shadow on
his chin and had to swallow hard at the raw relief at seeing
Blackwell obviously on his feet and recovered.

“I was expecting you.” He stood slowly,
holding his hands up as if to demonstrate that he was unarmed.
“Though a very tired and sore part of me was hoping to expect you
later in the afternoon.”

Rowan sighed. “Blackwell was sure it
couldn’t wait.”

Ashe’s temper flared. “It won’t! The Jackal
has the mystic diamond, thanks to your vile betrayal, and there’s
no time to waste!”

“We’re going to go after it, Michael,” Galen
stated flatly. “Without your aid, obviously, but also we would
hope, without your interference.”

“I see.” Michael nodded. “You’ve a plan
already?”

“We do!” Ashe growled. “I still can’t
believe you’ve done this, Rutherford. But just in case you had the
vague hope of ever crossing our doorsteps again, this circle is
closed to you!”