Escape with A Rogue (34 page)

Then he kissed her on her lips, her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, on astonishingly sensitive places on her throat. He brought her right hand to his lips and suckled her fingers one by one.

What woman would not melt at that? She did.

Finally, groaning with pain, when she was quivering with need, he pulled back. “You can’t want me. Not like that.”

“I do. I could have died today if not for you. I would have died and never known this. I want it. Now.”

A rueful grin showed his dimples and caught hold of her heart. “Are you commanding me, my lady?”

“Yes!” she hissed fiercely.

His breath caught. Then his chest muscles rippled as he moved and pulled down his breeches. No one should look graceful taking off clothes, with all the stretching and bending, but Jack did. Even with his wounded back.

He mesmerized her as he pushed down his breeches, then kicked them off with one foot. His long fingers wrapped around the waistband of his small clothes, then drew them off in a swift sweep.

Her heart skipped beats and made a merry dance in her chest. Her hands cupped his derriere. Exploring. Possessive. Astounded.

His rear end was rock solid and surprisingly furry in the valley between his firm cheeks. She could hardly believe she was doing such a thing.

She wanted to do
more
.

It didn’t matter about the future. She wouldn’t think about what could happen if the Crown caught him. She would not think that one of them might lose the other forever. Right now, he would be hers.

Firelight coasted over his long, muscular body; caressed his wide shoulders and a narrow waist and the defined bones of his hips. The golden light illuminated scars on the tops of his shoulders, on his thighs, even on the tight indents of his haunches. His skin was pale between his hipbones and his knees, where the sun wouldn’t have touch his flesh, because of the ragged trousers he used to wear in prison—

He shifted, curling his shoulders inward, as though hiding his body.

Earlier, when she had wanted to help the doctor, Jack had been out cold. Now that he saw her look at him, it was as if he was trying to hide.

“I want to see you,” she whispered. “I saw your chest before.”

“I know. But I’m a mess of scars, scrawny, hairy, and covered in bandages.”

“You are beautiful because you are mine,” she said.

His low laugh rippled over her. A thrill raced through her as she looked up at him and as she looked . . . down. His erection was straight as an arrow. Huge. How had she put so much of it in her mouth? When she’d thought she was talking almost all of it inside, she hadn’t even been close.

She pointed to the bedside table. “I put the sheath down there, in a handkerchief.”

“You came here knowing you wanted to come to bed with me? Why, Lady M.?”

“Don’t call me that. Can’t you just kiss me again? And stop talking?”

She held her breath. She was certain he would stop, but he didn’t. He fumbled for the handkerchief and as he pulled it to him, the small sheath plopped on the bed. She still didn’t breathe as he drew it on and tied it. Her head felt dizzy. She sucked in one gasp of air as he positioned his hips between her thighs. Jack held his cock by the hilt, pointing it between her legs.

Madeline hooked her leg around his thigh and pulled him down to her.

Jack hadn’t expected Lady Madeline to have so much womanly knowledge. He’d never dreamed she would take him to heaven with her mouth. His heart still slammed against his ribcage, beating like pounding hooves. Her clever lips had brought him to his knees, had him trying to hang onto what was left of his mind.

His prick was so rigid it didn’t need his hand to guide it.

As his hips pressed to hers, his cock slid into her slick, hot passage an inch.

Her heat seared him. The glow in her eyes—gold on a sea of deep blue—warmed his heart. He braced his body over her, supporting his weight while fire licked at his brain. Controlling his desire for her was damned harder that climbing to the top of London’s criminal world or breaking out of prison.

He’d almost lost her. She could have died, and the thought almost made his heart explode with pain.

“Slowly,” he warned, barely able to speak.

But Madeline arched up to him, then stopped. “Oh!”

He’d never made love to a virgin. Boys he had known in the stews said a man should plunge in fast—give her a dose of pain, get it over with, get on with it. But he stayed rigid over her, his cock dipped just inside her heavenly wetness and warmth. “We’ll go slowly. If it hurts too much—”

“It won’t.” Beneath him, her hips wiggled. Glorious sensation hurtled through him. He dared to give a slow, easy thrust—barely moving inside her.

Her soft moan whispered over him. “It’s good.”

Growing up in the stews, he’d always seen sex as a hurried business. Sordid and rough, something to work off frustration, something only a fool surrendered his heart for. His partners had been looking for money or escape, not love.

But with Madeline, it was like throwing wide the doors to heaven. He slid out, then thrust in a bit further, gliding along her silky creaminess, and her fingers drove hard into his shoulders.

He should pull out. But his body wouldn’t obey his head’s command.
Stop hurting her. Stop, damn you.

“More,” she begged. “Try more.”

Though he tried to move slowly, her muscles seemed to grab at his shaft to pull him deeper. He was drowning in this—her tight grip on his throbbing cock, their smells, their frantic breathing. Slowly, he pumped into her, until his groin brushed her crisp spray of pubic curls. He was buried in her to the hilt. He stopped and savored it in a way he’d never stopped to savor anything in his life.

She wrapped both legs around him. Slowly, fighting to make it last, as if his every minute on earth depended on them being joined together, he made love to her.

He skimmed his hands over her bare thighs, cupped her bottom, and drove deep. She didn’t protest. She surged up to him, meeting his thrusts. Their groins collided, his cock slammed deep. She gripped his shoulders and lifted her cunny to him. He saw her clever face testing each sensation. She was searching for pleasure, for release.

He intended to bestow it.

Shifting his hips, he rode her higher, which bent his cock downward, intensifying the sensations. He rubbed his thick shaft along her clit. Her hands tightened into fists, hitting his shoulder and she gasped his name.
Jack.

He slid his hand around one globe of her ass. With his thumb, he teased inside the valley of her voluptuous, round cheeks, playing gently with her puckered entrance.

In and out, he pumped into her. Deep. Hard. She met him stroke for stroke. She worked frantically for her pleasure. Her eyes opened wide, their gazes locked, and he watched her reach the brink of ecstasy and tumble over the edge.

God, she was sweetly beautiful. Her eyes opened wide, then shut tight. Her mouth opened wide and she cried out. Her head moved with the spasms of pleasure, rocking back and forth. Her hair flew wildly. She was out of control.

Jack had to fight not to explode with her.

Madeline’s body coiled up, and her every muscle twitched and pulsed. She pressed her mouth to Jack’s shoulder to smother her cries. Her body trembled and throbbed, and felt rather like boiling cream. Colors burst behind her closed eyelids, then they faded to a rich red-velvet shade, and she flopped back on the bed.

Jack thrust again. “Yes, yes, yes,” she gasped. “More.” She slid her hands down his side, careful of his back, then she grasped his rock-hard bottom, and held him to her. The instant she pulled him hard against her and took his erection deep inside, he groaned loudly and began to jerk and spasm on top of her.

His mouth tensed. His eyes shut. In silence, he plunged deep and rode against her. He had to be climaxing, too.

Madeline closed her eyes and wriggled. “Oooh. I think I’ve glimpsed heaven.”

He laughed hoarsely. “I saw it the first time you came to see me at the stables, two years ago.”

She wanted to speak of the future. Now, while he was smiling with pleasure. He was grinning with delight at her, showing his dimples. His hair was damp with sweat and disheveled. He looked beautiful.

Surely, that must mean he wanted her—

Lightning flashed close to the window, then thunder crashed, making her jump. The August heat had broken in a storm.

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Are you afraid of storms?” Amazement showed in his green eyes, as if he believed she feared nothing.

But in truth, she feared many things. Some she had revealed to him. Now she was determined to overcome one of those fears—the fear of being cast out by her family—and run away with Jack. “Perhaps a little,” she admitted. “They are something I cannot control.”

She took a deep breath. “Jack, I know you should leave now, to ensure you are safe. But I don’t want you to go. I can’t leave my family yet, not until we’ve found the killer. After that, I want to go with you. I want to run away with you.”

Chapter Twenty

Run away
with him?

Panic hit Jack hard. It clamped around his chest, gripping him tighter than his bandages. Fear showed in Madeline’s eyes when he didn’t answer, and a scarlet flush of embarrassment washed over her cheeks.

Jack groaned. His answer had to be no, but he couldn’t just bluntly say it. He owed Maddy the truth. She was clinging to a fantasy and he had to destroy it—for her sake.

He had taken her innocence and ruined her. He owed her marriage, but he wasn’t worthy to offer it to her.

“You don’t want to go anywhere with a man like me,” he began gently. Sheer horror showed on her face. “What you need is a gentleman,” he added, as quickly as he could. “A real gentleman. One who can give you everything I can’t—”

“Oh, stop!” Her lovely face contorted. He expected tears to fall, but she blinked, bit her lip, swallowed hard, and fought them. “I told you I’m illegitimate. Do you think that if a gentleman learned that, he would want me? There’s only one reason a gentleman would marry me. My money.” She threw the words out bitterly.

He’d hurt her. He felt like a wretch, a worm, horse dung. “That’s not true, Madeline. No matter what, you are worth a thousand men like me.” When she shook her head, he said, “I’ve killed men, Madeline, and one of them was a peer. That murder was a long time ago, but a man is never free of a charge of murder. It might have happened almost twenty years ago, but I would still hang for it.”

He’d used a harsh, cold tone, fighting to push her away. It worked: she went white and she drew back. She looked so small and vulnerable, sitting on his bed, one white cover held up to her slender, naked form. But then she straightened, faced him squarely, and asked, “Why, Jack?”

Damn it. He feared if he told her the truth, she just might be foolish enough to forgive him. Once upon a time, acting ruthless had come very easily to him. He shrugged in what he hoped was a jaded manner. “He was my mother’s protector and I didn’t like him. So I broke his neck. That’s the kind of man I really am. What you think I am is a fantasy. You don’t want me, believe me.”

She recoiled. He should have been happy. Instead, he felt as if he had given up his soul. “I’m sorry,” he said humbly. “After what I’ve taken from you, after all you have done for me, you deserve more.” She made him feel he was now what he’d been throughout his life: a poverty-stricken, unwanted urchin; a gaming hell owner; a man who had killed. He couldn’t take her with him—for her sake—but he
needed
her to think well of him.

“Do you want to hear my story, Madeline, or do you hate me now too much?”

She lifted her chin and faced him bravely. “Tell me.”

He couldn’t look at her and talk. Despite the pain in his back, he got out of the bed and paced at the foot of it, staring at the floor. “My mother was beaten to death. I grew up with her in a flash house, sharing a room with three other women and their children. We would beg in the streets while our mothers served clients in the room, on four tattered old mattresses.”

He couldn’t resist—he stole a glance at her, expecting to see horror and disgust on her face at the truth of his origins.

Her brows dipped in confusion. He had told her, after all, that his mother had been an elegant courtesan, the sort of lovely one who had a marquis as her protector.

“My mother was once sought after by men of the ton, but that interest vanished when she got older.”

“From what you told me,” she whispered, “I realized your life had been hard, but I never envisioned anything like that. Dear heaven, I always feared being turned out of my home into poverty, but you had to live through it.”

“I survived. My one regret is that my mother died long before I had the wealth to take her out of the stews.”

“Was she kind to you?”

This was something he didn’t want to speak of. But Madeline had revealed her deepest secret, her darkest fears, to him. He owed her the truth she’d given him. “I was a duty she didn’t want or need. She became addicted to gin and resented me for ruining her figure, then pushing her into poverty. Since she insisted I was a nobleman’s bastard, she presented me to a few peers, claiming to each man that he’d fathered me, hoping to get some money. They ignored her. None of them would give her a penny and that made her hate me more.”

His bitterness hung in the room, but her soft voice washed it away. “I’m so sorry. You had no family at all.”

Suddenly, all his rage and bitterness felt childish, pointless, weak. She had not felt as if she had a family, either, yet she hadn’t turned bad. She had never hurt anyone. Madeline had grown up with the same fears, the same reasons to be angry, yet she had only wanted to help and care for others.

No, hell, he really was not worthy of her.

A tear rolled down her cheek. A tear for him, damn it. “I wasn’t entirely alone,” he said. “I had Bess.”

“S—someone you loved?” she whispered.

“Not like that. Bess was one of the women who shared the room with my mother. She was a kindly woman and she acted like a mother to me. She used to sing to me, tell me stories. She made sure I had food, even when my mother spent all her money on gin. I always tried to protect Bess.”