If I Fall (38 page)

“Oh,” she said, her voice decidedly uneven. It was a shock to the system—more than finding out exactly who the Blue Raven was—that he would now disappear altogether. But how she felt about it was harder to pin down.

“Sarah,” Jack said, hesitation in his voice, “why did you believe me? Why did you fall under the Blue Raven’s spell so completely? I was convinced you would see through me at any moment, but you never did.”

Sarah looked down to her feet, the bedspread, finally her eyes falling onto her silly scrolled dressing table.

“I think…because I wanted to believe in it. In him.” She answered quietly. “It was safe.”

Jack glanced quickly at his arm and torso. “I can’t imagine anything less safe than chasing after the Blue Raven.”

“But it was.” Her eyes met his. “It was safe for me to fall a little bit in love with him. So I ignored rationality and let myself. Because it was a fantasy, you see. And a fantasy can never hurt, because it’s never real.” She looked to her toes again. “Jackson Fletcher is far too real for my peace of mind.”

Jack, it seemed, was curious about the same thing she was trying to decipher within herself. “Sarah—I know you liked him a great deal more than me…”

“Not true,” Sarah refuted quickly, vehemently. “To be honest, part of me is relieved that he’ll never be back. I would not like to spend my life pacing the floors, wondering if you are living or dying. But part of me will miss … it.”

“It?”

“That feeling of being part of something bigger than myself.” She looked up at him shyly. “And it’s silly … but I sort of wish I had the chance to say good-bye.”

He met and held her gaze, leaning back against the headboard of her bed, his torso exposed, his legs languid. His entire body a beck and call. But it was his voice, unconsciously deepening, taking on the rasp she knew in another form, cloaked and tantalizingly forbidden, that drew her in.

“What would you tell him?” he asked.

“I would say … thank you. For reminding me—somewhat aggressively—that there’s more to life than my own little dramas, my own tragedies. Bigger things, more important things. That I can move on from this constant barrage of parties and intrigues and silliness that I’ve been mired in. That I lost myself in.” She wet her lips. “I’m ready now, for what comes next.”

He leaned forward, slowly, likely being careful of his wounds—but the effect was beyond seductive. The light played over his body, finding the planes and hollows of muscle. His eyes, already dark, were nearly black in the light from the single lamp by her bedside.

“You know I never meant to hurt you,” he breathed, his hand reaching out to touch her cheek.

She jumped at that. It was what her skin cried out for, but somehow the tension in the air made her as skittish as a colt. But he withdrew his hand, and let the cold air touch where his hand had been, and she knew she could not have that. She needed the contact. She had to touch him.

“You know you’re still wearing your mask?” she said, reaching for a cloth, dipping it in the still warm water.

His hand went to his face, and he drew back dark fingers. “The greasepaint. It was supposed to look like soot, as a chimney sweep.”

“It does. So much so that I worry about what your greasepaint will do to my sheets.” She put her fingers under his chin, reveling in the electric shock, the comfort of that touch, and gently began to wipe away the grime, revealing Jack underneath.

Jack
.

As she concentrated on her work, she could feel that his eyes never left her face. Drinking her in. She kept her face from burning through a will that she didn’t know she had. The closeness of him made her brave, she supposed. But how brave?

“You told me a story once,” she said, her voice as nonchalant as she could make it in a whisper, continuing to wipe his face clean. “About a girl you grew up with, and how you’ve searched for a light like hers ever since.”

He nodded, once, gently, careful not to disturb her work. She hesitated a moment. Somehow, she knew her entire existence hinged on this question, this spare breath. “You never said who she was.”

He stilled her hand. Took it into his own, and looked her dead in the face. She dropped the cloth. The greasepaint had been wiped away, leaving only the man in front of her. Only Jack.

Slowly, he brought her hand to his lips, pressing them against her palm, reverently, with all the feeling in his body.

What was happening to her? Her entire being was a bolt of electricity, her mind reeling with the possibilities of what came next. He was a man, in her room, half-naked.

More than that, he was Jack.

He was the friend from childhood. The gangly boy in a too-small cadet uniform. The pirate Bluebeard. The misguided idiot who had played her for a fool. The man who had kissed her senseless right over there, on her silly little dressing table. The man who refused to leave her alone with the Comte when he learned he was a danger. The man who played apology bowls. The one and only thing that had occupied her senses for longer than she realized.

The one and only thing she had wanted. Since the Event. Since before.

She had been doing everything right, for so long. She had
done as she was told, by people who knew better than her, and failed and succeeded in equal measure. Maybe, maybe now it was time for her to decide what was the right thing to do.

“Jack,” she said softly, pulling her hand back from his lips. He looked up at her then, seeming to come out of a haze. Gently, sadly, he put her hand back down in her lap.

“Right. Right,” he repeated to himself, his breath coming in small shifts. “I should go … to my own rooms, I suppose.”

“No, Jack,” she said smoothly, even though her heart beat in her throat. “That would definitely not be right.”

Then she took his face in her hands, and kissed him.

I
T
took Jack a moment to figure out that what was happening was real. And when he did, he fell into Sarah like a man starving. In all of the different ways this adventure played out in his head, he never imagined
this
.

That wasn’t exactly true. Of course he had imagined this. He had imagined her in his arms a thousand times, making sleep fevered and waking painful. He’d imagined those inches of skin she’d kept hidden from everyone but him, imagined her breasts, her eyes turned emerald with passion. He’d imagined every minute, every second. But he’d never let himself hope for it.

He held her face with his hands, keeping her in the here and now, making certain she would not disappear into the ether, like the smoky Sarah in his dreams did.

Slowly, he pulled her toward him, leaning back against the headboard of Sarah’s bed, the solid thunk of skull on wood reminding him that he was, indeed, in the present. And Sarah was with him.

He grimaced in pain. She pulled back immediately. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you? I’ll stop.” Her questions came in such a rush of worry that Jack almost laughed.

“Do not worry. Harder things than the headboard have tried to get through my head.” He grinned at her. “And don’t stop. Stopping would hurt infinitely more.”

She relaxed her worry, giving him a relieved, yet still nervous smile. The smile of the inexperienced. Of the wanting.

If her inexperience gave him pause, then her wanting banished it from his mind. She wanted
him
. Jack. Not the ghost of childhood adoration, but Jack. And he was not about to begrudge her.

Slowly he slipped his arm around her waist, pulling her to him, pressing her against his length. She was not shocked by the hardness she found there. Instead she nestled against it, seeking, urgent.

All of his blood surged to the bottom half of his anatomy.

“Hold on,” he rasped, his voice a desperate grumble. At her confused look, he explained. “If we don’t slow down, this will be over before it’s begun.”

She nodded slowly, then laid a small, shy kiss at the joint of his neck and shoulder.

“That wouldn’t be good,” she agreed, her lips making their way to his ear. “I feel like I’ve wanted this forever. I feel this should last forever, then. Don’t you?”

He breathed out slowly, his mind reeling from the way she pecked at his neck, his shoulder, his ear. “I’ll do my best,” he exclaimed on a breath.

The trick, he decided, was to think about anything other than what he was doing. Think about … tactical ship maneuvers, instead of how her flesh felt beneath his fingertips. Think about climbing the rigging of the main yard, instead of how easily the buttons of her dress came undone, how his hand was moving up her leg, finding its way to the temptation of her garters. Think about cannons firing, again and again, instead of … actually no, don’t think about cannons firing. Ever.

While Jack tried to tame his brain into falling under his control, Sarah had decided that her skin was far too warm, and that the dress that was half off of her already should really be removed in its entirety. She pulled back from him, for the barest of moments, leaving him bewildered and forlorn.

Bewildered and forlorn that is, until she whipped the heavy silk up over her head, and let it fall away to the side of the bed.

He drank her in, drank his fill. She blushed under his scrutiny. “They’re white,” he mused aloud.

“What are?” she said looking down, inspecting herself.

“Your under things. I would have assumed the golden lady wore only a chemise of spun precious metals.”

She cocked her head to one side, playfully. “And I would have thought the Blue Raven had feathers all over his skin. But no, no feathers here.” She came forward on her knees, leaning into his chest, touching him ever so lightly there, where springy, rough curls had been flattened to his chest with the exertions of the day.

She was kneeling on the bed in front of him, doing her best to be seductive, to lure him into her—and having no idea if she was doing it properly. But she figured she had to be doing something right, because she could feel the rapid movement of his blood, his heart, just under her fingertips. She could be this bold, she thought, this
carnal
—as long as she relied on some of the sophistication she had earned in the past few months. Since she had decided on this course of action, that this was
her
right, then she simply had to do it right, as well.

And her plan seemed to be working—until she lost her balance, and ended up crushed against him. He fell back sideways, catching her against him so they lay together crosswise on the bed. And then, he laughed.

She was mortified.

She ducked her head against his arm. Hid herself from his view. Even as his hands came around her, soothing, she still stayed down.

“What is it, love?” His eyes came down and found her where she hid.

“Nothing…” she replied. “I ah, I slipped.”

“I noticed. I caught you.”

“You laughed,” she said, in a mock accusation.

“Because it was funny.” Jack slipped his hand up her leg, finding that spot where here garters still hung on, proud and steadfast. Gently he slipped his fingers beneath it. “And because it is you.”

She shot an eyebrow up at that.

“Don’t you see, Sarah? All this time—you don’t have to be
perfect with me.” The knot of her garter came free with surprising ease. “In fact, I would much prefer it otherwise.”

“How did you do that?” she asked, her skin burning beneath his touch.

“I’m very good with knots. Now where was I?” he mused playfully, as his hand worked its way to the other garter. “Oh yes. I much prefer the Sarah who falls out of trees. And the Sarah who kisses strange men in theatre cupboards—”

“As long as that strange man is you,” she returned saucily, as her second garter found itself untied and her stockings were dragged down to her ankles.

“Yes, I much prefer that as well. I prefer the Sarah who isn’t trying so hard to be in control of her life that she forgets to live it.”

She raised an eyebrow, and her knee, to better accommodate his removal of her stockings. “I much prefer the Jack who isn’t angry.” He shot her a glance. “The one who’s found that maybe the path he’s taken has ended but there are new ones available.”

His brow came down. But she continued. “And I prefer the Jack who listens to me, even when I’m trying to control everything, much to my detriment. The very serious Jack who could stop a girl’s heart in his cadet uniform—”

“You liked me in my cadet uniform?” his smile came up, wicked and inviting.

“You have no idea what that uniform did to the Forrester girls, did you? My goodness, it stilled my ten-year-old heart more than once, I assure you.” She giggled—whether it be from the expression on his face or the way his hands had moved up her thigh underneath her chemise, she could not be sure. But either way, it felt so wonderful to laugh. To be free to laugh with him. With Jack.

Which he must have surmised, because he began to laugh, too. Softly, a chuckle that was born of mirth but still in awe of his luck. Of his life. He brought his free hand up to her face, brushing a tendril of hair behind her ear.

“How did we get here?” he murmured, laying a kiss on her temple.

“Crookedly,” she replied. “But here we are, all the same.”
Her voice became a breath, a caress against his ear. “There is nowhere else I would rather be, Jack.”

His gaze came to hers then, intent, serious.

And there were no more words to be said. All that had happened before and all that would happen hence, hinged on this moment, and there was nowhere else they wanted to be.

He dipped his head and kissed her, with reverence, but soon lost all caution. Lost himself in the sensation of her skin, even the silk of her chemise feeling rough by comparison. Clearly, it had to go. As did his boots—how the hell had they stayed on his feet so long? Clearly Sarah had the same idea, because in a rush of movement, she leveraged herself up and began to pull at his boots. Jack could only watch as she struggled, her full body exposed to the light, finally freeing the boots from his feet, thudding to the floor on the other side of the bed without care for the attention the sound could draw.