Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy (36 page)

His coat hit the floor.
Byrnes's lips slid to her jaw, the rasp of his stubble grazing her throat as she tilted her head back.
A shudder ran through him.
"I'm a blue blood, love."
His hands stilled on her waist.
"The second I stop thinking is the second all the darkness runs to the surface."
His lips nuzzled at her throat, sheer want shuddering through him.

Ingrid paused.
She knew what he was suggesting.
"You want my blood."

Those fingers curled into iron claws as he grasped her hips.
"It's not that simple."
The breath exploded out of him as he tore his face from her throat.
"It seems to be more of an urge to mark you...
as mine.
I've never drunk from the vein before.
Never really wanted to."

A little thrill tore through her, and her nipples hardened into points.
It took all of a second to make her decision.
Byrnes wanted this, but feared the loss of control.
And she found she rather liked the idea of him marking her.
"Do it," she whispered.

He hesitated.

"Do you think I can't handle you at your best?"
She curled a fist in his hair, and forced him to look at her.

Those icy blue eyes were glazed, pinpricks of darkness growing in them.
"I know you can handle me, anytime you want."
Then Byrnes turned those clever fingers to her armored corset and the thin chemise she wore beneath it.
"Stop me if I hurt you."

A shiver ran through her as he kissed his way down her throat, pausing at the lace edge of the chemise.
"You won't hurt me."

Then he was dragging her chemise up, tugging it over her head until her breasts were free, round and heavy, swollen for his touch.

"Jesus."
He curled his hands around them, filling his palms with her breasts.
"I forget how beautiful you are sometimes.
And then it takes me by surprise all over again."

Ingrid dragged his mouth to hers.
He might claim he knew nothing of romance, but his blurted truths filled her heart with joy.
She arched into his touch, the sensation of his hands on her whispering through her blood.
Then his mouth was there, sucking gently on her nipple.
Ingrid groaned, sliding her hands through his hair.

"Yes.
Please."
She bit her lip.
"There."

Byrnes knelt and stripped her trousers from her legs, tugging them down over her sensitive feet.
Ingrid thrust her foot against his chest, pinning him there as he looked up with blackened eyes.
The hunger had him in its grasp, but he smiled, as if challenging her to relent.
And she did.

She wanted this too much.
Her breath came hard and fast, wetness slick between her thighs.
"Do it," she whispered.
"Take me.
Claim me.
Make me yours."

Byrnes pressed forward, her knee caught up between them.
Suddenly he was the one in charge, locking her knee against his chest as he dragged her other leg around his hips.
The heat of his erection rasped against her drawers as he showed her in no uncertain manner how much he wanted her.
"As my lady wishes."

Then he tugged his knife from the sheath at his hip.
It kissed her throat so lightly, so sweetly, that she barely felt the sting.
And then his mouth locked over the wound, a gentle suckling sensation that swiftly turned to fierce desire.

Ingrid cried out as that sensation speared right through her core.
Jesus.
She hadn't expected this.
It was like lightning through her veins, like setting fire to oil, as each suck of his mouth pulled directly on the heated flesh between her thighs.
The connection between them was intense.
She felt like she truly belonged in that moment, belonged in his arms, belonged with this man.

And suddenly, it wasn't enough to be merely marked like this.

"I need you," she gasped, and thrust her hand between them, finding the buttons to his tight trousers.
Byrnes made a grunting sound deep in his throat, as he swallowed her blood.

"Yes," he breathed as she tugged them open.

His cock surged into her hand, hungry for attention.
Ingrid curled her fingers around it and squeezed, then she was guiding him between her legs, tearing the slit in her drawers apart.
Feeling the blunt head of his cock slick through her wetness.

Byrnes sucked hard at her throat, and Ingrid threw her head back.
Everything ached.
A bittersweet sensation that blew her mind.
She felt like she was going to explode.

Then he was pushing his way inside her, inch by heated inch, working into the tight slickness of her sheathe.
"Please," she found herself saying.
"More."

The first full thrust took her by surprise.
Sweat gleamed on her skin, and her muscles locked tight, as though she never wanted to let him go.

"Oh," Ingrid gasped, her nails curling into his upper arms, as the storm beneath her skin threatened to tear her apart.
"Oh, my God!"

She had forgotten the rumors: the chemicals in a blue blood’s saliva could sometimes bring a woman to orgasm.
Another hard suck at her throat brought her to the edge, hovering there, on the precipice of the fall.
Byrnes thrust again, and it was enough to shatter her.

Ingrid gasped, bucking in pure bliss, her sheath tightening around him and clamping down hard as she came.
It exploded through her as though she'd been struck by lightning, until she was nothing more than wild abandon, pure need.

"Ingrid."
Byrnes thrust hard, lifting his face from her throat as she dug her heel into the cheek of his arse as if to urge him deeper.
"Jesus.
I can't—"

And then he lost control himself, one hand clamping the back of her neck, the other her hip, as he pounded himself into her.

It was wild and furious, and she reveled in it.
The vanity beneath her hammered against the wall until Byrnes caught her up with a growl and half spilled her onto the bed.

"Mine," he growled, thrusting home and filling her.

"Mine," she corrected, and he seemed to like that even more, as he captured her mouth in one final, fierce coupling of tongues.

She dug her nails into his spine, clenching all of her inner muscles around him.
Byrnes growled.
Their eyes met, and then he gasped as he came inside her.
One last final thrust and Byrnes's head dropped, his forehead resting against hers.
"Jesus," he breathed harshly.
"You...
You're amazing."

Ingrid collapsed against the sheets, gasping, her entire mind a white blaze of sensation as they shuddered together.
Destroyed.
Utterly destroyed.

She had the vague feeling that she was still half wearing her drawers, and Byrnes’s leather trousers were around his knees.
They were a mess, the both of them.
Sweat-slicked and breathing hard.
Ingrid laughed as she met those startled eyes, unable to stop touching him, each stroke so gentle that he half collapsed on her again.

"When I was dreaming of this," he told her with a groan, "I thought I'd last longer than a green lad on his first tup."

A smoky laugh shivered through her as Byrnes curled against her, his chest heaving as he sought to regain himself.
"Oh, Byrnes.
Whoever thought that Mr.
Control would lose himself entirely when it came to the deed?"

Byrnes lifted his head, that evil glint back in his eye.
"Is that another challenge, Miller?"

Ingrid stroked her fingers down his chest in lazy abandon.
She felt like purring.
"Think you're up to it, Sir Leather-britches?"

This time the growl in his throat had nothing to do with claiming her as he slid between her parted thighs, his cock growing hard against her leg.
"Ingrid Miller, I think we need to prove just who, precisely, has no control...."

His mouth slid down her skin, his lips capturing one peaked nipple between them.
"Starting here, I think."

Ingrid shivered as he suckled hard.
Her eyes rolled back in her head in pleasure.
"Challenge accepted."

A
s the moon
slid across the sky, Byrnes simply stroked his hand through the cascade of honey-brown hair that smothered his chest.

It was surprising to realize how enjoyable this moment was.
Ingrid was heat and warmth in his arms, soft curves pressed against him, and her breath whispering over his bare chest.
He knew she was awake.
Occasionally she shifted a little, but there was joy and peace in the silence between them.
At least there was until she broke it.

"What did you mean, that you're afraid to think of the future?"
Ingrid murmured.

Byrnes's hand paused in her hair, his throat growing tight as she threw them straight into the conflict that he'd been putting off.
Coward
.
"I was speaking of the unknown."

"Of me?"
Her voice dropped to a mere whisper, and he heard doubt there.

God, no.
Byrnes shifted until he lay on his hip and shoulder beside her with her head nestled in the crook of his arm.
Bronze eyes looked up, met his.
"Not of you.
You're the one thing I don't doubt."
He kissed her mouth, a gentle caress.
Then paused.
"I never thought that there would be someone for me.
I never dreamed of what that would be like, or the complications involved."

"Are you saying I'm a complication?"
She arched a brow and bit the skin covering his biceps, and relief filled him.
No doubt in her eyes.
Not anymore.

Byrnes rolled over her slowly, resting on his forearms as he looked down at her.
Time to plunge right into the heart of this.
"You want children."

Ingrid froze and glanced up from beneath dark lashes.
"And you don't?"

"I don't know what I want.
I don't know...
if I would be a good father.
It's as I said.
I never looked down this road."

There was a subtle withdrawal as she stared past him, toward the ceiling.
"I never looked down this road either," she admitted, but it sounded sad.

"You've dreamed of it though," he pushed.
"I could see it in your face when you were holding Phillip that time at dinner."

Ingrid bit her lip and turned back to him.
"I never used to dream.
Not when I was trapped in the cage, because if you dared to dream, then you would dare to hope.
And nothing hurts more than having that crushed and thrown in your face."

A fierce, bloody desire filled him, and he kissed her mouth.
"I sometimes wish Lord Balfour hadn't died in the revolution.
Then I could take him apart with my bare hands for you."

"So do I."
No smile, no regret from her.
Only bloody violence gleaming in her eyes.
"I never dared to dream when I was trapped under Balfour’s hand.
But when we escaped from him, life changed.
It was still hard, don't mistake me.
But...
we'd escaped Balfour.
That was all I’d ever wanted.
I grew into a young woman in Undertown, because it wasn't safe for a free verwulfen to be seen above ground, but I was out of the cage.
The dreams that I'd never dared dream came true.
And something else began to grow in my chest, in my heart.
A sense of something missing.
Then three years ago we won the revolution, but it always felt a little hollow for me, because"—she looked away—"that something was still missing."

"Your family."

She shrugged, as if careless of her feelings.
Or perhaps trying to dismiss the depth of them.
"Maybe I'll never find them.
I think that sometimes in the middle of the night.
And...
I might not have dreamed of children before, but if you asked me if I wanted them?
Then yes, yes I think I do.
Holding Phillip fills that hole inside me.
Not all the way, but for a moment I belong."

"Trust me."
This time his tone was dry.
"You belong to Rosa.
And her brothers.
I've learned that in the last week."