Proper Scoundrel (17 page)

“Prostitutes?”

“Yes,” Marcus sighed. “A tiresome business, but I had to let them all use me, before they would let me go. I left them all deliriously happy and sated. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

Jade shook her head. She wanted to ask why he’d followed her, but that would be admitting too much. None of it mattered, anyway. Because she couldn’t take her gaze from the sight of his muscled torso, his wide shoulders, everything, naked, as he stood in her bathtub, hands on hips, a scowl on his face, daring her to give him the argument he craved.

“Well,” he said. “Are you getting out, or am I joining you?” He dangled her dressing gown just out of reach.

Jade released her breath, too tired to muster up a fight. “I’ll take the dressing gown.”

He held it open in front of him for her to slip into. “Stand up and turn around, I’ll help.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Maybe. I’m also cold, sore, tired and out of patience. Do it my way and I’ll see and do nothing. You’re way, I’ll get a good look, at the least, before you’re decently covered. Either way sounds fine to me. Your choice.”

“Close your eyes.” She didn’t believe for a minute that he would, so she stood quickly and allowed him to slip her dressing gown around her and she slipped her arms in the sleeves and tied the sash.

He smoothed the silk along her shoulders and kissed the back of her neck, then he slid his wicked hands down her back and around her waist. They stopped their foray, finally, but too soon, just below her breasts, remaining, almost unfortunately, above her dressing gown.

Denying her longing for him to touch her, skin to skin, Jade stepped from the tub before she weakened and issued a command for him to fulfil her desire.

Marcus slid down into the hot water, heaving a great sigh.

Determined not to look at him, Jade turned her back to knot her sash and pick up her brush. Then, the only garment he’d been wearing a minute before hit the wall beside her with a splash.

“Much better,” he said. “Hand me the soap, will you?”

“You’re a devil, Marcus Fitzalan.” She turned on him, curiosity making her wish she could soap him from head to foot, herself. She threw the soap that had been within reach all along, smacking the water hard. Taking satisfaction from his grunt of surprise, she wrenched open her door, certain if she didn’t leave, her weak resolve would crumble.

“Where are you going?”

“To get you some dry clothes. It’ll be dawn in a couple of hours and I don’t want you parading around the house naked, if you don’t mind.”

“You sure know how to spoil a man’s fun.”

Jade shut her door on his chuckle, wishing she could have slammed it, annoyed all the way down the stairs. As she gathered his clothes, she tried to stay irritated, but she couldn’t get the sight of him standing above her, nearly naked, from her mind. She shuddered remembering how tempted she’d been to call his bluff.

In a way, it was a good thing that he’d come to see her. She hadn’t been certain how to face him in the morning. He’d taken away that worry, at least.

After Beecher got over his fury at her for venturing to the railroad site alone in the middle of the night, he’d told her that Marcus followed her and risked his life to keep her from being shot. Then Beecher helped her dispose of the lumber.

Again, a few minutes before Marcus arrived, Beecher came to her rescue when he told her, as she paced her room, sick with worry, that he’d spotted Marcus from the turret window, limping, but looking none the worse for his stint as a knight in shining armour.

Yes, she’d worried about the man with the pistol and his reason for aiming it her way. But she’d worried about Marcus more.

She had just climbed into the tub after learning Marcus was safe, when he’d been so bold as to invade her bath.

Clean clothes gathered—including a pair of underbreeches she examined with a smile by sliding her hand through the slit at the front—Jade went back to her room, exhilarated at the prospect of sparring with her nemesis.

Perhaps she’d stay near the door and make him come and take his clothes from her hand, so he’d have to step from the tub and she could finally see ... everything.

But her fantasy was not to be, because he lay in her bed fast asleep, his man parts completely covered by her blanket, drat him. On his side, facing the centre of her bed, one knee bent, he slept as if he’d left a place just for her.

Bruises had formed on his jaw, under his eye. Another on his chest. Almost feeling his pain, she made a sound, and he opened his eyes. “God, Scandal, I’m so bloody tired. Give me a chance to rest, will you, before you throw me out.” He stroked the space beside him. “You must be as tired as me after hauling all that lumber. Come, let me hold you while we sleep. Just for an hour or so.”

He’d followed her; that made her furious.

He’d risked his life for her by grappling with a gunman; that made her knees weak. She threw off her dressing gown and lay beside him.

Marcus pulled her close, threw a leg, an arm, and the blanket over her and went to sleep.

When her shock wore off and he snored softly against her hair, Jade’s heart became soft and warm and content. She smiled, settled into his ready embrace, and closed her eyes.

Marcus woke with an erection and a hand full of breast.

Life was looking up.

One of Jade’s legs nestled neatly between his, her face nuzzled his chest, her hand rested on his naked hip.

Some days started just plain perfect.

He nibbled her ear and she purred, arching against him like a veritable temptress. Morning-ready, the both of them, she remained in control, he discovered, as she pushed him off her and rose over him, her hair falling free on either side, shutting them away from the world.

“Do the rules remain the same?” she asked. “Have I still but to command and you will obey?”

His erection did a happy dance. “Have your wicked way with me, then ... please.”

With a lusty chuckle, she backed away and he almost wept, but then she knelt beside him and removed the blanket from the parts that interested her most.

“Glory, that’s big!”

Every time Jade opened her mouth, Marcus fell deeper in love. “Stallion quality, right? And don’t you dare say no.”

She trilled a laugh, skimmed his length and circled his tip with a finger, raising him off the bed in a sizzling combination of sweet rapture and prickling surprise.

“You liked that?” She did it again.

Marcus released his breath and stopped her hand. “You’re going to get more than you bargained for, if you keep that up.”

“Like what? What will I get?”

He didn’t know what to say, not sure how far the delightful mix of wicked siren and pure innocent’s education went. To distract them both, he unbuttoned the bodice of her filmy nightgown and allowed her breasts the freedom he craved.

She watched his body’s reaction with avid interest as he filled his hands with her bounty. Then she threw her head back and closed her eyes as he fondled her nipples, abrading and peaking them.

“The way you make me feel when you touch me,” she said on a breathless whisper. “That’s how you feel when I touch you, isn’t it?”

He nodded and she fingered him again, closing her hand around him suddenly, instinct teaching her the age-old rhythm.

He rode the ecstasy of her ministrations until he could barely contain himself, then he urged her to lie beside him. “Let me touch you the way I did yesterday while you touch me like this.”

She didn’t say yes; she didn’t say no. But her heavy-lidded, smoky eyes told him the notion aroused her as much as it did him.

To heighten and sustain her pleasure, Marcus stroked her legs from her ankles to her calf with the back of a hand, his touch as light and slow as a feather drifting on a warm breeze. The higher along her limbs climbed his caress, the deeper her breathy gasps stroked him.

When he slipped his hand between her legs, she adjusted herself to accommodate him, and he found her slick and warm, throbbing and ready.

“Kiss me,” he whispered, trying to keep sane, to give her the most gratification possible while riding a fast-rising wave toward his own fulfilment.

She kissed him with greed, her tongue teasing and plundering.

Hot, untutored passion. Erotic. Mind-altering.

Keeping pace with each other, their rhythm quickened to escalating pleasure. When she gasped his name with the impact of her climax, he let himself go and pumped his seed into her hand—both of them shocked and amazed at the power of it.

He knew that burying himself in her tight sheath would be like nothing he’d ever experienced.

They kissed and floated, kissed some more, less frantic yet more so, desperate to milk every wild moment, to become closer than close.

He ached worse for her now. Hard again, already, he wanted inside her more than he wanted to breathe.

“There’s more,” Jade said. “I know there is. I want more.”

A pounding at her door turned both their heads, stilled their hearts and their breathing.

“Jade? Jade, are you in there?” Lacey turned the doorknob as she called Jade’s name.

Jade jumped from the bed, glorious in her nakedness, and threw his sopping clothes into hands still warm from her body. “I’m coming, Lacey. Just a minute.”

Jade pushed her dressing table aside and opened a door disguised as a wall. Grabbing his hand, she tugged him off the bed and shoved him through it, abandoning him on a landing in a dank, narrow, windowless stairwell.

“One flight down, this opens into your room,” she said. “You’ll have to force your wardrobe aside while you push your door open.” She shut the door in his face.

Still trembling from sated exhaustion, Jade slipped into her dressing gown, and masked her frustration over the interruption before she allowed herself to open her door.

As Lacey stepped into her room, Jade noticed Marcus’s clean clothes on her dresser. Lacey saw them too, and appeared to understand, only too well.

Because Lacey once knew and tasted forbidden passion, she would neither reveal what she saw, nor would she judge. She did, however, bite her lip against a smile, despite the concern in her eyes. “I’m sorry. Really. But there’s a man downstairs threatening to break down doors until he finds Lilly and little Molly. Fortunately, Em had a nightmare and I went looking for warm milk, or I never would have heard him break the window.”

Jade began to dress. “Does he seem dangerous?”

“Not really, one minute he’s crying because he misses them, the next, he’s going to tear the place down looking for them.” Jade donned her trousers, the better to deal with an irate husband. Once, she thought she appeared strong in male attire but now she knew better. Either way, she caught men off-guard when she wore pants. “Has he been drinking?”

Lacey nodded. “As usual, from what Lilly told me.”

“Who’s with him now?”

“I couldn’t wake Beecher no matter how hard I knocked, so Lester’s with him, but Lester is so frail.”

“Go back down,” Jade said, pulling on her boots. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“If Marcus is hanging outside your window,” Lacey said. “You’d best let him in before you leave.”

Lacey touched Jade’s hand. “Be careful, my dear, the elation of physical love can be buried all too quickly beneath a pall of remorse and regret. Protect at least a part of your heart, Jade, for if you do not, it will be lost forever. There is no going back.”

Jade blanched at Lacey’s warning.

She’d shut him in! Pitch black. Freezing. Bare ass and bare feet. Marcus gingerly made his way down the cold stone steps to his own secret door, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get it open.

Not for anything.

Marcus sat down in the middle of the stairs, but he shot up when his bare ass met the icy step. After two sleepless nights, a foot chase, and this early morning’s passion, this situation did not bode well for a day of rest.