The Danger of Desire (31 page)

She made a pleased, agreeing sound, and Hugh wanted to kiss it out of her mouth. But she whispered against his lips. “Then how? How did you learn to do that, to make me feel all golden and happy inside?”

He did kiss her then, taking her sweet mouth and kissing the small puckers of worry smooth. “Meggs. Lass.”

“I mean, I knew about it,” she explained between kisses. “Heard all about tupping, even seen it a time or two—people going at it in a doorway. But I never imagined how it could make me feel. You’ve never done this before, either, and yet, you can make me feel like my body was raining sunlight.”

It was a wonder he didn’t float away on the lazy rush of pleasure. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. He kissed his way across her eyes. “But there you have it. Imagination. Inspiration. For instance, this, right here—” He traced his fingers lightly over the delicate scoop of her hip bone. “I find this fascinating. I find it
erotic
. There’s a word for your collection. Do you know what that means, erotic? Inflaming the passions. It means, it makes me feel the need to touch you. To be touched by you.”

“So if I feel the need to do ... this”—she rolled her sweet, sleek, softly naked body atop his—“I could?”

“You can do whatever you want,” he assured her.

“Can I do whatever I want to you?” Her eyes were avid, roving over his body in fascination.

Hugh wondered vaguely if he could expire from pure, undiluted lust. He threw his hands out wide. “Have at it, lass.”

And she did. She stretched full out on top of him, the soft friction of her skin whispering hot, erotic promises along his flesh. He touched her in encouragement, his hands cradling her face, his thumbs tracing tender, sweet circles across her cheek and lips. The first touch of her plush lips to his was soft and tentative, a mere taste until she grew more sure. She opened her mouth to kiss him, taking his lower lip between hers to nip and suck, to draw him deeper into the velvet softness of her sweet mouth. He let go of all thought when she sent her tongue out to tangle with his, exploring him with eager, unbridled curiosity.

And then she drew back abruptly, her mouth open and panting from her exertions, her eyes wide and avid, scanning his body for more ways, and more places, to explore. She was sitting across his belly, her sweet rounded arse pressing into his very attentive cock. She was a sight to behold—her pale, white skin flushed and rosy, her dark hair and eyes an exotic contrast. He showed her how to explore by example, reaching his hands up to cup the perfect roundness of her breasts and brush the pink crests of her nipples.

She groaned in response and leaned into him, filling his hands. And then she did the same to him, running her palms over the muscles of his chest, exploring, her nimble fingertips tracing the flat shape of his nipples before her mouth descended to kiss and tongue him the way he had done to her. “Do you like that?”

“God, yes. I like anything you do. Everything you do.” She was his fantasy come to life, her body sleek and moving under his hands, her ruined hair brushing along his skin, her hips pressing against his.

“Anything?” She ran her hands up his arms to push his hands over his head and lay against him again, moving and stretching, trying to appease her need for greater contact. She kissed him again and again, and then, when her lips weren’t enough, she used her teeth on him, nipping along his neck and jaw, pain and pleasure melding together in bursts of fire along his skin.

“Yes,” he groaned in her thrall.

She pushed away again, dragging her nails across his chest as she sat up. She rocked back against him once before she slid back even farther to sit across his thighs and take his erection into her hands. “Anything?” And she stroked him with her clever, strong hands.

Her hands fisting along his length felt beyond good—the bliss was exquisite. The sight of her seated atop him like an earthy sprite, working her magic on his body with her nimble hands and her plush open mouth, was like spark to powder. And when she wiggled even farther back so she could lean down and stroke him with her lips, he thought he might explode.

“My God, lass. Yes,” he encouraged, his voice thick with lust.

“I don’t know,” she asked, out of breath as she came up for air and slid her hand back down his flesh, “how your skin can be so soft, and yet so hard.” She licked him like a candy, once, twice, before she covered him with her lips and took him again into the velvet warmth of her mouth. She closed around him, stroking him with her tongue and abrading him with her teeth, urging him closer and closer to the keen edge of his need. When her hand slid lower to take the weight of his balls, caressing him in her palm, he thought he might expire from the jolting rush of dark pleasure.

But then the heated bliss of her mouth was gone, only to be replaced by her hands, as she slipped forward and rubbed his cock against her mound. “I want you inside of me.”

“Yes.” He was eager to oblige her, so as her nimble hands continued to stroke his engorged flesh, he reached between her legs to find the heated entrance to her body.

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure your body is wet and ready for me.”

But Meggs didn’t want to be led. She laced her own fingers with his, stealing her way into her own body. Hugh thought he might come right then and there, so powerful was the rush of carnal heat at the sight of her with one of her hands wrapped around his cock and the other one stroking the slick entrance to her body.

“Do you like that?” she asked, but she already knew the answer, her eyes dark and glowing with the newly discovered knowledge.

“Yes,” he gritted, rapidly moving beyond finesse, beyond anything but sharp-honed need. He speared his fingers through hers and took the dew from her cunny to slick over his cock. And then he was gripping her hips and guiding her—but it was she who had his cock in hand and was easing him into her lush, warm flesh, sliding down onto him, the slick circumference of her passage tight and clinging. And when she moved atop him, slowly rising and falling upon the length of his cock, he had to close his eyes against the crazy rush of blood through his veins. Over and over, the sweet heated friction of her body drove him inexorably higher.

He tried to lie back. He tried to let her set her own pace, but she was whimpering with need and rocking harder and harder, flinging herself down upon him. And then her hand was grappling around his neck, pulling him up so she could slide her legs forward, around his hips, and wrap her arms around him for purchase, to shudder hard against his loins. Her head was thrown back, her face nearly contorted with concentration, as she strove to feed her body’s hunger .

He leaned back on his arms for leverage to angle his hips to give her more pleasure, more of the exquisite, torturous, heady friction as she pushed her body against his. He found more of his own pleasure in watching her abandon, in hearing her cries.

But when she began to call his name, begging and pleading for her release, all thought began to close down until there was nothing but dark ravening need. He gripped her hips and pumped himself into her ruthlessly, again and then again, building his need like a wave until finally it crashed down upon him. He heard her orgasmic scream, and all hell broke loose inside him as he exploded into her.

CHAPTER 22

B
y midafternoon a wet snow had begun to fall, blanketing the world outside in gray and white. Inside, they had not yet left his bed, though they were both awake. Hugh was content to bask in the glow of her contentment. But, while they didn’t have to get up and go out into the cold snow, they would have to get some food, sooner or later. Later was an easier thought.

“Are you comfortable?”

Meggs sighed like a cat. “Warm as toast. Sleeping with you is like sleeping next to a cast-iron stove.”

“That does not sound comfortable.”

“Hmm, no, it’s lovely. I meant it as a compliment. I’ve never been so warm.”

“Well.” He was inordinately pleased to be able to give her so simple a pleasure. But he made a joke of it. “Let me set this phenomenon down in my log book. Tuesday, the tenth of December, in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and ninety-nine: Meggs gave me a compliment.”

They laughed and Hugh’s heart and body felt ... aligned, for the first time in his life. No not for the first time. But in a very long time.

The thought was there in his mind in an instant. He could marry her and live quietly. He could make her a captain’s wife. She seemed particularly adaptable—she might even like the rather rough and tumble of life at sea. He’d never seen the advantage before. Indeed, he served with only one captain who had his wife aboard, on a first rate that hadn’t seen much action, back when he’d first been a midshipman. But to have Meggs to hand, to talk to, to have the benefit of that agile, quick mind. Not to mention having her in his bed.

“I’ve been thinking.”

She laughed. “Have you? Don’t know how you can possibly tup and think at the same time. I can’t.”

“Don’t say tup.” He wasn’t sure why it bothered him, only that it did.

“Why not?”

“It’s vulgar.”

She sobered, in that quiet way of hers, going intensely still beneath his hands. “But I am rather vulgar, aren’t I? That’s what thieves from the Cheapside docks are. I can’t change who I am.”

“You’re only vulgar when you choose to be. I think you can choose not to be.”

“And you want me to choose not to be.” Her voice was guarded and careful.

He made his voice deceptively casual, though his response was every bit as careful as hers. “Probably. But it’s what you want to choose that matters. Now, do you want to know what I’ve been thinking or not?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I was thinking about what comes next. I did tell you about my friend, Captain Marlowe?”

The carefulness made her voice even more quiet. “In the navy, yes.”

“Well, I wrote him, just to see if what I proposed for your brother might actually be possible.”

“Oh. For the Tanner. And?”

“And, I’ve received his reply. He will take your brother on as a servant—which is a sort of way of saying he’ll be an apprentice at first, to see how he goes on. Marlowe is adamant about making sure it’s what the boy wants. Marlowe was forced into the navy, and even though he loves the life, he won’t stand for any boy under his command being made to join against his wishes. But if it is what Timmy wants, and Marlowe thinks he’s capable—which I have no doubt he will—he’ll make him a midshipman and teach him lessons in seamanship and navigation, and all the skills it takes to be an officer, a gentleman sailor.”

“A gentleman.” She rolled away and looked at the ceiling for a very long time.

Hugh didn’t rush her. He knew what Timmy meant to her—she had devoted her entire life to his care and upbringing. And change, especially a change that would take her brother away from her, was always going to be difficult and frightening.

Finally, she just nodded. “Then it’s settled then, is it?”

“Only thing is for you to say yes. And the Tanner to be asked, of course.”

“Yes.” She nodded again, though her lip was buttoned down trying to keep it from quivering. She didn’t like this whole idea, but she knew it was for the best. “Best if you tell him. Or ask him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She pulled on bravery with the bed sheet as she moved away. “I’m sure.”

Timmy was ecstatic. They settled the business between them and made the arrangements in less time than it took for Meggs to case a mark. Mrs. Tupper agreed to accompany the boy down to Dartmouth by post chaise and deliver him to Marlowe, whose housekeeper she really was. Now that Meggs’s training as a housemaid was done, Mrs. Tupper felt she had paid her debt of gratitude, and she wanted to return to Mr. Tupper in Dartmouth for the coming holidays.

It was also, Hugh knew, Mrs. Tupper’s emphatic way of letting it be known she did not approve of his new relationship with Meggs.

“I’m too old not to speak my mind, sir,” she had told him when he had finally left Meggs, and the closed confines of his bedchamber, in search of food. “That girl deserves better.” Her sharp criticism was all for him, but he would be relieved to spare Meggs the mortification of hearing any of it.

They were to leave in two days’ time. And that left Hugh exactly one day to figure out what he was to do with Meggs. He could think of only one way to go about the business. He took a hackney coach to the door of Number Forty-Five Berkley Square.

His mother saw him immediately.

“Hugh, darling, what could be wrong? What brings you here?”

“Why must something be wrong for me to visit my mother?”

She fanned her hands through the air impatiently. “Because. Tell me at once.” She waved him into the chair beside her.

“All right.” He eased his bulk cautiously into the delicate-looking silk-upholstered armchair. “I would like your advice and assistance in helping someone to ... learn how to go on in Society, a little. A very little.”

The pleased surprise he had expected did make a brief appearance in her face—her eyes lit and the tiniest of smiles curved her lips—before it was replaced with a certain wary caution. “A little? I will, of course, help you do so. But I’m enough of a mother to want to know why.”

“A simple favor.”

“Simple? I see. And what is the name of this simple woman?”

“Why must it be a woman?”

“Because I didn’t think, even after all these years in the navy, it would be a
man
. And because you’re cagey about nothing else in your life but women.”

It was not quite shocking, but definitely disquieting, to be so easily read by a woman he hadn’t spent more than two days with in the past ten years. “You would make a formidably spy, Mother.”

“So would any woman worth the name mother. It’s our job to figure out our men’s thoughts regarding such things, for you don’t seem to want to do it for yourselves.”

She had him there. He most definitely did not want to examine his thoughts regarding Meggs too closely. They were foolish in the extreme.