“We waited until light and then rented a hack,” she whispered into his shoulder. Her breath sent shivers of unease across his skin. “We’d just come within sight of O’Connor’s house when Silence emerged from it.”
He stroked her hair. She still wore the yellow topaz pins he’d bought for her, though she’d changed her gown.
She shuddered as if remembering. “Her hair was down, Caire, and her bodice undone. He made her walk that way up the street, as if to brand her a whore. When she saw me, she started to cry.”
He closed his eyes, absorbing her pain, and repeated the only thing he knew to say. “I’m sorry.”
“She said nothing happened, that O’Connor made her stay the night in his bedroom but didn’t touch her. Oh, Caire, her protests were so pathetic that I didn’t dare press her for the truth. All I could do was hold her.”
He tightened his arms about her. “I’m sorry.”
She pulled back, looking into his eyes. “But the worst part was when we returned to the foundling home. William was waiting for us—”
“He didn’t accompany you in the hack?” Lazarus frowned.
Temperance shook her head. “He said if he was seen near O’Connor’s house, it would give credence to the claim that he was in league with the river pirate.”
Lazarus ran his hand soothingly over her back without comment. Hollingbrook sounded like a fool.
“And when we arrived, he took one look at Silence and then turned his face away. Oh, Caire”—her eyes closed wearily—“it near broke my heart.”
He bent his head then because he couldn’t not do so. His lips brushed hers gently. “I am so sorry.”
Her head sank wearily against his shoulder as she accepted his kisses. Her lips were soft and tasted of tears. He brushed his mouth over her cheeks, tasting the tears there as well, licking up her grief.
“Caire,” she sighed.
“Hmm?”
“I’m so tired,” she said, almost like a little girl. He guessed she’d not slept since he’d brought her back to her home the night before.
“Then lie with me a while,” he whispered.
He picked her up like a child and brought her to his still-unmade bed, laying her gently there before climbing in beside her. He pulled her close until her head was snuggled against his banyan-covered chest, pricking him with almost-pain.
She sighed again. “’S funny.”
“What is?” he murmured, threading his fingers through her hair. He took the yellow topaz jewels out of her coiffure and laid them on the table by his bed.
“William sent word. After he went home with Silence. After my brothers argued and Asa stormed out.”
“What did he say?” He plucked bent little pins from her hair, one by one, releasing her tresses from their confinement, combing them gently with his fingers.
“The ship’s cargo,” she said. “Mickey O’Connor kept his word. It was all there on the ship this morning. As if it had never disappeared in the first place.”
Lazarus stared at the canopy over his bed and thought about a thief’s perfidy and his honor and the price a woman might pay for the man she loved. When he looked down again, he saw that Temperance breathed slowly and evenly against him, her lush mouth slightly parted. Her mahogany hair was spread like a blanket of silk upon his shoulder and bed, and the sight gave him satisfaction deep in his soul.
He lifted one lock and watched as the strands curled adoringly around his fingers. He smiled slightly. How a man might deceive himself with such a sight.
Then he let his arm drop. He pulled her a little closer against his chest and closed his own eyes.
And slept.
SHE AWOKE IN a darkened room with the realization that something awful waited for her just as soon as she opened her eyelids.
So she didn’t.
She drifted, not thinking, not waking, trying to hold on to the peace of sleep. There was another body next to hers, large and warm and comforting, and she concentrated on that. He breathed deeply as if still asleep, and she liked the sound of his soft exhalations. It meant that she wasn’t alone. She wished she could stay here forever, in the gray warmth of half-sleep. But inevitably, wakefulness and knowledge intruded and she opened her eyes on a pained gasp.
Caire’s arm tightened about her.
She turned her face into his side, inhaling his musk, ashamed that tears still threatened. Silence was the youngest, the most innocent of their family, and her downfall seemed too terrible to bear, as if all light had been extinguished in the world.
He sighed heavily, one hand trailing down her back to her bottom and squeezing. “Temperance.”
He was hot. She slid her arm over his back, vaguely surprised to realize that only a thin layer of silk separated her fingers from his bare skin. “Caire.”
His mouth found hers, lazy with sleepiness. He kissed her and she was comforted, here in the darkness. She wasn’t Temperance at this moment; he wasn’t an aristocratic lord far above her. Here in the limbo between night and day, they were simply a man and a woman.
And as a woman, she opened her mouth to his.
He made a satisfied sound, deep in his chest, and thrust his tongue into her mouth, asserting his authority. She let him, drawing him deep. Right now she didn’t want to face the world outside those bedroom doors. She only wanted to feel.
To let herself feel as she hadn’t in years.
Desire hit her, hard and fast. She’d always been particularly vulnerable to physical lust, had to guard against it every day of her life to make sure others didn’t know how it controlled her. Now she let it run free.
She opened her hands over his back, feeling the slick silk slide beneath her palms. He was muscled, his shoulders wide, the indent of his spine very defined.
He broke the kiss on a gasp, plucking at her bodice. “Take this off.”
It was awkward, here in the dark, but she skimmed and wriggled, and in the end, when her stays twisted about her middle, he simply inserted his fingers under the laces and tore them from the holes. Each lace made a popping sound as it was released from its prison, and she felt her breasts jiggle in freedom. He ripped the ruined stays from her body and then pushed her chemise over her head.
And then she was naked.
“Remove this,” she whispered, pulling at his banyan.
“I can’t. I’m sorry,” he murmured, and she remembered his sensitivity.
She met his eyes. They stared regretfully down at her. “It will hurt you?”
“Not hurt.” He brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth. “No longer hurt with you. Just… discomfort. And only if you touch my bare skin.”
“And if you touch my bare skin?”
He smiled slowly. “That, I assure you, will cause me no pain at all.”
This frustrated her, but then she moved against him, rubbing her breasts against his chest, feeling the silk against her nipples.
He growled, reaching for her, and she broke free of her reins. She threw a leg over him and ran her bare calf up and down his leg. He wore breeches, and she felt the rough material against her skin before she came to his bare lower legs. He stiffened. She knew she was causing him discomfort, but she couldn’t stop. She delighted in the contrast between her softness and his hard strength.
He moved suddenly, rolling her beneath him.
“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes.”
But he didn’t do the expected. Instead he captured her hands, pressing them above her head, shoving his weight down on her until she could hardly move.
“Please, now,” she panted. She didn’t want to leave this drugged state, to return to normal life and guilt and sorrow.
“There’s no rush,” he murmured against her throat.
“Yes,” she replied angrily, “yes, there is.”
But he only laughed, his breath tickling her skin as he trailed his mouth over her collarbone. What was he about? Didn’t he have the same urges as other men? That part of him—the part that made him a man—was most definitely interested. It pressed against her belly, hard and hot through his breeches, sliding to her hip as he moved down her body.
She was distracted, dazed and confused, her attention split between his wandering mouth and the cock that pressed now at the top of her mound. She tried to raise her hips, to push against him, but he chuckled and shifted one thigh, ensuring her immobility.
“What are you doing?” she cried in frustration.
“Why, Mrs. Dews,” he drawled, “I thought you’d been married.”
“I was married,” she said waspishly. The last thing she wanted to think about now was her dead husband.
“Then I would think you’d be somewhat familiar with this process,” he whispered just before he took her nipple into his hot mouth.
Her mind went blank, and then a rolling wave of sensation made her literally shake. Dear God, it’d been so long since a man had touched her there. Since she’d felt that strong suckle. The eroticism was almost overwhelming.
He lifted his head to lazily lick at the breast, each languid swipe of his wet tongue harrowing in its own way.
“I must admit I’m a novice at this myself,” he drawled.
“What?” She blinked into the darkness. “What do you mean?”
“Making love,” he said, quite matter-of-factly, and bit gently on her other nipple.
She sobbed, feeling that pleasure-pain, feeling the growing ache in her center. He would not move to relieve her.
Instead he babbled.
“I’ve been told it’s an extraordinary experience,” he said calmly, “but you must forgive me if I seem unsure. I’ve bedded many women, but the act of making love is one I’ve never ventured. In this, I think, you must be the master.”
His voice had a slight question, but even if she’d been in her right senses, she wouldn’t have commented. Why was he playing this game when all she wanted was his flesh between her thighs?
“Gently,” he crooned in a hushed voice, chiding her for a groan of frustration. He shoved apart her thighs and settled himself into the space he’d made. “There. Is that better?”
It wasn’t perfect, but it was unquestionably better. The length of his hardness lay against her wet folds, the material of his breeches a wonderful abrasion. She closed her eyes in bliss at his heat, at the slight, but not quite hard enough, pressure.
“There,” he repeated soothingly. “Now, what if I add this?”
And he drew her nipple into his mouth again, his teeth scraping just barely as he suckled.
She wanted to touch him as well, to run her fingers through the hair on his chest, to grip his shoulders and reach beneath his breeches to knead his buttocks. But his hands still chained hers and she was forced to simply wait.
To submit.
“Widen your legs,” he whispered, his voice deep and clear in the still dark.
She complied.
“Lift them a little.”
She obeyed. He grunted in what sounded like pleasure. Her movement had caused him to settle closer to her, his cock now lodged between the folds of her sex.
She swallowed, waiting for his next move.
“I think… yes, this.” He shifted, his hand between them, opening his falls, letting himself out. When he again let his weight settle against her, his naked penis rubbed quite explicitly on her clitoris, and while she was distracted by that, he brought his mouth down on hers.
He kissed her openmouthed, and it was almost too intimate, here in the dark. He lay on her—his chest pressed into her vulnerable, naked breasts, his hot cock burrowed against her softness—and thoroughly, leisurely, kissed her.
He caught her bottom lip between his teeth, nibbling delicately, then whispered against her lips, “Open.”
She accepted the sweep of his tongue into her mouth, sucking for long moments helplessly. So erotic was the kiss that she almost didn’t notice when he began to move against her. But she did. She stilled, her entire concentration on that part of his body becoming intimate with that part of her body. Until he nipped the corner of her mouth.
