I
t was nearly nine o’clock when Dodswell found her in the common room and handed her a note.
“From his highness,” he said with a grin. “Said I had to put it into your hand and no other, and that I couldn’t find my bed until I did.”
Em smiled. “Thank you.” She bit back an inquiry as to “his highness’s” health; doubtless that was what the note was about.
She stuffed it into her pocket, where it burned a hole while she forced herself to finish chatting with the latest travelers who’d decided to make the Red Bells their temporary home.
News of the inn and its food and refurbishment was spreading faster than she’d dared hope. She’d opened two more rooms, and had filled them every night; the girls she’d hired to help were slaving to have two more ready in the next few days.
She saw the travelers upstairs, then whisked into her office and pulled Jonas’s note from her pocket. Unfolding it, she smoothed the sheet and tipped it toward the lamplight.
Dearest Em,
It is with immeasurable regret that I have to inform you that, when upright, my head still threatens to spin rather too much to risk making the journey to the inn.
I’ve asked Lucifer to look in later to make sure all’s well.
I’ll see you tomorrow—until then, take all due care.
Yours, etc, Jonas
Em read the note twice, then humphed. “All very well for
him
to tell
me
to take care! I’m not the one with a goose egg on my head.”
She stared at the note for a full minute—considered, debated—then whirled and sat in the chair behind her desk. Pulling out a fresh sheet of paper, she flicked open her ink pot, dipped her nib, and quickly scrawled a note of her own.
After blotting, folding, and addressing it, she slipped out and found John Ostler, and dispatched him, note in hand, to the Grange.
“I’m not expecting any reply,” she called after him.
He saluted and went, striding into the wood.
Em looked at the dark, dense trees, and inwardly shivered. Turning, she hurried back into the warmth and light.
Just after ten o’clock was the inn’s usual closing time. Lucifer duly appeared in the tap at that time, and assisted with good-naturedly evicting the customary stragglers, a task Jonas had fallen into the habit of performing in recent times. The tap cleared, Lucifer waved to her, then headed home.
It was close to eleven o’clock before she farewelled Edgar and retired with the last lamp. Climbing the stairs, she refused to let herself question her plan, the one she was about to put into action. There was no quibble in her mind over whether or not she should—it was more a case of whether or not she could.
She went through her rooms to the back stairs and thence to the attics, checking on the twins, Issy, and Henry, and finding them all fast asleep. Safe and well.
Returning to her rooms, she gathered a small bundle of necessities, tied them in an old scarf, then threw her warmest shawl around her shoulders. Picking up the lamp, she checked the level of oil and, finding that satisfactory, adjusted the wick so it threw a glow just bright enough to light her way, then, with nothing else to check or do, she went down the stairs, past the bar and her office, and out of the inn’s back door.
She locked it carefully behind her, then—without letting herself think—walked steadily across the yard and onto the minor path that led to the main path through the wood.
Doggedly she thought of other things—of the church in sunlight, of the warmth and light in Hilda’s kitchen, of the bustle in the laundry, the babel of the tap—anything to keep the black darkness beneath the trees from swallowing her senses.
She didn’t want to think about the dark. She wasn’t exactly afraid of it; it was simply that her senses tended to freeze, that being shrouded in inky blackness seemed to paralyze her. Keeping her eyes locked on the pale shaft of light thrown by the lamp, concentrating on keeping her feet steadily moving, one foot in front of the other, she came to the intersection with the main path and turned south toward the Grange.
The huge old house lay ahead of her, somewhere through the trees. She drew in a breath, tighter than she liked, fought not to let the shadows distract her, to let them pull her attention sideways, into the solid gloom beneath the branches.
She could feel her heart climbing slowly upward, into her throat. The compulsion to pick up her skirts and run—flee down the path—steadily grew, but she was determined not to race into Jonas’s room in hysterics.
Jonas.
His image formed in her mind; she seized upon it like a drowning soul, clung to it, felt her senses lock and hold, tightly enough to withstand even the insidious pull of the dark.
She trudged on beneath the trees, under the overhanging branches, her breathing still tight, but calmer now, her eyes locked on the beam of lamplight, her feet moving more confidently, with a surer purpose, her senses fixed on the beacon that glowed in her mind’s eye.
And then she was stepping into the open, into the faint moonlight, free of the trees. Out of the dark. She could almost feel the tendrils of her latent fear fall away, stretch thin and break as she walked along the path through the Grange’s kitchen garden.
She went straight to the back door. Lifting the latch, she pushed it open and went inside. There was a candle left burning on the dresser, waiting for her. She smiled and blessed Mortimer as she blew it out, preferring to take her lamp upstairs.
In brazen contravention of all acceptable procedure, she’d written directly to Mortimer and baldly asked him to leave the kitchen door open for her, saying she wanted to check on Jonas before she retired for the night.
All perfectly true.
Locking the back door, she resettled her shawl, picked up her lamp and, silent as a mouse, made her way through the quiet house to the main stairs and climbed them.
Jonas’s door was shut. Carefully screening the lamp, she opened the door, glanced in, and saw him sprawled under the covers. Moonlight streamed in through curtains left wide, providing more than enough illumination; she doused the lamp, then slipped inside, and quietly shut the door.
She set the lamp down by the wall, then approached the bed. He was asleep, but restless; as she watched he stirred, head turning on the pillow, long limbs shifting beneath the sheets. He wasn’t wearing a nightshirt. With the bandage no longer swathing his head, he didn’t look injured at all, but unsettled.
The observation confirmed her assumptions, firmed her resolve. Laying her small bundle—her brush and a change of clothes—on his dresser, she set her fingers to the laces of her gown.
It took a few minutes to peel the gown down and step out of the skirts and her petticoats, then strip off her garters and hose. Feeling the touch of the cool night air, she hesitated, but then quickly pulled her chemise off over her head.
Naked, she lifted the covers along one side of the bed—the side she normally ended upon—and slid under.
Heat enveloped her; he wasn’t fevered, but his large body radiated a familiar and comforting warmth. She instinctively snuggled closer, trying not to disturb him, intending to comfort simply by her presence.
He sensed her; he turned and wrapped his arms about her, gathered her against him, settling her within the circle of his arms, her head on his shoulder, as he always did.
She thought at first that he’d woken, but the vagueness in his touch and the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing said otherwise. Lips curving, she laid her hand over his heart, relaxed into his embrace, and closed her eyes.
He might be asleep, but he remained restless, stirring again and again. At first she thought it was dreams that were disturbing his rest, but watching his face, she realized he was still suffering from occasional pain. From pangs strong enough to disturb, but not wake.
She watched, waited, but he didn’t truly settle, not properly; his sleep remained light, constantly fractured.
The need to do something to alleviate his pain, to bring him peace, built until it flooded her. She couldn’t ignore it; the compulsion was too strong, too inherent a part of her.
But what could she do?
Her mind considered and rejected a host of options; her thoughts circled, then returned to just one. She’d heard that pleasure—physical, especially sensual, pleasure—could mute pain, override it, at least for a little while.
Possibly long enough for him to fall more deeply asleep.
Pleasure, after all, distracted her utterly; she was fairly certain it distracted him, too.
The thought tempted, tantalized, yet she hesitated, then he stirred again, this time more fretfully, and she set aside her reservations; hands splayed on his chest, she stretched up against him and kissed him.
Gently, lingeringly, lips supping without urgency or haste, tasting, coaxing.
He responded, and yet…she didn’t think he was awake. His hands spread and slid over her skin, touching, tracing, possessively caressing before gripping and supporting her where she was, leaning over him.
So she could kiss him more deeply, could take advantage of his parted lips and with her tongue claim his mouth as he had so often hers. He let her, not quiescent, but accepting each increasingly lavish caress as his due—as if he were some pasha and she his pleasure slave.
The notion slid into her mind and her Colyton soul leapt in reckless anticipation. In wanton abandon, urged and compelled her to seize the moment.
To slowly slide her body over his until she was lying atop him, then to part her legs until her knees found the bed on either side of his waist. Slowly, flagrantly lingering, she drew back from the kiss, but only to slide lower and set her lips to his chest.
To trace with lips and tongue the broad, muscled expanse, to with her teeth test and tease the flat nubbins of his nipples concealed beneath the mat of springy dark hair.
One large hand rose to cup her nape as she eased herself lower, feeling his erection, solid and rigid, pressing against her midriff. Wantonly wicked, she wove her body back and forth, using her soft, smooth skin to caress the turgid shaft, the sensitive bulbous head.
His grip on her head tightened, strengthened; his chest swelled as he drew in a long, shallow breath and held it.
Inwardly smiling, certain now that she was on the right path, that the pain that had so constantly niggled could no longer reach him, she trailed her lips lovingly down the narrow band of hair that arrowed to his belly. Muscles tensed, tightened, as she wriggled lower still, as she lifted her head and eased her hips down to rest between his widespread thighs, and brought one hand up to cradle his erection.
To fondle, stroke, caress, to with her fingertips trace, then she bent her head and followed the same trail with the tip of her tongue.
He stopped breathing. Excitement skittered along her spine; a sense of wonder bloomed—that she could so thoroughly please him, pleasure him, that he forgot to breathe.
Emboldened, she licked—and muscles bunched and shifted. She settled to lave and felt him slowly tense beneath her. Felt the muscles surrounding her, cushioning her, turn to steel.
She parted her lips and took him into her mouth, curled her tongue and tasted. Went back for more, the salty tang very much to her liking.
Delighting him, pleasuring him, was a pleasure in itself. She gave herself over to it, taking as much as giving, thrilled and enthralled that she could give him this, give of herself to him in this way.
Her hair had come loose; it fell in rivulets over her shoulders to lightly brush his naked skin. Jonas felt the silken touch, featherlight, elusive, working in tandem—in sensual contrast—to the hot, wet suction of her mouth, the earthy rasp of her tongue cindering any thoughts he might have had, leaving him wanting—craving—more.
More of this dream.
More of her.
He let himself slide into the moment, into the drugging delight, let the sensations wash over him, capture him, ensnare him.
Let them sink to his soul and imprison him.
Trap him and hold him in pleasured delight.
The throbbing in his head had eased, the throbbing of his erection taking precedence. She drew his engorged flesh deep, suckled, and he gasped, felt his spine helplessly arch as he locked his hands about her head, sank his fingers into her soft curls, and held her there.
While she took him deep and slayed him with her passion, seductively flayed him with her tongue, with the steady deliberation of her devotion.
He knew she was real, that this was no dream, that she was there, tangling with him in his bed, but that only deepened the fantasy, heightened his delight.
The knowledge that she had come to him of her own accord, sought to please him, ease him, that she would willingly engage with his primitive soul in such a blatantly erotic way, was the elixir of paradise to him.
To the him who wanted her, needed her, coveted her—who wanted her to want him with the same fervor, the same unequivocal devotion. The same abject surrender.
She was an innocent adept when it came to pleasing him; her hands toyed, weighed, gently squeezed, and while he valued her actions, treasured her attentions, he couldn’t take any more of her giving, not like that.
He wanted her, wanted more of her. He’d already surrendered in every possible way, yet there was more he would give her, gift her, yield to her, lavish upon her—to him that was his role; to him giving to her had become a major part of his reason for being.
Tightening his grip on her skull, he urged her up; she released him reluctantly, but yielded to his direction—let him draw her up so he could fill her mouth with his tongue, so he could capture her senses while he drew her knees up on either side of his waist. Releasing them, he set his hands to her shoulders, eased them down the long planes of her back, testing the supple muscles, then he gripped her hips and held her steady, and nudged the heavy head of his erection into the scalding heat between her thighs.
She gasped through the kiss, but he held her to it, with his tongue possessed her mouth while slowly he pushed past her entrance, slowly drew her down and filled her.
With a short, powerful thrust of his hips he seated himself within her, impaling her on his full length, making her catch her breath, letting her break from the kiss, suck in air as she straightened and felt him high inside her.
Her face was a mask of sensual surprise; she looked down at him, bright eyes glinting from beneath her long lashes. “My God,” she breathed.
His face felt graven, stone etched by passion. Eyes locked on hers, he gripped her hips and lifted her, then slowly brought her down again.
“Oh…” She breathed the sound out on a long, slow exhalation, eyes closing as she sank lower, as he filled her completely again.
He repeated the movement once, but then she took over—eagerly, joyously, smiling in pleasure as she quickly learned, experimented, and tested, then settled to ride him with her customary abandon.
Bringing his hands up, he closed them about her breasts, kneaded evocatively, then half-rose beneath her to take one pert nipple into his mouth and feed.
Feed the conflagration that had flared, swelled, and raced through them, that burned so hotly their skins grew flushed and damp, fevered. That consumed in a rush of heat and passion, and left them both gasping as she reached the pinnacle.
And shattered.
Gasping, fingers clenched on his chest, head back, she struggled to breathe, struggled to stand against the tide of sensation that poured through her and swept her away.