The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) (36 page)

She rose quickly from her bed in the deep darkness, her fingers fumbling for the candlestick on the nightstand, searching out the little packet of lucifers Rosa had left there for her. The moon had set, and the room was still unfamiliar to her.

Damn—
the side of her hand caught the candlestick, knocking it down and sending it thumping behind the table where the floor was hard, exposed wood. She slid from the bed, onto the soft Turkey carpet beside it, and had just got down on her knees to try to find the candle, when, like a burst of thunder, the door to her room exploded open, and a heavy body tackled her.

An arm hard as steel snaked around her front and yanked her upright.

A sharp blade stung at her throat.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Before she could scream, the blade was lowered, and the strong band of steel that had clamped around her middle eased its grip.

“Christ—Rachel is that you?”

The voice was Sebastian’s.

Confused, half sleepy, half terrified, she could hardly organize her mind enough to answer him at first.

His crushing weight lifted and he scrambled off of her, leaving her free to sit up again. She could see nothing in the pitch black. But she could feel his solid shape in the air near her, and hear his breathing, down low enough that he was clearly sitting on the floor beside her.

His voice rasped again, in a low whisper. “Is there anyone else in the room?”

“Besides
you
?” Instinctively, she stretched out her hand to touch him, to reassure herself he truly was a man and not a nightmare. She found his arm—his upper arm, covered only by his shirtsleeve, firm and real and warm. And heartbreakingly familiar. “No,” she said. “No one else. What are
you
doing here?”

“Saving your life.” His hand closed over hers, his calloused palm pressing hers more firmly against the linen of his shirt. He chuckled softly, though there was as much anxiety as humor in the sound. “Well, that was my intent, anyway. I heard—I heard a thump. I thought someone had broken in here, through your window.”

“I knocked over the candlestick.”

He shifted his body just a little closer to her again. The air stirred in front of her face, and then the tips of his fingertips brushed her cheek. “Thank God you’re safe. What were you doing awake?”

Oh, Lord—she couldn’t let herself be distracted by those fingertips. So she countered with a question of her own. “What were you doing outside my door?”

“Keeping watch.” Now the fingertips stroked gently along her jawline.

“What? Why?” The stroking sensation made her almost dizzy.
Treachery. You know better than to trust him
. If there were any light, she would certainly have pushed his hand away.

But somehow, in the dark, in the strangeness of the night, Lord Henry’s words seemed utterly unreal. They had no force compared to the real presence of the man beside her—the palpable fear she’d felt in him when he burst in, the sense of comfort she felt radiating from him now.

He heaved a breath before he spoke. “I was worried someone might manage to follow us back here tonight. Just an instinct. It was probably nothing.”

Was it her imagination, or had Sebastian moved even closer? The air seemed warmer. Safer, too, somehow.

“You must be exhausted,” she said.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“How did you get in here? You returned the key to me.”

“I returned
one
key.” His shrug was almost audible, his shirt shifting, rasping against his skin. “I kept another copy, of course.”

One of his hands touched to the small of her back, a solid clasp. Against all rational thought, she eased back into his touch. And then his arm was around her, warm through the thin fabric of her nightgown. Once gain, there was only that and the linen of his shirt between them.

His other arm came around her as well, about her waist, and he drew her tight against him. His heart was hammering; the force of it thudded against her chest where it pressed against his.

Her heart was slamming into her ribs nearly as fast.

“You’re safe,” he whispered, burrowing his head against her neck. “You’re safe. Perfectly safe.”

Lord Henry must have been lying to her—somehow, he must have been. How could Sebastian be the one deceiving her now? Could even the best of liars control the beating of his heart?

She began to melt against him, her muscles going slack and soft. She couldn’t help herself—he was all comfort, all strength. And she needed that, so desperately.

Somehow, one of his hands was stroking her hair, gentling her, and then his fingers were combing tenderly through the strands. His lips came to rest against her cheek, and she drank in the scent of him, a scent she’d so quickly come to know—and to crave.

It seemed for a moment this was all he wanted, all she wanted, just to hold one another in the darkness. But then more urgent sensations began to swirl through her, and a new tension rose through him, his muscles tightening and bunching at every point where his body touched hers.

A rush of heat filled her. Her body wanted more—it urged her to lay down again, to feel what it had felt lying with him in the cabin of the Calliope and in his bedroom in this house, the pleasurable weight of his body stretched over hers. The memories pulled on her like an addiction, frantic and needy, as though the touch of his flesh and his mouth were the only source of breathable air.

A tremendous restlessness overcame her, a need to move. Instinctively, she shifted closer, the edge of her hip coming up against his, and she angled her head so her mouth nudged closer to his lips.

He seemed to need no further invitation.

His mouth came down on hers at once, urgent, possessive, demanding, the heat of it almost searing. His arms came around her again, and his strength crushed her once more, pulling her against him, her breasts against the rock-hard wall of his chest, her spine arching under the pressure of his steely arms. It was heady, thrilling, frightening—and not nearly enough.

Perhaps if there had been light, even the thinness of moonlight, neither one of them would have allowed this to happen. But in the dreamlike darkness, there could be no consequences, no explanations demanded.

She gave herself over to the kiss, reveling in the taste of him—a heated spice with a flashing hint of whiskey, mixed with the warm, musky scent of him.

His tongue nudged between her lips, slipped through to stroke against the slick places inside; unthinking, she drew it further inside, and he groaned.

Her hands roamed over his shoulders, his back, kneading at the powerful lines of his muscles. Pleasure raced and simmered through her, pooling and pulsing down through her belly, between her thighs. It was molten, fluid, wonderful, intolerable—and exactly what she needed. She might scream from it; she wanted more of it, now,
always
.

Then somehow, without either of them speaking, it seemed of one accord they settled towards the floor. He eased her under him, his long, powerful form stretching over hers. Without a soft bed beneath them, he felt heavier and harder and broader than before.

Need and desire and a wild excitement spiked through her.

“Rachel,” he said against her mouth, low and urgent.

The gruff need lacing his voice sent fire through her veins. Almost since the moment she’d first seen him, something in her body, deep in her flesh, had wanted exactly this from him. Had yearned for it. Had needed it. And would never stop needing it.

Between her nightgown and his weight, she couldn’t move the way she wanted to. She wriggled beneath him, shifting her hips so her gown began to ride up her legs. He groaned again. In a moment, Sebastian’s hands were helping as they had that morning, but more roughly, taking fistfuls of the cloth and pulling it higher, his knuckles raking against her bared skin as he exposed her knees, then her thighs, and dragged the hem straight up to her hips. There was no slowness now.

She bent her knees, ran her feet up along the backs of his trouser legs, wrapped her bare legs shamelessly around the muscled range of his buttocks, resenting the material that was still between them.

In response, he ground his hips against hers. The sound he made deep in the back of his throat was primitive. Demanding. Demanding and promising more. Much more.

It seemed the darkness affected him too. She felt no hesitancy in him this time, no restraint. He wasn’t going to pull back from her this time, she could
feel
that—he wasn’t going to abandon her again, and leave her desperate and unsatisfied. There was a wild abandon in him now, too intense to pull back again. And she reveled in the thought.

She speared her hands into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling his mouth down harder against hers, and followed his lead in sliding her tongue into his mouth. So strange, so intimate to do that—before he’d ever kissed her, she’d read descriptions of such kisses, but had never understood why any sane person would wish to do that. But now—after the kisses they’d shared, after the way their bodies had responded to one another over and over again—it made perfect sense to share such intimacy with him, to plunge herself into him, even as his tongue pulsed its way into her.

His hips moved in rhythm with his tongue, pressing that remarkable hardness that bulged there against the soft, sensitive place at the junction of her legs. Her nightgown still pooled there, and his trousers still covered him as they always had, but the heat of it seemed to burn into her nonetheless.

His strong hands were everywhere. He caressed her sides, her hips, reached up behind him to stroke her bare legs, sending shuddering pleasure through her.

Then he rolled her slightly so that his side was partially touching the floor, taking most of his weight off of her, and his hands were freed to roam their way along the front of her, whisking along her ribcage, coming up to cup her breasts.

Lightning seemed to crackle through her, and burst, and build again, as he brushed his palms again and again over the hard peaks.

Having him kiss her mouth at the same time made the sensation even sweeter. She felt—
joined to him
. Every instinct told her they belonged together, that this was inevitable, natural, necessary.

How could she not trust him? How could she not give herself to him completely?

And then his fingers were working the small buttons that held the neckline of her nightgown closed, moving with great deliberation and patience, making her want to scream at him to rip them away.

His tongue skimmed the whorl of her ear, and then returned to her mouth.

After what seemed like an eternity, he eased the neckline of her nightgown down, baring first her left shoulder, then her right. And then—she nearly screamed again—his mouth left hers to trail down her throat to the valley between her breasts, and then take one of those peaks between his burning lips. The hot wetness against her bare flesh sent fresh shock waves through her. And then he drew his lips together, drew the peak into his mouth, and suckled hard.

She did cry out then, the rush of pleasure forcing its way through her lips.

His mouth moved to torture her other breast.

She was writhing beneath him, gripping at his hair, making noises no lady was ever supposed to make. Some wild, liquid heat was building in the core of her. Instinctively, she hooked her right leg over his thigh, and like a flash, his hand moved to her bottom, pulling her hard against him. He dragged the hem of her nightgown up a few last inches, so the bare flesh of her buttocks was exposed, and then stroked along the curve, up to the base of her spine and down again.

He grasped the hem again and pulled harder upwards, bringing it up over her belly, over her breasts. She wriggled to let the cloth escape from beneath her, and soon he was pulling it up and over her head. He tossed it aside—it whispered as it slid to the ground a few inches away.

She was naked with him, at long, long last. Naked in his arms.

She wanted him naked too, finally naked, so she could run her hands across his skin without stopping, but she was too afraid, somehow, to speak.

Speaking might break the spell. Speaking might make all this real, too real.

Then, before she could even become accustomed to the sensation of laying so exposed before him, he slid his hand between her legs.

His voice rippled through her like a drug, the headiest of drugs. “Let me. Please let me,” he murmured. “Let me give you pleasure.”

Oh, yes, she wanted that, wanted it now. And pleasure was already warming every inch of her body. It seemed she could still feel his mouth on hers, and on her breasts, though he was merely pressing it against her cheek at the moment.

He hooked his leg over hers, the one closest to him, pinning it to the floor, opening her more fully to his touch. Even in the darkness, she shut her eyes tight. She wouldn’t think, she wouldn’t worry; there was no future, only now.

And then his fingers slid further into her cleft, and, expertly, they parted her, pressed her—he always seemed to know exactly where to touch, and how to touch. She found her hips rising to meet him; her breathing went ragged, and she couldn’t quiet it. Had no real desire to quiet it.