The Fighter and the Fallen Woman (22 page)

After she woke up, rested and peaceful, she shared a light supper with Nessie, then enjoyed a bath. She piled her hair up in steam-curled ringlets, put on a ruby-red walking dress and slipped out after Nessie went to sleep. She was so happy she wanted to giggle and so scared she almost threw up.

Chapter Twenty-Five

King sat in front of the fire, a glass of beer in his hand. He hadn’t even bothered to put on a shirt. After he’d won the fight last night, mercifully without anything more than minor bumps and bruises, he’d returned to his rooms for a hot bath and prepared for a late-night visit from Lady. When the sun rose and there had been no word from her, King started to wonder. He couldn’t go to her house and demand an answer as to why she was there and not with him, regardless of how desperately he wanted to know. If he forced Lady, he’d be no better than Mr. Adams, and he couldn’t do that, not to her. If it was her choice not to be with him, he’d rather have her happy and where she wanted to be, rather than with him and unhappy.

He finally slept after the sun rose and didn’t wake until well after three. He got dinner from the main kitchen and ate alone in front of his fire, listening to the sounds of the house become louder and livelier as the day progressed. As the food lumped in his gut like thick globs of mud, King realized the happily-ever-after he’d preached to Lady might not come true after all. He needed to plan for after the tournament, a new plan that might not involve Lady. He’d gotten as far as wondering if pain could stretch to America when there was a knock on the alley door.

He jumped out of his chair and then froze. If it was Lady, now, almost twenty-four hours later, what did that mean?

He took a deep breath and went to the door with a feeling he hadn’t had in so long he almost didn’t recognize it.

He was nervous.

He opened the door and there she was, framed like a fine piece of art in a dark red dress, an angel kicked out of hell. The nerves he’d just discovered were threatening to escape through his mouth, choking him on their escape. He couldn’t speak, could barely breathe.

“My favorite color is blue,” she said with a tremulous smile. “I absolutely hate mushrooms, and would love to learn how to play the piano someday.”

King cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. He kissed her like he’d never sat up all night waiting for her to come and like he hadn’t woken up hoping her absence had been a bad dream. She was here. She hadn’t chosen money or power, she’d chosen him.

Without letting go or stopping the kiss, he slowly stepped backward, making her walk forward with him. She laid her hands over his and as they walked, she laughed into his mouth.

He stopped kissing her but left his hands on her face because he couldn’t not touch some part of her right now. Without breaking eye contact, he kicked the door shut. “Now, miss, suppose you tell me what’s so funny?”

“Oh, King, it feels so good—touching you, being with you, being back here.”

“If it feels so good, why did it take you so long to come back?” King wasn’t sure why he asked or even if he should have, but the words forced themselves out before his tongue could hold them back. When her face fell from laughter to sadness, he quickly said, “But the important thing is you’re back,” and kissed her briefly to apologize for his churlish question.

“I needed some time,” she said softly. King had trouble understanding why, but he could tell it was important to her and he respected that. After spending the past twenty-four hours telling himself that nothing would matter as long as she was with him, he wasn’t going to start tearing apart the reason for her delay. She was here. She chose him.

He took her hand and led her to his big chair in front of the fireplace, the one he’d practically been living in for the past day. He sat down, then pulled her to sit on his lap, his arms around her waist and hers around his shoulders. His head rested quite naturally in the curve of her neck, letting him hear the beat of her heart, feel it against his cheek.

“You’re not hurt?” she asked. King smiled because he could feel her voice as well as hear it. “You looked like you won the fight without serious injury, but I want to be sure you’re well, that your shoulder is healed.”

“You’re here with me. I feel like I could fly to the stars and bring one back for you.”

She pulled back and looked at him, her arms still circling his shoulders. He drank in the sight of her face, one side lit by the fire, the other left in darkness. Her mouth was slightly parted, like she’d just said “Oh,” and her eyes looked vulnerable yet wary.

He waited, determined not to scare her or rush her. If she wanted to sit like this all night, he would.

“King? What happens after the tournament? What do we do then?”

Her gaze drifted back to the flames, so he pulled her close again, resting his cheek against her heart. “Whatever we want.”

“How can you say that? It’s not that easy.” She sounded defeated and it hurt him worse than a physical blow. “I don’t think Nessie is going to come around, and that’s only the beginning of our problems.” She told him of the way she’d held off Mr. Adams, the worry of what would happen immediately after the fight.

“Okay, we’ll think about how to keep you away from Mr. Adams and how to best convince Nessie to come with us.” The ghost of Nessie’s possible betrayal hung heavy over King, but this wasn’t the time to tell Lady about that. “And it won’t be easy staying ahead of Mr. Adams—staying alive—but we’ll figure out how to do that too. I promise.” He gave her a brief squeeze. “Now let’s go to the easy stuff. What do you want?” She startled, like somebody had given her a little push between her shoulder blades. It was quiet for a few minutes and he wished he could see her face.

“I want to be able to say yes or no, to raise chickens if I want or just sit by a window and quilt, without having to worry about somebody else telling me what I have to do. To be dry and warm and fed and know I’m going to stay that way. To be safe,” she added in a small, faraway voice and he wondered if it was the first time she’d said it out loud.

He continued to hold her, enjoying the feel of her fingers idly stroking up and down his arm. He wished he could take her to the bed and hold her there, watch her while she slept, but that might push her too far tonight.

“What about you?” she asked, breaking the silence. “What do you want?”

“I want to give that to you,” King said. Lady looked at him, her whole body shuddering in some extreme emotion he couldn’t guess at. He held her close with his arm around her waist and gently touched her cheek, his thumb catching the first tear to fall, and poured everything he had, everything she made him, into this one moment. “I want to shelter you, to give you cause to smile the first thing in the morning and happy dreams throughout the night. I want you to go through this life knowing how strong and amazing you are, and bugger how selfish this sounds, but I want to be with you every day so you can see it in my eyes. If I could do that for you, I would die a happy man.”

He watched her face, felt her tremble beneath his hand, and tried to tell her the rest, the things he didn’t know how to say, by letting her look into his eyes and see his love for her. He wanted her to see forever.

With him.

* * *

She lost herself in his eyes, in the warmth of his touch. Unable to hold back from another instant of not bringing him fully into her life, her heart, her body, she reached for him the same time he reached for her, and they came together like wind and rain. He slanted his mouth over hers, lips, teeth and tongue all plundering her with a passion unleashed. He slid one hand to grip the swell of her hip while she ran her hands over the broad planes of his chest. She kissed him back, licking, biting and sucking, the bold sweeps of his tongue causing her to flex her fingers into the meat of his chest as though trying to pull him closer by her fingertips alone.

“I need to touch your skin,” he said, kissing his way to the hollow beneath her ear.

She released her hold on him and started unbuttoning her dress. For every button she slipped free, King did the next, until she reached the last just below the curve of her belly. With a groan, he parted her dress and laid his hand on the bare skin above her corset. Lady knew a part of her would carry his handprint over her heart for the rest of her life.

Giving him one last kiss, Lady pulled away and stood up. She faced him and kept his eye as she slipped the dress off her shoulders and let it bunch at her waist. Pulling free the knot at her waist, she released her petticoats and let them drop along with her dress. She walked backward to the bed, wearing only her corset, drawers, stockings and shoes. When she’d dressed for King tonight, she’d chosen her good satin corset and had left her chemise at home. Feeling the thick, smooth fabric against her skin, she smiled, and it actually felt like one of happiness, not of a character she needed to play.

King smiled back and jerked his shirt off as he stood up. In three huge, hurried steps, he’d crossed the room and stood in front of her. She took his hands and felt him head to head, chest to chest and hip to hip.

“You’re tall for a woman,” he said and she could feel his breath fan her ear.

“Does that mean you don’t want me to take off my shoes?” One side of her mouth curved up in a grin and she felt his laugh sweep down her neck.

“Let me.” He knelt at her feet and took one foot in his hands, running his thumbs up her calf to the sensitive hollow behind her knee. A tremor ran up Lady’s leg and she sat on the bed, suddenly too weak to stand.

One hand cradling her ankle, the other grasping the tie of her boot, King gave her a smile that was half shy boy and half wicked man. With a tug, he pulled the satin ribbon free of its knot and wiggled the lacing so it was loose, then slipped her boot off. He did the same with the other shoe and Lady felt something new inside her open. As he slid his hands up her stockinged calves, Lady cupped his face.

“What’s your name?” she asked in a choked voice. “Your real name, the one you had before this?”

“Honestly?” he asked and she could only nod. “I don’t know. I was on the streets long before Mr. Adams found me, had other men who used me for my fists or my speed or my youth. My first memories are of stealing bread and fighting for the crusts. I remember the name Henry but I don’t know if that was mine or somebody else’s.”

Lady looked into King’s eyes and saw a flash of pain before he hid it behind his wall again. Suddenly she knew that they weren’t King and Lady, a fighter and a whore, but simply a man and a woman who had fallen in love. “Poor man,” she whispered and laid the softest of kisses on each of his cheeks. “I shall simply have to call you mine.”

In a jerky motion, he grabbed her hands and pressed them to his face. Lady spread her fingers and stroked his cheeks, needing to touch him as much as he needed to be touched.

“And you,” he said, his voice a quiet rasp. “What’s your real name?”

“Elizabeth Thornton, no middle name.”

“Elizabeth. It’s beautiful, just like you.” He laid his head in the curve of her neck and Lady wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him into her embrace. He wrapped his arms around her waist and she rested her cheek on the side of his head, offering him the solace he’d never received before and taking the same he offered.

When she felt him take a deep, huffing breath, she released him. “Now, man of mine,” she said and brushed her lips across his. “Make love to me.”

* * *

Lady crawled backward on the bed as King climbed onto the mattress and followed her on his hands and knees. As she reclined on her back, her wrists crossed above her head, King slid onto his side beside her with his head propped on his hand, one knee draped over hers.

“I can’t believe you’re here, with me, my beautiful woman.” He brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead with one finger.

She only smiled and lifted her head for his kiss. He touched his lips to hers, trailing his hand down from her head to her waist, and Lady felt every inch burn her, brand her. She grabbed on to the broad shoulders she loved so much, and pulled him against her for a deeper kiss. As her tongue stroked against his, his hand slid to the fullest part of her hip, his rough hands softened by the fine lawn of her drawers. He rubbed against her and she could feel his erection against her other hip.

His hand brushed the skin exposed below her corset, a few inches below her waist yet a few inches above the triangle of her curls. Drawing in a ragged breath, Lady arched against him and rocked her head back against the pillow. He started to kiss her neck and slid his finger into the seam of her corset. Lady wanted it off as badly as he did, desperate to feel him with no barriers between them. She reveled in the feel of his mouth on her neck, the warmth of his cock heavy against her hip, and waited for her corset to be parted. Writhing against King and the soft cotton quilt that now smelled more like him than her, Lady was awash in sensation.

“I can’t do it.” King’s voice was strained.

“Mmm?” Lady rolled her head to look at him.

“I can’t unfasten your bloody corset.” He flattened his hand on her stomach. “And the way you keep rubbing against me isn’t helping.”

Her dexterous fighter was having trouble popping four metal hooks to get to what lay beneath. In a slow, measured beat, Lady sprung each hook.

“Can I go back to rubbing now?” Her voice was almost a purr.

“Oh, God, yes.” He kissed her hot and openmouthed while driving his hand up the open seam of her corset and palming her breast, catching her nipple between his finger and thumb and gently pulling it.

Lady rolled against him and groaned at the head-to-toe contact. He was heat and strength and a promise of better things and she wanted more. He eased her back and slowly pulled out of her arms. She opened her eyes to see what he was doing and watched him jump off the bed.

“King?”

In three sharp, swift movements, he unfastened and pushed off his pants and drawers and stood before her nude, lit only from the firelight behind him. He stood over her, an intense look on his shadowed face. She held out a hand to him. “Make me burn.”

He leaned on one knee by her hip and grabbed her drawers in his hands. He started to pull when she stopped him. “Wait. There’s a tie—”

With a wicked grin on his face, King gave a tug and pulled off her drawers without having to take off anything else. He left her in her spread corset and stockings, the rest of her open to his gaze and his touch.