Written on Your Skin (21 page)

“Collins wasn’t the one who poisoned you,” she said. “Your two-faced confederate did. I suppose he thought you’d found him out. Collins didn’t elaborate to me. Only that it was clear he had no idea you weren’t American until afterward. And he was angry that his stooge hadn’t told him about you, not to mention that he’d botched your murder.”

He took a long breath. “Names?”

“I didn’t get any. I was not in a position to ask such things.” Her eyes briefly broke from his. Something in him tightened. A memory of her face flashed before him, the way she had looked leaning out the window, the thick scent of roses. Whatever position she had been in afterward, it had not been pleasant; the recollection was causing her to pale.

He spoke quickly, to pull her back to the present. “Have you ever told anyone else of this? Your honesty is crucial, Miss Masters.”

“No. Who would care but your government?”

The implications clarified fully now. He turned away from her, his hand on his mouth. The signet ring pressed, cold and smooth, against his lips.

He lowered his hand to study the ring. For the greater part of his adult life, he’d worn no jewelry, no bright colors, nothing notable enough to linger in the mind of anyone who glimpsed him. It still troubled him when Fretgoose produced any article distinctive enough to stand out in a crowd. But he’d grown unexpectedly accustomed to wearing this piece. It had not left his finger since the day he’d first been given it.

The recollection of his triumph that day, the giddy sense of unbounded possibility as he’d slipped it on, seemed suddenly as thin as the gold leaf gilding these walls. If Ridland was guilty and managed to find Collins first, the man would never make it back to London alive. After all, Ridland would not be able to rely on his discretion during the interrogation that would certainly greet Collins’s return. But if Collins was captured by honest sorts—and there were more men on the case than Ridland could hope to control—he might reveal the name of his ally. If guilty, Ridland would therefore need to act preemptively. And by turning Miss Masters over to Phin, he had arranged his own alibi. If she died now, Ridland would say, Do not believe what Collins says; believe the facts. I told Ashmore she had proof of a traitor. He killed her to protect himself.

In fact, her death would be convenient to Ridland in more ways than one. It would give him an opportunity to destroy the man who’d had the bad taste to balk at becoming his protégé and now made a hobby of undermining his power.

He turned back, and caught Miss Masters chafing her thumbs across her palms. Another honest gesture: that made for two, in less than a minute.

Too late, she noticed his attention. Her hands relaxed, and she produced a smile. Her mask was well constructed, her weapons more than sufficient for drawing-room games. But not for this. In this game, she was the most vulnerable pawn on the board. And he rather thought now, when he turned his whole mind to it, that she was telling the truth. She was innocent of deliberate involvement, which meant he had mistreated her terribly. In fact, as he reconsidered all their interludes with this new view of her in mind, he realized that it meant far more than that. It meant that she was sharp, and frighteningly clever, and foolishly brave, and rash to a bone-chilling degree.

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

She arched her brow, clearly unimpressed by his tardy grasp of this fact. “Several, I believe.”

He nodded. “Several, then.” And then, because that dark flower had taken root in him and all its tendrils were unfurling toward her, he found himself asking, “Why did you save me in Hong Kong?”

She shrugged. “Because I knew you were after Collins. It had nothing to do with you, really.”

No, of course it hadn’t. He found himself wishing it had. She was, without doubt, against all odds, quite obviously and all of a sudden, the most unlikely and extraordinary woman he’d ever met.

He smiled at her. She looked startled, and he felt his smile widen. How goddamned relieving to know he was not so perverse as he’d feared. His instincts had not sabotaged him. On the contrary, they had been drawn to her wisely, and so strongly that they had even managed, once or twice, to override his brain.

A wisp of hair had fallen across her cheek. He reached out to brush it away. The gesture had no conscious intent; he told himself, belatedly, that sympathy motivated it. Her composure would have fooled most people, but he had some experience with subtle and habitual pretenses.

But as his fingers traced across the softness of her cheek, he decided he wouldn’t lie to himself. He simply wanted to touch her. Now that he knew he was right to want it, there seemed no reason not to do so, as often as possible. He lowered his hand to brush a knuckle over the locket between her breasts.

The corner of her mouth twitched.

From another woman, it would mean nothing. From her, it was a flinch as marked as a full-bodied jump. And that small, telling movement startled his own thoughts into a new direction. She was not so immune to him as she seemed. His touch put a crack in her mask.

As the revelation unfolded through his brain, it twisted, taking on a predatory intensity that made his muscles tense. His senses seemed to be stretching and sharpening; the scent of lavender was thick around her, and he could hear the whisper of her hair against the wall. He told himself that the motive for what he intended to do was nothing more complicated than convenience: in the days to come, he would need her cooperation. If he explained to her that he needed to protect her in order to keep his own throat from being sliced in some back-alley execution of justice, she would hear it as an invitation to create havoc, knowing that for his own sake, he could neither send her away nor mistreat her. But if reason would not sway her to behave, there were other methods at his disposal. Such as what he was about to do.

He told himself this, but he didn’t bother to believe it. She stirred something acquisitive in him, as antique maps used to do when he couldn’t dream of affording them. She was healthier than opium or bullets, more pleasurable, marginally safer. He searched himself but could find no scruples, only a gratified surprise that something should finally, after months, appeal to him so strongly.

In some ways, it wasn’t so bad to be his father’s son.

He put a hand on the warm, soft curve of her hip. No petticoats. “You really have no idea,” he murmured. “You have no notion of how thin your defenses are.”

It took her less than a second to recover the thread of their earlier conversation. “It’ll serve. Liberty uses only the very best fabrics.”

Saucy beyond compare. He smoothed his hand up to her unbound breast. As his thumb found the slight peak of her nipple, her throat jerked. “Will it serve? For what purpose, do you think?”

Her nipple began to bead under his thumb. God above, she was sweet to the touch. Her sea-blue eyes met his with maddening composure. “For that too, I reckon.”

He laughed. Even in Hong Kong, dazed by drugs and poison and addled by the need to escape, he had paused to goggle at her self-possession. It was not a quality often praised in a woman, but then, most men were idiots—himself included, until now.

The smile lingered on his lips as he stroked her nipple. He’d had no use for her four years ago, but he had a use for her now. And she knew what he was; his own mask had slipped in his study and she had seen him very clearly. She had no expectations for him to fulfill or to fail. The thought was an aphrodisiac in itself. Her nipple grew harder. “You seem to be enjoying this,” he said.

She tilted her head back, exposing the long line of her pale throat. “So it seems.”

“I take it that means you don’t want me to stop.”

“I haven’t decided,” she said breathily. “Let me consider it.”

How quickly she made him feel disadvantaged, like some servant boy tasked to pleasure his mistress. “Decide quickly. My patience is running out.” The words did not even sound like a lie to him. The softness beneath his hand, paired with the stubborn, taunting tilt of her chin, made him feel sympathetic to villains. He could become one, if that was what she wanted from him. He’d been one before. Maybe she liked a challenge.

She turned her head, pressing her cheek to the wall, and a sheaf of blond hair spilled across her shoulder, falling cool and soft over his wrist. “Yes,” she said, and her body arched into his hand. “Perhaps,” she revised in a murmur. “Only vary it a bit, and you might be as good as Hans.”

Hans? He grabbed her chin and pulled her head around. “Look at me.”

Her eyes opened, deceptively innocent, wide as a babe’s.

“I am not one of your damned lovers.”

“No-o-o,” she said thoughtfully. “Not by my preference, at any rate. Generally, I demand a bit more skill in the approach.”

Five minutes ago, her taunt might have infuriated him. Now it only seemed like a very good opening. “Here’s skill,” he said, and laid his mouth to hers.

Her lips were a revelation of another kind. They parted beneath his, and her tongue flicked out like a challenge, daring his to chase it back into the sweet, wet space behind her teeth. She still thought this was a fight, but she was hardly chastened; if anything, he was the one who was humbled. Her mouth tasted cool and fresh, like summer ices in a hot climate. It was beyond all expectation, now that he could permit himself to like it; he licked her for more of the taste. She kissed as cleverly as she retorted.

It came to him, suddenly, that she knew this. She counted on running the board. It was what enabled her to look on him so composedly.

Not this time. He was going to seize the lead.

He pressed forward, pushing her into the wall, angling his head to go deeper. Her breast beneath his palm was a hot, heavy weight, the hammering of her heart proof of the vulnerability she tried to deny. A slippered foot pressed onto his boot; her breasts pushed out of his hand, up into his chest, mocking his attempt at jurisdiction. Holding her was like grappling with a current of electricity, and the hot sensation that streaked through him left him unbalanced. He was harder than a goddamned fire iron, his balls tight and heavy, all her softness begging to be fucked. Nails sank sharply into his arse. You are being outmatched, his wits whispered, and he hardly minded at all. She awed him.

The kiss had not started out with much promise. It was too full of design to speak to any part of her body other than her brain. She had seen it coming and had braced for it; he was trying to convince her of something, and no matter how pretty his eyes or clever his lips, kissing a woman into compliance ranked barely above beating her into agreement. Mina told herself she favored originality. She was not impressed.

But when he drew away for breath, his eyelashes fluttering against her forehead, she realized that his body was trembling beneath her hands. His broad shoulders, his muscled back, even the tight cheeks of his bum were shaking. She had turned the kiss around on him. Now he stood in her grip.

The thought was like the soft stroke of a finger between her legs. Her breath went from her. I have you. She pulled his head back and kissed him softly, licking the salt from his mouth. If a debt would not compel him to cooperate, seduction would do; she had already resolved on it, and this could be a good test of his mettle. His lips clung to hers and his hand palmed her body, from breast to waist to hip and back again, as though to convince himself she was real.

She pushed at one of his shoulders, nudging him around. It was possible that he didn’t realize her intention; he did not resist her, and after another push, his back was against the wall. The mighty lord of the manor submitted to her as eagerly as a puppy, his hands reaching after her when she pulled back to look him up and down. Muscular, rangy, broad-shouldered, utterly defeated; she wanted to laugh, oh the poor man, she wanted to kiss his brow and pat his cheek. She grabbed his face and kissed his mouth again; all the penny dreadfuls were suddenly making sense to her. She could see why there might be a piquant pleasure in a trembling, unwilling response. Of course he would help her—he’d have no choice, caught up in his need. His hands slid to her bum, tightening against his good sense. In a minute he would regret this very much, and she would adore soothing him for it, Don’t fret, it’s all right, but she had him under her thumb right now, and he would never forget the experience.

“Wait,” he said into her mouth.

“No,” she whispered. And he listened to her. His hand tightened in her hair, and his tongue returned to hers. She said into his mouth, “Touch me,” and felt a triumphant thrill as his hand slid between her legs, pressing lightly through the silk. She had been touched there before, but never compliantly, and it made all the difference; it made her feel powerful, an Aphrodite. She abandoned his mouth for his neck, biting him over the Adam’s apple. Beneath her fingers, his biceps flexed, and his throat worked on a guttural noise. Yes. She bit again, sucking lightly. This time he remained silent, so she lightly blew on the dampened patch of skin. There. He did it again. And his fingers, below, pushed harder, setting up a rhythm that made her knees go weak, that made hunger uproot itself and migrate downward, from her breasts and her belly to the spot between her legs.

It was time to laugh at him again, but when she reached for her humor, all she found was the urge to rock against his palm. He was so splendidly muscled, his thighs like granite; how far could she challenge him, what would it take to make him toss her away and call her names? Henry had been easy that way; he’d never managed to surprise her. He had served his purpose, but he’d never given her a moment’s surprise. This man might.