Page 30 of Mistress of Sins

“You should not be touching that, you wicked man, nor kissing my breasts,” she pretended to scold him. “It is simply not done.”

“Had we time enough, I would take you out to that bed and strip you naked,” Greystone said, his voice deep and rough now. “I would map every inch of you with my hands. And my mouth. And my cock.”

“You intrigue me now.” From some hints in novels she had read, Jennet had long suspected there could be other ways to make love. “You wish to kiss other parts of me, perhaps?”

“I have dreamed of it,” he assured her, and rubbed his thumb across her lips. “And imagined you doing the same to me. So many dark nights I have lain alone in my bed, stroking my cock with my hand, and wondering if you would dare do so with your mouth. How it would look, to behold you suckling me.”

“That is very shocking, my lord.” She pouted for a moment, and then smiled. “I think I should like to try, but only if you will do the same to me.”

“I knew it would be like this with you,” Greystone muttered, almost as if he were angry. “I could see the passion waiting to awaken in you. I could feel it every time I touched you.”

She looked into his eyes. “Then why did you leave me to go and kill people, you idiot?”

A loud crash came from the floor below, and they both went still. Jennet held her breath as she listened for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but none came.

“I fear we must be quick now,” she murmured against his ear.

“Hold onto me.” He stood, pressing her to him so that their bodies remained joined, and then lowered her onto her back on the bench.

Jennet wrapped her legs around his hips as he began to thrust into her, his shaft driving deep and hard into her clenching slickness. Greystone never looked away from her face, and when he saw her press her lips together he clamped a hand over her mouth to help her silence her cries. She writhed under him, helpless now as a rush of sensations tossed her higher and higher with each plunge of his hips. He felt her teeth against his palm and gripped her breast with his other hand, tugging at her nipple until she arched up and then shook as her terrible need became an incandescent ecstasy.

Greystone muttered something dark and desirous as he plowed through her pleasure and found his own. He thrust one last time, his cock pumping again and again as he filled her with his seed. He braced an arm over her as he held her skewered, her mouth panting and her skin flushed rosy, and kissed her with the delicate tenderness of a hopeful swain before disengaging their bodies. He sat on the floor by the bench, his head resting against her hip.

“You have undone me, Liam.” Jennet brushed the damp hair back from his face.

He caught her hand, and kissed her palm. “That night at the harvest dance, when you stood by the window to eavesdrop,” he said as he laced his fingers through hers. “Do you remember it?”

“I can hardly forget.” She wished she could go back to that night. She would have eloped with him on the spot. “Why do you think on it?”

“I saw you there before I came out of the hall. The quiet child I had met in church had grown into the most striking woman I had ever seen.” He turned to regard her, his eyes filled with emotion. “I can still see you, grown tall and shapely. Your body seemed as refined and elegant as if you had been sculpted from sunlit marble. You wore no jewelry or hair adornments, only a bronze velvet ribbon around your neck.”

“Catherine said it would disguise my goose neck.” She smiled, remembering. “She always wore them in those days, before they became unfashionable.”

“You might have dressed as the other ladies had, in a pastel dress with a satin sash. Instead you wore dark green velvet, like some goddess of the garden.” Greystone shifted so he loomed over her, and cradled her face between his hands. “I looked into your eyes, as pure and new as ever the world is at spring, and I lost all sense of myself. From that night on there could be no more loneliness for me. My world became us, together. Always.”

Jennet felt confused by the intensity of his words. Was he trying to apologize again for leaving her? She would not revisit that subject, not now.

“We must live through this night so we can be as you envisioned us,” she told him.

The pleasure emptied out of his eyes. “We can never be that.”

“We were just now.” Jennet pushed herself upright. “Surely you can give up this life as an assassin. It is not who you are.”

“The quickest way to get out of the hall unseen is by the staircase tower,” Greystone told her as he rose and went to the clothespress and removed a shirt. He quickly donned it and went back to his cache of weapons. “Go down the hall to the very end, turn right, and then left through the door to the stairs.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded as she fastened her soft stays and his shirt.

“Your escape. I will lure them from the house while you escape.” He handed her a dagger and a small pistol, pressing them into her hands when she wouldn’t take them. “When you reach the bottom of the stairs, walk straight ahead. The door there leads to the outside.”

Jennet shook her head. “You must come with me. Liam.”

“I must do my work now, and you cannot be part of that,” he told her. “Stay out of sight as you make your way to the road; they may have men out patrolling the grounds.” He gave her a hard, brief kiss and then strode out.

Chapter 17

Ruban upended the desk where Pickering had died, sending the drawers and their contents flying. Kicking a boot through the scattered papers did not provide any consolation. Whatever the English agent had stolen from the officer’s tent back in France remained hidden somewhere inside the house, or concealed on the Raven himself.

Staring at the puddle of blood Pickering had left behind made Ruban even more furious. He should have died after being questioned, not before. If he had been the Raven, then finding whatever he had spirited back to England would be almost impossible.