Page 43
“I … could refuse.” The hesitation spoke volumes she didn’t need to read.
“No. You could not.” Another, deeper breath. Honestly, where is the air in this bloody carriage? “I suppose I’m wondering what my choices are, rather. You obviously must go.”
“Your choices are not easy, my love. First, you can come with me to Paris. Lady Wellington will be joining us and—”
“When do we leave?”
Tristan blinked. His hold on her tightened again, not painfully but almost as if he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t jump out of the carriage if he let go. “You mean you’ll come with me? Elinor, are you … certain?”
“Did you get the impression I wish to go for Lady Wellington?” she smirked, hoping the teasing would reassure him. “Of course I am certain, Tristan. I wish to be with you wherever you are. London, Paris, Spain… If you’ll allow it, I will follow you anywhere. You cannot abandon The Duke, and I cannot abandon you.”
He pulled her into his lap, laughing, until he’d buried his face in her hair. “Not Spain, love. I’d consider taking you to the Indies before that.” His hand had found her thigh again, and he traced a heart, she was sure that was the shape. “You’re sure?”
“How many times must I say so? Yes! Yes, a thousand times yes. I’m going to Paris with you. I’ll lock myself in your trunk if I must.”
“No need for that. I’d rather you tied yourself to my bed.”
“And then you’d never leave.”
“Hm. Fair point. But I shall look forward to discovering whether your French dresses will come off as easily as this one.” The carriage rocked her back against his hard, blazingly hot body, and his thick arm clenched around her waist.
Elinor pressed herself to him as she tugged his cravat loose. Grinning, she bowed her head to brush her lips against his throat, kissing where his jaw met his ear. “My dress is still on, my lord,” she whispered. “Surely an oversight on your part.”
“Oh, it’s staying on, sweetheart. Until we reach our chambers.” One long, wicked finger slid into her intimate folds—when in heaven’s name had he gotten her smallclothes off?—and found her swollen bud, tracing the same delicious shape he’d used on her thigh, before pressing firmly enough to make her whimper with the carriage’s next bounce. “Now, be a good girl and unpin your hair for your lord.” He gave the order with his lips grazing her left breast, which had somehow come loose of both stays and dress.
“How did you…?” She stopped herself when she realized the answer didn’t matter. Raising her arms, her fingers clumsily fumbled with the pins Blackwell so meticulously put in her hair and let them fall somewhere onto the carriage floor. Or seat. She didn’t care. Her hair fell around them in rose-scented curls. “You know I can’t concentrate when you’re doing that.” She moaned and gripped his head, encouraging his continued attention.
“That’s part of the fun, pet.” His velvet lips sucked at her nipple, sending sparks through her while his fingers worked her throbbing clit. Her husband growled his approval of her willing response, and the wetness dripping along her leg. “Shall I take you here in the carriage, Elinor? Or should I be a respectable man and wait to have you in our chamber?”
“Now.” She began to tug at his coat, her hands impatient as she struggled with the buttons, nearly snarling when the material didn’t give.
“So wanton? And scarcely wed.” He was teasing, his voice deep and sinful as chocolate.
“Wed to a dissolute rake. I was doomed. And … why are these buttons … dammit!”
Tristan chuckled, and caught her wrists. “Easy, darling. Leave tearing my uniforms to the enemy.” He soothed her frustration with another kiss, just as she realized he hadn’t released her wrists. Her eyes widened, and she gave an experimental tug. Another low, wicked chuckle rolled from the soft lips teasing her throat, but her wrists remained imprisoned. “If I’m abducting you from England, you ought to feel well and truly captured, hm?” This time his teeth grazed her nipple. She whimpered, rocking her hips forward in an appeal she couldn’t think how to say. “Promise to be a good captive, and I’ll let you go.”
She shook her head, hoping he could see her grin. They’d passed into near darkness on the city’s outskirts. “Wh-what do you mean by good?” she asked, tugging again even though she knew she wasn’t strong enough to free herself. Not that she wanted to. She recognized her husband’s game and had every intention of letting him win.
“That you’ll do exactly what your lord tells you. Respond…” His finger danced along her clit and around her channel, without giving her the satisfaction of entering. She felt empty, aching, and every fiber of her body thrummed with desire. “Just like this.” Another devilish whirl around her clit left stars exploding behind her eyelids. “Now, promise.”
“I … I promise.” She tried to tilt her hips toward his hand, begging without words for him to keep touching her. She was a hair’s breadth away from coming, but he lightened his touch just to torture her. Elinor whimpered. “Please, my lord? Please, I need you...”
“What do you need?”
“You. Inside me.”
He released her in a flash, using his miraculous skill with her gown to magic the skirts up. “Turn.” He’d abandoned her aching flesh, leaving her trembling and unsteady, but he guided her to turn in his lap, until her back met his chest, the ridges of piping and cool metal buttons on his uniform making her shiver. “There, like that. Good girl.”
His legs were inside of hers, urging them apart, leaving her helplessly splayed with her skirts up to her hips, her aching breasts bare to the world. Nerves reasserted themselves in her head at being in such a vulnerable position. If the door came unlatched? If some street sweeper or drunken lout saw? The sounds of other vehicles’ clacking wheels magnified, as did the shouts of night-time pie vendors and drunken revelers.
Before she could struggle her way back to propriety, Tristan’s right hand returned, strumming her most intimate parts like some pagan musical instrument while his left smoothed her hair and cupped her breast. The vulnerable feeling transmuted into something shadowy and sinuous, burning deeper in her core.
“I need you, too,” Tristan whispered against her ear. “You’re worse than opium, my darling. You haunt me. I’ve been dreading this talk for days, imagining every lover’s vow and heartless threat I’d have to give to hold you at my side.” Two fingers slid into her, curling and twisting until he found the spot, the exact pressure to melt away her thoughts.
Her back arched and while one hand clutched his wrist as he toyed ruthlessly with her nipples, the other reached up, grasping his hair both to drag his lips toward hers and to stifle the scream that followed when her body, wound so tight, finally snapped. She shuddered on his lap until she collapsed back against him, his name on her lips.
“So beautiful.” Tristan’s voice was low, rough with desire, and she felt his erection against her most sensitive flesh a moment later. He shifted her hips, and one big, careful hand threaded through her hair, gripping close to her scalp and pulling her head back, the move painless but inexorable. “You do make an excellent captive,” he whispered before nipping her earlobe.
