A Dark and Stormy Knight Read online

  She gasped as he pressed his lips into her, delving through her folds with slow, languid licks.

  He unlocked her with his lips. Undid her with his tongue as he stroked and slipped over the swollen, aching core of her, eliciting pleasure she’d never known existed. She’d the sense that he savored this as she did, which was ridiculous. He did this every night. To every sort of woman.

  No wonder they gave him diamonds. He’d been at it all of two seconds and she’d have handed him her entire dowry had he requested it.

  And maybe her heart.

  She closed her eyes, escaping from the whispers of guilt and shame her upbringing instilled in her. Focusing instead upon the tactile sensations of the moment. The soft, almost intangible coolness of the fountain’s mist kissing her upturned face like snowflakes in the summer.

  A miracle. Just like his tongue.

  The tendrils of pleasure elicited by his ministrations diffused through her blood, and then seemed to be called back to her core by a tightening low in her belly. A harbinger of happening. A pulsing, pounding, throbbing thing that rushed at her from a great distance.

  Something she was afraid to miss and equally frightened of being run over by. Like a train or a stampede of wild horses.

  “Oh,” she fretted breathlessly. “Oh, dear. I—I think I—”

  He lifted his lips from her… stealing the sensation away to her utter consternation and relief.

  “Don’t think,” he ordered in the voice of a man quite used to giving orders.

  “Don’t stop,” she begged, her hand blindly reaching for the head hidden beneath her skirts.

  He made a low sound of amusement, breathing a cool stream of air against her overheated flesh. He whispered something she didn’t quite catch and was too overwrought to clarify.

  But she thought she heard the word “forever” before his tongue returned to flicker against the little button of pure sensation.

  His touch was eternally light. Barely there, even, but it infused her with such an electric pulse her entire body tightened and jerked with it, as if he’d plugged her into one of Edison’s own machines.

  She arched and bent with such strength she feared she might snap her spine in two, and he rewarded her by sucking that little bead of flesh into his warm mouth, rolling it gently with his tongue.

  A raw sound escaped her, and she returned her hand over her mouth, leaving the other to support her against the stone ledge, all she had keeping her from diving backward into the water.

  The wave crashed over her before she even realized it had formed upon the horizon. A crest of such unimaginable, inconceivable euphoria dismantled everything she knew about herself.

  She came apart in his hands, against his mouth, and hoped to never again be found.

  This was bliss. Rapture. Heaven. And a bit of the other place, too. Because once she’d begun to tumble into the grips of ecstasy, she already understood it was fleeting. That it would inevitably end, lest she die from the intensity of it.

  For surely nothing like this could last.

  Inevitably his mouth softened, gentled, and returned her back to herself. A self she wasn’t certain what to do with. She was a weak, trembling, overwrought mess, and she couldn’t seem to remember her own name let alone consider what to do next.

  So she sat and breathed, because such was the extent of her functional capacity.

  She’d expected pleasure… but not that.

  Not her unaccountable unraveling.

  He left her, sliding from beneath her skirts, and used one of the many ruffles of her petticoats to wipe his mouth before he rested back on his haunches so that they might take the measure of one another.

  She couldn’t see much of his body, as he was dressed in all black and the night was a moonless one. The lamps filtered through the fountain and cast the shadows of water against his skin. Like a mirage of tears. An entire ocean of them.

  They bled down his stark cheekbones creating hollows beneath, and the effect somehow caused her heart to swell in her chest.

  “You look… as if you are in pain,” she ventured, doing her best to lift her boneless arms to reach for him.

  “I’m hard as fucking marble.” A crass, almost cruel admission, one that brought her body back to astonishing life.

  “Bloody hell,” he panted, running the back of his hand over his mouth again as if to rid it of her flavor. Stopping in the middle of the motion, he curled his fingers into a fist and bit down on his knuckle. Composing himself just long enough to command, “Stop looking at me like that, woman, or I won’t be responsible for what I do next.”

  Little trills of danger thrummed through her veins. Something primitive and ancient in this garden of delights. Something as old as the first stories, when a man found a woman who tempted him to sin.

  The stories had always offended Prudence as she’d obediently sat in church, listening to holy men blame Eve for everything. For the knowledge of good and evil and the ability to bear fruit. For life, itself.

  And for temptation.

  Why would God, in all his infinite wisdom imbue them with these forces of nature so powerful, there was barely the sentience to deny them? Didn’t it make sense that a more pagan deity was responsible? Perhaps one with golden hair and electric eyes. With savagely beautiful features and an expression of half hunger, half wrath.

  Eve was not tempted by the devil, but by the power of the very impulses already inside of her. She’d been in Eden, much as Pru was now, and had stared across at a man who’d looked at her just like that, infusing her with power and fire and subtle submission.

  How could she have possibly denied him? How could she have denied herself?

  Prudence slid from the fountain to her knees before him, little more than a puddle of pleasure and need. Her hands explored him a little, tested the mounds of muscle beneath his coat before slipping it up over his shoulders and down his corded arms.

  He was hard and she was soft. He was stone and she was water.

  Wet, ready.

  Willing.

  He watched her as she came to him, his eyes strangely wary and uncertain. His skin pulled taut over the shape of his bones.

  The moment she freed his arms from his coat, he took over. He draped it on the moss before guiding her to it and following her down.

  He kissed her gently, and she tasted a lingering essence of herself.

  It tasted like sin. Reminded her of where he’d taken her. Someplace like paradise.

  She opened her legs to welcome the lean intrusion of his hips and he took every inch of ground she ceded.

  He distracted her with soft, probing kisses as he reached down between them. Lifting her skirts to her waist, fumbling with his trousers.

  No romantic words punctuated his kisses and none were needed. Though his desire was rough and apparent, his mouth was gentle and endlessly restless. He dragged his lips up her jaw, breathing in great gasps, as if he could lock her scent in his chest. He pressed them to her temples, her eyebrows, her lids and the tip of her nose.

  Prudence kept her eyes closed, under the guise of appreciating his attentions. All the while preparing to give him what George no longer deserved.

  Her virginity.

  She didn’t tell him. She couldn’t say why, exactly. Maybe because he treated her in this moment like no one else had. Like someone whose need and knowledge matched his. Someone who could take what he was about to give her with all its primal desire and no little bit of masculine anger, and provide him a little of the pleasure she’d only just experienced.

  Lord knew, he’d earned it.

  He returned his mouth to hers just as his fingers stole into her cleft once again, sliding against even more abundant moisture than before.

  She squirmed a little, anxious and anticipatory. Wanting him to stop. Wanting him to get on with it. Not knowing what to say or do other than to cling to him.

  Yes. That was it. She reared up, wrapping her arms around his trunk, and buried her
face against his neck. She breathed him in, a scent like cedar and stringent soap and perhaps a bit of creosote, as if he’d been in a trainyard recently.

  Her breath warmed and moistened the scant space between their skin, and she inhaled greedily as his arms locked around her.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  He stole her next words with a strong thrust.

  Prudence bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. She’d expected pain. Or maybe pleasure. But not this unbearably magnificent medley of the two.

  Her intimate muscles were not exactly as welcoming as she wished them to be at first, but after the initial thrust, they seemed to clench at him. Pulling him inside.

  He’d claimed to be hard, but she realized she’d never truly had an idea of what that word meant. He was like heated steel inside of her, over her, around her. He was everywhere she wasn’t and also where she was.

  He was her entire world, and yet still a stranger. He blocked out the sky and the breeze and the darkness, her lonely pain and her fears for the future. Reducing her entire frame of existence down to this.

  To the place where they joined.

  She suddenly wished for daylight. For a filter of illumination through which she could appreciate his nude form. She wished she’d seen exactly what it was he’d pressed inside of her. But for now, all she had was this. Darkness and experience.

  And what an experience it was.

  With a dark growl, he withdrew slow and deliberate. He held her to him like a coveted treasure as he curled his back to sting into her again. And then again.

  Each gliding, slick thrust was easier to bear than the last, easing the way for the pleasure he began to pump from his body into hers, chasing away the lingering shadows of pain.

  He made dark, needful, animal sounds. She reveled in the catches of his breath and the sheer wonder in the wordless questions he kissed into her mouth.

  He took pleasure as he gave it, and she thought, that was what lovers ought to do.

  For he felt like a lover, even though love had nothing to do with what they did here in the dark on the earth.

  It was more like a rite. A swiftly intensifying, carnal ritual. One blessed by witches who would have burned once upon a time. As she was burning now, immolating as he thrust pure liquid heat into her with increasing brutality.

  She pulled away from his arms, not because she wanted space but because she wanted to see what gathered between them. Because that celestial tide of pleasure was threatening to separate her from herself once again, and she had to make sure this time she was not alone.

  That he came with her.

  Come. This is why it was referred to as coming. Because no one quite stayed where they were, inside of themselves, inside of each other.

  They came, and went, somewhere else entirely.

  She looked up at him and instantly noticed that he was closer to that place, that he was afraid he’d leave without her.

  His features were a mask of exquisite torment, more beautiful than any piece of art she’d ever seen. She gasped up at him with every motion, as he thrust her into the ground. Her legs widened, strained. Her body seized, and he barked out a harsh sound.

  He reached between them and with three magical strokes of his finger, he brought the pleasure crashing into her and sent them both careening into the night.

  They came together.

  Locked in some paroxysm of bliss that might have looked like a contortion of pain. Neither of them seemed capable of sound, only straining, taut and impossible motion.

  Her entire body pulsed around long, liquid warmth he buried deep into her womb, and God if that didn’t heighten the entire experience.

  She returned to herself before he did, it seemed, her body slackening to the earth as his still thrummed with spasms of pleasure. It seemed to drop him suddenly, and he collapsed over her. Not with his full weight, but with a delicious heaviness that compressed her into a puddle of pleasant affection.

  He rooted around in the pool of ruined ringlets at the nape of her neck, breathing deeply, pressing reverent kisses to the sensitive skin. She fought the shrugging giggle as long as she could, but alas her ticklish neck broke the moment.

  He rolled to the side, sliding away and arranging himself back into his trousers before she had the presence of mind to peek.

  A consummate professional, he was.

  They lay next to each other beneath the stars for an eternity, or maybe only a moment. Their breaths synchronized as they deepened and slowed.

  A drowsy sense of satisfaction stole over her limbs, and Prudence was the first to roll to her side, acutely aware of the slick aftermath left against her thighs.

  He was still far away, she realized. Somewhere in the night above them, unable to return back to the troubles of life below.

  She understood a little, she thought. Morning would bring no pleasure to her, especially not after trust had been broken by those she’d once considered closest to her. But her sadness felt like a phantom next to what sort of bleak emotion settled on his features, and she thought to dispel it with a compliment.

  “Whatever you charge, sir, it’s not enough.” She sighed contentedly. “You are a master of your craft.”

  “Never enough…” he murmured, his eyes still somewhat unfocused, his chest still struggling a bit for breath.

  It made sense, she thought, he’d done all the work. She’d just lain there and enjoyed herself.

  Feeling at a loss herself, she pushed herself up on her hip like a depiction of a mermaid, legs stretched out to the side. How did one conclude such an interaction? And why didn’t she want to?

  It wasn’t an interaction, was it? But a transaction.

  And yet she felt an odd sense of attachment to him now. Was this normal? She could ask, but something told her the question would drive him away.

  “Are you cold?” She gathered his coat from beneath her and did her best to brush off errant blades of grass.

  He finally glanced over at her, then at his jacket, as if seeing it for the first time. “No. But thank you.” He sat up and took it from her, donning it deliberately. “Are you all right?” He asked the question as if he dreaded the answer, but his features didn’t at all convey what his voice had.

  She wished she could identify his expression, but it was a certain kind of inaccessible. Pleasant, but arch. Remote, but attentive. Intense, but polite.

  Very carefully so. As if he was suddenly wary or mistrustful of her.

  Had she done something wrong?

  “Never better.” She summoned her most dazzling smile, wishing she had the strength to open her lids past half-mast. That she didn’t suddenly want to cry, not because she was sad, but because something powerful had just happened and her emotions hadn’t been prepared for it.

  “Do you ever—that is—do you care about the women with whom you’ve spent the night?” she ventured. “Romantically, I mean?”

  His gaze flicked away from her, and he stared at the gate, as if hoping the exit would draw closer.

  “I don’t allow myself the luxury of romance,” he answered, and Pru believed she’d never heard anything more honest. Or more depressing.

  “Do you ever want to, in spite of yourself?” She was a sentimental fool, but something within her burned to know.

  He shook his head adamantly. “Terrible things happen to those I care about.”

  His answer piqued both her curiosity and her compassion, but he stood before she could reply, and reached down to help her up.

  He lifted her with such surprising strength. He was neither overly tall nor was he more than elegantly wide. But rather superbly fit, his every inch hardened with well-used muscle.

  She’d first-rate knowledge of that.

  “Is it gauche of me to express gratitude?” she asked. “Other than remuneration, that is.”

  His face softened and the glaciers of his eyes melted behind his mask, his gaze touched every part of her face. “Is your coach nearby? How are
you getting home?”

  “I’ll manage, thank you.” A part of her deflated. Of course, he was gently telling her it was time to go. Bless him, for keeping up at least the appearance of concern. “What are you called?”

  A sad smile touched his lips as he lifted a lock of her hair that’d escaped its coiffure. He tucked it back in place, smoothing it down with such a tender motion, her throat ached. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just a shadow.”

  Bending down, he retrieved her drawers from where they lay discarded by the fountain and turned to give her privacy. She turned as well, bending to step into them.

  “But what if I—” She almost toppled when trying to step into the second leg of the garment and had to steady herself before going on. “What if I’d like to find you again?”

  “You won’t, I’m afraid.”

  She drew her underthings up over her stockings and garters. Glad that they’d absorb the dampness that lingered there, until she was able to return home. Wriggling into them, she dropped her skirts and petticoats and smoothed them down her thighs.

  Thighs that had just been spread for him. For the man who didn’t want to tell her his name.

  She whirled back around. “I’m Pru—”

  He was already gone.

  Chapter 4

  Three Months Later

  “Congratulations, Morley, you’re famous!” Millie LeCour lowered the periodical she read from across the carriage and wriggled dark brows at him. “They’re calling you the Knight of Shadows.” She leaned deeper into Detective Inspector Christopher Argent’s side so she could show him what she read. “Sufficiently ominous, don’t you think, darling?”

  “Terrifying,” he replied with his distinct brand of prosaic nonchalance. He didn’t spare the paper a glance, but he tilted his head to inhale the very nearness of Millie before pressing a careful kiss into her coiffed dark hair.

  Morley’s grim mood darkened to thunderous. “Bloody journalists,” he muttered, hoping his companions would believe the papers solely responsible for his ire.

  And not their nuzzling nonsense.