Earl Crush (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #2)

Chapter 19

… You cannot conceive with what joy I embraced the hopes thus given me of seeing the delight of my heart again.

—from FANNY HILL

Her rescue, as it turned out, did not take long.

There was no little congestion of vehicles on the Great North Road, particularly here in the immediate environs of the Scottish capital. The Thibodeaux could not travel too quickly, and Lydia managed to stay far enough back that they did not mark her.

She was certainly remarked by everyone else who passed her, a woman riding astride a red horse with a black silk bonnet upon her head and a mourning veil trailing behind her like a very long and diaphanous flag.

She was perhaps twenty yards behind the Thibodeaux, the sun just beginning to tip toward the tree line, when she noticed the first splinters of wood in the middle of the road.

The first few pieces were small, perhaps the size of her longest finger. They were dark with age, almost black, their color the only thing that distinguished them from the general brush and debris that found its way onto any well-traveled highway.

The next few pieces were larger. As she rode on, settling her mare in the lee of a mail coach, she noticed them every few feet: fragments of wood, like broken-off bits of planking, jet-black and roughly the size of her fist. Some were still and others were rolling, bouncing slightly in the wheel-worn channels of the road.

A sudden presentiment came to her mind. She brought the roan around the side of the mail coach, tugged her veil down over her face, and watched the Thibodeaux’s carriage.

Within moments, another chunk of wood appeared between the rear wheels, tumbling and spinning along the road before coming to a rest just before her mare’s hooves trampled it. A second emerged beneath the carriage as she watched, as if the vehicle had begun disgorging splintered wood fragments from its belly.

Which of course it had. Somehow, from inside the carriage, Arthur was slowly dismantling the vehicle’s wooden floor.

She was torn between sheer delight at his cleverness and instantaneous terror.

What the devil did he mean to do when he created a big enough hole? Leap through? If the fall from the moving vehicle did not injure him, there were the two rear wheels to contend with—not to mention what would happen if the Thibodeaux happened to look behind them and observe a large and recognizable man rolling out from beneath their coach.

Perhaps he would wait until they stopped to rest or change out their horses. But no, that avenue was equally unsupportable. They might miss a bearded giant escaping from the coach while they drove, their eyes fixed on the road ahead, but they certainly would not overlook his emergence while they were stopped at a coaching inn.

Oh God. Oh hell. He would have to jump free while the carriage was moving. Surely he had come to the same conclusion she had. If only he could give her some sort of sign, so she might know when he meant to make his move—but he wouldn’t, of course, because he had no bloody idea she was following him.

She muttered a prayer under her breath and kept as close to the Thibodeaux’s coach as she dared.

She’d stopped seeing wood bits littering the road for at least a quarter of an hour when they came to a narrow stone bridge. All the vehicles on the road slowed, arranging themselves into a decorous queue. Lydia fitted herself in nervously behind the mail coach, her eyes darting from her roan to the Thibodeaux’s conveyance.

And then she saw Arthur’s legs emerge, a slow controlled descent, from the bottom of the carriage.

Oh bollocks, he’d chosen now to free himself, when the road was crowded with passersby? What was he thinking?

And then she knew, a brilliant electric revelation. She urged the mare out of the line, driving her toward the bank of the small swift river, where—yes—hell—

As she watched, Arthur lowered himself the rest of the way out of the carriage, landed on the stones beneath, and then rolled in one smooth motion off the side of the bridge and into the water.

She swore aloud and leaned over her horse’s withers. They stopped hard at the bank, the roan pawing at the fronds. Arthur rose, sputtering, from the water and met her gaze.

Or—no. She was still veiled. He could not see her. She shoved the fabric to the side to behold his stupefied face more clearly. “Hurry,” she hissed. “Get out of there and climb on.”

“Lydia? How in hell —” But he was already obeying her instructions, water cascading from his body as he crushed several Scottish water plants beneath his boots. She loosed her foot from the stirrup just in time for him to replace it with his own and then swing up onto the horse’s back behind her.

The mare had been worth the hundred sovereigns. She stood sturdily beneath the addition of Arthur’s weight and the sudden slosh of frigid water down her speckled red flanks. Arthur’s arms came around Lydia’s body and he turned the horse quickly, carrying them both into the thicket of trees that lined the roadway.

“We have to get out of sight,” he murmured. “As deep into the woods as we can go.”

She nodded, and he transferred the reins to one hand, using the other to pull her against him.

“God,” he murmured into her hair. “Oh Christ, it’s good to see you.” His voice had gone rough. His hand on the reins was trembling slightly, the physical manifestation of his relief.

He brought them deep into the shadows of the heavy-limbed oaks, where the late-afternoon sunlight made dappled patterns on the leaf-littered ground. When he finally halted and dismounted, she half fell into his arms, and he pulled her up against his dripping form. His arms were hard as iron bars, his chest a firm solid wall, and she let herself melt against him, let him take her weight. All the fear that had swamped her since the moment she had seen his hand emerge from the coach seemed to leak away as he held her, as her body pressed against his.

He was safe. They were both safe and together.

In one quick decisive movement, he yanked off her bonnet and kissed the top of her head. “God,” he muttered. “God, I’ve been out of my head with worry. Oh fuck —” He stiffened and then pushed her back away from him, a trifle wild-eyed. “Your clothes. I’m soaking you with my wet things.”

“It’s all right. Everything I have on is wool. I’m perfectly dry. You, on the other hand—” She paused, noticing the raw scrape across the knuckles of his left hand. “Oh, Arthur! Is this from the floor of the coach?” She caught his hand between her palms and brought it up to her face. Her lips found the tips of his chilled fingers, and then she pressed them to her cheek, trying to warm him.

“Nay,” he murmured. His fingers cupped her face. “Merely scraped myself with the striker from my tinderbox. I used it as a lever for the floorboards. Thought my gunpowder would be too noisy a way out of there.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake.” She pulled his fingers gently away from her cheek to examine his knuckles once more, but he closed his hand over hers.

“I don’t feel it, love.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re frozen half to death.”

“’Tis not so bad as all that.” He looked down at his sodden garments. “Though I would not wish to ride together until I dry myself, I suppose.”

His lips were pale. His hand covering hers was terribly cold.

She felt a hot rush of emotion, a tide of resolve and fierce tenderness. She had come to rescue him, had she not? He still needed her.

“Take off your wet clothes,” she ordered.

He made a sound of protest, but she was already shoving at his jacket, urging him out of his shirt. When he was half-unclothed, she untied her own pelisse and curled herself around his chest, trying to share the warmth of her body with him. Her breasts crushed against him, and he took a slow, shuddering breath. His bare arms came around her, pulling her even closer, even tighter.

“For Christ’s sake,” he muttered. His fingers stroked her hair, the back of her head. Trailed down the nape of her neck and then wrapped around her waist. “Daft woman. Don’t ever do that again.”

She relished the ferocity of his embrace, curling herself tighter around him. She tried to make her voice light, but emotion—relief and pleasure and fast-fading terror—clogged her throat. “Do what, precisely? Watch as you are accidentally abducted?”

“Go away from me.”

She swallowed against the ache in her throat.

She did not want to go. The truth of the thought struck her full force. She did not ever wish to be parted from him.

She wanted—God, what didn’t she want? Her body bloomed under his in helpless yearning; his familiar scent filled her nose. She breathed him in and felt need spin up inside her, desire a spool wound tight and then tighter.

She tilted her head up to him. He moved at the same time, quick and almost desperate. His mouth found hers. One of his hands caught at her hair, tipping her head back. He made a low, harsh groan—an uncontrolled sound, the sound of something tearing free in his chest. Her lips parted, and he took the lower one between his teeth and sucked.

She gave as good as she got. She wrapped her hand around the nape of his neck, pressed up into him, and kissed him back, hard and rough and frantic.

“Please,” she gasped when he started to draw away. “Arthur. Don’t stop.”

His mind had not been working properly since he’d lost sight of her that afternoon. Even when the Thibodeaux had come—when he’d been forced to hide in the coach—his only thoughts had been for her.

What would she imagine when she came back and found him gone? Was she safe, wandering the Old Town alone? His fevered brain had thrown up visions of cutpurses, her heavy reticule a glittering draw. With every splinter carefully prised from the floorboards by his steel striker, he’d thought himself one excruciating step closer to getting back to her.

But now she was here— she had come for him , a notion that caused his mind to reel—and still his faculties had not come back into order. He couldn’t think—he could only see and hear and feel her.

Her sunset hair, her quick hot mouth—Jesus, the sweet little whimper at the back of her throat. She had wrapped herself around him, containing him with her body, her busy hands, the murmur of his name.

“Lydia,” he gritted out. Her touch was light and devastating, her fingers skimming across his bared torso. With her jacket undone, he could see the frantic rise and fall of her breath, her breasts pressing against the neckline of her bodice. He cursed and lowered his mouth to her shoulder, his hands sliding down from her hair to grasp her waist.

She came up on her toes and her body dragged against his aching cock—a pleasure so charged he almost could not bear it. He pressed kisses along her collarbone, his mouth inches from her breasts. His hands slipped higher, his thumbs tracing the delicate unyielding bones of her ribs through her damp woolen dress.

He wanted her naked. He wanted to see every inch of her—to know her safe and well and his. God, how he wanted her to be his.

He did not know at what point his fear had transmuted into arousal. It was no rational thing, this wanting. He felt a terrible urgent need to care for her—to see to it that she was dry and warm, that no part of her was hurting. He wanted to touch her more gently than his large and clumsy hands were capable of.

And at the same time, he wanted to be inside her. He wanted her writhing beneath him, sweat in her hair and a cry on her lips. He wanted—

Christ. He wanted to fuck her hard. Madly. Like an animal, mindless with desire and the feel of her.

He pulled back from her, staggered by the force of his desire. “Tell me to stop,” he rasped.

“Never.” Her voice shook with need, with all the courage and stubbornness inside her small form.

And, God help him, he listened. He cupped one breast, stroking his thumb across the stiffened peak. She whimpered—almost a whine—a sound that went straight to his bollocks.

He dragged his teeth along her skin and yanked her bodice down, baring her glorious breasts. “You’ve no idea the things I want to do to you.”

“Do them,” she gasped. “All of them. Don’t stop.”

Fuck , he thought, oh fuck, because her nipple was in his mouth and she was making those sounds again, eager and frantic as he flicked the taut nub with his tongue and then sucked.

Her nails bit into the skin of his back, and he heard himself make a desperate noise. His hips thrust forward without his conscious command, pressing his cock against her. His head spun at the sensation—at the heaven of that soft flesh. The word generous had been made for her body: the way it gave beneath him, the way it poured out pleasure for the both of them.

She was twisting, almost writhing, her face and chest flushed. Her pupils were large and dark, and the tips of her breasts were wet from where his mouth had been. The sight of her nipples, glistening in the dappled light, was the most dizzyingly erotic thing he’d ever seen.

Her fingers, he realized, were striving at his falls, where the damp cold fabric clung to his burning skin. She was not delicate— she was almost frantic. His cock came free of his trousers, and her fingers—her—

Oh Christ. He closed his fingers over hers, unintentionally clamping her palm against his erection. Fireworks went off inside his brain, but he could not let her get her fingers around him, he could not —if she did, he would be inside her in half a minute, and he knew he could do no such thing.

So he dragged her hand away and bore them both down to the earth.

He took her weight onto him—the ground was cool and pebbled, and he did not spare one single second for regret as he rolled her over, pinning her beneath him. Her breasts shook as he did, and the sight was a lightning strike, sending demand arcing through him like a current.

He drew up one of her knees and wrapped her fingers around it, holding her skirts up and baring the auburn curls that shielded her sex. He moved deliberately between her thighs.

She made a tiny, plaintive whimper, her hips arching up into nothing, and then his mouth was there, licking up into her, his hands clamped on her thighs and spreading her wide. She was wet—Jesus God, she was so hot and wet. He could taste her arousal, feel it where his thumbs stroked the insides of her thighs, and everything shimmered out of existence except the feel of her body and the raw and begging sounds she made as he licked and sucked.

He circled her entrance with his thumb, then eased his first two fingers inside of her. Christ—the tight clench of her body, the squeeze of her channel around his fingers—his head spun. His cock throbbed, a desperate rush of blood he could feel in his belly, in the soles of his feet. He worked her clitoris with his tongue and felt her thighs tremble, her body close to release.

He wanted it. He wanted her to come on his fingers and on his mouth and on his prick. God, he wanted that last so badly he felt almost dazed.

But he wanted her more. He wanted her to be his—not just her body, but every part of her—her mind, her heart. He wanted to make her shatter around him not once but every day, a thousand thousand times, wanted to hear her voice go to pieces on his name for the rest of his natural life.

He would wait for her, for that. He had to.

He brought his free hand to her nipple, a slick caress, and that was enough. She gasped as she came, her body clenching around his fingers, an endless heady pleasure.

When her shudders stopped, she caught his arm and pulled him up her body, her legs locking around his waist. His cock slid against her slick folds—a sensation so intense, so intoxicating that he lost his breath. His vision went gray, then white, and something clicked in his brain like a latch sliding shut.

His. She was his. He would not go wrong in this.

He drew back, coming onto his knees and lifting her with him. He brought her hand to his length, a frantic gasp of will you and please , and then her fingers were around him, sliding against his erection. He groaned in helpless pleasure and thrust into the circle of her fingers, every part of his body taut and delirious with need.

Her face was flushed. Her lips were parted. Her hand was on him and her bodice was down, and his climax came upon him in a mad rush, his seed spilling on her bared breasts in time to the frantic beat of his heart.

As soon as he could manage it, he gathered her up into his arms. Her head fit neatly under his chin, their bodies interlocking as though they had been made for this moment, for this sin gular place and time. He stroked the nape of her neck, savoring the fine softness of her skin.

When he could speak again, the words on his lips were not a question, but a demand that was half a vow. “Promise me you will not go away from me again,” he murmured. “Say the words.”

She promised.

Some tightness in his chest eased.

He needed to get to his feet, to clean her skin with his discarded shirt. He needed to recapture the roan and find an inn and then figure out some way to get to London with her.

But he held on to her for a long time, lingering there, watching the patterns the shadows made on her hair. He marked the rise and fall of her chest with each breath, a slow and steadfast rhythm that matched his own.