Chapter Thirteen #2
“I want to see you.” His whispered words against her lips was a dream, too far away to be real.
As was her leaning more fully into him until there was no space. Nothing but shared breaths and heady heat.
His clever fingers slid down the row of buttons at her back and plucked at the fastenings one by one.
A tug, and her dress loosened around her waist and fell down her shoulders. The aftereffects of her climax had left her body tingling and short of breath, and when his warm hands touched the skin at her collarbone, she gasped for air.
“Anna.” He whispered her name before his lips replaced his fingers.
She clutched his shoulders as his teeth scraped lightly across her throat.
The feel—it was like a million fiery wings across her naked skin.
“Jackson.” The pressure was building again.
Too much more and she’d fall over the edge a second time.
“I’ve got you, Anna.” A promise. “You’re safe with me.”
His words urged her on, to fall with no hope of finding her footing again. To become who they’d once been to each other again: lost.
You will lose.
Anna ignored the inner voice. She focused on the trailed kisses he placed along the column of her throat, across her bare shoulder . . . How his hand had locked around her waist, as if to hold her still.
Claiming.
Possessive.
The haze in her mind slowly lifted. This time, she listened.
She would lose.
“Stop.”
Jackson froze, his words a rush of breath across her jaw as he said, “What is it?”
“Stop,” she repeated. Desire pulsed heavily through her breast. Her body was screaming: More. More. MORE.
She clapped her hands over her ears, anything to drown out the need, the want. Her mind was spinning, in opposition to her body’s cries. Space. Quiet. She had to think.
“Anna?”
His questioning tone pulled her back to solid ground.
She stared at him, her vision blurred from the bite of her nails in her scalp.
This had to stop. She wasn’t a child to charge recklessly ahead any longer. There was no more childish curiosity to blame for the pull between them. What they’d done, what she’d given was that of a knowing adult, and it had far more consequences than a rushed union.
They were to be married. A mutual contract. Cold, distant.
There’d been nothing distant about how he’d touched her. Or how she’d responded.
And Anna knew if she gave herself fully to him now, she’d never be able to keep her distance. She’d be at his mercy. She would lose. Something far more precious than her freedom or her name.
“I can’t.” She dropped her hands to her sides, her palms open and exposed. “I—I’m not—”
“Not ready,” he finished for her. He pulled back, his gaze searching. Too long, too knowing. His brows dipped down. “I see.”
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
Because she refused to see herself.
“I shouldn’t have taken the liberty.” His tone was gentle, contrite, as he stepped back.
It would be better if he were rough, unrepentant. He’d given her such pleasure. Been patient all this time. And she’d taken it all. He was right to be confused.
So was she.
Conscience had her biting her lip. “I’m sorry—”
“No.” His one word was cold, but the look in his eyes was tender. His throat worked as he swallowed. “Never apologize to me. I can accept such things from everyone else. Not you.”
Anna’s heart pinched. He wouldn’t accept her apology. No humor in his eyes now.
She’d truly hurt him this time.
“I’ll give you privacy to put yourself to rights,” he said, gaze straight ahead.
Anywhere but on her.
She clutched her dress to her chest. “Yes.”
He nodded and walked off in the direction of the house without a backward glance.
Anna sank to her knees, there on the damp bank, her gaze on the path he’d taken long after his figure had disappeared. Their parting had happened so fast.
Including her faltering.
She’d let her guard down since returning to Grandfellow Hall. All her defenses, her resolve, were slipping, leaving casualties on all fronts.
If she weren’t careful, she might not survive the next siege.
Still, her gaze went to the tree line and the man she’d harmed with her latest assault.
The wind kicked up, the breeze biting and chilling without his warmth surrounding her.
A sudden chill she felt to her bones.
The chill of the night air swept through the room where Jackson stood at his desk in the library.
He didn’t bother looking up at the man who’d snuck into the room before he said, “Any movement by the counterfeiters?”
Roberts—as agile as a cat—sat on the corner of the desk, his workman’s disguise replaced with a dark smock and a bowler’s hat. “Still like the grave.”
Damn.
“It’s been too long between drops.” Jackson gritted his teeth. He’d been careful. Meticulous. And yet . . . “I must have questioned the wrong person. Come on too strong.”
He wouldn’t allow himself to draw parallels between the investigation and his recent behavior. “Something must have shaken loose,” he finished.
Not a total loss in and of itself. Jackson could go back through his list of interviews and double-check his impressions with any movements his men had noted over the past two weeks.
Simply because Mrs. Dove-Lyon didn’t appear to be the inside man didn’t mean someone lower on the totem pole hadn’t thought to earn a bit extra.
“Roberts—”
“You want me to look into those previously questioned for any connection to the gang.” Roberts sniffed as if offended Jackson needed to ask. “Doubt we’ll find anything useful. The counterfeiters obviously haven’t found you a great enough nuisance to act.”
Jackson frowned. “What makes you say that?”
He shrugged. “No one has tried to kill you yet.”
Jackson snorted. “Your insight into the criminal mind grows more concerning by the day.”
Unfortunately, the man’s instincts were usually the very thing.
Jackson moved on. What else could he do? “Where are you on the investigation into William Greene’s connection to the brothel?”
“’Bout where I started,” Roberts said.
Jackson frowned down at the dark grain of his desk. “Nothing?” Telling for a man of Roberts’s skills. The man could make a suit of armor give up its mettle.
“Lord Brixby’s debts to the Lyon’s Den were deep before his sister’s selfless sacrifice—”
Jackson rolled his eyes at the man’s jab.
“—but my contact at London Trust says with some creative shuffling, the viscount would’ve seen his vowels torn up. There was no need for the man to go into hiding.”
Jackson nodded. His preliminary inquiries into the Brixby estate had arrived at the same conclusion.
“Have there been any shady characters coming around the Brixby townhome? Any suspicious letters?” Just because William could pay his debts to Mrs. Dove-Lyon didn’t mean the man hadn’t other vowels around the city, held by less forgiving hands.
“Ransom, ya thinkin’?” Roberts made a face. “Not smart if usurers want to get paid. A fool knows taking a lord’s sister would see a better payday than taking the man himself.”
The thought of Anna taken—a hostage for some lowlife’s scheme . . . Better Jackson not tread that particular road of thought if he planned to attend his wedding tomorrow with any hope of civility.
“There was some tension with an uncle on the father’s side,” Roberts said.
Jackson frowned. “Sir Daniel?” Yes, Anna had claimed as much.
Roberts nodded. “My man reported the baronet was making inquiries into the Brixby estate and grew red about the collar when Lord Brixby’s solicitor showed him the door.”
Jackson’s brows rose. Sounded like a man with a temper and an unhealthy curiosity over his nephew’s holdings. “What kind of inquiries?”
“The kind that end in shouting and a don’t come back.” Roberts lifted his chin. “What are you thinking, Your Grace?”
That your good breeding is showing. The case must have truly caught Roberts’s attention if he’d let his gutter slang drop.
Jackson kept that tidbit to himself. There were few things Humphrey Roberts, second son to the Earl of Barnes, hated more than being himself. “Seems William Brixby has found himself one hell of a solicitor,” he said instead.
“Here’s hoping yours is as well, seeing as that bricky intended of yours may burn the estates down one by one.”
Jackson didn’t ask how Roberts had come to define Anna’s nature so well. The man had a nose for people’s true intentions.
“She wouldn’t burn them,” he said, more hopeful than certain. “She’d simply change all the locks, with me on the other side of the door.”
Roberts grinned and mimed raising a glass. “Here’s to your last night of freedom.”
Jackson shook his head, less apprehensive about tomorrow than he’d thought he’d be. “Will you be attending the wedding?”
Roberts’s humor dulled at that. “As which man?”
“Either?”
“Hmm. Charm half the ladies before catching the bouquet and then charm the other half?” Roberts seemed to give his delusions some thought. “Tempting, but no. If I’m going to witness a man clapped in irons, I prefer to be the one handling the restraints.”
“No sense of adventure, Roberts.” Or reality. “I’ll be returning to London tomorrow after the ceremony.”
“Not much of a wedding night,” Roberts teased.
Jackson ignored him. The shorter the honeymoon, the less likely his bride would skewer him with a dinner fork.
“I don’t trust you.”
And the panic he’d seen in her gaze at the creek. He’d thought—not that she’d forgiven him yet, but—that she’d softened toward him in the last fortnight.
“There’s work to be done,” Jackson said, misery like a knife to his chest.
“I best get to it, then.” Roberts’s grin was cruel. “So you can give the necessary attention to your marriage bed. Heirs don’t make themselves, I’m told.”
“Do you know the best thing about my relationship with the Home Secretary?” Jackson threw his own razor smile. “Carte blanche for disposing of idiots who meddle in my affairs.”
“What a comfort that will bring you when your duchess sees fit to throw you out of her chambers.” Roberts slapped Jackson on the back. “Word of advice from this meddlesome idiot: don’t rush.”
“Rush what?”
“Her.” This time, Roberts’s expression turned uncharacteristically somber. “A smart man doesn’t approach a wildcat.”
Jackson snorted. “I’ll be old and gray before this particular wildcat comes of her own volition.”
“Then you wait.”
The sober words had Jackson searching his friend’s face in the low lamp light. There was truth—experience—in Roberts’s voice, and Jackson reminded himself there was a lot he didn’t know about the second son of the Earl of Barnes.
He’d never rushed Anna. Hers was a will of iron; it was a waste of time to try. Except—
Hadn’t his actions at the creek spoken of desperation? Impatience? He’d kissed her, pushed her, and she’d pulled away when he’d asked for too much too soon. Then she’d apologized, as if he hadn’t been the complete bounder.
Jackson scowled. “Where was that advice twenty-four hours ago?”
Roberts pressed a hand to his chest. “I am here for you, dear Jackson, whenever you have need of my faultless wisdom. You have but to whisper my name, and I will appear out of fire and smoke.”
Like a demon.
A demon with a fanged smile.
“Arsehole,” Jackson said.
He wasn’t truly angry with Roberts; he was mad at himself.
Roberts knew it too, because the man swung one leg over the windowsill, saluted, and called a congenial, “See you in London,” before he disappeared into the night.
Jackson went to the window to watch the man’s figure slip between the shadows before disappearing altogether.
A demon, indeed.
Jackson pressed his forearm on the cold window glass and dropped his head to the same pane.
“Don’t rush.”
The wedding tomorrow was a second chance. For a different life. With passion. With laughter and challenge.
With Anna.
Circumstances with the Home Office meant he’d never fully be able to reveal himself. But Anna had always claimed a large piece of his soul.
Don’t rush.
Patience wasn’t part of his nature. But he’d try.
Because Annabeth Greene was worth the wait.