Chapter 12 #2
To not drag her down, Jeremy instantly adjusted his pace, but he still held on to her hand until they stopped at the tall brick wall that fenced in the market.
She and Jeremy each dropped their hands on their knees and bent over to catch their breath. All the while, they grinned at one another.
Linnie couldn’t stop from staring at him—his face flushed with merriment and his smile, the carefree one she so loved and had yearned to see again.
In the boy-like way of old, and not the angry recent one, he furrowed his brow. “What is it?”
“It’s . . .” You.
“Linnnie!”
Linnie cursed the distant cry of her youngest sister.
Trapped.
Straightening, she looked to Jeremy and found him scouring the area around them. His gaze landed on the nearest building. “Come,” he urged, stretching his gloved hand toward her.
Without hesitating, Linnie linked their fingers. They’d taken two steps into their launch when a cloaked figure stepped out into their path.
She and Jeremy abruptly stopped midflight.
Meghan looked back and forth between Linnie and Jeremy. Utter shock stamped her younger sister’s heavily freckled features.
Gasping, Linnie’s hand became disentangled from Jeremy’s.
Her heart climbed into her throat, and she tried to swallow around it. “Meghan,” she whispered.
This time came Lord Culross’s shouted, and closer, “Miss Smiith!”
Frantic, Linnie looked to Jeremy . . . and found his stare locked with Meghan’s.
Linnie’s sister averted her gaze and turned on her heel, starting in the direction of the earl’s voice.
Jeremy didn’t waste any time in grabbing Linnie’s hand and hurrying her over to a nearby crude oak door. He shoved it open, and they went stumbling inside together.
A deafening cacophony of frantic squawks rushed to greet them, the cries of chickens and roosters growing imminently louder as Jeremy pushed the panel shut behind them.
Covering her ears, Linnie laughed and looked about.
While she and Jeremy moved deeper into the poultry house, winding their way between cages, she tried to make herself heard over the din. “I daresay no one shall discover us here.”
“It is fair to say.” Jeremy flashed a wry grin. “Though, given Fleur declared all the McQuoid-Smith livestock pets, there is the risk she might come and find us by chance.”
She laughed.
Jeremy winked and wandered on a bit.
Sighing, Linnie melted inside and stared longingly after him as he walked away. It was hardly fair that he, with a mere quick up-and-down flutter of his sooty lashes, should have this effect upon her.
Oh, it’s not just you. Did you forget the night of your reunion, when Jeremy mistook you for a paramour, when he’d really been awaiting two women?
Her smile faded.
Linnie should have still been more scandalized and horrified over that wickedness than hurt.
“What is it?”
Blinking, Linnie glanced over at Jeremy. He stood frowning. “Hmm?”
With sleek steps, he returned. “Here.” Jeremy dusted a fingertip along the right corner of her lips and then the left.
Linnie’s mouth trembled; her entire body did, from just that slightest of caresses. “It is nothing.”
“It is definitely something if you’re frowning, love,” he murmured.
Jeremy teased the pad of his thumb along her lower lip.
Linnie spun away.
“I don’t know what we’re doing!” she said desperately.
He stared, perplexed. “I thought we were hiding.”
“Jeremy,” she said pleadingly, “I don’t understand any of this.”
Without a doubt, he knew what she spoke of.
“Fine.” Jeremy scrubbed a hand through his black, windswept hair. “I don’t know what to say. We are having a good time with one another.” He paused. “As we used to,” he quietly added. “And I don’t know what else to say, other than I really do like being with you, Linnie.”
Her throat moved up and down. “I love being with you,” she confessed.
Aching, she closed her eyes so she needn’t see him.
“It feels so very good and right, being with you.” She forced herself to look at him.
“But why would you seek my company, Jeremy?” she begged, desperate to know.
“Why, when you are feuding with my entire fam—” Linnie’s word cut on a breathy gasp as Jeremy cupped a strong palm about her nape.
Lowering his head, he touched his mouth to hers; this kiss was tender where his first had not been. He gently worshipped her mouth, gliding his firm lips over Linnie’s softer ones with such reverence . . . as if Linnie were a beloved goddess whose favor he courted.
Linnie sighed, slid her eyes shut, reached up to loop her arms about Jeremy’s neck, and kissed him in return.
He moved his lips over hers slowly, taking his time, when last time, there’d been only furious, frenzied passion.
She dimly registered Jeremy reaching behind them, and then they were stumbling into a separate room, an empty office.
He closed the door on that swell of chickens, heightening the silence. In here, she and Jeremy existed on the edge of the world, away from everyone and everything else.
Their lips lightly found one another again and again.
This devout yet fervent kiss proved no less potent, melting her insides, and the intimate place between her legs—touched only by this man—throbbed.
She moaned and shifted her hips to alleviate the ache there.
“Jeremy,” she beseeched, needing him to ease that pain.
“Ah, my love,” he said between kisses, his voice thick. “I know what you want, but I want to be gentle for you, as you deserved your first kiss to be. I failed you.”
She angled away just enough so their eyes could meet, so that he could see her full soul on display. “I don’t want you to treat me like some fragile, lofty lady too pure to tou—”
Not allowing her to finish the rest of her plea, Jeremy growled and crushed his mouth against hers.
“Open for me,” he ordered. That harsh, hungry command left her shamefully wet.
Joyously parting her lips to freely give what he’d demanded, she returned his kiss in kind. They battled with their tongues; her flesh and his moved like fiery brands.
A blast of cool air came up to hit her lower limbs.
Instinctively, she knew what he wished from her and let her legs slide open, just as he made to instruct her.
Fire blazed in Jeremy’s eyes. “You are magnificent,” he praised and rewarded Linnie by filling his hands with her buttocks and digging his fingers into the soft flesh.
Incapable of words, she just moaned into his mouth.
Jeremy scooped her up and seated her on the cold edge of a wood desk.
All the time he continued wrapping his tongue around hers, battling Linnie for domination, he slid a hand between their bodies.
Jeremy’s fingers touched her embarrassingly wet womanhood.
Linnie’s hips came shooting up, and she cried into his mouth.
“I’m going to help you.” He breathed that vow against her cheek.
That promise sent a delicious shiver through Linnie.
As Jeremy trailed his tongue down the length of her neck, he petted her thatch, threading those long digits within her damp curls.
Then in the same way he’d slipped his tongue within her mouth and stroked her over and over, Jeremy slid a finger inside her channel.
Arching her head back, Linnie screamed to the ceiling overhead.
“Do you like that, love?” he breathed. “Or,” Jeremy teased, “would you like me to stop?”
She cried out. “No!”
Jeremy flashed a smug smile. “Given how absolutely drenched you are for me, love, I didn’t think so.” Only the corners of his eyes and mouth revealed the strain his efforts were having on him.
Seating himself beside her, Jeremy continued to kiss her neck.
While he gave Linnie what she yearned for, she closed her eyes, rested her head against his shoulder, and gave herself completely over to his magic.
Jeremy alternated. He’d move his fingers inside her, withdrawing and then gliding back in, and then his pace would quicken until Linnie found herself climbing to some uncertain peak.
But each time she’d begin to soar off that dangerous, unknown cliff, where she could be free of the anguished ache, he stopped.
His own breathing had become ragged, shallow, and hoarse.
Stealing a glimpse up, she found his features as strained as her own; light beads of moisture dotted his hairline.
“Are y-you in pain too?” she whispered.
Jeremy inhaled shakily. “Aye.” His lashes dipped. “But I don’t want my beautiful Linnie to suffer.”
With that, he folded an arm around Linnie, angled her toward him, and even as he kissed her hard and fast, his fingers picked up the cadence within her.
That pressure of before built, and the agony grew deeper. “J-Jeremy?” His name emerged, pitchy and panicked.
“Don’t be afraid, love,” he rasped. With his spare hand, he eased her cloak back and slipped the bodice of her dress down until he’d bared her breasts. “You’re going to come, and it is going to be wonderful.”
The cool air kissed her skin, and she gasped.
Then Jeremy lowered his mouth to the right swell and took the pebbled peak in his mouth.
Linnie cried out. While he simultaneously punished her and pleasured her with a new form of torture, her hips took on a life of their own. She lifted into his touch, shoved herself against his hand.
Suddenly, her body stiffened.
“Don’t be afraid, love,” he coaxed. “I want you to come all over my fingers—”
Jeremy’s forbidden words proved the final catalyst.
Screaming and weeping, Linnie bucked and thrust. Jeremy didn’t let up. He moved his fingers inside her over and over until Linnie’s entire body shuddered and the nerve endings in her core spasmed.
With a dying rasp, Linnie collapsed against Jeremy’s side.
She frantically tried to breathe and failed. Her lungs burnt and her chest rose and fell so hard she shook.
She’d never felt like this. There’d never be anything like this, or anyone like this man.
Jeremy pressed his lips against her temple. “Good?” he murmured.
Still unable to get words out, Linnie managed a shaky nod.
He rewarded her honesty with a long, slow kiss.
When he ended that too-quick embrace, Linnie’s lashes fluttered open.