Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
She’d spent part of the ride back to Crabbett Close asleep in Mungo’s arms. Safe, she had thought as they left Three Waters, and the hell they’d narrowly escaped, behind.
They had spoken very little on the journey, and Eliza had been grateful for the silence.
It had been enough simply to feel Mungo’s solid warmth behind her after so much fear.
But that fragile sense of peace slipped into uncertainty the moment they’d entered Crabbett Close in the early hours of the morning.
The cart had taken the girls to the Hellion household, and Mr. Greedy was to be roused to tend them there. She’d offered to help, but Mungo had told her there would be enough hands to do that, as she was exhausted.
He had then dismounted outside number 11 with her still in his arms. The second her feet touched the ground, she stepped away from him.
After offering a garbled but heartfelt thank-you to the men who had saved her, Eliza had hurried up the steps, through the door, and into the waiting arms of Ivy, who had hugged her tight and then sent her to her room.
Eliza bathed, dressed in her nightgown, and climbed into bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. Her entire body ached from her scalp to the soles of her feet.
In the darkness, she begged sleep to take her. It didn’t. Her thoughts now churned restlessly instead.
What happens now?
Did Mungo want a future with her, or had she imagined everything in the terror and relief of the night?
The knock on her door came an hour later. She climbed out of bed and opened the door to see an angry Scotsman standing there.
“Why are you still angry?” Eliza asked, stepping back to let him in.
“You took risks tonight you should not have, Eliza.”
“You can leave if you are going to yell at me. I’m tired and wish to sleep.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
Though his feet were bare, he still wore his trousers and a shirt, unlike Eliza in her nightclothes.
“That is what I am trying to do,” she snapped back. “Go away, and I will try again.”
“First, I’m going to talk some reason into you to ensure you never take a risk like that again,” Mungo snarled.
His hair was standing on end and he had dark smudges under his eyes, and yet she still wanted to run at him. Have him hold her and drive away all the hurt and pain. All her fears and suffering. But that wasn’t how her life worked. Eliza could rely on no one but herself.
“We’ve discussed this, and I will always take a risk if it is to save you—or anyone,” she added.
“Not anyone. Me,” he said, his rigid stance softening.
“Why are you up here, anyway? You should be sleeping, Mungo.”
“Because I can’t stop thinking about you. I keep seeing you launch yourself at Ellington, like Boudica.”
He had her in his arms in seconds, and Eliza didn’t put up a fight. After the night she’d had, she wanted this—him.
“I was scared for you.”
“You’re always scared for someone,” she said, kissing his jaw. “But I don’t need you looking out for me.”
“Someone has to.” His breath was hot on the skin of her neck. “I want you, Eliza. So tell me to leave, or I’m staying.”
“I should want you to leave.”
“But?”
“But I don’t.”
He eased back, and then his fingers were lifting her chin so their eyes met, and every doubt she’d had fled. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’m not an innocent, if that’s what you are asking me.” The words came out fast. “That’s why my uncle threw me out of his house.”
“Tell me.” He kissed her softly.
“No.”
His lips teased hers for long seconds. “Please.”
She couldn’t remember a time he’d said please.
“Niall worked in my uncle’s stables. We started talking.”
She’d been so desperate to have someone see her. Someone care about the pain she was going through. The girl with the burned hand and broken heart that she’d known would never heal.
“My uncle found us one day in a stall.”
“Bastards, both of them,” Mungo rasped.
His arms locked around her, crushing her to him. Eliza felt the anger thrumming through him, leashed and dangerous, but all of it aimed outward at the two men who had hurt her.
“It was a long time ago,” she whispered. “I was foolish and lonely. Niall said I was pretty and that he didn’t care about my hand. I was desperate for affection,” she said, needing to explain why she’d done what she had.
His gaze dropped to the hand that was usually covered by a glove. His thumb brushed the back of it, slowly, carefully.
“He should have done more than not care,” Mungo said hoarsely. “He should have treasured you.”
Heat prickled behind her eyes. “Niall said he would marry me, and I was foolish enough to believe him. My uncle told me if I stayed under his roof, I’d bring ruin on the house. So I left.”
“You came to London?”
She nodded. “My uncle gave me money. I know there was more, my father’s money, but he gave me enough to survive until I found employment.”
He swore softly, the sound low and vicious against her hair. “I’d like to meet your uncle.”
“You’d hit him.”
“Aye.” He didn’t even pretend otherwise. “And probably more than once. Then I’d find this Niall.”
She gave a shaky laugh that felt like it might spill over into tears. “Niall only took what I let him,” she said. “I was the one who went to the stable. I was the one who—”
“You were a lonely girl,” Mungo cut in. “That’s no crime. Your uncle judged you where he should have protected you.”
His voice had softened on the word girl, and something inside her clenched. No one had ever talked about that day without condemning her.
She swallowed. “I don’t tell you this so you’ll pity me, Mungo. I tell you so you understand that I know what I am agreeing to.”
His fingers tightened on her waist. “Eliza, do you think that’s why I asked? Because I thought you innocent?”
“You said you didn’t want to hurt me.”
“Aye, because I am not a gentle person,” he growled. “Because when I want something, I want it with all of me. And I have wanted you for so long.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs. “You’d never hurt me.”
“You can’t know that.” His mouth twisted.
“I am in Bram’s house, a man I trust and respect more than any and should know better than to lie with you here, but I can’t resist you anymore.
” He searched her face. “I’ve no right to touch you.
And yet tonight, watching you leap into danger, thinking I might lose you before I’d even worshipped you properly…
.” He broke off, shaking his head. “I thought I would go mad,” he whispered.
He looked tired… Vulnerable, she thought, and unlike the Mungo she knew so well.
“Eliza.” The way he said her name was different this time. A plea and a warning both.
She slid her hands up his chest, feeling the hard planes of muscle beneath his shirt, the rapid pounding of his heart against her palms. “I don’t want to be a girl in a stable this time,” she said quietly. “I don’t want secrecy and shame. I want to remember every moment.”
He made a sound then, low and raw, and any last restraint he’d been holding onto snapped.
One moment she was standing there, the next her back was pressed against the cool panel of her bedroom door with his body caging hers in. Mungo framed her face gently and ran his thumb over her cheekbone.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmured against her mouth. “If I go too fast, too far. Tell me, and I swear I will.”
“You won’t hurt me,” she said again, knowing her words for the truth.
His lips claimed hers, and this time there was nothing tentative about it. The kiss was deep and hungry as his hands went to her hair. The world outside the room and what they’d endured mere hours ago faded as Eliza rose to her toes to meet him.
His hands slid from her face, skimming down her neck and over her shoulders, pausing at the sleeves of her nightgown.
“Yes,” she said before he could ask.
Slowly, he began to work at the fastenings, his fingers not as steady as they usually were when handling weapons or reins. She realized, with a jolt of wonder, that he was nervous.
“You’re trembling,” she murmured.
“So are you,” he returned.
He slowly opened the buttons and then eased the dress from her shoulders. Eliza shivered as he pushed it down her body. Every time his fingers brushed bare skin, sensation followed, and soon she was moaning.
When the sleeves slid over her burned hand, she instinctively curled it into a fist.
“Let me see you,” he said.
Her stomach knotted. “You have seen it.”
“I want to see it now, after Mr. Greedy’s ointment.”
She forced herself to keep still as he lifted her hand in his, turning it so the light caught the uneven, shiny surface of the old burn.
“It feels easier with the massaging and ointment,” Eliza whispered.
Mungo said nothing for a long moment, his thumb tracing up and down her fingers.
“This hand,” he said at last, voice thick, “held a frightened girl’s fingers tonight and kept them steady. It has bandaged wounds, poured tea, mended things, and held books.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “Never feel anything but pride for it, as I do.”
Tears stung her eyes. “My uncle hated looking at it, and he used to turn away if I wore no gloves.”
“If your uncle could not see the worth of you, that is his blindness.”
He pressed his lips to her palm, to the damaged skin.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Don’t thank me for kissing the parts of you I already cherish.”
“I feel off-balance when you’re sweet.”
He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “I’ll try and balance it out by being grumpy.”
“If you could, I’d be grateful.” This time she framed his face. “I doubt many have seen this side of you.”
“We all have sides, Eliza, and reasons for hiding behind them.” His lips brushed hers again.
She worked at the buttons of his shirt, and then, impatient, he took control and wrenched it over his head. His breath hitched when her hands slid over the skin he’d exposed. So warm, she thought, and solid.
“Eliza,” he said softly. “Look at me.”
“I am looking at you.”
“Look in my eyes and know that if you change your mind at any point, I will stop. I will hold you and nothing more.”
“I won’t change my mind, so you don’t have to keep cautioning me, Mungo. I am no gently bred woman who must always behave like a lady—”
“You’re not going to behave like a lady?”
She studied him, this fierce man with the careful hands and gruff exterior that she now knew was how he kept himself safe.
“I have regretted so many things I could not control in my life,” she said. “I refuse to regret something I choose for myself.”
“Then I will try to be worthy of that choice,” he said solemnly.
They moved to her bed together, almost clumsily, bumping into the edge.
Mungo drew back the covers and lifted her onto the mattress as if she weighed nothing, then followed her down in a slow, controlled descent so his weight didn’t crush her. The mattress dipped around them, the familiar creak of the frame oddly comforting.
He kissed her slowly this time, as if they had hours until the household was roused, his warm lips mapping her mouth, the line of her jaw, and the sensitive hollow just below her ear. He traced the curve of her waist and lower to the slope of her hip.
She arched into his touch, her own fingers roaming over his back, feeling the bunch and flex of muscle.
“You’re beautiful,” she said.
He huffed against her throat. “Lass, I look like someone carved me from a cliff.”
“A very fine cliff,” she said and felt rather than saw his answering smile.
His hand slid up her side, then paused, hovering just below the swell of her breast.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He cupped her then, his touch reverent as one large thumb brushed over the sensitive peak of a nipple until she gasped. Heat coiled low in her belly as the tension inside her rose.
The world narrowed to him and Eliza, here in her small room. His mouth on her throat, his hands exploring her body. Each new caress made her moan and sigh, his touch nothing like the fumbling of a stable hand hidden away in a smelly stall.
When his hand slid lower, over the soft plane of her belly, she caught it, not to push away but to hold it there.
“I’m here,” he murmured. “We’ve plenty of time, my sweet Eliza.”
“I keep expecting someone to take you away from me,” she admitted.
“They’d have to be very determined,” he said dryly. “I’ve waited too long for this.”
“How long?”
His gaze traveled slowly up her body to her face. “Since the day you walked through our front door.”
“That wasn’t long ago.”
“It feels like months,” he whispered into her neck.
His fingers moved lower, through the soft dark curls. Eliza tensed as his long finger ran over the seam between her thighs. Niall had done nothing but thrust inside her. That had hurt, but this was so different. Mungo was worshipping her body.
He watched her as the pressure deepened, and then his finger was inside her slick, damp heat, the delicate muscles tightening as he stroked.
Her thoughts scattered. The shame of her memories with Niall and her uncle’s fury faded. It was just her and Mungo now and the magic his hands were creating inside her.
“Easy,” he muttered, though she couldn’t tell if he was speaking to her or to himself. “I’ve got you.”
And he did. In every way that mattered.
“And I have you,” she whispered.
His thumb moved to the sensitive bud and stroked, adding yet more delicious tension.
She sighed his name as it became unbearable, and then she was arching, scaling the peak of pleasure.