Secluded with the Rogue

6. Slip Out The Back Jack

Slip Out The Back Jack

“I ’ll take the floor.” Jack contradicted her. “Or, if you prefer, I can sleep somewhere downstairs.”

He wasn’t at all keen on sleeping in public places. If it weren’t so bollock-shrinking cold outside, he’d have simply made a bed on the bench of the carriage.

Although that would have been damned uncomfortable as well.

“No!” Delia burst off the bed. “This is your chamber. If I’m to stay, then I’ll be the one to sleep on the floor.”

“Do you honestly believe I could sleep knowing a lady is on the floor while I’m on a perfectly good mattress?”

“But—”

“We’ll share the bed,” Jack said. “You’ll be perfectly safe. Now that I know…” Jack’s gaze lingered on the sweet curve of her waist and the round flare of her lush bottom before catching himself.

He turned to stare out the window instead.

“Oh, of course. I’m not worried about that.” She ought to be. She put too much faith in his self-control. “You are a most trustworthy gentleman.”

He wondered at her confidence.

“I’ll change out here. You go behind the partition.”

“I won’t look. I promise.” The fact that she would make such an attempt to reassure him of privacy had Jack shaking his head.

Rothchild, whom Jack had given the holidays off to visit his aging parents, had warned him that a time would come that he’d regret making a habit of sleeping in the nude. His valet had pointed out more than once that, in the event of a fire, a person might not have time to don a dressing gown.

Jack scratched the side of his face as he stared into his trunk. On this particular occasion, anyway, he wouldn’t have minded having a nightshirt of some sort.

Only after rummaging through the contents did he decide that an old pair of breeches was going to have to do. They might feel confining, but as he would be sharing the bed with Delia, that might not be a bad thing.

He tossed his waistcoat aside, then his shirt. But when he went to grab a chair so he could begin the struggle with his Hessians, he paused.

His demure little miss had not, in fact, kept her promise.

Instead she was staring at his chest and arms looking like a person lost in the desert would a tall glass of water.

“Thank you.” She tugged at the hem of his shirt, which ended just above her knees. The glimpse of her creamy thighs reminded him how silky they’d felt beneath his fingers. “I thought you might need help with your boots.” She pointed. “My father and brother are constantly cursing them.”

Jack cocked a brow. She was clutching the tall bedpost, leaning against it with one leg bent in what he imagined was her attempt at modesty but having the opposite effect. She’d weaved her hair into a loose braid, and it draped over the tender swell of her breast.

Flickering light from the hearth cast her in mysterious shadows.

What was she doing? If they hadn’t just finished discussing that she very much was not a prostitute, he’d reconsider that he’d been mistaken.

Definitely too na?ve for her own good.

Although…

It wasn’t as though she had a proper dressing gown. What did he expect her to do? Wrap herself from head to toe in the counterpane?

“These blasted things are the only reason I miss having my valet.” Jack dropped his foot back onto the floor and reclined on the chair. “Pardon my language.”

But he was more than a little mesmerized as he watched her pad across the room and then crouch down in front of him.

“Was your valet traveling behind you? Do you think he’s caught in the storm?” She was kneeling and then sitting on her feet as she took hold of his heel and began tugging.

Jack blinked. His shirt was too large for her—so much so that it left a large gap down her front where he had a perfect view of?—

The boot she’d been working on broke loose and Jack chuckled at the pure satisfaction on her face. “You’ve done this before.”

“My father hasn’t kept a valet since the first time Bartholomew got himself into trouble.” She broke off, frowning. “When my mother isn’t available, I help him.”

Jack had never known anyone quite like her. “My valet is with his family for the holidays; they like to pack themselves together in a ridiculously tiny cottage once a year.”

“That sounds lovely.” She successfully removed his other boot, but rather than rise and tuck herself safely beneath the quilt on the bed, she remained sitting on her heels, staring up at him. “You gave him time off for the holidays—for Christmas.”

“Don’t read anything into that. When he’s happy. I’m happy.”

“Of course.”

Jack found it difficult to contemplate his valet’s circumstances with her staring up at him from the floor that way. Her gaze meandered across his shoulders to his chest and then down to where a smattering of black hairs disappeared into his partially unfastened breeches.

She’d told him she had never been kissed before and doubted she would ever be kissed again. Which meant no one had ever made love to her and, in her mind, never would.

Which was a damn shame. What had she said?

It was a rather wonderful kiss.

He studied his stockinged toes. “Thank you.” He barely recognized the gravelly tone of his voice. “He deserves a few days off,” Jack insisted. “It’s nothing.”

Before she could become all sentimental on him, he reached down and took her hands, assisting her to her feet. This entire situation had become more disturbing than he’d imagined it could be.

“I’m sure he doesn’t think of it as nothing.” She licked her lips.

Having helped her up, Jack relinquished her hands only to slide them around her waist, settling his palms on the curves of her hips.

Her scent, which was simple and clean, tantalized him. What was it about her?

“You liked being kissed?”

She did not push away from him, so he tipped his head forward, needing to see her expression. If he sensed even the slightest reluctance on her part, if he thought for an instant she would yield to him out of gratitude, he’d make his bed downstairs for the night.

Or hell, he’d sleep in the stables himself. He obviously needed some cooling off.

But he’d be damned if he would take something she didn’t want to give.

She held his gaze and nodded slowly.

“What do you want, Delia?”

Pink flushed her cheeks and neck. Jack waited, bracing himself for what was inevitably going to be one more disappointment.

She might be on the cusp of entering service, but she’d been raised in a genteel household. She was a lady.

She licked her lips, and Jack swallowed hard.

Delia might be a lady, but she was also a woman—a woman with needs.

“Do you want me to make love to you?”

She didn’t look away. She didn’t pretend to be shocked.

“I doubt I’ll have such an opportunity again.” Such honesty ought to have startled him, and yet, it didn’t. This woman had never been taught to tease or pretend.

She was utterly transparent—so refreshing.

“You’ll have other opportunities,” he had no doubt. But those opportunities weren’t likely to be with someone as skilled as himself.

She smiled weakly, shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”

“No one need know,” he assured her. “But you and me.”

“Just you and me.” She was nodding again, and then—“What if I change my mind?” She slid a wary glance toward the bed. “… During.”

“Then we stop.” Of course, stopping a second time would be tantamount to torture, but he’d take his chances.

“And in the morning, we go our separate ways,” Delia said. “I will not labor under the delusion that you love me and want to marry me, and you will not attempt to pay me.” Jack admired that she’d allow for no misunderstandings this time.

“We will simply be a man and a woman making the most of these unusual circumstances,” Jack agreed.

If she needed time to think it over, she wasn’t truly willing. He would not attempt to persuade or convince her.

“Yes.”

Jack barely heard her whisper. “What was that?”

“I’d like that.” She cleared her throat. “Just this one time. I’d like to know…”

Jack moved his fingers, squeezing the flesh between her waist and hips. “You will tell me,” he said. “If you change your mind at any point.”

“I will tell you.”

Jack was going to make love to her in that bed. The rush that exploded in his veins was unexpected and… humbling.

He dropped to his knees, smoothing his hands down her hips to where his shirt skimmed her thighs.

“I—what?” She stared down at him, even as she placed her hand on his head. Her fingers curled and she drew them through his hair.

Jack pressed his face against her belly. Soft, feminine. It wasn’t often a woman invited him to be her once-in-a-lifetime lover. He would live up to the task—that and enjoy himself immeasurably while doing so.

For such a tender thing, the muscles in her legs felt surprisingly strong. Jack kneaded the backs of her thighs as he teased her under the long shirt. Her hands clutched his shoulders and she swayed forward.

“You like this?” Jack inhaled her scent.

“Yes.” She whispered.

It would have been easy to push her onto the bed, finish unfastening the buttons on his falls, and take pleasure between her legs.

Too easy.

“What should I do?” she asked.

D elia was not the same person she’d left behind in London. She wasn’t a sister, a daughter, or a friend. She was a woman. No one need ever know, he’d promised.

But she needed to ascertain one last thing.

“You will not spend inside of me?” She’d spent too many evenings sitting amongst gossiping dowagers and married ladies not to know that this was important.

He paused and lifted his head, his dark eyes serious. “I will not.”

She exhaled.

Delia was going to do this. She was going to have sexual congress with a man who was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. And after, she would press the experience into her memory not unlike a debutante pressed a precious flower in her diary.

He worked his hands magically along the backs of her thighs.

“What do I need to do?” Her voice came out sounding low, and she marveled at the heaviness of her eyelids, her breasts, not to mention the pulsing between her legs.

Jack swooped her into his arms for the second time that day.

Oh, but this time was so very different. Sinking into the bed, she was under no illusion that he loved her, nor that he would marry her and carry her away to his castle on a hill where the two of them would live happily ever after.

Delia’s eyes were wide open, figuratively if not literally.

“You like kissing?” His breath caressed her cheek, and she opened her eyes. If she would only do this once in her life, she didn’t want to miss any of it.

“Yes,” she answered. His gaze flicked between hers. This close she could see his expression perfectly. She could almost count the black whiskers on the lower half of his face.

She had never considered a man’s lips before—that they would be soft or full or hard or sensual. Somehow, Jack’s managed to be all of those things.

He touched them to hers. “Like this?”

Nothing she’d tasted or might taste in the future could ever rival the flavor of Jack’s kiss. “Yes,” she whispered into his mouth.

Jack was all the things that she was not. He was experienced, confident, independent, and worldly. And muscles defined his body whereas tender flesh defined hers. She inhaled. His scent was leathery and warm and familiar but also different than anything else in the world.

The warmth of his hand seeped through the material of her shirt—his shirt. Just as he’d massaged her legs and thighs, he rubbed and gripped and pinched one aching breast and then the other.

His coaxing, in tandem with his mouth and tongue, drew a myriad of sensations from the deepest part of her—from her core—from the heart of her womanhood.

Jack trailed hot kisses around her chin, and then down her neck. “Do you know what you want?” His voice vibrated against her skin.

She felt like she was being offered the very best desserts in the world but could only decide on one of them. But she knew. She knew what she wanted—what she needed.

Taking his hand, she drew it down between them. But her courage faltered there. She could not place his hand between her legs, where she craved his touch, where she yearned to be filled.

But…

He knew.

“Here?” He pressed his palm against her apex, over the linen shirt. He sounded amused, but he wasn’t laughing at her.

And she doubted she’d have the desire to challenge him if he was. She covered his hand with one of hers and pressed.

“You like that, do you?”

“Yes.” That was where they would join. But rather than align himself with her, he walked backward on his knees, edging toward the foot of the bed, kissing his way down her body.

He drew a line with kisses over her chest to the curve of her shoulders to her elbow and her wrist. When his mouth found her abdomen, he exerted that enchanting pressure between her legs.

It ought to have been satisfying, it was, it was incredible, but it also had her writhing in search of something else…

More.

Cool air drifted over her thighs but only for the instant before she felt the rough texture of his beard. Delia clutched the sides of his head.

“Are you sure…?” She sputtered. This was all deliciously wicked, but it wasn’t what she’d expected. “Are you sure you’re doing it right?”

Delia stared down at the pale skin of her belly, her hips, and her thighs—which, even in the candlelight, contrasted vividly against his hair.

Was there a right and a wrong when it came to this sort of behavior?

Or, by the very nature of what she was doing, was it all wrong? Or did that make all of it right?

He stroked her seam, enflaming more warmth and wetness than she’d felt before, and then lifted his eyes to meet hers. His face was mostly in shadows, but she could still make out the tilt of his head and a cocked brow. “You don’t like this?”

“I like it, but…”

“But…?”

Delia had always heard that a man intent upon having relations would be focused solely on sliding his cock between his woman’s legs.

Jack seemed in no hurry whatsoever.

“Is this the proper way to do it?”

He contemplated his response before answering, and she rather appreciated that. “So long as I enjoy it, and you enjoy it, and this is between only you and I, then I would say, yes. It is proper.” He dipped his head just enough so that his chin grazed along the flesh below her navel. “Shall I proceed?” He was smiling, but he was also serious.

Delia hesitated only a moment. He had provided her with a very rational answer. “Yes, please.”

He responded by going right back to what he’d been doing.

“Relax.” His voice sounded muffled.

Relax .

How could she be sure that she didn’t miss out on any of this if she was relaxing?

His hands massaged her legs again, and when he urged them apart, she offered no resistance.

“Oh!” She tipped her head back, clenching and fighting whatever was threatening to wash her away. Was this the part where she was supposed to think of the queen? “This isn’t how my mother described it.”

Delia immediately regretted her words when Jack stopped what he was doing to look up at her.

“Do you want to do this the way your mother told you, or my way?”

“Your way.” She didn’t hesitate. “So long as you are enjoying it.”