Wicked Nights With a Lover (The Penwich School for Virtuous Girls #3)(13)

He lifted his mouth, blew warm air against the engorged tip, and raised his head to look at her, holding her gaze.

She released a strangled sob at the darkly familiar eyes. Taunting demon eyes. Devilish and seductive.

He shouldn’t be here. It should be Roger, not him. Not him!

But it was just a dream. A mere dream. With that whisper coaxing its way through her head, she relaxed back on the bed again and accepted the magic of his mouth and hands, the delicious weight of his large body bearing her down.

Moaning, she let her head drop to the side, fisting the coverlet. And she saw the other pair of eyes then, watching from the dark still of the corner, a voyeur of her most intimate tryst. A chill chased through her at the flaming white eyes set in a face shadowed beneath a deep hood.

Gasping, she jerked upright, pushing at the warm male chest too muscled to belong to Roger. But not another. Not a certain brutish man of the streets.

“What? What is it?” her lover whispered, his hand skimming down her throat, focused on only her.

“Him.” She pointed a shaking finger at the cloaked figure. So tall and thin, she doubted whether anything thicker than a rail stood beneath the voluminous folds of the cloak.

“Oh, him.” Her lover’s voice was all nonchalance. “He can wait. For now.”

A niggling awareness curled with the rippling heat coursing through her body, distracting her from the full pleasure of her lover.

Her attention strayed back to that watchful figure, so stark, dark and faceless save the glowing eyes. He spoke to her. But not in any tangible way. Not with words. His voice reached inside her, into her mind.

I’m here for you … soon now … soon …

Understanding slammed into her with gale-force power.

She lurched upright, screaming, ready to flee, to run as far from that dark figure as her legs would carry her, even if it meant losing the lover whose mouth and hands worked magic upon her. It wasn’t worth it. Not if it brought Death.

She blinked in the suddenly altered air, the scream still caught in her throat. She looked about her wildly, serrated breath tripping from her lips. She skimmed a hand down, feeling her night rail covering her body. Just a dream.

The curtains at her window fluttered as if a wind had just blown through. With the mullioned glass sealed tight?

Her flesh puckered to gooseflesh. She chafed her arms, running her hands over them, concentrating on steadying her hammering heart.

A swift rap sounded at her door. She jumped, swallowing down another cry.

“Miss Laurent!” Mrs. Dobbs’s disembodied voice drifted through her bedchamber door. “Are you well?”

Marguerite cleared her throat, managing strangled speech. “I am fine, Mrs. Dobbs. Simply a nightmare. Forgive me. I did not mean to disturb your rest.”

“Not at all, dear. Only wanted to assure myself you weren’t being murdered in your bed.”

She bit down on her fist at Mrs. Dobbs’s flippant remark, feeling the words like a barb to her heart.

Not murdered. Not dead. Not yet, at any rate.

“I am well,” she called again.

“Good night then, dear.”

Marguerite fell back on the bed, sighing deeply as her head sank into the pillow. She listened to the heavy tread of the proprietress fade down the corridor. In the distance, a door opened and shut, the sound desolate as it echoed through the night.

Rolling to her side, she burrowed beneath the coverlet, seeking warmth, grasping the fleeting scraps of her resolve to do everything in her power to seize her life and mark it as her own, to avoid a fate like the one Madame Foster had described.





Chapter 6

Ash sat upright in bed and glared down at the large, blinking blue eyes of the tousled female beside him. “What did you just say?”

“Easy there, love.” Mary smoothed a hand over his bare shoulder, her gaze hungrily following the stroke of her hand on his flesh, like she wanted her lips there instead, tasting everything she touched.

He leaned forward, draping his arms loosely upon his propped knees, and stared dazedly ahead as he absorbed her words, his blood simmering to a furious burn in his veins. “Are you certain it’s true?”

“Aye.” Mary fell back on the bed, mindless of her nudity. She and Ash had been lovers off and on for years. Long before Jack made him a partner. Hell, back when he was just one of Jack’s managers. Their long-standing friendship made her someone he could trust. A girl brought up alongside him on the streets, in the days when he picked pockets to survive, would always have his back.

“The great Jack Hadley has gone and gathered his entire flock. All girls. Daughters, can you believe it? It’s almost amusing. For all his procreating, he never fathered a son. Suppose you’re the closest he’ll ever have to that.”

With a growl, he shook his head. Not a son. A son was told things and kept apprised, and Jack had kept him in the dark over the matter of his daughters. Not an oversight, Ash was certain. Everything Jack did was with methodical deliberation.

Not that it shocked Ash to learn that Jack had fathered offspring. He only felt shock over the fact that he was suddenly interested in claiming his progeny—that they suddenly possessed value in his eyes.

Jack was no sentimentalist. He did nothing without benefit to himself. For no other reason had he made Ash his partner. He saw the advantage in it. Claiming his illegitimate offspring had to provide him with something. Ash knew Jack well enough to know that he cared for no one more than himself.