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Her voice was like music in his ears, and he loved hearing her exclamations getting louder and louder as he took his time, exploring the pebbled tips of those breasts until they were thoroughly mapped, before moving to lick those delicate collarbones, to nip at her chin, and to suck the tender lobes of her ears. He didn’t bite, although she clearly expected him to, tensing up whenever he pulled some delicious bit between his lips, and laved it with his tongue.

But that wasn’t his aim at all.

Kit enjoyed turning areas not usually considered erogenous into ones that gave his partners reason to shiver, even long afterwards. He liked the idea of someone carelessly placing an elbow onto the top of a table and suddenly trembling all over in memory. He had given such fancies to half of Cambridge, the overproud sons of the upper classes, who ate at different tables from the poor scholarship boys and sneered at them in passing.

But they hadn’t sneered in bed, and he oft wondered how many still shivered slightly when a knuckle brushed over an Adam’s apple when getting dressed, remembering the feel of his teeth on it. Or sat too abruptly in a chair and had the vulnerable underside of a knee remind them of past days. Or sucked jam off a thumb and recalled his teeth for an instant.

And it wasn’t supposition; he knew they did. He’d personally watched one playing tennis and smiled at him when he raised an arm, the pit of which had come to know Kit’s nose quite well, as the boy had enjoyed being nuzzled there. He had fumbled his shot and glared at Kit, who had looked knowingly back.

And watched a blush stain those aristocratic cheeks.

But that sort of thing had been at least partly for the satisfaction of mastering those whose birth had allowed them mastery over him. It hadn’t been like this; it hadn’t been for love. And for a moment, Kit paused, for that was the first time he’d allowed himself to think that word.

He didn’t like it. If feeling free and happy was frightening, feeling love wasn’t even to be thought of. Love was something that other people felt and which he had been trained to use as a tool—to get information, to gain favor, to manipulate—but not something that he was supposed to feel.

Love left you vulnerable; love made you stupid; sometimes, all too often, love got you killed.

But Gillian . . . she’d flushed rosily halfway down her chest, warm despite the chill of the wind, protected by his body and cloak. But she was making little gasping sounds in her throat, desperate for him to start thrusting, to make her his, and yet he did not, using vampiric stamina to hold off, just a little longer, to drive her just a little wilder. He wanted to be the best she’d ever had, wanted to be the last she ever had, and the depth to which he wanted that was disturbing.

But then, he’d always been a man who liked risks. One who could have had a plush position with the church, his needs met all his days, with money, respectability, and an easy, predictable life. And died old and gray and in his bed many years from now, having never known danger or want or fear.

He had rejected it all to take on the much less certain life of a spy.

Or no, that was a lie, he thought, as Gillian shook underneath him. He’d never seriously considered that sort of life at all. He hadn’t worked so hard to go to Cambridge, to make something of himself, to live what might as well be a prison sentence of an existence.

That wasn’t living. This was living. Balanced on the edge of a knife, finally stroking into his lover, hearing her cry out in relief and surprise, smelling the sweet scent of her sex flood the air, feeling her clench around him.

No churchman had ever known ecstasy like this, no not even now when they could legitimately marry. He had been lectured about that, as with so many things: how to choose a proper, sober, temperate sort of woman, the kind who would be a credit to him. Instead of the kind who was gnawing on his neck like a fiend intending to eat him.

Kit’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he thought he would gratefully go to his death if it felt like this. Instead, he sped up, driving deeper and faster into his lover, partially because his restraint broke for a moment, carrying him away, and partly for the giggle it forced out of her. They could keep their staid maidens; he preferred experienced, redheaded temptresses fair fit to drive him mad!

Yet, after a moment, he got himself under control somehow, and slowed back down with a Herculean effort. He stroked shallower and slower, loving the feel of her body surrounding him, gripping him. And because he wanted to prolong this, wanted it to last, wanted this crystalline moment of pure joy to go on forever.

But Gillian had different ideas, and narrowed those magnificent eyes at him when she realized what he was doing. And clenched down hard, wrenching a gasping laugh out of his throat. Because he knew what she was doing and it was working.

He wondered briefly who was in charge here, while he had enough mind left to wonder anything at all. Which wasn’t long as she kept doing it, kept wringing his pleasure out of him, pulling his body back into rhythm with hers and refusing to stop. Not that he wanted her to, and his desire to prolong the moment quickly giving way to an even stronger wish: to see that final moment of ecstasy suffuse her cheeks and sparkle in her eyes.

The latter craving won.

He was grateful for the wind whipping past their hidden bolt hole, gusts of which were as loud as a banshee’s wails. Because he was even more vocal than she as their passion broke over them, as it shook their bodies and tore groans and sighs and reams of laughter out of them. He couldn’t remember the last time he had finished while laughing, or if he ever had, but he did that time.

And then wrapped himself around his lover, tucking her head into his neck, with his cheek against that beautiful hair as they panted together. And dared the gods to do their worst. He had known heaven, and they could all go to hell.

Section III: London and Beyond, 1595 (mostly)

Dory

Chapter Nineteen

It had started to rain, which hurt my head, although not from the droplets plunking down on top of it. But from the experience of leaving a rainy, blustery night only to end up in another one, seven years later. Time travel twisted my brain in a way that nothing else ever had, even portals.

I was coping by not thinking about it, and by reminding myself that at least Morgan wasn’t here. That was less than helpful, however, since we needed to be forming a plan for locating her and the ring she held before she managed to change time with it, which seemed to be her objective. And because I still had that same itch up my spine that had haunted me all day.

Well, one day.

Somewhere.

Somewhen?