Page 35 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

Viv was breaking her most sacred rule:

No romantic entanglements until a successful playwright career is well established.

After years of being certain she didn’t even like Wynchesters, she couldn’t quite fathom how she’d wound up in this one’s embrace.

Except for the part where she’d wrapped her arms about his neck and pulled him close.

Their entanglement wasn’t a romance , Viv assured herself. This was just a kiss. Men dished out kisses all the time without it meaning any particular commitment. Surely, she could be just as nonchalant.

But Jacob was a maddeningly good kisser, damn him. His lips were warm and inviting, his taste sweet and forbidden. He emanated heat like a fire on a winter’s day: comforting, yet dangerous to touch.

Here she was, doing plenty of touching. Not merely approaching the fire but stoking the flames.

Pressing her entire body against him, from bosom to hips.

Not that he was complaining. All physical signs indicated he would be happy to lean her back across this sideboard and take her right here, with the scattered piles of her failed plays as a mattress.

At least the pages would be used for something.

But Viv was now the playwright of her own life. The architect of her own success or ruin. She could stop this kiss before it went too far. She could exit this embrace any time she pleased.

The surprise twist was that she didn’t want to stop. She not only liked Jacob’s kisses, she liked him far more than she wished to admit.

His soulful eyes and slow smile and strong body—those elements were why every woman he passed took a second glance. Viv had seen beyond that.

She had been in his home. In his barn. In his arms. She knew how kindhearted he was, how insightful, how stubborn and clever.

He’d never voiced it, but she also understood deep in her marrow how it felt to be good at something, to have drive and tenacity, to have a calling, only to be overlooked or dismissed out of hand because of the prejudices of those in power.

She would rather have in common that they were the two most famous writers in England—or the world!

Which unfortunately reminded her that in order to earn that someday, she needed to stop kissing this delicious man and return to real life. With far more regret than she dared to show, Viv untangled her hands from behind Jacob’s neck and lowered her lips from his.

“I…” she began, flustered to have momentarily forgotten all of her best objections.

He nodded. “Me, too.”

Had he read her mind? Or did he think she meant something else entirely?

Jacob dropped to a crouch, swiftly gathering all of the fallen papers before she had a chance to clean up her own mess.

“Set them anywhere,” she said. “They’ll take hours to put in order, and there’s no sense bothering. No one wants to read them.”

“I do,” he answered. “I’ll put them in order for you.”

“You don’t have to,” she said quickly.

His brown eyes were gentle.

“I want to,” he said simply, his voice soft and warm. “Let me do something for you, just this once. You can tell yourself it’s a blatant selfish bid for free reading material at any cost.”

She snorted, despite herself. “That doesn’t even make sense. Besides, you and your entire family are already doing things for me. Finding Quentin is far more important than reading my plays or… anything else we might have been doing.”

He arched his brows. “What else might we do?”

Her neck heated. His kiss wasn’t one she would be forgetting soon—or ever.

A kiss like that would turn up in her next ten plays, right along with the happy endings she couldn’t manage to write for herself in the real world.

A kiss like that deserved footlights and fireworks and a standing ovation.

She’d be replaying it in her dreams for the rest of her life.

“I’ve forgotten the entire incident,” she assured him. “As though it never happened. Two strangers, staying strange. I mean celibate. I mean separate.” Good God, what was this jumble of word soup flowing from her mouth? “I’m busy, you’re busy,” she babbled. “Don’t let me keep you from your tasks.”

His eyes glittered with amusement, as though The lady doth protest too much, methinks was on the tip of his tongue.

“Don’t you dare say a word,” she muttered. “Walk away while we both still can.”

He tucked the thick sheaf of papers under one muscular arm and held out the other elbow. “Aren’t we going in the same direction? I have to infiltrate a monastery within the hour, but if you’d rather not join our next planning session…”

She grabbed his arm as if he were saving her from drowning. Not because she wanted to touch him again. She was almost completely over that unquenchable impulse. But mostly because finding her cousin was her highest priority, which meant being on hand to hear any news or craft any strategies.

He handed her the stack of papers. “You’ll have to hold these.”

She frowned up at him. “Nobody has to hold them. They’ll be fine lying between us in the carriage.”

He grinned. “I didn’t bring a carriage.”

“What—” She followed him out the front door to discover a lone gray horse tied to an iron post. “You didn’t even bring a saddle ?”

“Be glad I didn’t, or we wouldn’t both fit. Do you want to grab onto me from behind, or do you want to sit on my lap?”

Her face was on fire. Her entire body was on fire. Should she slap him now, or after she ravished him atop his stallion?

“Behind you,” she said swiftly. That had to be safest. She could hide her burning face and all the rest of her body. As she pressed herself tightly against him. Nipples and thighs and all. Purely for safety’s sake.

Soon, the wind whipped past them as Jacob flew through the cobblestone streets.

Her notebook and the jumbled plays were safe in a leather satchel, the long strap of which looped across her torso.

A torso that would have been glued against his back, if her ankle-length skirts hadn’t prevented her from riding astride.

Viv would be lying if she denied that a large part of her wished to channel Lady Godiva, and ride this horse naked—if it meant pressing her body more fully against Jacob’s.

God help her, she was smitten.

This morning’s breakfast had been the first time in Viv’s adult life that someone had helped her, unasked, without expecting her to do something for them in return.

Even the one great kindness of her youth had not been without strings attached. After Aunt Kamia abandoned an orphaned ten-year-old girl to suffer the rest of her life in slavery, Viv’s aunt had finally rescued her from that horrid plantation… in exchange for a different kind of servitude.

Jacob’s kindnesses were given freely. The only thing he wanted was to make her happy. Viv had no idea how to respond to that.

And Lord knew, she wouldn’t erase the kiss they’d shared for anything.

The horse soon slowed to a stop.

“We’re here,” Jacob said cheerfully.

Viv wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad news.

The end of the ride meant she no longer had an excuse to press her cheek against his warm back and wrap her arms tightly around his chiseled stomach.

At least, she imagined it was chiseled. He was wearing too many layers of clothing for her to have been able to execute a subtle investigation to her satisfaction.

She lifted her head and peeled her arms from his abdomen.

He slipped down from the horse without dislodging her in the slightest and held out his hands. “Can you descend on your own, or would you like me to catch you?”

Both. Viv could jump from heights much higher than this and land on her feet, but she’d be damned if she’d waste an opportunity to have Jacob’s hands on her body again.

As he lowered her to the ground with care, hoofbeats thundered up behind them.

She glanced over her shoulder just as a messenger on horseback pulled to a stop beside Jacob.

“Letter for the Wynchester family,” said the lad.

Jacob held out his hand. “I’m a Wynchester.”

“Note that he is using a saddle,” Viv whispered behind her hand.

Jacob’s eyes sparkled. “You liked the ride.”

She’d like a different kind of ride even better. Maybe tonight, when the work was done…

The messenger approached without meeting their eyes. The moment the letter was in Jacob’s hand, the footman tore off down the road as if the hounds of hell were after him.

Viv frowned. “In an awful big hurry, wasn’t he?”

Jacob shrugged. “Footmen generally have more tasks assigned than they have time to do them.”

“Footmen generally are on foot,” she pointed out. “Hence the name. Idle lords famously spend hundreds of pounds wagering over how fast and how far their footmen can run. That messenger was on horseback.”

“Maybe his employer isn’t a numbskull.” Jacob handed his own horse off to one of the Wynchester servants with thanks and a smile.

“Did you recognize his livery?”

“I didn’t even notice his uniform,” he said with a chuckle. “You must be confusing me with my brother Graham. Who, like you, always thinks everyone else is up to something.”

“They usually are,” she muttered.

“Do you know what I wouldn’t mind getting up to?”

She smiled. “Please tell me you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

He widened his eyes innocently. “Biscuits. I wager Cook has fresh ones in the oven.”

She stifled a snort of laughter. “Are you bamming me? You’re hungry again, after that breakfast we just had?”

They bickered playfully up the front walk and into the house, stopping only when they reached the sitting room and half a dozen faces turned in their direction.

“Oh, it’s you two,” said Graham. “I heard horses. I’m waiting for news on the Rainsford case.”

“I think it just arrived. As we were heading in, a footman handed me a note addressed to…” Jacob’s voice cut off as he glanced for the first time at the letter in his hand.

Viv felt the sudden tension emanating from his body. Her own flesh ran cold in response.

Marjorie rose to her feet. “Something’s wrong.”

“Another rejection?” asked Adrian. “Don’t take it so hard. Honestly, Marjorie and I could fashion for you as many printed and bound books as you like, completely indistinguishable from—”

“Addressed to all of us,” Jacob said. “‘Wynchester Family.’ There’s a smear of red in one corner. It almost looks like… dried blood.”

“It’s not blood,” said Philippa, her voice shaking. “Is it?”

Marjorie plucked the letter from Jacob’s hand and scanned it. “I recognize the handwriting. This is from that hoaxer who claimed to have kidnapped Horace Wynchester.”

“What?” asked Viv, startled.

“There’s nothing to fear,” Philippa assured her. “There is no Horace Wynchester.”

“But there is blood,” Marjorie said softly. “Jacob’s right.”

A heavy silence filled the room.

“Why is there blood?” Viv whispered. “Is that normal?”

“Was the messenger bleeding?” asked Graham.

Viv was ashamed to admit she hadn’t noticed. Her eyes had been on Jacob.

“We receive heaps of utter nonsense,” he said. “It could be nothing.”

“It is nothing,” said Philippa. “There’s no Horace, therefore there’s no problem. Throw that letter into the fire with the others.”

Viv looked at the cold fireplace. “There is no fire.”

“It’s symbolic,” Jacob murmured. “May is too warm for a fire. We’ll turn it into ash in October.”

“You lot are no fun at all,” said Marjorie. “At the least, we ought to read the hoax before we burn it. I told you the silly ones belong in a special album.”

Jacob took the letter back from his sister and broke the seal. “It says:

Dear Wynchester Family,

You do not appear to understand the gravity of your situation. If you do not cease investigating at once, your brother Horace will die.

See below for proof that his blood still flows… for now.”

Viv’s flesh went cold.

“Dramatic,” said Marjorie. “What proof did he send?”

Jacob held up the letter so they could all see. “A bloody thumbprint.”

“That’s commitment to the ruse,” Philippa said, impressed. “A hoaxer cutting his own thumb, in the hopes that we would believe—”

“No,” Viv gasped. “There’s a scar on that thumb.”

Jacob squinted at the dried blood. “It could be where he cut himself. Or just a smudge. Besides, what does it matter if—”

“I know that thumb.” She fumbled open the leather satchel and pulled out her notebook. There, on an otherwise neatly printed page, was the blackberry-preserves thumbprint Quentin had accidentally made the day they’d argued and he’d stormed off, never to return.

Marjorie’s wide blue eyes leapt from one print to the other.

“Identical,” she breathed. “This print belongs to…”

“My cousin.” Viv’s voice cracked.

Philippa’s brow creased. “Quentin faked his own abduction?”

Viv shook her head. She jabbed a trembling finger at the parchment. “Quentin faints at the sight of blood. Someone did this to him. You have to help. Someone has him. This is no hoax. Some malefactor has kidnapped my cousin and is willing to torture him to make us do as he demands.”