Page 30 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)

Once more Ian watched Felicity fumble to fit the key in the lock of the school’s front door in the darkness, her shoulders drawn up tight and tense. Once more she raced for the carriage as if the very hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.

This time, he’d elected to wait outside the carriage lest he frighten her again with his unexpected presence within it. Her obligations to the school did not cease at any prescribed time—so he’d swiftly learned in the month of their marriage—but he’d had the use of the carriage for most of the day already and had seen no particular reason to keep her waiting to learn what he and Graves had accomplished after he’d returned her to the school earlier in the afternoon. He’d been waiting a half an hour already in the bitter cold.

Felicity clambered into the carriage the moment he opened the door for her, and she settled into her seat, her head dropping back with a weary sigh. In only a moment, her head popped up once more as she gave a delicate sniff.

“Do I smell—?”

Ian shoved his hand into his coat pocket as he climbed into the carriage himself, withdrawing a paper-wrapped item, which he tossed gently into her lap.

“Might not be hot any longer,”

he said as he rapped upon the roof of the carriage.

“I’ve been waiting a while.”

“Thank God,”

she said, with no small amount of feeling as she peeled back the brown paper concealing the beef pasty contained within.

“I’m half-starved.”

But even as she took the pasty into her hands, she paused a moment. The carriage rolled into motion, and as they passed a lone street lamp near the closest corner, a sliver of light slid across her face. She stared down at the pasty like it held a long-sought answer to some unknowable question within it, rather than just meat and potatoes and onions.

“Did you not eat at the school at all?” he asked.

The question startled her out of her strange daze. She tore into the pasty with sharp white teeth. “No,”

she said as she chewed and swallowed.

“I couldn’t. My stomach was in knots.”

He’d feared as much. Probably she would not sleep particularly well this evening, either.

“I don’t want you to worry,”

he said.

“And I know that must seem an impossibility for you—”

“It is,”

she said dryly, between bites.

“In the history of the world, not once has telling someone not to worry ever managed to produce that effect.”

And yet, she had managed to eat now. So he assumed that whatever knots might have been wrought of her stomach, they had, however marginally, eased. He said.

“Mr. Graves is eager to make amends for his mistakes. Between the two of us today, we’ve managed to visit every publication in the city to inform them that they should consider carefully what sort of gossip they are willing to print.”

“And…beyond the city?”

she inquired carefully as she finished off the last of her pasty.

London, she meant to say, most likely. Other than Brighton, it was the place she could most easily, most quickly be made notorious.

“It’s a possibility,”

he said.

“I don’t expect that to be the case, however. The sheer volume of London gossip leaves little room for anything else.”

Felicity folded up the paper wrapper and tucked it into the pocket of her coat.

“I wish I could have such confidence,”

she said softly.

“Have you learned anything new?”

Ian hesitated.

“Not much,”

he admitted.

“I’ve hired a few more men to make inquiries and to search the city, armed with Graves’ description of the woman. Regrettably, because she came to Graves at his office, he doesn’t know where she might be lodging. But I don’t believe it will matter. We know what they want, but not where or when they intend to collect it. They’ll have to inform you if they hope to receive the sum they desire. And the moment they slip a letter through the mail slot, we’ll have them.”

“One of them, at least,”

Felicity whispered.

“All we need is one,”

Ian said.

“There is no honor among thieves. I sincerely doubt one will be willing to suffer the legal consequences alone—most especially if we offer some manner of leniency in return for the capture of their compatriot.”

The carriage turned down their quiet street, slowing as it approached the house.

“I know it doesn’t feel it at the moment,”

he said.

“but there is a net stretched across the city, like the web of a spider. The very moment either of them tests it, there are men lying in wait to apprehend them. The house is being watched; the school is being watched. They might think they have the upper hand at the moment, but they can have no idea what we presently know, how much we’ve learned, and how easily it will be used against them.”

She gave a little nod, but it was not difficult to see that she remained unconvinced. Those dark brows were knit with worry, with the strain she’d endured these last weeks. What did it do to a person to suffer such concern for so long?

He grated out.

“It’s nearly over. I promise you that.”

As the carriage came to a stop before the grand house, Butler threw open the door…and Felicity’s sisters and brothers-in-law came pouring out of the house to greet her. Ian tried—and failed—to stifle a resigned sigh.

“I’ll skip this evening’s entertainment, if it’s all the same to you,”

he said wryly as he reached for the carriage door.

“There’s only so much glaring a man can be called upon to tolerate.”

Those dark brows winged down sharply, bewildered.

“But I owe you an hour,” she said.

“And I owe you a Christmas present,”

he returned.

“You never did tell me what you wanted. So instead, consider yourself absolved of any such obligation while your family is with us.”

The gift of time was perhaps the most precious thing he could offer her, given the circumstances.

“Thank you,”

she said as he pushed the door open for her, and it didn’t sound in the least resentful. She slid across her seat toward the door, rose to her feet, and paused.

Rather than slip out onto the pavement, she bent toward him, still well-concealed in the shadowy interior of the carriage, and kissed his cheek.

For a moment, Ian wished it was possible to peel it off his cheek and put it in his pocket, to turn it into a token he might pull out and admire when he had need of it. But she had misunderstood, and he owed it to her to correct that misapprehension. He cleared his throat and said carefully.

“Just to be plain, I meant you might consider yourself absolved of all such obligations.”

“I gathered as much,”

she said as she slipped out of the carriage ahead of him.

“But that, I think, you almost deserved.”

∞∞∞

Felicity lifted the covers, sliding beneath the sheets in the darkness. Beside her, Ian startled awake. Probably the chilly air in the room had preceded her beneath the blankets, announcing her presence.

“Felicity?”

he asked, his groggy voice tinged with surprise as he levered himself up on his elbows.

She shivered at the touch of the cool sheets. He hadn’t put extra coals upon the fire this evening. Then again, he hadn’t been expecting her. He’d absolved her of all obligations, after all, while her family was in residence. Probably he’d expected her to have chosen a different bed chamber. And she had tried, for a time, but sleep had not been forthcoming. Eventually she had given up the effort and come to him instead. Because she hadn’t had to. Because there had been a safety in that, a comfort in it.

“I couldn’t sleep,”

she whispered in the darkness.

“It’s too loud.”

“Has Flora been wailing again? I didn’t hear.”

He smothered a yawn in his palm.

“There’s another bed chamber or two on the floor above. They’re smaller, but just as comfortable.”

“It’s not that sort of loud.”

“Ah,”

he said, in a low voice, and she knew he must be thinking of every midnight walk they had once taken together, on those nights when the roar of her thoughts have proved too loud for sleep. When her fraying nerves had threatened her sanity. When she had needed the cool darkness of the night on her skin, the fresh air in her lungs.

It wasn’t the house that was loud, now. She was loud. Her head too full of her own thoughts, too busy to let her have any peace.

“I can’t go walking, can I?”

she asked.

“No,”

he said.

“That is to say, I wouldn’t advise it.”

She’d thought not. She’d paced the house for a time, but it hadn’t satisfied the itch in her veins. It prickled at her skin even now, and a restless shiver slid down her spine.

“Let me put some coal on the fire for you—”

“No.”

She stayed him with one hand upon his chest, and felt the escalation of his heartbeat beneath her palm.

“I don’t want that. I just want…”

She chewed her lower lip, hesitated.

And Ian shifted his weight, freed one arm to lay his hand over hers.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I want to use you,”

she said.

“I want you to warm me, and I don’t want to talk, but most especially I don’t want to think.”

She wanted the roughness of his hands calming her twitching nerves. The physical sensation to distract her from the race of her thoughts. The exhaustion which would follow the release and send her into a peaceful sleep. The comfort of his arms around her, with which she had once been so familiar.

“You promised,”

she whispered, her fingers flexing beneath his.

“I did. And I meant it.”

He turned toward her, moving closer, across the space that separated them.

“You good girl,”

he murmured as he slid one arm beneath her shoulders and found only bare skin there. The words vibrated against the skin of her throat, and the warmth of his breath shimmered over her skin, prickling the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

“Will it mean anything to you?”

“No.”

Her breath shuddered in her lungs.

“Yes—I don’t know. Blast you, I said I didn’t want to talk.”

He couldn’t know how conflicted she’d felt just lately, in her own mind, in her own heart. How she’d hesitated outside the bed chamber door for long minutes before she’d mustered up the nerve to enter.

“I just want—I only want—”

“Felicity. I know.”

His cheek rubbed hers, soothing but for the abrasion of the growth of whiskers on his jaw.

Her hands reached for him, her fingers finding purchase upon his shoulders.

“I can’t go walking, and I want to sleep well for once. I need my mind to be quiet enough for it. I need my head to be clear.”

And he had always helped her to calm herself. To distract her from whichever dire thoughts plagued her.

“I don’t require a reason, and you don’t require an excuse.”

His knee nudged between hers, and her body softened at once on instinct. Like the resurgence of a long-formed habit.

“You can always come to me.”

Her breath feathered out on a sigh, and her head tipped back, sinking into the plush pillow beneath it. The restlessness that seethed beneath the surface of her skin translated itself into little shudders, which he swept away with the soothing strokes of his hands. As if he could wick away the very tension from her muscles, pluck each frantic thought straight from her brain.

The smooth strands of his hair slipped between her fingers. Somehow, one of her hands had ended up in his hair, and the other—the other traced unconscious, idle patterns upon the flat plane of his back. Her thoughts grew distant, foggy. Yes. Relief relaxed her muscles further.

His lips skated across the valley between her breasts, coasted lower, lower still. There was the slick slide of his tongue around the rim of her navel, and her toes curled as her hand fisted in his hair.

“What are you doing?”

“Clearing your head, albeit in a roundabout way.”

Another flick of his tongue, lower still.

“I don’t know that I trust myself at the moment to withdraw in time. You came to me to ease your worries, not magnify them.”

His shoulders wedged themselves between her knees.

“Don’t worry. You’ll sleep well.”

His hands bracketed her inner thighs. His thumbs sifted through the coarse curls between, finding the petals of her sex, opening her. A searing lick followed, and Felicity threw her head back on the pillow, her toes curling.

“Oh, God,”

she said as her belly clenched on a sudden surge of longing. Her thoughts scattered to the darkest reaches of her mind, all busyness of her brain eclipsed by the urgency of arousal.

“Ian. This is indecent.”

It had to be, surely.

Another lick; long, slow, savoring. A raw, hungry sound emerged from his throat.

“I don’t give a damn about decency. I’ve wanted to do this to you for years. Years upon years upon years.”

His hands pressed firmly against the instinctual nip of her thighs, fighting to keep the space he’d made for himself between them.

Her hand groped for his head, fisted in his hair once more. Her thighs trembled with exertion, tiny little twitches she couldn’t control. He found her clitoris buried beneath the curls at the apex of her thighs, massaged it with the point of his tongue. Fire sizzled in her veins. Her core clenched. Her chest hitched in a few frenetic breaths, struggling through the sharp, nearly painful surge of pleasure.

Probably, she thought, she ought to have pulled him away. Instead her trembling fingers smoothed at the silky strands of his hair. “There,”

she said, her breath hissing through the grit of her teeth.

“Again. Please.”

Her senses spun as he set in with a vengeance, feasting upon her private flesh like a starving man. Breathing in hard little pants, she only just managed to choke back a cry when he peeled one heavy palm from her splayed thigh and stroked the tender opening of her body. His fingers dipped inside her, stretching delicate interior muscles.

A lingering lap. His fingers curled, rubbed some exquisitely sensitive place. The cry escaped anyway as she cast her head back upon the pillow. “Ah—Yes!”

It was almost upon her, that first mind-scrambling spasm. Pleasure coiled deep in her belly, pressure compacting in on itself, growing deeper, stronger.

Another plunge of his fingers, another curl. His lips drew that tiny bead of flesh between them, sucked delicately. The tip of his tongue rubbed in a lazy rhythm, pitching her headlong into the brilliant flash of climax. Every muscle drew unbearably taut for a long, torturous moment—and released in a rush of bliss so devastatingly pure and perfect that for a second, she thought she might have glimpsed heaven.

Her limbs went lax, all tension dissolved. Restlessness overtaken by complete lethargy, satiation. Thoughts dark and dim and mercifully few. Head clear and quiet, echoing only with the gasps of her own breath.

Exhaustion weighed upon her more heavily than the blanket Ian drew up over them. In the silence that followed she could manage no more than to turn her cheek against his chest and melt into the security of the arms he wove around her, guarding her against the chill of the room.

“It means something to me.”

The words were little more than a murmur, pressed against her temple with the warmth of his lips.

“Sleep now. Just sleep.”

She would. She could now. She could feel it already, slipping over her like a rising tide. Her lungs drew in a greedy breath, savoring the scent of salt that clung to his skin. Her eyes closed as she exhaled, and one palm landed on his chest.

“It didn’t mean nothing,”

she conceded in a whisper as sleep descended upon her.

“It didn’t mean nothing.”