Page 34 of Match Made in Heaven (The Cricket Club #5)

J ack jerked awake sometime near dawn. He’d been in such a deep sleep, and his body wasn’t used to it.

The small window in his quarters still showed no signs of light.

Nevertheless, the faint scurrying of dockmasters and sailors, stumbling to their ships after a night of hasty sex, poor gambles, and sloppy decisions, alerted him that rising would be a wise decision.

He had been so excited to show Ella the Siren that he hadn’t thought it through properly. She would naturally be mortified to slink past these scoundrels wearing her ball gown, giving every indication of what they’d spent the night doing.

Jack stretched his limbs, unable to keep himself from smiling at the memory. She would get over it. He wouldn’t be apologizing anytime soon. He hadn’t planned on making love to Ella, but it had been inevitable. She was his… the moment she’d glared at him.

Just like she was doing right now.

“I’m sore,” Ella said, snuggling into his side, hiding the blush on her cheeks. Not just her cheeks. Jack would wait to tell her about that little discovery. Ella was so pale and fair that she would never be able to hide a thing from Jack anywhere in the vast lands of her magnificent body.

Fuck. Jack enfolded her in his arms, wondering if she could sense his cock’s insistence. She’d just told him she was sore, and he was already throbbing against her like a young lad, so very keen and enthusiastic.

Her head popped up, her frown growing deeper. “I said I was sore!”

With a giggle, she pushed him away. Jack lifted his hands in a defensive motion, his grin as innocent as he could muster. “It’s not my fault. I have no control of it in the morning. I promise.”

“Then what do you do in the morning when I’m… I mean, when a woman isn’t…”

Was she really asking him what he thought she was asking? “Um…” He coughed. “I deal with myself.”

“How?”

Fuck me. Curious women are the devil. Jack grimaced. “I’ll show you when you’re not so sore.”

Ella eyed him warily, and Jack was struck with her beauty once more.

Her blonde hair was tousled around her head, giving her a lopsided halo.

Her lips were plump and rosy, her body soft and pillowy.

Her eyes warned of danger, but her light pink nipples pointed at him in invitation.

Jack grazed the backs of his fingers against one, causing it to ripen even further.

Ella slapped his hand away, and he gave her a rascally grin. “All right,” he said. “I could have controlled that .”

Before she could scold him again, Jack rolled on top of her, kissing the morning drowsiness away. Secretly, he also hoped it would melt some of that soreness. The noises outside the ship clearly indicated it was time to go… but Jack could stretch it if need be.

Because he couldn’t remember a time he’d felt this happy.

And light. Like he could fly if he really put his mind to it.

And it had everything to do with Ella. The way she’d given herself to him, trusted him to give her what she needed.

Even now, she was building something wonderful inside him, something that could withstand hundreds of sieges and wars.

That smile of hers—the one that said she was mildly irritated but also aroused—made him want to spill his seed inside her as well as spill his inner thoughts.

She didn’t make him want to be better; she made him want to appreciate who he already was.

“Tell me again. I need to hear you say it,” he said, grinding his pelvis lightly against her cleft. Chagrined by his neediness, Jack lowered his head to her breasts, bestowing upon them lingering kisses, licking the swell of the mounds, one after the other in wonder.

Ella wrapped her arms around his neck. Jack’s cock jerked from the possessiveness of it, the casual ownership. It amused him to think he was a horse, freshly broken. And content.

“Tell you what?” She grinned.

Jack had never considered himself so fragile before. After everything he’d seen his brother go through the past month… What he’d felt and done with Ella was nature at its most decadent, but nature was a delicate thing, needing perfect balance.

Jack’s tender feelings were anything but balanced at present. The new rush of emotions left him raw, unprepared, and feeling so incredibly young.

He lifted his head from her chest. “Just one more time,” he said quietly. “I need to hear that you want me—and only me.”

Ella’s eyes darkened with solemnity as she contemplated him. “One more time?”

Jack nodded. Laying his head over her heart, he listened as she told him the story of how she’d first met his brother at her family’s ball.

How she’d thought him handsome; how she’d started going to the park hoping to catch his attention.

How one little comment she’d made under her breath changed everything.

It pained Jack to hear the contrition in her voice.

If anything, he was used to people—women—grazing past him while latching on to Oliver.

But he’d be lying to himself if Ella’s story didn’t affect him on a visceral level.

Second place, he did not feel. But he still didn’t completely feel like first.

Ella tightened her arms around him, using her nails to scratch at the base of his head. Jack moaned. If he could purr, he would have.

“Will we live here?” she asked, as if the idea had just come to her. Jack tried to read her voice. He couldn’t tell if the thought excited or repulsed her.

“Do you want to?”

A thousand years seemed to pass as Jack waited for her response.

When he couldn’t wait any longer, he relented.

“I can build you a house or buy one near your parents if you prefer.” That worry of not being what a lady like Ella needed reared its head once more.

“I’m not poor or homeless, you know. I’ve just been too busy to deal with it. I can afford any life you desire.”

Ella regarded him curiously, as if she hadn’t understood a word he said. “I know that.” She tried to pull him back down, but Jack held firm. “It doesn’t matter to me. I think living on a boat—”

“Ship.”

Ella smiled. “Yes, ship. I think living on a ship with you would be the most amazing adventure. I couldn’t ask for anything better.”

Profound relief flooded Jack—along with annoyance that he’d turned into such a bear over the topic.

He went down on his elbows, taking a piece of her yellow hair and brushing its ends against his fingers.

“You deserve more, better,” he muttered, lost in thought.

“You were raised to want a certain life, and I won’t let you toss it aside for me.

You’ll have that life, Ella. That and more. ”

Ella’s expression was damn near sympathetic, like Jack had just told her that he’d had to put down his favorite horse. He didn’t want her pity. He wanted her damned hand in marriage—now.

She straightened and placed a soft kiss on his cheek, and then the other, before reclining back on the mattress. “If you want to give me everything, then I’ll take it. For your sake. But all I want is you, Jack. Forever.”

“Only me, hmm?” He smirked, knowing full well that this smug bravado he was showing was only for her benefit. Inside, he was nauseated with the kind of doubt that made one ill.

Ella pulled Jack down and took his mouth in a gratifying, bracing, melt-all-your-silly-fears-away type of kiss. Her lips shone with passion when she slipped away.

“Only you,” she said in that lusty, low voice. Terribly suggestive.

Jack dropped his head with a groan. “I’m being ridiculous.”

She laughed. “Yes, you are.”

“But I’m not a duke.”

“No, you’re not.”

“And you wanted a duke.” His words were muffled in the valley of her breasts, but she heard him all the same.

Gently, Ella picked up his head until he looked at her. She was determined and fierce. She was also his. It didn’t matter what she said next—nothing would change that fact for Jack. He would turn into the pirate everyone assumed he was and steal her away if he had to.

“The little girl in me wanted the duke,” she said slowly, “because that was what she’d been taught to want.

But I’m not that little girl anymore. I want you.

Mr. Jack Sutton. But let’s not forget about Lord John.

” She smiled shyly. “If he acts like he did last night, the gentleman can make an appearance at any time.”

Jack laughed. It was laced with pain because his cock was pounding like the devil, but it was genuine. He ended the unnerving conversation with a lingering kiss.

He glanced out the window, sighing as a thin ray of light began to cut through the darkness. “We should go,” he said. He tried to roll off, but Ella wouldn’t let him.

“Jack,” she said in that sexy little way that made his balls tighten. He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth through the discomfort. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Hmm?”

Ella angled her lips toward his ear. “I’m not as sore as I thought I was.”

*

Later that night, Jack didn’t know what had come over him. He decided to eat with the family.

Which meant he would have to use Herculean strength the entire dinner service pretending to care what his imbecilic uncles said while simultaneously acting like he didn’t want to drag Ella to the nearest dark corner and ravish her senseless. It was damn near impossible.

Jack could wear a mask over his face and stuff his ears with cloth and he’d still smell the spiciness of her lovely skin, still feel the heaviness of her hair in his hands, still hear her life-affirming laughter.

He finally understood and commiserated with Adam and Eve’s weakness. Forbidden fruit doomed a person because knowing something pure and splendid existed while never being able to experience it was torture of the worst kind.

But even with that dismal thought, the worst part of dinner was coming to the conclusion that Jack didn’t completely hate it.

Yes, there were moments of the mind-numbingly absurd. For instance, as everyone was finishing their dessert, Ella had the ridiculous notion that Uncle Christopher should come to work for him!

Jack was struck mute, dumbfounded. Ella couldn’t possibly think that just because he had encountered heaven in the ambrosia between her thighs, he would not chafe at the idea of Uncle Christopher working for Sutton Shipping.

Uncle Christopher! Who demanded a special dessert course after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and once asked the carriage driver to take him all the way to London on a Tuesday afternoon because he “had a hankering for scallops.”

But, shocking to Jack, his uncle displayed good sense. The man seemed just as perplexed by the unwanted suggestion—and the time it would steal from his schedule.

Uncle Christopher’s bulbous nose scrunched up as he regretfully returned his spoonful of blancmange back to its bowl. “Nine o’clock!” he said, his voice shrill with astonishment. “In the morning?”

Jack observed Ella with avid fixation, waiting for that pleasant smile to crack. “Yes, of course,” she replied, nervously shifting her eyes to him before returning them to the confused lord.

His uncle appeared to think on that. But then another question logically arose. “And I’m supposed to stay… all day?”

Jack downed his glass of wine with an eye roll. “Yes, all day. All day! Because that’s what work means.”

That earned him a frown from the lady.

Jack didn’t say anything more on the subject.

He kept his remarks airy and perfunctory, determined to make it through the whole damn familial episode without losing his temper.

Luckily there was Sonia, who was never at a loss for conversation.

And Jack loved asking the girl about her time spent surrounded by artistic Italians and dramatic Frenchmen and then watching his mother shudder.

It was… fun. Amusing. Lively. The food, the company, the conversations (most of them) were cozy.

Jack hadn’t felt this comfortable at this table since before his father died.

It was the kind of atmosphere one could get used to.

Like a comfy chair that sucked you into its pillows, making you rethink the need to ever get up.

It made one want to stay.

And then his mother had to ruin it.

Lady Evelyn’s spoon landed in her empty bowl with a clink. She leaned back in her chair, patting her lips with her white napkin. Sonia, her little shadow, promptly did the same on her right. Lord Andrew, seated on her left, took the cue to finish as well.

Jack breathed a sigh of relief. Thank fuck. Now he simply had to sit and wait for Ella to happen upon a dark corner.

But the joke was on him, yet again.

“Oh, Ella?” the duchess said, perking up in her chair. “Oliver asked that you go to him after dinner. He’s feeling so much better, and he wanted to know if you would read to him tonight. Would you mind, dear?”

“No… no, I wouldn’t mind,” Ella replied, gaining a wide, ebullient smile from the duchess.

Jack clenched the stem of his crystal glass and forced himself to keep his voice steady. “What changed his mind?” he asked. “Oliver has never wanted her before.”

He grimaced at his mother’s scowl. “That was a rather rude way to put it,” she admonished him. “Apologize to Miss Ella.”

Lowering his head, Jack murmured, “My apologies, Miss Ella.”

“It’s fine,” Ella returned quickly.

“But what was the reasoning, Grandma?” Sonia asked. Jack could have kissed the girl and her limitless curiosity.

Lady Evelyn’s eyes sparkled under the gold chandelier. “He just told me that he wanted her. I didn’t ask why, though his memory must be returning, because he said that he knew she liked to read.”

Jack placed his elbows on the table. “He said that? Oliver said that he remembered that she liked to read?”

The duchess flicked her hand out in irritation.

“Yes,” she said before hesitating. “Or maybe he said that he remembered hearing that she liked to read. That’s hardly the point, Jack.

We should take this as a sign that your brother is feeling ready to start living again.

You should be thankful for that. You can get back to your boats. ”

She was right. He should feel thankful. But he didn’t.

Sonia clapped her hands, and Uncle Andrew followed suit. At the last second, the man forgot himself and caressed the top of the duchess’s hand before quickly sliding it back to his lap. Jack’s mother flushed, and she angled herself away, toward Sonia, taking a shaky sip of her wine.

No one noticed. Only Jack.

He saw the whole pathetic thing.