Page 27 of The Rake is Taken
“Very,” she agreed, looping a gloved hand around his neck and pulling him closer, her body unfurling like rose petals dipped in dew as his tongue swept in and engaged. His arm coiled around her waist and tugged her in tight, up high on her toes until they fit, lock and key, against each other. His body was more muscular than it looked beneath his beautiful clothing she found as she began to explore. He ended the kiss, and she thought to argue when his mouth trailed her jaw, nipping, soothing each point he touched, to the shell of her ear and back. Goosebumps dimpled her skin like raindrops striking a pond.
I’m yours,she thought as the door to the library burst open, and a startled exclamation shattered the silence.
Edging back, she glanced over Finn’s shoulder to find Lord and Lady Beauchamp standing in the doorway, echoing expressions of astonishment on their faces.
Finn banged his head against the wall and sighed. “Julian. Piper.”
She nodded, letting her arms slide free and giving him a shove that sent him stumbling, all his delicious magnetism moving away with him.
His eyes when they found hers were a dogged blue-black, darker than she’d ever seen them. The look in them alarmed and aroused. “You owe me for this one, Tori darling, and you should know Ialwaysseek payment.”
Chapter 9
The first taste of her had felt like Finn’s brief but frenzied experience with absinthe.
After Freddie’s death, he’d spent many a predawn surrounded by starving artists, butchers, cobblers, earls, actors, barons, princes, paupers—even a doctor who’d kindly attended to his chest wound when he’d torn the stitches during an unfortunate brawl—crowded in the back room of the Mon Plaisir, the lowliest back alley club, during the infamousl’heure verte. The green hour. Only to be expelled like a heedless gasp into the wretched London miasma when the curtain of darkness began to fade. He’d stumbled through those twilight streets night after night with a blessed sense of detachment.
Which, at the time, he’d needed to withstand one day rolling into the next.
He’d not felt that sort of separation from mind and body until he’d stepped away from Victoria a half hour ago, forced apart by intrusion, a good thing, as his awareness had compressed to only the points where their bodies touched, like poking holes in a sheet of paper and trying to see the world through it. The nape of her neck, his hip, her thigh, his bottom lip, her cheek, the rounded curve of her breast. Scalding points of contact drawing them together as if they’d been connected with needle and thread. Coming back to find himself surrounded by the scent of moldy books and ink, stacks of letters and open ledgers, the sound of his breath rushing from his lips to mix with hers, had been as bewildering as a blow across the jaw.
He’d never lost himself in a kiss. Not once.
Not ever.
Had never imagined he could when his attention was centered on the thoughts. This time, amazingly, the ones crowding his mind were his and his alone. He’d found that to be, indeed as he’d always imagined, quite wonderful.
From his view out the library window, Finn recorded Victoria and Piper’s progress across the sloping lawn. At this late stage of pregnancy, Piper waddled, to put it kindly. They paused at the fountain to rest on the carved stone bench adorning it, Victoria’s gaze not once roaming his way, although she knew Julian was monitoring how the increasing distance affected their gifts—observations to be recorded in his blasted chronology.
Finn tapped the letter he held against his thigh. It was a simple kiss. Two, he supposed, if precise calculation signified. Nothing he and Tori hadn’t experienced many times with other people and walked thoughtlessly away from. Kisses were weapons he often retained to create distance, not eradicate it when he wasn’t even sure he liked the amusement all that much. Too intimate an effort when reading someone’s mind was the very definition of dispassion.
Victoria was quite skilled at using kisses to remove herself from tight spots, conversations she wanted to divert. He’d seen her in action. Saved her from letting the ton see her in action.
Because being caught in a compromising position was more damaging than anything she could do aside from marryinghim.
He crushed the letter in his hand, wondering where the hell that thought had come from.Simple, Finn, remember?Nothing to this. Just another girl. Same old. Except simple was an unfair categorization for an interaction more carnal then ones he’d had with someone’s legs locked around his hips.
“Incredible,” Julian said from his place beside Finn, shoulder wedged against the window frame, folio balanced on his arm as he scrawled notes across the page. “I don’t even get the sensation of a vision from this pencil until she’s more than a hundred yards away. She and Piper made it to the garden before the images starting floating in. So faint I could almost overlook them, and I had half a dozen people touch it at breakfast, something that would’ve had me retching in the rubbish bin on a normal day after holding it this long. The most curious element? It seems to draw nothing from her to impede our gifts, like she holds them off with a sword that weighs less than a feather.”
“Minnie was able to perform while in the same room. Remember her giving Lucien the cookie? Different effects on different abilities.”
“True enough,” Julian agreed and scribbled another note. “We’ll test everyone on the estate. Distances, interpretations of potency. She and Piper, for instance. One gift strengthens, the other calms. How do such divergent abilities work together?”
Finn shrugged, the occult not nearly as interesting to him as it was to his brother. The chronology was Julian’s religion. What was fascinating tohimat the moment was watching Victoria hold her arm aloft for a passing butterfly to land upon. Her smile could light the darkest of souls should one tear down the walls and let her in. “Test her with Simon. It should be interesting. Can Lady Victoria’s fantastic gift repel the haunts? They seem to multiply with every year that passes. I think they talk amongst themselves and decide Harbingdon is a nice place to visit, then they never leave. God, would it be wonderful for Simon if they’d leave him for even a moment.”
Julian flipped a page, paused. “You test her with Simon. He’s your boy. Always has been. Attached at the hip since we dragged him here. Or in the past six months, did you forget that fact?”
Finn muttered an oath and turned his back as Victoria struggled to pull Piper to her feet, their warmhearted laughter trickling in the open window. Not a surprise they’d become fast friends as both were obstinate and attracted to trouble. Nevertheless, he’d no time to stand there mooning over a woman plainly out of reach. There were letters to translate and invoices for the gaming hell to pay, enough work to keep him sequestered in this library, should he be hiding from anyone, which he wasnot, for days. “Broach the subject with Si. He’s a bit perturbed with me at the moment.” He extracted his penknife from his waistcoat, slid the blade beneath the envelope’s seal and shredded, relishing the obliteration.
Julian’s stinging gaze landed on him. Suggesting there was discord in the Alexander household was like waving a crimson flag before a papa bull. “Meaning?”
“Meaning he wants to live in London. With me. Above the Blue Moon, where he’ll graciously ignore the womenandthe drinking, all for peace. From you.” Finn dropped to the worn leather chair behind the desk and gave a halfhearted salute with the penknife. “Congratulations, Jule. You continue to suck the sunshine out of your brothers’ lives, one cloying gesture at a time.”
Julian hummed beneath his breath, signaling advice was about to be offered, a marked expectation of obedience attached. “I don’t usually get involved in your liaisons. Except for the one with the Earl of Kilmartin’s daughter. Couldn’t just stand by and let that work itself out.”
“How was I to know she’d brandish a pistol? And proceed to shatter every window in the earl’s ballroom shooting at me?”
Julian glanced out the window and closed his eyes—still testing the visions he was receiving from the pencil against how far away Victoria stood. “You don’t have to tell me anything, boy-o. The broadsheets described the destruction in detail, ink bleeding over every society matron’s fingers the next morning. We can only thank God Lady Esmerelda has horrendous aim, and Baron Fredricks was besotted enough to marry her the following week.”