Chapter Nine
THIS IS MADNESS.
The thought cracked like lightning through Lavinia’s mind, but it was gone just as fast as every bit of her being surrendered to sensation.
Half drunk on exquisite feeling, she melted into his kiss, opening to let him in. He was at once familiar and novel—a comfort from her past mixed with experience and surprise. The grip of his fingers on the back of her neck, seeking purchase in the strands of her hair. The warmth that snaked through her, waking up every part of her body that she’d long neglected.
Her hands went around his neck as he dragged her down with him to the floor. Her skirts spread wide, enveloping them both in soft fabric. He gently tugged at her hair, searching for the pins he needed to release it. He used to gather it up in his hands and drink in the scent of her as though it were the sweetest perfume. But this was not the kiss of those lazy afternoons and long evenings spent learning each other’s bodies in the abandoned house at the edge of town. This one was fueled by raw, deeply held urgency, and when her fingers danced over the knot of his necktie in the faintest request for something more, Andrew moaned low.
He wedged his leg between hers, bunching her skirts up against her. There was too much fabric for her to truly feel the muscle of his thigh, but the weight of his body over hers was enough. She gasped and squirmed under him, desperate to press in just the right way to relieve the ache. A low growl sounded in the back of his throat, and his tongue dove into her mouth, slipping over hers in a hot caress.
His hands danced down her body, lingering on her breasts and smoothing over her stomach before glancing over her hips. Her heels pressed into the floor in frustration, the longing for his touch too powerful to deny, and when his fingers reached the hem of her skirts she nearly gasped out yes. She wanted Andrew. Needed him. Desired him. That had never stopped.
He kissed her, bruising her mouth deliciously as his hands dove under her skirts to find stocking-clad skin. Her skin lit up when he circled her ankle, stroked up her calves, and glanced up over her knees until he found the tops of her stockings. There skin finally met skin, and she nearly cried out in thanks. His fingers pressed into the soft flesh of her inner thighs, pushing through the slit in her drawers.
Andrew broke their kiss and dragged his mouth over her jaw and neck as his fingers brushed the folds between her legs and up across her clitoris, setting her alight. With two fingers, he pinched the sensitive spot and rolled it between his fingers. Her hips bucked, feet planted hard against the floor, and her hands clawed at his back in desperation for more.
He remembers. The thought tore through her as violently as a sob. Despite all the years apart and the hatred he must feel for her, he remembered the way she liked to be touched and the exact rhythm of his fingers that promised her release.
Her body arched again, demanding more while his free hand snaked up to shape the curve of her breast. His fingers slipped into the edge of her bodice and yanked it down as far as it would go. It was enough to free her breast and, as she cast her gaze down at the man lavishing attention on her, he lowered his head, closed his lips around her nipple, and sucked.
She cried out as her orgasm rolled through her, pulsing and pushing her along. Her arms wrapped around him, pulling him closer until her face was buried in the crook of his neck. Maybe she should’ve held something of herself back, but she was lost in the touch of the man who’d once known her so well. It was all she could do to hold on as he continued to circle his fingers, drawing out every last bit of her desire.
The muscles of her thighs quaked when his hand finally stilled. With her eyes closed, she could hear the pant of his breath. He’d always been like that, taking a quiet but proud pleasure in her enjoyment as they’d explored one another’s bodies with the care of two young people who believed they had a lifetime together stretching out before them.
But then he’d sailed off that last time, bound for the Caribbean, and everything had changed.
She opened her eyes and found Andrew sitting on the wood floor, his elbows braced on bent knees, staring hard at her. A chill that had nothing to do with the sweat cooling on her skin rocked her, and suddenly she knew what would come next.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I should’ve shown more restraint.”
A mistake. He thought this was a mistake. Something inside her chest twisted—whether it was her heart or her pride, it didn’t matter—as she realized that this hadn’t been about his desire or her pleasure or even the temptation found in the comfort of a long-lost lover.
She tilted her chin back, determined to push past the embarrassment. “Really? That’s your first concern?”
“A man should respect a lady’s wishes and—”
She put a hand up. “I was a more than willing participant in what just happened, and I’m certainly not delicate enough to break. I never was, or don’t you remember, Andrew?”
For all the guilt he seemed to be holding, his eyes flashed icy cold at the mention that this was neither the first time she’d found herself with his hands up her skirts nor the only time she’d enjoyed it.
“We shouldn’t have kissed,” he gritted out.
The words jabbed her low and true in the gut, because in that he was not wrong.
“That is, I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he said, not seeming to notice that her face had fallen. “A sailor should know discipline.”
She snorted. “Not according to some of the stories I’ve heard.”
“A captain should be able to control himself,” he said, his voice gruff. “I’m not the boy I was when we knew each other. I’ve changed, and I should know better. Becoming . . . involved in any way could compromise my ability to look out for your safety.”
Oh. He had changed so much, and yet in one fundamental way he would always be the same man. Even through his obstinate belief that she’d betrayed him, his first concern was her. He’d been protective of her from the first time they played together. Eight-year-old Caleb had shoved her off the side of the road, knocking her into a ditch. Andrew had jumped down to haul her up and then punched her brother on the arm so hard the bruise had been black and purple for weeks. It was juvenile justice—the kind that needed no explanation. Anyone who trifled with Lavinia would have to answer to Andrew. It had only been a matter of time before she was madly, head-over-heels in love with him.
She leaned back on her hands, aware that he kept glancing over to her still exposed breast and her disheveled hair. She’d spent many years sure of his anger for her, but she refused to be ashamed of his desire for her or her desire for him because he was still the Andrew she’d known.
“There are many things that might be broken between us, but sex was never one of them,” she offered, her lips crooking into a smile.
He shook his head and began to tug at his necktie to set it to rights. “As your handler—”
“As a woman, I can promise you that if you call me your asset one more time, I’ll scream.”
That lifted his lips a fraction, but they fell just as quickly.
“If I can’t think clearly around you, I could put you in danger,” he said.
“And holding on to your anger against me lets you see me or this mission any more clearly?” she asked.
After a long pause he shook his head. “No.”
“Then perhaps we call this evening what it was. Inevitable.”
Andrew had been prepared for many things when he’d walked into Mrs. Parkem’s, but ending up on the broad plank floor with a wanton Lavinia in his arms hadn’t been one of them. Now she sat there, exposed and unbound, as though defying him to look away and, weak man that he was, he couldn’t.
Ever since he’d learned that she was to be his last operation, he’d spent all of his energy focusing on not recalling the halcyon days of their youth. He was exhausted because it was an impossible task. How could any man will himself to forget his first love, first kiss, first everything?
He should’ve known that to dip a toe into the sea of the past would be to lose himself. And yet here he was, staring at the woman he’d once thought would be his bride, her wavy sable hair spilling over the creamy, exposed skin of one of her shoulders.
“Inevitable?” he repeated, rolling the word around in his mouth as though it were foreign to him.
She shrugged that unclad shoulder, her hair slipping over her breast to hide her nipple. Thank God, he thought at the same time that his brain roared in protest.
He’d loved her for this boldness once. She used to lie stripped and bare before him, allowing him to trace the lines of her body while he whispered his love. The contrast of his calloused, sea-weathered hands against her soft, pristine skin had fascinated him nearly as much as the little, indecipherable noises she made when he pushed into her. He’d relished her lack of shame then, enjoying that only he had access to this secret saucy side to her.
That sauciness had matured, more powerful for the fact that they were no longer young. She was the queen of this little world of hers, and he could sense the power pulsing off her as she pinned him with her gaze as though challenging him to rise to this strange game of dares he didn’t know the rules to.
“It was only a matter of time before we would act upon our mutual attraction to one another,” she said with a shrug, as though her orgasm had hardly affected her.
His knuckles popped as he clenched his fists to his sides. It shouldn’t anger him to see this casualness, but he couldn’t help it. She’d been everything to him, pulling him back from the brink in a thrashing sea when he thought he couldn’t hold on any longer. It was the memory of her that had kept him going when he’d been picked up in a remote village in Suriname, stopping in Curaçao, Port-au-Prince, and Kingston, before finally landing on British soil once again and making the bumpy, uncomfortable ride back to Eyemouth by mail coach. And when he’d arrived in their hometown and knocked on her father’s door only to learn from her cold, self-satisfied mother that Lavinia Malcolm was now Lavinia Parkem, he hadn’t believed it. It was only when he saw Alistair Parkem loop his arm around her waist that his world shattered. She’d been his beacon in the dark sea, until he’d learned she’d turned her back on him, just like everyone else in his life.
When Sir Newton had told him that she’d been reduced to owning a shop and working for her living, he’d felt a flutter of unmanly satisfaction he knew he should be ashamed of, yet the sight of the proud, determined woman who’d faced off first with Wark and then taken him to task had bowled him over. Ever since that first meeting, he’d been unable to shake the feeling that she had once again knocked him off his balance until, gripped by an impulse he could neither name nor control, he found himself in this situation.
Strangely, he found he didn’t regret it one bit.
That was the stunning, disturbing truth he wrestled with as she slowly put her dress to rights and began to collect the hairpins he’d scattered across the floor.
“I’ll remind you that you kissed me first,” she said, as she used her short nail to catch up one of the hairpins that had fallen into a crack between the floorboards. “And I suspect you liked it more than you wish to let on.”
Of course he had. He could try to deny his attraction to her, but there was no way he could’ve hidden his body’s reaction. Not when he’d been pressed up against her legs, his tongue laving at her breast while he’d breathed her in. He’d wanted her something powerful, and now that he’d had his first taste in over a decade, he was afraid he couldn’t stop.
“I should go,” he said.
She nodded. “You should.”
He shifted, unsettled as she watched him. He didn’t want her to think that he was the sort of man who counted down the minutes until he could slink out of a woman’s home after an encounter. Not that he cared what she thought.
Eventually good sense won out, and Andrew hauled himself to his feet and then reached down to help her up. “Here.”
Her hand—no longer soft but strong from work—set his skin sparking as she placed it in his. He jerked against the strange sensation, pulling her just a little too hard and sending her careening into his chest. His arms instinctively went around her, trapping her with her hands flat on his chest.
They stayed there for a stunned moment of pure torture. That damned gardenia-scented soap she used to wash her hair wrapped around him, and he could see the subtle thrum of her pulse at the side of her neck. The fingers of her hands curled slightly into the cloth of his jacket, holding her in place, and when she looked up at him he knew with frightening certainty that if she lifted up just a couple inches and kissed him there would be no sanity left in him to keep him from lifting her skirts and taking her up against the wall.
“So we find ourselves again in a familiar situation,” she said. But the amusement in her voice wasn’t enough to cover the vein of desire pulsing underneath. She was not so very unaffected after all.
Turning over this new information, he stepped back, holding her at arm’s length. Her fingers brushed down his chest but she didn’t grasp at him any longer.
“You’re determined to attend Wark’s dinner Tuesday?” he asked. “You won’t stay away even if I tell you to, will you?”
Her smile faltered for a half second, but she shook her head.
He should shut the whole operation down. No matter how hard he fought it, he was emotionally compromised. Still, without her, he and Gillie would be blindly throwing darts, hoping one would stick. It had to be Lavinia. It had to be now.
“I’ll ask Gillie to put together a list of Wark’s known associates so you can prepare, and she’s already investigating Douglas,” he said. “If you’re going to go into this, I want you as ready as possible. The more you know, the less likely you’ll be to say the wrong thing and stir their suspicions.”
“Then you’ll support me?” she asked.
“I don’t see how I can do anything else.”
She nodded. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. I trust you.”
They were the words he’d never thought he’d hear from her again, and they felt strangely like succor to his soul.
Lavinia followed him down the stairs to let him out. He lingered only long enough to hear the bolt on her door slide into place, and then donned his hat and began the short walk home to his lodgings through the cold Edinburgh night.
Nothing about this operation sat well with him, but he knew two things for certain: the years had done nothing to diminish his longing for Lavinia, and he knew as surely as he knew the sun set in the west that this evening was not the end of whatever had sparked again between the two of them.