The Damsel and the Daggerman

.10.

She made him wait.

Back in her conveyance, she refilled Brutus’s tank with clockwork oil, added to her caravan notes and stored them in a new pigeonhole, and, much to her own annoyance, primped in front of the mirror, making sure she looked ravishing but not as if she were trying too hard. She’d put on her fancier corset that morning, along with the new style of stockings she’d picked up in Paris. Even if it was wishful thinking, she’d found over the years that wearing fancy underpinnings gave her the confidence she needed to face up to anything from roaring bludmares to charging warriors in buffalo chariots.

With an odd little twinge of surprise, she realized that she had abandoned completely the idea that he might be guilty. Even without hearing his side of it, even knowing him only a few short days, she felt, bone deep, that he had not committed the crime for which he’d been accused. With renewed determination, she set out for his wagon and the answers she kept forgetting she needed.

She knocked on the door of his trailer first, but he didn’t answer, and she wasn’t willing to break in again, especially during daylight. Slipping past the clockwork bird was no problem, and she was soon exchanging pleasantries around the circled wagons, caught between wanting to win over the carnivalleros and wanting to get close enough to Marco to feel the ripple of acknowledgment her body seemed to experience every time he was near.

She found him by the target, throwing the knives with his usual offhand brand of lazy concentration. Waiting a respectful distance away, she admired his perfectly coordinated movements and the snap of his forearm that sent each silver missile thudding into the target. He didn’t acknowledge her until he’d thrown his last knife.

“Found something better to keep your hands occupied?” His playful smirk was back, so full of promise that she cocked her hips and licked her lips on instinct.

“As much as I hate to leave things unfinished, my time is too valuable to waste. I like playing games as much as the next girl, but I prefer to play to checkmate and have at least a few pieces to move around as I wish.”

“Talking in metaphors. That’s cute.”

“As a button.”

He’d collected all of his knives from the target by then, sliding all but one into their slots on his vest. Walking toward her slowly, he twirled the last one in the air. She wore an expression of bored expectation, but inside, her heart was racing, her toes curling in her boots.

“You ready to try this again?”

She glanced around, one eyebrow raised. “I’d prefer somewhere more private, if you don’t mind.”

“Damn, woman. You’ve got a one-track mind. I meant target practice.” He jerked his chin at the target.

She grinned to keep from showing her disappointment. “Same rules?”

“I’m upping the ante. Twelve knives, one question. You in?”

Jacinda took a deep breath, studying the painted shape on the target.

“Let me get this straight. You want me to let you strap me to a spinning target and hold still while you throw not one knife but an entire dozen? And in return, I get to ask one measly question, which you might or might not answer to my satisfaction?”

He took her hand gently and led her to the target. When he placed her palm against the shiny wood, her insides shuddered with recognition at the last time he had placed her hand, just so.

“You’re good at what you do. Trust that I’m good at what I do. There’s not a single cut in that wood that I didn’t mean to put there. It’s not as dangerous as you think it is. But I need a live assistant, and you need incentive.”

“Incentive?”

“If you want the truth, you have to work for it. You’re a woman who needs an occupation. And I think you like the excitement.”

With a raised eyebrow, she took her hand off the wood and faced him head-on. Putting her palm on his chest with the same gentle pressure he had used on her, she softly said, “You want to tell me the truth, don’t you? But something’s holding you back.”

He looked down at her hand, considering. “Tell yourself whatever you need to hear. But you’ve got two choices: play by my rules, or go interview the lizard boy about his acid spit. You’re the one who wants something here.”

She ran her hand down his chest, hooking a single finger into his belt. “You don’t want anything?”

He pulled her hand away. “Step up or keep walking, woman.”

She detected bitterness, but she also understood that this was a dangerous dance. He wasn’t just toying with her; any misstep on her part could cause him to shut down completely. She wasn’t accustomed to jumping through hoops for a man, to dancing around rules or playing games. But she knew that she would forever regret it if she didn’t find out the truth about Marco Taresque. So she stepped up, right onto the platforms, the wood against her back a familiar caress.

“Strap me in, will you?”

He obliged, silent as he gently tightened the leathers around her ankles, her waist, and, this time, both wrists. When he knelt to pin down her skirts, she waited, breathless, to feel his hands brush her legs. Because the game was so very tenuous, her senses were on alert, desperate for his attention. It was maddening. And intoxicating. When the pad of his thumb caressed her calf, the heat in her cheeks told her that he was right: she needed the thrill of this man and his knives.

For the flash of a few heartbeats, he disappeared behind the target, and then she was spinning slowly, wondering whether the drop in her belly was from gravity or from the man staring at her as if she was the only thing on earth.

“Six knives.”

He stopped twirling one and cocked his head. “What?”

“Twelve is insane. I want a question for six knives.”

“You can’t change the terms that you’ve already agreed to.” He walked up closer, close enough for her to count the holes in the buttons on his pants when she was upside down. “For the love of all that’s holy, woman. You’re strapped to a target. I could come at you with a hatchet, and you couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

“But you won’t.”

“Just because I’m a gentleman doesn’t mean I’m about to let you tell me how things are going to be.”

“Eight knives.”

He chuckled and turned away, walking back to his bare patch of ground. She was so riveted with the progression that she very nearly forgot that deadly steel would soon be flying at her body with only the meager armor of her corset, and that only protected her vitals and her heart. Her head, arms, and legs were utterly vulnerable. And she didn’t know how many knives he would throw, although she swore to herself that it would be fewer than twelve, because she was betting he was an honorable man with a soft spot, somewhere under the dark clothes and darker eyes.

With a smirk that echoed down all of her own soft spots, he said, “This time, don’t move.”

She barely stopped herself from saying, Yes, sir.

The first knife surprised her, slamming into the wood by her hip. They came in quick succession after that, none of them coming close enough to really frighten her. She sensed he was going easy on her, that he could have outlined her every curve with steel had he so chosen, the blades pressing against her with the tenderness of fingertips. But they were all crowded in the vast plains of red and white rings between her arms and her body. She lost count, but as he walked toward her, she noticed three knives still in his hands.

“Nine?”

“It’s a square number.”

He disappeared behind the machine, and she giggled.

When he stood before her again, he asked, “What?”

The machine slowed to a stop, and he turned the target until she was head up. “Nothing. You just didn’t strike me as a mathematician.”

“Woman, what you don’t know about me could fit in a Kraken’s belly.”

“I know. That’s why I let you throw nine knives at me. Now I get a question. What really happened that night?”

“That’s too broad. Like wishing for a million wishes.”

“You never said I couldn’t ask a perfectly reasonable question.”

He said nothing, simply pulled the knives out around her. She felt exposed and ridiculous and realized suddenly that she hadn’t given any thought to her question. The first time she had asked him where the body was, and he had told her there was no body. Which meant she’d asked the wrong question.

“Where is Petra?”

“I have no idea.”

The answer came quickly, and in a flash, he was behind her, turning on the machine. The target began to spin again and, with it, her mind. She couldn’t concentrate with him staring at her, so she closed her eyes and wracked her brain as the knives landed, one after the other, in the wood around her.

Thwack.

There was no body.

Thwack.

He didn’t know where Petra was.

Thwack.

That meant his ex-assistant had to be alive.

Thwack.

But if she was alive, where had the blood come from? He said he’d never drawn blood.

Thwack.

And why had he run, if there had been no crime? Why would he tell no one the truth?

Thwack.

She’d read every word of the newspaper, gone through her archives. There was no mention of the name Marco Taresque, not even on the broadsheets.

Thwack.

And Letitia wouldn’t have let Marco stay if she’d seen anything unsafe in his past or his future. And she wouldn’t have let Jacinda herself stay had she seen danger.

Thwack.

She was missing something.

Thwack.

Her skirts felt oddly tight, and she opened her eyes and looked down. The last knife quivered between her thighs, piercing the layers of her skirts and drawing the cloth tightly over her legs.

“What—”

His mouth quirked up in a hungry, amused smile as she spun around slowly, and she pinned her lips together before the words escaped her and she stupidly wasted a question. What on earth are you trying to do? was not the question she’d suffered near impalement to ask.

It only took one breath, and she knew.

“If you didn’t do what they accused you of doing, why won’t you tell the truth?”

He switched the target off and spun her upside down. All the blood rushed to her head, and she found her mouth inches away from his thighs. She was about to ask him what the hell he was doing, again, but she knew: he was trying to confuse her, muddle her senses, keep her off balance. It was the same tactic she was using on him.

He sat on his haunches and leaned close to whisper, “Because a man has his pride.”

“Pride? Your pride is worth allowing the world to think you a murderer?”

He spun her right-side up and began to collect his knives as she went over woozy.

“Is that your next question? Because I can throw the knives faster, if you like. My aim is actually better when I remove my mind from the equation.”

“You’re being purposefully evasive.”

“You want something I don’t want to give. You’re lucky I haven’t taken off for the hills.”

“Why haven’t you, then?”

He stepped close, wrapping a fist around the knife he’d thrown through her skirts. His knuckles brushed her body, making her shudder, and he held his hand there, warm and solid, his wrist against the tender curve inside her thigh.

“Because you’re like an itch I can’t scratch. I keep telling myself to disappear.” He leaned even closer, his mouth near her ear and her hands pinned, unable to reach out in any way. “And yet I keep coming back for more.”

She shuddered, licked her lips. “For which I’m glad. Gladder still if you came closer.”

“I told you from the start: I can’t give you the things you think you want.”

He jerked the knife out of the wood, and the target shuddered against her back. That blade had gone deeper than most.

“Are you going to let me down?”

“Depends. You want one more question?”

She nodded, hoping that he would throw that knife again, so close to where she wanted other sorts of impalement. Instead of turning on the machine to spin her, however, he walked to his usual spot and said, “Really, this time, don’t move. Not a hair.”

“What are you going to do?”

His grin was fatal. “I don’t think you want to know.”

Before she could protest, a knife thunked into the wood, right against her ribs, touching her corset. Then another on the opposite side. Then one on each side of her waist. Then around her hips, the flat blades a whisper, a leaning away from her dress. Two more around her thighs, then her knees. The penultimate knife thudded beside her left ankle, and the last one glittered briefly in the weak sun before quivering in the wood beside her right ankle. But something was wrong. It burned.

“Marco . . . I think . . .”

Blood bloomed in the green of her dress, and she tried to pull her leg away, but the blade was firmly stuck. With the skirts in the way, she couldn’t see what exactly had happened, but the pain was radiating out. It was clear enough he’d struck her, for all his bravado.

“Oh, sweet Ermenegilda.”

He was beside her in seconds, yanking out the knife and unbuckling her, ankles first, then waist, then wrists. She all but fell into his arms, the blood drained from her arms and legs.

“Is it bad? I can’t see anything. It stings.”

Marco glanced around before carefully placing her on the crate where she’d once taken his carved pins from Demi and left all but one behind. He released her as if she might break, and she curled fingers around the splintered wood and tried to make the world stop spinning. He fell to his knees, running his hands up her ankles without asking permission and pressing the place that burned.

“It’s not as bad as it might have been. Dammit, woman. You’re too pretty. It’s distracting.”

He held back her skirts, and she leaned over to see a cut just above her boot top, her new stockings sliced neatly and blooming with blood. She’d had a lot worse. But she was shaken by the combination of excitement, fear, pain, and the strange sensation of having all of the blood in her feet and nethers instead of in her brain and fingers where it belonged.

“Let me fix it up for you. Can you walk to the cassowarrel? Stupid clockwork guards shouldn’t be on during the day.”

With a shaking hand, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her disruptor. “I’m in a hurry. Let’s make trouble.”

He shrugged and stood, putting his arm around her to help her hobble to the nearest clockwork, a gangly giraffe that she froze with one jolt of blue sparks. They struggled past the automaton and around the corner of the wagon to Marco’s door. Her ankle was bleeding down her stocking and into her boot, and it stung, and she had trouble getting the disruptor back into her pocket. By the time she paid any attention to her surroundings, he was closing the door behind her and helping her onto the couch. He’d soon pulled a stool up and fetched an old wooden cigar box. Without asking, he picked up her damaged leg and laid it across his lap.

After rolling back her skirt, he unlaced her boot and slipped it off, seemingly unaware of the effect his businesslike touches were having on her body. Taking the thin silk stocking in two hands, he tore the rip wider, exposing her calf and the freely bleeding cut that she no longer really felt, thanks to his closeness.

“I don’t think it needs stitches. Do you?”

“Hmm?”

He palmed the back of her head, directing her gaze down to her own leg. “Stitches. Do you want them?”

“Not particularly.”

He chuckled and dabbed at the wound with a clean handkerchief. “It’s refreshing, a woman not losing her guts over a little cut.”

She slipped farther down on the sofa, enjoying the strength of his hands. He’d shed his gloves at some point, and she felt the heat of his touch, not to mention every move of his body as he cleaned off the wound.

“One time in Freesia,” she began, “we were beset by a peacock and a unicorn—they work together, you know. As the men fought the unicorn, the peacock went for me. Although I’d heard their beaks were razor-sharp, I didn’t quite believe it until he was licking the blood from my arm with his black tongue. That cut was far deeper than this one.” She held up her arm, rolling back her sleeve to show a white scar cutting across her forearm.

“What happened next?”

“I beat him to death with my umbrella and put his tail feathers in my hat.”

He sat back, eyed her as if she was edible. “Really?”

“I can show you the hat.”

“So fierce.”

He was still dabbing gently at the cut, and she flicked her eyes to it. It was dry and clean and no longer hurt much at all. But he didn’t stop touching her. “Hold on. I can make this easier for you.”

She bent over, her foot still in his lap, and ran her hands under her skirts to pull the bow that held the stocking up at her thigh. She carefully rolled down the dove-gray silk under cover of the green fabric, smiling coyly as the thin material skimmed over the rip and the cut. His dark eyes widened, his breath catching with a satisfying pause. She pulled off the ruined stocking, tossed it onto the floor, and nestled her bare foot back in his lap. When she resettled herself against the sofa, he gently grasped her ankle, ignoring the wound as his thumbs massaged her arch and the ball of her foot. Her head fell back, a moan escaping her.

“I’m sorry about this, Jacinda.” His voice was low, husky.

“You’re forgiven, provided you keep doing that.”

His hands froze. “I suppose it’s the least I can do.”

She wiggled her toes at him, and he sighed. There was something sad in the sound, some unknowable sense of loss, but she forgot it as soon as his touch changed, his thumb pressing with warm intimacy against the sensitive arch of her foot and running down to the cleft between her toes. With her eyes closed and the welcome but unfamiliar feeling of having one leg completely bare, she gave in to the eddies of warmth and electricity whirling through her.

“I should tell you to leave, woman.”

“You’re not going to.”

“I should pack up and hit the road. Find another caravan to hide in.”

“I’d find you.”

“I should treat you badly. Say cruel things. Set fire to your conveyance.”

“You should kiss me, Marco.”

“I most definitely should not do that.”

“But you want to.”

“What’s wanting got to do with anything?”

She leaned forward, her lips a breath away from his. “You think you’re so tough, don’t you, Marco Taresque?”

He tilted his head, his lips almost brushing hers. “Pretty sure I stabbed you today, and I wasn’t even trying.” He kissed her, lightly, teasingly, pulling back almost instantly. “You should see what I can do when I actually put my mind to it.”

“Oh, I’d like to see that.”

She tried to kiss him, but he pulled away. Her temper flared, but she tamped it down. There had to be some way past his defenses. With a sly smile, she leaned back and slowly unlaced her other boot, kicking it off and slipping her stockinged foot into his lap with the one he still held, cradled in warm, callused palms. It wasn’t difficult for her toes to find what she was looking for, and he groaned, his fingers tightening on her other foot.

“I’m going to be blunt. I want to bed you. It has nothing to do with the story. This is for me.”

She felt the effects of her words under her toes and smiled at the truth he couldn’t hide. He closed his eyes, his mouth falling open deliciously for just a moment before he groaned and stood, dumping her feet angrily on the floor. “I can’t. I flat-out can’t. You think I don’t want to?”

“I know you want to. You certainly seem . . . able. I just don’t know why you won’t.”

“I have my reasons.”

“You’ve already got a girl? You’re married? You took an oath? You’re cursed?”

Marco turned away. “There’s no one else. But otherwise, you’re closer than you think.”

He snorted and shook his head bitterly, his back to her. She didn’t mind the view, but it pained her to see him so conflicted, to know that there was some real, deep reason he couldn’t just throw her against the wall and kiss her until she cried, even if he ached for it as much as she did. She wanted him, she liked playing and flirting with him, and she realized that as little as she knew about him, she cared for him. And he was hurting.

She stood, wrapping her arms around him and putting her cheek against the solid curve of his shoulder. He smelled familiar and warm, wood and metal and the same incense she remembered from the caravans she’d visited on her way to find Criminy’s. She didn’t grind herself against him, didn’t let her hands roam. She just held him.

“I’m sorry for pushing you, Marco. I thought you were just flirting with me, enjoying the back-and-forth. I didn’t know there was an actual impediment. I’ll back off. Getting a story is one thing, but I’m not the sort of journalist who tears people down. All along, I just wanted to prove you were innocent. But if you don’t want that to be proven, if you can’t take this farther, consider the issue closed.”

She pulled away from him, her hands lingering briefly, wistfully, on his biceps. Silly. She felt silly now. Pursuing him when he didn’t want to be pursued. Pushing him when he didn’t want to be pushed. Coming back for more, when he’d made his position clear, told her again and again it was a game, not real. Whatever his reason, it just seemed cruel to them both to continue on as she had been, goading and pressing and toying with him for her own amusement and pleasure.

As she bent to slip on her boots and leave, an embarrassed blush high on her cheeks, he murmured, “This issue damned well isn’t closed.”

Before she could straighten and ask him what he meant, his hands caught her hips and pulled her back, hard, against him. Jacinda gasped and straightened and wobbled, her foot half in her boot. He steadied her back against his chest, one arm around her waist and the other traveling up to her jaw to hold her, tightly but gently, against the length of his body. With a small sigh, she pressed against him, forgetting everything she’d just said about respecting his boundaries.

His lips found the edge of her ear, and he turned her face to kiss along her throat, half frantic and half tender.

She didn’t want to say it, but his earlier conviction, his passion, had left its impression. “But you said—”

“I know what I said.”

His tongue slid past the lace edging of her collar, his fingers deftly undoing the buttons as his mouth undid the woman. It took every ounce of fortitude she had to wrap an arm around his neck, grab a fistful of hair, and yank his lips away from her skin.

“I told you I would back off, and you agreed it was for the best?”

He shook her hand off and nipped the shell of her ear. “I did agree with that.”

“Then why is your other hand cupping my ass?”

“Because it’s perfect.” Both hands slid down to briefly frame the part in question, his lips warm on her neck. “And because I’m sick of running from the past. And the future.” He flicked two more buttons and pulled back her collar, exposing her entire throat. “You can run, if you still want to.”

She let her head fall back over his shoulder, her mouth against his ear. “I never wanted to run at all.”

He caught her throat in one hand and turned her face, their lips meeting, half open, and she realized that they’d never once kissed normally, lined up like they were meant to. Thus far, it had always been sideways, upside down, over her shoulder, her back against his chest. She didn’t care; she didn’t want anything average. The fierce abandon of their tongues, their mixed breath, his hand slowly sliding down her open collar, seemed fitting for a wild creature like him. Caught between his hands and mouth, spine twisted and body pulled taut, she kicked off her boot and gave in to him entirely, to taking whatever he would give her, heedless of his best intentions.

With sudden ferocity, he swept her up into his arms, carrying her toward the back room of the wagon. “I want to see you.” He kicked open the door and laid her gently on a wrought-iron bed neatly made with a quilt of patchwork silks. “All of you.”

She stretched her arms overhead, lifted her bare foot to let the hem of her dress slide up her calf and give him a view of creamy skin. Then, with a slow and wicked smile, she reached to grasp the headboard, arms spread wide, fingers curled around the iron bars.

“Reminds me of being strapped to your target.”

“Mm. You forgot something.”

With a matching smile, he took an ankle in each hand and pushed them apart until she lay there, spread-eagled on his bed, as he climbed up to straddle her. She couldn’t help admiring the way his black breeches stretched tight over his thighs, making her fingers twitch around the iron bars. His boot tips hooked over her ankles as he found the next button on her jacket and slipped it open.

“You city women and your buttons,” he mused, and she shook her head.

“I’m not a city woman. Haven’t lived in a city since I left university.”

He undid another button, traced a fingertip down her throat. “What are you, then?”

“Nothing that has a name.” He flicked another button, this one just over her heart, and before she could elaborate, his mouth was on her, his tongue tasting her throat as his fingers continued downward, exposing the edge of her corset. She unclenched the bed frame, but he caught her hand and put it back firmly.

“I like you like this, spread out for me. If you let me enjoy myself, I promise you won’t regret it.” His lips nibbled her clavicles, his tongue tracing the fine lines of her bones. “I told you: I like to take my time.”

“I’ll do my best. But I’m not one for following orders.”

“Consider it a polite request, then.”

His tongue dipped into the valley between her breasts as he finished with the last button of her jacket, spreading the thick cloth from chin to waist and revealing an emerald-green corset that made her fair skin glow like porcelain held before the fire. She wanted so badly to touch him, to enjoy the softness of his dark hair and the breadth of his shoulders and the smart, enticing curve of his ass, but she was painfully aware of what had happened the last time she’d moved her hands from his chosen place before he was satisfied. The frustration heightened the touch of his fingertips, callused from flicking blades and perfectly nimble with softer flesh as he gently eased her breast from under her corset. Her nipple hardened and pearled as he pulled it into his mouth, licking and tasting it. His fingertips found her other nipple, rolling and rubbing it, making her squirm to be free of the confines of stays and thick satin. He teased from one to the other before pressing them both together and tonguing both of her nipples at once, a sensation she’d never experienced but that made her throw her head back with a strangled moan.

“You make that noise again, I’ll have to do something about it,” he murmured, his breath hot against her flesh.

“If you’re daring me to dare you, then I dare you.”

Before she’d finished speaking, his tongue was in her mouth, messy and wild and wet and all too brief, and then he was kneeling between her legs, his hands on her ankles under the hem of her skirts. His knees against her thighs made her squirm, as did the painful slowness with which he slid her skirts and petticoats up, revealing her legs inch by inch.

“Oh, this is pretty.” He ran a fingertip up and down the lone silk stocking she still wore.

“When I put them on this morning, I was thinking of you.”

“Holy mother, they go all the way up. Maybe the cities aren’t so bad.” Walking his fingers up her leg from ankle to thigh, he lifted just that side of her skirt to expose the dove-gray stocking. She closed her eyes and writhed, so impatient for him to reach the ribbon bows that connected the Franchian silk to her corset.

Reaching the curve of her hip, he paused.

“You weren’t lying.” His fingertip stroked the place on the crease of her thigh where an Almanican shaman had etched her skin with needle and ink in an elaborate ceremony. The stylized quill tattoo had been hard won, and she treasured it beyond words. After a short pause, he kissed it gently and said, “Beautiful,” and she exhaled in relief.

He leaned over, taking the black ribbon in his teeth and pulling so slowly that she could hear the bow spring free. It took everything she had not to let go of the iron bars and dig her nails into his back, not to beg him to give her something besides exquisite frustration.

“Mmm.” He rubbed his cheek against her hip, the rasp of his stubble delicious against her skin. “I like the stockings, but I like what’s underneath better.” He took the silk in his teeth and lightly dragged it down her thigh, his breath hot on the inside of her leg as he exposed her flesh to the cool air. When his nose grazed the tender curve of her ankle, she shivered, and he slipped the stocking free with his teeth and tossed it onto the floor.

Jacinda lifted her eyes, and he was staring straight at her, a look of such profound emotion on his face that she was momentarily bewildered. There was hunger and lust and darkness and a strange sort of sadness in him, and before she could ask him why he was so worked up over simple love play, he was nibbling up her ankle, his hand on her other leg matching pace and pulling up the other side of her skirt to expose her completely. His tongue and lips traveled up her calf, paused to dip into the tender spot behind her knee, and then began the ticklish, devilish, delicious trip up the inside curve of her thigh, closer and closer to the place where she’d been dreaming of his touch. He was drawing it out as long as possible, making her breath build to pants and causing her body to strain toward him.

“Damn, Marco, but you can work a woman up.”

“I’m very generous.”

“Generous with torture.”

“It’ll be worth it. You won’t believe the things I can do with my tongue.”

“I’m more interested in what you can do with other parts of your body.”

Marco’s lips froze with a quick intake of breath, almost as if she’d wounded him, even though there wasn’t anything she could have done, spread out as she was.

“I hope I live up to your expectations,” he murmured, licking gently up the inside of her thigh until he exhaled, slowly, at the core of her.

Jacinda held her breath, waiting. He was so close, his thumb nearly brushing her, just next to his mouth. Her entire world started and ended with the place where she waited for his touch, and she realized she hadn’t wanted anything this badly in a long, long time.

When his caress came, it nearly ended her. Just the tip of his tongue, wet and gentle, barely dipping to taste her as his thumb pressed, softly, just beside it. She was already wet, dripping with want, and she whimpered and went stiff, beyond desperate for more. Lick by lick, he teased her, tasted her, touched her, pressed in the tiniest bit, nowhere close to satisfying her, taking his time as he had promised. One finger slid into her with infinite patience, his tongue probing her most secret of places. Marco was just as frustrating in bed as he was on his feet, and she loved and hated it with equal measure.

Since Liam, all her lovers had been fast and brash and pounding and innocently selfish, easy to lose herself in for a night and just as easy to forget come morning. But Marco’s touch brought her back to herself, reminded her of what it was to yearn and want and need. She couldn’t escape it, couldn’t escape him, couldn’t escape the feeling writhing in her chest, the hunger, the needing.

“Please.”

One long, deep lick, tongue flat, enough to make her shudder. “Please what, sweetness?”

“Just . . . please.”

He put his lips against her and hummed, sending a thrum throughout every cell of her body. “Hmm. Please go more slowly?”

She groaned. “Curse you and your damn lips, Marco Taresque.”

He paused, set his forehead against her thigh. “Care to rephrase that?”

“Yes. No. Faster. More.” He licked her again, and she whimpered. “Please. More.”

He chuckled against her, slid a second finger in beside the first, and curled them as if he knew every inch of her body as well as he knew his knives. His tongue began to work her with purpose, pushing in and out in perfect time with his fingers, and she met his rhythm with every breath, with the little moans and whimpers that escaped her as her head thrashed back and forth. Her fingers were numb around the iron bars, her hands forgotten in the frenzy he’d built inside her.

“Better?” he asked.

“So close. Still not enough. All of you. Now.” After one last, forceful, hard push of his tongue, he withdrew, leaving an emptiness behind where his fingers had brought her to the edge of a release she felt sure he wasn’t ready yet to give her. The knowledge was thrilling, that he was so attuned to her body after so little time, that he was reading every signal she threw. She felt like an instrument in his hands, as if he knew how to coax songs from her that she didn’t yet know how to sing.

Marco moved up, one knee at the juncture of her thighs, flush against the place his fingers had filled almost perfectly. “You haven’t let go of the bed yet. Good girl.”

He wrapped his hands around hers and bent his mouth to her lips, kissing her long and deep and fitting his knee more snugly between her thighs. His fingertips trailed down her arms, tracing over the fabric of her undone jacket until he came to the plain of her exposed chest, her breasts still floating over her corset and aching for his touch. He licked and sucked and teased them, but she could feel his patience turning to hunger, could sense that he couldn’t go on like this much longer, drawing out her pleasure while denying his own. One by one, he unlatched the hooks down the front of her corset, kissing down the valley of fevered flesh until the last one popped free, exposing her utterly. As she gulped a deep breath, he licked a long line straight up from her navel to her throat. In a heartbeat, he was back at her navel and circling there, briefly, before dipping below the waist of her skirt.

Before she could twist her hips to show him the buttons, he’d already undone them and begun to slip the heavy skirts and petticoats down her hips, his mouth lingering on the ticklish flesh of her hipbones. She lifted herself up, helping him slide the skirts off completely and toss them onto the floor. With a sigh of bliss, she wriggled all over, glad to be free of the heavy layers of fabric. His hands ran reverently over the curves of her, tracing and cupping and brushing as if he’d never seen so much of a woman before. When she looked up, she was moved by the softness and awe in his eyes. He caught her looking and leaned over to take her face in both his hands and kiss her with such tenderness that her desire melted away, for just a moment, into bliss.

And then his finger found her again, testing the wetness pooled between her legs.

“I think you might be enjoying this.”

He began to ease in one finger, and she tossed her head and whimpered. “I want to touch you, Marco. Please let me touch you.”

He shook his head no, but ever so softly, he said, “Do, then.”

Her fingers ached when she unwound them from the iron, and her head swam when she sat up. With tentative hands, he helped her draw off her jacket and unwrap the corset, and then she was completely naked before him, a field of sweetly flushed freckles and soft red hair. The way he stared with liquid violet eyes, as if she was an angel, made her feel cherished and beautiful and fierce. Jacinda slipped from the bed to stand between his knees, the wood floor cold under the balls of her feet.

With trembling hands, she began unbuttoning his shirt, pausing only to gasp when he cupped a breast in each hand and held them together, licking every curve. The soft black linen fell open, and she untucked his shirt and drew it down over his shoulders, skimming her hands down the smooth, hard muscles of his biceps and scratching her nails through the dark, curly hair on his forearms. Her eyes were drawn by a series of thick white scars that stood out from the golden skin of his shoulder, side, and chest.

“What happened?”

He grimaced and shook his head, turning it into a smile. “Being a daggerman has its perils. Like beautiful women throwing themselves at me.”

She knelt in one smooth motion, his knees on either side of her. Kissing down his chest, she ran her hands over the curve of his ribs, over hard muscles, down to that elegantly delicious line where his hipbones made a V pointing somewhere lovely. Marco held perfectly still, his eyes closed, letting her do her work, his hands making fists in the coverlet as if he was afraid to touch her. After running her hands along his thighs and to his knees, she sat back on her haunches and slowly, so slowly, undid the buttons on his breeches. He leaned back and groaned as he sprang free, and she was smugly gratified by the evidence of his desire, that he had taken such time to drive her mad with hands and mouth while he felt the same hunger she knew.

The deadly Marco Taresque looked so very vulnerable this way, torso bared and head thrown back, throat exposed and eyes closed, wild hair tangling down his back. And she very much wanted to shock him, to drive him mad. And so, with her hands on his knees, she bent and took him deep into her mouth. He groaned and tensed and growled as she tasted him, just as slowly as he’d tasted her.

“No . . . I don’t . . . I can’t . . .”

Without pulling away, she innocently mumbled, “Can’t what?” around him.

With a growl, his hands caught her waist and pulled her to standing, and her excitement ratcheted up a notch with his sudden ferocity and need. He pulled her close and gazed up into her eyes, and it was like falling into a cave of ever-twilight, into a dark, echoing, endless chasm.

“God, you’re unspeakably beautiful.” He laid his face against her side, nuzzling, and she tugged fingers through his dark, silky hair, waiting for his next touch, for him to finally initiate the release they both craved. But he made no move.

“What do you want, Marco?”

His lips tickled her ribs as he spoke. “Everything. I want to taste every inch of you and meet you a thousand ways for a thousand nights and hear you scream in my ear as you shatter under my mouth.” He pulled away, traced her curves up and down with his fingertips. “But since you’re asking, let’s start with this.”

He spun her around and sank his teeth into her ass briefly as his fingers found her, spreading her lips and pulling her back gently. With a smile of satisfaction, she spread her legs to straddle his knees. Ready as she was, he slid in easily, perfectly, deliciously, making her gasp as she settled against him. He let out a strangled sigh and set his forehead against her shoulder, and for just a moment, she imagined she felt the wetness of a single, solitary tear.

Then Marco’s arm wrapped around her, pinning her hands to her chest, and he rocked forward tentatively. With a little “Ooh,” she moved with him, grinding against him slowly. He moved her hair aside and caught the nape of her neck with his lips, finding a steady rhythm that battered against her, striking deep inside. With his arm still around her, his fingers wrapped around both of her wrists, she leaned forward, testing his strength, changing the angle just slightly, and his groan thrummed down her neck, down her spine, adding to the pooling pleasure at the core of her. His free hand roamed her body, cupping her breasts, pinching her nipples, and skimming her ribs, following the crease of her thigh to the crux of her, where he rubbed in time, moving faster in counterpoint to his thrusting.

Jacinda threw her head back and wrenched her arms free with a growl. Her hands found his thighs, finally, and she rode him without shame or regret or thought, becoming a being of pure hunger and desire and hot, wet sweetness, with no past, no future, no deep-down sorrow. As many times and ways as she’d imagined being with Marco since the first time she’d laid eyes on him, it was better still than that.

He fit perfectly with her, moved perfectly, knew just how to work her flesh with mouth and hand in a wild frenzy that drew her into ecstasy, into forgetfulness, into that pitch-black, starlit abyss where nothing mattered but this, but him, but the movement, the feeling, the riding. And still they moved faster and faster, until only his arm kept her upright and in one piece. She arched her back against him and whimper-screamed, her head over his shoulder and her fallen hair streaming down his back as he caught her mouth and swallowed the panting whimpers of her crest. With one last cry, she clenched her muscles around him and kissed him hard, until she felt the rhythmic pumping of his own release. The kiss ended when his climax ignited a second bloom of pleasure deep inside her, and she had no choice but to lean back against him and ride it out in one long, high scream.

She went silent and collapsed against him, and Marco fell bonelessly back onto the bed, taking her with him. Rolling off his body, she put her head to his chest and smiled at his slow, steady heartbeat.

“Damn, woman,” was all he could say before closing his eyes and going completely limp, his booted feet still on the floor and his undone breeches flung open.

“Damn, yourself.”

He flinched, and she nuzzled closer. “Maybe I should just say ‘Wow’ and leave it at that.”

“Wow, indeed.”

He curled an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, brushing her hair back from her temples. “If I’d known it would be that good, I might not have resisted for so long,” he said.

“I had my suspicions.” She ran a hand over the dark hair fuzzing his chest. “But I always like it when I’m right.”