Laura Lee Guhrke (21 page)

He moved even closer. His hip touched hers, and she jumped, quivering inside, as if her body were full of butterflies. She started to move away, but his arm came up around her shoulders to prevent it. He leaned closer, then closer still, until his lips brushed her ear. “You still insist you can read people’s thoughts?”

“Sometimes,” she whispered, “I said sometimes.”

“So you did.” He turned her toward him and tilted her head back. “Can you read my thoughts right now?” he murmured, his lips lightly brushing against hers as he spoke.

“No.”

“Thank God,” he muttered and kissed her.

Sophie was lost in the sensation of his mouth on hers. She felt herself sliding off the edge of the earth and grasped the lapels of his jacket. She knew she should stop him, but her lips parted beneath his without any resistance at all, and any thought of stopping him went right out of her head. Never before had she been kissed the way Mick kissed her, a way that was so blatantly sensual, so powerful that it heated her blood and made her ache.

His arm around her, he leaned back, pulling her with him until he was lying on the seat with her on top of him, and she could feel the strength in his lean, powerful body stretched out beneath her.

The movement broke the kiss, and he trailed soft, wet kisses up to her ear. He began to nibble on her earlobe, and she shivered again, gasping at the pleasure of it.

He shifted his body beneath her, and she felt his knee touch her between her thighs. The scorching intimacy of it made her feel as if her whole body was on fire. “Mick, oh, Mick,” she moaned, unable to stop herself from calling his name.

He slid his hands to her hips and straightened his leg, aligning her body with his. Even through her skirts, she could feel him, hard and aroused against the apex of her thighs. He lifted his hips, rocking back and forth against her, and the delicious sensations came again, this time in waves, shooting through her like bolts of electricity, tearing tiny moans from her throat.

Afraid of what she was feeling, she flattened her palms against his chest, starting to push herself away from him.

“Don’t move,” he groaned, wrapping his arms around her to keep her body pressed to his. “Stay right there.”

“This must stop.” She tried to gather her wits, but she could not seem to manage it.

“I know. I’ll stop. I promise I will,” he muttered. His breath came fast and uneven as his hands moved
up her hips, along her back to the high collar of her dress. “But not yet. God, Sophie, not yet.”

He pulled one end of the ribbon at her throat, undoing the bow he had tied only moments before, then he moved his hands down her back, undoing buttons as he nuzzled her neck. He pulled back her collar and kissed the pulse at the base of her throat.

“I told you not to wear that perfume around me anymore,” he murmured against her skin. “It makes me insane.” He grasped the edges of her dress and pulled it apart until he could get it over her shoulders. Then he reached under the silk to undo the front buttons of her corset cover.

She should stop him. She really should.

He slid his hands inside her corset cover and cupped her breasts in his palms. She could feel the warmth of his hands on her even through her corset and chemise. He seemed to be doing magical things to her with his mouth and his hands and his body that she couldn’t stop. She turned her head and captured his lips with her own, kissing him with a sudden frantic urgency. With that kiss came her complete capitulation, and she knew she was lost.

Mick knew it, too. His hands caressed her breasts, his thumbs brushing bare skin above the lace of her corset. “Sophie,” he groaned against her mouth. “Sophie, you are so soft. So beautiful.”

He slid the tips of his fingers beneath the edge of her undergarments, touching as much of her bare skin as he could, given the restrictive corset. His touch felt so good that Sophie arched her back, pressing her hips
against his groin. She began to move her body against his, the way he had done to her moments before, wanting more.

“Christ Almighty,” he swore under his breath.

Suddenly, she was sitting up and so was he. She opened her eyes, disoriented and confused. She looked into his face, and the harshness of his expression did nothing to banish her bewilderment.

His mouth was set in a grim, tight line, and his lashes were lowered, preventing her from looking into his eyes. There was nothing in his face that showed a hint of what they had just shared, but his groans of pleasure still echoed in her mind, and she knew she had not been the only one to feel the exquisite pleasure only a few moments before.

She could feel him pulling her dress, jerking the edges back over her shoulders and into place. “Mick?”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he simply grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around. He began fastening buttons without a word.

“What arc you doing?” she asked over one shoulder, feeling abandoned and bereft by his sudden withdrawal. “Why did you stop?”

She heard him let out his breath in a rush, and his hands stilled. “Because I told you I would,” he answered and resumed buttoning her dress. “I don’t break promises, especially that one.”

Sophie knew what he meant, and what the consequences would have been had he broken his word. She also knew she would not have had the resolve to stop him. Never had she felt the pleasure he had aroused in her, nor could she have predicted the passion
of her own willing response. If Mick had broken his promise, a promise given in the heat of the moment, the consequences could have been dire indeed.

“I take back what I said when we first met,” she whispered over her shoulder, “You are a gentleman.”

He fastened the last button, then kissed the base of her neck just above her collar. “Don’t bet on it.”

Eleven
 

He was trying to keep his promise. He really was. But Sophie, sitting across from him in the carriage, with her hair about to come tumbling down and her lips swollen with his kisses, was a sight that wasn’t helping his resolve.

He was rock hard and softheaded about a woman who was somehow involved in a plot to kill him. He was an idiot.

What had he been thinking? Even as he asked the question, he wanted to laugh. Thinking had nothing to do with what had just happened. Thinking had nothing to do with the ache in his body or her soft cries of pleasure that still echoed through his mind.

He knew he hadn’t satisfied her, and he was angry with himself because he wanted to. Even now, even as he reminded himself how stupid it was to get involved
with a suspect, he wanted to feel her body against his again. He had to clench his hands into fists to stop himself from reaching for her.

He looked out the window at the rain-washed Berkshire countryside, because looking at her only made him want her more, yet he couldn’t ignore the scent of her perfume which clung to his clothes. He couldn’t ignore the sound of rustling silk as she crossed her legs, a sound that drove him wild because he wanted those legs wrapped around him.

The carriage turned off the main road, and Mick hoped they would soon be at Lord Fortescue’s estate. When the limestone walls of Parkfair came into view, Mick let out a long, low sigh of relief, but he knew he had several more days of this ahead.

When the carriage came to a halt in the drive before the house, Mick exited first, then held out his hand to Sophie. But she had barely stepped down from the carriage when she jerked her hand out of his with a suddenness that startled him. She dropped her reticule, and it fell to the graveled drive as she pressed her hands to her head with a moan of agony. Another moan followed, and she began rocking back and forth on her feet as if she was in intense pain. This was nothing like her pretense at Ascot. This was real.

“Sophie?” Alarmed, Mick grasped her shoulders, watching as her eyes closed and all the color drained from her face. Several servants began running toward the carriage from the house, and the driver stepped down from, his seat, but Mick waved them back as Sophie let out another moan of pain. “Sophie, what’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she shook her head, her hands still pressed to her temples. “Oh, God, not another one,” she whispered. “He’s dead.”

Sophie collapsed, and for the second time that day, Mick lifted her into his arms. She felt like dead weight, and he knew she was unconscious. He swept past the servants gathered in the drive and carried her up the front steps into the house. He found the drawing room and laid her on a sofa there. He gave a terse command to the housekeeper for smelling salts, then sat down on the edge of the sofa beside her, rubbing her wrists and commanding her to wake up, but she did not open her eyes.

It seemed like hours before the housekeeper returned. Mick grabbed the tiny bottle from the woman’s fingers, and as she watched, Mick held the vial of ammonium carbonate under Sophie’s nose.

She came awake, gasping, as if waking from a terrible nightmare. She pushed aside his hand and sat up, her breathing hard and fast as if she’d been running. Her face was white, and her brown eyes looked straight through him as if with some unidentifiable horror. It was the look in her eyes more than anything else that alarmed Mick. She looked as if she were in shock.

Before he could even ask what had come over her, she grasped his arm and said in a shaking voice, “Mick, we have to go to London at once. There may still be time.”

That threw him completely off his trolley. “Time for what?”

“It’s so horrible.” She seemed on the verge of tears.
“We have to do something. We can’t let it happen.”

Mick glanced up at the housekeeper, who was hovering anxiously nearby. “Tea,” he ordered. “With lots of sugar.”

“Yes, sir. Tea is good for ladies after a fainting spell, and sugar is important when you’ve had a shock.” The housekeeper departed.

Mick returned his attention to Sophie. He didn’t think she was truly in shock, but she did seem, close to hysteria, and for no reason he could fathom. “Sophie,” he said, tucking a loose tendril of her hair behind her ear. “Try to calm down. You fainted, and now you’re—”

“Yes, yes, I know what happened, but despite what you’re thinking, I’m not hysterical,” she said, her voice rising with each word. “And I’m not in shock, I’m frightened. It’s happening again, and we have to go to London.”

“Now?”

“Yes, right now.” She started to stand up, but he pushed her back onto the sofa.

“Sophie, you are not going anywhere.”

“But—”

“You just fainted, you are overwrought, and you arc not going anywhere.” She started to rise again, but again he pushed her back down. “If you don’t stay put, by God, I’ll handcuff you to this sofa.”

“We don’t have time to argue about this.” Her voice quivered with desperation. “We have to go now. This time, I know when, I know where, and I’m going to do something about it.”

“What do you mean?” Mick felt his guts tighten, and
he had a feeling he knew what was coming. His concern for her faded as his hardened detective instincts took control. “Sophie, just what are you trying to tell me?”

She grasped his sleeve in her fingers. “Mick, he’s all bloody, and I know he’s dead. We have to prevent it. We have to go and stop it.”

“What are you saying? There’s going to be a murder?”

“Yes.”

Mick studied Sophie’s pale face, wide eyes, and trembling lips. She looked scared to death, but in his entire career as a police officer and detective, he’d seen many fine actresses. Earlier today, he’d known at once her fainting spell was pretense, but this time, he’d have sworn it was real.

He could not detect any duplicity in her, but after what had happened in the carriage only a short while ago, he knew his own judgment could not be trusted just now. “I suppose this is another one of your predictions?”

She nodded, not seeming to notice the sudden cynicism in his voice. “Yes. It’s going to happen tonight, after dark. We have to do something about it. When I tried to warn you about what was going to happen to you, I made such a bungle of things that you didn’t believe me, and you almost died. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

She wasn’t the only one who didn’t intend to make a second mistake. Mick was on his feet in an instant. He grabbed her by the arm and began propelling her toward the door. There wasn’t time for an interrogation now. He could ask her any questions he needed to once they were on the train. “Come on.”

In the doorway, they almost collided with the parlormaid, who was bringing a tray laden with a silver tea service, cups, sugar, lemon, milk, and a plate of sweet biscuits.

The maid looked at them in confusion. “Mrs. Price told me to bring the tea, miss,” she said, looking at Sophie. “But—”

“It’s all right, Dorcas,” Sophie said as Mick pulled her past the girl. “We won’t he needing any tea after all.”

They had reached the entrance hall when Sophie jerked free of his hold. “Wait! I have to leave a note for Auntie.”

“You can telephone from the Yard.”

“Lord Fortescue doesn’t have a telephone here. This won’t take long.” Before he could stop her, she ran for the stairs.