Scandalous Desires (36 page)

“Aye!” Mick remembered those offhand remarks, the lessons given casually as they’d raided ships and analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of their men and of their enemies. But he’d considered Bran one of his own—his lieutenant, damn it. His friend. How could Bran have taken his words and turned them against him? “I expected loyalty from ye and every man under me command.”

“Under your command, exactly,” Bran said. “I had no way of bettering myself. I wanted to be like you.”

“Ye
were
like me,” Mick roared. “I took ye into me
confidence, made ye a man. What the
fuck
were ye thinkin’, Bran?”

“I was thinking of freedom!” Bran shouted. “You kept us under your thumb, made us live in your house, eat at your table. You dealt out the spoils as you saw fit and consulted no one else. You never listened to my suggestions or plans. I was nothing but a lackey to you when what I wanted to be was your equal.”

Mick stared. He’d spent years never knowing where his next meal would come from. He’d made the palace into a fortress, not only to guard his wealth, but to guard his men. And now Bran threw back his generosity in his face?

Mick turned his head away in disgust and stood. “Try and put the blame for yer betrayal on me, but it won’t work. Fionnula is dead because o’ ye and ye alone.”

“Oh, God.” Bran squeezed shut his eyes, moaning so low Mick had to lean close to hear the words. “Oh, God, don’t you think I know that? Her pretty face was burned off. I keep seeing her in my dreams. I can’t sleep at night.”

Mick grunted. “How did ye find me house?”

Bran shook his head. “I snuck a look in Pepper’s book.”

“And have ye told the Vicar where I am?” Mick asked, low and deadly.

“No!”

“Why come here?”

Bran opened his eyes, the tears stark upon his face. “I thought to warn you about the Vicar. He wants Mrs. Hollingbrook. He talks of nothing else now.”

Mick laughed though he felt no mirth. “And don’t ye think I know that well enough? Why did ye really come, Bran?”

“I’m sorry, Mick,” Bran whispered. “I didn’t know what he was like. If you’d told me…”

“What?” Mick sighed. “If I’d told ye he was mad ye wouldn’t have betrayed me to me own father?”

Bran stared, the color leeching from his face. “Your father? The Vicar is your
father
?”

“Aye.” Mick inclined his head, his mouth twisting bitterly. “Come full circle, hasn’t it? Betrayed by me father, and betrayed
to
me father. The old man’s probably right pleased.”

“Mick—”

Mick threw out a hand, stopping the other man’s words. “Get out o’ me sight afore I kill ye.”

Bran rose wearily. “Will you forgive me, Mick?”

His words cut a cord within Mick, letting loose the grief within. Mick drew his dagger and before Bran could move he had the knife at his throat.

Bran froze as a drop of blood welled under the dagger.

Mick looked into the face of the boy he’d held dear as a friend. “I can’t forgive ye, Bran, no. Ye banished that hope the moment ye put Silence and Mary Darlin’ in danger. They might’ve died because o’ yer stupidity. For that, for puttin’ them at risk, I should slit yer throat here and now and throw yer rotten corpse in the river.”

For a moment he stood, the knife against Bran’s neck, staring into the other man’s light blue eyes. They’d once laughed together, drunk brandy, and planned raids. Bran had been as close to him as a brother… or a son.

It could’ve been Silence with that ruined face.

Abruptly Mick swung away, putting the length of the stall between him and Bran as he strode to the stall door.

“Harry!” he roared.

The guard appeared a second later. He glanced in the stall and blinked, looking confused to see Bran still alive.

Well, and hadn’t Mick killed for far less than Bran had done to him? “Take him.” Mick jerked his head back at Bran.

“Take ’im?” Harry asked cautiously.

Mick winced. He wouldn’t put the burden of Bran’s death on Harry, either. No, Bran was his own responsibility and he’d see him out of England himself. He sighed and stretched his neck. “Take him to the cellar and lock him in well. I’ll be bringin’ him back to London and a ship bound for a distant shore tonight.”

The relief was plain to see on Harry’s face, but it was fleeting. When the big man turned to Bran his expression was as cold as Mick had ever seen it.

“Come on, then.” Harry took a firm hold of Bran’s arm and marched him from the barn.

Bran cast one helpless look over his shoulder, but Mick ignored it. He’d made up his mind.

Mick waited, listening to the retreating footsteps, then stayed many minutes longer, trying to get his anger under control. He didn’t want her to see him this way. She wouldn’t understand. She came from a foreign land where people could forgive one another, where it wasn’t weakness to let live the boy you’d taught to be a man.

Mick threw back his head and stared blindly at the dusty rafters of the stable. He couldn’t change who he was. He’d been bred from the loins of a demon in human form and there was only so much humanity in him.

“Michael?”

Her voice was soft and sweet in the stable’s still air. For a moment he wanted to hide. To not let the disease of his soul touch her. He felt filthy with sin.

But she was ever relentless was his Silence. She poked her head around the stall door. “There you are.”

He straightened from the wall. “Aye, here I am.”

She hesitated by the doorway as if aware of the blackness in his soul. Perhaps the truly good had a sort of inner compass that swiveled around when in the presence of evil.

“What did Harry come to say?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing ye need worry about.”

He started for the stall door, but she didn’t move aside. Instead she hugged her arms across her chest and looked at him with those damned beautiful eyes. “What if I want to worry about it? What if I want to share your troubles?”

He stared at her nonplussed and couldn’t help thinking that he’d never had this sort of problem with any of the whores he’d taken to bed. He wanted to brush past her and leave her and her damned questions, but he had a feeling in his gut that to do so would somehow be an act not easily mended.

Mick sighed. “Harry brought Bran to see me.”

She stood immoveable and simply raised her eyebrows.

“Damn ye,” he hissed, taking her by her slim shoulders. “Why can’t ye leave it alone? ’Tis a man’s business and none o’ yer own.”

“I think it is,” she replied, bravely tilting her face to look him in the eye, stubborn thing. “I’ve given you my body and more. I think in return you can give me some small confidence.”

“It that what this is? A test?” He felt the anger rise in him again, seeking a victim even if she might be innocent of any outrage against him.

“Perhaps it is,” she said slowly. “I need to know that I’m more to you than a woman in your bed, Michael.”

“Ye know full well yer more than that,” he growled in outrage. “What d’ye want from me?”

“Truth,” she whispered, powerful in her softness. “Honesty. Friendship. And perhaps love.”

The words sent icy fear through his belly. He could storm a ship, could knife a man, could lead a gang of near-feral pirates, but the things she asked of him were impossible for him to do. He was the son of Charlie Grady, a man who’d never felt compassion, let alone love in his entire life. What softness Mick had had in him had been burned away sixteen years ago as surely as Charlie Grady’s face had melted. He’d had to armor himself in layers of granite to survive, to fight to where he was now in the world. And she? She wanted him to simply strip his armor away—let it fall and stand naked and vulnerable in the sunlight.

Her gaze was clear and direct and too terrible for words as she waited for something from him—something he wasn’t sure he
had
in him.

“Damn ye,” he hissed again, and brought his mouth down on hers.

He’d been bedding women since the age of fourteen. He knew well their sweet parts, their soft sighs. This he could do. She would have to learn to be content with it. He knew no other way to keep her.

M
ICHAEL’S KISS WAS
overpowering. Silence struggled to remember that he’d not answered her questions. But her body had become attuned to his mastery overnight it seemed. She found herself curving toward him, opening her mouth, running her hands through his lovely hair. Already she was quickening, anticipating whatever he might want to do to her.

But he hadn’t told her what Bran had come for. He’d refused to share that information and more importantly some small part of his everyday life. If she was to be more to him than merely a body in his bed, he must learn to open himself, he must—

Michael began gathering her skirts in great handfuls and her thoughts scattered.

She tore her mouth away. “Oh! What if someone comes?”

“Hush,” he murmured, his voice lowered to a deep rasp. “No one will interrupt.”

He’d bared her legs now and was backing her into the stall wall. She leaned there and watched, dazed, as he dropped to his knees.

“Michael!”

He ignored her urgent hiss. “Hold yer skirts.”

“Oh, dear Lord.” She obediently took the material in her hands even as she craned her neck to watch for intruders. What if Harry came back? Or Bran? Did Michael keep a groom?

He laid both hands on her now, stroking up over her calves, smoothing over her knees, and delicately tracing her thighs.

She shivered. What did he intend to do? She could feel heat gathering at the apex of her thighs and if he reached up there—

She squeaked as he bent to kiss the inside of her thigh.

“Raise yer skirts higher, love,” he whispered.

She groaned under her breath. If she pulled up her skirts any farther, her most intimate parts would be exposed. It was one thing to frolic nude in the dark, quite another to do so in the light of day.

But his voice was like liquid sin, dark and dangerously seductive. She did his bidding, her fingers trembling with want, and felt the cool air caress the juncture of her thighs.

“That’s it,” he said approvingly. “Hold it there, love, and spread yer thighs jus’ a wee bit wider.”

She swallowed and did as he bid.

“That’s me girl.” He whispered against her skin, his hot breath making her shiver.

His mouth trailed up beside her mound, licking and kissing, but very leisurely, as if he had all the time in the world. She tilted back her head, impatient, nervous, on edge from suspense. He drew closer to her center and tongued the crease next to her thigh.

Silence bit her lip, trying to make no noise—surely they would be discovered if she did.

She felt him run his thumbs through her maidenhair and down to the plump outer lips of her sex. He thumbed them apart, exposing her wet inner folds.

“Michael!” she whispered, as loud as she dared.

But he ignored her. He blew on her wet curls and she shivered—more from the sensation than the chill. Then he leaned forward and touched his hot tongue to her center.

She jumped at the contact, nearly hitting her head against the boards of the stall. Oh, dear Lord! “What are you doing?”

He chuckled low and restrained her quivering body with his hands, then he drew his tongue through her folds, slow and thorough, the most intimate contact she’d ever experienced. His tongue was wet and hot and felt indescribable.

He didn’t seem to care that they were in an open stable, that she was jerking in reaction from each touch, that
what he did to her must be some kind of wicked indecency. Michael O’Connor didn’t care at all. He just kept licking and tonguing her until she thought she might go mad with the intensity of the feelings he was provoking in her. Each swipe of his tongue burned exquisitely on her nerve endings. Each deep kiss drove her ever nearer to an edge. She was shaking, panting, damp with her own need, and he simply would not stop.

She found herself spreading her knees wider, tilting her hips to give him better access. She might very well expire from this torture, but she would die in bliss. Her head was back against the old stable wall, and she watched the rafters overhead blindly, thinking that she’d never be able to enter a stable again without blushing.

And then he took her little knot of flesh between his lips and suckled it as deeply as he had her nipples this morning. Dear God, she could not hold back. She tumbled over the precipice, sweetly unaware, joyously free. Her back arched, her legs tightened, and she had to stuff a hand in her mouth to keep from screaming.

She was still trembling when he stood and took her into his arms. She rested there grateful and limp, for she wasn’t sure she could stand on her own feet after her ravishment. But when she made to let her skirts fall he placed his palm possessively on her mound.

“D’ye like that, darlin’?” he drawled.

“You know I did.” Her tongue felt thick and her words were slow. “But you did it to distract me.”

He pulled back and looked her in the face, his own wary. “Ye never give up, do ye?”