The Reinvented Miss Bluebeard (London Paranormal 03) (25 page)

She smiled at something he said, thinking about what an odd man he was. Adam was composed of many parts, not unlike Frederick. She hadn't even known the man a full week, and yet she found it difficult to imagine that he'd once been nothing but a figment of her imagination. He had come into her life and made it better with his presence.

He smiled back at her, patting Frederick, who was now waxing rhapsodic about Miss Beal's attributes. Eve rolled her eyes. If Frederick wasn't singing some horrid song, he was writing odes to Miss Beal's beauty. If she heard one more word about the woman's dainty elbows, she would go mad herself.

The carriage stopped. Catching Eve's expression, Adam helped a lurching Frederick into the house, along with her driver, James. Inside, his creator and Clair both scolded the wayward giant.

Adam returned to the carriage and climbed inside. Once settled comfortably against the seat, he crisply rapped on the roof. "Home, James!" he called. Then, turning to Eve, he smiled a slow, crooked smile, which left her slightly breathless. "I'm so glad that your driver's name is James. I've always wanted to say that."

Eve laughed, surprisingly happy. In her wildest dreams, she would never have imagined loving the devilish glint in a husband's lovely hazel eyes, or recalling fondly the way his broad shoulders looked while he was shoveling dirt alongside Fester.

Adam winked, his manner quite merry for someone who had been singing in the rain with a nude monster a short while earlier. His humor was infectious, and she found herself giggling for no reason at all. Her feelings for him were becoming rather warm, even though she knew that he was calculating, cagey, cunning, and probably as crooked as the day was long. But he did make her toes curl when he kissed her. Maybe even more important was the fact that he made her laugh.

As the carriage took them back along the muddy roads to the asylum, he and Eve talked more about his past. Adam found her questions to be a dashing good sign. To his way of thinking, her curiosity indicated interest, and interest could be turned into lovemaking, if a man were both cunning and intrepid. Adam was nothing if not intrepid.

As they talked, Adam stared at Eve. She was his guiding light, his shining star. When he was younger, he had stood alone on jagged peaks in distant lands, and below he would watch the world go by without him. Now the world was a different place, and his participation in it began with Eve.

She was telling him something about her past, and he commiserated, noting appreciatively how the soft glow of the carriage lantern set off her creamy complexion. The reddish-gold strands of her hair were highlighted, and glistened like flame.

"What about your early life and family?" Eve asked. "You've mentioned them little."

Adam sighed. "My father, before he lost the estates, was a jolly fellow, always laughing. He taught me to love nature, to ride, to hunt, and he always had a good story to tell." His father had also taught him pride in his heritage. "He was a good father. He chased away the monsters in the dark when I was small."

He stared into the flickering fire of the lantern, his surroundings fading from view. Bravely he summoned memories of things long left buried, and he looked back across the years.

"I remember him fondly. When we were small, my father used to throw me and my little brother into the air, laughing the whole time. My mother would scold him and kiss him on the cheek, while she combed our mussed hair. Mine was always tangled. I was quite the little scapegrace."

Eve noted the slightest curl of his lips, and the faint smile sent her heart pitter-pattering in her chest. "You had love and affection in your childhood," she said. "I wish all my patients could say the same. With love as a foundation, most people can make a decent life. It gives them strength to avoid temptations and wrong roads. It gives them a reserve to draw upon in times of trouble."

He nodded. "We did have love—and wealth and a general gaiety of life. Until the betrayal."

"What happened?"

"My father invested with a distant relative. The venture failed, and we lost almost everything. To recoup his losses, my father gambled at a very high-stakes game at a party thrown by that same relative. Needless to say, my father lost the rest of our fortune. He retained his title, but the baronial estates were unentailed and therefore forfeit. We were left with a small cottage located on the coast of Ireland. Our distant relative, who'd won everything, moved into our ancestral home, and my father never seemed to regain his balance. Not long after, he began to drink."

"I'm so sorry, Adam." Eve touched his arm, her concern clear in her blue eyes. "What of your brother and mother?"

"My brother died six months after our move. My father had been drinking heavily and took him out sailing. The boat capsized and my brother drowned. My father became very ill. He blamed himself and died a scant two weeks later. My mother followed a little over a year from then, with inflammation of the lungs. I've always believed that it was due to our reduced circumstances, and the loss of my father and her youngest child."

The flickering light cast half shadows upon his face, yet Eve recognized courage when she saw it. Yes, courage. This man had dropped his barriers enough for her to see beneath his bold and droll exterior to a sensitive, kind, and wounded soul beneath. It was a view, she instinctively knew, that Adam kept hidden from others. Yet he had revealed it to her, which meant more than a hundred flowery compliments.

"I'm so very sorry for your tragedies," she said. "Life is never quite what we expect, is it? We hope for rainbows and merry memories, but we end up with stormy skies, sad inclinations, and, if we're lucky, we have only a trickle of hope left to begin again. I hate to think of you left alone at such a tender age."

Eve's sincere response and compassion caressed Adam's lonely heart. It also eased the long-buried ache. Placing his hand over hers, he stared into her lovely pale face, and the rustle of past ghosts seemed to fade like dust in the wind. "And yours, my sweet? What was childhood like on a pirate ship? Merry, scary, or rather bawdy?" He hoped to lighten the somber mood in the coach.

"All three and more," Eve answered. "There was freedom, yet no room to explore it. So much water surrounds you, and yet there were times when the freshwater was so low that we went without bathing for weeks on end. I climbed ropes instead of trees. My playmates were a scurvy lot—Peg Leg Peggins, who taught me to dance, and One-eyed Jack, who made me a doll out of rope. And I wore breeches and practiced with cutlasses. I saw whales in the Atlantic with their blowholes spouting, and pink dolphins off the coast of Asia—along with a mermaid or two."

"Did you play pirate?" he asked mischievously.

She laughed. "I imagined tea parties at the queen's, and I played doctor. I doctored cut fingers and sword wounds, and treated rum poisoning. Why, I even tried to fix Peggins a new leg! Unfortunately, a shark ate that one as well. When I dressed up and decked myself out, I had the help of my mother's treasure chest. I did so at least once a week. My father thought me quite unnatural."

"Though I do admire your father, at times he can be thickheaded," Adam remarked gallantly, placing a kiss upon her wrist.

"You don't find me a bit unusual?" Eve tried to ignore the heated tingle beginning in her belly.

"Is this a trick question?" Before she could reply, he leaned over the carriage seat and began to kiss her eyelids, lingeringly and with soft adoration. He placed feathery kisses across her lips. As she clasped her arms about his neck, he moved his mouth to hers. His arms tightened possessively about her. She was absolutely perfect.

Closing her eyes, Eve felt as if a hurricane had swept her away. Her body came alive, responding to Adam's passion; she was tingling and quaking all over. Her toes curled at the heat shooting through her, making her grind restlessly against the soft cushions of the carriage and his hard body. Her fingers eagerly roamed his chest, delving into his jacket and beneath his white shirt, and she gloried in the feel of his chest's strong muscles and its mat of crisp short hair. Lower, she felt the hard bulge in his trousers.

Pure heat shot through Adam, and his caresses became more desperate. He trailed tiny kisses along Eve's throat, wanting to eat her alive. His arousal throbbed in his breeches.

In the blink of an eye he'd urged her back against the cushions. With an expertise born of years of experience, he released her breasts from their confinement. His breath rasping, he managed to relieve Eve of her gown to her waist. As her chest was revealed, his body burned. Her nipples were erect and reminded him of hard, dark garnets. The most wonderful treasures ever.

Catching his breath, Adam groaned. Eve was some pagan goddess come to life. His pagan goddess. And he wanted to worship.

Exercising strict control, he forced himself to move slowly when all he wanted to do was ravish her on the spot. "How beautiful you are. So lovely, so divine." He bent to lick and suck her breasts. They were so very soft, and he nipped at them lightly, listening to her soft moan. "The great treasure of Bluebeard revealed."

Pressing her even farther back upon the carriage seat, he slid his fingers under her gown, caressing the white flesh of her thighs. She gasped loudly. The breathy sound stirred his already overheated senses as nothing else could, and his nostrils flared as he breathed in the scent of her arousal. She was all hot female and silky skin. His blood was racing, and his heartbeat quick. He felt more alive than he ever had. This was the grandest adventure of his lifetime.

It was several minutes before Eve's rational mind offered protest. Her wits had gone a-begging, disarmed by his masterful seduction. But… "No, Adam. We shouldn't be doing this," she protested weakly. He made her feel so wicked, so desirable, as if her skin were on fire. Her breasts ached, and the place between her thighs was burning. Embarrassingly, she could feel wetness there, as if her womb were weeping for something that only Adam could provide.

His arousal pressed against her hip, and she moaned again. His effect on her was devastating, like a typhoon in the tropics—and she was now about as wet as one. That last thought had her nails sinking into his shoulders.

"This is wrong. I'm an unmarried—well, married in a way—but a virgin. Our wedded life is a fantasy. A fantasy growing on me, but a fantasy nonetheless. Besides, we can't make love in a carriage. It's so unladylike."

Adam argued by kissing her nipples. Then he said, "Making love in carriages is all the rage. Why, a duchess I once knew—" He fell silent as her eyes popped open and she hit him on the arm.

"I don't need to hear of your past conquests!"

"Of course not, my love. But I swear on my sainted grandmother's grave that none of them compare to you. And I haven't even gotten you to bed yet. See what a little temptress you are?"

"Adam, you're not stopping," she remarked. "I can feel your hands." His fingers had skimmed the tops of her thighs and pressed into the slit in her lace drawers. The spot he touched was virgin, and the sensations shocking and yet seductively wondrous. "Oh… oh… oh,
Adam
."

"My love, my sweet. I adore you," he whispered, kissing his way across her flushed and heaving chest. His fingers were as busy, playing lovingly between her legs.

"Argh…" This time, Eve's exclamation was whispered in wonder and not in annoyance. The blue eyes staring up into Adam's were heavy with passion.

Eve knew somewhere deep inside that she should stop this foolishness, but then his fingers teased that perfect place between her thighs, and the tingling there grew to a fierce, overweening need that eclipsed all else. He began a fiery stroking. At last, he touched a spot that had her muscles clenching. It was surprising, delicious, and made her yearn to know all love's many splendors. After all, she was twenty-seven years old.

"I adore you," Adam gasped, his breathing heavy as he slid two fingers into her. She was tight and wet. The pearl of her passion was plump and juicy with need, yet another treasure for him to plunder. He needed her. He wanted her with an intensity that bordered on madness.

"Feel how much I desire you," he moaned, releasing himself from his trousers, his face dark with desperation. "I think I shall die if I don't have you right now."

My, my
, Eve thought in stunned amusement. From what she could see, her husband was walking proof of Dr. Sigmund's theory of envy. And he wanted to share that magnificent specimen with her! She shivered—whether in anticipation or appreciation, she wasn't sure.

He had just begun the lengthy entrance when outside the carriage a loud shout was heard, and the galloping of horse hooves pounded the earth. "Halt that carriage or I'll shoot!" came a voice.

Adam's muscles bunched, and his face became a study in pain. The shout had caused him to halt his advance. With a ruthless gleam in his eye, he raised his head, and Eve tried to sit up, saying urgently, "It's a highwayman; I need to hide my jewels."

Glancing down at where they were half-joined, Adam winced and licked his lips. "That's what I thought I was doing," he muttered. His passion was overwhelming, and yet they could be in danger. He must protect Eve at all costs, even his own desire. Sighing, he added, "I suppose a different cache is in order." Once again, his seduction had been sabotaged.
What rotten luck
.

"I can't believe I don't have a pistol with me," Eve said. "But I don't!" Their carriage was slowing, and it hit a rut, knocking her head back against the cushions.

"What kind of pirate's daughter are you, no pistol?" Adam's expression was beyond grim. He ached with need and unfulfilled lust.

"A reinvented one," was her firm answer, and she stuck her pert little nose in the air.

Again a shout sounded outside the carriage. This time the robber's voice was much nearer, and recognizable. "Stop, ye bloody English. I know ye are carrying the king's gold. Ye think to fool me by traveling in disguise, but you shan't or my name isn't Napoleon Bonaparte. I'll have yer gold for me army. Charge!"