Thief of Shadows (Maiden Lane #4)(56)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“No!” She grasped his hair and pulled him down, uncaring of modesty, sophistication, worldliness.

And he was a quick learner. He licked her, his tongue swirling against his finger, parting her folds, kissing her deeply, until she was blown over by the storm, hard and fast, panting, gasping, losing all sense of herself and time. She arched under him, vaguely aware that he’d grasped her hips to keep from being dislodged, racing with the wind.

When at last she opened her eyes, he was lounging beside her, waiting patiently, his hand placed possessively on her belly.

She stretched out a hand, tracing the lines around his mouth wonderingly. “Come to me.”

She spread her legs invitingly and he mounted her. She took his hard penis in her hand and guided him to her wet entrance, watching from under drooping eyelids the tense expression on his face.

“Now,” she whispered, “now.”

He rose, moving on her, moving in her, but obviously holding back.

She arched her hips. “Let go.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You won’t,” she whispered, smiling. “I want to feel you. Every inch of you.” And she pinched his nipple between thumb and forefinger.

Something seemed to give way inside him. He reared and thrust into her, hard and fast. His eyes were locked with hers, determined, even as the orgasm took him, convulsing his features, tightening the tendons on his neck. He shoved into her one last time and held himself there, tight against her, as if to claim her forever.

Her smile wobbled. Forever wasn’t for them.

FOR A BRIEF moment in time, Winter’s mind stopped. All of his concerns and worries, all of his thoughts, simply ceased to be. He lay on the hearthrug, his chest rising and falling rapidly, and only felt the relaxation of all his muscles. The wonderful warmth of the woman lying next to him.

Total peace.

Isabel ran her fingers across his chest, tickling a bit. “Winter?”

“Hmm?”

“How did you come to be the Ghost of St. Giles?”

He opened his eyes, thoughts and memories flooding back so quickly to fill his empty mind that it was nearly painful. “A man named Sir Stanley Gilpin taught me.”

She propped herself up on one elbow, leaning over him. Her breasts swung gently at the movement, for a moment capturing his attention. “What do you mean?”

Her hair was still confined in an elaborate coiffure and he wished she would let it down. He’d never seen her hair down. “Sir Stanley was an old friend of my father’s and the home’s benefactor before he died two years ago. He was a widower. When I was young, he’d come to our house to debate religion and philosophy with Father. They were friends from childhood, but very different.”

“In what way?”

He absently pulled a pin from her hair as he thought. “My father was quite serious.”

She smiled. “Like you.”

He nodded, finding and removing another pin. “Yes, like me. He worked hard all day and at night read the Bible and heard my brothers’ and my lessons. What spare money he had he saved and eventually spent to found the orphanage. He believed one should devote one’s life to helping others.”

She folded her hands on his chest and laid her chin on them. “And Sir Stanley?”

“My father loved him as a friend but considered him frivolous. Sir Stanley liked reading novels and poetry, enjoyed the theater and opera, and even wrote some plays, although I have to say they weren’t very good.”

“He sounds a delight.” Isabel grinned.

Winter blinked, his hands stilling in her hair. He’d never thought about it before. “I suppose he was. In any case, he was quite the opposite to Father, and I rather admired him as a boy.”

He felt a familiar guilt. Father had been everything a good man should be—pious, hardworking, generous. In contrast, Sir Stanley had been flamboyant, full of extravagant ideas, not very practical—and oddly compelling to a young lad.

“It would be hard not to be attracted to such a man,” Isabel said gently.

He glanced at her face. Did she know the guilt he’d felt? He shook his head, returning to the story. “Sir Stanley was a canny businessman in his youth. He made his fortune in stock in the East India Company. Later I believe he owned a theater. In any case, by the time I was seventeen, I was helping Father at the home—”

She suddenly pushed up on her arms. “You started so young?”

He’d succeeded in freeing one long lock of hair. He wound it about his finger as he watched her. “Yes. Why? Many have a trade by that age.”

Her fine brows knit. “Of course, but”—she shook her head, thinking—“did you have any say-so in deciding to be the home’s manager?”

“You mean did I ever think to desert the home and all the children therein—”

“Winter,” she chided.

He gently tugged her lock of hair. “That’s what it would’ve been.”

She looked mutinous.

He found another pin and pulled it free. “If it makes you feel any better, I enjoy my work and always have.”

“And if you didn’t?”

“I’d do it anyway,” he said gently. “Someone has to.”

She sank to lie on his chest again. “But that’s just it. Why must it always be you?”

“Why not?” A second lock of hair fell to her shoulders, and he pulled it forward to run it over his lips. Her hair smelled of violets. “Do you want to continue to argue the point or hear about how I became the Ghost of St. Giles?”

She wrinkled her nose adorably, and a single spark of pure, sweet happiness shot through his breast. “Ghost.”

He nodded. “When I’d been working at the home for three or four months, an… incident occurred.”

He concentrated a moment on untangling a pin from the hair at her nape, aware that he was stalling. She waited quietly, not moving or saying anything, and at last he met her eyes.

Winter swallowed. “I’d been sent to pick up a child who we were told had been orphaned by his father’s death. When I arrived at the wretched rooms where he and his father had lived, he was being auctioned off by a whoremonger.”

He heard the sharp intake of her breath. “Dear God.”

Dear God indeed. He remembered the cramped room, the dozen or so adults crowded into it, and the terrified little boy. He’d been a redhead, his hair shining like a beacon in the midst of the wretchedness.