Burning for the Baron Read online

  Eyes closed, Colleen sat back and followed his instruction. Her fingers glided over her ribs to her destination. She cradled her breasts, circling her thumbs over the nipples, and her sheath jerked around him.

  Max rammed into her, wishing his cock was ten inches longer so he could pierce to the center of her. He needed more. Wanted all of her.

  “Your nipples are so red and hard, like cherries just before they ripen. Pinch them for me.”

  She did, and the sound of her moan echoed around the room.

  His body demanded release. It had never been this hard to wait on a lady’s pleasure. Squeezing his fingers tight, he pulled her down. His nails dug into drops of wax, scraping them from her skin.

  “You look so good, I need to taste you.” He surged into her. “Will you offer up your sweet breasts for me, love?”

  And like she’d been trained as a serving girl, Colleen plumped her breasts and leaned down, presenting her bounty.

  Max ran his nose around the velvet pucker, inhaling the dusky scent of heat and woman. He circled the beaded nipple with the tip of his tongue. With one hand planted firmly on her bottom, he skimmed the other up her spine. His fingers rolled over smooth streaks of wax, broken up by the silky heat of her skin. He rested his palm between her shoulder blades, pressing her lower, and sucked her nipple between his questing lips.

  Colleen jerked her hips, her body searching for relief, and Max was right there with her. He knew he should take the time, slow things down, suckle her until she begged for him to end it. He wanted to nibble at her lower lips, drink from her sex. Taste every inch of her skin, caress her, take deep, long strokes into her body. And he would.

  But not now.

  Right now, he needed release. Needed to find it with this woman who’d helped him erase the filthy memories with fire and wax. Let him forget for a couple of hours just how depraved human nature could be. The horror of the man’s suicide was the faintest of memories. Max’s need was all-consuming.

  Hands on her hips, he brought them together. Rough. Hard. Every jolt set her breasts to bouncing. Every slap of skin on skin made him burn. A tingling heat built in his groin. He tried to ignore it, wanting this to last forever. Each time he bottomed out, the cutest little squeak passed her lips, but it wasn’t enough.

  He rolled, putting her to her back and staying between her thighs. Grabbing her hands, he pressed her palms flat against the headboard. “Hold on,” he growled. As much as he liked Colleen’s bouncing up and down on him, this was the position he liked best. A woman spread open below him. Taking what he gave her. Digging his knees into the mattress, he found his leverage and pounded home.

  Her breasts still jiggled with each drive, and he filled his mouth with a soft globe. Her heartbeat pounded beneath his lips, her skin growing hotter. She wrapped her legs around his hips and arched into his touch. The heels of her boots dug into his arse.

  So. Fucking. Good. Grabbing the top edge of the headboard, Max lifted his head, watching Colleen squirm beneath him.

  “Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “Please, oh please, oh please …” Eyes wide, she implored him. “Faster,” she whispered.

  He didn’t know if that was possible, but he would give it his all. Using the headboard as leverage, he slammed into her. His sweat dripped onto her left breast, and he licked it away. He tried to empty his mind of the picture of her, tried to stave off his impeding release. But even when he closed his eyes, Colleen swamped his senses. Her scent, her feel. He could see her as clearly behind his eyelids as he had with eyes wide open, so he gave in and looked his fill.

  She thrashed her head from side to side, her sheath tightening around him like a velvet fist. If he could just hold on. One. Moment. More …

  His grunts matched the rattle of the headboard against the wall. “Come now, love. You have to come now.” The need for completion bordered on pain.

  Turning her face into the pillow, Colleen slid her finger between them. His next thrust bumped into the back of her hand, pressing it hard against her clit, and she went over with a cry.

  Her muscles clamped down, sucking at his cock, triggering his release. With regret, he pulled out of her clutching heat and rocked against her belly. String after string of his sticky seed jetted from his cock, splashing across her softly-rounded stomach, and Max groaned at the exquisite relief.

  He fell forwards, his nails clawing down the headboard as he collapsed onto the mattress. He turned slightly, keeping his weight off of Colleen, but keeping her body pressed close. He felt the slickness of her sweat, the stickiness of his release, smear across his stomach, and didn’t care. He was content to lay where he was.

  Colleen, however, was not. After her chest stopped heaving, she wiggled out from under him and scooted to the side of the bed. Pulling the half-full bowl of water onto her lap, she took the cloth out, and wiped her body down, spending quick attention to the vee between her legs.

  Much of the wax had scraped off on the coverlet, but streaks still covered her back in a medley of red, blues, and whites. He smiled. It rather did look like a Union Jack. He scratched at the largest patch, and the blue wax peeled off in one large, satisfying piece. “Rubbing you down is my job. Give me a chance to catch my breath, and I’ll lick you clean.”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice was a harsh rasp.

  Max pursed his lips. Rolling onto his hip, he wrapped an arm around her middle and pulled her around to face him. “What’s wrong? Was I too rough?”

  Her face turned pink. “No. That part was fine.”

  Max took the towel and bowl from her and set it next to the pillow. He might not be the world’s best lover, but usually a woman liked to cuddle up to him after sexual relations. A sigh of contentment never went amiss. And a word or two of praise was always appreciated. But Colleen was a working-class woman. Who knew how they reacted?

  “Talk to me,” he said, his voice brusque. He cleared his throat and tried again. “If I did something wrong, I want to know.”

  Her blush deepened, and her adorable freckles looked almost purple. Pulling her legs up to her chin, she wrapped her arms around her shins. The toes of her leather boots dug into the sheets. “You aren’t the one who did anything wrong.”

  Max’s stomach clenched like a blow had landed. He took a deep breath. “You haven’t done anything wrong, either.”

  “Haven’t I? My husband’s only been dead six months. I’m sorry, but this can’t happen again.” She rested her cheek on her knee. “I should still be in mourning, not traipsing around like a common Florence.”

  Max ground his jaw. “There was nothing common about what we did. And nothing wrong with it.”

  “Of course, you wouldn’t think so.” Rolling off the bed, Colleen hurried to her clothes and pulled her shift over her head. The threadbare cotton did little to hide her form.

  Max planted his feet on the floor. “What the deuces do you mean by that?”

  “You own and utilize a Venus club.” She arched one auburn eyebrow. “A little bed-bouncing would be of no account to you.” She crossed her arms, the hem of her shift riding the tops of her thighs. “I wasn’t brought up that way.”

  Prowling towards her, Max grasped the tail of her braid. “And how were you brought up? To show the gentry little respect, act as though social classes have no distinctions, but then hide behind your working-class morality when it suits you? Is that what your mother taught you?”

  “I have plenty of respect for my betters.”

  She damn well didn’t and that was one of the things he liked about her. “So, it’s just me that you feel free to debate, to question? Every other gentleman you’d bow and scrape before?”

  She opened her mouth, but Max cut her off. “You curtsy to no one.” Not sincerely leastways. He dropped to one knee. “And you’re magnificent for it.”

  “Max, what are you doing?” She tugged at his shoulder.

  Leaning forwards, he buried his face in her heat. Her regret spurred his anger, and
he wanted to prove her wrong. Demonstrate that she was as weak when it came to matters of the flesh as he. She couldn’t just put him on the shelf when it suited her.

  He pressed an open mouth kiss to her lower lips, tonguing the cotton, making it wet.

  Colleen shifted. Her fingers gripped his shoulder so tightly she’d be leaving marks of her own. “We’re supposed to be fighting.”

  Drawing back, he ran his finger over the seam between her legs. The wet cotton clung to her, molding around her cleft. “You feeling shame for what we did isn’t a fight we’re going to have.”

  “You can’t control how I feel. Or what I’ll argue about.” Burrowing her fingers in his beard, she tugged his face up.

  Max begged to disagree, and he played dirty. Ignoring the sting on his cheek, he lifted her shift, exposing her dewy curls. He ran his tongue between her folds, her musky sweetness exploding in his mouth.

  “Max!”

  “Is this something you want to give up?” He nibbled his way down one lip before swirling around her entrance. He lapped at her essence, not able to get enough of her flavor. “Will you let your notions of propriety take this away from you?”

  “No,” she breathed.

  He fucking thought not. “I can make you feel so good, Colleen. Better than any man ever has.” He sucked her clit into his mouth, swallowing thickly against the pain in the back of his throat. The only other man who would have tried would have been her husband. Max had taken Joseph Bonner’s life, and now he’d taken his wife, as well.

  There would be a special place in hell waiting for Max. But until that time, he planned on redressing that wrong as best he could. To take care of all of Colleen’s needs. And kneeling before her in penitence seemed like a worthy start.

  Wrapping one arm around her waist, he dragged her right leg up and over his shoulder.

  She tugged again on his beard, this time holding him close. “Lord of mercy.” Her leg shook, and she wobbled in his arms.

  Firming his grip, Max rose to his feet, Colleen half-sitting on his shoulders, and kept her pressed close to his mouth. She shrieked, her arms going around his head. Max couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he tossed her onto the bed.

  He crawled over her, and spread her legs wide, keeping his palms pressed to her inner thighs. “Now, where were we?”

  Colleen flopped back on the bed and moaned. Any façade of respectability had crumbled away.

  He buried his head between her thighs and let himself enjoy her decadence. Tomorrow he’d delve back into London’s underworld, confront the worst of humanity. And remember the worst that existed within himself.

  But tonight, he’d lose himself in bliss, fall into oblivion.

  And drag Colleen over the edge right along with him.

  Chapter Nine

  Colleen pulled on a pair of cotton gloves, ignoring the hole at the tip of the index finger. A torn and tattered pair of gloves was a suitable accompaniment to how she felt. Worn out. Both physically and mentally.

  The physical fatigue wasn’t a problem. In fact, the soreness and lethargy had come as a pleasant surprise when she’d awoken that day.

  And it had distracted her from her guilt.

  Ever since her husband’s death, she’d carried around a ten-pound sack of it. After last night, her load had doubled. It weighed heavily, dragging her steps, curving her shoulders. How could she let herself feel such pleasure when her husband wasn’t alive to feel anything?

  “Going somewhere?” Max pushed into her room, looking her up and down and frowning.

  The fact that he hadn’t knocked didn’t pass unnoticed. “These are my private chambers. Please don’t barge in. I might have been dressing.”

  His dark eyebrows shot up under his wild shock of hair. “Would it have mattered? Sorry, love, but there isn’t an inch of you that I haven’t already seen.”

  Colleen shrugged into her cousin’s coat, making sure that her watch was secure in her waistcoat pocket. “No, I suppose not,” she muttered. She cleared her throat. “Do you have plans for the afternoon? I was hoping to ask some questions in my neighborhood about this blackmail ring.”

  His muscles went rigid. “Were you now?” Pulling out a drawer in her bureau, Max removed a delicate pair of kid gloves and strode to her side. He tugged at the finger of one of her gloves, sliding it off her hand, before working on the other. He tossed them on her bed. “Anyone in particular you wanted to question, or merely an interrogation of the general populace?” Placing one of the new gloves between his teeth, he tried to work the other one onto her fingers.

  She took the smooth leather from his fumbling hand and donned the glove herself. It was like she’d slipped inside a silken cloud. “I am nothing if not practical. I know that asking random people questions would lead to little result.” Taking the other glove from his hand, she smoothed it on. This one pair of gloves, butter-soft and as supple as a second skin, likely cost more than she had ever spent on every piece of clothing she’d worn in her entire life.

  Nausea ate at her insides. She was an ordinary woman from Wapping. That’s where she was supposed to be, not playing dress-up with a nob.

  And that’s where she was going to return. She’d devised the idea of her own investigation that morning as her breakfast of toast and eggs threatened to come back up her throat when she thought about her actions of the past night. It was a compromise to herself, of sorts. She didn’t know if she could give up Max’s touch, no matter how big a sin their affair, not while she lived under his roof. He was too tempting. But she could make her time in residence as short as possible. Keep her folly to a short duration.

  She set her shoulders. “If I want my flower shop, I can’t wait around for you to find out who Zed is. I know some people, people who wouldn’t turn up their noses on a bit of knavery, not if it paid the right amount of coin. If this crime ring was as big as you say it was, the sailors and dockworkers in my neighborhood would have heard of it.”

  He tugged the musty coat down her arms and tossed it by her waste bin. Opening the wardrobe, he eyed the contents, finally deciding on a hunter-green pelisse trimmed in velvet dyed a darker shade of green. “All right, if you know people to ask, we’ll go talk to them.”

  Colleen blinked. She hadn’t thought he would follow her counsel, much less invite her to join him in the investigation. She was so shocked, she let him put her arms into the sleeves of the pelisse and pull it onto her shoulders. “You think it’s a good idea? That we’ll get answers?”

  “I don’t know if we’ll learn anything, but it doesn’t hurt to try.” Gently pressing her down onto her dressing table chair, he knelt and untied her old boots. “Lord knows I ran into a dead end. Literally.”

  She cupped his cheek. “That wasn’t your fault.” In the early morning, as they’d lain twisted in each other’s limbs, Max had told her of the suspect they’d cornered. Of the horror the man had committed.

  He turned his face into her touch. “Fault, no. But I can’t understand how a man could do that. The look in his eyes was … mad. He wasn’t scared. He killed himself to protect someone he worshipped.”

  “Zed must pay his men an awful lot.”

  “That type of compulsion has little to do with money.” He held up her ratty boots and frowned. “I thought you’d disposed of these.”

  Colleen pinned her arms against her stomach. “Those are the only pair of boots I own. I wouldn’t get rid of them.” Even though her feet had screamed in protest when she’d slid them inside that morning. It was amazing how quickly one became accustomed to borrowed comfort.

  His eyes went hard. “All the footwear in this room is yours.”

  “You paid for them. I was merely borrowing them.” Putting on her old boots had felt like a form of penance. A silly idea, perhaps, but her old boots also hadn’t made her blush like a maiden when she’d looked at them. The beautiful kid boots would forever remind her of everything she’d done in bed with Max.

  Shaking his h
ead, he worked the new boots on her feet. She ignored the heat in her cheeks. “It is most admirable that you want to earn everything for yourself,” he said. “But look on the clothes as part of your salary. I can’t have a manager walking about with sores on her feet.” He looked up at her and smiled. “It would decrease your efficiency.”

  Colleen pointed her toes, examining the boots. Wearing them again should be all right. She’d already broken them in, after all. They couldn’t be returned. Spurning them because they reminded her of a wonderfully wicked night would be wasteful.

  Standing, Max took her hands and pulled her to her feet. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer one of your new dresses?”

  “My own clothes do me well enough.” She tugged at the hem of the pelisse. “I have no need for all that frippery.”

  “Of course.” His lips twitched. “And you look enchanting in whatever you wear.” Stretching out an arm, he guided her to the door. As they crossed the threshold, he lowered his head and whispered, “But you look best of all when you wear nothing.”

  The tips of her nipples tingled, but she pretended she hadn’t heard him. She didn’t know how to respond to such playful words, but they warmed her right through. But now wasn’t time for such foolery, not when there was business to be done. She marched down the stairs and opened the door to the main room of the club. A couple of her girls were lounging on settees, chatting before The Black Rose opened. Colleen headed for Lucy.

  “I’m going out for a couple of hours.” Colleen ran a hand down her skirt. “Will you watch over things here?”

  Lucy gave a pert salute. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll make sure to batten down the hatches and keep everything running shipshape.”

  Colleen pressed her lips flat but couldn’t help but find the vivacious girl charming.

  Molly sat next to her, fiddling with her necklace, the large green gem glittering. She eyed Colleen and Max, a malicious gleam in her eyes. “And where might the two of you be off to? A little afternoon delight?”

  This one, however, was the opposite of charm. Unless it came to a paying customer. Then she’d charm the trousers right off of him. “Where we’re going is none of your concern. But if you have nothing to do but ask questions, I believe Mrs. Hudson could use some help cleaning the rooms down here.”