“The goal of any meaningful democratic reform must be universal suffrage for all adults, and not just regardless of income or sex, but even regardless of nationality; for any person who lives within the borders of a country is surely as bound by its laws and as subject to its taxes as its citizenry and thus these inhabitants too deserve a voice in how they shall be governed.” – Polly Dicax
Honora buttoned her right glove and then held out her hand to accept the canvas bag that contained the articles she and Lucas had selected for republication in this week’s leaflet. “Thank you for agreeing to help me with this. I couldn’t do it without you.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Lucas responded easily. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” He slid the handle of the bag over her arm, and her skin prickled with awareness as his fingers brushed the bare skin just above her wrist. “And you definitely have the will.”
The playful tone of his voice invited an equally teasing response. “Am I meant to take that as an insult or a compliment?”
“Oh, it is most definitely a compliment.” His voice dropped half an octave, and his hand lingered an inch or two over her arm. For a heart-stopping moment, she thought he might kiss her and caught herself leaning toward him, face uplifted, in silent invitation.
A vain hope, not to mention a foolish one, since they currently stood in front of the open door between the sitting room and the corridor. At Lucas’s insistence, they had kept the door open for the duration of her visit. When Honora had protested that she had no concerns about her reputation, he had chuckled and said he had to think of his own, particularly when it came to remaining in his landlady’s good graces. After taking such pains to observe propriety for nearly two hours, he would hardly be so reckless as to take her in an ardent embrace now.
But that didn’t stop her wishing that he would or her insides from tightening in expectation of an event that wouldn’t happen.
At long last, he drew back, a frown flitting across his lips and creasing the corners of his eyes. “Before you go, may I ask you a question?”
“I believe you just did,” she pointed out with a smile. “But yes, of course, you may.”
The corners of his mouth deepened with amusement. “Fair, but what I want to know is… That is, I wonder whether—” He broke off and shook his head, obviously irritated with his inability to formulate the question to his satisfaction. “Damn it,” he muttered, more to himself than her, and then heaved a sigh and continued. “The truth is, I suppose I have a confession to make.”
Her heart clutched at the words. They sounded so ominous and yet so encouraging. She nodded, on a knife’s edge of anticipation.
“In spite of what I said about it being better if we never saw each other again, I couldn’t stay away. Yesterday, I went to your neighborhood and stood on the pavement outside your house. I told myself I was doing it to remind myself of why we cannot be together, but in the end, I know better. I went because I hoped to see you. Except, of course, that I could not think of a single justification for paying you a call. Instead, I stood there and watched a well-dressed young man get out of an expensive coach-and-four, walk up to your door, and gain admittance, and I envied him beyond reason. I even imagined he might be your suitor or your betrothed, and I hated him.” He paused, his jaw clenched, his dark eyes swimming with raw emotion.
The bottom had fallen out of her stomach. He had been there, just yesterday, when Noel had arrived, wanting to see her. If she had known…
If she had known, she’d have done nothing. Because she could hardly invite a stranger into her family’s home without an explanation, and there was no explanation she could have given that would not have resulted in even more questions. Mr. Lucas Delgado was not the publisher of any periodical her parents knew she wrote for; Luke Evangelista was the publisher of a newspaper her father would consider dangerous and subversive. Neither version of the man could reasonably call upon the daughter of the Earl of Ormondy without prior introduction.
She wished she could apologize, could reassure him somehow that she would have welcomed him into her family’s home, but that would be a lie. How had she never truly seen it before? She’d believed that because her parents were both loving and unconventional in their attitudes, she could live beneath their roof and still have her independence. But that wasn’t true at all. Her choices were circumscribed by her reluctance to openly do anything that would disappoint or wound her family. All of her freedoms were nothing but meaningless little rebellions that she either concealed or denied.
Her chest aching, she said instead, “That was my cousin.”
Lucas waved his hand. “That doesn’t matter now. I told you this because ever since you arrived, I’ve been wondering whether you called on me today for purely professional reasons or if you, like me, just couldn’t stay away. Did you come for this?” he asked, tugging at the handle of the bag looped over the crook of her arm. “Or did you come for me?” he finished, stepping so close to her body that she could feel the heat radiating from his big, muscular body.
Her pulse roared in her ears. This shouldn’t be happening. Not yet. She had meant to tell him later, once they had spent more time together and she was sure of what she wanted, that she had dreamed up the voter information guide as an excuse to circumvent his request that they never see each other again.
But it was happening now, and she would either have to admit to her perfidy now or lose the very opportunity she had been trying to create.
“For you,” she whispered, her throat dry, her mouth full of parchment. “All of it was for you.”
“Thank the gods,” Lucas muttered. “I don’t know if I could have borne being alone in this.” He grasped her chin between his thumb and index finger, tilting her head back so he could look more directly into her eyes. “It’s madness to want you like this, but I cannot seem to stop myself.”
Heedless of the open doorway and the possibility of passersby, she pressed her palms against his chest, reveling in the supple yet solid feel of the muscles concealed beneath shirt and waistcoat. Everything below her waist turned warm and soft and…hungry. “If you are mad, then so am I.”
Taking her hands in his, he stepped backward, breaking the contact between them. She made a sound of protest, and he gave her a rueful shake of his head. “I have no wish to hide my feelings, but neither am I anxious to risk being thrown out of my lodgings.” He brought one of her hands to his mouth and pressed his lips to it. “Also, you have set yourself a large task to accomplish today. Or do you mean to abandon your plans now?”
Oh, yes. There was the blasted voter information guide. Which she would have to deliver to the printer before midafternoon tomorrow to have it ready for distribution on Monday.
Why hadn’t she dreamed up a project with a less aggressive deadline? Because drat it all, she had dragged Noel into this and she did care about the outcome of the election. And so, she thought, did Lucas.
“No, of course not,” she said gloomily, the conflagration in her midsection ebbing to a low, persistent glow. Slipping her hands from his, she stiffened her spine and put on a resolute smile. “Will you meet me at Lee & Roth tomorrow around two o’clock?”
His expression went briefly blank and then cleared. “To discuss having them print The Weekly Disciple.”
She nodded. “They will want a proper introduction. And afterward, we can…” Her voice trailed off as her mind served up graphic—though not precisely visual—images of what they could do. Of kisses and caresses, of Lucas touching her breasts and…well…other parts of her body, of her releasing the thick, hard shaft from his trousers and stroking it. What would that part of him feel like in her hand? What would that member feel like inside her? She flushed hotly at the direction of her thoughts and finished the sentence weakly with, “…spend time together.”
“Yes.” His low, rough voice was suffused with promise and made her shiver. “We can spend time together.”
Lucas watched her departure until the feathers that bobbed atop her bonnet disappeared below the stairs before he retreated into his flat.
He truly was mad with wanting her. That was the only explanation for his willingness to throw both caution and conviction to the wind for the chance to have her, however briefly, in his arms. In his bed.
Hell and damnation, his bed. His lips twisted with scorn at the thought of the narrow frame topped with a straw-stuffed tick mattress on which he slept. The pallet was scarcely large enough to accommodate him, let alone two people engaged in any sort of amorous activity, and could hardly be described as comfortable. Honora would likely take one look at what passed for his bed and flee in horror. And he would not blame her.
Then again, he had no right to imagine her in bed with him at all—any bed. Yes, she desired him and wanted to explore the physical dimension of that attraction, but it did not follow that an unmarried lady who was unquestionably a virgin meant to spread her legs for him at the very first opportunity. On the contrary, she might not ever welcome a true consummation, especially if she never meant to marry, and he would not take anything that was not on offer.
That still left a lot of room for pleasure, however. For both of them.
If she but took him in her smooth, elegant hand, he would spend. And if she took him in her mouth…
With a muffled curse, he grabbed one of the linen towels he kept near the grate, popped opened the fall of his trousers, and extracted his swollen cock. Closing his eyes, he encircled the shaft with his thumb and forefinger and began to stroke the aching member. He imagined at first that his hand was Honora’s hand, and then, as the pressure in his loins neared the crest, that his hand was her mouth. He visualized her kneeling in front of him and sucking him, her head bobbing in and out, her hair tumbling round her shoulders, her storm-gray eyes wild with passion. The image was crude and indecent and so vivid, he could almost believe she was really there, sucking his cock between the pretty pink pillows of her lips.
His climax took him so suddenly and so sharply that he overshot the towel, his seed spurting onto the bare floorboards before he could reposition the cloth to catch the rest. When he’d finished, he collapsed into the chair Honora had vacated only minutes before, finding it still slightly warm and smelling of her orange-and-honey perfume.
He closed his eyes and let out a low, scornful laugh. It had taken him less than three minutes to bring himself to completion just imagining her sucking him off. Probably, he ought not allow her to touch him at all if he didn’t want to shame himself.
Gods, but he felt as unprepared for their assignation as if he were a virgin himself. The mechanics of the act might be familiar to him, but he had never experienced anything like this voracious, insatiable need for a woman. Physical arousal he understood; it was something he felt easily enough but could also ignore if he chose. Indeed, he found celibacy considerably less taxing than engaging in meaningless, temporary liaisons.
But this was different. Not just desire, but a bone-deep compulsion to know her in every way, to make manifest the intellectual and emotional connection that had existed between them even before they had met in the flesh. That was the only explanation for the kiss in Rickert’s hidey-hole. Nature had required it in the same way it required objects to fall. And who was he, a mere man, to resist what the universe had ordained?
Besides, the problem wasn’t the fall itself, but the sudden stop at the bottom.