“You’re too kind, Francesca.” Like a man who can’t bear to hear any more bad news, William crossed the room. He dropped heavily onto a low sofa featuring an ornate wooden frame of scrollwork. The cushions of crushed blue velvet were a pleasing contrast to his gray trousers and charcoal jacket. “This week has been a nightmare.” He rubbed a hand along his jaw and then leaned his head back against the sofa. “Chief Inspector Pryce has requested a meeting. No doubt he’ll give me a dressing down for failure to solve the cases.”
“I feel you’re close though.” She beckoned the butler in when he brought tea on a silver tray. “Please close the door on your way out. Thank you,” she murmured quietly so as not to jar William while his defenses were down. By rote, she poured out a cup of tea and put it into one of his hands, for she’d taken a spot on the sofa next to him. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”
“If only tea could solve all the problems of the world,” he murmured but did as she asked.
“It comes close. The rest is up to us.” As she sipped from her own cup, she peered at him. To all accounts, he was a man broken, beaten up by his position and the horrors found therein. When she could no longer stand the silence, she set her cup on the table. “What you’re doing with Bow Street is amazing, even if it’s brutal at times.”
“It takes much from me.” He handed her his empty cup and she laid it next to hers. “There is always another case, another body, another murderer, another crime, another broken life left behind.”
“But there is also an end to the torment, a closure to the questions, a moving forward with answers and justice.” She touched his hand that rested on the cushion between them. “And you take one more killer off the streets of London. Don’t discount that.”
“I suppose, but oh, when will it end?” Such desolation echoed in the question that it tugged at her heart.
“There are no easy answers.” Daring much, Fanny cupped his cheek, gently smoothed the pad of her thumb along the grazing cut decorating his cheek. The faint blood had dried and left him looking slightly battered but heroic. “You’re making a difference, William. Please believe that. I’ve learned so much in our time together that I want to make a difference too.”
He turned his head and nuzzled into her palm, catching her gaze as he did so. “I’m trying, but it’s so easy to lose myself in the work, the violence, the horror of it.”
“I know. We need to change that.”
A sigh escaped him. “Are you well from that shot of earlier?”
“More or less. Still slightly shaken.”
“God, I’m so sorry I’ve put you at risk.” His eyes were haunted.
“You don’t know that, and if it’s true what you said and that ball was meant for me, it could have happened anywhere: the crime scene, my home, out on a drive, while attending a society event.” Saying such aloud twisted the knots of worry already in her stomach. “It wasn’t your fault.” When he grunted, she leaned into him and briefly brushed his lips with hers. Never had she initiated intimacy, but it felt right to do so now. “For what it’s worth, you’re also making a difference with me.”
“Ah, damn it, Francesca,” he said with a low growl in his voice. Then he tugged her into his arms and kissed her hard enough and with such authority her head swam.
Clouds of drugging passion came over her as she fell into that embrace, wanted it more than she’d wanted anything, but she’d hoped to relax him, bring him out of the dark space he’d fallen into since seeing the dead body of Lord Coxhill. Breaking their kiss, she slipped to the floor and kneeled between his splayed knees.
“What are you about?” Worry and desire mixed in his expression and his stormy eyes.
“Doing what Lady Jane says is the best thing to soothe a man’s anxiety, especially that of a Storme.” Quickly, before she could change her mind, Fanny fumbled at the buttons of his frontfalls. Her nerves felt strung too tight, and this was so scandalous she could hardly think, but she didn’t stop. “It’s so naughty, you see, and I’ve wanted to do this to you since the night you and I came together, and I realized just how… impressive you were.”
“Oh, dear God.”
His hardened length popped free into her hands, all soft, heated silk over tempting steel. Fanny licked her lips. This would either be the greatest folly, or it would win the inspector over. “Let me do this for you; I’ve never done this with anyone else.”
“Stop, please don’t…” He groaned, in either defeat or frustration, and it was the most erotic sound she’d ever heard.
She closed her lips over the wide head of his member experimentally and hoped she could pull the act off with some semblance of skill. His groan spurred her onward. She slid down his shaft, taking as much of him as she could into her mouth then she eased off. Her heart pounded frantically behind her ribcage. Slowly, she swirled her tongue about his thick length and dared to cup his stones. The warmth of him, the tickling hair covering those strange bits, the slightly salty taste of him all worked at her own undoing, and as she bobbed up and down on him, she imagined him employing that impossibly hard, hot member inside her.
“Francesca, please.” Desperation graveled William’s voice. He straightened his posture, which broke their erotic connection. Need darkened his eyes to the color of thunderclouds. “There are more pleasurable things we can enjoy together that will see us both relaxed and sated if you wish to continue down this path.”
“Such as?” Oh, dear, had she provoked a storm?
“This.” He drew her up onto his lap so that she straddled him. Her skirting pooled around them. Then he cradled her head between his hands and kissed her so thoroughly she wondered if he tried to reach her soul.
The hard thickness of his length scraped against her bum, growing more insistent the longer he plundered her mouth, and it was all Fanny could do to give him back the pleasure he brought to her. Yet she couldn’t deny how much she wanted him—to assure herself that everything would come out right, to tell him the world was a better place with him in it. Never breaking their kiss, she rose onto her knees and, putting a hand between them to guide that rampant arousal to where she needed him, she slowly lowered herself onto it until she was fully impaled.
“Dear Lord.” Sensation swamped her. It zipped through her body, seemingly touching everywhere, and she let out a shuddering sigh.
“I understand that sentiment all too well.” He didn’t move and neither did she, for Fanny was all too content to revel in the physical feeling of being joined with him.
“Mmm.” She kissed his lips, his cheek where he’d been grazed with the ball, the side of his neck, ran a series of nips and nibbles beneath his jaw that caused his length to jump deep inside her and a groan to rasp in her ear. Oh, there was such power in pleasuring a man, and it was more satisfying than trying—and failing—at flirting.
“I never thought you’d try your hand at seduction,” he whispered as he pulled down her bodice, freeing her breasts from the layers of fabric. “It’s yet another reason why you’ve engaged my curiosity.” Then he teased her nipples into tight, aching peaks with his fingers and mouth until she squirmed on his lap with a cry of both surrender and encouragement.