He plied her then with an expertise so deliciously carnal, she whimpered aloud, hips rising.
“What’s my name, little corvus?”
“Oh!” She couldn’t even recall her own name.
“Wrong.” He chuckled and slipped two strong fingers inside her. The erotic rhythm that followed made her approaching orgasm gain speed like a hurricane crossing the Mississippi. Twisting atop the bed, she spread her legs wider.
“More? Okay.”
He gave her so much more her orgasm broke like a thunderclap. Crying out his name, she slammed a bed pillow over her face to keep her hoarse screams from being heard by the entire population of South Carolina.
When she finally put body and soul back together, he was lying next to her, propped up on an elbow and smiling. He brushed a finger over her nipple. “I wondered if you knew my name.”
She swore that orgasm would be echoing inside her until the next Mardi Gras. “I’m sorry. Have we met?”
Grinning, he leaned over, took her nipple into his mouth, and slowly teased it until she was breathless.
One kiss led to another, and all too soon she was mapping the length of his lean arms, feeling the skin of his hard chest, and doing some heated nipping of her own—the curve of his dark shoulder, the flat discs of his nipples—all the while teasing her hand up and down the hard ridge hidden inside his trousers. His responding kisses and caresses relit her inner flame. Still wearing her unbuttoned gown, shewhispered sultrily against his ear, “May I have some cock now, please?”
He ran a finger over her lips. “I love a woman who knows what she wants.”
He took a moment to shed his trousers and she fed her eyes on just how gloriously made he was.
“Like what you see?”
“I do.” Taking him in hand, she showed him just how much, and it was his turn to groan. As she treated him to her version of the pleasure he’d given her, it took only a few minutes before he raised her head. “I’m not going to last much longer if you keep this up.”
She smiled. “Then let me get my sponge.”
And once it was inserted he gave her all she’d asked for in a slow, sensual dance that made her purr. Each thrust, each caress of his worshipping hands over her breasts, and each tantalizing kiss sent her higher. The creaking of the bed rose in tandem with the increasing pace and the vocalizing of their passion. He grabbed her hips, raising her to fit himself more roughly and possessively, and worked her faster. Her second orgasm shattered her with another loud cry and his followed on a roar. Lost, clinging to each other as if for life, they rode the storm to its end before slowly dropping back to earth, gasping and breathless.
In the aftermath, he gently rolled her over to keep from crushing her with his weight and she lay atop him, waiting for her breath to regainsomething akin to normal. She glanced up, and the small smile on his lips matched the one she offered in reply. When he ran a light hand down her sweat-damp back, she lowered her head against his equally dewed chest. He closed his arms around her, and she enjoyed the contentment. “We should probably go to sleep,” she said after a while.
“Probably.”
She raised up again. His bearded, handsome face gave rise to a now familiar jumble of emotions and feelings that continued to lack explanation or resolution.
As if his thoughts mirrored her own, he said softly, eyes serious, “Let’s just let things be for now.”
She agreed. “I’ll go clean up.”
“I’ll follow once you’re done.”
Later, after stripping the bed of the dampened sheet, they doused the lamp and lay spooned together in the silence of the darkness.
He kissed her hair. “The next time we do this, how about we use the porch so we don’t waste a clean sheet. I’d enjoy having you undo your buttons for me in the moonlight.”
The scenario made her senses flare back to life. “Go to sleep.”
“Do I get a reward?”
“Go to sleep, Braxton.”
He draped an arm over her, eased her closer,and whispered, “Okay. Hearing my name on your lips is reward enough. Good night.”
Amused by his humor, she closed her eyes and slept.
In a boardinghouse in the center of the city, Detective Ruth Welch was enjoying her brandy nightcap and feeling good about the way her operation was proceeding. Sara Caron, the Pinkerton posing as her sister, Adelaide Clarkston, had just cracked the case she’d come to the city to investigate, a fraudulent railroad stock scheme. One of her sources of information had been a man named Washington Lewis. Having been a swindler himself when younger, he’d used those skills to infiltrate the gang selling the stocks, and the evidence he’d passed on to Sara had resulted in their arrests. During the months-long investigation that led to the charges being filed, Sara learned Lewis was a native of New Orleans and his true name was Tobias Kenny. Thinking of Ruth’s case, Sara asked him if he knew the Moreau family. He did. He’d also admitted to having worked with them on a variety of their jobs before moving to Charleston. Sara passed the information on to Ruth, and a meeting was set up. Initially Ruth was to have met the man at the city market the morning after her arrival, but he hadn’t been able to get to the city from his home on one of the bordering islands. Thathad been for the best, as it turned out, because Raven Moreau and Braxton Steele had been at the market that morning. Ruth was certain she’d been spotted, and having Kenny with her might have proved disastrous to her plans going forward, had he been recognized.
She was now set to meet him tomorrow afternoon. If what he provided proved valuable enough, she planned to offer him a portion of the sizable reward put up by San Francisco jeweler Oswald Gant for his assistance. It was her hope that Kenny could shed light on the vast number of crimes she was certain the Moreaux were responsible for, thus arming her with enough vital evidence to use in her quest to turn the ring of thieves in to the authorities, and become as famous as lady Pinkerton Kate Warne.
Should her plan bear fruit, her superiors would have no choice but to appoint her to lead the female division of the company. She was also weighing the possibility of forming her own agency due to the recent tarnishing of the Pinkertons’ once great image; an unraveling that began three years ago after a botched attempt to apprehend the notorious outlaws Jesse and Frank James at the home of their mother, Zerelda Samuel. The James brothers had been tipped off and weren’t there, but the assault by a combined force of Pinkerton agents and local lawmen resulted in an explosion that blew off Zerelda’s right arm and killed their eight-year-old half brother, Archie. The public outcry condemning the boy’s death echoed from coast to coast. Up until then, the agency had enjoyed hero status, successfully hunting down the gangs robbing banks, targeting trains, and terrifying everyday citizens. The James incident changed that. The Pinkertons’ increasing role as strikebreakers for large companies had also soured their image in the eyes of America’s working class, so maybe starting her own office was something to seriously consider.
First, she had to get her hands on the stolen copy of the Declaration of Independence. Once she did, she could tout herself as having foiled the Moreaux attempts to sell it off, gather the evidence for their other crimes, and bask in the glory brought on by having her name splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the nation. Pleased by the thought, she downed the last of the brandy, doused the lamp, and fell asleep with a smile on her face.