Page 22 of Bargaining with the Devil

Sweat gathered on her skin, a trickle running between her breasts. She pressed her feet flat on the floor, pushing back against the door as tension tightened her muscles. Pictured him on the other side, doing the same.

“Are you close, a mhuirnín? I hear your breathing.”

“I hear yours too.” His breath was ragged, just as hers was.

“Tell me. Tell me what it’s like for you, reaching for it, because I’m going to think about it too.”

She told him about the images flashing through her mind. The shape of the midnight cliff whose summit she was nearing, the pulsating colors of the aurora borealis all around her.

“Ah. That’s fine, that is.” Quinn’s breathing was uneven, rasping. “I’m stroking fast now, a mhuirnín. I’m there, ready anytime you are, but I’m not going to bring myself off till I hear you. Not till I hear you crying out or you tell me to finish.”

The final climb was so steep, but she was right at the cliff’s edge. “Now. Now.”

On the other side of the door, he groaned, the sound ripped from somewhere deep in his chest.

She grabbed one last life-sustaining gasp of air and shattered too. Like a flower bud bursting open, a rose blossom unfurling its petals all at once, release hit, a rhythmic throb that slowly flowed outward from her core and through her, her muscles losing their tension.

Limp, she slumped back against the door.

“Was it good for you then, a mhuirnín?” Quinn asked after a minute or two, his voice low.

Yes. She said it aloud. “Yes, it was . . . good.” But she was suddenly too shy to say anything more aloud. Never mind that they were on opposite sides of the door, her alone on this side in the dark room, what the two of them had just done nonetheless felt intimate. Shockingly so.

Except she wanted an answer too. “Was it good for you?”

Against the door, he shifted. “Let’s say I’ll not be picking myself up off the floor just yet. I’m wrung out.” He sounded it, from his voice. She was still having trouble with her own breathing.

“I hope you weren’t planning to leave your room anytime soon to come out here,” he added. “I’ll be here a few more minutes, collecting myself.” There was a smile in his voice. Undoubtedly he knew she was in no way ready to come face-to-face with him so soon after . . . this. How she would face him tomorrow in daylight and still look him in the eye, she had no idea.

What a strange encounter. Certainly it was like nothing she’d ever done before. Nothing that had been asked of her. Nothing that had been given to her either.

After a few minutes, she pulled her gown back on, covering her chilled body, but rather than get up and go to her bed like a sane person, she stayed on the floor.

Were they still sitting back to back? “Are you still there?” she whispered.

“I’m still here, a mhuirnín. I’m not going anywhere.”

She leaned her head against the door.

Chapter 8

He was up early the next morning. He never slept deeply, and he never slept long. ’Twas what came of having been in the Rifles for a good chunk of his formative years. Soldiers on campaign learned quick to fall asleep fast no matter the discomfort and to come awake quick to be at the ready.

Thus he was awake well before he heard signs of stirring from within Lucy’s chamber. He’d poked at the fire a bit just enough for it to start throwing some heat, wondering how it would go—their first conversation after what they’d done the night before.

He’d not quite meant for it to go the way it had. He’d mostly said what he said to get a rise out of her, mayhap a bit to redirect her if she’d had the thought to go for whisky again. She’d done more than politely sip the whisky the other night, and he suspected ’twasn’t a one-off, that. She’d accused him of moralizing, but he truly wasn’t one to judge. Most everyone had a crutch of some sort or another. ’Twas a rare person who hadn’t some habit, some way of coping, that might not hold up to the light of day, particularly those with the Devil on their shoulders. Didn’t mean he wanted to see her lost to the bottle. She wasn’t yet, mayhap, but she had the look of a woman who could get that way.

But when he’d told her his solution—’twas genuinely a grand solution to sleeping difficulties given some privacy—he’d realized from her face that however much it scandalized her, she was also intrigued.

And then he breathed life onto those embers, just as he was doing now at the hearth, seeing what caught. Turned out mayhap she’d been having more sexual thoughts about him than he’d guessed, her looking at him over the whisky.

There was no harm in what they’d done. He’d reminded himself of that a time or two already. And if he was being honest, ’twas also one of the more thoroughly arousing things he’d done in a good long while. Talking about it in the dark—or mostly the dark; there was a little glow left from the fire on his side of the door—picturing her touching herself as she made little rustlings and caught breaths and wisps of sound, all while stroking himself . . . Well, he’d not been exaggerating, telling her ’twould take him a few minutes to pick himself up off the floor.

She would be embarrassed this morning. He had no doubt of that. Perhaps the right move was letting her set the interaction.

When he started hearing noises behind her closed chamber door, he busied himself by the hearth, stirring up the fire to something crackling. He’d get it going to take off the morning chill for her, and it gave something for him to do, meant she wouldn’t have to look him in the face just yet.

Behind him, her chamber door opened. There was a very long pause after that, and although he’d have loved to have known what expression—or range of expressions—crossed her face, he studiously kept his back turned.