Tarnished Rose of the Court. Amanda McCabe

cousin,” she said, and slowly held out her hand to him.

      Anton gave a relieved laugh and bowed over her hand. “You are most welcome at our home at any time, Celia.”

      Celia shook her head. “You needn’t worry, Anton. I shall not be the dark fairy at the feast. The Queen is sending me on an errand, and I probably shan’t be back for some time.”

      A frown flickered over his face. “What sort of errand?”

      Celia opened her mouth to give some vague answer, but she stopped at a sudden sensation of heat on the back of her neck. She pressed her fingers over the spot, just below the tight twist of her hair, and shivered.

      She glanced over her shoulder and met John Brandon’s bright blue eyes staring right at her. Burning. His head tilted slightly to one side, as if he was considering her, as if she was a puzzle, then he moved towards her.

      Celia reacted entirely on instinct. She shoved her empty goblet into Anton’s hand and said, “Excuse me. I must go now.”

      “Celia, what …?” Anton said, his voice startled, but Celia was gone.

      She only knew she had to run, to get away, before John could catch her and strip her soul bare with those eyes as he had come so close to doing earlier.

      The hall was even more crowded and noisy than before, and Celia had to elbow her way past knots of people. She was a small woman, though, and slid past the worst of the crowds and into the corridor. She could still hear the high-pitched hum of voices, but it seemed muted and blurred, as sounds heard underwater. The air pressed in on her, hot and close.

      Yet she could still vow she heard the soft, inexorable fall of his boots on the floor, coming closer.

      “I am going mad,” she whispered. She lifted the heavy hem of her skirts and hurried to the end of the corridor, where it turned onto another and then another. Whitehall was a great maze. It was quieter here, darker, the narrow, dim length lit at intervals by flickering torches set high in their sconces. She heard a soft giggle from behind one of the tapestries, a low male groan.

      She didn’t know which way to go, and that moment’s hesitation cost her. She felt hard fingers close over her arm and spin her around.

      She lost her footing and fell against a velvet-covered chest. Her hands automatically braced against that warm, solid wall and a diamond button pressed into her soft palm. It was John. She could smell him, knew his touch. The hawk had swooped down and caught its prey.

      She forced herself to freeze, to go perfectly still and not panic and run again.

      “Do you have an urgent appointment somewhere, Celia?” he asked quietly. “You certainly seem in a great hurry.”

      Celia tried carefully to move away from him, slide out of his hold on her arms, but it seemed she was not unobtrusive enough. His other arm came around her, a steel bar at her back.

      She eased her hands down his chest, and that hold tightened and kept her where she was. Her head was tucked under his chin, and she could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart under her palm.

      Her own heart was racing. She couldn’t breathe too deeply because his scent was all around her. She closed her eyes and sought out the icy centre that had held her together all these years. The distance that had saved her. It was not there now. He had torn it away.

      “I am tired,” she said. “I merely sought to retire. There was no need to chase me down like this.”

      John gave a low, rough chuckle. “Usually when a woman runs like that she wants to be chased.”

      “Like a doomed deer on the Queen’s hunt?” Celia choked out. She had been on such hunts, had seen Queen Elizabeth cut the fallen deer’s heart out. Celia had thought she herself had no heart left to be ripped out. It seemed she was wrong. There was still one small, hidden part of it, bleeding, and he was dangerously close to touching it again.

      John had surely chased scores of eager women since they had last met, and held them thus. Kissed them in the darkness until they happily bled for him too.

      “I am not most women,” she said, and tried once more to wrench out of his arms.

      He only held her closer, until she felt her feet actually leave the floor. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her backwards until she felt the cold stone wall at her back, chilly through her brocade bodice.

      Her eyes flew open to find he had carried her into a small window embrasure, where they were surrounded by darkness and silence.

      “Nay,” he said. “You, Celia Sutton, are quite unlike any other woman in all England.” His voice held the strangest, most unreadable tone—bemused, angry.

      “And you know all of them, I am sure,” she muttered.

      John laughed and eased her back another step. He braced his palms to the wall on either side of her head, holding her trapped by his body as he had earlier. “Your faith in my stamina is quite heartening, my fairy queen. But I have only had twenty-eight years on this earth. Alas, not long enough to find all the women out there.”

      Hearing his old name for her—fairy queen—once whispered in her ear as they embraced in a forest grove, snapped something inside Celia. He had no right to call her that. Not any longer.

      Before she could think, her hand shot out and her fingers curled hard around his manhood.

      He froze, and she heard the hiss of his indrawn breath. His eyes narrowed as he stared down at her, and the very air around them seemed to crackle with a new tension. This strange game, whatever it was, was shifting and changing.

      The codpiece of his breeches was not a fashionably elaborate one, and she could feel the outline of him through the fine velvet. He was already semi-erect, and as her fingers tightened he stirred and lengthened. Oh, yes, she did remember this—how he liked to be touched. Caressed. She felt her hard-won sense of control steal back over her.

      She twisted her wrist to cradle the underside of his penis on her palm and slowly, slowly traced her way up. She remembered how it felt naked, hot satin over steel, the vein just there throbbing with his life force. She reached its base, and with another twist of her fingers she held his testicles.

      “Is this what happens when you catch your prey, John?” she whispered. She stroked a soft caress, lightly scraping the edge of her thumbnail over him.

      She could feel the burn of his eyes on her as he held himself rigid around her. For once she had caught him unbalanced. He didn’t know which way she would jump. And neither did she. Not any longer. He did that to her.

      She had acted on instinct, reaching out to bring her control back. But it seemed to be slipping even further away.

      “Usually they get down on their knees to me and take me in their mouths about now,” John said crudely.

      One hand left the wall by her head and she felt his finger press lightly to her lower lip. He traced the soft skin there. The merest whisper of a touch.

      Celia gasped, and he used that small movement to slide his finger into her mouth, over her tongue. She jerked her head back, but she could still taste him—salt and wine. She wished she could pull away from him and snatch her dagger from its sheath on her thigh, plunge it into his heart so he could not touch her heart again.

      “That will never happen,” she said.

      “Nay? I think it will in my dreams tonight,” John answered. “But perhaps you want me on my knees to you instead?”

      Before she knew what he was doing, he’d deftly twisted out of her grasp and arched his body back from hers. The hand that had been at her mouth slid all the way down to her skirts and drew up the heavy fabric until her legs were bare. The white stockings glowed in the darkness.

      As Celia watched in frozen shock he fell to his knees before her and let those skirts fall back over him. She tried to kick him