“Take it,” he whispered, his head tilted back as he watched her. It was like he could read her mind. Sometimes she thought he could, at that.
“Show me what you stole first,” she demanded even as she reached between them and slowly unfastened his trousers. She freed his hard cock and took him in hand, stroking gently as he reached into his pockets and withdrew tonight’s spoils.
He draped a bracelet around the wrist of the hand that held him so intimately, and she caught her breath at how the sapphires sparkled in the firelight. Then he took out the pocket watch she had helped him obtain by distracting the gentleman who had been rambling to her about horses. She smiled as Hux draped the chain around her neck and let the heavy watch rest between her breasts.
“Is that all?” she murmured.
“A few coins,” he said, his breath becoming shaky as the strokes of her hand increased in speed and pressure. “Cufflinks, but I wouldn’t mar your pretty dress, even to see the diamonds rest on your skin.”
She shivered. “Later.”
He nodded. “Right now there is only one spoil I want to take, Zara.”
Her breath was short now as she shifted, bunching her dress around her hips so he could see she wore nothing beneath.
“Fucking minx,” he muttered, his fingers sliding beneath the folded silk and gripping her bare thighs as she lowered herself over his hard cock and took him deep inside in one slick thrust.
And then it was magic, one she had studied for years with this man. She rode him, pressing her forehead to his, their gazes locked, their breath matching as she ground toward her pleasure. They went on like that for a while, not too long due to the danger, but long enough that the edge of release teased.
“I want to feel it, Zara, let me feel it,” he whispered, his voice rough.
She began to quake around him, her orgasm mounting with every thrust of her hips. She gasped, digging her fingers against the heavy fabric of Hux’s jacket as she dropped her head back and rode the intense waves that wracked her body.
“Hux,” she moaned, her breath hitching around his name.
“So pretty,” he whispered, lifting his hips hard and fast beneath her. She felt the shift in him now that she’d had her pleasure, the drive in him to find his own. His legs shook beneath her and then he buried his head into her shoulder, groaning low and hungry against her skin, his breath hot and ragged as he pumped into her.
She shivered and slowly eased off him. He was still half-hard, his flesh glittering from the slick remnants of their mutual pleasure. She smiled at him wickedly and then leaned over to lick the sensitive head of his cock, tasting their combined come like the sweetest treat. He rose against her with a cry.
“We definitely don’t have time for that,” he groaned.
She smiled as she lifted her head. “So much for living dangerously.”
He arched a brow. “Oh, if you want more danger, then why don’t we see if we can take that signet ring from Lord Evensly that you were eyeing when we came in?”
She leaned in to kiss him, slow and steady, reveling in the smoky flavor of his lips, tinged by a hint of whisky. Then she leaned back and nodded. “Fine. Just one more mark and then we go.”
“Your wish is my command,” he murmured as they both stood and smoothed themselves back into place. She handed over the jewels he had draped over her so no one within would see them, then they linked arms and slipped from the room.
Slipped back into the heady world where neither of them belonged and no one was the wiser.
CHAPTER2
Richard
From the moment they had entered the ballroom hours before, Richard Fitzroy had been acutely aware of the gorgeous couple he had just watched fuck on the settee. Not only were both of them stunning, her with her honey hair and bright blue eyes, him with that broad-shouldered confidence and angled jaw that seemed ripe for tracing with a finger—or a tongue—but there was something else.
They didn’t belong at this gathering. No one else seemed to have noticed and Richard wasn’t in the business of outing anyone. So he’d just watched them. As they separated and paraded around the ballroom, her drawing everyone to her like flies to honey, him fading into the background so he could spring their traps. Richard had watched them come back together from time to time, too, the sexual energy between them so palpable that it made him sweat a little. Made his palms itch with a desire to get closer.
It had been a long time since he’d wanted anyone. Anything. He fucked from time to time, of course. He wasn’t a monk. A night at a house of pleasure with a man or a woman…or both…scratched an itch the same way eating food fed an empty stomach. But it was all rather rote.
This draw to the strangers in the ballroom was different. Powerful. He’d fled it, taking refuge in the quiet of a sitting room only to have the pair intrude, not noticing him slouched in a chair in the darkest corner of the room, nursing a scotch. Not noticing him as they drowned their desire in each other.
And revealed the true nature of their attendance tonight.
They were thieves. Richard supposed he could march back into the ballroom and reveal them. Perhaps others would have done so out of some class loyalty. But he felt little of that. He’d grown up with and around the fools in that ballroom. He knew that on the whole they deserved anything that knocked them down a peg.
He pushed from the chair in the corner of the room, feeling the throb of desire their display had caused easing and the cockstand that had leapt up, demanding attention, softening. He could go back into the ballroom, at least. He could watch them some more, this time with a different eye.
