Free Touch of Rogue by Mia Marlowe Page B

anyone learn another’s secrets?” He brushed her lips with his and pulled back. “I’ll have to make him want to tell me what he knows.”
    Heaven knew, he was making her want. The memory of Jacob’s kiss from last night was burned in her mind. His breath warmed her slightly parted mouth. She flicked her bottom lip with her tongue. Then she leaned toward him, closing the distance between them, and kissed him back.
    She hadn’t meant to. It was just that he was so close and male and so vibrantly alive. He made her body remember what it was like to feel real.
    There was a time when she’d felt real only when she was onstage, where she might slip off the skin of the poor, common girl who was born in Cheapside and become anything—a goddess, a temptress, a murderess, or a whore. Each night, she tried on other selves as a person might try on a set of clothing. She lived and sometimes died in their most harrowing moments and emerged from the side stage door in one piece when all was said and done.
    It was as if her life outside the theatre—the grubby little rented rooms, the endless travel to the next town, the playhouse politics and jealousies—was the fantasy. The only words that tasted true in her mouth came from the script, the only real passions were the ones she indulged in character each night, twice on Saturday counting the matinee.
    In some ways, becoming Algernon’s countess was the best role of her career. But it was only a role.
    Jacob’s mouth on hers was real. This kiss wasn’t scripted. It just happened. The way her blood pounded in her ears when he kissed her wasn’t contrived. No audience was hanging on every move waiting to see what happened next. His hand on her skin—
    She realized he’d unbuttoned her bodice without her being aware of it and now traced the lacy edge of her all-in-one peeping above her corset. Her nipples hardened at his finger’s nearness. His mouth traveled along her jaw and down her throat. He kissed his way across her shoulder bone.
    He slipped a finger under the lace and brushed her nipple with his fingertip. Desire shot to her warm, moist center. She sucked her breath over her teeth.
    Her body flared to raging life as he kissed his way down to the hollow between her breasts. He untied the bow on the neckline of her undergarment with his teeth and peeled back the linen to bare her pink nipples just above the heavy boned corset. He closed his lips over one and suckled her.
    The jolting coach faded around her.
    She’d had lovers before her husband. What actress hadn’t? She’d had a briefly satisfying time with Algernon when he was able to keep his vow to “worship” her with his body. After he died, she’d been tempted to welcome a man to her dowager’s bed.
    But she’d never wanted anyone with as much white-hot longing as she wanted Jacob Preston.
    She slid her hand inside his jacket, down the front of his shirt and vest. A man’s warmth radiated through the fabric. The image of his naked body rose in her mind. His chest was rock hard.
    She suspected another part of him was too.
    But before her hand drifted lower to find out, Jacob stopped paying skillful homage to her breasts and raised his head.
    “The coach has stopped. We must be there.” He began retying the bow at the neck of her all-in-one.
    Her mouth gaped. “Is that all you can say?”
    His gaze sizzled into hers. “What do you want me to say? That I’d rather lift your skirts and swive you senseless than continue to work on your case?”
    He slid a hand under her petticoats and hoops and ran his palm up her leg. The thin linen of her undergarments was no shield against the shivers that trailed in his fingers’ wake.
    “It would be the truth,” he admitted.
    Her core throbbed. He covered her sex with his hand, holding her hot mound. A fingertip found the slit in her undergarment and slipped into her wet cleft. She closed her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from moaning.
    “Shall I