Chapter sixteen:
Jack left the Savoy in a rush, striding out the door and feeling relief at the sight of a horse-drawn Hackney carriage waiting; they were rare these days but cheaper to travel by on the shorter journeys in London. Rose had been speaking with Stuart and Clara just as he had gone. He would return to retrieve the motorcar before he would return to collect Rose, if she would leave with him. He vaulted into the softly lamp-lit interior and settled against the leather squab. The whip cracked and the equipage lurched into motion, rounding the circular drive. They slowed when they reached the open wrought-iron gate, their way blocked by the clogged lane. It would be this way the entire route home, he knew, as the streets filled with Society carriages and cars conveying their passengers from one event to another. He exhaled and relaxed, his mind returning to the moment he'd introduced Rose to Richard. What had the man who he had met, only six months before and promised to become a partner in a business, thought when Jack had told him how he wished to no longer even have the store. How making money from photographs just meant nothing to him anymore. How as soon as he laid eyes on Rose once more, there was no other reason for him to breathe but her. Richard had believed his friend to be jesting, but now, he could only truly understand Jack's reasoning. Richard was a recently married man, to a perfectly lovely woman and so there had to be some understanding.
How life had changed. From the sinking, to the war, to his own personal demons and now, just when life had almost made sense, he had found Rose Dawson. If the world had been tilted, shaken and then replaced back then it still would make more sense than his whole life had. It had been lying in bed the night before that Jack had truly not thought of morphine fully for the first time; well, briefly but it was a pause of not wanting it, but more questioning why he didn't want it. Why was this the first night he had not thought of how he could so easily find a release, even temporarily. Even when Rose had been the centre of his life, he had pined for something to ease the pain. Even just to take the edge off. The war had been the only demon upon his mind for damned long years after it had ended. Now, the burdens seemed to have relieved themselves. Now, only time would tell if they could return. The Devil perhaps had grown tired of chasing one man.
Suddenly, the carriage drew to a halt beside one of the brick gateposts bearing a sculpted lion on the top. A dark form emerged from beside it and opened his carriage door. The figure was met with the tip of the rapier hidden within his cane. A gloved hand moved aside the shield of a cloak's hood and revealed Rose's wry smile. Jack whooshed out his relief before knitting together his brows.
"I was hoping you wouldn't impale me, thank you." He pulled back the unsheathed weapon hidden in the floorboards, and he helped her inside. The door was shut behind them, earning the footman responsible a raise in tip.
"What in hell are you doing, Rose?" She tumbled into him, pushing him back into the squab. ''I was going to come back for you.''
''I turned and you had left.''
''I thought that you were safe with your friends just for ten minutes.''
Rose's eyes flared.
"The dance may have been enough for you, but it wasn't for me. Not nearly." Pushing off his chest, she stooped and tugged the curtains closed. She hunched over him, yanking up her blood-red skirt with frantic impatience. He caught a glimpse of the lacy hem of her pantalettes, and then she was climbing over him, straddling him.
"Rose." Jack breathed her name. His skin felt too hot, his chest too constricted to allow him sufficient air. The feelings he had for her were too volatile to contain. She overwhelmed him. Surprised him. Seduced him with ridiculous ease. His breathing just seemed to stop for her.
"I have to tell you . . . you have to know . . . I am s-sorry." The cracking of her voice broke him as well. "I'm sorry I was afraid. I am sorry I caused you even an instant of pain or doubt. I love you. You are what I want. I don't care what happens from this moment on, as long as I am with you,''
"I love you," he said gruffly. "There is no more pain."
''But I have been so lost, so unsure of how to even proceed from here but the truth is, I can't have you and the stage because neither fit in the same sentence for me. I am only myself with you, away from here. If I return to the stage then I will lose you because I can only be Katherine with a broken soul.''
''And I can't even take a photograph without my damned hand shaking. I don't want to do it. I want you.''
Rose's gloved fingers fumbled with the button of his trousers. He laughed softly delighted with her eagerness. Staying her hands by covering them with his own, he said, "Slow down."
"I'm dying for you. The way you dance . . ." Her eyes were fever bright in the muted glow of the carriage lamps. "I thought it would ease when I parted from you, but it only worsens by the moment."
"What worsens?" he asked, wanting to hear her say it.
"My hunger for you."
His blood thickened.
"Then I must take you home with me."
"If I come home with you then I won't ever leave.''
''Yes, you will, I will take you with me.''
Jack's grip flexed into her waist.
''We're barely moving. Why are you not in your Bentley?''
''Because Richard brought me out this evening.'' He saw the frustration of her face. ''I left him there an unhappy man. But a rich one.''
Rose didn't press him further on the matter, instead she pulled at the collar of his shirt with the need to be closer to him. Skin to skin. ]
"We are moving at a snail's pace, Rose. Too slowly to disguise any rocking of the carriage. And we are surrounded on all sides." Rose arched into him, her graceful arms encircling his shoulders.
"You can think of something. Be inventive." She brought her mouth to his ear, her tongue tracing the curve. "I think I just need you now more than I have ever needed you before." A hard shudder shook his frame. She could not have displayed her trust in him more clearly than this, yet her haste and frenzy told him more was at stake than her hands, urging her to lean back and meet his gaze directly.
"Rose."
She stilled, registering the sombreness in his tone. Angling his head, he pressed his lips lightly to hers and breathed the words "I love you. I'm taking us home tomorrow."
Rose didn't move for a long moment following Jack's fervent pronouncement, then the tension left her in a rush, the driving need to connect with him receding to a softer, sweeter craving.
"Jack."
"I was afraid to even ask before tonight knowing what you had at stake here but now, I know just how unhappy we would grow to be living the life which we had started without the other." Her eyes stung. Her throat clenched too tight to allow speech. ''I know how you struggled to perform last night. I know how we felt in Brighton and so I want us to go to Santa Monica.'' Pausing, he anticipated her response but her eyes were glimmering with unshed tears. Her mind clouded with such images of them; both, together at the pier of the great place of which they had once imagined to be together.
"Surely you knew," he murmured, bringing one hand to his mouth. His even white teeth caught the tip of the middle finger of his glove and tugged.
"Yes, I knew that," she whispered. "But to hear them aloud, its daunting but you have said everything that I have thought of since we returned.'' Rose parted her dry lips. ''It is everything that I have dreamt of since you promised to take me there ten long years ago.''
"Then, I will keep my promise to you." The glove slipped off his hand, and he released it from his teeth. It dropped to his lap between them. To her surprise, she found the uncovering of his hand impossibly erotic. He switched his attention to his other glove, tugging on the fingertips one by one until it slid free, his gaze heavy lidded and filled with sensual intent. The sight of his bite gripping the short white glove roused some primitive instinct inside her. There was something primal about disrobing with one's teeth. The second glove fell to his lap. There had always been something about his hands; artistic and rough to the touch but impossibly gentle when laying his hands upon her, even now.
''I want you to draw me again, even just once.'' Rose murmured against his ear, knowing that he had said that he had long since ceased trying to put a charcoal to paper.
''I-I don't know if I have the ability.''
Rose silenced him with a press of her lips to his just once.
''It's all right.''
The carriage made a slow turn. Lifting her hand, Rose extended it to him. His bared fingers went to the buttons at her wrist, deftly releasing each one. When her skin was bare, he lifted it to his mouth. The flutter of his tongue over her pulse made her gasp. The glove caressed the length of her arm as Jack drew it off. By the time he'd removed the other one, Rose was breathless with anticipation. He pressed a kiss to her knuckle above her ring finger. How her body shuddered by the act of kissing a hand; just how he had done once years ago attending a dinner, the night they had first danced as adolescents before falling deeply in love with one another. The memory triggered something in Rose and boldly, she reached between his legs and stroked the rigid length of his erection. He made a rumbling sound very much like a purr. She loved the way he lounged without affectation, every inch the voluptuary and perfectly willing to let her have her way with him.
"It will take more than a lifetime," she said, "for me to ever get used to how you kiss me." His hands slid under her dress and gripped her thighs. She loved that, too. Jack always began each touch with a firm, possessive squeeze, as if he needed that brief moment of fierceness to attain the control that followed. He watched her as he reached around to cup her buttocks in his hands, then pushed through the slit in her pantalettes.
"I waited long enough to do it again," he murmured, against her ear. "And even longer to make love to you." She felt how aroused he was. It gave her a wild thrill to be responsible for arousing him to the highest degree. No longer hindered by her gloves, she freed him with a deftness born of practice. He fell heavily into her waiting palms, so broad and long. He was a brutal instrument of pleasure. The wide head stretched her to her limits, while the thick veins coursing the weighty length rubbed every tender nerve inside her. Rose fisted him with both hands and moved, priming him to proceed to the point where he lost all restraint and bared himself to the soul. He groaned, his head falling back into the high back of the squab.
Rose was ready. Had been from the moment he'd turned around in the ballroom and looked at her as if she were an oasis in the desert and he'd been lost in the dunes for days. She had been just as parched for the sight of him, withering with every day that passed without his presence. Rising onto her knees, she pulled her legs free of the dress which had wrapped about her knees and steadied herself above him. The moment the flared crown notched against the clenching entrance of her, she began to tremble. He caught her hips in his hands, steadying her, but allowing her to set the pace with which she took him into her. Wanting to feel every inch of him, Rose lowered herself slowly, a soft keening cry accompanying the deliberate, relentless impalement. She reached up and gripped the narrow lip where the upholstered back gave way to lacquered wood, sinking down on him with a leisurely measured pace. He bruised her with his grip.
"Rose. Wait!" His thighs were rigid between hers.
"Give me a moment. You're killing me. No. For God's sake, don't move . . ."
Jack climaxed with a primal groan, his teeth grinding audibly, he was jerking inside her as he spurted in thick, creamy pulses. He was only halfway in her, but the sudden flood of lubrication gave her no traction to delay further. She sank onto him to the root. Her toes curled; her nails dug into the leather and wood. Jack looked at her, his face flushed and eyes gleaming. The carriage swayed as it moved at a crawl over cobblestones, the sounds of the city filtering into the hushed and humid interior. His jaw clenched as he rocked deeper into her.
''What is it about the backseat of a vehicle?'' Rose kissed the tip of his nose and smiled. "Although, it is awfully easier when you're stationary.''
Jack could only smirk at her playful demeanour, having no interest in anything other than her. He moved in a burst of graceful physical agility, lifting her and carrying her to the opposite squab. Everything shifted as Rose found herself beneath him, pinned to the seat by the relentlessly hard, thick length of his penis. Her back was cushioned by her lined velvet cape; her front was mantled by his large, powerful body. He braced himself with one palm against the backrest and the other above the armrest near the door. He held her open by planting one knee on the squab and pinning her leg to the back. Her other leg dangled off the edge, her foot flat to the floorboard next to Jack's. She was completely vulnerable, her shoulders curved in the corner in a manner that gave all the leverage to Jack, who used it long, deep plunge. She bit her lip but couldn't contain a plaintive whimper.
''Now, this I believe was how it was the last time we were in a backseat. You were beneath me, clinging to me.''
''Yes, it was.'' Rose watched as he alternated between his movements and watched her, with his hair falling idly into his face. What was it about that which made her so aroused? Perhaps the way it was a flicker back to the adolescent he once was, watching her so intently with that lock of hair in his face.
"Shh," Jack admonished, his eyes gleaming wickedly. He knew damned well what he was doing to her by setting this torturously slow pace. His hips lifted, then fell again. Shallower this time, a short fierce dig.
"Jack . . ." She clenched tight around him, the tiny muscles rippling greedily.
"Rose," he breathed. ''I remember this. I remembered this, perhaps more than anything else.'' His lips grazed her forehead but he still never removed his eyes from hers as he ground against her, teasing her with fleeting pressure. Completely possessing her. This wasn't her first time but it was the rarest of times when one's soul could be seen through the window of their eyes and she was allowing him that peek with nothing more than an open heart. It was for him. It always was.
"I can feel everything.'' Rose whispered, just the words which he had during the first-time making love again in the surf. ''I can see straight through you and I can feel all of you.''
With his lips to her right ear, he murmured, "We are surrounded by dozens of people, and I'm making love to you." Rose shivered, her passions raging beyond all reason. In a distant part of her mind, she heard the voices of pedestrians just outside the carriage. She heard the rolling of passing carriage wheels and the laughter of the passengers within. The very real threat of discovery was akin to throwing kerosene on an already raging fire. She was insensate with lust, reduced to a primitive state in which only the quest for orgasm mattered.
"Is that terrifying?" he asked, his voice course. ''Does any of this scare you?''
''No.''
Rose gently bit against his fingers and he moved to somehow make her feel more. She met his gaze over the hand covering her lips, seeing a fierce love and aching tenderness in the aqua depths that belied the coarseness of his speech. There were so many sides to the man she loved—some smooth as river rock and others rough as gravel; some innocently vulnerable and others wickedly depraved. She couldn't imagine living without any of them. Together they made up the whole that completed her. He rocked his hips, touching the end of her.
Perhaps it should be terrifying to ache the way that she did. To be in love so deeply. To be entirely enthralled by the look of one man. Instead, she was consumed. Wholly consumed.
''I can feel you trembling.'' She whispered, as he loosened his hand across her mouth.
''I can feel you are, too.''
There, they clung to each other, grasping and writhing, straining for the closeness they required but couldn't attain while dressed. Lost in each other while surrounded by the teeming city.
I am desperately unsure if this chapter worked but sex in a carriage was always a dream to put them into and even though they were pretty much redudant by the early 20s, I had to entice them into one somehow.