With a traumatized sort of numbness, Francesca dressed in the detached tent and wobbled out into the
night. Her carriage awaited her in the drive next door, the ruins of Cecelia's old manor. The rebuild
of Miss Henrietta's School for Cultured Young Ladies had already broken ground, but the last of the
rubble had yet to be cleared away.
London seemed darker tonight. Quiet and eerie, with the muffled, biting chill of the winter. Or
perhaps that was just how she perceived it.
Perhaps she saw in the atmosphere what swirled about inside. She was both a tempest and
wasteland after tonight. A storm with nowhere to blow.
But she'd achieved her goals, hadn't she? She'd infiltrated the enemy, and seduced their leader. If
she was stalwart, she could break them. So long as she didn't break first.
The gas lamps didn't seem gold tonight, but pallid and wan. They cast more shadows than light,
and she kept a firm grip on her knife in case she might need it.
When strong hands grabbed for her and pulled her behind the solid stone security fence of
Cecelia's property, she had the blade out and at a male throat in an instant.
"Frank, darling," Alexandra said gently. "I'd consider it a personal favor if you didn't stab the
father of my child."
Francesca wrenched herself out of the Duke of Redmayne's grasp and scowled up into his scarred,
satirical features. "I'll slice the pretty side of your face if you presume to grab me again," she
snapped with no veracity whatsoever to the threat.
"You're welcome." The split in his lip showed as his close-cropped ebony beard parted to reveal
one of his rare smiles. He pointed at a post, one she might have walked into if he hadn't have
redirected her.
She scowled at it, refusing to thank him while he was being smug.
"I expressly forbade you two from spying on me," she scolded the Rogues, refusing to let them
know how knee-wobblingly glad she was to see them. "And then you bring these brutes to muddle
things up? If I'm discovered because of you, I'll be so bloody cross I'll—"
Cecelia threw her arms around her as if she were a long-lost sister. "We were so worried, Frank."
She might as well not have whispered, as the rasp of her voice carried through the night at a regular
pitch. "All these people and no lights."
They turned to watch the last few people disperse into the night like Mayfair ghosts. "I've never
seen the like. What is going on over there?"
Francesca backed up, right into Ramsay, who wisely stepped back and allowed her to steady
herself.
Ramsay, a famous celibate before Cecelia, touched no woman but his own.
Francesca assessed the four faces glowing at her expectantly from what little light shone through
the clouds.
Should she tell? Should she confess to Ramsay that the Lord Chancellor was dead, arguably at hercommand?
As she searched each of their faces, she thought of power. These were powerful men. Redmayne
held one of the oldest ducal titles in the realm. And Ramsay, who lorded over one of the most
powerful elected offices, was being eyed by the throne as the next Lord Chancellor. Their women
were influential in their own rights, Alexandra as one of the few female doctors of archeology in the
entire world, and Cecelia a wealthy, brilliant businesswoman—and keeper of enough secrets she
might inadvertently be able to tear down the Crimson Council on her own.
Though the sweet woman wasn't capable of wreaking destruction. Not on purpose.
Yes, they were formidable … and yet they could never stand against the throng of what she saw in
there. They didn't have an army of devotees, nor did they have the kind of killer instincts to burn
someone's entire legacy to the ground on a whim.
No, she had to do this herself. She … and Chandler. This had become their destiny long ago, the
moment they'd clung together in a fireplace.
"This is the Crimson Council?" Ramsay asked, his features arranged in such a way to show how
thoroughly unimpressed he was. "It seems like any soiree dispersing into the early hours of the morn."
Francesca nodded. "Promise me you'll not do anything." She seized his arm. "I've infiltrated them,
but not deep enough yet. You must be patient a while longer."
"Like hell!" Ramsay seethed before Cecelia clapped a hand over her would-be husband's mouth.
His eyes burned murderous, and Francesca hurried to mollify him.
"I found something out. We knew they were planning on using the girls they kept in the catacombs
beneath your house for nefarious deeds, but I don't believe it had anything to do with sex as we first
assumed. I think they were planning on using them for something more occult. Maybe sacrifices."
"What?" Cecelia drew back, holding the back of her hand against her mouth as though she might be
sick.
"These bastards don't deserve to live," Redmayne snarled. "Give us names and we'll hunt them
down. Tonight, if we have to.""
Francesca shook her head vehemently. "There are too many." She turned back to Ramsay. "I'll tell
you everything, but we must wait until tomorrow."
"What is tomorrow?" Alexandra asked.
"A ritual of some kind. Here at the Kenway estate." She gathered her Rogues to her, relying upon
them to hold sway over their men. "You have to trust me to handle this. I know what I'm doing."
Ramsay eyed her with a rank glare. "Trust is not a virtue I was born with. Ye'll need to give me
more than that."
Cecelia—ever faithful, valiant Cecelia—came through. "You can trust Frank. She's the truest soul
in the world." The statuesque woman leaned in and kissed Francesca on the cheek, smelling of
chocolate and wine and hope. "We can be here tomorrow night."
"You mean Ramsay and I will be here," Redmayne decreed. "You and Alexandra will be
somewhere safe, far away from men who would murder little girls, and from us, when we quite
possibly murder them." The father-to-be curled his hands at his sides into fists.
"No, thank you," Cecelia said gently. "We'll be here."
"We'll lock you up if we—"
Alexandra put a hand on her husband's arm, leaning in to press herself against his side. "We've
never let a Red Rogue march into danger without us." Her declaration wasn't forceful, but it wasfinal. "We're not about to start now."
"Tomorrow then." Francesca gave them a full salute before she turned on her heel and made for
her carriage at full regimental march.
Bless Cecelia and her blind faith. Bless Alexandra and her undying loyalty.
Because she'd just lied to them all to save them from being anywhere near the Crimson Council
tomorrow night.The very devil rode the wind as it whipped through the streets of London that night. Gusting first this
way and then that with the chaos of an angry battle. It carried the scents of the river, of industry and
bakeries and chimneys. Fetid things and pleasant things.
The Devil of Dorset identified them all as he lurked in front of Francesca's home.
The structure snuggled with almost defiant cheerfulness against the backdrop of the bleak and
lonely night. Little lamps glowed in the front windows, and he wondered if she lit them to give the
illusion of a home on alert.
Hers was a modest house for the West End, one with a spectacularly famous garden. It was likely
built before the Tudor dynasty and had been lovingly tended to by generations.
He waited to approach until the imminent storm whipped some sense into him. It wailed and
screamed in a voice that matched the bleak howl inside of him. Fury and fear were both such
powerful emotions, and they warred within him like a tempest of the gods.
Because of her.
She shouldn't have been at the ritual tonight. She shouldn't have let Kenway touch her. Every
breath that man took in her direction was a blasphemy, and Chandler would be damned before he
allowed her to be tainted by his evil.
If only he could make her understand …
She'd glimpsed the darkness of Kenway's soul tonight, but she couldn't even fathom the depth of
his evil. She'd never borne witness to it.
Not like he had.
He closed his eyes, breathing in the chaos while becoming very still. He was a stone. He'd always
been a stone. Heavy, hard, and unable to float. If he were to be dropped in the pool of her eyes, he'd
sink.
He'd drown.
But the wind could not move him. No matter how it howled and battered.
For Chandler, it was safer out here on the street, safer to endure the tempest than to approach her
lair.
And yet.
She had to be stopped, before she ruined everything. Before she distracted him from his ultimate
goal, when he was so very close.
Idly, he rubbed at the place where she'd touched his arm, then lifted his fingers to examine his
palm in the lamplight. One of his only scars he never regretted.
The mark had meant more to her than he'd originally thought. Perhaps because her brother
Ferdinand's blood had melded with his. Perhaps because it reminded her of her purpose.
A purpose he had to diffuse.
Tonight.
He would breach her gates, so to speak, and scare nine shades of shit out of her. He'd tell her thetruth if he had to. If it came to that.
That once he'd been an innocent on the altar of Kenway's sacrifice.
That the Crimson Council had not taken everything away from him once … but twice.
That he wouldn't allow them a third chance. Not her. Not this time.
Chandler approached her home, trying the doors and the windows first, gratified to find them
locked up tighter than a nun's knickers. At least she wasn't a complete fool. He'd been starting to
wonder if she had any sense of caution or self-preservation beneath all that boldness and bravado.
As he made his way around to the back of the house, he ran his fingers along the stone, letting it
catch and abrade the calluses on his hands. He'd felt matching calluses on her fingers. Ones that might
have been made in a similar fashion as his. With weapons, and weights, and physically punishing
combat arts.
He scaled her back wall with climbing picks, planting them into the mortared brick beneath the ivy
and levering his body above each one. He held his weight with one hand as he drove the other into the
stone, waiting for a gust of wind loud enough to cover the sound.
When he reached her second-floor balcony, he picked the lock and let himself in, careful not to get
wrapped up in the white drapes that floated around him like the shifts of spirits warning him away.
The second-floor balcony belonged to a guest room, and he tiptoed through it, avoiding the
shadows of furniture, and let himself into the hall.
Her house smelled different from most. Less like flowers and perfume and more like herbs and
earth. Had he been blindfolded he might have thought he'd broken into a witch's lair. The pleasant
aromatics of magic bubbling in a cauldron over the fire.
He padded up a flight of stairs, following the architect's map he'd memorized of her home that
he'd acquired some nights ago from the records office. The master suite looked over the gardens in
the back and had its own balcony, though Francesca had erected an iron fence around it complete with
medieval-looking spikes just as dangerous as they were decorative.
He'd done his best not to be impressed.
Chandler's heart was not an unsteady organ. It didn't give in to bouts of emotion-fueled pumping. It
was a fit muscle, efficient and steady.
Which was why he found it insufferable that its thundering was all he could hear as he put his ear
to the door.
Taking a steady breath, he turned the latch slowly and let himself into the darkness.
He was taking a moment to allow his eyes to adjust when a lamp blazed to life with the flick of a
switch to reveal his prey.
Or rather, Francesca, her knees bent in a fighting stance, a pistol in one hand and the glint of
something he couldn't make out in the other.
Upon seeing him, she lowered her weapons. "Oh," she breathed in relief. "I had a feeling it was
you."
"Did you plan to kill me?" he asked.
She lowered her weapons, setting them on the nightstand. "I just had to be sure. You know. In case
it was a murderer or some such unpleasant thing." She bent to straighten the covers of a bed into
which she obviously hadn't retired yet and then patted it in invitation. "Here. Sit."
Chandler didn't sit. He stared.
It was widely thought that women were delicate creatures. Like seashells and flower petals. Likethings that were easy to break and crush and discard. Useful, pretty. Ephemeral.
If this was so, Francesca Cavendish was a flower made of steel.
A curious ache opened in Chandler's chest, welling from a place that had been drowned in
suffering long ago. He'd learned how to hate so early, and how to pluck the weaknesses and flaws
from a person with such efficiency, he wasn't certain he was able to do anything but distrust. He was
a cynic, a manipulator, and sometimes, when the situation called for it, he was a monster. He never
looked at people, but he disassembled them moments after. He poked about their insides to see where
the strings were, so he could pull them.
But what he saw before him was an entire woman. A person. Whole and bold and true. The wind
whistled at the shutters of her window, but only whispers of a draft got through. He thought he heard
her name in the gusts, a portent or a poem, he couldn't be sure.
Was it startling or sensual that not only did she keep up with him, but she was often one step
ahead?
Her hair was tamed in a shiny braid that fell over her shoulder like a silk rope. Draped in some
sort of green silk harem pants and a kurta she might have picked up in the Far East, she looked both
fearsome and feminine. The fabric shifted and shimmered in time with her easy strides, molding to
thighs that were long and distractingly lovely.
Chandler suddenly forgot to be angry.
"There was no need to sneak in," she informed him while stowing her weapons in her bedside
table. "I would have let you in the front door."
"I wanted to demonstrate how easy it was to get to you," he said. "I needed to frighten some wits
into you."
"Your hairstyle frightens me, if that's any solace."
Stymied, Chandler glanced in a gilded mirror across the room. The wind had thrown his hair into
startling disarray, as if he'd taken a dunk in pomade and let a chimpanzee groom him.
Grimacing, he smoothed it down and turned to scowl at her. "You can jest, after everything you
witnessed tonight?"
Her pleasant mask slipped just enough to announce that she'd been wearing it in the first place. He
grasped at the unfettered emotion he read in her expression and advanced. "Are you going to explain
to me just what the fuck you were doing at Luther Kenway's home?"
"Same thing as you." She moved to the escritoire by the balcony window and began to leaf through
some papers in an obvious ploy not to look at him. "Infiltrating the Crimson Council."
"You didn't tell me they'd invited you, Francesca." He ate up the whole of her room in a few
furious strides.
She stubbornly refused to look up from scanning the paperwork. "You also neglected to mention to
me that you'd be there…" The words drifted away, as if they hadn't much mattered in the first place.
He stopped in front of her, brows drawing down. "Why would I tell you? You're not—"
"Not what?" She flipped the paper to look at the back. "A man?"
"A spy." He snatched the paper from her and tossed it to the floor. "Goddammit, Francesca look at
me!"
She did, and the frank assessment she gave him reminded him instantly that she'd seen him naked.
"I could be, you know," she protested, jabbing his chest with her index finger. "I'd make an excellent
spy."Of that, he had no doubt. She'd excel at anything she put her mind to. "I'd never allow it."
"Why?" she demanded, her clear eyes clouding with storms.
"Because you'd be bloody miserable, that's why. Everything I am, everything I have, is tied to
what I do. A wife, children: I can hope for none of it. Any chance to try was taken from me ages ago."
Her face softened as she reached up to him. "I know. I was there. It was taken from me, too."
No. She wasn't. It had been before then. Before her and Mont Claire and this entire bloody
debacle.
God, but he'd been born under a cursed star. He saw it glimmer in her eyes as she stared up at him.
The curse that was waiting to take her from him a second time.
"I suppose there are many things we are both denied," she said. "But we can each claim our
vengeance. Together." Instead of backing away from his anger, she leaned in, sliding her hands into
his jacket "You can still have me."
"Francesca," he warned, even as his body responded. "Don't."
"We are close, Chandler, I can feel it." Her fingers curled against his chest, becoming fists. "You
and I, we can put an end to this. Doesn't that excite you? The thought of victory?" She traced the
corrugated ripples of is ribs, eliciting a moan and a shudder of need.
She'd seen his body tonight, and it seemed to have ignited something in her.
He'd wondered what she'd thought of his desire, what she'd felt about his cock straining for her as
he stood naked and proud. A stag ready to strike at any other who would seek to claim her as a mate.
He would even have locked horns with Kenway. Right then and there. Consequences be damned.
What did she feel, now that she knew what her nearness did to his body?
Every fucking time.
He took her hands and pulled them off him, imprisoning them in his palms so he could think. "You
cannot go back there tomorrow."
She gave him a wry glance as she pulled her hands away, hiding them behind her. "Of course I can.
Kenway is grooming me for the Triad. This is our in…" She retrieved the letter he'd thrown on the
floor, giving him a view of how the silk of her pantaloons stretched over her backside.
He was still swallowing his tongue when she looked over and said, "Not to be unkind, but my
infiltration into the Crimson Council is deeper than yours. I mean, you were little more than a party
favor." Flashing a roguish smile, she lifted the lid of the desk and put the paper in it.
"It can't be you," Chandler declared.
"Why not me?"
"Because you are…"
Her mild amusement turned to mutiny. "Because I'm a woman?"
"Stop saying that, Francesca, you have no idea…" Turning, he scored his scalp in frustration,
ruining his hair once again. "You have no idea the ruthlessness of this man. The depths of depravity of
which he is capable. I mean, he very likely killed everyone you love."
She advanced on him, eyes narrowed into slits of viperous wrath. "Do you think I've forgotten
that? You think you're the only one who has sacrificed his entire life for this? I have to go back. I
have to. I hate them, Chandler. My hate is all I have, and I cannot make way for anything else until it
is dealt with. If you cannot handle that, then you should be the one to step away."
An impotent frustration welled within him. He couldn't force her to drop this … and he couldn't
stand the thought of her in danger. Reaching out, he drew a knuckle down the curve of her cheek."After everything you saw tonight, are you not afraid?"
The jaw beneath his hand hardened. "Aren't you?"
"Of course I am." His answer seemed to startle her, and she blinked at him, mute for a blessed
moment.
"Fear is the most primitive emotion," he continued. "But as you know, hate must be learned. You
have to experience it. Smell it. Taste it. And I know you have." He stepped closer, framing her face
with his hands. "My hate is stronger than my fear, Francesca. I've melded with it and I let it run
through me like it is my own blood. But you don't have to. I don't want that for you."
"This isn't about what you want." She put her hands on his wrists but didn't pull away. Suddenly
her eyes were both bleak and unsure and for a moment, she looked incredibly young. And not at all
like the girl she'd been.
"The Lord Chancellor…" Her breath hitched. "I thought he'd gotten off easily with that little show
he did with the dagger. I thought…" She swallowed some strong emotion. "Did you see the hounds? I
didn't mean for him to die … not like that."
He nodded. He'd seen it, and it had sickened him, despite his acrimony for the Lord Chancellor.
"This is what I'm talking about," he said, heartened that he might be getting through to her. "It's not
too late, Francesca. I can get you out of this. I can help you—"
She surged forward, mashing her lips against his, her fingers dropping to his shirt, ripping at the
buttons, clumsy with frenzy.
"No." Chandler couldn't believe he stopped her, but he did.
"You want to help me? Then take off your trousers."
He wanted to. God, how he wanted to, but something in her frenzy caused him to pause.
Fear. He'd found it. He'd done what he'd come to do. He'd frightened her.
So why did he feel like such an absolute ass? For all the lies he lived, it was time he told some
truths. "Do you want to know what I thought when I learned you might have lived?"
"That I was a liar." The earnestness in her eyes was almost his undoing.
"I thought—I'd hoped—that perhaps you'd buried your past. And me along with it. I didn't know if
you were real. Maybe I didn't want to know, because if you'd lived, if you were happy, then I could
visit you whenever I felt like it. In my dreams. I thought that maybe, this was all worth it if you were
happy."
Her chin dipped toward her chest and she stole furtive, melancholy glances at him before her eyes
darted away. It reminded him of the Francesca of his youth. A shy, repressible girl with a dainty smile
and generous heart.
"I shouldn't have waited to come find you," he said, meaning it. "You've reminded me what I'm
doing this for. I think, you're making me believe in the one thing I'd thought I'd never recover. You
give me—no—you force me to hope. And in order to keep that hope, to do what must be done, I need
you alive. I need you safe. You are a rare and incredible creature, you always have been. And
Kenway sees this."
He cupped her cheek, hating that behind the strength of her was flesh that could puncture and a
skeleton that could be broken. She had the will of iron, but her body was still delicate. "He doesn't
just want you, Francesca, I know this. He wants to crush you. He's done it before, and I couldn't live
with myself if … if anything happened to you."
The smile she attempted was wobbly, as if she knew his words should please her, but they had theopposite effect.
"Francesca." Her name escaped as a tender benediction. "Listen to me—"
"No," she said, cutting at the air with the flat of her hand and jerking out of his reach as she backed
toward the bed. Not a retreat, but a regroup.
"You listen," she commanded, jabbing her finger at him before turning away, as if she couldn't
think and look at him at the same time. "You listen. Kenway is no longer the villain." She paused.
"Well, not the only villain. They all are. If we cut Kenway down, we only succeed in chopping off
the head of the hydra, and it'll just grow another." She whirled on him, composure reclaimed into
those gem-hard eyes. "I think you know that. We have to do this, to go all the way into the Crimson
Council so we may find the roots and rip it out of the earth. You and I.
"If you'd looked for me sooner, you'd have seen me become who I am now. You'd understand that
the Francesca you knew doesn't exist. She's dead, Chandler, buried alongside Declan in the ashes of
Mont Claire. This is what we are." She held her hands out to the side. "This is what we must do:
Take down the Crimson Council. Together."
Instead of coming at him, as she'd done before, she held her hands out like a penitent to a priest,
beckoning him to close the gap. "Rather than fight me on this, join me. Join with me, and I will prove
to you that I can do what it takes."
Magnificent.
The word throbbed through him in perfect sync to the rhythm of his heart.
Mag.ni.fi.cent.
She'd been a pretty girl, sweet like spun sugar and fragile as a china cup. His young love for her
had been excruciating, because her radiance had illuminated his darkness. He'd never felt as though
he could touch her, because everyone would know. He'd leave imprints of shadows upon her
perfection and they'd come for him in the night. And who would have blamed them?
And so he hadn't dared to dream.
But now. Now? She was something else. She was no longer a saint; she was a sin. She wasn't
perfection, she was pleasure. She wasn't forbidden, she was … fire.
She'd become the element that had taken everything from her.
And holy Christ did her flame tempt him like the proverbial moth. Her heat, it radiated from her
like that of the very sun. How could she have become this unstoppable force, this marvel of energy
and essence that put every other hero, mythic or otherwise, to shame?
Suddenly it didn't matter how many men had had her before, because the answer was none.
She'd had them.
She'd been born a whisper, and now she was a scream. A demand. A fucking goddess in a pair of
billowing silk trousers.
Her appetite rivaled that of Kali. Her desire was worn naked and abashed on her face as she raked
him over with rank challenge.
And to think, he'd once been afraid that she couldn't handle him. His weight, his darkness, his
need.
But for the first time, Chandler felt a pang of fear … of a girl. A woman. Of the hunger pulling her
skin tight over those perfect bones. Of the honest promise in her eyes, and also of the secrets.
He'd thought it better to be a rock. To be hard and heavy and immobile, and yet … he realized he
could still be ground to dust. Or even reshaped. If he was stone, then she was water. Nothing was sosoft, pliant, and nourishing.
And yet, who could withstand the power of a rogue wave?
Or a rogue redhead.
The most incredible force on this earth, she was. She would claim him, pull him back to the sea
from which he wouldn't emerge again. At least, not the same man he'd been before. He would drown
in her depths as she devoured him. Body and soul. She'd show him no mercy and offer him no
excuses. She would leave him an empty husk and walk away strengthened by their encounter.
Because she was what he feared the most. Both fire and water.
In spite of himself, Chandler took a step forward, and her gaze sharpened. Then he took another,
and her eyes flared.
Whatever intent she read on his features caused her to go utterly still. Then, as per usual, she did
the exact opposite of what he'd expected her to. Instead of meeting him halfway, or waiting for him to
reach for her, she grasped the hem of her kurta and pulled it over her head, uncovering the loveliest
breasts he'd ever seen. She stood before him, her back arched and her hip kicked out to the side.
Proud. Challenging. Perfect.
They collided like thunderclouds. All electricity and wild, chaotic abandon. Some would fear to
watch it, of that he had no doubt. His fingers tangled in her braid and he couldn't be sure if he trapped
her or she'd ensnared him. Her hands scored at the rough stubble of his cheek as she pulled him in to
kiss him as if she'd been born hungry for a taste.
As if she'd been waiting for twenty years.
Her hands scraped down his shirt and then tightened into fists, threatening to tear it from his body.
He did it for her.
The sound of buttons clattering to the floor was the perfect percussion to her purr of
encouragement, the vibrations of which went all the way to his cock.
He filled his hands with her, his arms, pulling her in and crushing her lithe frame against his thick
one. His fingers were bruising on her back, her shoulders, her waist; he knew that.
Neither of them would escape this encounter unmarked.
It was only that her frenzy matched his own. She clutched at him, digging her fingers into the cords
and muscles of his back, pawing at him with identical ardor. Her tongue met his, matching him stroke
for stroke and plunge for plunge.
Christ, if he was the devil … she was a fucking demon. A succubus. And he was quite suddenly
her willing victim.
Chandler finally stopped fighting. He gave over to the hunger, surrendered to his own dark desires,
and succumbed to her unspoken challenges.
But that didn't mean he was dormant.
He used his teeth on her lips as he explored her every bare inch of skin with rough hands. He
wanted to mark her. To show the world that she might own him now, but he'd claimed a bit of her, as
well.
She was all smooth flesh over toned muscle. Not lush, but lovely. Her flares were subtle and her
lines sleek. Her breasts small and pert, the nipples pink pebbles begging for his mouth.
All in good time.
Her fingers delved into his disheveled hair, and he growled as her nails scored his scalp. He
pinned her to him, imprisoning with one arm as he filled the other hand with her ass covered with thatemerald silk. The muscles of her bottom flexed and clenched beneath his touch, and she lifted a leg to
wrap around his thigh. Gods, she was strong, and limber as well.
This was going to be as much a fight as it was fucking.
He couldn't wait.
As impatient as he was, Chandler explored the parts of her mouth he'd missed before. Going
deeper, thrusting stronger until he felt as though she stole his breath from his lungs and gave it back
again.
Finally he tore away, needing to think. To breathe.
"No," she panted. "More."
It wasn't a question, but a command.
And he could do nothing but oblige her. With a rumble of victory that escaped from somewhere
deep, deep inside of him, he reached down to lift her against him, splitting her other leg so they both
wrapped around his waist.
In three powerful strides he drove her against the wall, hissing a breath in through his teeth as his
sex rolled and flexed against hers, again frustrated by the layers of their clothing.
Yes, they'd been here before …
And now he'd get to finish what they'd started.
She wasn't a patient prisoner. She climbed him like a rope, using her thighs as a vise as she
hooked her heels around his buttocks and pulled him harder against her, riding him, after a fashion.
Her movements were not those of a practiced seductress, but a primal, jolting roll of her body in
shuddering successions.
No, he would take nothing from her tonight, but she would take whatever pleasure from him he
could give.
And all he could do was be humbled. Grateful. Two emotions with which he was not well
acquainted.
Her lips drove against his with such fervor that their teeth briefly met. She kissed like a woman
denied too long. As if instead of doing this with regularity, she'd been waiting her entire life for it.
Her hands were everywhere at once. His hair, his neck, the columns of muscle bracketing his spine.
She used the wall as a rally point, pushing against it to get closer to him. He pinned her down,
grappling her, grinding her, reveling in the little mewls of pleasure she made.
He'd never come like this with a woman. Not without being inside her in some capacity or
another.
He wasn't about to start now.
Pushing away from the wall, he rebounded to another surface, the wardrobe maybe, settling back
into her with a bruising, straining kiss. When that wasn't enough, he abandoned it to set her ass on the
desk and pulled away just long enough to reach between them and tear those fucking silk pants and her
underthings down the never-ending length of her legs.
The scent of her filled his mouth with moisture, and he had her spread wide on the desk, his head
buried between her legs, before the raw, shocked sound she made even registered.
He dragged the flat of his tongue through the folds of her intimate flesh.
Fire and water, she was. Unbearably hot, and indescribably wet. Here was the spun sugar he'd
been searching for.
Here, where she was all woman.Somewhere in his lust-frenzied brain it registered that she didn't ride his mouth. Instead she
became curiously passive beneath his ministrations.
Would wonders never cease?
He laid ruthless claim to her sex with his tongue. Sliding through the ruffles of flesh with strong
licks, leaving silken heat and wet promises in his wake. He worshiped the center of her until her hips
began to buck and jerk, making him chase her with his seeking lips.
Finally, he pinned her legs wide, needing to dine on her, to drink her desire. This was the only
way he could take her inside of him.
Before she returned the favor.
Her fingers fisted in his hair, but she neither pulled him away nor encouraged him forward. She
merely held on. As though she needed something to hold on to or she'd fall.
He'd never allow that. He'd never let her fall.
He wanted to tell her that. He wanted to say so many things. But he couldn't look at her. He
couldn't see the storm in her eyes. Instead he admired the pink flesh beneath him. The delectable
delicacy of it. He discovered what made her gasp. What caused her to buck and writhe. And he did
those things.
Relentlessly.
He sucked at the petals of straining flesh, capturing the tiny bead between his lips and flicking his
tongue across it in measured movements so as not to be too much. Her hips rose and she made a
jagged sound. Then another.
And then she went silent. But not still. Oh God, never that.
Her every lovely muscle seized and her back arched in such a way he had a momentary worry that
it would snap. She pulled his hair so hard, he heard some of it tear, the pain doing strange and
wondrous things to his erection.
She didn't merely come, she came apart. He watched her, then, his mouth gentling to elongate the
moment for her. Her breasts trembled as they arched to the sky. Her other hand clasped over her eyes,
as if she was afraid to look. Or perhaps to look away from whatever she was seeing on the backs of
her eyelids.
He kept her locked in that place for as long as he could. Until she found her voice and could make
little hitching sounds, until those sounds turned plaintive and she squirmed for escape when the
pleasure became too much.
Only then did he pull away to kiss the smooth length of her thigh and wipe his lips with the back of
his hand. He stood, replacing his head with his hips between her parted legs. His entire body
throbbed in time with his cock, and the look on her face did little to help.
She gazed up at him as though he were a god. And he felt like one, standing over her then. A wild
pagan deity, one that didn't bother with mere mortals.
Only her.
The summer storm raged outside, the wind not abating, but gathering strength, as did his need.
As did hers.
She didn't lounge back on liquid bones as some women were wont to do after such a release.
No, she reared up and reached for the placket of his trousers. Her thighs still parted, her limber
body able to move in ways he couldn't comprehend. With a few swift movements of her thumbs, she
had his trousers open enough to delve inside.Her fingers closed around his cock, and pulled it free.
He couldn't exactly read her expression now, as the light from the one lamp lit her from behind. It
created a brilliant ruby halo around her ruined braid, but left her features mostly in shadow.
She scooted to the very edge of the desk and, once again, wrapped those long, lovely legs around
him.
With a lithe roll of her spine she brought her body against him, threading her arms around to pull
him close.
Chandler stilled. For all of their frenzy … the clutching, seizing, bruising desperation of before,
this was something else.
An embrace, perhaps.
She put her head on his shoulder, and then rooted around for a moment, finally landing with her
face pressed firmly into the crook of his neck and her hand sliding with an almost anxious repetition
along his back.
He wasn't ready for whatever tender thing rose from the void within him, the thing that wanted to
hold her back. That wanted to soothe and smooth, to nuzzle and croon.
That wasn't him. It wasn't them. This was them. Wet, hard, straining sex.
Christ, he'd barely made peace with her strength, he wasn't sure he could bear her softness.
And so did the only thing could think of.
He drove his hips forward, shoving his full, hard length inside of her heat.
Past a barrier he hadn't expected, eliciting a gasp of pain he'd never forget.Francesca bit back the raw cry just as soon as she'd uttered it, cursing herself. She'd known it would
hurt, of course she had. She just … hadn't realized how much.
She was grateful she knew a bit about combat, and that her training had taught her to fight through
the pain, or she'd never have been able to stick to Chandler like a burr as he attempted to jerk back.
His hips levered enough away that he withdrew, and she couldn't deny that her straining body
found it a relief.
"Wait," she said. "Wait. Don't stop." They needed to do this. For so many reasons.
"Jesus. Christ. Jesus. Fuck."
She waited patiently as he worked through every curse she'd heard in the queen's own English,
and a few new ones, as well.
She breathed in the warm scent of his skin, linen, soap, and something a little earthy. Like cedar
maybe, or pine. Christmas. His scent reminded her of Christmas. Unable to help herself, her tongue
escaped her lips for a little taste.
I just licked Christmas, was her absurd thought. Followed by the fact that she wanted to do it
again.
He tasted good. He tasted right.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Francesca, did you just lick me?"
She drew in a few more lungsful of his scent before she gathered the strength to draw away. "To
be fair," she ventured, "you licked me first."
Did he ever.
She'd known of the deviant acts one could perform upon another, being friends with two very
adventurous, very well-pleasured women. Also, she was no stranger to a climax, having given herself
more than a few.
But she'd never known … could never have imagined in any of the many meanderings of her
imagination that a man's mouth could be so incredibly wicked. That the euphoria he elicited could be
so absolute as to be unbearable at the end.
Not just any man's wicked mouth. Declan Chandler's.
"Let go," he commanded in an impatient tone, one bordering on panic. "I have to make certain you
are—"
"No," she said, pulling him closer, teasing her pebbled nipples against the swells of muscle on his
chest. "No, we're not finished."
"But you were…" He froze. "You want…? But I … how is it … bloody possible … Everyone
thinks…"
Francesca hid a smile against his shoulder. It wasn't very often that a man such as he was so
completely gobsmacked that he couldn't finish a sentence. "Later," she said. "More. Now."
Apparently lust turned her into a rather monosyllabic creature.
She reached between them, sliding her hands down his impossibly tight abdomen to the impressivemember below, delighted to find it still hard.
Hard, and wet. Wet with her own release.
His breath seized when she wrapped her fingers around him. "Don't make me beg," she said
huskily.
"Fucking hell, Francesca."
"I know." Drawing back, she pressed her forehead to his, nudging at him with her nose. "I want
you. I've always wanted you. Ever since I was a girl, I knew that you were it for me. That you were
the man I would have, or none at all. And I mean to have you, make no mistake of that."
A mirthless laugh gasped out of him, choking at the end as she moved her hand in a slight caress.
His hips responded, thrusting deeper into her grip before he pulled away.
"Not like this," he wheezed out.
"Then how?"
"The bed." He lifted her off the desk and carried her to the bed, this time with an arm hooked at
her shoulders and her knees. She felt small when he held her like this. Small and soft and delicate.
She wouldn't admit she liked it … but she didn't hate it.
He placed her gingerly on the bed, and she sank into her favorite covers that smelled of vanilla and
orange blossoms. She stretched, testing her muscles for pain and finding none as he towered over her
like a giant tempestuous storm cloud.
"Christ, you're going to ruin me," he whispered.
"Am I?" She opened her arms to him, suddenly chilly and beginning to feel a strange and maidenly
apprehension. She needed him against her; then she could do anything.
He joined her, covering her in heat and muscle and masculine need. "Yes. You'll ruin me, and
there's nothing I can do to stop it."
This time, he rose above her and stared into her eyes, his gaze searching hers intently as he nudged
at her entrance, and then sank into her in one long, slow, endless slide.
This time, the pain was little more than a whisper, followed by something else. An ache, restless
and consuming, the ghost of the frenzy she'd felt before.
She took him slowly, feeling as though she'd been shaped for him, by him, and not at all surprised
by it.
She belonged to this man.
She always had.
A detached part of her admired his masculine beauty. The slope of his shoulders, the breadth and
depth of his chest. The network of veins visible in his powerful arms. It distracted her from any
vestiges of pain she would have felt.
"Francesca. Francesca, look at me." A hollow note in his voice drew her eyes, and what she saw
in his gaze broke her heart.
She shaped her palm to his jaw, first one, then the other. And she kissed him, tasting her nectar on
his lips.
It was all he needed.
He rode her in long, slow strokes. Each time he filled her, erotic pulses of pleasure unfolded
within her like the tendrils of spring ivy.
Awe and astonishment lay like strangers on his features, turning them from savage to utterly
seductive.They said nothing. Barely made any sound but that of their flesh and friction. They communicated
in sighs and breaths and the flutter of eyelids.
Francesca focused on the heat of him inside of her, and the warmth of him around her. She felt an
intense possession well within, one not unfamiliar. She clutched at it with the same desperation as she
clung to him.
She told him so many things without speaking. She told him how deeply and desperately she'd
missed him. That she was sorry for the secrets she kept … and even sorrier that she couldn't be who
he thought she was. Who he truly wanted. But she'd be her best. For him she'd be everything;
anything. Anyone. His loss was her greatest tragedy, and his pleasure her greatest achievement.
His life her greatest joy.
She wished he could hear her, or read her, but his eyes were so intent. So full of lust and fire and
primitive animal things.
There was tenderness there, too, she thought. Hope, just like he'd said.
Not love. Never that. The gods were not so kind. But hope she could live with.
Hope … was everything.
Francesca hadn't known how affected she was by this momentous happening. Not until he leaned
down and kissed away a tear.
She ran her cheek against his, savoring the scrape of his shadow beard. A pressure mounted within
her, aching and rolling across her bones and dispersing into her blood. It never crested, but she didn't
need it to. She wanted to be here. Present. In this moment.
She wanted to stare into his eyes forever, to wonder what color they truly were. She wanted to feel
everything, from the hot slide of his cock inside of her to the tickle of the fine hairs of his thighs
against hers.
Could this moment never end? Could tomorrow never come?
Just as she had the thought, his movements became faster, more insistent, less careful though she
knew he never unleashed the full force of his desire upon her. She could feel him growing against her
intimate flesh. Pulsing and pressing against the channel that contained him.
And then he said her name the way dying men pleaded with the gods.
Francesca.
Her name. And not her name.
Warmth spread through her abdomen as his muscles bunched and strained to their capacity,
building upon themselves with the excruciating consummation of his release. It lasted for an eternity,
or only for seconds, she couldn't be sure, so breathtaking was the moment.
Then he dropped his head beside hers, and stilled inside of her. This time, when he whispered her
name it was framed as a question.
She shook her head and nudged him to settle next to her while she rolled over and doused the light.
He shifted, cradling her close "I—"
She reached up and pressed her fingers to his lips, lips that still carried her intimate essence upon
them.
"Tomorrow," she said. They could say all the words that needed saying then.
His mouth tightened as if he would argue, but then they relaxed. "Tomorrow," he agreed.
They lay there and listened to the storm, and eventually his breaths came in deeper increments, and
then soft, exhausted snores.She wasn't going to sleep, though. Not if it meant missing this. An honest, unfettered moment with
Chandler.
The tempest died, never turning into rain. Eventually, moonlight pierced the chamber, and she
watched it cast him in an ethereal glow. He was a man who belonged to hours such as this. He wore
his darkness. He owned it. It was part of his blood.
"I love you," she whispered. That much had never changed. Whether he was Declan Chandler,
Chandler Alquist, Lord Drake, or the devil, himself. She loved him.
Still.
Always.
"Whatever souls are made of, yours and mine are the same," she whispered.
In sleep, he'd melted away from the unyielding man into the boy she'd loved.
She murmured her name to him then, revealing her secret to ears that couldn't hear her. She might
be brave, fearless even, in some respects. But in this way, she was an ultimate coward.
With her heart.
Don't hate me, she silently pleaded, dashing away another tear before pressing her ear to his
heart. Remembering with every bit of her soul the day she'd first heard it beat in the chimney as the
world had burned down around her.
Don't hurt me, Declan Chandler. I'm not as strong as they all think.