by Anne Mallory
He could feel her smile against his lips. An openmouthed smile on full, soft lips, still touching his, still tugging out his soul. The temptress of the dark, binding him to her.
“It is like a rebirth when you kiss me.” Her voice was shy, but sure, beneath the softness.
Too open, too honest, to be of the dark. Temptress of the light then, absolving him of sin before destroying him completely.
“I want such a thing to last forever.” Her tongue darted out, licking her lower lip, the edge of her tongue touching his, being so near still. “Even should I wither from lack of food, lack of drink. I would be happy to exist solely on the feel of your lips against mine, I think.”
He had never been good with words. Not for anything other than threatening someone or issuing commands. He was a man who spoke with action. So he connected their mouths again and let her drain him completely, should she choose to do so. Willingly giving her the power to destroy him.
His shirt disappeared and her dress became undone and she was arching underneath him as he set about touching each bit of skin on her body with his lips.
A long time later they lay sprawled on the rug together. Half of her hair was out of the braid, messy about her head and shoulders. The glint of firelight cast a glow on the individual strands sticking out.
She drew a pattern on his chest, matching up one scar with another, dragging her finger between them like a twisted maze game.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m playing mazes on your chest. I always loved to do them, and it gives me an excuse to touch you.”
He would think up a dozen excuses to hand her for the future.
“How did you meet your brother?” she asked.
He couldn’t stop himself from stiffening. She pressed more firmly on the paths across his shoulders and upper arms, kneading his muscles back down.
“Please. I want to know about you. Let me in.”
For some reason, he couldn’t rediscover his ability to say no.
“He dragged me out of the gutter.”
He could feel her throat work against his chest. “What were you doing in the gutter?”
“Dying.”
He looked down at her and saw her lip curl between her teeth, but she continued to touch him, almost stroking him now like some sort of feral beast who needed calming.
She let the silence drag out, though not uncomfortably. Not with the way she was touching him.
For once, he gave in to the urge to fill the void. “I’ve always done a poor job of dying unfortunately.”
“Where were your parents?” she asked in a curious, non-confrontational manner. He knew she had already connected most of the dots. The apparent ones, anyway. She didn’t know the actual reason he had been ordered killed.
He smiled an old, chilly smile. He pictured the back of his mother’s head through the carriage window as it drove away.
It took him a moment to realize he had vocalized part of his thoughts. But the stilling of her hand proved that he had.
“Both of your parents left you to die?”
“My mother left me to die. A last act of generosity—or ennui—on her part as she stopped the driver from completing the task given to him by the man who had been listed as my father.”
He could see the emotions churning from her eyes as she looked up at him. He didn’t want her pity.
“It was the best thing that could have happened,” he said tightly. “I hated them, and I hated living there. It became unbearable after they threw . . . my nurse . . . out. She always took care of me.” Nana, poor Nana. Tending all of his wounds, holding him in the night—the only one who had cared, and she’d been almost destroyed for it.
With her hand, Phoebe made a soft, soothing motion along his chest. “I’m glad you had someone,” she whispered. “And that you got out alive.”
“I got Roman, the stupid bastard, as a result, so it wasn’t a complete loss.”
“Tell me about meeting Roman then,” she said, voice deceptively light.
“He wouldn’t stop talking. The man can hold a three-way conversation by himself. He dragged me away. Fixed me up.”
“It is hard to imagine you lying in the gutter, dying,” she said. “I dislike the very image.”
He lifted her braid and played with the end.
“I thought they’d killed Nana.” Damn. He hadn’t meant to say that. “As soon as I recovered enough to hold a pistol, I planned my revenge. Would have quite literally died for it if it hadn’t been for Roman.”
And even then he had lived much of his adolescent years gloriously plotting out various outcomes in excruciatingly bloody detail. The woman next to him would be horrified.
“You were wronged. As someone who feels . . . strongly . . . for you, I want blood myself.”
He stared at her.
She tilted her head to look at him fully. “The question is—you have spent so much time waiting and plotting, what do you plan to do after?”
He didn’t know. It had never mattered. He had just pushed forward, doing everything he needed in order to set himself up as the most powerful, to set the stage for Garrett’s utter annihilation, putting off the final act of revenge until he didn’t have to worry about Roman anymore. Roman was happy now, with a good life set before him. And so Andreas could exact his revenge—he had been dodging death for it.
But things had steadily changed since Phoebe Pace had bounced in and taken over everything that belonged to him, internally and externally. He stared at the woman in front of him. What did he want? After? Did he deserve an after?
“There is nothing wrong with wanting justice. You just can’t allow it to consume you.” She stared directly into his eyes. “You have for a long time, but the consumption has slowed now, hasn’t it?”
He had the absurd urge to look away from her, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Yes,” he said softly. “But I cannot purge the desire fully.”
She nodded. “And he shall pay. But you shouldn’t pay anymore.”
His fingers circled her wrist. “You need to understand that I didn’t start these events in order to help anyone else. I am a bad person.”
“Sometimes, yes.” She patted his fingers. “But sometimes you are quite a good person. And everyone has faults to work on.”
She smiled softly at him. “I have many, for instance. But my abiding interest in you isn’t one of them.”
Her lips were so near. And then suddenly they were under his. And he knew it was because he had moved first. Spread her beneath him. Because he knew abruptly and irrevocably that she was his.
And he wasn’t going to let anything interfere with that fact.
And an hour later, as she was arching and moaning under him, he was as positive of that as he had been of anything else in his life.
He likely tore half of his stitches as they moved together. And he didn’t care one whit. As long as there were still a few that remained, pulling the edges together, he could resew the rest himself. He could bleed out completely as she kissed him, writhing beneath him, clutching him, her warmth surrounding him as he thrust in and out, wanting to be buried completely inside her forever—he could have bled out and died, and it still would be worth it.
The first light of dawn crept slowly, but surely, forward as he lay in bed, fingers carding through her hair. He had gotten a few hours of the best sleep he had had in years. He was so unused to such rest that he was wide-awake, his brain working too quickly for such an early hour.
He had a few options available—to what his direction would become.
Options that had moved past using the papers from the vault in his final act of revenge. Gaining the ultimate revenge and legally stripping Garrett’s true sons of their title and the legacy that Garrett had been so obsessed with since he had realized the truth of Andreas’s parentage so many decades ago. Andreas did not need to threaten a charge of treason in order to enact a killing blow. Garrett had been anticipating and panickin
g over legacy ever since he had seen Andreas Merrick six months ago. So little time really in the grand scheme of things for Garrett—never understanding for so many years as to where all of his bad fortune had sprouted. And why.
But legacy revenge wasn’t part of Andreas’s option set anymore. He wanted something else far more. Something that superseded vengeance. That could not exist if he did not choose a new path.
And that was where he had to rally. Quickly. To decide.
He could confess everything. Let Phoebe shoot him. Go to his grave at least free of guilt.
Or he could try and bind Phoebe to him so completely that she wouldn’t be able to break free no matter what was later revealed.
He stared at her lying there, smile lovely and wide as her eyes opened upon him. The choice was obvious. He rose and dressed.
“A bit early for you to be up, isn’t it?” she teased, and he had the solid notion that she was still half-asleep. She had obviously slept soundly as well. It was a strategic mistake, though—she should have been back with her parents already. Then maybe she would have had some choice in what he was about to do.
“Watching you dress in such a mechanical and focused way, Andreas, I’m feeling a little doubtful that we shared the same lovely experience a few hours ago.”
He smiled at the teasing note in her voice and pulled his shirt over his head, not bothering to set it fully to rights—and without answering her, he walked determinedly to the door.
“Andreas, wait, where are you going?” Her voice sounded uncertain now. Wary. “What time is it?”
“It is time I speak with your parents.” He walked from the bedroom.
“What?” It was all but a shriek, and he could hear her throwing on her clothes.
He didn’t stop to think that with the quality of sleep he had finally received combined with their actions the night before and the total upheaval of his world that he might not be thinking clearly.
Because in a newfound state of bliss, but backed by old, coiled fears, it all seemed a perfectly good idea at the time.
Chapter 22
Phoebe tripped in behind him and grabbed at his shirt, trying to pull him back through the doorway before her parents could see them. Her mother and father stood there already, though, likely disturbed from sleep by the loud knock and subsequent opening of the door. He had been too far ahead of her. Long, long strides ahead.
And he had keys to their rooms. Of course, he had.
Phoebe froze, hand fisted in the back of his shirt as she met the eyes of her mother, who had just picked up the note Phoebe had left—a note she had left just in case, she thought hysterically. Mathilda Pace looked bemused.
There was a chance! She pulled at Andreas’s shirt with all of her strength.
He reached behind, smoothly detached her hands, and took one of her hands in his, bringing it, and her, to his side.
“I formally request your daughter’s hand in marriage.”
Her mother’s eyes went wide. “What? Why?” She turned those wide eyes on Phoebe, taking in her state of dress fully. “Phoebe? It says the kitchens . . . Not real . . . What have you done?”
Phoebe cringed. It was possibly the most mortifying and horrifying moment in her life. “Nothing. Nothing! Andr—Mr. Merrick is attempting amusement. There was an accident downstairs—”
“I am not.” He was looking straight at her mother. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Andreas Merrick. I formally request your daughter’s hand in marriage.”
Her mother was without color, gaping like a fish, with nothing clearly recognizable as English emerging from her mouth.
“Good man, Your Highness. Course you can have her,” James Pace piped in from the corner.
“James!”
“Father!”
Her father’s eyes narrowed on her suddenly. “Wait, who are you?”
The action never stopped hurting, no matter how many times it occurred. But she opened her mouth to softly tell her father she was a maid, when Andreas stepped in front of her. “She’s your grown daughter, sir. You are unwell. I’m asking for her hand, do you grant it?”
She tried to pull him back, but he was an unmovable force. She peered around his arm to see her father’s face—expressions chasing across and folding in.
“I . . . I don’t feel well,” her father said. Her mother turned to him immediately, but just as immediately turned back to her daughter, clearly torn between where she was needed most.
“What are you doing?” Phoebe tugged on Andreas’s hand, hissing. “I never said I’d marry you. You didn’t ask me.”
He turned suddenly, dark blue eyes piercing her. “Will you marry me?”
Her mouth was moving, but nothing was emerging from her mouth now as his eyes pinned hers. It was as if someone had cursed their family to silence.
He tilted her chin up. “Will you, Phoebe?”
She stared at him, at the gentleness in his eyes, unable to look away.
“Will you?” he whispered, lips so close to hers.
“Yes?” she choked out.
His lips turned up in amusement, but his eyes were still intense, shadowed. “Is that a question?”
“A bit of one, yes. Where is this coming from?”
“Well, we did have s—”
She clamped her free hand over his mouth and looked to where her mother was gently touching her father’s shoulder. Phoebe closed her eyes, then tugged Andreas toward the door, one hand still stretched to cover his mouth, the other connected to his. “We are obviously not going to discuss this here,” she hissed at him, then called to her mother. “I’ll be back with breakfast, Mother. Don’t go anywhere.”
Her mother’s eyes promised slow death for her only daughter. But Phoebe pulled the door shut. She put a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “I’m still asleep. I’m still asleep.”
He pulled her hand away. “Phoebe.”
Firm footsteps pounded up the stairs. As soon as the blond hair crested, light blue eyes connected with dark blue. “Andreas. Uh, Miss Pace.” Roman’s mouth was trying not to curve into a grin as he took them both in. “You are both dressed rather strangely this morning.”
“Roman.”
Roman gave in to the grin, then his face turned serious. “Garrett is on the move. He left just before first light.”
“Good.”
“Four men are following him. The last report had him in Surrey and moving west.”
“Perfect.”
“Yes. There is something else though—a suspicious man was reported outside of Nana’s house.”
Andreas immediately stiffened.
Roman squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll keep Nana until everything settles,” he said. “Charlotte, Viola, and Emily will love to have her. I’ll go collect her now.”
As Andreas slowly nodded to Roman, she again saw everything she needed to about him. About how he felt for those few he deemed under his protection. Her intuition had been absolutely right all those months ago.
“I will go as well.” Andreas looked down at her, almost apologetic. “We will speak later.”
That cued her previous mental state. “We certainly will not speak later,” she hissed. “After what you just did, you will speak with me now.”
“Go inside—”
“I’m not going back into that room.” She poked his chest, hissing. “Are you mad?”
“Phoebe—”
“No.”
It had to be a trick of the morning light, because she swore a grin tugged the edges of his mouth. “You can hide in my rooms then.”
He exchanged a look with his brother, and Phoebe experienced sudden outrage that she had no one to share a look with on her side of things. The side of the mistreated. She didn’t know Charlotte Merrick well, but she determined right then that they would be fast friends.
She walked back across the hall with the two men, dress sliding around awkwardly on her otherwise naked frame. She needed her shift badly. Damn ma
n and . . . whatever damn madness had possessed him this morning.
“The men guarding her house?” Andreas asked Roman as he grabbed something from a shelf.
“Still in position.”
Andreas walked to another series of shelves on the other side of the room and began shoving things into a bag. She couldn’t identify what they were, but she could hear the clinks as one item hit another.
“Andreas, we don’t know for sure—”
“No one knew where she was three days ago. Garrett likely got lucky in his desperation.”
Roman gave a tight nod. “I have twenty men assembled downstairs.”
“Good. Go home. I will bring her to you.”
“Like hell I’m going anywhere else. Not with you carrying that arsenal.”
Andreas pinned him with a look. Phoebe watched, fascinated. “Go home to your wife, Roman. I promised I would keep you out of these things from now on.”
“What?” Roman hissed, a sleek blond, lethal great cat. “Promised whom? Charlotte would never ask that.”
“Promised myself. Now get out of my way.”
“No. And you know you’ll never make it past me.”
There seemed to be some truth to that statement, as Andreas’s eyes were stiff, but calculating. “Go home, Roman.”
“Nana is mine as well, Andreas,” Roman said tightly, obviously upset as a heavy street accent had started to thread the words. “She has been since you rediscovered her a decade ago. And you are mine too.”
“And you are happy. I want you to stay happy.” Andreas’s voice was soft. Phoebe’s breath caught.
“Stop trying to die then.”
“I’m not. I think Miss Pace has to marry me first before she successfully kills me.”
Phoebe was too involved in the interaction between the two men to glare properly at that.
Roman narrowed his eyes. Then he pinned a glance on Phoebe, and his smile reappeared slowly. “Well, that’s settled then. Let’s go.”
Andreas nodded sharply and seemed to accept that was indeed that, argument over, with Roman set to accompany him. Phoebe stared at Roman as if he held a secret elixir that she could take.