by Tracy Sumner
Using a riskier method, Emma’s rescue attempt had been successful.
He trailed his thumb across the sleek curve of her jaw, his fingers trembling. Her gown was torn at the shoulder, her cheek scratched and bleeding.
Success…but at what cost?
Simon grasped Mollie’s wrist when she struggled to stand. “What happened?”
“We was in f-f-fine shape. Got Katherine out of harm’s way and tucked in a safe spot. Was headed back straightaway. Before breakfast, before a-a-anyone knew. Just like Miss Emma planned.”
Simon inhaled sharply, rage pouring through him. “And?”
“The time tracer c-c-caught up with us. Stepped out of the mist like a phantom. He touched her, and she went down like old Freddie Two-step, a pugilist who’s not adept-like in the ring for what it’s his profession. It’s only c-c-cause we were already sliding back here that we got away, to my thinking. That uncanny r-r-rock flickering like a wick gone bad. We whooshed from the past to this very spot like we’d marched through a doorway, simple as that when it’s not so simple. We weren’t supposed to come b-b-back here, but Miss Emma said your name when the tracer touched her.” Mollie yanked her wrist from Simon’s hold and wobbled on shaky legs. “So here we be.”
Julian stepped into the fray, gently grasping Mollie’s shoulder and drawing her to her feet. “Time tracer?” As the League’s leader, Julian managed a thousand-page volume listing everything he and his group of mystics knew about the supernatural world. This information would be something he’d desperately want to record in his chronology.
Mollie palmed her brow and swayed, beginning to feel, Simon guessed, the exhaustion he had after his adventure in 1802. “Miss Emma said he follows the ones who gambol through the ages. A watchdog of sorts. Always trying to bring them back.”
Someone was chasing her through time.
Simon gazed at her, his mind racing, wondering what else she’d failed to tell him.
As if she felt his regard, Emma blinked and sighed, her lips moving in wordless entreaty.
Simon leaned in to hear her whispered words.
Her eyes opened and focused on him, her gaze such a glorious shade in the muted light that his heart stuttered. “I can’t breathe,” she said, the Soul Catcher throwing crimson facets across her face and his chest.
He unfurled her fingers, took the gem from her and pocketed it before she woke fully. It dimmed the moment it left her touch. “Relax, you’re back. You’re going to be fine.”
She licked her lips and tried again. “Can’t breathe. Corset.”
Simon glanced toward Julian. “Take Mollie, will you? Help her locate her sister. Then, I’ll get Emma back to the duke’s. And Henry”—he looked to the haunt loitering in the doorway just behind his brother—“a moment, please.” Henry gave a proper salute, then faded like a wisp of smoke into the night.
Julian opened his mouth to speak, advice Simon didn’t want but perhaps needed, then shook his head. “Twenty-seven-year-old men don’t need direction, now, do they? Wasn’t that what you were telling Finn upstairs?”
Tears pricked the backs of Simon’s eyes, and he was damn glad the lighting wouldn’t allow his brother to see them. “Thanks, Jules.” For everything, he wanted to add but wouldn’t dare.
A rare occurrence, Julian’s lips kicked as he ushered Mollie into the hallway, closing the door behind them.
Simon looked back to find Emma had shifted to a half-sit, her breath coming in shallow fits and starts, her hair a glorious tangle of auburn and gold swimming past her shoulders. She frowned, her cheeks flushing. Bloody corsets, Simon thought and reached for the knife in his boot. “Turn around,” he ordered and flicked the blade free.
Emma glanced from the knife glittering in the gaslight to his face. She swallowed once and presented her slim, delectable back.
Against his will, Simon’s cock stirred beneath his trouser close, arousal coloring his ire a shade darker. “Hold still,” he gritted between his teeth and reached for her.
She dipped her head and swept her hair to the side, offering a gently rounded form for his consideration. He had the urge, irrational but evident nonetheless, to press his lips to the nape of her neck, to mark her skin with his teeth. As she gasped, struggling for breath, he pierced her gown at the waist and split the fabric up the back, an ocean of emerald silk falling open beneath his blade. Of course, her corset was a violent splash caught somewhere between gold and russet, tantalizing against her pale skin. The laces were easy to destroy, pleasure he shouldn’t be experiencing flooding him as they fell away, strings dangling.
Her back was finely-boned—and freckled. A light dusting along every bend and dip of her spine.
Perfect for a man waiting to be led to the right spots.
He fought the urge to toss her over his shoulder, hide her away in his bedchamber at the top of the stairs and never come up for air. Make her beg for mercy as he prayed for deliverance. As he’d always dreamed.
With a gasping inhalation, the first full breath she’d had in hours, he’d bet, she moved to press the ruined corset and gown against her bosom, gazing over her shoulder with a feral twist of her lips. “You don’t have to look so happy about the obliteration,” she whispered in a ragged voice that told him that she, likely against her will, was affected by both his touch and his savagery.
Her response revealed much about her in the hazy darkness, things he didn’t want to know. Or use.
Hoping his erection would die a quick death, Simon rocked back on his heels, closing his knife and jamming it in his boot. “Is that any way to talk to the man who just removed you from your torture device?”
Emma yanked a coat from the pile that had fallen to the floor and jammed her arms, one at a time to keep from exposing more of her body to his hungry gaze, through the sleeves. They hung well past her hands, dangling nearly to her waist. “I wager that’s not the first time. Corset removal.”
“With a knife?” He raised a brow when she looked back at him, daring her, challenging himself. “It’s not.”
“You despicable cur!” she spit and shoved to her feet. When she got there, she closed her eyes and braced her hand on the wall for balance. She looked pitiful, the overcoat leagues too large, draped over her shoulders, gathered in a sorrowful heap around her ankles. Her gown a disaster, her cheek and chin smeared with blood. Her skin having paled to the color of chalk, except for the rosy slashes sweeping her cheekbones.
He held himself from going to her, protecting, nurturing, but just barely. A caretaker for haunts since the hour of his birth, he wasn’t volunteering to care for her, too. “Time tracer,” he murmured and deliberately rose to his full height, an intimidating stance. The poker chip was in his hand before he could stop himself from tunneling in his pocket to retrieve it. “Care to tell me about that?”
Emma blinked, her mouth falling into a round, little O he wanted to shut with a kiss that would curl her toes. Bemusement looked marvelous on her.
Simon rotated the chip between his fingers, watching her try to puzzle her way out of her dilemma. “Don’t lie now; it’s too late. I know enough, and you’re going to tell me the rest.”
Emma gave the coat sleeves a brutal roll, exposing delicate wrists and a light sprinkling of hair that glistened in the light. “I don’t owe you my story.”
Simon lobbed the chip in the corner and stepped in, snaking an arm around her waist and dragging her against him. She fit like she’d been made for him. Which, at one time, he’d thought she had. “You damn well do. I risked my life to save yours. That, my darling Emma, is payment owed. And as you can see from my booming business in the salon behind us, I know well how to collect.”
She tipped her head, catching his gaze. “Collect, then. Go ahead, Alexander. Do your worst. Take your payment. I dare you.”
His hand roamed her back, curling possessively around the nape of her neck. Her skin was flushed, slightly moist, her scent, lavender this day, circling, entrapping. She sme
lled like the duchess’s soaps, every last one of them. A new scent every day, driving him mad with desire. And anticipation. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you? Make me lose what I’m about.” The words came out harsher than he’d intended, more truthful, closer to the bone. Damn her.
Her lashes lowered, quivering, her tongue coming out to wet her bottom lip. “With all your women, how could a gutter rat from the Hamlets possibly make you lose what you’re about?”
Simon’s resolve splintered.
She was too tempting. His fascination too real.
Her eyes blazing, goading when he wasn’t a man to be goaded. Her warm breath struck his cheek as he stood there debating, the scent of mint rolling off her tongue to tangle around his. A darkened cloakroom and the sounds of a gaming hell sliding into the background.
One kiss…
How much could one kiss change?
And wasn’t a kiss what he’d always wanted from her?
He didn’t think, question, strategize. He simply acted. Hand rising to cradle her jaw, fingers plunging into her hair, tilting her head and taking. Simon caught her against him, his lips capturing hers, dragging her almost off her feet.
The contact bursting with everything he’d denied every other woman.
He kissed Emma like it was the only time, the last time, his one chance. Like she’d returned instead of leaving and wrecking his heart.
He kissed her like it was forever.
Chapter 9
Devastating.
The thought circled Emma’s mind that she’d been waiting for this kiss her entire life. A horrifying thought. Simon wasn’t hers, would never be hers.
So she should let him go.
But when he loosened his hold, letting her slide down his broad chest, retreating, she went up on her toes, hand snaking around to circle the back of his neck, mouth opening beneath his. She touched her tongue to his bottom lip because he’d done the same to her, and he groaned low in his throat, pulling her so tightly against him, two bodies became one.
She met his every thrust until they established a mindless rhythm, animalistic and raw, a rhythm that tilted her world on its axis.
A battle for control, a battle for breath.
A battle for sanity.
A kiss unlike any she’d imagined existed.
And with this man, she’d imagined many.
“So this is you,” he whispered against her lips, his voice rough, fevered. “Ferocious, uninhibited.” He walked her back, stumbling over coats until she was pressed against the wall. Taking a halting inhalation, he braced his forearms on either side of her, caging her in. Pinning her between his hard, hot body and cool plaster. His gaze met hers, his eyes the color of deep twilight, a murky, beautiful spill. His lashes lowered as his focus did the same, following a trail from her neck to her toes and back that felt like he’d set her on fire. Her gown gaped, her breasts unbound behind the fragile structure of a ruined corset that was close to slipping from her body. Trailing a finger down the middle of her chest, he halted at her belly. Then trailed the finger back to her collarbone, a sluggish crawl setting goosebumps racing across her skin. Her nipples pebbled, aching, begging for attention they’d never received and were unlikely to be given.
The punch of pleasure from his languid caress weakened her knees, her determination, her ire. Her ragged sigh was not lost on either of them. He was changing her, changing them, right before her eyes. As if he spun their future like a coin between his talented fingers.
“Are you going to kiss me again?” she asked, appalled but too eager for his touch to care.
A worrying fold crept between his brows as she studied her.
Her hand rose without invitation, her thumb smoothing the line with a tender touch. In response, Simon turned his head, caught her palm between his teeth, his tongue following to appease. The bite was pain. The lick pleasure.
She groaned through open lips as her heartbeat erupted, aggravated and aroused beyond measure.
If she waged war, it was easier than she’d imagined winning the subsequent encounter.
She followed instinct, hand sliding from his cheek to his chest, ribs to his belly, heading lower, to the hard length pressed against her thigh. He whispered an oath and captured her wrist before she reached her destination, wrenching her arm high above her head. “You incorrigible minx,” he murmured and collapsed into her, seizing her lips and every thought in her head and tossing them into the wind.
Frenzied, his hands were all over her. In her hair, cradling her cheeks, gliding down her ribs, grasping her waist and drawing her in until they were joined hip to hip, thigh to thigh, his incredibly hard shaft a powerful presence between them. She followed his savage lead, nipping his bottom lip while struggling to remove her arm from his hold. Though she wasn’t sure she wanted him to release her.
And he didn’t. Not for one second.
This unknown facet, that she’d given a man control and liked it, sent her pulse in a dizzying spin. Sent heat—pure, primal heat—flooding to her core.
It was madness, the blaze they created. The Soul Catcher smoldered like an ember from its spot deep in his coat pocket, a more forceful glow than she’d alone caused it to emit. Even in her innocence, she imagined he hadn’t created this combustion often.
But the image of him with another woman wouldn’t let her go.
That he’d experienced this, in part, with some random actress or opera singer or widowed hag—and the memory of what she’d seen in the countess’s bedchamber when she’d tried to return to him—sent a bolt of fury through her.
He’s not yours, Emma. And he never will be.
Shoving him back a step, Emma heaved a gasp into the leaden air and yanked her arm from his grasp. This time, his dark gaze full of fire and fury, he let her go. However, with his chest heaving, he didn’t step away.
And he didn’t try to hide how her kiss had affected him.
Scowling, he dragged his thumb across his bottom lip, his lids fluttering. “I don’t know why you’re vexed. I gave you every opportunity to slap my face and walk away.” His gaze fixed on her for a long moment, then drifted off. “When you ask a man if he’s going to kiss you again, expect the answer to be yes.”
Everything changed in that moment.
Fury turning to love, ire to uncertainty. She would never look upon Simon again without knowing exactly how he tasted. How he gently stroked his tongue against hers, increasing the intensity only after she let him know she was ready. How his biceps flexed as he held himself back from crushing her to the wall, when she knew he wanted to crush her. His hot breath in her ear, his teeth sinking into her skin. His rigid length pressed to her thigh. His hips intimating a dance she wanted more than any waltz on earth—a dance that would lead to doom.
So intimate, every piece of it. Yet, he’d never thought to wait for her.
But such was a man’s desire.
Insatiable, or so she’d heard.
She waited until his gaze met hers, his jaw ticking from suppressing emotion and speech. He crushed his feelings something awful inside until he looked like he was ready to crack. “I came back, Simon. Five years after I left. My ma”—she expelled a sigh, started again—“my mother was ill. And the tracer trackin’ me, every step. He’s like one of your haunts. His existence unending, ageless. His duty, or so he says, to keep travelers in their own time. To curb the disorders made by going back and changing. Traveling forward and seeing.” She frowned, her hand going to her bodice when her gown and the corset beneath it started to buckle. “Like today, saving Mollie’s sister. Things I can do, use my gift, you see. Ways I can help, something good from this mess of a life I’ve found myself mired in. God, that mongrel would have hated it. That I helped someone. I’ve done it before, modest interference. Traveling back and keeping someone from a grievous injury, say. It’s not the first time I came to someone’s rescue, is all I’m telling you.”
Simon burrowed his hand in his coat pocket, coming out with
the swish stone. Her swish stone. Her man. Its ferocious radiance had eased to a faint flicker. Nothing like the blaze when she held it. Or when they’d kissed. He rolled the gem between his palms in what she could see was his way of calming himself. She felt the urge to protect—the stone and the man. Insanity, all of it. When neither was hers to safeguard. “When he touches you…” He swallowed, his jaw flexing.
“One brush of his pinkie, and it’s like I took a punch to the jaw. Lights out. He casts a spell. Sounds like something from a penny novel, but it’s the only way I can describe it.”
“Never again,” Simon said in a rough snarl, bouncing the stone between his hands. “The League is protecting you now.”
Emma felt resentment stir. If he thought… “He will find me again. Your precious League or no. He always does. He travels time as well as I do, which is, not perfectly. But he travels. And he’ll try to bring me back. This is my fight. It always has been. I think he even wants me to help him. Becoming a jailer, like he is. I’ll die first.” She laughed cruelly and yanked ruined silk to her neck. What the hell. Tell him. “I might have let it be your fight. Before. I came back, Simon.”
He halted, the stone falling still in his hands. Tilting his head in bewilderment, he asked, “You mean you made it? To Oxfordshire? You found me?”
The scene she’d stepped into in that garish bedchamber rushed into Emma’s mind in full, bleeding color. She growled and stomped past him, across the room and out the door she flung open.
“Wait,” he shouted, his long-legged stride quickly catching him up to her. “I’m missing something here. Which, when dealing with women, isn’t unusual. You’re furious. You’ve been furious since I dragged you to 1882, and I don’t know why. When I’m the one”—he thumped the hand holding the swish stone against his chest, crimson sparks spattering the wall—“who should be. You never told me, we never spoke, but you said that you were coming back with your eyes. I didn’t have anyone else, Emma, to talk to, except people long gone and a pack of overprotective brothers. No one who understood what it was like coming from where we’d come from, being connected to such a cheerless life and still yearning for it. Because I could see you had, and you did. I needed that.”