She could barely breathe over the sensations—so new and so old—as if her body had been preparing for such a thing for weeks, yearning for exactly what he was doing to her.
And it was as if he was savoring every touch. Not rushing each delicious brush or lingering kiss. Tasting her and savoring the feel of her around his fingertips.
She could do nothing but hold on. Her chin brushing his hair as he did the most delicious things to her breasts with his mouth and the most scandalous things below with his hand.
“You taste just as I imagined.”
She was sure it was her imagination that had conjured his voice. But she responded anyway. “You are everything I conceived.”
Suddenly his lips found hers and she could barely take time to register the awe at the taste of
him
—all heat and danger, hardness and hunger—before he arched her back again and sucked hard at the tip of a breast. His thumb brushed against her, his fingers thrust within her and she gasped as shudders rocked her. Lovely, glorious waves. She felt his fingers, so deadly and hard, as they softly drew over her skin, lips whispering words she couldn’t hear in her hair. But words that sounded like an apology, of begging her forgiveness.
She tried to calm her own harsh breathing enough to be able to hear him. Her body leaned automatically anywhere his fingers touched her. Buttoning her back up, smoothing her out. His lips pulled along her neck as if in a last taste.
And even later, curled up in her covers, she relived the memory of it. Thought on how he had denied his own pleasure, the release of his control and surrender.
She didn’t think it possible to feel
more
determined, but the determination coiled to claim him completely for herself.
T
he sun was shining brightly. Birds squawked merrily. And Andreas gripped the pen tightly as he scratched his signature on the line, the name blurring.
“I now pronounce you man and wife.”
Phoebe Pace, now Phoebe Merrick, stood at his side, smiling brightly. She put her hand to his cheek. “This is the happiest day of my life,” she murmured. A knife appeared in her hand, dripping red, jabbing downward toward his already shriveled heart. “And I want you to know just how much I hate you,
Duncan.
”
Andreas shot up in bed, knife in his left fist, breathing hard.
He pressed his chest, right fingers feeling the puckering of scars, old and new. But no gaping holes dripping blood.
He gave a harsh laugh and hurled the dagger to his left, embedding it in the wall. Just as quickly he picked up another and held it against the sheets of the bed, habits ingrained. The light told him it was just before noon. He had gone to bed at dawn. Another wonderful night of
sleep.
Dreaming of her, of the taste of her, the sounds she had made, the feel of her in his arms. The
want
. His desire. His damnation. The nightmares of his twisted web winding around him and making him wake nearly screaming.
He pushed the covers aside and shoved his right leg off the bed. He needed to see Mathias today—he had been putting off visiting the man’s strange mechanical castle for far too long.
He walked to the secret panel, hesitating for a moment before he triggered the mechanism, then spun the lock. He pulled the papers free. Parish records and dated entries. He gripped them tightly in his fist, a sudden wish to burn them to ash colliding with his need for the ultimate revenge against the man whose name was listed as father on the line above the other faded name—the name of a boy long dead.
Insidious thoughts whispered of things more important than revenge. But he had lived with the burning need for retribution for so long, building his life around the demand, that he didn’t know how to rid himself of the desire for it.
And now there was Phoebe.
He had wanted to take her. Completely. He wanted to do so
right
now. Take what she so innocently and knowingly offered.
The insurgent thought that he didn’t even know what game he was playing anymore was not a comforting one. He was dancing to
her
tune, certainly.
He needed to change that.
He needed to change that.
He couldn’t watch her smile dim when she realized the truth. Couldn’t watch the light leave her eyes.
He gripped the page. It didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter.
He should just tie her in ropes and ship her off to the country. What he should have done weeks ago. So much weakness. He shoved the papers back into the safe.
A door slammed, and someone shouted. He was halfway across the room when a body slammed into the hallway door, and someone pounded on the panel.
Horrific images filled his thoughts, as he sprinted to the door. Phoebe Pace lying on Roman’s bed, throat slit.
Fear.
He yanked the door open and a man fell inside, hitting the floor, hands outstretched, a brown blur soaring over his back.
The man scrambled to his knees and threw himself at the door, collapsing against it. The handle jerked from Andreas’s grip as the door slammed shut. Andreas had a hand and a steel blade pressed against the man’s neck in the same instant. The man choked around his fingers.
“Where is she?” Andreas snarled. “Who hired you?” He could smell smoke. Footsteps were pounding heavily on the stairs.
He was just about to kill the man and run to find her himself when the trespasser looked up. Andreas’s fingers automatically released.
James Pace stared at him, eyes wide, no recognition or even minimal awareness in his expression. Then something lit. “Your Highness! You must hide me. Quickly.”
Andreas withdrew the blade slowly. James Pace, not realizing how close he had come to certain death, rose to his knees and examined the bottom of the door. “They’ll be here soon. Slimy buggers can fit under the cracks.”
All manner of realizations slid into place, and the confusing matter surrounding Phoebe Pace’s actions finally snapped together. “Mr. Pace,” he said stiffly, flicking his blade back in place up his sleeve. “I believe you are expected across the hall.”
“Gads, man. Of course they are expecting me. The beasts want to murder me.”
The man looked as physically healthy as someone cooped inside for long periods of time could be. Andreas, like much of London, had speculated incorrectly that James Pace was on his deathbed.
To many people, this fate was worse.
The shouts increased as footsteps hit the hall from both directions.
“Showed them though.” The man’s face looked viciously satisfied. “They’ll be putting out the flames for hours.”
“Flames?” Andreas stiffened again.
And as if by divine intervention, he heard her voice, from the direction of the steps. “Mother, are you hurt?”
There was a hysterical answer from the other side of the hall. But that didn’t matter. All he cared about was that the first voice was surrounded by the shouts of his men and on the path to a cleared exit.
“Dodgy little crusts tried to attack from the drapes again,” James Pace muttered. He suddenly focused on something behind Andreas, eyes widening. He lunged, and Andreas stiffly watched as the man stretched out in the air and tackled the wide-eyed dog to the ground, the furred bastard yipped twice as they rolled.
“I’ve got you, Deer Meat.” He pinched something invisible from the top of the dog’s fur and after squashing it together, staring between his fingers as he did so, he flicked it to the side. “Here, got the ratty bastard off.”
If a dog could look exasperated, this one did, its chin on the carpet.
“This one here is Deer Meat,” James Pace said, presumably to Andreas, while petting the dog. “Took a nice-sized chunk out of my ankle the other day. Thought I was a reindeer. Likes the taste, Your Highness.”
Andreas forewent the mention of the dog’s name being Mr. Wiggles. Frankly, Deer Meat was preferable.
“
Where’s Father?
”
He wasn’t paying attention to anyone else in the hall, but he could hear everything
she
said. His ear specially tuned to her voice.
“
No, Mr. Donald. I can’t go. I must find my father.
”
The entire floor could be burning down and collapsing, and she would still try to find her father. Of that, Andreas was sure.
He walked forward and reached down, gripped James Pace by the upper arm, and dragged the squawking man—who was still holding the dog—to the door.
He opened the door. Boys ran down the hall in both directions with buckets, empty and full. Andreas thrust the man and dog into the chaos and closed the door. He leaned against it for a moment.
“
Father!
”
He could hear her father ask her who she was, and to unhand him, but the voices grew fainter, the steps on the stairs depressed with their weight. The smell of smoke was dissipating, and voices were calling out that the fire had been contained. He walked to the window to check the alley. The guards had kept to their posts there. Unless the entire building collapsed, that was as it should be. Neighborhood distractions had been used before to gain undetected entry to the building.
A tremor vibrated around his midsection. A single waking image of Death having causing it. He hadn’t experienced one of those in a long, long time. They usually stayed in his nightmares. Unpleasant.
A single woman was upending his world, and he was letting her. He needed to change what he was doing.
He had always said he wouldn’t change for anyone.
Another peculiar sensation registered as the tremor subsided. Andreas looked down at the puddle he was standing in. The one where the dog had been.
All in all, he sort of hoped the floor burned down after all and took him with it.
S
he thanked the high heavens that the building was fully locked down and her father had passed out, giving them time to do as they needed. It had taken several hours to calm him and hang new drapes. Luckily, very little had actually been damaged, and all of the things that had were replaceable.
She bit her lip trying to imagine what Andreas might say about the afternoon’s events. No one had pierced their privacy since they’d moved in. Likely because of uncertainty at first, then to direct orders later. And they had been
so good
at keeping her father away from everyone—always keeping him in the bedroom when one of the hell’s inhabitants visited. They had gotten sloppy for a moment. That was all it had taken.
Yes, she wondered with great trepidation as to what Andreas Merrick would say and do. No one had been able to locate him on any of the lower floors, and he hadn’t answered the door to his personal rooms. When she had requested they check on him to make sure he was well, the boys, and even Donald, were quite firm that no one, but no one, opened that door but Roman or Andreas.
She would have approached him immediately, confronted him about the matter on her own terms, if she hadn’t been needed to help subdue Father. And Andreas had reportedly slipped out of the building before she could separate from her parents.
So she had returned to her normal afternoon routine—the part that didn’t include pestering Andreas Merrick—which instead included haunting the kitchens. Before they had secured the building, so many weeks ago, she had needed to sneak down to bake, outfitted in her gray wig, pretending to be just another cook. Then the boys had begun to move out the gaming tables and other gaming area furniture, armchairs and lounges, bit by bit and day by day. The noise of the customers and gamblers dimming until that area was finally silent.
Now she had full run of the building, and her hair had free run as well. She pushed her palms and wrists into the dough, one ear always listening.
“He didn’t.”
“Yes, he did. I tell you, I saw it.”
“Mr. Merrick don’t go to no tinker’s shop.”
“He did. I saw him two hours ago,” Tommy said belligerently.
“What would he need there? A wind-up toy? It were someone else you saw.”
“It was him, I say. He looked shifty too.”
“Now I know you are cracked. Shifty? You wouldn’t have seen him if he didn’t want to be seen.”
“
You
are cracked, old man. He is as easy to spot as one of them lions at the menagerie amidst a pack of geese.”
“Only if he wants to be the lion. He let you follow him.” The man shook his head, and she could almost picture the forbidding stare he wore well. “And that’s odd behavior, boy. You should be terrified.”
“I’m not scared of him.”
“You’re shattin’ your trousers. And don’t call me an old man. You’re gonna end up with a split head, boy.”
Silence greeted that. Tommy preferred to show his mutiny expressively.
“What were you doing following Mr. Merrick, anyway?”
“I wasn’t.”
She wished she could see what Tommy was doing, but she kept her attention on her actions, rolling the dough, keeping out of notice. This was her fault.
“Just happened to see him, is all,” Tommy added.
The older man snorted. “Keep your head, boy. Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not stupid,” Tommy hissed.
“Then mind your business. I’ll give you fair warning since you’re somewhat new. Though you should know better. The Merricks take care of their own.” He paused. “And
the Merricks take care of their own.
”
“I can handle myself,” Tommy’s irritated voice said.
“You aren’t a total dunder, and you’ve been settling in with the boys and Boss Roman mighty fine, but you go poking around Mr. Merrick . . .”
Phoebe would have to have a talk with Tommy as soon as possible. This was entirely her fault. She had been poking into Andreas Merrick’s affairs for months—entranced by the rumors, his correspondence, and the way he handled his business affairs. Nothing could compare to her interest in the man himself, though, once she had met him.
The memory of a conversation with a man on the street, a few nights after she had met Andreas Merrick, tickled.
The trinket seller had checked both ways before he had motioned her farther into his stall. “He’s not human, ma’am,” he had whispered. She had been in full disguise, having learned to be cautious.
“Is he a dog?” She had joked—for a less likely image wasn’t to be had. Dogs had masters and subservient natures. Happy, barking expressions and joyful exteriors. Andreas was less a dog than anyone she had yet met. Unless he was of some wolfish breed, solitary and territorial, snapping and mateless.
“He’s something
unnatural.
”