Dancing With Danger

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “You’ll telegraph the villa if something goes awry,” Gabriel reminded him unnecessarily.

  “That goes without saying, even though you’ve said it twenty times too many.”

  A grunt from his brother was as close as he ever came to a laugh.

  “The extra days will serve us well,” Raphael continued. “It gives me time to make the arrangements to have Mathilde’s ashes go with us. We can spread them from the Brooklyn Bridge. She’d like that, I think.”

  Gabriel’s gait changed, which was how Raphael knew he was about to say something that made him uncomfortable. “I know she was difficult... but I am sorry Mathilde is gone.”

  “As am I.”

  They fell silent as they stopped at the back-garden gate of the mansion no one knew they occupied. Their fountain tinkled in the background, mingling with the sounds of an approaching couple.

  Raphael thought back to the day when his father had told them that the only way to escape their destiny was death.

  Well...turned out the bastard had been right.

  As the couple approached, the man deftly moved his lady to the opposite side of the walk, placing himself between Gabriel’s bulk and her body.

  Though they were in the part of the West End that was well patrolled, and where street ruffians rarely dared to venture, it was Gabriel’s bulk and general air of menace that ignited the man’s protective instinct.

  Besides that move, the pair paid them little mind as they swished by, chattering as if nothing could touch them in the infatuated world they’d created.

  Raphael would not have even marked them, if not for his brother.

  Gabriel watched them with undue intensity. His fingers twitched as the man ran his hand along the woman’s face.

  Shifting uncomfortably, Raphael second-guessed his own plans for the evening.

  All he’d desired in the hours since he’d left Mercy’s side, was to return to it. Once the sun had gone down, he’d been nearly vibrating out of his skin with anticipation.

  Walking around half hard at the thought of having her, hoping no one would notice.

  Especially his brother, who had never so much as touched a woman.

  He’d been born and bred a machine of violence. And nothing more.

  Where would Gabriel fit in this world when they were through? He knew nothing else.

  He was nothing else.

  Raphael thumped Gabriel’s chest to catch his attention. “Don’t be worried, yeah? The doctor said that big dolts like you don’t die in surgery often.”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  “Then what is wrong with you?”

  His neck swiveled back to the woman. “Nothing.”

  Raphael took in a gigantic breath, bracing himself for extreme disappointment. He wanted Mercy with an ache he’d never known, but on an evening as momentous as this, he should be there for his brother.

  “Do you want company?” he asked. “Let’s get a round, yeah?”

  “Not tonight.” Gabriel fished his pipe out of his pocket and packed it with an expensive tobacco he was fond of. “I’m going to check a few things.”

  That brought Raphael to attention. “What things?”

  “Never you mind.”

  Raphael rolled his eyes. There was no talking to him when he was like this. “Well, I’ll be off then.”

  He pointed his shoes in the direction of Cresthaven Place.

  “What are you about tonight?” Gabriel asked, as if it had only just occurred to him to do so.

  “Never you mind.” Raphael threw the answer over his shoulder.

  “Raphael Thierry Sauvageau.” His brother’s glare was an uncomfortable prickle along his spine, so he turned to face it.

  “I’m going for a woman, if you must know, you insufferable nag.” They’d always japed and jibed and poked at each other. Gabriel knew he had women. That he was somewhat a lothario, but they never really discussed it.

  It had always seemed insensitive to do so.

  Tonight, it felt especially so.

  He put out a hand. “Gabriel, I’m sorry. I—”

  “Don’t be.” The words were released into the night like a puff of smoke over gravel.

  Impatience warred with guilt in Raphael’s chest. “Why don’t you just put on an entire mask and pay some strumpet to at least suck your—”

  “Go, Rafe.”

  He put his hands up. Feeling both awful and relieved.

  Were he making any other decision regarding his own future, he’d have insisted they abide.

  Were his life expected to be any longer than a couple of nights... he’d have spent it all gladly with his brother.

  But Gabriel had been right about one thing. The men of the underworld—and the officers of the law—would never believe them truly dead without a body to identify.

  And that body would be his.

  Gabriel had never lived a life before, and Raphael had devoured whatever he could from his own existence.

  Now, he’d the opportunity to give his brother a second chance.

  But first...Raphael would taste a bit of heaven before hell claimed his restless soul.

  Mercy Goode would be the name on his lips. Nay, the taste lingering on his tongue when he met his death at the Midwinter Masquerade.

  Chapter 9

  It wasn’t a noise that woke Mercy.

  But her body.

  It came alive, rousing her from restless, wicked dreams. Banishing them from memory the moment her eyes flew open.

  And found Raphael Sauvageau silhouetted against her window.

  The wispy white drapes stirred around him, reaching as if disturbed by a shade, or by the very potency of his atmosphere as he stood.

  Watching her.

  The light of the lone lamp she’d left burning painted shadows on his face, casting one single expression in both stark and savage relief.

  Hunger.

  She remained burrowed to the neck beneath her plush blue blankets, shivering not only with cold, but with vulnerability.

  One look from him threatened to strip her bare. Expose her in ways she’d not prepared for.

  He’d come for his pound of flesh.

  He’d come to claim her.

  Mercy cast about for something erudite and worldly to say, some greeting that a temptress, a lover, would tantalize him with.

  “Erm—hullo.”

  Well...Shelley she was not.

  “I was going to let you sleep.” His voice rumbled into the air of her room with a foreign vibration, splashing against her nerves with all the threat of thunder in the great distance.

  A man had never entered this room, certainly not at night.

  “I wasn’t sleeping.” She yawned against the back of her knuckles.

  “Oh?” He drifted inside, shutting the window behind him.

  Locking them in together.

  “Do you often snore whilst awake?”

  “I don’t snore,” she protested.

  A smile toyed with the corner of his mouth, though he didn’t argue the point. “Forgive me for being tardy. I had urgent business with my brother to attend, and it took longer than I hoped. An eternity, in fact. When I knew you were here. Waiting.”

  “You weren’t tardy, as I didn’t know when to expect you.” She would have shrugged if she were not curled on her side, swaddled in a pile of blankets. “If I’m honest, I expected a messenger at first. I thought it would be tidier to meet somewhere other than Cresthaven, where we might be discovered.”

  He conducted a quick study of her room, the rich blue accents contrasting with clean white walls gentled by gilded paintings and tapestries. “Here is as safe as any place. Your parents are not in residence and your sister is in the next room fast asleep.”

  Should she be disconcerted or impressed that he knew that? “Might someone be roused if...if we make noise?”

  His eyes flared as he approached her bed, but he made no move to join her upon it. Instead, he crossed his arms and pr
opped his shoulder on her tall bedpost.

  If he was dangerously handsome in the sunlight, at night he was utterly fatal.

  The darkness embraced him as a creature of its own. Blessed him with satirical beauty and fiendish grace.

  He was a demon in a bespoke suit.

  “You are so open,” he noted. “So straightforward and bold. There isn’t a hint of coyness or artifice about you.”

  A defensiveness welled in her chest. “I don’t know how to be coy and I don’t have time for artifice. Besides, why are women expected to be shy or tentative? Why must the fact that I am bold or inquisitive be revolutionary?”

  “I was admiring, not admonishing. I find everything about you refreshing. Alluring.”

  “Oh... well... thank you.” Mercy chewed on her lip, trying to figure out a way for them to not say anything further. The longer men spoke with her, the more likely she was to drive them away.

  “Why don’t you undress and get in?” she ventured, tucking back a section of the covers.

  He made a sound of disbelief deep in his throat. “You want me to undress here? In front of you?” He uncrossed his arms and lowered them to his sides, regarding her with a wicked scrutiny. “Are you a voyeur, Mercy Goode?”

  “I don’t know what I am,” she answered honestly. “But you can’t get in bed with your shoes on. Nor can we—accomplish our aim—while you’re dressed, I expect.”

  “Accomplish our aim?” His mouth flattened with chagrin. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

  The tips of her ears began to burn again, she ducked her head under the covers. “Don’t make me say the word while I’m looking at you.”

  His chuckle was like the purr of a tiger and washed her in prickles of awareness, pebbling the tips of her nipples. “How can you do the deed if you cannot speak the word?”

  He made an excellent point, though she’d die before telling him so. “Fornicate,” she spat from beneath the coverlet. “Now could you take off your clothes and join me please?”

  This time his laughter was genuine and rich. She shivered with pleasure at being the one to have produced it.

  Even if it was at her expense.

  She peeked out at him.

  Bucking away from the bedpost, he blinked at her from beneath dark, suggestive lashes. “Oftentimes, lovers undress each other.”

  “Oh...” She struggled into a seated position, clutching the sheets to her unbound breasts. “Well, I undressed myself so you wouldn’t have to.”

  Raphael closed his eyes for a moment and brought his fist to his mouth where his teeth sank into a knuckle.

  Suddenly uncertain, Mercy asked, “Should I not have done? Do you want me to put my nightdress back on so you can be the one—?”

  “No!” He cleared his throat. Inhaled. Exhaled. And tried again. “No... I will undress and join you there. Keep the damned covers on or I’ll not be able to contain myself.”

  “I shouldn’t think you’re here to contain yourself, rather the opposite,” she teased.

  “For a woman’s first time, a man should always contain himself.” He said this as if lecturing himself.

  She didn’t know enough about it to disagree with him.

  The sight of Raphael’s deft fingers undoing the knot at his collar did something wicked to her insides. All her boldness deserted her as he undid the buttons of his shirt and vest, shucking them down his shoulders.

  Mercy’s eyes widened at the sight of his tattoos. Black ink danced and swirled over his tawny skin, rising over broad, round shoulders and circled down one corded arm. They were a chaotic array of blasphemies. A religious icon inked adjacent to a naked woman in a suggestive pose. A raven perched on a skull. Other beasts interspersed with pagan symbols and words or verse in his native language.

  One thing became instantly obvious. He was the art...the depictions were merely decorations.

  The disks of his chest were smooth, unfettered by hair or adornment, and sloped down to the slight corrugations of his ribs and the deep etchings of abdominal muscles.

  The only hair she could see, aside from his head, was a dark line disappearing into his trousers.

  He undressed without hurrying, watching her watch him.

  Touching her, all of her, without touching her at all.

  His hands rested at the placket of buttons beneath which the barrel of a bulge nudged to be uncovered.

  Mercy almost swallowed her tongue. Should she be anxious?

  Was she?

  Raphael paused long enough for her to take in a breath. “Have you ever seen a naked man before?”

  She forced herself to drag her eyes back to his. “Of course, I have.”

  His dark brow arched as darker questions emerged upon a growl. “When? Who?”

  “Well... there’s David, of course, and various other statuary. I mean, Achilles is right there in Hyde Park for all to see.”

  He seemed to relax, and when he looked at her, his eyes swam with limitless tenderness.

  “There was also a medical text Felicity and I found in Titus’s office. We studied that most thoroughly. I know all there is to know about the male anatomy...medically speaking.”

  A soft catch in his throat could have been a laugh, but he schooled his features admirably.

  “But never...in the flesh?” he clarified.

  That word. Flesh. It made her tingle.

  She didn’t want to be untried. Couldn’t bring herself to admit her inexperience in front of a man who likely knew all there was regarding what they were about to do.

  And so, to retreat from answering an uncomfortable question that would leave her open to his derision, she found herself babbling.

  Starting a conversation.

  At a time like this.

  And actively hating herself as she did so.

  “I wanted to tell you...I exonerated you to Chief Inspector Morley. Scotland Yard is no longer after you—well—for Mathilde’s murder, at least.”

  “Oh?” His hands remained hooked in his waistband and made no move at all.

  “He seemed convinced as I that you didn’t do it.”

  “I suppose I owe you my gratitude, Detective Goode.” He smiled down at her.

  “I showed him the sort of boots that left the print and... I drew diagrams.” Stop talking, you ninny, she ordered herself. Or he’ll never undo his trousers. “I was thinking perhaps tomorrow night we could both go to the Midwinter Masquerade, see who we can question regarding Mathilde.”

  Lord, but she was bungling this.

  She should have guessed that she would.

  His hands fell away from his trousers. “You’re not going to the masquerade.”

  “I don’t recall asking your permission.”

  “I don’t recall mentioning to you where it was being held.”

  For once, she bit her tongue.

  Mathilde had informed her where it was being held, but he needn’t know that.

  “Mercy.” He went to the bed and sat on it, taking one of her hands and allowing the other to keep her modesty, such as it was. “Women like you don’t belong at the Midwinter Masquerade. You’d regret it if you went.”

  “I’m not an idiot. You needn’t threaten me.”

  “I’m warning you. It’s not a savory affair. Surely you know that.”

  “Everyone knows that,” she said with a droll look. “Are you going to be there?”

  “If I were to attend, I might not be around long enough to make certain you’re safe.”

  “Why not?”

  For the first time, he couldn’t seem to meet her gaze. “If you find anything else out about the case, do not follow up on it yourself. Go to the authorities. To Morley.”

  “But—”

  “Please?”

  She sighed...wondering if this man had ever begged another human being in his entire life.

  She phrased her reply with the utmost care. “I will go to Morley with anything additional I learn about the case.” After the Midni
ght Masquerade, she amended silently. She was no retiring debutante who needed her delicate sensibilities protected along with her reputation. She knew better than to be alone with any of the reprobates who would surely attend. But it was the last plan Mathilde had ever made. She owed it to the woman to seek the truth there.

  He raised her hand to his lips, kissing the back of her knuckles. “I consider it a personal favor.”

  “You’re going to leave tonight,” she realized aloud. Of course, that’s what he’d been referring to when he said he would not be around. They weren’t proper lovers. This was no affair of the heart. He’d made certain to let her know that, even during his proposition.

  Would you let me fuck you, Mercy Goode?

  He said nothing about caring or cuddling.

  Staying.

  He would fuck her and then... What? Thank her promptly and dress?

  Even sitting, he towered like some Roman god, skin like honey poured over steel.

  And frozen with an aghast expression on his face.

  “Not that I’m expecting you to stay,” she rushed on in one breath, attempting to appear nonchalant. “I am aware that such liaisons are conducted without much ceremony or expectation, and I wanted you to be comfortable knowing that you’ll get none from me. We shall...do what it is we’re here to do and take what—several minutes at least? Though I’ve heard it can be as brief as—”

  He’d covered his mouth with his hand, but he couldn’t hide the shake in his shoulders or the creases of mirth at the corner of his eyes.

  “You’re laughing,” she accused, incensed. “Is this funny to you?”

  “Don’t be irate with me, mon chaton. I scoff only at the idea of a brief encounter between us.”

  She knew she looked churlish, but she was trying to decide whether she believed him or not.

  His eyes became pools of liquid desire. “With you I intend to take my time. I will make it last until the tolling of the bells warn of the dawn.”

  Her thighs quivered. “Oh. Well...I’ll admit that I prefer that. It seems silly for you to come all this way if you’re only going to take all of a few minutes.”