by Gaelen Foley
The younger agent nodded. Max and Jordan exchanged a grim look, then their team leader went to help Virgil with Niall.
When they had gone, Jordan turned to Rohan. “Fancy a trip to Seven Dials? I mean to pay a call on Dresden Bloodwell. Join me if you like.”
He flashed a grin. “Thought you’d never ask.”
During the carriage ride back to the seedy neighborhood, they had a quick discussion on strategy and checked their weapons. Jordan described the layout of the lodging house where their target was holed up and warned Rohan of possible gang interference. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he hired some of the local thugs for added security.”
Rohan nodded. Even someone with Bloodwell’s abilities could not watch in every direction or stay awake around the clock.
“Best do this quietly, then. And if we can’t grab him,” Jordan added meaningfully.
“Mm-hmm.” Rohan cocked his gun.
Recalling the narrowness of those rookery lanes, Jordan pulled the check-string to make Findlay halt the coach a few blocks away. They got out and left him to wait, guarding the coach with his trusty rifle.
They went the rest of the way on foot. The moment they stepped into the cramped, dirty street where Bloodwell’s lodging house sat, however, Jordan instantly knew that something had gone wrong.
Dozens of people stood in the street, many in their night-clothes. More milled about between the lodging house and the building atop which he had left Mercer.
Rohan and he had stopped, but now exchanged an ominous glance. Then two uniformed Bow Street Runners came out from around the corner, carrying a corpse between them.
Mercer.
Jordan stared.
“What happened here?” Rohan demanded, marching over to get answers.
But Jordan could not even speak, stunned guilt choking off his voice.
The Bow Street officers recognized Rohan’s air of authority, if not his face, and believed him when he said he was from the Home Office.
“Peepin’ Tom here came to a bad end,” one Runner quipped with jovial graveyard humor. “Took a nasty tumble.”
“How’s that?”
“According to witnesses, he was lurkin’ on the roof up there watchin’ some woman nurse her baby on ’er tit. Pervert.” The officer scoffed in disgust. “Some of the local lads spotted him. He tried to run when they confronted him, but he fell off the building. Drunk maybe. Hard to say. But he was armed.”
“Any idea who he is?” Rohan asked.
The other Runner shook his head. “Nothin’ in his pockets to identify ’im. We’ll see. Somebody’s likely to show up at Bow Street sooner or later to report a missing person. It’s a bad business, sir.”
“That it is,” Rohan murmured. “Carry on.”
With a shrug and a respectful parting nod, the Bow Street Runner returned to his task of clearing the onlookers out of the street so the cart could take Mercer’s body to the morgue.
Jordan and Rohan looked at each other but said nothing in front of these local “witnesses,” any number of whom might be reporting to Bloodwell. Almost certainly, they were covering for him.
Jordan turned away with a furious curse under his breath and rage building in his blood. “They threw him off the building,” he uttered in a low tone of rage.
“Not necessarily. He might have jumped.” Anger hardened Rohan’s voice as well. “Mercer would’ve known he was more valuable to Bloodwell alive.”
Jordan eyed him sharply.
The thought that Mercer could’ve taken his own life to evade capture by the Promethean assassin—and the sort of torture Drake had survived—only made Jordan more furious.
“Or,” Rohan added with a cold shrug, “maybe it was an accident. Perhaps he did fall trying to escape. Whichever it was, Bloodwell’s long gone by now.”
Jordan glanced at him, then nodded toward the lodging house. “Let’s go find out.” Ice stole into his veins as he stalked into the building and began running up the stairs, his brother agent right behind him.
Jordan kicked open the door and lunged into the room, bracing his pistol with his left hand. He advanced into the apartment, Rohan behind him. Jordan moved to the right, Rohan swept to the left. But a quick search of the three-room suite only confirmed that their quarry was already gone.
Jordan’s fury broke from him abruptly. With a low curse, he upended the table with a violent throw and sent it crashing sideways to the floor.
“Calm down!” Rohan barked.
“Why did I leave him alone out there?”
“You had no choice! Listen to me. This is not your fault—”
“Yes, it is.”
“It could’ve happened to any of us! He let himself be seen.”
“He died for nothing.” Jordan shook his head and walked away again, his stomach in knots. He prowled from room to room searching for any clues to Bloodwell’s purpose for sending Albert into the royal library.
But it was no use. The whole dingy apartment had been expunged of any telltale clues. No doubt accustomed to moving around constantly, just as Falkirk had described, Bloodwell had abandoned his latest hovel without a trace.
Once more, Jordan shook his head. “I’m going to get this bastard. So help me, God. If it’s the last thing I do.”
“How?”
He looked at him in seething anger. “I don’t know yet.”
“Where are you going?” Rohan demanded, as Jordan stalked out of the apartment.
“Home. I’ve had enough for one night.”
Dresden Bloodwell loomed over Albert. “Who gave you this message?”
“I-I—no particular person! Everyone was talking about it. Why?”
“Because it was a trick!” he snarled. “Somebody’s onto you.”
“What?”
“I discovered a man tonight spying through my window,” he bit out harshly. “Alas, the poor fellow took an unfortunate spill off the side of a building trying to evade me, so I was unable to question him and find out where he came from.” Dresden continued pacing back and forth across Albert’s opulent chamber. “I only had two visitors this evening—your courier and another man, whose name is not your affair. One or the other allowed himself to be followed straight to me. Now you tell me this flimflam tale of the King’s wits mending—”
“Flimflam?” Albert cried, his eyes as round as saucers. “Why do you call it that? Hasn’t His Majesty spent the past decade losing his mind and getting it back again? I thought you wanted to know any relevant news from court!”
“Well, yes, there is a small chance it could be true, and that it was my colleague who was followed, not your messenger. I don’t yet know,” Bloodwell growled. “But if this ‘rumor’ about the King turns out to be false, then it means you were deliberately fed the tale by someone who was trying to get to me. I will look into it, believe me. But in the meanwhile, you had better be more careful who you talk to—and you’d better get my list,” he added coldly. “Because I’m running out of patience, and you, my fine Duke, are running out of time.”
Mara awoke in the pre-dawn darkness to find a male silhouette in the chair beside her bed. He was staring down at her.
“Jordan?” She struggled to clear the cobwebs of sleep from her head as she pushed up onto her elbows. “W-what are you doing here?”
“Go back to sleep, my love,” he whispered. “I just needed to see your face.”
Something in his voice sounded strange, and it was too dark to see the expression on his face. But she instantly knew that he seemed—off. “Is everything all right? I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I was trying not to wake you. I’m sorry. I should’ve waited until tomorrow. I’ll go now—”
“No, don’t go. I’m always glad to see you, no matter the hour. Come. Lie down with me.” She made room for him in the bed, pulling back the sheet in invitation, but he stayed where he was. She could feel his faint smile and his wistful gaze in the darkness. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I just missed you,” he murmured softly.
“How sweet.”
“I shouldn’t have bothered you this late.”
“I don’t mind, truly.” She stretched a bit and rolled onto her back. “Did you play cards at Watier’s tonight?”
“Earlier, yes. You’re very beautiful when you sleep, you know.”
As Mara’s vision adjusted to the indigo darkness in her bedchamber, the faint glimmer of starlight helped her to make out the lost look on his face. “Jordan, what’s wrong?” she asked immediately. “Has something happened?”
“Oh—I don’t want to bother you.”
“Nonsense! What’s the matter?” Alarm suddenly had her wide awake. She reached to light the candle by her bedside, but he stopped her, his hand closing gently over hers.
“I prefer the dark if you don’t mind.”
She tried to search his face, but the shadows hid him.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
When he released her hand, she lifted it to cup his cheek, but he pulled away, sitting back in his chair for a moment. He rested his elbow on the chair arm in brooding silence, his fingers obscuring his mouth. When he spoke again, his voice was very low, and rather dark. “Those men I sent to guard your house under Sergeant Parker. You remember them?”
“Of course. What about them?”
“One of them died tonight.” He paused, as though slightly bewildered himself that this could have happened. “Mercer. He was under my command.”
Mara stared at him in shock. “Oh, Jordan,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry.” She barely knew what to say. “How did it happen?”
He shook his head. “I can’t discuss the details. Suffice it to say he was a good man. Loyal. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
She could only gaze at him in shared pain, hearing the anger in his taut voice, the seething self-recrimination.
Considering his news for a long moment, she recalled that he had told her that those men sometimes protected foreign dignitaries and such. It must have had something to do with a mission like that.
But I thought he was playing cards with the Regent.
The misgiving that flitted through her mind seemed unimportant, however, when Jordan was obviously in pain.
“Did he have a family?”
“I don’t know. If he did, I’ll have to speak to them tomorrow.” He got up and paced over to her bedroom window.
As he leaned against the wall, staring out the window past the light curtains, his back to her, Mara got out of bed, brushed down the rumpled muslin of her night rail, and padded over to him, the floor cool beneath her bare feet.
She caressed his back as she joined him by the window. Then she slid her arms around his lean waist. “I’m so sorry, my darling,” she whispered. “Is there anything at all that I can do?”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“Nonsense, you were right to come to me. You’re exactly where you belong. Look at me, darling.”
Warily, he met her gaze. Mara stared into his eyes, read the haunted look in them, then lifted her hand and gently stroked his hair, trying to comfort him. She had never seen him like this before, so cold and shut down.
She could feel the pain in him and longed to reach him somehow. She knew he had come to her in his hour of need. He was full of seething emotion that he did not know how to release. She rested her fingertips on his chest, then lifted her chin to brush his lips with her own, a cautious invitation.
He accepted tentatively, holding himself back.
She gave him another; he returned it a bit more earnestly. She fingered the V-shaped neck of his shirt with a restless touch, and the next thing she knew, Jordan was kissing her for all that he was worth.
She wondered vaguely what she was getting herself into as Jordan gripped her nape and cupped the back of her head almost roughly, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. This dark, wild, dangerous current underneath his passion frightened her slightly and yet deeply excited her.
He began sliding her night rail off her shoulder with a desperate, shaking touch that bespoke his need. “Take this off,” he ordered in a low voice roughened by desire.
Her heart racing, she stepped back a little to oblige him. His stare consumed her when she had lifted it off over her head. With nothing to cover her nakedness but her long hair, she reached for his hand and drew him toward her bed.
With fractured yearning in his eyes, he let her lead him in wordless acquiescence.
Beside her bed, he kissed her again, and there, they both undressed him, piece by piece, coat, weapons belt, boots, until, in moments, he was as bare as she. Mara delighted in the splendor of his body—tall and strong—as hard and muscled as she was womanly and soft.
Rather than lying down, she stood before him, getting better acquainted with all the marvelous parts of him that his handsome clothing usually concealed. But even Bond Street’s finest tailors could not do justice to his athletic, sculpted body. Such a comely male form was surely meant to top a marble pedestal, she thought, kissing his chest and stomach, exploring his arms and his tight, chiseled waist.
She could tell that her ardent interest excited him. It was not just the quiver of lustful anticipation that confirmed it; the swollen evidence of his arousal clamored against her stomach, straining toward her breasts. She wrapped her fingers around it and caressed it as she pressed up onto her tiptoes to sample one broad shoulder with her kiss.
She flicked her tongue against his throat to tease him, but he moved suddenly, capturing her around her waist with one arm, hauling her up against his heaving chest. His mouth swooped down on hers in a hard, claiming kiss.
Mara yielded gladly, her heart pounding as he lowered her onto her bed. Her limbs were weak, sweet, and heavy with her desire for him. Surely there was one way to ease his pain.
With pleasure.
She reached down once more, taking hold of his engorged member. Jordan closed his eyes as she began to stroke him, with a tight but tender grasp, up and down the length of his shaft, rounding its pulsing head. Enjoyment began erasing some of the strain from his angular face, and that would have been reward enough for her; but then he moved closer, fully intent on giving her much more.
His velveteen skin was feverish, his eyes glittering with need when he dragged them open again, pressing her onto her back at the edge of her bed. Mara spread her legs, but bent one knee, accepting his touch as he took care to see that she as ready and eager for this as he was. But he pleasured her with needless self-restraint. She had wanted the man since she had opened her eyes and found him there.
The smell of him, the sight of him, his smile, the taste of him—all these things had become her addiction.
He heard the summons in her breathless groan and eased atop her. She welcomed him into her arms, her heart racing with the wild thrill of that delicious moment when he first mounted her.
“Ahh, God.” He went perfectly still for a second, as though he could not trust himself. “You make me sane again.”
She gazed wantonly into his eyes and wrapped her legs around him, joining him in the beautiful dance and the bliss of skin on skin. She felt so free with him, holding nothing back, in a trance as she slid her foot lovingly up and down the lightly furred side of his muscled calf.
He kissed her so deeply and already had her so aroused—neophyte that she still was—that she came in moments, but he wasn’t nearly through with her, as she discovered when he rolled onto his back, taking her with him. Laughing, pink, and tingling all over with release, she found herself sitting astride the earl, their bodies still thoroughly joined, as though he had no intention of even giving her a break.
He held her in place atop him, luxuriously impaled.
“Now, then. You were saying?”
She beamed with a dazed smile from ear to ear. “I wasn’t saying anything.”
“Yes, you were,” he taunted in a silken murmur. “You were
saying, ‘Jordan, make me come again.’”
“Oh, was I?”
“Mmm. Would you like to know my answer? Or would you rather I keep you…in suspense?” He tugged her down flat onto his chest and kissed her heartily, running his fingers through her hair.
Mara took note at once of the new sensations that this position awoke in her, a whole different series of pleasurable responses now that she was on top of him.
“I rather like this,” she informed him breathlessly.
“So do I.”
Aware that he had her full attention, Jordan licked her lips slowly, such a naughty boy, entrancing her, tracing her lips erotically with the tip of his tongue; she quivered violently and felt the way her breath rushed past her wetted lips into his mouth, and his into hers.
Both of his expert hands caressed her hair and made their way slowly down her back, gliding over the white contours of her derriere, spreading her wider, taking her to an even greater depth.
He had no qualms whatsoever about where he would touch her, she discovered. Then she closed her eyes in startled, wary, but blushing acceptance as his fingertip penetrated another orifice, one that had certainly never interested her husband.
Well! she thought. A decent woman really should protest, but everything he was doing to her melted will and rationality to naught. She was his, a toy to play with as he willed.
“So you like that,” he commented. “Good.”
Before long, she found that he was right, as usual: To her amazement, he reduced her to a state of mindless ecstasy once more, writhing with release, her whole body, her entire being, open to him.
She was sure she was utterly spent when she rolled off the man to try to recover her wits, panting as if she had just run a mile. But a wicked gleam had come into his eyes.
“Oh, Jordan,” she said in a breathless tone of unadulterated praise, her admiring whisper partly buried in the pillow, for she lay on her stomach.
“Yes?” he murmured oh-so-politely as he crept up behind her.
“What are you doing?” She went motionless, scandalized and torn, half of her ready to beg for mercy, the other half eager for more.
