Raphael nodded, wondering why it sounded wrong when she said it, why it pricked him with defensiveness. “My father invented the name and our creed. We were beasts before we fashioned ourselves men, and built our own cages of law and order. But once, we had the morality of a wolf. The ferocity of a bear. Cunning and speed of a viper.”
“A viper.” She held up her finger as if to tap an idea out of the sky. “That is what you are.”
He contemplated the word. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Worse than a snake?”
He lifted a shoulder and loosened it again. “I don’t mind snakes so much. They’re clever creatures... They’re only villainized because of the one who tempted Eve.”
She swatted the air in front of her as if batting his words away. “I find that story patently ridiculous.”
“Do you?”
She rolled her eyes and tossed her head like a skittish mare. “We haven’t the time for me to count the ways.”
“I’d still love to hear you do so,” he murmured, finding that he wanted very much, indeed, to know what she thought about anything. Everything. He found her relentlessly entertaining. “Another time, perhaps.”
“I’m not planning on spending an inordinate amount of time in your presence.” Gathering her skirt, she shifted away from him as if she needed space.
Distance he didn’t want to give.
“You’re angry with me,” he prodded.
“Have you forgotten that you escaped the law and left me to face it? What sort of nefarious reprobate does that?”
“I knew you’d done nothing wrong, and that your family would close ranks and protect you. In my defense, I had business only a nefarious reprobate could conduct. Since you are not one, I couldn’t very well be responsible for your safety.”
Her chin jutted at a stubborn angle. “I’m an investigator, not an idiot. I wouldn’t do anything unduly perilous. Also,” she glared at him as if she could bore through his middle with the blue fire in her eyes, “you kissed me, you impolite blackguard! Without my permission, I might add.”
“Ah, for that I would ask your forgiveness, Miss Goode...” His mouth softened and curled up at the memory. “If you had not kissed me back.”
“I never!” She pushed away from the wolf enclosure and stomped toward the gate, her skirts swishing angrily.
“I know what animal you are,” he teased, ambling after her with his hands shoved in his pockets.
So he did not give in to the impulse to reach for her.
“I am no other creature than woman.”
“You are a fox,” he corrected. “Playful. Clever...cautious and elusive. Yes. You, Mercy Goode, are a vixen.”
“What I am is growing tired of your company,” she snapped.
“Might I remind you that you were the one who followed me here?”
She whirled on him, her little nostrils flaring and her eyes sparking with azure storms. “I—that—I mean—” She pressed her lips into a frustrated hyphen before gathering her response. “Don’t you dare for one minute feel flattered. I was investigating you. To see if you were doing anything despicable. I didn’t come for you, but to gather information that would help Mathilde.”
Oh, that he could make her come for him.
Raphael drank her in. She was lovely when she was angry. Her Cupid’s bow mouth pursed and white at the edges with strain, her snapping gaze electric with color, and her little fists balled with fury.
She was so young. Perhaps too young for his thirty years. She glowed with an inner incandescence that didn’t belong to this grey country. He wanted to sweep her away to a villa along the cerulean coast of his homeland. To strip her bare while white gauzy curtains danced in the sea breeze. He would let the sun kiss every inch of her pale skin just before his lips trailed in its wake.
“I want you to leave justice for Mathilde to me,” he said, curling the fingers in his pockets into fists, so he didn’t give in to the urge to sweep her hair away from the curve of her neck. “I will avenge her.”
It would be among the last things he did.
“Avenge her?” Her eyes narrowed and she took a step closer, her ire at him thrown over for a clue. “Are you saying you know who is responsible for her death?”
“I have an idea.”
“Who then?” she demanded.
She would never drag it out of him. Would never be drawn into his world. She was everything good and light and worthy. She was a beacon, one that both attracted him and warned him away.
Raphael changed tactics, taking a threatening step toward her. “You’ve already done something perilous. You came here. To find me... Alone.”
He should have expected anything other than a retreat from her. “As you can see, sir, we are not alone.” She gestured to the throngs of people, some passersby paying them a bit of curious attention.
“We are not alone,” he conceded, drawing her hand into his to brush a kiss against the knuckles of her gloves. “But if you are with me...you are in danger.”
“From whom?” She glanced about them dramatically, as if searching for the danger of which he spoke.
Surely some primitive instinct within her had to realize how close he was to—
“I’m perfectly safe,” she said in a tone more convincing than confident. As if she were trying to persuade herself. “My—my brother-in-law, Chief Inspector Carlton Morley, is nearby.”
“No, he isn’t,” Raphael tutted, advancing on her with measured steps. Forcing her to retreat in small increments. “I know Morley, he’s as decisive as he is honorable, which means he’d have me in chains before I could do this.”
Raphael seized her by the elbow and swung her into a deeply shadowed alleyway between two enclosures, with all the deftness of a man twirling his partner in a waltz.
He ducked them into the alcove of a door and slanted his mouth over hers, desperate to taste her before she could take in enough breath to protest.
Chapter 5
But she didn’t.
She didn’t struggle or fight.
The first time he’d kissed her, he’d taken her by surprise. She’d been unerringly sweet and obviously untried.
And still she’d captivated and aroused him more than the most skilled of courtesans.
She was artless. Guileless. And in her presence, he was something he’d never been before.
Helpless.
She didn’t remain still or soft in his arms. She didn’t become rigid nor limp with fear nor anger.
She went wild.
Her fingers were claws in the lapels of his jacket. At the taut muscles of his back. Then suddenly scoring his scalp as she turned his impulsive seduction into a battlefield. Her lips pulled tight against her teeth. Her tongue went on the offensive, thrusting into his mouth and tangling with his.
God, he’d only meant to pilfer a sip of her. Sample her particular confection of flavor and savor it.
But she devoured him.
Raphael’s blood pounded in a deafening roar, screaming through his veins with a victorious thrill. His entire body was consumed with the taste of her, like a crisp, sparkling Alsatian summer wine, both tart and sweet, with a sultry bite.