Emmy frowned in the darkness. Shakespeare? She vaguely recalled the scene. It was from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Oberon and Titania, the feuding married couple of the underworld. Very apt. Except, of course, she was nowhere near married to Harland, thank the lord.
She pressed her gloved hand to her throat, not having to feign her jittery shock. “Lord Melton. You startled me. I was just getting a little air. I was about to leave.”
He tilted his head. “Whereas I have just arrived. It seems we’re destined to be forever at odds, Miss Danvers. Adversaries, if you will.”
She managed a nervous laugh. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, my lord.”
“Would you not?” He paused a moment, as if considering. “What would you say we are, then? I don’t think we can really class ourselves as friends.”
Emmy ignored the twinge of hurt at his easy dismissal of friendship and managed a careless shrug. “I’m sure I don’t know. I’d have thought you have more than enough adversaries from your work for Bow Street, however.”
He took another step closer. She tried to retreat, but the low brick wall behind her prevented her escape.
“That’s true.” He sounded relaxed, gently amused. “But there’s definitely something to be said for a good adversary. There’s something … invigorating about it, don’t you think?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” Emmy lied.
“I have. An enemy keeps you on your toes, brings out your full potential. I’d never have honed my sharpshooting skills, for example, if I hadn’t been forced to fight Napoleon’s troops for so long. I’d never have learned how to chase down criminals if I didn’t work for Bow Street.”
A diamond is only produced under great pressure. He and Camille were of the same mind.
“You sound as if you enjoy the chase,” she said, and hated the way her voice quavered. She needed to be bold and flirtatious, not reeking of guilt and nerves.
His smile flashed in the darkness as he took another step closer. A shaft of moonlight illuminated one half of his face, caressing his cheekbones, the straight line of his nose, the wicked curl of his lips.
“Oh, I do. Catching a criminal elicits a wonderful sense of triumph—all the better if I’ve been led a merry chase.” His low murmur, almost a purr, sent a shiver through her. “Things are always so much more satisfying if you’ve had to wait for them, don’t you think?”
His gaze dropped to her lips and without thinking, Emmy pulled in her lower lip, biting it with her top teeth. His expression became almost pained. He glanced back up and slanted her a look from beneath his lashes that made her insides liquefy.
“Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of having the Nightjar at my mercy, for example?”
Her heart began to pound. He knew.
No! He didn’t know for sure. He was just trying to goad her into saying something incriminating. She pressed her lips together to stop words spilling out.
He answered for her. “A long time. And I know exactly what I’m going to do when I catch him.”
Emmy let out a silent sigh. Him. He’d said him. She was only imagining the double meanings to his words. She was still safe. For now. “What will you do?”
“Exact retribution,” he sighed dreamily. “I’ve fantasized of the moment over and over again. I cannot wait to have him in my power.”
Oh, God. The heat of him was mere inches away. Emmy inhaled his scent and entertained a brief, startling fantasy of stepping forward and letting her body soften and curve into his, of resting her head against all that masculine warmth and strength. She sidestepped instead. “I really must be getting back to the ballroom.”
He moved to the side to block her and her heart gave a panicky squeeze in her chest. The rich scent of earth and hothouse flowers made her head reel.
He leaned forward conspiratorially, as if the darkness engendered confidences. “So, what are you doing out here in the dark? Here to meet a lover?”
Emmy gasped. “No! I’m not meeting anybody! I just needed to catch my breath. It’s so crowded in there.”
Flustered, she turned and sniffed at the nearest flower, a peony in full bloom. Peonies were her absolute favorite, with their extravagant abundance of petals and gorgeous sweet scent. She closed her eyes. How on earth was she going leave, with him blocking the path?
Alex frowned at her tempting profile. The woman was utterly infuriating. Why couldn’t she be like all the other vapid, innocent women out there in the ballroom? He bit back a growl and studied the charming tilt of her nose, the satin softness of her sweetly lying lips. Why the hell couldn’t he be attracted to any of those other women?
Her presence out here had nothing to do with meeting a paramour. The only illicit assignation she’d arranged tonight was with Lady Carrington’s jewelry case.
Oddly, the thought of her meeting another man annoyed him just as much as the fact that she was a thief, but he didn’t want to examine that contradiction too closely. He didn’t care how many men she kissed in dark corners. Really.
He narrowed his eyes. Wearing those feathers in her hair was practically flaunting the fact that she was the Nightjar. She must think him as dense as the rock she’d labelled at the museum. She’d only been out of his sight for a few minutes, but he’d bet his life that if he ventured next door, he’d find one of those feathers in Lady Carrington’s jewelry box.
Fury burned in his chest, both at himself and at her. She was a scheming little liar, as guilty as he suspected. So why was he so reluctant to unmask her? Why did he want to stop time and stay in this state of not knowing just a little longer? Why did he feel the insane urge to hold her in his arms one last time before everything went wrong?
Self-loathing lashed him like a whip. He never learned, did he? He still wanted to ignore the facts, to believe in the innocence of a beautiful face, just as he’d done in Spain. He wanted to be blind to her sins. He choked back a bitter laugh. Maybe the injury to his eye was the perfect poetic justice, the physical embodiment of his greatest flaw: willful blindness.
She was stroking the waxy petals of an orchid now, and he tried not to remember the way those fingers had felt against his skin.
Concentrate.
She turned back to him, with those big wide eyes, and he experienced the usual jolt, that strange humming awareness of being alive. He’d felt the sensation once before, from an “electro-static machine” Lord Braxton had hired as a parlor trick. It had made his nerves tingle. Emmy Danvers produced the same reaction.
He couldn’t allow himself to feel anything for her. She was a criminal and he was sworn to uphold the law.
Yet here he was, breathless with desire.
The faint strains of a quadrille drifted in through the doorway, but he felt disconnected from it all, as if they were in another, more elemental world, one that consisted of darkness and earth. Her pupils seemed enormous, her skin luminous against the near-black of her dress, and he curled his fingers into his palms against the urge to put them around her throat. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to strangle her or ravish her.
He felt positively medieval, freed from the trappings of polite civilization by the shadows and the heat. There was no point in denying he wanted her. No point in pretending he wasn’t going to kiss her either. He’d thought of little else for days. Craved it like the laudanum they’d given him when he’d first been wounded.
She’d hidden the jewel somewhere on her person, he was certain. Finding it was going to be an absolute pleasure.
He closed the distance between them and the lush scent of her filled his nose, headier than all the flowers surrounding them. He slid his hand around her nape. She sucked in a surprised breath and started to object, but he didn’t want to hear excuses.
“Don’t say another word.”
His lips found hers with unerring precision. He half expected her to push him away, but with a muffled groan she lifted herself up on tiptoe and returned the kiss as if she were as desperate to taste him as he was to taste her.
Hellfire. This woman was always a surprise.
Alex closed his eyes and kissed her deeply, extravagantly. He let her taste his hunger, taking her breath and giving her his in a sinful, erotic exchange. Her heart pounded against his chest as he pulled her close, the same heartbeat that throbbed in his ears, a deafening drumbeat of sound.
You’re supposed to be finding the jewel.
The sensible thought struggled to surface against the drowning tide of pleasure. Alex forced his hands from her nape and stroked down her arms, then slid them back up over her ribs to her armpits. She made a little whimper of pleasure against his lips; the sound went straight to his cock. He kept on kissing her, claiming her attention while he drew his thumbs down the center of her bodice, feeling for the telltale bump of a hidden gem. But all he could feel were the stiff whalebone strips of her corset and the soft, yielding woman beneath.
His hand skimmed over her breast and she arched up into his touch with a groan that made him feel invincible. Unable to resist, he slipped his fingers inside her bodice and bit back a groan of his own. God, she was so soft. The perfect weight in his hand.
Time lost all meaning. There were no seconds or minutes. Only decades luxuriating in her mouth, eons of pleasure as he tugged down the front of her dress and lowered his lips to her skin. Her fingers tightened in his hair as he flicked her with his tongue, glorying in the contrasting textures of hard, ruched nipple and satiny curve of breast.
A reckless wash of desire swamped him. More. He wanted more.