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He looked away, then back. The movement was barely there. Less than a second. Less than that. And still, it was enough. Felicity knew the truth. There would be no someday. No tomorrow, no next week, no next year. There wouldn’t be another night here, on the roof of his offices, or in his rooms, or in the ice hold at his warehouse. Tonight was it. She’d played her game, and tonight was it.
Tonight was all they’d have.
And tomorrow, he would be gone.
She lifted her hips to him again, loving the way his length stroked through her wet folds, slick and smooth and hot as the sun. Her cry of pleasure was met with his low groan, until he pulled away, lowering himself once again. “You wish to come again, love?”
Where was he going?
“Wait,” she said.
His lips, again on her torso. Felicity tried to sit up. “Wait, Devon.”
He rubbed the rough shadow of his beard over her skin. “I shall take care of you. Lie back. I intend to taste your pleasure a dozen times tonight. A hundred.”
But not the way she wished. Not with his whole self.
“Wait,” she repeated, this time lifting her knee, pressing it against him. Pushing him away as she scrambled to sit up. “No.”
He stopped instantly at the word, reeling back, his warm hand on her thigh. “What is it?”
“I don’t want that.”
His thumb stroked at the warm, soft skin of her thigh, and her breath caught in her chest, followed by a flood of warmth when he said, low and dark, “You don’t?”
Of course she did. My God, the man was magnificent. “I mean, I don’t want it alone. I want it with you. I want us . . .” She hesitated. And then, into the breach. “Together.”
He released her, instantly. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because if I touch you like—” He stopped and looked away, to the buildings in the distance, dark against the starry sky. And then back to her. “Felicity . . . if I fuck you . . . you’re ruined.”
The coarse language was meant to scare her. It only made her want him more. “You told me you would give me what I want. I want that. I want tonight. With you. All of it. All of you.”
“Not that. I shall give you everything but that.” He looked hunted.
“Why?”
“Felicity.” He began to rise. “I am not for you.”
She came up on her knees, following him. “Why not?”
“Because I was born in God knows where, and was reborn here, in the Covent Garden filth. I am soiled beyond repair. And I am so far beneath you that I have to strain to look at you.”
“You’re wrong,” she said, reaching for him, not knowing what else to do. He pulled away. “You’re wrong.”
“I assure you—I am not. The things I have done . . .” He paused, running a hand over his head. “The things I will do . . .” He backed away from her. “No, Felicity. We are through. Get dressed, and I will bring you home.”
“Devil,” she said, knowing that if she left that rooftop, she’d lose him forever. “Please. I want you. I . . .” Another hesitation. And then, the only words she could find. “I love you.”
His eyes went wide, and the hand at his side moved. Reaching for her? Please, let it be reaching for her. “Felicity . . .” Her name was ragged on his lips. “No . . .”
She resisted the tears that threatened. Of course he did not love her back. He was not the kind of man who would love her. And still, she could not stop herself from adding, “You are all I wish for. You. This. Whatever is to come.”
He shook his head. “You think London will have you back if you tie yourself to me? You think you’ll resume your place in Mayfair ballrooms? Have tea with the queen or whatever it is you people do?”
“I don’t want to have tea with the queen, you idiot man,” she replied, letting her frustration take hold. “I am tired of having my life chosen for me. My family decides where I go, what I do, whom I should marry. The aristocracy tells me where I belong in a ballroom, what I can hope for as a woman, where the limitations are for my desires.
“Don’t ask too much, they caution. You are too old, too plain, too strange, too imperfect. I shouldn’t want more than what I should be grateful to receive—the scraps of the rest of the world.”
He reached for her then, but she was busy with her rage. “I am not too old.”
He shook his head. “You are not.”
“I am not too plain.”
“You are nothing close to plain.”
“And we are all imperfect.”
“Not you.”
Then why won’t you have me?
She hugged her knees to her chest and confessed her sin. “I don’t want to save them.”
“Your family.”
She nodded. “I am their last hope. And I should want to sacrifice everything for them. For their future. But I don’t. I resent it.”
“You should resent it,” he said.
“They care nothing about me,” she whispered to her knees. “They love me, I suppose, and they tolerate me, and they would miss me if I were gone, but I’m not sure they would notice for quite a while, honestly—my mother hasn’t noticed I’ve taken to spending my evenings in Covent Garden, and Arthur’s so worried about his own marriage, he hasn’t time to think for a second about mine. And my father . . .” She trailed off. “He’s barely a character in this play. He’s deus ex machina, popping in at the end to sign the papers and take the money.”
She looked up at Devil. “I don’t want that.”
“I know.”
“I never wanted to win the duke. Not really.”
“You wanted more than that.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You wanted the marriage, the man, the love, the passion, the life, the wide world.”
She considered the words—perfectly encapsulating what she wanted. But not Mayfair. No longer Mayfair. Here. Now. Covent Garden. With its king.
More than she could have. Always more.
“Shall I tell you something true?”
He exhaled on a long, harsh breath, her name in it like a prayer. “No.”
“Well, I’m going to, considering I’ve already told you the worst of it,” she said, unable to stop the words from coming. “I hate tea. I want to drink bourbon. The kind you won’t admit to smuggling in from America with all that ice. I want to make love to you in your ice hold and bathe in your enormou
s bathtub. While you watch. I want to wear trousers like Nik and learn every inch of Covent Garden. I want to stand by your side here on the roof and there in the street below, and I want you to teach me to wield a cane sword as well as I wield a lockpick.” She paused, enjoying the dumbfounded look on his face nearly as much as she hated it. “But more than all that . . . I want you.”
“This world is all sin, Felicity, and I am the worst of it.”
She shook her head. “No. This world is locked away. You are locked away. Like something precious.” She met his gaze. Held it. “And I want in. Tonight.” Always.
“There is no way this ends without your ruin.”
“I am already ruined.”
He shook his head. “Not in any way that matters.”
She thought that was rather a semantic argument. And then, like a promise, memory surged. Wild and mad, just as she was when she grasped it. “I’ll never win the duke, you know. The banns are posted, yes, but even if I were to marry him, I wouldn’t win him. I don’t want him. And he doesn’t want me. Not with passion. Not with purpose.”
“It’s not important to him,” Devil said. “He doesn’t know about passion.”
“But you do,” she replied.
He cursed in the darkness. “Yes, dammit. Yes, I know about passion. It’s consuming me here, tonight, naked on a roof in Covent Garden where anyone could stumble upon us.”
She smiled at the words, pride and love rioting through her. This magnificent man. She reached for him, and he let her, let her touch his thigh, let her come closer, even when she softened her words and said, “And if someone were to stumble upon us?”
“I’d have to kill them for seeing you naked.”
She nodded. Dear Lord. She would never love anything the way she loved him. “Devil . . .” she whispered, her hand sliding up his bare chest, flirting with the skin there.
He caught it in his own. “Felicity . . .” She hated the resignation in his tone.
“We made a deal all those nights ago,” she said, leaning in, pressing a kiss to the corner of his full, beautiful lips. “I was promised slavering.”
He saw where she was going. Shook his head. “Felicity—”
“No. That was the deal. You wouldn’t renege, would you?”
