Savoring the relief.
“Should I to ascribe these attributes to you, Blackbird?”
Oh, Heavens.
Eliza’s internal exclamation was part prayer, part awe. He was like an angel of darkness with wings parted wide enough to blot out the light.
Eliza had come to this—this place—intent on saving her sisters. She only ever intended to meet with the Black Widow, ask her for her assistance, and then depart as soon as possible. The few people the wiser, the better.
Now, she found herself face-to-face with a man she knew to be the intimate confidant of very person who had, tonight, devastated Cassie’s hopes. A man who—if she could not get her hands on Harbury—she would happily use for vengeance in the duke’s place.
But instead of loudly enumerating the many, very sensible reasons she loathed him, she was staring up into his face. Redver’s question—smooth, deep, and rich with flirtation—had left her speechless.
“Come into the light,” he urged with a gentle tug to her hand.
Up close, he was no less arrogant looking than he’d been at a distance.
He’d been pointed out to her, always on the outskirts of any gathering, glowering like a bird of prey. Pointed out, in fact, by various hopeful young women who must have been partial to rogues in need of reform.
She’d thought she had no such partiality for rogues. And none at all for arrogant ferals.
And yet, there was something alluring about his square jaw, his thin nose, and his narrow, hooded eyes, even if his prominent eyebrows arched in a manner that made him appear perpetually cross…until he smiled.
His smile was unexpected.
Warm, inviting, and full of wicked promise, his smile left an ache in her chest. If his face had a saving grace—and shewasn’t yet convinced she was willing to grant him that much—the saving grace would be his lips.
His lips were full, almost feminine.
She wondered why she couldn’t look away. His lips, his gaping collar, and the dark hair visible beneath…together they were creating a pool of heat in her lower belly even as her palm itched to slap away his curiously appealing grin and her body pulsed with a longing.
“Please,” he added.
She blinked. Ah, yes. He’d just asked her to come into the light, hadn’t he?
“I’d rather not,” she answered.
She’d meant to sound authoritative, like her godmother at her most haughty, but she did not even recognize her own low, gravely tone. Somehow, she, like Cassie, had entered an involuntary dance. He was leading, calling forth some rebellious buried deep inside.
How could she be herself, but also not herself?
Could one be both in and out of one’s body? Perhaps she’d lost her power of speech because she’d never been alone with a man besides Asquith, and her godmother’s son had never left her silenced.
Silenced. And angry. And hot. And curious.
“You’ve nothing to fear from me,” he reassured her.
She felt his whisper like a feather against her flesh—tingling, light, sweet. She swallowed roughly. “I beg to differ.”
He cocked his head as if she were something of an enigma. Eliza was used to odd expressions, to people who felt that she and her twin’s identical faces gave them the right to openly study them, looking for some subtle way to tell them apart.
His gaze was different. Even though she knew that between the shadows and the veil, he could discern very little, his gaze sought to penetrate her outer shell and look straight into hersoul, as if, just by looking, he could peel back layers and uncover secrets she had not known she possessed.
He’d fail, of course.
But the sensation imparted by his undivided attention was, well, thrilling.
Every precept she’d been taught warned her to run, even as every newly blooming, ravenous instinct begged her to stay.
