Page 49 of Rules for Ruin

Her gaze turned toward the railing. A quaver of fear went through her. She huffed another whimpering laugh. “Impossible.”

“Come.” He brought her face back to his. “I’d never have taken you for a defeatist.” The rough edge of his Birmingham accent emerged, turning his a’s into ai’s. This time, it wasn’t anger that summoned it, but another, more powerful, emotion. He didn’t stop to examine it.

“A realist,” she replied, just as she’d said at dinner. “There’s only one way down.” She trembled. “Down.”

“Quite. We’ll use those branches. It’s what—three floors? That’s nothing. All you have to do is calm yourself sufficiently enough to hold on to me.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

He stroked her face. They didn’t have time to linger. At any moment, a servant might enter Compton’s room or one of the guests might wander out into the garden. “What? Don’t you trust my climbing ability? I’ve got nine lives, me.”

“One of us will fall.”

“Neither of us is going to fall.” He bent his head to hers, still holding her face in his hands. “Do you want to know the secret to it? Don’t think of how high up you are.”

She gave him a pained look. A tear spilled from her brimming eyes to slide down her cheek. “I can concentrate on nothing else.”

Gabriel brushed the hot tear away with the pad of his thumb. His face was inches from hers. He felt her sweet breath puffing softly against his lips. She smelled of honey and black currants. Of everything he’d ever wanted in life but never received. Never deserved. He bent his head closer, his voice deepening to a husky scrape. “Concentrate on this,” he said.

And his mouth captured hers.

11

Effie’s fear-paralyzed brain registered Gabriel’s intention a split second before he acted. She inhaled a startled gasp. The faint trembling sound was muffled by his mouth claiming hers.

He kissed her gently to start. As gently as the way he had held and caressed her face to reassure her. But finding her willing, the tame character of his kiss transformed in a quicksilver instant. The intensity increased by dizzyingly swift degrees. No longer soft and searching, his mouth took hers with a hungry desperation, kissing her fiercely, deeply, urgently.

A rush of yielding warmth flooded through her. Her brow creased and her eyes fell closed. The frozen panic that had immobilized her only seconds before burned away at the edges. The cool night around them was reduced to a single pulse point. To the two of them here, on the terrace floor, his knees crushing her skirts, and his large, calloused hands framing her face. And his lips—

His lips.

They angled over hers, engulfing her in an all-encompassing heat.

Her heart thumped wildly and her blood ignited. She’d been kissed before, but never like this. There was no calculation in it. No chaste deference or rakish strategy. Only the barely leashed passion of a man who had resisted the desire for too long. A man who wanted to touch her, to taste her, to breathe her in.

She surrendered to the scorching pressure of his mouth, her lips softening and parting beneath his. Fear was eclipsed by the heart-quaking sensation of their mingled breath. A soft moan escaped her throat as she kissed him back.

It was ill-advised. Nonsensical. But a small, distant voice in the furthest recesses of Effie’s soul whispered that this was where she belonged. Not on the terrace, but with him, this dangerous, merciless, unfathomable man who had climbed three stories to save her.

Releasing her grip on the stone pillar, she brought her hand to cover his on her cheek. It wasn’t to stop him. It was to keep him there, prolonging the tender intensity of the moment.

But there was no prolonging it.

At length, he drew back, his brow resting on hers. His breath was unsteady. “Still scared?”

She curved her fingers around his. He pressed her hand in response. “Yes,” she admitted, her breath as woefully uneven as his. “But I’m no longer frozen with fear.” Her voice sounded quite unlike her own.

“Good.” He pulled back further so he could search her gaze. There was something different in his face—a line of deep consternation etching his forehead and a frowning shadow of baffled vulnerability flickering at the back of his eyes. It was only a crack. A glimmer. But Effie registered it just the same.

She had the uneasy sensation that the fundamental topography of their acquaintance had undergone a seismic shift. It was more than a change of perception. It was an alteration to the very ground on which they stood.

But they weren’t on the ground, she reminded herself.

A flush of cold air kissed her cheeks as Gabriel removed his hands from her face. “We need to get out of here,” he said.

She nodded her assent.

He stood all at once. Still holding her right hand in his, he pulled her up along with him.