Page 54 of Devil in Her Details

“The foot of the bed will do, too.”

“You’re impossible.” She snatched a pillow from the head of the bed and thrust it at his chest without thinking. “And I have enough pillows.”

He caught the pillow without looking, eyes still on her, amusement touching his mouth. “You’re a strange woman, Lilly Trenton.”

Lilly smiled.

She should most definitely put up more of a resistance. After all, she’d been so blastingly determined to cut all ties a few hours ago. That determination, however, seemed to have been a fluke. A mask. One he’d peeled off in seconds.

Brighton truly was a dangerous place.

“And you’re a strange man, Dagger Fury.”

*

Dagger stared into the darkness, painfully aware of the lynx beside him. She’d fed him and then allowed him a space on her bed after he’d stubbornly insisted on staying close. She had, however, separated them with a row of pillows. As if they could ever stop him if he wanted to breach them. And letting him into her bed . . .

Too soft-hearted for her own good.

She’d looked at his wounds and seen something that needed mending, rather than something that might pose a threat. It was a dangerous kind of blindness. One that tempted him to teach her a lesson. Show her the danger. This maddening woman knew he was a man born of dark histories, and she was a woman from starlight and sun rays. The distance between them wasn’t just the width of a mattress. It was a chasm of class, conduct, and consequence. She should have been terrified of what it meant to have him in her inner sanctum. Instead, she was probably already worrying about whether he’d had enough to eat.

She should have kicked him out.

And she might have been better for it, even with her little plan to rid herself of the marquess. He was not a man who improved circumstances for women like her. He complicated them, darkened them, dragged them sideways into territory most sensible people knew to avoid. Lilly Trenton was sensible. He’d known that from the moment she’d met him without flinching. Sensible women did not keep company with men like him. Sensible women certainly did not kiss rough men in hallways.

Yet here she was.

Here he was.

And he found, with a clarity that should have sent him straight out the window he’d come in through, that he had absolutely no intention of going anywhere.

This was certainly a first for him.

He’d never shared a bed with a woman. Not even to meet his needs. A man didn’t need a bed for that. It wasn’t a bad feeling, this. He couldn’t claim it was a good one either. It was dangerous. Being a light sleeper and in a foreign environment, he couldn’t imagine he’d get much sleep tonight. If any.

“I was thinking . . .” Her soft voice trailed off.

He glanced over to her silhouette. “Is that good?”

She chuckled. “Everyone thinks.”

“True, but not everyone has a mind like yours.”

“Oh, please. I’m hardly the only woman with a mind of her own.”

No, but didn’t know of any others with her particular brand of trouble. “What were you thinking?” Dagger asked.

“How you are the first man I’ve crawled into bed with.”

Dagger had no way to describe what that sentence did to him. He’d just been thinking the very same thing, but he’d have choked and cursed at the same time if he had a voice, his body exploding with both fury and satisfaction at the same time.

“Finally speechless?”

“Don’t say things like that,” he managed roughly.

“Why not? I also happen to sleep in men’s shirts, so I’m quite comfortable with the unconventional, but you might have already gathered that.”

He stilled. Sleeping in the shirts of men? “You’re not wearing one now.”