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How could he go to war without tasting that for himself?
Especially when she’d looked at him inthatway. With the heavy-lidded gaze of a woman who wanted to be kissed but was too proud to ask and too untried to take what she wanted.
Raphael bit into his fist. He couldn’t tell which was a more exquisite hell. Wanting to taste her? Or having sampled her flavor, knowing that a more sublime pleasure awaited the man who unlocked the passion roiling beneath the barely contained surface of her propriety.
Knowing, without a doubt, that he could release her like a volcano, and watch as she erupted into ecstasy.
He should go. He had so much to do, to prepare for.
He needed to be rid of her. For both of their sakes.
Visibly deflated, Mercy stowed her opera glasses in the velvet pouch hanging from her wrist and turned to contemplate the wolves.
They’d come alive at her approach, panting and pacing, some of them making wild, hungry sounds.
Raphael knew exactly how they felt.
His feet carried him toward her as if moving without his consent. There was no stopping this, he was propelled—compelled—by her mere presence. She was, indeed, like the sun, and he was merely a helpless body trapped in her orbit.
How could he leave when she appeared so glum? How could he be the cause of such a frown?
He’d done some terrible things, but her displeasure would bother him all day.
So intent was she upon her disappointment, she didn’t mark his approach until he spoke. “I always pity them, the predators,” he murmured as he drew abreast of her, standing close enough that their shoulders nearly touched.
Other than a lift of her bosom with a sharp intake of breath, she made no move to acknowledge him.
Raphael leaned against the iron bars of the enclosure, watching the alpha pace back and forth. Staring deep into eyes that seemed so ancient and feral, compared to this so-called civilized place.
His chest ached for them both. “I wonder what it would be like to be as they are. Creatures of instinct and insatiable hunger...caged but longing to roam free.”
Mercy tilted her chin to level him a sharp look, scoffing gently. “I am a woman. I don’t have to wonder such things. I already know.”
A pensive sound escaped him on a huff of breath. “It has never been a mystery why men keep women caged by so many unseen confines,” he said. “Their laws. Their clothing. Societal expectations...And through doing this, men have devised the most fiendish jailers.”
“Yes, you men have fashioned yourselves as most cunning oppressors,” she agreed with an arch bitterness in her voice. “Congratulations.”
“No,” he purred, turning toward her. Inching closer. “Women’s greatest enemy is other women. If you ever stopped competing for the favor of your oppressors and rose up against us, instead, we men wouldn’t stand a chance.”
At this, she shifted, her sharp chin dipping so she could study him from beneath the veil of her lashes. “You speak as though you’re an expert on the subject of my sex.”
“Women are too complicated and varied for one man to become an expert,” he said, rather modestly, he thought, congratulating himself.
Her eyes narrowed further, reminding him of a cat irked by the attentions of a tiresome human. “Is it women who are complicated? Or men who are just too simple or fatuous to figure out what should be painfully obvious?”
He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “You’re right, of course. Let us not say complicated. Let us say...intricate. Comprised of so many parts both fragile and indestructible. Mechanisms of emotion and logic, trivialities and also infinite wisdom.”
He motioned to the wolves. “We men are the beasts. Quarrelsome and querulous creatures of instinct and desire.”
“Is that why you call your gangthe Fauves? The wild beasts. Because you are encouraging such animalistic behavior?”
Raphael nodded, wondering why it sounded wrong when she said it, why it pricked him with defensiveness. “My father invented the name and our creed. We were beasts before we fashioned ourselves men, and built our own cages of law and order. But once, we had the morality of a wolf. The ferocity of a bear. Cunning and speed of a viper.”
“A viper.” She held up her finger as if to tap an idea out of the sky. “That is what you are.”
He contemplated the word. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Worse than a snake?”