Page 18 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

“Yes,” she said with a smirk. “Sort of. I’ll be outright cheating, but you just need to understand how to weigh the odds. Don’t worry, I won’t taint your soul.”

He gave a delicate cough and gave her a lopsided smile. “You can if you want to.”

She felt it then, all the blood finally making its way into her face. “Christ on a cross, Joe. Keep saying things like that and I might just do it.”

He blinked, clearly surprised, but that smile didn’t vanish. It morphed instead, curling up at the corners. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was smug .

She stared at him, clearing her throat and attempting to avert her eyes. “We want people to think you’re harmless,” she continued, refusing to acknowledge that her heart had just visited her toes.

“But I’m not harmless,” he said, that low steadiness of his voice hitting her like a flash of fire.

“No?” she snapped, unable to resist looking at him again, unable to stop how enjoyable it was, looking at him. “You aren’t?”

“I’m not,” he confirmed, never breaking that soft cadence, not moving a single muscle. His eyes were burning holes in her soul. “I think you know that.”

She gripped the wineglass, the ghost of that gentle, life-ruining kiss nudging at her, tormenting her, whispering confusion in her ear. What she wanted to do was ask him to prove it, to drag him over the table and demand he do as much harm as he could muster.

But how would he react if she did? Would it change the way he looked at her?

“That must be a boon in your profession,” she heard herself saying. Stupid. Too polite.

“It can be,” he replied easily, still not moving, still watching. He set the dice back on the table between them.

Eleven.

Again.

“Oh, look at that,” he said, leaning his elbows on the table, somehow crowding her despite the full plank of wood between them. “I’ve won again.”

She threw the wine into her mouth, fully tipped it back, swallowing it with a desperate gulp, and immediately grasped for the bottle like a lush to refill it. She thought she might need to scream soon, or perhaps jump out the window.

And he just kept watching, the bastard. Kept wearing that little smile. Kept using those silver eyes like blunt weapons.

She stared at his lips. Remembered how they felt. And drank again.

The wine wasn’t soothing her nerves at all, she realized, it was just pooling more warmth into places that had long since overheated. She wasn’t even here to gamble, and somehow she was still losing everything she had.

She wanted to demand answers, but she didn’t know what questions to ask. Instead, she felt herself pushing to her feet, knocking the chair back and bracing her hands on the table. The room tilted a little with the severity of it, the suddenness of her impulse.

“I have to go,” she said, sounding brittle and panicked even to herself, her eyes darting between the bed, the window, the door. “I … yes, I have to go.”

She turned on her heel. Fleeing was the only option now, wasn’t it? She had to get the hell out of here before she didn’t know herself anymore.

“No, you don’t,” came his voice just as her fingers circled the knob—impossibly close, impossibly low and dark.

She turned, certain he was still at the table, shocked at her outburst, and found herself nose-to-nose with him. He reached behind her, pushing the door shut again, looking down on her as her back came against the wood.

“Don’t go,” he said, so soft, so fucking soft.

And she felt something like a sob rip from her throat, because that was the last card she’d had to play. The final, desperate card.

She gripped his shirt and pulled him into her, closing the very little space that had remained between them, rising onto her toes and crashing her mouth into his. If she couldn’t escape to shore, she reasoned, she would happily drown.

This time he wasn’t soft. This time he wasn’t careful. This time he rolled his tongue into her mouth and let her taste him, and yet still, it seemed as though he wasn’t demanding anything. He was giving, somehow. Not taking.

He cupped her face, his thumbs tracing down the column of her throat. He moaned, a soft surrender of unapologetic pleasure, as though he’d craved this for too long to ever feel he’d had enough.

She enjoyed the feel of them, all that warm skin radiating through the thin material of his shirt, the path of the muscles he’d come home with, golden and working under her fingers.

His chest, his ribs, his abdomen. He let her touch him, he let her explore, and the more he allowed, the weaker she felt.

Here was the hunger she’d wanted. Here was the feral desperation of desire.

But somehow, this time, she felt like the claimant.

She felt like the one holding the reins.

She’d never felt that before. She’d never held the power of it so completely, the knowledge that if they were going over the edge of a cliff, it was because she’d driven them there.

She wanted this. Oh, yes. More than she wanted to breathe. But, the gravity of it? That would be hers too, wouldn’t it?

God.

She pulled back, her eyes tilted up to meet his, her hands still splayed over his stomach.

He was dragging in air, those dark curls in disarray, hanging over his forehead as he gazed down at her.

He lowered his head, pressing his forehead against hers, and let his eyes flicker shut, his hands falling down over her throat, onto her shoulders, his thumbs still tracing little patterns on her skin.

She felt her own eyes close, felt her lungs fill with perfection, and they just stood like that for a time, entwined, holding one another, connected.

“I want you,” she confessed to him, “so very, very much.”

He released a little burst of air through his nose, almost like disbelief, almost like he couldn’t believe his luck. His eyes opened a little, still hooded, still soft, as though he just wanted to see her again, to confirm to himself that it was really Ember who had said those words.

“More than I’ve ever wanted any man,” she continued, both for emphasis and because it was true. “And that scares the absolute soul out of me.”

“Does it?” he said, lifting his head, searching her eyes. “Why?”

She felt herself starting to smile, a fondness growing in her chest that defied definition. “You are a man, aren’t you? Perhaps a perfect one, but still a man.”

He just raised his brows, clearly without a response to such a statement.

It made her laugh. It made her pull him closer. “You could destroy me, Joseph Cresson. You could break me into a thousand pieces and I’d never be able to find wholeness again. Do you understand that?”

He paused. He considered it. He listened .

And then he nodded. Like he did understand. Like he had heard her.

“People have hurt you,” he said, almost whispering. “I won’t hurt you.”

She forgot to breathe for a moment. She felt it welling up in her like oxygen, but hot and threatening, like she might sob instead. She felt herself trembling a little, felt the desire once again to flee, and shook her head at him. “You can’t promise that.”

“I can,” he said immediately, firm but without any force, without a single thread of harshness or presumption. “I am promising that.”

How could she respond? How could a woman who knew better answer such horrible sincerity?

He didn’t seem to expect words from her. Not a return of that promise, not an acceptance of it, not a validation that she’d heard it. He leaned down again and kissed her, gentle and sweet, in a way she absolutely did not deserve.

“Come sit down,” he suggested, leading her back to the table. “Just take a breath, Ember. It’s all right. Everything is well right now. Everything is safe. Everything is perfect.”

It was true, she realized, letting him return her to the seat she’d fled.

She was safe.

She was well.

And everything was perfect.