Page 29 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

E mber awoke around sunset, mostly face-down in Joe’s bed, her body twisted like a corkscrew in its efforts to claw back the sleep it was owed, or at least a portion of the debt.

She blinked over and over, her arms too heavy to lift and wipe the grog away, and felt her vision swim into focus facing that little table by the window and the window itself, which was currently flooded with pink and orange light, a final flash of color before the somber blue of dusk.

Once she could force herself to move, to straighten her tired limbs, she began the process with groaning complaint from her very own voicebox and no small amount of ache and strain from her stretching muscles.

“Easy there,” came Joe’s voice from the other side of the bed, surprising her enough that she changed the direction of her efforts, folding over on herself toward him, rather than the window and the floor and all the trappings of being upright again.

Had he been there all day? Surely not!

He was leaned against the headboard, a notebook in his lap and Millie’s letter spread out around him in neat little stacks. He’d been making his own notes, she saw, on his own paper by the low light of his own lantern.

“Joe?” she said, as though she needed to ask. “How long was I asleep?”

He chuckled, setting the notebook aside and reaching out to push a tangled nest of hair from her face. “How long is a full day?” he replied gently.

She squeezed her eyes shut and yawned, reaching up with heavy effort, her fingers only brushing her lips after the yawn had fully escaped. She dropped her hand back on the pillow and tried to shake away some of the grog, blinking up at him.

“I wish they had sent one of the forged slips,” he was saying with a little frown, busying himself with restoring and tidying Millie’s full missive, “and one of the real ones. It would have been useful to see them side by side.”

“I’ll have both for you back in London,” she told him, her body nuzzling closer to his, to his warmth. “We don’t need them right now.”

“Don’t we?” he said, glancing up at her over the stack of papers. “To show Mr. Lazarus? To use against Beck?”

“I know my own handwriting, Joe,” she reasoned, giving him a sleepy smile. “It’s not very good, and so probably quite difficult to fake.”

“Hm,” said Joe, a grumble that sounded adjacent to disapproval.

She watched him, a lazy sort of fascination in the tension she saw in his movements, in that single syllable he’d uttered.

“Are you …” She trailed off, wakefulness dripping in through her repose as she pulled herself up a little, onto an angling of pillows, squinting at the back of his curly head. “Joe Cresson! Are you unhappy with me?”

He looked over his shoulder like she’d startled him deeply. “What?”

“You are!” she marveled. “You’re angry!”

“I’m not angry ,” he protested, dropping the papers on the stand with his notebook and turning to fully face her. “I am, at worst, a little confused. That’s all.”

“A little confused,” she repeated, an absurd little grin starting to tug on the corners of her lips. “From you, that might as well be a declaration of war, my own. What’s the matter?”

He sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, high color rising into his cheeks.

“Is this because I said I was going to marry you?” she asked, tilting her head. “I suppose I wasn’t very romantic about it, was I?”

“No! Not that!” he exclaimed, at a volume only slightly above normal that still made her startle a bit.

“Gracious!” she said, nudging him with her foot. “You’ll bring the house down.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and huffed. “It’s not that,” he said after a second, at his more typical volume. “I’m happy about that.”

“Are you?” she asked, watching him closely.

“Overjoyed,” he said with businesslike certainty. “I am, however, uncertain about your decision regarding Mr. Beck.”

“My decision?” she repeated. “You mean my decision not to crucify the bastard?”

He grimaced, the little tick of his expression enough to fully remove the remainder of any sleepiness from her body.

“That can’t be it,” she said, pushing herself up to sit, drawing her legs behind her as she faced him. “Mercy should only please the likes of you, shouldn’t it? I thought you’d be relieved.”

“This isn’t about mercy,” Joe protested, that grimace giving way to more of a wince. “It’s about safety. It’s about the law. And it’s about pragmatism, Ember.”

She narrowed her eyes at each new revelation of what this was supposedly all about. “Say what you mean.”

He sighed heavily. “What is your plan, exactly? Maybe I’m misunderstanding.”

“Plan? I don’t have a plan,” she replied, perhaps a little shrilly. “Well, not as such. I wrote out a few options, a few drafts of what to return to Millie with the post tomorrow, but I haven’t decided on anything yet other than making sure my stepsons never darken my doorstep again.”

He watched her, his face unmoving. “And Beck? Lazarus? Are you going to tell them about any of it?”

“Well, yes, I …” She trailed off, frowning. “Yes. Beck, at least. If I tell Lazarus, it might get away from us.”

“How?” he pressed, turning his body toward her, drawing her hands into his.

“How are you going to tell him? How are you going to present this information in a way that doesn’t make things worse?

You know he is already lying low after what happened in the hallway.

You know we could already send him to jail, easily, for punching Freddy.

Are you certain you don’t want to do that? ”

She half wanted to jerk her hands away, her gaze darkening into something like a glower. “I said I didn’t want to do it,” she reminded him. “Don’t you believe me?”

“That’s the problem,” he said on a soft sigh, “I do believe you, and I don’t think I can talk you out of it.”

“Good,” she returned, sharper than necessary, “best you learn that now.”

He almost smiled, just a flicker on the edge of his expression. “Before you marry me, you mean?”

“Aye, that.” She nodded curtly. “Before I marry you.”

He chuckled, leaning forward to catch her lips with his own, a soft press of hearing and listening and understanding. “All right,” he said. “I believe you. I just worry too. Best you learn that now.”

She blinked at him, more disarmed by agreement than she could have been by a thousand raging rebuttals. She didn’t move for a second and then she nodded and she understood.

“All right,” she allowed, squeezing his hands back. “How should I tell him, Joe? What do you think?”

It wasn’t a flicker this time. He smiled fully, and damn him, it made her smile too.

“I will tell you after,” he told her through his happiness.

“After what?”

But she was already on her back, already being crawled over, already tasting his satisfaction with this conclusion of their first and only spat.

His hands were already working down the length of her dress, a loose morning dress that would be far easier to remove than the evening gown she’d worn the last time. His lips were hot and soft and unrelenting.

She welcomed the flood of confusion that they created as it washed into her mind, her mind that had been dragged to capacity with adrenaline and plotting and surprise and wanted nothing more now, nothing less than what he was providing.

“Are you going to propose to me?” he teased, his fingertips finding their way under her skirt. “Properly?”

“No,” she answered, only because she knew it would make him grin, would make those dimples appear and devastate her further.

“No?” he asked, touching her where she most wanted, teasing, discovering her there.

“No,” she confirmed, and gasped as those long, scholarly fingers found their way inside her.

He kissed her again. He tasted her. He moaned, whisper-soft, against her lips. “Fine,” he breathed between kisses, between strokes of his hand, “I’ll allow it. But …”

“But?” she breathed, her own fingers gripping at his shirt, pulling at the seams, desperate to remove it.

He shook his head, withholding his flesh from her, kissing around the curve of her cheek to breathe warm air into her ear, to send gooseflesh scattering down her arms and over her whole. “Tell me you love me,” he whispered, gentle and firm all at once. “Tell me you love me the way I love you.”

She released a sound like a growl, a catty little tone as she shoved at him and pulled him closer too. “You know I do,” she groaned as he withdrew his hand, as he pulled away, as he loomed over her, still smiling, still dimpling down at her. “You already know.”

“I want to hear it,” he insisted with a raise of his dark brows, fingertips trailing up and down the thin, hungry flesh of her thighs. “In lieu of a proposal.”

“In … in lieu,” she stammered, shoving herself up to jerk loose the ties at the back of her dress, to draw it over her head, to cover her own grumbling submission in the face of this demand. “Are you litigating our lovemaking?”

He nodded, thumbs brushing over her, teasing her, tormenting her. “Yes.”

She glared. She steamed. She wanted. And then, when it was clear he meant it, she deflated. “Fine.”

“Fine,” he agreed, watching her, those silver eyes scraping over every exposed inch of her skin, that smile still hovering on his lips, those thumbs still teasing in agonizing arcs.

She huffed. “I love you,” she said, offering it like a defeated general offered a sword. “I love you so much, it’s stupid and reckless and awful. Now take your shirt off before I die.”

He did. He grinned and he retreated, relishing in his own victory.

He took all of his clothes off, and he did it slowly. He let her watch. He let her hunger, piece by revealed piece of his extraordinary body. And then he was over her again and there was nothing left between them, not declarations, not uncertainties, and certainly not clothing.

“Please,” she breathed, sliding her bare legs along his, her lips grazing the warm curve of his throat. “Joe.”

He met her eyes. He groaned. He gave.

He always gave, didn’t he? But this time he gave and took all at once.

This time it was equal giving and equal taking and perfection in every facet.

This time he filled her, he took her, he claimed.

He accepted what he was owed, what he had earned, every time he slowly, deliberately, pushed himself inside her.

Finally , she would have thought, could her mind form words. Finally, he is fully mine. Finally we are one thing, one desperate, aching thing.

She fell back on the pillows, allowing herself to be towered over and taken. She enjoyed it. She surrendered to it. She watched.

He had never been so beautiful, so devastating, so undeniably desirable. He watched her back; he enjoyed every stroking claim, every collision of their wanting, every debt of the long, long pain that comes from the intersection of desire and distance.

She clung to him, rising up to meet him where he was, claiming his mouth, touching his hair, tasting his tongue.

She could taste in him all the things that made him whole, the sea salt of his journey and earthen core of his origins, the heat he restrained and the cool balance he offered. He tasted of himself, Ember thought, and nothing had ever been more intoxicating.

She hooked her legs over his, planting her feet in the mattress, and met him at every wave, at every motion of it. She told him again, two times, three times, “I love you.” She told him until he could not doubt it ever again. She told him and she told herself, “I love you.”

The shutter of his lashes, the delicate beading of sweat on his brow, the flex of his muscles as it happened—all of these things and none of them overwhelmed her. She watched, but more than that, she saw. She saw him.

And it was the seeing that sent her in a final gasping crash over that very edge she’d once feared so very much, steeper than the tallest cliff at Blackcove and deeper than the very sea floor.

She went willingly and dragged him along with her, her hands consuming every available inch of his warm, golden skin.

When he fell, she caught him. She caught him and bore him all the way back to earth. She wrapped him in her arms and realized with a sparkling wonder that she’d never have to let him go.

He’d be in her arms forever.