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A lice sank into the sensation of Sinjin’s soft, insistent lips pressed to hers.

The chill from the night air fled as if chased by hounds.

She slid her arms around him and drew him against her body.

No fireplace or stove had ever warmed her the way he did.

Shock, astonishment, and a fiery curiosity sped through her.

He clasped her face between his hands and tilted her head to deepen their kiss.

He flicked the tip of his tongue along the seam of her mouth, which tickled.

When laughter escaped in a little burst, he swept his tongue inside and caressed her tongue with his.

She gasped but immediately set to exploring his mouth and matching the sensuous undulating of his tongue with her own.

Her breath caught, and her chest rose and fell against his, brushing her sensitive breasts against the surprising hardness of his muscled body.

She’d never really thought of Sinjin as being solid and strong.

He’d swept her into his arms and carried her to the carriage without breaking stride, without a change in his breathing.

He slid his hands down the sides of her neck and across her shoulders beneath her cloak.

When he reached the sides of her breasts he stopped as if waiting for something.

She shifted from her seat until she was practically sprawled on top of him and he lay half across the forward-facing bench.

Sinjin cupped her breasts and stroked his thumbs across her silk-covered nipples.

The friction of the fabric on her most sensitive flesh sent a shaft of shivery heat down her body to settle in an aching pulse between her legs.

“Sinjin,” she moaned softly as she sifted her fingers through his hair.

He stilled and gasped as he lifted his mouth from hers and glanced down to where his hands held her breasts.

Slowly he sat up and moved her back onto her side of the seat.

As an afterthought, if his startled expression was any indication, he snatched her hands back and rested them on his thighs.

His action drew her eyes to his fitted silk evening breeches where a distinct bulge appeared.

“Alice, I—” He scrubbed his hands over his face, a sign she recognized from the long years of their friendship. Friendship. In this moment she felt something very different for Sinjin Perriton, very different. She pressed her fingers to his lips.

“Hush. Don’t you dare apologize. That was the most wonderful kiss I’ve ever had.”

His eyes flashed. “How many kisses have you had?”

Was he jealous? Sinjin? How…incredibly singular.

“Ravenwood kissed me a few times,” she replied in her most innocent tone.

“Well.” He huffed as he sat back in his seat. “You shot him, so I suspect his kisses were not the best.” He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised.

She laughed. “Nothing compared to yours, you have my word.”

“Hmmm.” He continued to gaze at her. In the dim light she could not see exactly what shade of blue his eyes were. She’d learned early in their friendship to tell his mood by the color of his eyes, an incongruous, changeable blue with his rich brown hair. “Alice, we need to talk about…this.”

“This?” She felt her stomach drop suddenly. The idea of actually voicing her change in feelings for him terrified her. She wasn’t ready. She certainly didn’t want to know what his feelings were. Not now.

“This kiss. The way we feel about each other.” He’d grown so serious, like he was when he explained one of his experiments. She didn’t want to be an experiment. Did she?

“I’d much rather discuss our next adventure.” She kept her tone light and flippant. “We have plenty of time to discuss the other. You devised three ideas to humiliate my tormenters. The first two have worked a treat. What about the third one?”

“The third what?” He looked so young and dear when he was confused.

“Plan, Sinjin. You dictated three plans of attack for Stanton, Earden, and Weatherly. I know because I recorded them in your journal. We have used the first two. Now we need to decide when to put the third plan into play.”

“Alice.” He took her hand between his and turned to face her.

“It is enough. What we have done so far is enough. I doubt they will show their faces in good company for the rest of the Season. The prints in windows and the story in the news sheets alone will keep them hiding behind closed doors for weeks. You’ve done it.

You’ve taken your revenge. Even got a bit on Millicent Rutherford in the bargain.

She is likely packing to flee to Hampshire as we speak.

” He patted her hand and raised up to knock on the roof of the carriage.

“Berkeley Square, John, if you please.”

“Yes, Mister Perriton,” the coachman called from the coachman’s bench. In a few minutes the carriage turned onto Park Lane in the direction of the Duke of Chelmsford’s Berkeley Square home.

He had made up his mind, of that Alice was certain.

His open, level gaze and the way he sat back, resting against the luxurious squabs of his brother’s carriage, meant she would have to figure out a way around him.

“I suppose you are correct,” she said with an exaggerated sigh.

“I have had my revenge and it was quite the feat if I do say so myself.” She sat back and covered his hand with hers.

He chuckled. “As I said, I would not want to be on the wrong side of you and Miss Olivia Jones. I do not think I shall ever remove the memory from my mind’s eye, of Weatherly, bare-arsed and covered in shite lying at the feet of Lady Jersey.”

“Nor I to be sure. We have had quite the evening, have we not?” She turned her head to meet his gaze. He was staring at her in such a way she forgot to breathe.

“Yes,” he said. “We have. Alice, I must tell you—” The carriage rocked to a halt and tilted slightly as the coachman climbed down to open the door.

“Here we are, Lady Alice,” John Coachman said as he offered her his hand to help her descend from the carriage.

“Thank you, John.” She fairly leapt from the conveyance to the pavement in front of her Uncle Percy’s townhouse.

Sinjin opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

“Good evening, Mister Perriton, and thank you for a most entertaining night.” She winked and hurried to the already open door where Uncle Percy’s butler waited.

As badly as she wanted to look back at Sinjin she did not.

Her heart ached at his last bewildered expression.

Just one more, she told herself as she climbed the stairs to her chambers.

One more act of revenge, and then she would be brave enough to dare to tell Sinjin her feelings for him had begun to change.

His friendship was the most important of her life, and she dared not risk losing that friendship should he not feel the same way she suspected she was feeling. She’d sort everything out tomorrow.

“Well,” Nell said once Alice had entered her chambers and closed the door behind her. “Tell me everything. Tell me what happened while I was hiding up here, pretending I was gone to chaperone you at Almack’s.”

Alice tossed her reticule onto her bed and dropped into her chair before the fire. “It was so delicious I don’t know where to begin.” And she was determined the next punishment she rained down on those three gentlemen would be more spectacular still, no matter what Sinjin said.

A lice and Sinjin had taken a few days’ rest from the mad whirl that was the London Season.

She had many reasons for the respite. After a good night’s sleep, she was even more confused by her passionate interlude with him.

She made every effort to sort her feelings and had failed miserably.

Once the Season ended, she’d fully intended to take the money Uncle Percy had promised and set up her own household, perhaps in Bath or Brighton.

In spite of her memorable revenges on Stanton, Earden, and Weatherly, London held no allure for her.

Too many bad memories and too many people who continued to snub her or insult her behind her back.

Her father was still the Outcast Earl, moldering away on his Surrey estate likely never to venture into good society ever again.

He’d driven her mother to suicide and had tried to blackmail Sinjin’s sister, now married to Alice’s Uncle Daedalus, into marrying him.

The scandal had died somewhat, but not the desire of certain people to continue to remind Alice at every opportunity.

The fact Viscount Ravenwood deserved to be shot for his crimes against women mattered very little to Society.

He was a favored son, related to many of the highest-ranking families in the peerage.

His exile to the Continent did not sit well with them.

And Alice had been the frumpy, spotty daughter of a man who saw her as a commodity to be sold, with little value otherwise.

Much of her life had changed since she’d been taken in by her uncle, the powerful Duke of Chelmsford, and his intimidating wife, Captain El Goodrum.

However, her past remained like a cloud floating in and out of the sky—sometimes nearly invisible and sometimes dark and foreboding.

The most pressing reason she had eschewed the past few nights’ entertainments and Sinjin’s escort was to clear her head about two vital subjects.

What did the change in her feelings for him mean for her plans for the future?

And what would her decision be in regard to her final act of revenge?

As the first subject made her head spin, her heart ache, and everything she’d ever thought about her life and her friendship with Sinjin run together like watercolors in the rain, she’d devoted her few days away from him to consider his admonishment to let her first two acts of revenge suffice.