Page 35

The taste and smell of him overwhelmed her, rich with the dark warmth of brandy, laced with the spice of his cologne. He lifted his mouth, stopping, and the sound of frustration that snuck from her parted lips sounded… embarrassingly wanton.

Peregrine pulled back enough to meet her gaze, his eyes half-lidded like a cat basking in the sunshine.

Seeing her dazed, flushed expression, he chuckled softly, rubbing the last of the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.

“I meant to distract you with a kiss, but I wasn’t quite expecting you to look that surprised. ”

She had to clear her throat to find her voice. “I, er, wasn’t expecting you to distract me so thoroughly,” she said wryly. “Or so pleasantly.”

“Consider it retribution for the state you had me in last night,” he murmured teasingly, pressing his nose again briefly to her throat in search of the scent at her pulse point. “You played such an unfair game that stealing this kiss was almost all I could think about.”

This last was said with a smile that took her breath away.

Not because he was beautiful to her—even though right now, he was.

But because that smile felt like she had won the rarest of prizes.

She could not remember ever having seen such a look of genuine, contented happiness on his face. And it was directed at her.

In spite of everything , her thoughts whispered, turning sad, this was the Peregrine he always should have been.

He pressed a kiss to the furrow of worry forming between her brows.

Feeling shockingly daring, Charity grabbed his hair to pull him back to her mouth, wanting to feel the sensation again.

Peregrine let out a low groan as he complied.

Then his lips wandered a taunting path of devastation to her ear, where he nipped at the delicate skin with his teeth and sucked gently on the lobe.

She shivered, awed by the sheer pleasure such a touch could engender. Was this what it could really be like when two people were fond of one another? She never imagined it could be this… consuming.

But then he released her ear with a sigh of resignation, stiffening beneath her hands with resolution. “We should stop this now, before it goes any further,” his voice was quiet.

Charity didn’t want to. “But why?”

His eyes closed. “Because you deserve better than what I am. Perhaps you were right, Charity. We are cursed and have been from the very start. Things are not nearly done between my mother and me. It is my fault that you’ve been caught on the battlefield, and I will do whatever is in my power to see that you survive it.

” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I do not want to be one of the things you look back on one day with regret.”

Madness. She could not imagine regretting this. “You won’t be,” she whispered. “I would never.”

“You can’t be certain,” he said softly. “Not when you don’t know the truth of what I really am.”

His breath hitched. “I am not a good man, Sparkles. You may forgive that my mother’s business made me hurt people. But I have done so much worse.”

She studied him, unflinching. He may have hurt others, but he was the one who had suffered for it. And suddenly she guessed what Marian Fitzroy might have done to clip the falcon’s wings. “She made you kill someone innocent. Is that it?”

His throat bobbed. “Oh, yes. She put the poison in my hand and sent me to her enemy, ignorant and unaware. And after I discovered what had happened, I did nothing. I didn’t go to the authorities and name her for what she was. Because she told me if I did, she would ruin Lark, and me, too.”

Marian had yoked him into doing terrible things by threatening his sister.

And suddenly, all of Perry’s attempts to push Charity away, the things he said and did, made a perfect, tragic sort of sense.

His feelings made him exploitable by someone like his mother, who likely didn’t feel anything at all, and he had learned this lesson the hardest way.

But he couldn’t help wanting to feel something, sometime, even when it wasn’t safe to.

“She is the one who did something monstrous, Perry,” Charity said evenly. “Do not hold yourself in such contempt when she is the one who put you and your sister into an unbearable position.”

Peregrine gave her a chiding look. “No. It was the wrong decision.”

“You believe the right decision would’ve been to sacrifice yourself and admit to murder.” Her eyes burned. “And what then? Lark was a child. You are not a man who would condemn his sister to a lifetime of ruin. She would pay a price, and you would have gone to prison. Perhaps to hang.”

He gave her a small, ironic smile. “There was always a blood price that would have had to be paid, and it should have been paid by my family only. She would have been ruined, yes. But she’d be safer.

It is not a perfect solution, but my mother’s evil would have been stopped.

No one else would have had to bleed. That would have been the right choice, in retrospect, and not the coward’s one. ”

Now he carried the guilt for that choice. For every act that his mother had committed since, he felt the blame was on his head.

But Charity could see clearly where his hindsight did not. Peregrine didn’t know for certain that he would have been able to stop his mother’s depredations. Marian might have eluded justice by throwing the blame on him. Or perhaps she would simply have killed him, the way she was trying now.

“Maybe others would condemn you. But I cannot. You survived,” she said, slowly. “You endured something impossible, and you chose to keep your sister safe. That isn’t cowardice. It’s… love. ”

Something about that word broke him, and he glanced away, blinking moisture from the corners of his eyes. “It astonishes me that you can look at me and still see something respectable. It makes me wish I were a better man.”

“You already are.” She laid her hand upon his chest, trying to bring comfort.

“You want to set things right, and that is worth everything to me. Oh, sometimes you are vexing and obnoxious, and you refuse to give me the respect I am due as a woman of superior station,” she said archly, unable to keep her face entirely straight.

“But you have also shown me your courage and integrity so many times. And—” her voice broke off at what she saw in his eyes.

A bottomless hunger for… something she couldn’t quite name.

Reassurance, perhaps, that there was something worthy in him.

It nearly broke her heart. “And you haven’t broken into my bedroom in weeks,” she continued lightly. “Surely that is worth something.”

As she hoped, that made him laugh, though it sounded a little pained.

He lifted his hand to rest on top of hers, letting their fingers twine together, and the expression on his face was both wicked and soft.

“I want you so badly, Charity. And it feels like I have so little to offer you—except chaos. That I seem to have in abundance.”

She felt a smile growing on her face. “I will own, when we were at odds, my life seemed very dull without your chaos. Perhaps…” Her face warmed as she tried to figure out how to ask for what she wanted. “Perhaps you might be able to teach me how to enjoy… it?”

His free arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her tight against him, his breath coming faster. “Be certain, Charity. Nothing will destroy me more than you waking up tomorrow wishing it had never happened.”

“I want this,” she told him, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “I want you . And no further promises are required than that.”

She was shocked at her audacity, but Charity was tired of regretting her lack of bravery.

Of regretting her fear of speaking up, or choosing a different path.

Peregrine regretted the things he had done; Charity had so many regrets for the things she hadn’t.

If this was the only moment she could have with him, she did not want to waste it.

“Please, Perry,” she whispered, letting her body yield against him.

It was her quiet plea that broke through the final barriers. He brought her hand to his mouth, kissing her knuckles with parted lips and a teasing tongue, and then turning it over to brush his lips over her wrist. She shivered, filled with wonder at how such a soft touch could seem so intimate.

Encouraged, he nipped at the sensitive skin, his eyes holding hers with a question.

“More,” she answered again.

He tugged her fully against him, pinning her to his chest as his hands began to explore, sliding from the nape of her neck down the curve of her spine, and then to grip her hips as he captured her mouth in another deep kiss.

Moaning her encouragement into his mouth, she let her own palms sweep the planes of his shoulders and chest.

Abruptly, he pulled back from the kiss, but the smile on his face told her he was not finished.

Lifting his hands, he quickly began to pluck her hair pins out, tossing each one to rain upon the floor around them.

She laughed, because she already knew how much he adored her hair, and then sighed as his fingers plunged into the loosened fall, massaging the small bones of her neck and skull in a way that felt sinfully decadent.

“That look, yes, that one ,” he informed her as she looked up at him through her lashes, letting him support her weight as he continued his devastating ministrations, “is going to haunt my dreams, Sparkles.”

As if she was going to be able to forget this herself. Especially when his hands returned to knead at her hips, pooling fabric around her waist and causing the hem of her skirts to slide upwards, baring her legs to the air.

Her brief, ceremonial wedding night hadn’t even been a shadow of what she now felt burning through her veins. Obligation, not desire. Duty, not fire. She had thought herself incapable of wanting, of craving, of aching for touch. She had thought herself beyond such things.

But here, now, with Peregrine Fitzroy—the man she had once believed forever out of reach, too sharp, too dangerous —she was falling to pieces.

Every whispered breath, every grazing brush of his lips sent tremors through her, as if her body were awakening to something it had been denied and would leave her forever starving for another taste of it.

He waited, his breath ragged, his eyes darkened with desire. For a moment they hovered there, trembling on the edge, neither quite daring to cross.

She saw the question flicker again in his eyes. Shall I stop?

Her hand slid up along the line of his jaw, thumb brushing the faint stubble at his cheek. “Don’t stop, Perry,” she whispered.

He exhaled sharply, as if that single word broke whatever tether had held him in check.

With a soft groan, he enclosed her in his arms, holding her so tightly she could scarcely breathe.

A startled laugh bubbled in her throat, half-sob, half-joy, as she buried her face against his neck, feeling his pulse race beneath her lips.

She could not believe this was happening. That it was real . That in this moment, after everything, they had found their way to each other .

“Tell me what you want, Sparkles,” he whispered, trailing his fingers down her spine.

“I—I don’t know. I don’t even know the words to ask,” she stuttered, a lifetime of propriety tying her tongue in knots.

“If you trust me, I will teach you how to ask. Whatever you want. This night, I give to you.”

“I trust you,” she whispered. “Teach me how I should have had the courage to make a different choice a year ago.”

Without a word, he swooped her up against his chest. He carried her from the firelit room, his footfalls steady and sure, and very quickly, the rest of the world fell away.