Page 28 of The Hellion is Tamed
Simon burrowed his hand in his coat pocket, coming out with the swish stone.Herswish stone.Herman. Its ferocious radiance had eased to a faint flicker. Nothing like the blaze when she held it. Or when they’d kissed. He rolled the gem between his palms in what she could see was his way of calming himself. She felt the urge to protect—the stoneandthe man. Insanity, all of it. When neither was hers to safeguard. “When he touches you…” He swallowed, his jaw flexing.
“One brush of his pinkie, and it’s like I took a punch to the jaw. Lights out. He casts a spell. Sounds like something from a penny novel, but it’s the only way I can describe it.”
“Neveragain,” Simon said in a rough snarl, bouncing the stone between his hands. “The League is protecting you now.”
Emma felt resentment stir. If he thought… “Hewillfind me again. Your precious League or no. He always does. He travels time as well as I do, which is, not perfectly. But he travels. And he’ll try to bring me back. This is my fight. It always has been. I think he even wants me to help him. Becoming a jailer, like he is. I’ll die first.” She laughed cruelly and yanked ruined silk to her neck.What the hell. Tell him.“I might have let it be your fight. Before. I cameback, Simon.”
He halted, the stone falling still in his hands. Tilting his head in bewilderment, he asked, “You mean you made it? To Oxfordshire? You found me?”
The scene she’d stepped into in that garish bedchamber rushed into Emma’s mind in full, bleeding color. She growled and stomped past him, across the room and out the door she flung open.
“Wait,” he shouted, his long-legged stride quickly catching him up to her. “I’m missing something here. Which, when dealing with women, isn’t unusual. You’re furious. You’ve been furious since I dragged you to 1882, and I don’t know why. When I’m the one”—he thumped the hand holding the swish stone against his chest, crimson sparks spattering the wall—“who should be. You never told me, we never spoke, but you said that you were coming back with your eyes. I didn’t have anyone else, Emma, to talk to, except people long gone and a pack of overprotective brothers. No one who understood what it was like coming from where we’d come from, being connected to such a cheerless life and stillyearningfor it. Because I could see you had, and you did. Ineededthat.”
I needed you, he could have said but didn’t dare.
She hauled the neckline of her gown to her chin and halted at the end of the hallway, wrinkled silk fisted in her hand. Lifting her arm, she rapped on the scarred walnut door leading to the alley. Three times, quick and hard, like he had the first time. Two knocks came back. Emma slanted Simon a heated look and repeated with one.
Mackey opened the door, his grin rising when he saw who stood on the other side. “I thought those blows sounded right feeble. But you got the cadence best as a judge, darlin’. A crafty one, you are. I can see why you’ve been loafing ‘round.”
“We meet again,” Emma said, throwing out a curtsey she hoped Simon could see was elegant enough to please a queen. Unfortunately, she was a fast learner of waltzes, curtseysandcyphers allowing women in and out of back entrances of gaming hells. The duchess had her bending and scraping until she’d declared the effort perfect, and Emma’s knees ached.
But, by God, she was going to fool themall.
“Meet again, we do.” Mackey tipped his bowler hat and bowed, not bad form for a ruffian, if Emma were asked to assess. Which, of course, she’d never be asked to do. “Same chit twice in one week. A record for our boy. I fear you got him by the short—”
“Mackey,” Simon snapped, “round up the carriage if you please.”
Emma snorted softly and descended four stairs to the grimy cobblestones. “Quite haughty for one from St Giles, isn’t he, Mackey? Polishes up nicely, though, I must admit.”
One of Mackey’s shaggy eyebrows rose until it slipped beneath the shadow of his hat brim. “Tragic place. Where the Great Plague started, first poor victims buried in the churchyard of St Giles-in-the-Fields.” Tapping his muddy boot on the cobbles, he gave his employer a painstaking examination, as if this information provided a connection he hadn’t anticipated having. “Me auntie comes from over that way. Grape Street, right horror of a lodging, but she’ll leave when she kicks and not a moment before. Stalwart, like most of the females in my family. Blast, likemostfemales.” Seeing the conversation was going no further, Mackey tipped his hat and hustled away, gesturing for the carriage they kept parked at the corner.
When the silence began to chafe, Simon took the stairs with a hop and landed beside her, blowing out an exasperated breath. “Are you going to tell me what has your knickers in a twist?”
“I want the swish stone back,” she answered without glancing at him. If she did, with that kiss swirling in her belly, filling her chest with what felt like flaming cotton, it was going to end with her pressing him against the gritty brick and begging to have another go. She covered it well, but her knees quivered, her hands trembled. Her lips stung. Her thighs burned.
And between her thighs…
She’d never felt more like a vulnerable female, a desirable woman. Regrettably, she wasn’t sure she liked it.
“Give it back? No ma’am. I’m not applauding bad behavior.”
Blood bubbling from the emotional mix—resentment, longing, helplessness—Simon created in her, Emma presented her back, turning to watch the Blue Moon’s carriage, that after circling the block, rolled down the alley on its journey to retrieve her.
“We make a deal, here, now, in this splash of misty moonlight, Miss Breslin. If you comply, I’ll consider giving it back at the ball. Not one bloody trick between now and then, not even traveling from the breakfast room to the duke’s garden unless youwalk. The next time you think of placing yourself in danger, don’t do it under my watch.” From the corner of her eye, she saw him pat his pocket, the Soul Catcher’s glow evident beneath the soft linen of his coat.
There had been others parts of him, ones she was desperate to explore, hidden but not well, beneath fabric this evening. Hard as a stone. She kept herself from looking past his waistband to see if this was still true.
“The ball is in ten days. So I won’t see you until then?”
His pause was interminable, his boots scraping stone as he shifted from one foot to the other. “After that kiss, a little distance might be for the best,” he finally said, his words as tentative as the fog. “The sensible avenue to take.”
Sensible? She didn’t want sensible. She never had. Not with him.
Instead, she wagged her head, her gown drooping, the corset’s sharp edge digging into her breast. Her nipples were still rigid as pebbles, she’d love to tell the toad. “Nothing to it. Forget it ever happened.”
“Done,” he whispered, pretty as you please.
The carriage halted before them, Mackey out like a shot, yanking down the stairs and gesturing grandly for her to make her way inside. “My lady. Yer chariot awaits.”