Isabel’s direct, green eyes locked onto his, searching him, seeing into him, down to his shameful, rotten core, he was sure of it.
“And yet”—she took one step, then another, and another—“here you are. In England. At your father’s estate. Sharing the same air as your daughter.”
As she closed the distance between them, Percy felt the change in his body, its reaction to her. The rush of his blood. The coil of his muscles. The race of his heart.
“You arehere, doing the hard work.”
Percy wanted to break from her gaze, at the grace she offered, but he couldn’t. By increments, she continued moving toward him, slowly as one would with a feral animal, and, with each step she took, her power over him increased.
“Last night,” she said, “I noticed that you and Lucy were different with one another.”
“Aye, we—” He was having a difficult time getting the word out. “We’ve reconciled, or have started, at least.”
Closer, Isabel stepped, now not five feet from him. “And how does it make you feel?”
He understood what she wanted him to say. That he feltright. That it was the first time in over a decade that he’d felt so. He turned away from the thought, not ready to accept her absolution. “How I feel about it is of no consequence. Only Lucy has that right.”
“Sometimes,” Isabel began, “we must make a choice in the space between one moment and the next. Just a tiny lick of time that will decide all the moments to follow.”
She was speaking of him, but also of herself. This woman had experience with such moments. Still, a hard truth must be spoken. “The consequences don’t have much care for the cause. Not a dozen years later.”
“Here’s what I know about the consequences of your time on the Continent. You became more than a useful man, you became agoodman. I don’t think many people know that about you.”
Percy scoffed. “When I returned to England, I still couldn’t face it. I saw Montfort embraced by Society, even by my family, and I burned for revenge. That is what brought me to Number 9 and all those other hells. The Savior of St. Giles wasn’t there to save society from its sins of the flesh and gaming. It was to expose Montfort for the fraud he is, which made it all the easier for me to ignore the fraud I am.”
“You are not a fraud,” Isabel insisted. “You are a good man.”
“Shall I give you a detailed account of the acts I committed for Crown and Country? Of myusefulwork? Of my sins? Will you be my confessor?”
Only a few feet of dusty floorboards lay between him and her. Her face tilted up so she could hold his gaze. It was all he could do not to stroke his finger along the line of her jaw.
“You don’t need a confessor,” she said, her soft, intimate contralto pouring into him. “You need something else.”
“What?” The question emerged raw and vulnerable, unable to mask the feeling that stirred inside him.
“You need to be touchedhere”—her finger traced the scar along his right cheekbone—“andhere.” She pushed the fabric of his shirt wide and touched, one by one, the scars scattered across his skin.
She inched her body closer, so close her breath pulsed against his neck in short, warm bursts. Percy’s own breath caught in his chest, and his hands remained empty and still at his sides. All he wanted was to fill them with this woman, her sweet, lush curves, her dark, silky hair,her. To do so, to slip into the stream of this desire was both dangerous and utter folly, but when had those considerations ever stopped him?
She rose to her toes and touched her mouth to the cup of his ear. “What you’re in need of Lord Percival Bretagne, is tenderness.”
“Isabel,” Percy began, because he must, “is this wise?”
He heard the breath catch in her throat. His heart banged out three hard thuds. She pulled back far enough to meet his eye. “No.”
If a no was ever a yes, hers was.
That instant, Percy was lost, come what may.
“Youare my addiction, Isabel.”
~ ~ ~
Oh, the way his words transformed feeling into physical sensation, from her fingertips to her toes to her sex to the very center of her heart.
She pressed her palm against his chest, and he moved with her when she pushed. She met him step for step, until the back of his legs reached the bed in the corner. She tugged his shirt from his trousers and lifted.
Here, he stood before her, muscular and gorgeous in the muted light. A fine dusting of hair spread across his bare chest, narrowing at the segmented muscles of his stomach, disappearing below the waistband of his trousers, his hard manhood straining against the cloth. Heat flushed through her at the sight, at her power over this man.
