The hackney with their pursuers was disappearing into the murk at the end of the street.

They were safe.

Registering Deliah’s silence, he looked back at her. Despite the shadows, he fell into the dark pools of her wide, stunned eyes. He felt the quick rise and fall of her breasts, mashed against his chest. Saw her lips, lush and ripe, full and parted in the poor light. Beckoning.

He saw the tip of her tongue glide over her lower lip, making the lusciousness glisten.

He didn’t need to kiss her again, yet he did.

It wasn’t a simple kiss but one fueled by anger, and relief. And by something he didn’t understand-that something she and only she evoked, and set pounding in his blood.

Her lips had been parted; he filled her mouth, stole her breath, then gave it back. Deliberately lingered, tasted, explored.

He tightened his fingers on hers, kept their hands safely locked, arms down, even though every instinct pushed him to free his hands and seize her, hold her, bring her close-much closer.

He wanted her, and that want was open, undisguised, there in every bold stroke of his tongue, in the demanding pressure of his lips on hers. In the hard ridge that pressed against her belly. Deliah had no difficulty reading his desire, recognizing it-along with the response that raced through her, hot, instinctive, and strong.

She wanted him, and that was dangerous.

Dangerous with a capital D.

Yet she couldn’t back away, pull back-end this unwise kiss. Because she didn’t want to. Because there was, it seemed, no force within her powerful enough to counter the pull of it, and him.

Once again, Del found himself in the unaccustomed position of having to force himself to end a kiss-a kiss that promised so much more, that left him aching and hungry for much more. A “more” he now was certain he could have, but while this, it seemed, was the right time, it absolutely wasn’t the right place.

Drawing back from the exchange, limited though it had been, was hard enough. Lifting his head, he looked down into her face, at the lashes that fluttered, then lifted, revealing eyes clouded with rising passion. Her lips were lightly swollen, sheening from his kiss.

Stepping back was much harder, losing the elementally feminine cushion of her curves, an evocative softness that had cradled his hard frame. Easing back, subduing his rising clawing need, took more effort than he’d imagined, but he finally moved back, then, releasing one of her hands, he turned and stepped out of the alcove.

After checking they were indeed safe, he drew her out, too, without a word led her to the nearest hackney, opened the door, and helped her in. He looked up at the jarvey. “Grillon’s.”

Climbing in, he shut the carriage door and dropped onto the seat beside her.


He didn’t say a single word on their journey back to Grillon’s-and neither did she.

By the time the hackney pulled up outside the hotel, Deliah had recovered her composure, but her pulse was still pounding.

With suppressed anger, and unslaked passion.

She recognized both, and knew which was the safer to address. While she could understand, even without his explanation, why he’d kissed her the first time, she couldn’t explain, and didn’t want to think about, why he’d kissed her again. The second time.

That second, much more thorough time.

Sweeping into the hotel’s foyer, she regally nodded to the clerk behind the desk, then continued without pause up the stairs and down the corridor to the suite.

Del, of course, followed; she heard his heavy footsteps closing in from behind. Reaching the suite, she threw open the door and swept in.

He strode in on her heels and shut the door with force.

Halting, she whirled on him, temper sparking. “Don’t you dare upbraid me for coming to your aid. I’ll do it again in such circumstances.”

“No. You won’t.” Eyes already narrowed, he walked toward her-only halted when he stood directly in front of her with a bare inch between her breasts and his chest, so she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes.

Eyes that snapped with a temper to match hers. “You will never, ever, disobey my orders again. If I tell you to go on, you will-without hesitation.”

She narrowed her eyes back. “No. I won’t. I’m not one of your subordinates you can order around. Whatever the situation, I’ll do as I think best.”

Del felt his jaw lock. He fisted his hands against a nearly overpowering urge to seize her and shake some sense into her. It was a moment before he could trust himself to speak. “If you wish to continue to be a member of this group-to assist in my mission-you will henceforth do exactly as I say.”

One finely drawn dark brow arched. Maddeningly. “Or what?”

He had to stop and think.

When he didn’t immediately answer-not because he couldn’t answer but because, belatedly, wisdom had caught his tongue, and he couldn’t immediately think of a response it would be safe to utter-her eyes, her expression, hardened, and she went on, “I’m not some flunky, or some private who has to jump to do your bidding. What’s more, if you recall, I offered-only this morning-to step away from this enterprise, but you insisted that, having commenced it, I had to see it through to the end. So I am-I will. However, I didn’t agree to transform into the sort of weak-kneed twit with more hair than wit who runs away and leaves you to deal with not one, not two, but three assailants-one armed with a club, another with a knife!”

She flung up her hands. “Why are you even lecturing me about this? We’re here, we’re safe-isn’t that the important thing? Aside from all else, I’m my own person. I’m twenty-nine, for heaven’s sake! I’ve sailed to Jamaica and back, more or less on my own. I’ve been an adult, my responsibility and no one else’s, for a very long time!”

“Which is undoubtedly my problem.” Del tried to shut up, but something-that something-was riding him hard. He met her glare for glare, leveled a finger at her nose. “This habit of yours of putting yourself in danger has got to stop!”

“Me putting myself in danger? Pray tell, who insisted we go to the recital tonight? And yes, I enjoyed it, thank you very much, but taking me there doesn’t give you the right to dictate to me!”

“You’re a female-one in my care. Your parents’ request for me to act as your escort makes you my responsibility.” Lowering his finger, he jabbed it at her sternum. “It’s my job to protect you.”

Her eyes narrowed to flinty shards. “Indeed? Is that what that kiss was about then? The second kiss. Protecting me?”

Deliah heard her voice rise-abruptly remembered the kiss in Madame Latour’s narrow hall, the more recent exchange, and her helpless reactions. She searched his eyes, all dark, hot and heated. Heaven help her, he was infinitely more dangerous to her than any thug.

Luckily, he didn’t know it.

So she could look down her nose and scornfully state, “I am not yours, not in any way-you don’t need to feel responsible for me!”

Fueled by a senseless, witless fury that he’d only kissed her to keep her safe-to continue their roles before the modiste, to stop her making a sound tonight, and even tonight’s second kiss she felt sure he’d have a sensible reason for-she whirled and stalked into her bedroom.

The door had been left ajar. Passing through it, she shoved it closed behind her.

Waited to hear it slam.

It didn’t.

On a stifled gasp she swung around-to see Del, his face like a thundercloud, storming after her.

Fury boiled through her veins. She straightened to her full height, raised one arm and dramatically pointed to the door, opened her mouth to order him out-

He grabbed her pointing hand, jerked her hard against him.

His head swooped.

And he covered her lips with his.

Six

Crushed them. Hauled her into his arms and held her as if he were trying to absorb her into his body.

He kissed her in the same way.

As if he wanted to devour her. To own her, claim her.

Have her.

In every imaginable way.

Deliah sank her hands into his hair and kissed him back. With equal fervor, equal need.

Their wills met and merged in a clash of fire and passion.

Of instant conflagration and fiery need.

The anger that had driven her converted in a heartbeat to something more potent, to a compulsion that thrummed in her blood, that filled her head with dizzying desire, that burgeoned, erupted and swept her on.

Her inner self seized control, and it wanted, needed, yearned.

For more. For this. For what it had been starved of for so long.

He angled his head, ruthlessly, relentlessly deepened the kiss, and she pressed against him, into him, and met him caress for caress.

She remembered this, the heat, the urgency.

Yet this time there were flames and fire, and heady des peration.

Del sensed the same, knew beyond doubt that he ought to stop, that if he’d been wise he’d never have kissed her.

Yet he’d had to.

He had to show her because she refused to see, had to demonstrate unequivocally in the most indisputable way that she was his-his in more ways, deeper ways, than could ever be needed to justify his right to protect her.

He wrenched his mouth from hers. “This is why I need to keep you safe.”

Safe from the Black Cobra. Safe from all danger.

Safe. And his.

She blinked up at him, jade eyes drowning in a glory of passion. Then her grip on his head tightened and she hauled his head down, hauled his lips to hers. Catapulted them both into a blazing inferno.