Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,46
a hand to his chest in false affront. “Me? Are you saying I arranged for that pair to be taking their pleasure, love?”
“I’m saying that you knew…” She kept her gaze trained forward and her legs moving in that same direction. “You knew that those… sounds were because that man and woman were…”
Faye continued ahead, but Tynan caught her lightly by the arm and steered her in the direction they needed to be traveling. “The man and woman were…?” he prodded, unforgivably delighting in baiting her. It was just too much fun. And too easy.
“Making love,” she snapped.
He brought them to a stop, and the lady shoved back her hood enough to allow him an unvarnished view of the icy rage in her eyes. If ever a glare could set fire to the winter cold that had snatched hold of London, this was the one.
“Aye, I knew, Faye,” he confirmed. “But you, however, thought you knew something more… something else.” Just as she thought she knew something more with this foolish—and dangerous—undertaking she’d come to him with. He ran a finger around full lips that formed a lush pout. “And they weren’t making love, Faye.” That flesh trembled. Because of his touch? Or because of his words? “That was nothing more than sex,” he said bluntly, letting his arm fall. “That’s all it ever it is when a man and woman fuck.”
“That is crude of you, Mr. Wylie.”
“That is truthful of me.”
“Well, then that would certainly be a first from you.” She wielded those words like a rapier.
She undoubtedly meant them as an insult, and yet, with that handful of words, she rose several levels in his estimation.
While they walked, Tynan lowered his voice. “You think you’re ready to see life in all its ugliest forms, Faye,” he said with a directness the lady desperately needed. “You don’t know anything about these streets. You don’t know how the people live or what life is like. And that is only dangerous for you.”
He stopped.
“We’re here,” he said as she came to stand at his shoulder before the ramshackle clay dwellings of St. Pancras. The buildings sat next to an open sewer that flooded the streets with the pungent scents of feces and rot. So crude as to be missing foundations and constructed of brick a third the size of that stone, the clay structures had already begun crumbling, showing not only the shoddiness of their construction, but the limited remaining life of each dwelling.
Gagging slightly, Faye fetched a kerchief from the pocket of her cloak and pressed it to her nose.
When she caught his pointed gaze, she hurriedly stuffed that article inside her pocket and swiftly averted her attention back to the hovel.
“Change your mind, kitten?”
Had she changed her mind?
She wanted to.
The moment she’d discovered those cries weren’t those of one in peril, but a couple making love, she’d wanted to turn tail and run.
Nay, that wasn’t altogether correct. It had been the moment Tynan had whispered like Satan in her ear, tempting her with that most forbidden of fruits.
Her desire to leave hadn’t been because of fear or even shame at her body’s stirring response to what she’d witnessed, but rather the knowing glimmer that had lit Tynan’s opaque gaze and the slightly mocking grin on his lips, all of which had said he knew precisely what she’d felt as she watched the strangers mating like animals against that wall. He’d sensed her intrigue, and worse… the desire that had left a dull, heavy ache between her thighs and a shameful dampness that sprang from her own yearning.
Aye, she did play with the forbidden in being here with him in the Rookeries… just in ways she’d never foreseen.
But no, despite his insistence that she abandon her work and despite the state of the streets around her, Faye was fully committed to her undertaking.
Lifting her chin in defiance of his wishes and opinion of her, Faye stepped forward and knocked on the door.
Even with the lightness of that rap, the flimsy wood rattled, its position within the entryway precarious.
And while she stood there in wait, she was aware of Tynan falling back behind her. For one horrifying moment, she thought he intended to leave her. And in that split second, she found herself confronting the truth that she wasn’t as brave as she’d touted. That she didn’t want to be alone here. And for reasons she couldn’t fathom, she felt better with him near.