Finding that a torpor also called to him, Gabriel lifted her and took her to bed, pulling the remaining covers over her body.
“Stay?” she murmured, her eyes already closed as if she knew as well as he did that he couldn’t deny her.
All he wanted was to sleep with her, but something about it almost felt too much.
Too intimate.
More permanent and unretractable even, than what they’d just done.
Lifting the covers, he slid into the bed beside her, gathering her close as she turned to curl into his body.
In seconds, her breath had steadied, and her lashes had begun to flutter with dreams.
Gabriel’s heart wouldn’t allow him to sleep for a long time. It beat a tattoo against his chest, four syllables at a time. Her name.
Felicity.
Happiness. Joy. Completion.
Never had a name been so perfect.
Chapter 15
Felicity would have loved nothing more than to spend the rest of the day in bed with Gabriel, discovering what his broad body looked like when the drapes were thrown open to the daylight.
Against the snow-white cloud of her bed, he was surely a wicked, colorful mélange of ink and flesh and muscle and sex.
But, alas, Mercy had pounded on her door just after dawn— demanding to know why it was locked— and then harassed her into meeting them downstairs for breakfast.
They’d an attempted-murderer to catch, after all.
Felicity might have rolled out of bed, if Gabriel hadn’t caught her first, pulling her bottom back against his hips.
She gasped as his erection throbbed against the cleft, then moaned as his lips found her ear and nibbled it.
Responding instantly, she rolled her hips, delighted when his cock slid between her thighs from behind.
Filthy French words spilled from his sleep-husked voice as his hand glided around to cup her breasts before angling down her belly to delve into her slit.
Lifting her leg for him to gain access, Felicity covered her mouth and bit down on her palm as he simultaneously slid into her from behind and worked damp circles around the hood of her sex with his clever fingers.
Her climax was less a climb to the stars as it was an explosion of them, and she had to bite the pad of her palm in order to not scream the house down now that it was awake.
As her clenching spasms began to abate, he quickened his strokes, the hand in her hair curling into a fist as he pulled out of her body and thrust between her thighs lubricated by the slick jets of his release.
He barely took the time to regain any breath before he left for the basin and returned with a damp cloth.
It was this thoughtfulness that made her care for him so. How strange, for a man so adverse to being vulnerable, who hid himself from everyone, to walk naked in her room with the prowling confidence of a rutting stag.
She liked it.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” he said once she’d been administered to.
“What’s that?” Sitting up, she nuzzled into his neck.
“Your sister is the worst.”
She giggled at his mock-aggrieved expression, playfully pushing him out of her bed with a shove of her foot.
“Better you go and dress in your own chamber, before Mrs. Pickering finds you in here and forces you to make an honest woman of me.”
She’d said it in jest, but their gazes crashed together for an uneasy moment. Her words landing on the floor in a heap of disorganized chaos between them.
They’d never spoken of the future.
Swallowing, Felicity was the first to give into her cowardice. “I-I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“Of course.”
They didn’t look at each other as he gathered his clothing and left.
Felicity was hoping the awkwardness between them would dispel by breakfast, but it hung above them like a sword through the meal. And then in the carriage after, when they went to the offices of George C. White, Esquire, to question her father’s solicitor.
Finding the offices suspiciously vacant, they followed a strange and complicated trail through the city, finally determining that Mr. White had left the country for an indeterminate amount of time.
It was well into the afternoon by then, and they all decided to return to Cresthaven for luncheon to plot their next move.
“Actually,” Mercy said as the carriage pulled into the courtyard. “I have a friend through the Eddard Sharpe Society of Homicidal Mystery Analysis who might know how to find this Marco Villanueve. He’s always talking about his contacts in the smuggling world.” She reached out and squeezed Felicity’s knee through