Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,23

spark igniting in his gaze. “Perhaps you need someone other than the dandies of your class to tame you.”

“Tame me?” His wicked suggestion aroused her, which irritated her in the extreme. “Don’t make me laugh. I cannot abide the whims of any man, be he dandy or dominant. I do not desire to keep a household. I do not want to be known as Lady So-and-so, this man’s wife. I want to be me. My own person.” She paused in her passionate speech, amending it without hesitation. “Except for Felicity, of course. I couldn’t live a life apart from her. We shared a womb. She’s the other half of me. She possesses all the fragility and gentility I do not...and she suffers—”

Suddenly she froze. Realizing she’d revealed more to this man than any other. That she’d been on a tirade that must have dried up any interest he might have had.

And why should that matter?

“Suffers what?” he asked.

“Nothing. You needn’t worry about her.”

“Tell me,” he prodded, and when she looked up into his arrested expression, she could believe that he really wanted to know.

That she hadn’t frightened him away.

“Felicity...she has these conniptions. Spells, you might call them.”

“Like Mathilde?” he queried.

She shook her head. “No. She is easily startled. Constantly trepidatious and worried. She has a hard time breathing, but not in the way of asthmatics. Her heart races and she will sometimes be sick or faint. She does faint an alarming amount. It’s as if she stole all my fear for herself so I could be as I am. Brash and bold. We are a mirror of each other. And her reflection is so fragile. So gentle...” Mercy blinked at a stinging in her eyes. “Well, anyway, I would never leave her alone, and a husband would invariably ask me to. He wouldn’t want for competition of my affections.”

She looked up to find Raphael regarding her with infinite tenderness. His eyes were not opaque or full of secrets. They were open. Challenging.

Burning.

No. He was not mysterious, this man. He wore his darkness. Advertised his sins. Pinned his emotions to his suit like a badge of honor.

“I don’t want to go without ravishing you at least once.”

Comprehension of his words didn’t quite land at first. “Go where? Wait... What?”

He stepped closer, his expression intent. “I desire you like I have no other woman. I would take as many nights as you would offer, but I’ll settle for just one.”

Mercy blinked at him, certain she misunderstood his meaning. He was casual but serious. Relaxed, but intense. Surely, he wasn’t asking if she would—

“Would you let me fuck you, Mercy Goode?”

Her mouth went slack, and she lost whatever substance held her bones together. She wished for a chair, a couch, a bench. Anything upon which to sink.

She looked around at the people. The families. This place that was so bustling and wholesome. Where propositions like his simply didn’t belong.

Oh my. Mercy wanted to check her burning face for fever, but she didn’t dare.

What was she right now? Upset? Insulted?

Enticed?

His eyes were searingly tender as he searched her face for an answer. “You are not slapping me. Or screaming at me. So, am I to imagine you are considering it?”

“You—were Mathilde’s lover.” And she was only deceased for a day’s time.

At that, his features became impossibly kinder, his gaze containing admiration. “I have touched no other woman since the night I gifted your sister with my gold.”

“But that was...months ago,” she marveled, doing her best to remember that she could not believe a word from his mouth.

He shrugged. “So it was.”

“Mathilde made it seem as though she’d been with you not so long ago.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Did she say that? That she and I had been lovers recently?”

“Come to think of it... no.” She examined her reaction to that.

Her heart felt one thing.

Her body another.

His muscles remained lax, even though he allowed her to witness the uncontested hope radiating from him. “I assure you, Miss Goode, Mathilde and I did not share an understanding of any kind. Not in that way. There was nothing like romance between us, do you understand? I am doing her memory no disservice by propositioning you. I will be working harder to find her killer than the police. She will be avenged; you have my word. But I will be too distracted by my obsession with your lips to be of much use, unless you yield to me.”

Swallowing around a sandpaper tongue, Mercy could only blink up at him.

For