The Devil in Her Bed (Devil You Know #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,66

a portent or a poem, he couldn’t be sure.

Was it startling or sensual that not only did she keep up with him, but she was often one step ahead?

Her hair was tamed in a shiny braid that fell over her shoulder like a silk rope. Draped in some sort of green silk harem pants and a kurta she might have picked up in the Far East, she looked both fearsome and feminine. The fabric shifted and shimmered in time with her easy strides, molding to thighs that were long and distractingly lovely.

Chandler suddenly forgot to be angry.

“There was no need to sneak in,” she informed him while stowing her weapons in her bedside table. “I would have let you in the front door.”

“I wanted to demonstrate how easy it was to get to you,” he said. “I needed to frighten some wits into you.”

“Your hairstyle frightens me, if that’s any solace.”

Stymied, Chandler glanced in a gilded mirror across the room. The wind had thrown his hair into startling disarray, as if he’d taken a dunk in pomade and let a chimpanzee groom him.

Grimacing, he smoothed it down and turned to scowl at her. “You can jest, after everything you witnessed tonight?”

Her pleasant mask slipped just enough to announce that she’d been wearing it in the first place. He grasped at the unfettered emotion he read in her expression and advanced. “Are you going to explain to me just what the fuck you were doing at Luther Kenway’s home?”

“Same thing as you.” She moved to the escritoire by the balcony window and began to leaf through some papers in an obvious ploy not to look at him. “Infiltrating the Crimson Council.”

“You didn’t tell me they’d invited you, Francesca.” He ate up the whole of her room in a few furious strides.

She stubbornly refused to look up from scanning the paperwork. “You also neglected to mention to me that you’d be there…” The words drifted away, as if they hadn’t much mattered in the first place.

He stopped in front of her, brows drawing down. “Why would I tell you? You’re not—”

“Not what?” She flipped the paper to look at the back. “A man?”

“A spy.” He snatched the paper from her and tossed it to the floor. “Goddammit, Francesca look at me!”

She did, and the frank assessment she gave him reminded him instantly that she’d seen him naked. “I could be, you know,” she protested, jabbing his chest with her index finger. “I’d make an excellent spy.”

Of that, he had no doubt. She’d excel at anything she put her mind to. “I’d never allow it.”

“Why?” she demanded, her clear eyes clouding with storms.

“Because you’d be bloody miserable, that’s why. Everything I am, everything I have, is tied to what I do. A wife, children: I can hope for none of it. Any chance to try was taken from me ages ago.”

Her face softened as she reached up to him. “I know. I was there. It was taken from me, too.”

No. She wasn’t. It had been before then. Before her and Mont Claire and this entire bloody debacle.

God, but he’d been born under a cursed star. He saw it glimmer in her eyes as she stared up at him. The curse that was waiting to take her from him a second time.

“I suppose there are many things we are both denied,” she said. “But we can each claim our vengeance. Together.” Instead of backing away from his anger, she leaned in, sliding her hands into his jacket “You can still have me.”

“Francesca,” he warned, even as his body responded. “Don’t.”

“We are close, Chandler, I can feel it.” Her fingers curled against his chest, becoming fists. “You and I, we can put an end to this. Doesn’t that excite you? The thought of victory?” She traced the corrugated ripples of is ribs, eliciting a moan and a shudder of need.

She’d seen his body tonight, and it seemed to have ignited something in her.

He’d wondered what she’d thought of his desire, what she’d felt about his cock straining for her as he stood naked and proud. A stag ready to strike at any other who would seek to claim her as a mate. He would even have locked horns with Kenway. Right then and there. Consequences be damned.

What did she feel, now that she knew what her nearness did to his body?

Every fucking time.

He took her hands and pulled them off him, imprisoning them in his palms so he could think. “You cannot go back there