He took her to the rooftops.

He knew he shouldn’t. He knew he should pack her into a hack and return her to Mayfair—untouched, to the home that had been in her family for generations. He knew he was wrong to bring her to this world that was all his and nothing of hers, that would do nothing but soil her with it.

But if Felicity’s sin was want, so was Devil’s. And Christ, he wanted her.

He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything, and Devil had spent much of his youth hungry and cold, poor and angry. He might have been able to resist his desire—but then she’d confessed her own: I want you. I want to be your flame . . . but I fear I am your moth instead.

And all Devil wished was to take her somewhere so they might burn together.

He closed the door after he pulled her up onto the roof of Grace’s club—rising from the task to discover her staring out into the night, the city below and the stars above, as clear as his view of the future.

The one he would spend without her.

But tonight, he would share this world with her, even as he knew he would regret it forever. How could he resist?

Especially when she reached up and removed the mask she’d been given inside, revealing herself to the warm night. She turned in a slow circle, eyes wide as she took it in. And then she raised her gaze to his, and the breathless smile on her face threatened to send him to his knees. “This is magnificent.”

“It is,” he said, his own breath coming harshly.

She shook her head. “I never think of the rooftops.”

He extended his hand to her. “They are the best way to travel.” She settled her hand in his, giving her trust over to him before he led her from one building to the next, down a long, curving city street, up and over the roofs, from ridge to ridge, around chimneys and over broken tiles.

“Where are we going?”

“Away,” he said.

She stilled at the words, releasing his hand. When he looked to her, she was facing away from him, toward the city. As he watched, she spread her arms wide and turned her face to the sky, breathing in the night, a small smile playing over her lips.

Devil froze, unable to keep his eyes from her, from the joy in her eyes, the wash of excited color on her cheeks, the swell of her breasts and the curve of her hips, her hair gleaming silver in the moonlight. For a heartbeat, she was Cardea, unseen by all the world except him—the beginning and the end, the past and the future. The present.

As beautiful as the night sky.

“I love this,” she said, the words strong and full of passion. “I love the freedom of it. I love that no one knows we are here, secrets in the darkness.”

“You like the darkness,” he said, the words coming out graveled, like wheels on the cobblestones below.

She looked to him, a twinkle in her eye. “I do. I like it because you wrap yourself in it. I like it because you so clearly love it.”

He tightened his grip on his walking stick, tapped it twice against the toe of his boot. “I don’t love it, as a matter of fact.”

Her brows rose and she lowered her arms to her sides. “I find that difficult to believe, as you reign over it.”

He climbed to the peak of the roof, making a show of considering the drop to the next one, so that he did not have to look at her when he said, “I feared the dark as a child.”

A beat, and then her skirts rustling over the roof tiles as she approached. Without turning, he knew she wished to reach for him. To touch him. And he did not think he could bear her pity, so he kept moving, down to the roof below, and up the iron steps to the next. And all the while, speaking—more than he’d ever said to anyone before—thinking to stop her from touching him. To stop her from ever wanting to touch him again. “Candles were expensive, and so they did not light them at the orphanage,” he said, stilling on the next rooftop, his gaze fixed on a lantern swinging outside a tavern far below. “And in the rookery, we did everything we could to avoid the monsters that lurked in the darkness.”

Still, she advanced, his name like a prayer on her lips.

He tapped his walking stick on the red roof tiles marking the gable of the roof beneath his boot, wanting to turn and face her, to say, Don’t come closer. Don’t care for me.

“It was impossible to keep them safe,” he said to the city beyond.

She stopped. “Your brother and sister are lucky to have you. I’ve seen the way they look at you; whatever you did, you kept them as safe as possible.”

“That’s not true,” he said, harshly.

“You were a child, too, Devon,” she said at his back, the words so soft he nearly didn’t hear his name in them. Lie. Of course he heard it. His name on her lips was like salvation.

One he did not deserve. “Knowing that does not help the regret.”

She reached him then, but did not touch him, miraculously, instead, she sat at his feet on the roof’s peak, staring up at him. “You are too hard on yourself; how much older could you possibly be?”

He should end the conversation there and take her down, through the door inset in the roof below, to his offices. He should send her home. Instead, he sat next to her, facing in the opposite direction. She put her gloved hand to the roof between them. He took it in his own, pulling it into his lap, marveling at the way the moon turned the satin to silver.

When he replied, it was to that silver thread, somehow magically spun in this darkness he loved and hated. “We were born on the same day.”

A beat. “How is that—”

He traced her fingers slowly through the glove. Up and down, like a prayer. “To different women.”

Her fingers twitched beneath the touch. Beneath the words. “But the same man.”

“Not Grace.”

“Grace,” she said, her brow furrowing. “Dahlia.”

He nodded. “She has a different father. Which is likely why she is better than the rest of us combined.” His fingers found the buttons on her glove and began to work at them.

Together, they watched the skin of her wrist revealed, before Felicity said, softly, “I thought you said you did not know your father.”

“I said my father did not wish to claim me when my mother died.”

“But later?”

He nodded, refusing to look at her face, instead removing the satin glove in a long, slow slide that made his mouth water. “Later, we became useful.” He paused. “When he realized Grace was all he would get.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand. She wasn’t his daughter.”

“He was married to her mother, though. And willing to accept her as his, so desperate he was for an heir.”

An heir meant . . . “He was titled.”

He nodded.

It took all her energy not to ask him which title they discussed. “But . . . he had sons. Why not wait? Why not try for another? A legitimate one?”

“It wasn’t possible. He’d never get another.”

Confusion flared. “Why?”

She had the most beautiful skin. He turned her palm up and traced circles in it. “Because he couldn’t sire heirs after Grace’s mother shot him.”

Her eyes went wide. “Shot him where?”

He did look to her then. “In a place that made it impossible to sire heirs.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. “And so he was left with a girl. No heir.”

“Most men would have given up,” he said. “Let the line die out. Pass to some distant cousin. But my father was desperate for a legacy.”

Her hand closed around his finger, capturing it with her warmth, making him wish she would stay with him forever and keep the cold at bay. “You and Beast.”

He nodded. “Whit.”

She offered a small smile at Whit’s real name. “I prefer that, if I am honest. Devon and Whit,” she said, releasing his fingers and raising her bare hand to his face. He closed his eyes, knowing what she was thinking before she touched him, letting the soft pads of her fingers trace down the long white scar on his cheek. “And the one who did this.”

“Ewan.” He captured her hand in his, leaning into the touch as he told the story for the first time in his life—at once hating himself for resurrecting the past and taking remarkable pleasure in speaking of it, finally. “I thought I was saved when he turned up at the orphanage—my father.” She nodded, and he went on. “My mother had left a few coins, but the family that took me in while they waited for word from him took room and board.”

“For a babe?” Her shock was palpable, and it occurred to Devil that there were some things he would never tell her—things he would protect her from ever knowing existed in the world.

He reached into his trouser pocket and extracted a scrap of fabric. Threadbare and worn. Her gaze fell to it as he rubbed his thumb over the embroidery, the tin pin attached. She wanted to take it, he knew. To investigate it. But she didn’t, and he was torn between giving it to her and hiding it away—at once wanting to share it and terrified of it, of the proof that he would never be enough. He settled for holding it in his palm, revealing the once-fine red M, now faded to brown and barely able to hold together. His talisman.

His past.

He wanted her to understand. “I was ten when he came—at night, ironically. They came to fetch me from the boys’ quarters and I can still see the light of the dean’s candle.” He squeezed her hand without knowing. “I thought I was saved. My father brought me to the country, to an estate that rivaled anything I’d ever dreamed. He introduced me to my brothers.” He paused, then repeated, “And I thought I’d been saved.”

Her grasp tightened, her fingers threading through his own, as though she could already see the past.

“I hadn’t been,” he said. “I’d exchanged one kind of darkness for another.”

Devil could feel Felicity’s keen focus, razor-sharp and without cease. He did not look at her. He couldn’t. Instead, he continued to speak to her hand, turning it over, running his thumb over her knuckles, savoring the feel of the peaks and valleys of them. “The day of our birth should have been an embarrassment of riches for a father. Four children. Three boys and a girl.” He shook his head. “I should not take glee from it, knowing as I do how the story ends, but I am proud to say that all my father wanted that day was an heir, and he did not receive one. The only one he might have been able to pass off as heir was born a girl. And the others—” He looked to the starlit sky. “We were all bastards.”

He tried to release her, but she wouldn’t have it. Her hand clasped his ever more tightly as he continued. “But my father was nothing if not shrewd. And for him, name was more important than fortune. Or future. Or truth. And he claimed an heir had been born. A son.”

Felicity’s eyes went wide. “That’s illegal.”

Not just illegal. Punishable by death when the heir would inherit a dukedom.

“No one discovered it? No one said anything?” It was impossible to believe, Devil knew. Late at night, he often struggled with the memory of it, certain he had it wrong. The house had been filled with servants. So many should have noticed. Should have spoken up.

But he’d been there. And the memories did not lie.

He shook his head. “It never occurred to anyone to go looking. Grace was kept in the country—never brought to town, something her mother was more than happy to allow, as Grace, too, was a bastard. A handful of old, loyal servants were allowed to stay with them. And my father had a plan. After all, he had three sons. By-blows, certainly, but sons nonetheless. When we were ten, he collected us. Brought us to the country house, and told us his plan.

“One of us, you see, would be heir. Rich beyond measure. Educated in the best schools. He would never want for anything. Food, drink, power, women, whatever he wanted.”

Her grasp threatened to stop the circulation of his blood through his fingers. “Devil,” she whispered.

He looked to her then. “Devon.”

It was important she remember that now, the name that he’d inherited not from a family, but from nothing. Important, too, that he remember it, here with her as pure temptation—making him wish he could take her for his own. He hadn’t won the competition. He was not the duke. He was still nothing.

Memories swirled. Whit, reed-thin and small, with too many teeth in his little face, his impish smile big and bright. Grace, tall and sturdy, with sunken sad eyes. And Ewan, all long legs and sharp bones, like a foal. And with a monstrous determination.

“One of us would inherit everything. And the others, they would receive a different fate. A lesser one.”

“How?” she whispered to him. “How did he choose?”

Devil shook his head. “He would tell you he didn’t choose. He would tell you we chose.”

“How?”

“We fought for it.”

She exhaled at the revelation, harsh and low. “Fought how?”

He looked to her then, finally able to meet her gaze. Eager to see the horror in it. Ready for her to understand from where he had come. And how. Ready for her to see what he had known from the start—that he was so far beneath her that he might as well be in hell.

When she was gone from his life, he would be in hell.

“However he asked.”

She clutched his hand, her grip stronger than he would have imagined it could be. “No. That’s madness.”

He nodded. “The physical challenges were easy. First sticks and stones. Fists and fire. But the mental ones—those were the ones that destroyed us. He’d lock us up, alone in the dark.” He hated telling her, but somehow, couldn’t stop the words from coming. “Tell us that we could be set free, into the light, if we’d choose another to fight.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“He gave us gifts, took them away. Sweets. Toys . . .” He paused, a memory teasing at the edge of his mind. “He gave me a dog. Let it keep me warm in the dark for days. And then told me I could keep it forever if I traded it for one of the others.”

She pressed closer to him. Wrapped her arms around him, as though she could ward off the memory. “No.”

He shook his head and looked to the sky, sucking in air. “I refused. Whit was my brother. Grace my sister. And Ewan . . .”

Ewan had been the only one allowed to keep his dog.

What had Ewan done?

Felicity shook her head. Pressed her face into his arm. “No.”

His arm came around her, stroking over her hair, pulling her tight against him. Ewan would never have Felicity.

“He wanted the strongest of us for his heir. The hungriest.” He wanted the son who would give him a legacy. “At some point, I stopped competing. I simply tried to keep the others safe.”

“You were children,” she whispered, and he heard the wound in her voice, as though she’d never imagined such torture. “Surely someone tried to stop his crimes.”

“They are only crimes if they are discovered,” he said quietly. “We found ways to stay together. Ways to keep sane. We made promises to each other, never to let him win. Never to let him take us from each other.”

Felicity was looking down at her lap now, and he knew this was the ending. That she wouldn’t return to Covent Garden after this story. She wouldn’t return to him. He forced himself to finish. “But when it came down to it . . . we weren’t strong enough.” The scar on his cheek burned with the memory of Ewan’s blade, sharp and unpleasant. With the order that had caused it. His father’s voice ringing out in the darkness.

If you want it, boy, you must take it from the others.

Ewan coming for him.

He exhaled, extinguishing the memory. “We had no choice but to run.”

She did not look up. “Here.”

He nodded.

“How long were you there?”

“Two years. We were twelve when we left.”

Her breath came on a harsh exhale. “Two years.”

He pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her temple. “We survived it.”

She looked to him, long enough for her beautiful gaze to set his heart to racing. “I wish I could give those years back.”

He smiled and stroked his thumb across her soft cheek. “I would take them.” Tears welled in her beautiful eyes. “No, love.” He shook his head. “No tears. Not for me.”

She dashed one away. “There was no one you could trust.”

“We trusted each other,” he said. And it was the truth. “We vowed we would grow strong and powerful, rich as royalty. And we would mete out a single, endless punishment—my father always wanted heirs. As long as we lived, he would never get them.”

Her eyes glistened in the starlight, her mouth set in a firm, straight line. “I want him dead.”

His brows shot up.

“I know it’s wrong. I know it’s a sin. But your father—I hate even calling him that—he deserves nothing short of death.”

It took a moment for him to find his reply. “He received it.”

She nodded. “I hope it was painful.”

He couldn’t help his smile at that. His magnificent lockpick, known to all of London as a wallflower, was a lioness. “If he weren’t dead, you’re enough to make me wish I could bring him to you as a trophy.”

“It’s not a jest, Devon,” she said, her voice wavering with emotion. “You didn’t deserve it. None of you did. Of course you are terrified of darkness. It was all you ever had.”

He pulled her tight to him, whispering into her hair. “Believe it or not, love, now it is impossible to remember the way the darkness terrified me. As it is impossible to imagine that I will ever think of darkness without thinking of tonight. Without thinking of you.”

Felicity turned toward him, her hand coming around his waist, pulling him tight to her as she bent her legs and wrapped herself against his side. The movement, immediate and without artifice, consumed him, and he could not resist mirroring her contortion, bending toward her, wrapping his arm around her, pulling her close. Pressing his face to her neck and inhaling her delicious scent. Jasmine was ruined for him. It would always be tied to this magnificent woman, with her soft skin and her lush body and the hint of it—enough to make his mouth water.

It was only then, as they curled together, as he breathed her in, that he felt her tears, the dampness on her neck, the ragged breath in her lungs. He pulled back and pressed a kiss to the damp tracks on her cheek. “No, sweet girl. No. No tears. I am not worth them.”

Her fist clenched at the edge of his waistcoat, pulling the fabric and him closer. “Stop saying that,” she whispered. “Stop trying to convince me you lack value.”

He lifted her bare hand to his lips, kissing her palm. “I do.”

“No. Shut up.”

He grazed his teeth over the full flesh at the base of her thumb. “You are a princess compared to me. A fairy queen. Don’t you see?” He licked the soft skin there. “My past is without value. My future, too. But yours . . .” His breath was hot against her palm. “Like Janus, I see your future. And it is glorious.”

Without me.

She heard the words he did not say. “You’re wrong. Your past is who you are—it bears infinite worth. And my future is nothing without you. The only thing that is glorious is our present.”

“No, love. Our present . . .” He gave a little huff of laughter. “Our present is torture.”

“Why?”

He reached for her, wrapping his fingers around her neck, pulling her close. Holding her still so he could watch her eyes when he told her the truth. “Because my present is only you, Felicity Faircloth. And you cannot be my future.”

Her eyes closed at the words, stayed that way for an impossibly long time as her lips twitched with frustration and emotion and her throat worked and her breath came in harsh, angry pants. When she finally, finally opened them, there were tears glistening in their beautiful brown depths. Tears, and anger, and something he recognized because he knew it was mirrored in his own.

Need.

“Then let us live in the present,” she whispered.

And she kissed him.