“We can use Helen’s office.” Clary led him by the hand because she liked how the strength of his grip grounded her after the night’s events. Also, she suspected if she let him go, he’d bolt in the opposite direction.
He took in the small, meticulously organized room with an appreciative glance. He and Helen shared fastidiousness in common when it came to their work space.
“I’ll go and fetch some water and a cloth.” At the door, she turned back. “You’ll still be here when I return?”
He gave her a single nod, and she took the gesture as his promise he wouldn’t duck out the back door.
When she’d asked him about violence, he’d shuttered, closing himself off from her. Clearly, he wasn’t a man who liked speaking of his past. But the more time she spent with him, the more she needed to know. What haunted him? Why did he guard his secrets so tenaciously?
After filling a basin in the kitchen and retrieving a few clean rags, she returned to find him settled on the stool, his head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed. But he didn’t look peaceful. Lines pinched his brow under a fall of glossy black waves. His mouth had firmed in a tense grimace.
She breathed deeply, steeled her nerves, and focused on the injury to the side of his head. He’d been bashed, perhaps more than once, and his cheek bore an abrasion too. Blood had dried on his face, near his ear, and trickled down his neck, completely saturating his crisp white shirt.
“You must be in a great deal of pain,” she said softly, causing his eyes to flicker open.
“I’m fine.” When he saw her approach with a damp rag, he reached for the cloth. “I can do this. You needn’t get blood on your hands.”
“Let me.” A tug-of-war ensued, though he didn’t fight her with much might. “I’ll be quicker.”
He let his shoulders slump and turned his head so that she had a clear view of the area in need of cleaning. Without a single wince or flinch, he allowed her to wash the area, casting his gaze toward the floor as she worked. The abrasion on his cheek wasn’t bad, but he’d have a fearsome bruise.
“How bad?” he asked, once she’d started wiping at the injury at his temple. “Will the cut require stitches?”
“I don’t think so. It’s more of a large abrasion than a cut.” She applied the cloth gently, desperate not to cause him more pain.
“The sight of blood doesn’t bother you?” He glanced up at her. “Most young ladies would be appalled. Or faint dead away.”
Clary bit her lip before replying, weighing how much she should reveal about her childhood preoccupation with tales of horror and garish drawings. “When I was a girl, I spent a good deal of time up in the nursery, drawing and painting.”
“Based on what I’ve seen, you’re very skilled.”
She waved away his compliment. “I tended to draw bloody scenes.”
He tilted his head back to narrow an eye at her.
“I read a lot of penny dreadfuls,” she confessed with a shrug. “Every single issue I could I get my hands on. And Kit taught me to love Shakespeare’s plays, which are brimming with violence.”
“So you’re a lady with cutthroat tastes.” He stared at the floor again. “Who loves flowers.”
For a man who’d suffered real, painful injuries this evening and used his fists on another man, her interest in fictional violence must have seemed childish to him. Frivolous. Naïve.
“Why are you in Whitechapel tonight?” she asked quietly. “Who did this to you?”
He ignored her questions as if she hadn’t spoken.
“What are those?” he finally asked, pointing to long rectangles of butcher paper hanging on the wall.
“Sketches for the ladies’ magazine. We’re trying to design a masthead.” Clary had worked up a few ideas for The Ladies’ Clarion. They needed a symbol that represented women and knowledge and inspiration, all at the same time. A few of the students whom Clary tutored in art had worked on sketches too.
“You’re still determined to make a go of your project?” He flicked her a rueful grin. “I thought perhaps a few weeks in the office would put you off Ruthven’s altogether.”
“Not at all.” She reached for another clean rag, returning his grin. “I’m more interested in the business than ever before.”
“There’s a bit more to publishing than charming vendors and dousing yourself with printing ink.”
She let out a wry laugh and nudged his shoulder. “I’ve always loved the smell of books and paper and ink, but to see so many people working together to create books is truly impressive. To watch the presses steaming away and know all the work that’s gone into printing a single page. It’s breathtaking. Inspiring. I’m excited to come to work each day.”
“Daughtry must be a good teacher to have such an enthusiastic student.”
“You’ve taught me a few things too.” Her breath tangled in her throat, and he looked up, his gaze glittering and intense.
“What are you doing?” He caught her hand in his when she reached up to untie his neckcloth.
“Your collar is ruined. There must be blood underneath.”
He allowed her to remove the paper collar and unbutton the top button of his shirt. Against the backs of her fingers, the skin of his throat was hot and smoothly shaved. He swallowed, and she felt the movement against her skin. After cleaning a bit of the dried blood, she reached for his second button gingerly, fearing that once she began undressing him, she wouldn’t wish to stop.
“Leave it,” he said, as he clasped her hand and stroked his thumb in dizzying circles against her palm. “I’ll wash when I get home.”
“Home, where you live with your sister, whose name you still won’t tell me.”
He released her hand and started up from the stool.
Clary flattened a palm against his shoulder. “I’m not done yet.”
Settling back, he trained his gaze on her, watching her every move. With a clean damp rag, she removed the last bits of blood near his ear, then above his temple. She lifted the fall of hair over his brow to ensure there were no injuries on his forehead and found herself stroking the strands back, running her fingers through the thick waves.
Dropping her hand lower, she pressed two fingers under his jaw and tipped his head up. Bending close to swipe at a spot below his chin, she felt his breath coming in quick, hot gusts against her face. Her own breath quickened. When she finally looked into his eyes, the heat in his gaze warmed her from her chest to her toes.
“Won’t you tell me what happened?” she whispered, their mouths inches apart.
“No,” he whispered back.
“Because you refuse to confess anything about yourself.” When she began to pull away, he took her waist between his hands to hold her near.
“I won’t let my past touch you.” He lifted his hands from her body. “I shouldn’t touch you.”
Clary pressed one hand to his shoulder, the other to his cheek. “What if I want you to?”
He shuttered his gaze. “What would your brother say, Miss Ruthven?”
“Don’t call me that.” She gripped the fabric of his coat in her fist and pressed between his spread thighs until her chest was flush with his. “Here, tonight, I’m Clary to you. Just a woman. Like any other.”
He let out a ragged chuckle. “You’re not like any other.”
No, Clary knew she never would be. Not beautiful like Sophia, or an organized mathematics goddess like Helen, or domestically inclined, as her mother had been. But she did know what mattered to her, and when she cared about a cause or a person, she did so fiercely. With her whole heart.
She cared about Gabriel Adamson.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and rose from the stool, nearly lifting her off her boots. “I need to go.” Rather than keep her close, he released her, setting her away from him and starting for the door. “Thank you for tending to my wounds.” Glancing up, he pinned her with a look that singed her straight through. A gaze filled with yearning. “Good night, Clary.”
Frustration bubbled up, a trapped shout to call him back. All that yearning she’d seen in his gaze? She felt the same. Yet he possessed what she lacked. Skill at hiding himself away, pretending to feel nothing.
“Good night,” she told him, looking into his eyes. Trying desperately for the cool facade he’d mastered. “Sleep well, Mr. Adamson.”
A muscle jumped in his cheek, and fire sparked in his winter-blue eyes. He wrenched the door open, and Clary turned so she wouldn’t have to watch him walk away. The door slammed shut behind her.
Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry.
His boot heels sounded at her back, and she whirled to face him. Gabe pulled her into his arms, bent his head, and took her lips. A hard, hungry kiss that had her clutching at his shoulders, curling her fingers around his nape to draw up onto her toes. Then he gentled, drawing his mouth over hers slowly, nipping gently at her lower lip before dipping his head to kiss her neck. “I want to hear you say my name,” he whispered against her skin.
“Gabriel,” she moaned when he swept his tongue across her skin.
With a flick of his thumb, he undid the first button of her shirtwaist, kissing every swath of skin he exposed. Clary immediately reached up to help him, unfastening the next two buttons.
If she had her way, she’d remove every stitch of clothing between them. All the secrets too. Anything that kept her from getting close to him.
When he kissed the swell of breast, just above her corset, her body caught fire. Heat rushed down her chest, her belly, pooling at the apex of her thighs. He pushed her chemise aside and ran his teeth along the edge of her corset, and her knees buckled. She gripped the warm, muscled swell of his shoulder to stay on her feet.
He traced the line of her corset seam with his finger, right above the spot where she was hard and taut and aching.
“Please,” Clary whispered against his hair. She pulled her chemise lower, tugging at the edge of her corset. “I want you to touch me.”
She lowered her hands to push the front of her corset together and free a few of the hooks, but he stopped her.
“If we don’t stop now,” he rasped, “we won’t stop at all.”
“Then let’s carry on.” Clary pressed her lips to his, drew a finger lightly along his stubbled jaw as she kissed him.
He broke their kiss and cradled her face in his hands. “Say it one more time.”
“Gabriel.”
He rewarded her with another kiss, and when he lifted his head, Clary was breathless. But she still wanted more.
“All this just to hear me say your name?”
He smiled, a genuine, face-creasing, devastating smile. “Because I couldn’t resist you anymore.”
Clary gave a muffled laugh. “No one’s ever found me irresistible.”
“Then they’re idiots.” He stroked a finger down her cheek, and she bent toward his touch. “As difficult as walking away from you will be, I must go. Sara will be worried.”
“Sara? Your sister.”
He nodded, sliding a hand down her neck, “I wish I didn’t have to go.”
“Me too.” Wrapping her fingers around the warm wool of his coat lapels, she teased, “Perhaps now you’ll stop resisting me.”
“I must.” His demeanor changed, all the heat and desire cooling bit by bit, until his face fell into an expression of pure misery. He drew back, dropping his hand. “I wish circumstances were different, but nothing’s changed.”
“Everything’s changed.”
“When we enter Ruthven’s tomorrow, you’ll still be an owner, and I’ll still be an employee. Your brother looks to me to mentor you, and he’d merrily murder me if he knew I’d laid a finger on you.”
Clary threw up her hands and spun away from him, pacing the narrow stretch of bare wood floor in front of Helen’s desk. “Why are you more concerned with my brother’s opinion than I am?”
“Because Ruthven’s pays my wages,” he barked. “And he’s right to wish to protect you,” he added more gently. “If you had any sense of your own safety, you wouldn’t spend your time in this part of London.” He ducked his head, as if he couldn’t quite face her to say the rest. “And if you had any discernment, you wouldn’t want a man like me to touch you.”
Clary’s throat burned. Her chest, which had been so full and warm and fizzing with bliss, went hollow. “You kiss me, and now you’re trying to make me despise you?”
“Is it working?”
“Maybe.”
He stared at her a moment, keeping all his thoughts and emotions hidden behind the icy surface of his gaze. Then he left her alone.
Don’t cry. She swiped at a tear. Don’t you dare cry.