Hawk put one foot in front of the other, walking as slowly and deliberately as he could to give Faith plenty of opportunity to flee rather than join him in conversation.

She was beautiful. A few dark tendrils had escaped from her unbonneted hair and a pair of spectacles he hadn’t even known she owned perched forgotten on the edge of her nose. She might as well have been draped in nothing but pearls, such was the desire he had for her.

It was the same magnetism they had always shared. Fighting a losing battle against a pull more powerful than their will to resist. From the moment she stepped into the schoolroom, every beat of his heart had belonged to her, every breath from his lungs a whisper of her name.

He had meant to ignore the attraction. Had tried valiantly to pretend it was all in his head. That there was nothing between them. That she didn’t care. That neither did he.

But here she was. Gazing up at him with huge green eyes as a telltale pulse fluttered at her throat. Close enough to kiss.

Now was not the time for conversation after all. Words were the enemy that kept cropping up between them. Every time he attempted to tell her how he felt he only succeeded in pushing her away.

He was done talking. He would show her. There would be no chance of misunderstanding.

Hawk lowered his mouth to hers, fully expecting her to push him away before their lips could touch.

Instead of a battle, he got a firestorm. Her fingers curled in his hair, tangling possessively even as he crushed his mouth to hers.

He wrapped one arm about her waist and hauled her flush against him. Rather than protest, her lips parted to allow him further plunder. He cradled the back of her head in his hand. No matter how hard he tried to take what was offered, he was giving even more. Complete surrender.

Her taste was simultaneously familiar and new, an intoxicating conundrum that only made him thirst for more. Every kiss was his soul unburdening itself to her, every lick of his tongue a confession of a love felt too deeply for one man to bear. This was the sort of kiss he had dreamed of once again sharing. A kiss that laid waste to reality and lifted them up into the clouds until nothing existed except the heat between them.

Her fingers were demanding, her lips sweet. She did not want to want him, but just like him, she could no more break this kiss than halt a hurricane.

Hawk didn’t want to stop. He never had. If he got his way, he never would.

The magic of her kiss could be the sustenance that gave him life for the rest of his days, if only she would allow it. He was hers. That he could not keep her, in no way prevented his helpless heart from belonging to her completely.

The thought made his blood pulse faster. Damn him. If marriage was not in their future, he almost certainly should not be kissing her.

Yet he could not bring himself to pull away. Not when she fit so perfectly in his arms. Her body flush with his was a brew as heady as any potion, making him feel as though they were not opposing forces but rather two jagged halves that had finally become whole.

He could fall into her forever. She was the sun and the stars and the ocean, an entire landscape of taste and sensation waiting to be explored. She was no gentle breeze, no wilting rose, but a goddess capable of destroying all hope or granting eternal life.

With each breathless kiss, he was finally born anew.

“Hawkridge?” Simon’s jarring voice came from just inside the school room, his footfalls ever closer. “Where did you go?”

Hawk and Faith leapt backwards from each other as if the shock of the outside world had physically jolted them apart.

In frustration, Hawk glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll be right there!”

But when he turned back to Faith, she was already gone, the distant click of a door latch the only clue as to where she had disappeared.

He ran his fingers through his tousled hair and turned back toward the schoolroom in a daze. After a kiss like that, his brain could think of nothing except sweeping her back into his arms. Hawk shook his head to try to clear it of the magic of her embrace.

With a shaky breath, he squared his shoulders and marched back into the schoolroom. “Here I am.”

“Splendid.” His brother dropped a heavy box of assorted tools into Hawk’s arms and bent down to scoop up a large leather satchel. “We’re off to the kitchens next to patch up the pantry.”

Hawk nodded absently. His feet might follow Simon’s, but Hawk’s head would remain in the clouds where he shared an endless kiss with Faith.

“Never have twenty-four children,” Simon joked as he raced Hawk down the stairs.

Hawk laughed and forced himself to focus on the moment. “Luckily, they’re not your children, or you really would be in trouble. Can you imagine if you had raised all twenty-four little girls since birth?”

“Not in the slightest,” Simon said cheerfully as they reached the first landing. “But not siring them doesn’t make them feel any less like my children. I am as responsible for them as if I were their true father.”

“You’re a better man than me,” Hawk said with a grin as they carried the tools into the scullery.

Simon grinned back. “Don’t I know it.”

Hawk cleared a spot for the tools. While it was odd to think of adopting four and twenty orphaned schoolgirls, he supposed were he in Simon’s boots, he might have been called to do the same.

“Put some pep into it,” Simon scolded him, making a show of checking his pocket watch. “I’ve an investigation to get back to, old man, so quit dreaming and get back to work.”

Hawk grinned and climbed up a wooden stool to position the brackets for the first shelves. “What are you investigating that is so important, big inspector? Has a gravy boat gone missing from Prinney’s buffet?”

“It’s an old case, actually.” Simon dragged another stool to the wall to help hang the shelves. “Perhaps you could help. What can you tell me about Maxwell Gideon?”

Simon was investigating Gideon?

Hawk’s skin went cold as pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.

He and his brother had met for the first time at the Cloven Hoof. They’d met every time at the Cloven Hoof, until Simon had been assigned across town. Had he been on a case from the very first? Was that the real reason the brothers had broken their silence after nearly thirty years?

“There’s nothing to tell,” Hawk said cautiously.

They both knew that wasn’t true. Maxwell Gideon and his club were one of London’s greatest mysteries. No one knew where he’d gotten the funding to start his gambling den, or how he gained the pieces of intelligence that allowed him to double and triple profits on an unprecedented scale.

No one knew, but of course Hawk had a few suspicions. He’d been an active participant in more than a handful of those backroom deals. In fact, funding for Hawk’s port had been one of the key ventures.

Simon sent a long glance down the scarred shelf toward Hawk. “You are in there constantly and yet I’ve never seen you gamble. If your visits with Gideon have nothing to do with the gaming tables, then why are you there?”

“Because he is my friend,” Hawk replied flatly, irritated at the idea of being forced to choose loyalties. He would not be Simon’s confidential source and he would not choose sides.

“I see.” His brother raised a nail to the wall. “Well, if you think of anything, you know where to find me.”

Hawk no longer felt like helping. He belatedly realized he already had made an unconscious choice by not mentioning to Gideon that the brother he kept meeting for drinks was actually a Bow Street Runner.

To Hawk’s credit, the detail hadn’t seemed relevant because Simon had never mentioned he was there at the Cloven Hoof as part of an investigation.

But now that Hawk knew the truth, he questioned how much of Simon’s brotherhood was real and how much was the means to an investigatory end.