She was so sweet, heady and lush and soft like that spun sugar from all those years ago. She was sin and sex and freedom and pleasure and something more and something worse, and he was lost in the feel of her lips and the taste of her when she opened to him like she’d been waiting her whole life for him.

Felicity Faircloth was perfection—the first taste of it Devil had ever had.

She tasted like a promise.

She sighed and he groaned, pulling her tighter to him, his fingers tangling in her hair as hers came to the rough stubble of his cheek, her nails scraping across it until she was pulling his head down to her, as though she’d been waiting all her life for this kiss, and she meant for it to be worth it.

Goddammit, he wanted to make it worth it.

He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her tight against him so quickly, so thoroughly, that she gasped. He released her lips and said, “I wanted to hold you like this earlier, when we were watching the cargo move,” he said.

Christ, why was he telling her that?

She came up on her toes and pressed her forehead to his. “I wanted you to hold me like this,” she whispered.

How could he resist that?

He returned to her lips, playing over them gently, softly, teasing her with his tongue until she sighed, opening to let him in, all sweet, silken heat and lush promise. And then Felicity Faircloth, plain, spinster, wallflower, kissed him back, meeting his tongue, matching him, like a fallen angel.

Like a fucking goddess.

And he reveled in it, in her pleasure, in her sighs and moans and the shiver that went through her when he opened her coat—no, his coat—and put his hands to her. She broke their kiss on a gasp. “Devil.”

“Are you cold?” Goddammit, of course she was cold. They were surrounded by ice.

“No.” She panted the response, her hands clutching his shirt in one fist and pulling him closer. “No, I’m blazing.”

Her grasp almost undid him—she was magnificent, a queen in the darkness. He knocked the lapels of his coat aside, resisting her pull to watch his hands on her, on that pretty white and pink frock that didn’t belong anywhere near this place that was too dark and too dirty and too sinful for her. Felicity didn’t belong here, but it didn’t stop him from touching her.

“You are blazing,” he said, his gaze tracking the movement of his hands, up the sides of her bodice to the neckline, where silk gave way to impossibly soft skin. He touched her there, where breath came hard and fast, revealing her pleasure. “You don’t need lessons in fire. You’re an inferno.”

She nodded. “I feel it.”

He almost smiled. “Good.”

“Would you—” She stopped, and then, “Would you kiss me again?”

Yes. Christ. Yes. “Where?”

Her eyes went wide. “Where?”

“Shall I show you where you might like it?”

Her lips curled in a magnificent smile. “Yes, please.”

Far be it from him to deny a lady. Returning his hands to her waist, he pulled her closer, putting his lips to her jaw, letting his tongue slide along the line of it. “Here, perhaps?”

“Oh, yes.” She sighed. “That’s quite nice.”

“Hmm,” he said. “I think we can do better than quite nice.” He ran his teeth down the long column of her neck. “How about here?” Her fingers slid up over his tightly shorn hair, her nails raking over his scalp, sending shivers of pleasure through him as he sucked at the place where her neck met her shoulder, knowing he must be careful. Knowing he couldn’t mark her. Wanting desperately to mark her. She whimpered, and he lifted his head. “What does that mean?”

She slid her gaze to his, and the look in her eyes nearly brought him to his knees there in the hold. “That’s very nice.”

The woman was teasing him. And it was delicious. He was hard as steel, and he loosened his tether, grasping her waist and lifting her to sit on the ice behind her. When she squeaked her surprise, he slid between her legs, her heavy skirts making it impossible to get too close, which was probably best.

Definitely best.

And also the fucking worst.

“This isn’t—” She cut her own breathless words off.

He reached for her again. “It isn’t the kind of thing ladies do.”

She shook her head, bit her bottom lip. “No, but I find I do not care.”

He did laugh then, a short, unwelcome bark of laughter.

“It is delicious. Show me another place.” And his laughter dissolved into a groan.

He pulled her closer with one hand, setting the other to her soft, bare ankle beneath her skirts. “You are not wearing stockings,” he whispered at her ear.

“It’s June,” she said.

“And in June ladies are able to dispense with stockings?”

She dipped her head, and he adored her embarrassment. “I did not expect anyone to see.”

“I can’t see,” he whispered, letting his frustration fill the words, loving the laugh he summoned with the words.

“I most certainly didn’t expect anyone to touch.”

“Mmm,” he replied, letting his hand climb higher. “That’s the problem with being flame, Felicity . . . moths want to touch.”

“Show me,” she whispered.

God help him, he did, taking her lips and letting his hand climb higher, pushing her skirts up, over her knee, revealing a long, soft expanse of leg. He took her thigh in hand, lifting her leg, pressing closer, and damned if she didn’t come to the edge of the ice block to meet him. He pressed a line of kisses to her shoulder and down the slope of one breast to the neckline of her dress. “Here?” he whispered, playing at the place where her breast rose from the lacy white fabric. He raised a hand, tugged at the bodice, baring more skin, enough to reveal the upper edge of a nipple. “Here?”

He licked at the soft skin, loving the way it puckered beneath his touch. She hissed at the sensation and he pulled back from her. “Are you cold?”

She shook her head. “No. No. No. No.” Her fingers tightened at his head and she rose toward him, closing the distance between them. “Again, please.”

Anything she wants. Everything.

He groaned and pulled the line of the dress lower, revealing her nipple for his lips and tongue, scraping it with his teeth as he tucked his hard length against her, his trousers suddenly too tight. She cried out when he suckled, light and then harder as she whispered his name in the darkness. “Devil.”

Devon, his mind whispered back, and he pushed the thought aside, refusing to allow it purchase. No one called him by his given name. Certainly no woman. And he wasn’t about to let Felicity Faircloth be the first.

But he would let her do other things—he would let her touch him, let her direct his mouth to where she wanted it, let her press closer to the long, throbbing length of him even when she didn’t know what she was tempting. What she was asking. “I want—”

“I know,” he replied, rocking against her, letting her taste the pleasure he could give her. She quickly got the hang of it, and Devil let her use him. He growled and sucked deeper, loving the cry she let loose against his hair as he worked her with tongue and lips. As she worked herself on him. She was fire.

And he was aflame.

All he wanted was to lie her back on this slab of ice and worship her with his hands and mouth and cock until she’d learned the thousand ways he could bring her pleasure. She would let him. She was lost to pleasure, rocking against him, begging him for it. “Please.” She sighed.

Not tonight.

He stilled at that, raising his lips from her breast, staying the movement of his hand on her thigh where it played at the seam of her undergarments.

Not yet. Banns haven’t been posted.

The whisper came from deep within, from the place that had planned revenge against his brother. From the place that had hated his brother for twenty years. From the place that had hated his father for far longer.

Hate had no place with Felicity Faircloth.

It would. There would be a time when she would hate him.

A heavy pounding on the steel door to the room punctuated the thought, and they both turned toward it. It wasn’t locked, but Whit and Nik would know better than to enter without permission. They’d also know better than to knock in the first place unless something had gone wrong.

He pulled away abruptly, her fingers releasing his head as he lowered her skirts, dropping them over her legs and stepping back—putting room between them as their heavy breaths echoed through the cavernous space.

She reached for him, like a goddess.

He shook his head, somehow finding the will to refuse her. “No,” he whispered. “No more tonight, Lady Flame.”

“But—” He heard the frustration in the word—the same frustration that crawled through him. She wanted him. She wanted all of it. But Felicity Faircloth didn’t know how to ask for it, thank God, and so she settled on, “Please.”

Christ, he wanted to give it to her.

Not tonight. Too soon.

He shouldn’t give it to her ever.

A knock again. Urgent and unwilling to be ignored.

He righted her bodice and pulled his coat tight around her when she shivered, the cold finally finding her. “Come,” he said, and she did, following him back through the ice to the steel door.

Behind it, Nik. “It’s London Second. Again.”

Devil cursed. “It’s been what, an hour?”

“Long enough to clear the rookery,” she said. “They were waiting for us. Stopped just before crossing Long Acre. Headed for Mayfair.”

They were already through the steel door, letting it clatter behind them, unlocked as they headed down the long, dark corridor to the hatch that let them up into the warehouse.

“What’s happened?” Felicity asked at his elbow. “Is it the Crown?”

He looked to her, half grateful she knew the truth and half irritated she knew the truth. “What would the Crown want with ice?” Then, without hesitating, he looked back to Nik. “The boys?”

“Dinuka is returned.” One of the outriders. “He fired on them. Thinks he winged one. Niall and Hamish are shot.”

“Goddammit, we changed the route.” It was the third hijacking of the same delivery in two months.

Felicity’s gasp drowned out his curse at the news. “Shot by whom?”

Nik looked to her. “We don’t know.”

If they knew, Devil would have run them through already. He swore again as Nik reached the ladder and set to climbing. Niall was one of the Bastards’ best drivers; the Scotsman had been with them since he was a boy. Hamish was his brother—barely out of boyhood, hadn’t even grown his first beard.

“Alive?” he shouted up to Nik as she turned to help Felicity out of the hold.

The Norwegian looked down at him. “We don’t know.”

Another curse as he passed up the lantern, Felicity leaning down to take it from him as though she’d done this a hundred times instead of once. “Devil,” she said, softly, and he hated the pity in her tone, as though she understood the rioting emotions in him. These were his boys. Every one of them, his to keep safe.

And tonight, three of them had been threatened.

He turned away from her gaze, looking back toward the ice hold.

Mistake.

There was darkness everywhere now that he’d handed up the lantern, and its nearness, the way it crept into the corners of his consciousness, was too much. He scrambled up the ladder, desperate to escape it. Except he’d never been able to escape it. He lived in darkness.

But there, on the surface, was Felicity, light and hope and everything he would never have. Everything he’d once been promised. Everything he’d once imagined might be his, in a brilliant, beautiful package.

The concern in her eyes was nearly his undoing.

He barked an order to Nik to close the hatch to the ice hold.

What had he been thinking?

What had he been doing?

She didn’t belong here—in this place or in his life. He shook his head once and started across the warehouse, toward the door she never should have come through, where Whit stood sentry, dark eyes seeing everything, lingering at a place near Devil’s thigh. Devil’s hand flexed under his brother’s watchful gaze, and he realized Felicity’s was in his grasp.

He hadn’t even noticed.

Devil dropped her hand, catching the cane sword Whit tossed before he was through the door and calling for John, who leapt down from the roof, rifle in hand. Waving back at Felicity without stopping, Devil ordered, “Take her home.”

Felicity’s inhale was loud as a gunshot in the warehouse courtyard. “No.”

Devil didn’t look at her.

John nodded. “Aye, sir.”

“Wait!” She chased after Devil. “What’s happened? Where are you going? Let me come. I can help.”

She had to leave here. She was in more danger every moment she lingered. She was more danger to him every moment she lingered. What if she hadn’t been here? Perhaps he would have decided to drive the rig. Then Niall wouldn’t have a bullet in him.

His gaze met Whit’s, calm and collected and absent of judgment, but Devil felt the judgment anyway.

What the hell was he doing, playing at passion in the ice hold while men with lives and families and futures were shot at in his name? Christ. He never should have let her in. Hadn’t Whit said it? Hadn’t Devil known it?

What a fucking mess.

He repeated his order to John. “Take her home. Shoot anyone who gets in your way.”

“Aye,” John replied again, reaching for her arm. “My lady.”

She pulled away. “No.” The word was firm and John hesitated. “Devil. I can help. If it’s the Crown—no one hurts a marquess’s daughter.”

Devil stopped then, turning to her, unable to keep his frustration from rising. “You think for a moment that if someone comes at you with a rifle, they’ll care if you’re a marquess’s daughter? You think they’ll care that you’re a lady who embroiders and speaks two languages and knows where to put the goddamn soup spoon and is engaged to a fucking duke?”

Her eyes went wide, and he should have stopped, but he didn’t. He was angry. At himself, but at her as well, for her fresh-faced innocence and her certainty that the world wasn’t bitter and cruel. “They won’t. Not for a second. In fact, they’ll aim for you, looking like sunshine and smelling like jasmine, because they know men raised in the dark will do anything for light.” Her jaw dropped, and he cut her off before she could speak. “You think you can help us?” He gave a little, humorless laugh. “What will you do, pick their locks?”

Her back went stick-straight, and he hated the thread of guilt that came with the hurt in her eyes. “You’re no kind of help. You think this is a game; you think the darkness a shining new toy. Well, here is your most important lesson—the darkness isn’t for princesses. It is time for you to return to your storybook tower. Don’t come back.”

He turned his back on the wallflower, leaving her in silence and taking to the horse at the center of the yard, saddled and waiting for him.

Felicity Faircloth wasn’t ready for silence.

“So you renege?” she called after him, her voice strong and steady, a siren’s call. He wheeled the mount around so he could see her in the shadows of the lanterns strewn about the yard, wind rustling her skirts and several locks of errant hair he’d released from their moorings when he’d kissed her.

His chest tightened at the image—at the straight line of her shoulders and the proud jut of her chin. “You have your duke, don’t you?”

“Not the way you promised.”

Fucking passion, like nothing he’d ever experienced. He never should have come near that request, because right now, he was willing to do anything to keep her from sharing air with his brother—let alone sharing herself with him. “You should know better than to believe the promises of a man like me. The deal is done. Go home, Felicity. You are not welcome here.”

For a long moment, she watched him, and every inch of him knew that he should turn from her before she spoke again. But he couldn’t. And then she spoke, her words taunting and as stinging as a whip. “Tell me, Devil, what shall you do to keep me away? Lock the doors?”

What in . . . Was she provoking him? Did she have any idea who he was? What kind of man he was? He moved to dismount. To approach her and—

Christ. He wanted to kiss her senseless.

What the hell had he done?

“Devil,” Whit warned, atop his own mount, staying Devil’s movement.

There were more important things than teaching Felicity Faircloth a lesson. He stared down at her from his great black horse—delivering her the cold, icy look that had terrified larger, stronger men.

Not stronger.

“Take her home,” he said, without looking at John.

She did not look away from him as his man approached her. Indeed, one mahogany brow rose in beautiful defiance.

Devil spun his horse around to face Whit, who was watching him, stone-faced. “What?” Devil snarled.

“Smelling like jasmine?” Whit said, his tone dry as sand.

Devil’s curse was lost in the wind as the Bastards spurred their horses into motion, heading for Fleet Street to rescue their fallen men.