Chapter 7
Cleopatra hadn’t probed and pried about the admission he’d made about his past: the parents and sister he never spoke of. Instead, she’d fixed on just one . . .
Oi’m sorry about your club.
There were five words there he’d never imagined a Killoran could or would ever string together.
Everything about that apology stank of a street trick. A bid to deceive one’s enemy, all to gain an upper hand. After all, she’d been discovered sneaking about Black’s home. Her emotional response was likely nothing more than a bid to distract from the fact he’d caught her red-handed.
Only—
She spoke about fires as one who knew. It had been there in the flash of horror and the emotion thickening her tone as she’d simply stated an understanding for what he’d lived through . . . not only recently at the Hell and Sin . . . but as a boy.
The young woman lifted her gaze to his, those luminous depths impossibly big behind the round rims of her spectacles. And something far more dangerous than a weakness for a Killoran consumed him—desire.
Dismayed, he stepped around her, brushing her out of the way. “Don’t you ever come in here again,” he ordered, swiftly stacking the numerous building plans Phippen had designed. “Don’t wander the halls at night, and don’t let yourself into rooms that don’t belong to you,” he gruffly ordered.
Cleopatra pulled herself up onto the edge of his desk, and from behind those silly, large wire-frames, rolled her eyes. “All the rooms here are unfamiliar.”
His lips twitched. “Fair point.”
“As much as you’d prefer to keep it that way, I’ll not let you make me a prisoner here,” she said.
Adair gathered the finalized design plan for the Hell and Sin and purposefully tucked it in the middle of the pile. For as sneaky as this one had proven herself to be on countless scores, he’d be wise to lock up his paperwork and any room he wanted this one to keep out of.
“That’s the one, then?”
He paused, midmovement, and looked over.
She nudged her chin. “It’s just you placed all the other pages on top, but you stuck that last one in the middle. So, I take it, you were attempting to . . . hide it.” By the amusement in that slightly overemphasized word, Cleopatra found that to be of extreme hilarity.
“You’re observant.” It was a good reminder that he should trust this imp as far as he could throw her, but having lived the life he had, there was also an admiration for her cleverness.
“No choice but to be,” she said simply, lifting her shoulders in a little shrug. She gave him a half smile that dimpled her cheek. “Learned quick that to not be watchful will ruin a person.”
“I didn’t see that one,” she said, contentedly filling the void of his unresponsiveness.
“And you won’t,” he muttered.
A cynical snort escaped the young woman. “Afraid of even a Killoran seeing your club? I didn’t take you as smart, Thorne.”
Thorne. Cleopatra used his surname to make her annoyance known . . . or to bait him.
“Why would I show you my plans?” he retorted. Relinquishing his pile, he folded his arms and met her gaze. “Isn’t one wise to keep one’s enemy close?” One also didn’t engage in casual discourse or make mention of one’s past . . . but he’d done—and continued to do—both this night. It’s boredom. Nothing else to account for it, but the tedium of living inside the fancy end of Mayfair.
“You’ve seen my club.”
My club. Not my brother’s. Not Killoran’s. Nor even Diggory’s. My club. Even in her boldest, most confident day, his own sister, Helena, had never laid claim to the gaming hell. This boldness and strength in Cleopatra only sent that blasted admiration swirling.
“Only fair you show me yours,” she continued over his tumult, giving a little shrug of her shoulders.
“Show me yours?” He chuckled. “Using a child’s argument.”
“It is the only way I seem able to reason with you.”
Adair stilled. Wait. By God, had she just . . . ? Why, did she call him . . . ?
Cleopatra winked and stretched her palm out.
He was going mad. There was no other accounting for the fact that even now he considered turning his plans over to a damned Killoran. Adair shot a glance over his shoulder at the closed door. His brothers would have his head for such foolishness. Returning his focus back to the persuasive minx, he dropped his gaze to her hand—and stopped.
A jagged D stood stark upon her palm. That possessive tattoo that marked her connections to the beast who’d tortured Adair and his brothers. Cleopatra balled her hand and yanked it back to her lap. It also served as a reminder of the folly in lowering his defenses where this one was concerned. He opened his mouth to deliver a jeering taunt.
It was her lips, however, that halted that flow of words. Or rather . . . the corners of her lips. White, tense lines that revealed that for her brave show and grand displays, she wasn’t the unaffected, deadened person Diggory had been.
“Never mind,” she mumbled. “Keep your damned plans. If they’re as rubbish as the other ones I looked through, then you needn’t even worry about competition in the first place.” She jumped to her feet, and any grand exit she surely intended to make was ruined as her spectacles slipped from the bridge of her nose and clattered noisily upon the floor.
Cursing, Cleopatra sank to her knees and stretched her fingers about. Why . . . why . . . she really had a need for those frames.
Swiftly joining her on the floor, Adair rescued the slightly bent pair. “Here,” he murmured.
“What are you—?”
He tucked the curved wires around her delicate, shell-like ears and perched them on the bridge of her freckled nose.
Freckles. She had freckles. A faint dusting upon her nose and upon her cheeks. It . . . softened this woman he’d thought could never be taken for delicate.
Adjusting her glasses, Cleopatra glowered at him through the smudged frames, shattering his foolish musings. “What are you staring at?” she demanded.
He frowned. Ignoring her cursing and questioning, Adair plucked them from her face and stood.
“Thorne,” she gritted, jumping up.
Yanking the tails of his shirt free of his waistband, he proceeded to scrub the frames with the soft material. “For someone who requires glasses, Cleopatra Killoran, you’re certainly one who doesn’t take proper damned care of them.” Ignoring her grasping hands, he held the spectacles higher, out of her reach, and continued cleaning them. “Here,” he muttered, replacing them again.
She blinked wildly like an owl startled from its perch, and in this instance, she may as well have been any innocent lady of Polite Society and not a ruthless member of Diggory’s—and now Killoran’s—gang.
He cleared his throat. “You need to clean your glasses.”
Just like that, the charged moment was shattered. “Don’t tell me wot Oi need,” she barked. “You with your presumptuous hands and . . . Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded as he returned to his desk. “Oi was . . .”
Shuffling through the stack, he withdrew the most recently agreed-upon plans for the club. “You wanted to see it,” he pointed out. “Here’s your chance to glimpse inside the greatest club in England.”
A half laugh, half snort filtered from her lips. Without hesitation, she joined him at the cluttered desk. He’d been so damned busy overseeing the construction and this one here that he’d really neglected his makeshift office.
“You really should tidy your space, Adair,” Cleopatra said, unerringly following his very thoughts.
“Shut it, Killoran,” he said without inflection. “Or don’t you want to see my hell?”
She wrinkled her pert nose. “I want to see it,” she conceded.
He stretched out the plans before them, laying the long sheet out for her viewing. Adair cast a sideways glance over and found her squinting hard. Quitting the place beside her, he crossed over to the nearest sconce. Carefully lifting the candle, he carried it about the room, setting the other candles alight, until the room was doused in light. Feeling Cleopatra’s eyes on him, he looked over.
The glowing candles played off the surprise in her eyes. “Do you think me so much a bastard that I’d have you squint to see the damned plans?” he asked gruffly.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I did believe that.”
Blowing out the one in his hand, he rejoined Cleopatra. “My family is not evil.” Unlike hers, who’d been loyal to the Devil. Just like that, he shattered the easy camaraderie, and a formal relationship between them was restored.
Angling her body away from his, Cleopatra examined the finalized plans for the renovated Hell and Sin. As she leaned forward, scraping her gaze over every portion of the page, the implications of what he’d given her access to registered. His brothers would kill him—and with good reason—were they to see him with Cleopatra even now. It didn’t matter that when the hell opened, there would be men of Killoran who infiltrated and reported back. His stomach queasy, he made to grab the page.
“This is all wrong,” she said, moving her finger up and down the hazard and faro tables stationed along the right portion of the club.
“Beg pardon?” he blurted, her observation instantly staying his hand on the sheet.
“You have your private tables set up here.” She drifted the tip of her index finger to the area in question.
Do not engage her . . . you’ve already shared enough with a Killoran. “And?” The question came as though pulled from him. For the truth was, he’d made enough sacrifices in his life that he wasn’t too proud to take advice proffered.
“Pfft.” The bold minx lifted her gaze from the designs and arched an eyebrow over the rim of her spectacles. “And?” she asked, and had her tones been mocking, it would have been far more palatable than the painful emphasis there. “You have your gaming tables separate. That means they have to walk”—she jabbed the page as she spoke—“one, two, three, four, five, six . . . twenty paces before they get from their private tables here”—Cleopatra swiveled her judgmental finger to each point in question—“to here.”
As they had for years. “Noblemen prefer to have a place to converse with peers over drinks, separate than where they play.”
“Of course they prefer it. A fancy toff doesn’t know what he wants by way of seedy lifestyles.” Cleopatra gave another skyward point of her eyes. “It doesn’t matter what they want or prefer. It matters what you get out of them. They’re too accustomed to their fancy clubs.” She paused and searched about, muttering incoherently to herself. “Ah.” Killoran’s sister grabbed a charcoal pencil. Over his sounds of protest, she etched small Xs upon the plans, marking the sheets. Adair lowered his hands on the table and leaned closer to assess her work. The scent of her—a hint of apple and strawberries—filled his senses, and he took it in, breathing deep.
“You paying attention, Thorne?” she snapped, glancing up.
Heat slapped his cheeks, and for the first time in the whole of his damned life . . . he was . . . blushing. “I am.” A liar.
“Look here.” She refocused all her attention upon the desk.
All the while I stand here sniffing her like a damned rose pushed into my hand by a London peddler, he thought, disgusted with himself.
“You place drinking tables here. One here, and here,” she continued, writing on the page. “All through it, interspersed with your gaming tables. This way your patrons are drinking all evening, and the wagering is always a step away.” Her spectacles slipped, and she paused to push them back into place.
Adair dusted a hand over his jaw, contemplating both her opinion and the markings she’d made. “Many lords come to discuss business.”
“Then you give them a place for that,” she said before he’d even finished. “Apart from your main floors. You don’t let the handful of ones there for nondrinking, whoring, and wagering drive the whole club.” She wrinkled her nose. “I forgot. You don’t have whores.”
Since Ryker Black had wedded a lady and had ultimately made the decision that they’d no longer offer the services of prostitutes for their clients, their profits had taken a blow. For Adair’s appeals to his brothers, they’d been adamant to continue on without those services offered. “You think it’s foolish,” he predicted.
“My brother does,” she automatically answered.
Interesting. “And you?”
The young woman paused. He shot her a side glance. Cleopatra chewed at the tip of her finger, and indecision raged in her eyes. Again, it occurred to him . . . for Cleopatra Killoran’s bold displays and unwavering confidence, there was still a vulnerability to her. It was far too easy to forget that the snarling, hissing hellion was, in fact, a young woman. Perhaps that was why he even now spoke in depth and at length with Killoran’s sister about the Hell and Sin. What else accounted for trusting her in this way?
“I . . . I don’t know,” she finally said, revealing an unanticipated hesitation. “My brother would certainly say so.”
“I don’t care what Killoran thinks,” he said bluntly. “I’m not asking his opinion. I’m asking yours.” A marvel, in and of itself. He must be going mad. There was nothing else for it.
She gave her head a frenetic shake. “I can’t answer that.” She looked about, and then she settled her stare upon his ledgers. “Not without knowing your profits.”
So, she was of a similar mind frame as Ryker, Calum, and Niall, that some profit could be sacrificed for philanthropic good. Who would have ever expected it of this woman?
“It’s enough I’ve shown you my plans.” A far too dangerous allowance he’d made. “I’ve no intention of discussing my profits—”
“Or lack thereof,” she mumbled.
“—with you,” he said loudly over her tart reply.
“I’m not interested in your books, Adair.” By God, she was fearless. “What your numbers are or are not hardly indicate how successful your club is or will be. Your plans, however, reveal more than enough about the vitality of the Hell and Sin.”
His hackles went up. “You’d challenge the might of my club,” he said on a silken whisper, facing her squarely so that she had to crane her head all the way back to meet his gaze. “Our hell is different than yours.” The Hell and Sin and Devil’s Den had begun the same, but ultimately, they’d evolved, becoming places that powerful peers visited and lost fortunes at. The Devil’s Den, however, had surpassed them in growth through its offering of prostitution.
“No truer words were ever spoken than those,” she said with her usual arrogance. “Do you know what your problem is, Adair?”
“That your brother burned my club to a pile of ashes?” he retorted, longing for a fight that would restore them to their proper places as hated rivals.
To the lady’s credit, she didn’t rise to that bait. “Your problem is that you and your family don’t know what type of club you want to be.” She turned up one hand, and with their bodies positioned as close as they were, that action brought her palm brushing against his chest. His pulse leapt at the unwitting touch. “Is it a fancy place like White’s and Brooke’s where only fancy lords come to play?” Cleopatra lifted her other palm, the one marked with a D. “Or do you want to be precisely what you are . . . men of the streets who offer those vices we know about to lords who wanted a taste.”
By nothing more than the sheer nature of enmity that had forever existed between their gangs, he wanted to throw counter-protestations in her face . . . to point out that they were nothing alike—in any way. In this, however, Cleopatra Killoran had surely spoken the truest words to ever emerge from her plump red lips. “Our clientele is not your clientele,” he said finally. That decision they’d undertaken long ago when they’d first purchased the Hell and Sin, before his brothers had married ladies of the ton.
“We know precisely what we are and the clients we serve. You are the ones who don’t.” She touched her gaze on the fine furnishings belonging to Ryker and Penelope. “The Devil’s Den caters to men who come to sin and are comfortable in doing so. You”—she gesticulated wildly as she spoke—“don’t know if you want to cater to the nobs or be part of the streets.”
Her words flummoxed him. Given her next diatribe, with Cleopatra’s quickness and rapier tongue, he wouldn’t ever want to be caught in a knife battle with this one.
“You design your fancy club . . . in St. Giles.” With irreverent fingers, she scooped up the stack of plans. “If the lords want a White’s, they’ll go to White’s. They want Brooke’s, they’ll go there. That’s not what the Hell and Sin is, and it isn’t what the Devil’s Den is, either. The names alone say as much. If you’re looking to give them a fancy club, then you’d be better off designing an altogether different plan for a different club, in an altogether different part of London.”
Damned if the young woman’s logic didn’t make sense, too.
“Not that I believe this is necessarily the club you’ve got in mind for your patrons,” she said, casually waving that sheet. “But even if it’s got a hint of the layout here, you’re in trouble of your own making, Thorne.” She slapped the page down decisively.
His mouth fell open, and he quickly forced it closed. By God, she’d realized that. “Are you always this astute, Cleopatra?”
She hung her head slightly, that telling gesture a mark of Diggory’s response to faulty missteps. “Not astute enough if I failed to realize you were in the room I’d entered.”
For the first time, he wondered what her life had been like as one of Diggory’s whelps. He’d not considered . . . until now—until seeing that D upon her hand and her dropped shoulders—that she also might have known suffering.
His gut clenched. Or she could be as deceptive as the man who’d become Diggory’s second-in-command—a man so much like him that he’d inherited all as though he were a firstborn son.
Don’t be fooled by her downcast appearance and seeming innocence. The fact he’d caught her snooping in this room, and just fielded too many questions from her, was proof that he’d be wise to watch her far more closely than he had this day.
Adair took her by the lower arm, encircling it in his palm. She gasped and made to wrench free. “Why did you tell me this?” he demanded gruffly, tightening his hold.
The young woman puzzled her brow.
He drew her closer so the walls of their chests brushed and she was forced to tilt the long column of her neck back to meet his gaze. “Pointing out errors, making suggestions.” Adair dropped his head down, shrinking the space between them. “Why should I believe there’s a thing real in that offering?” It was a question he asked as much for himself.
Did he imagine the hurt that sparked in her revealing eyes? If so, it was gone as soon as it had flickered to life. Through the glass lenses he’d cleaned a short while ago, Cleopatra glowered at him.
“Un’and me, ya jackanapes,” she hissed, giving her wrist another tug.
He gave another light squeeze, and that instantly quelled her. Detecting her faint wince, he gentled his touch. “Despite my brothers’ and their wives’ trusting nature in letting you share a roof with us, I’d be a fool to trust your motives, Cleopatra.”
She jutted her chin up mutinously, and that slight angling brought their foreheads colliding. “Then go ahead an’ build yar sure-to-fail hell. ’elp yarself along to your demise.” For Cleopatra’s remarkable composure, her greatest tell was the lack of mastery over her practiced, cultured tones.
“I’ve offended you,” he wondered aloud.
Cleopatra slammed the heel of her boot on his bare foot, and a hiss exploded through his teeth. The spitfire pounced, shoving her spare elbow against his rib cage. He grunted, and his grip slackened at the well-placed blow. She slipped around him.
“Hellion,” he gritted out, reaching for her.
A furious cry climbed to the rafters as he wrapped an arm about her waist and brought her back against him. She kicked and flailed with the same desperation of a person fighting for their freedom from the constable. “Ya bloody bully,” she spat, breathless as she wrestled against him. “Ya brainless, witless—”
He brought his mouth close to her ear, relishing far too much her spirited show. “Rather uninventive of you, love,” he taunted.
She stilled, and then with another shriek, she renewed her struggles. Bucking and writhing against him, she fought for her freedom, and just like that, all his mirth fled as a wave of desire slammed into him. The surge of lust was momentarily crippling.
“. . . useless, cock-less . . .”
Except . . . blood surged through his shaft, and he sprang hard against her lower back.
He swallowed hard; his breath came hard and fast.
Cleopatra ceased her struggles, and he gave thanks for small favors. Then—
“Let. Me. Go,” she spat, bucking against him.
I am lost.
With a groan, he spun her around and covered her mouth with his, swallowing the tide of inventive curses escaping her. He slanted his lips over hers, devouring the satiny-soft flesh.
Cleopatra went taut against him, her lithe frame so stiff she could splinter in his embrace. A half moan, half whimper left her. Reaching up, she twined her arms about his neck and, pressing herself against him, met his kiss.
And he, who’d always feared and despised fire, embraced this conflagration between them. Adair filled his hands with her buttocks, anchoring her close. He kneaded the perfect contours and, not breaking contact with her mouth, continued his search. Adair worked his hands over her: down her trim waist, the narrow curve of her hip. Then parting her lips, he searched his tongue around the moist, hot cavern.
Their raspy groans melded as one. He reached between them and found the modest swell of her left breast. Through the fabric of her gown, he molded it against this palm. How perfectly she fit within his hand. His tongue mated with hers in a battle for supremacy he was content to lose. Hungry to know all of her, he sprang her breasts free of her modest dress and cupped her without the hindrance of the garment.
She tossed her head back. “Adair,” she cried out breathlessly.
The sound of his name on her lips fueled him. Gathering her right leg, he brought it up about his waist, twining that sinewy limb around him. He guided her back against his desk and, reclaiming her lips, swallowed the breathy sounds of her desire.
Cleopatra twined both her hands about his neck and dragged him down closer, a woman in command who knew what she wanted, and his ardor burned all the greater that she’d been transformed into a gasping, pleading temptress in his arms.
She is a siren and I am ensnared . . .
Through the thick fog of lust consuming him, that truth registered, and he pulled back. He ripped away from her as horror penetrated the madness that had driven back his judgment.
Cleopatra sagged back on her elbows. Glasses askew, hair mussed, cheeks flushed, she had the look of a well-ravished woman.
My God, I kissed Cleopatra Killoran.
She blinked slowly; the cloud in her eyes slowly lifted as she met his gaze. All hint of desire receded under the full weight of her ire. “Ya needn’t look so horrified,” she retorted. “It . . . it was just a kiss.” That mocking rejoinder was countered by the tremble there, and the unsteady way she got herself back to her feet.
Unable to form a suitable mocking retort, he retreated several steps. “You aren’t to come here again,” he said, needing distance from her. Frustration with himself, and this inexplicable hold she had over him, made his words come out more sharply than he intended.
For a long minute, he believed she’d strike him. Little gold specks of fury glittered brightly in her eyes. And for an even longer moment, he wanted her to. He deserved a facer. Then she marched off, brushing violently past him.
“Cleopatra,” he called out as her fingers found the handle.
She stalled, but she made no move to turn around.
“I don’t want you wandering these halls at night,” he ordered. “Are we clear?”
“Go to hell,” she spat.
She’d taken his orders as an insult. Guilt knotted in his chest. She didn’t know he wanted her gone for his own sanity. Regardless, it was safer not engaging her, letting her form whatever erroneous opinion she had.
Letting herself out, she pulled the door shut behind her with a barely discernible click.
What in blazes had overcome him? He slammed a fist on the desk so hard, the ledgers leapt from the force of that movement. It only brought his attention to the design plans he’d pored over with Cleopatra. She’d raised valid points in terms of the layout of the hell, and her questioning seemed innocuous. Only she was a Killoran. Since Adair and his siblings had freed themselves of Mac Diggory’s clutches and established a fortune and future of their own, they’d earned eternal enemies in that gang. Through countless criminal acts carried out against Adair’s family and his gaming hell, he knew better than to trust her. Knew better than to desire her . . .
A knock infiltrated his tumultuous thoughts—a hard, strong, powerful one that marked it different from the waiflike Cleopatra. “Enter,” he called, swiftly straightening.
Ryker entered. His keen gaze did a sweep of the room, taking in everything. “I observed Killoran in the halls.”
Killoran. It was, of course, the young woman’s surname . . . but there was a detached coldness that no longer fit with the spirited minx he’d held in his arms. “I sent her to her rooms,” he said as his brother entered the room and shut the door behind him. Ryker had been watching after the newest houseguest. After his exchange with Cleopatra Killoran, Adair had no right to any annoyance at having his responsibilities questioned. Adair concentrated his efforts on righting his piles.
“You sent her to her rooms? And you didn’t see fit to personally escort her there?” Ryker asked.
Adair briefly stopped in his tidying.
He’d been tasked with looking after Killoran’s sister, and yet here he’d stood instead, sharing the building plans for the Hell and Sin, letting her inside that world, and then nearly taking her on his desk. “It won’t happen again,” he finally said, that reassurance laced with a double meaning. His brother could never know. It didn’t matter that Cleopatra’s kiss had said she was no virgin. It mattered the gang she belonged to, and the spell that had blotted out all logical hatred for her.
“Carelessness—”
“Kills,” he cut in brusquely. “I know the damned rules.” He, Ryker, Niall, and Calum had established the very guidelines for survival as boys. “I won’t forget.”
“See that you don’t,” Ryker commanded in gravelly tones. “My family lives here.” Recently a father, Ryker, who’d always been overprotective of his kin, had developed a singular intent to look after his loved ones.
“I will not make the same mistake,” he assured.
With a nod, Ryker let himself out. Abandoning any hopes of sleep for the night, Adair, in a bid to set Cleopatra from his thoughts, claimed a spot at his desk and evaluated the most recent design plans for the Hell and Sin.
His family and his club were everything . . . he’d do well to not, as Ryker said, let a Killoran threaten either.