Tommy had never in his life felt less kind.

  They stood in silence for a long moment, and then she took a step toward him, closing the distance between them. He caught his breath, knowing he should back away. Knowing he should end this—whatever it was about to be. Knowing that if they were caught . . . everything would go sideways.

  Except she spoke, the words barely a sound, “I disappeared from the ball.” He could not move. “And I wanted you to come looking.” He shouldn’t be so close to her. Shouldn’t be able to feel her heat. To scent her perfume, lush and mouthwatering. “But I should have hidden from you.”

  “Why?” He shouldn’t ask.

  “You scare me.” He stiffened, but before he could pull away, to put space between them, she lifted her hand and brushed her fingertips along his cheek. “Wait. Not like that. Let me . . .”

  “Explain.” The word came harsher than he intended. A demand rather than a request, and he forced his hands into tight fists at his sides. He shouldn’t touch her. That wasn’t the job. The job was to protect her.

  It didn’t feel like a job.

  “I—” she started, then stopped, collecting her thoughts. Her lips pursed into the prettiest little bow he’d ever seen. He bit the inside of his cheek. Christ. The woman had just admitted he scared her, and no wonder; he was imagining all the ways he wanted to devour her. “I am used to chaos.”

  He offered a crooked smile at the words. “I expect you are.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I am used to being the source of chaos. But you . . .” It killed him to wait in that pause that seemed to stretch on forever. “You make me feel . . . like the chaos is outside of me. Like I can’t control it.”

  The pleasure that came at the confession was acute. “You make me feel that way all the time,” he said, unable to stop himself from reaching for her. “Out of control.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You shall get used to it.”

  Her brown eyes found his in the darkness. “Does it go away?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t tell her the truth. That if she was like him, she would start to hunger for it.

  She tilted her head, as though she was thinking of a solution. Of a cure. “Perhaps if . . .”

  His brows rose. “If?”

  “If there were some way to embrace it.”

  “Embrace it?” She couldn’t possibly mean what he thought she meant.

  She nodded and stepped closer, looking down at his hands, his fists clenched tightly even though she was close enough to touch. Because she was close enough to touch. He could lift one hand and stroke his fingers up her arm. Over the soft skin of her cheek. Into her curls. Tilt her face up to his. Claim those pretty red lips again. Revisit the taste of her, fresh and sweet.

  He could, but he wouldn’t.

  This was his job. He was to guard her. To keep her from danger.

  But in that moment, somehow, he had become the biggest danger to her.

  Her head was bowed now, staring down at the floor. No. Not at the floor. At his hand. She reached for it, her fingers stroking over his fist, tracing the ridges of his knuckles. How was it possible that her touch felt like that? Like fire, rushing through him.

  Like mayhem.

  He released a shaking breath and she looked up at him, realization in her dark eyes, rimmed with sooty lashes. “You feel it, too. The ratatatat.”

  Yes. Yes.

  But he wouldn’t admit it.

  “Perhaps,” she started again, “if we just . . . let it take us . . . for a moment . . . once more . . .”

  A terrible idea.

  “Maybe it will calm it.” Her fingers were sliding up his arm now—scattering his thoughts with her soft touch, so soft he had no doubt he could resist her. She a foot shorter than he. He’d proven he could lift her. He should do that. Immediately. Lift her up and set her aside and leave this room.

  “Calm it,” he repeated, instead.

  “The chaos,” she whispered.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever be calm again. “Once more,” he said. Surprising himself. He hadn’t meant to say that.

  He hadn’t meant to return her touch. Hadn’t meant to stroke over the lush curve of her waist. Didn’t mean to pull her closer. To slide his other hand up to the soft skin of her jaw, to tilt her toward him.

  “Just once,” she said. “And maybe then . . . it will feel . . .”

  “Better.” It wasn’t a terrible idea; it was a brilliant one.

  “Right.” She nodded, coming up on her toes, meeting him as he leaned down.

  “Just one kiss,” he said. “And then—”

  She closed the distance between them, and he forgot the plan.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It should be said that Imogen was generally quite brilliant.

  She was extremely good at maths, a scientific genius to rival any man at the Royal Society of Chemistry, and in the past two years, she’d discovered three separate chemical reactions that proved extremely useful when it came to catching criminals, distracting peers, and rendering unconscious men who . . . well . . . deserved it.

  So it was not without thought that she proposed that Thomas Peck kiss her again. The way he made her feel was so uncommon—so out of the realm of her prior life experience—that she really did hypothesize that kissing him might calm the wild beating of her heart and return everything to normal.

  The moment his lips found hers, however, his arms coming around her waist and pulling her tight to him, it was clear that Imogen did not need to complete the experiment to prove that her hypothesis had not only been incorrect, it had been nonsensical.

  But she was going to complete the experiment anyway. Obviously.

  For science.

  Because the kiss might not have calmed the chaos inside her . . . but it was the closest thing she had ever felt to an explosion.

  A wild ka-boom of an explosion.

  And as a woman who enjoyed explosions, she was keen for more.

  She ran her hands up around his shoulders and tilted her head, opening to him with a little sigh of pleasure, delighting in the way he received her, sliding his tongue over her bottom lip with a sinful lick and dipping inside, bringing flame with him.

  Imogen sucked in a breath at the touch, stilling for a moment, unable to move or think or respond because it was happening. He was kissing her again. Not outside of The Place after she offered him a trade. But because he felt it, too—this wild pull.

  And that knowledge, along with the feel of him, warm and strong and for this mad moment hers . . . was enough to set her aflame.

  She met the kiss, and they burned together, sliding, stroking, clinging, their breath coming hard and fast and his hands moving, slow and deliberate, a smooth promise of pleasure down her spine, over the lush curves of her hips and around to her bottom, pulling her tightly to him, lifting her into his kiss, making her forget everything but this man, this kiss, this moment.

  No, there was nothing calming about Thomas Peck’s kiss.

  It was the opposite of calming.

  It was . . . exciting.

  So exciting that she couldn’t keep the discovery to herself.

  She pulled away with a quick “Oh,” her fingertips running through the soft pelt of his beard.

  He stroked one thumb over her cheek and caught her eyes. “Oh?”

  “It’s just—I was wrong.”

  He stiffened and made to pull back, to put distance between them.

  “Oh, no. I don’t mean . . . Don’t do that,” she insisted.

  He stopped and let out a quick exhale. “I think I ought to.”

  She clutched his arms to stay his movement, and couldn’t ignore the steel of his muscles beneath his beautifully tailored coat. “Oh,” she said again, unable to keep the approval from the word.

  A low sound rumbled in his chest. Something suspiciously like pleasure. Her gaze flickered to his, and he said, low and rich, “What were you wrong about, Imogen?”

  She blinked. “I thought the kiss would solve everything.”

  He cursed, soft and wicked in the dark. “It didn’t. It was a mistake.”

  No. It wasn’t. That much, she knew. “It should have,” she insisted. “It’s a matter of science. Of exposure.”

  One dark brow rose and he cut her an amused look. “Exposure.”

  “Precisely. In the same way one exposes a child to a disease. To get it done with.”

  “Lady Imogen,” he said, the words slow and easy. “Am I a disease in this scenario?”

  “You don’t have to be,” she said. “I am happy to be the disease.”

  “You are not a disease,” he replied, the words clipped, as though she’d offended him.

  She smiled at that. “That’s a lovely thing to say.”

  “I should not be here with you.”

  “My brother hired you as my guard,” she said. “Where else would you be?”

  “I remain a man. An unmarried man outside of your world. If we were discovered—”

  She would be ruined. Without doubt. “Sesily would be thrilled,” she muttered.

  “What?”

  Imogen lifted her chin, dismissing the question. “Mr. Peck, are you my guard? Or not?”

  His hands—still holding her tight to him, as though he could not find the willpower to release her—flexed at her round bottom. “I am.”

  “And you have reason to believe it is necessary?”

  He closed his eyes at the question. “I do,” he said softly, more to himself than to her. “Though I am not sure you aren’t the danger.”

  Feeling wicked, she pressed back into his grip, reveling in the way his eyes opened and his fingers tightened, sending a thrum of pleasure through her. “I like to think of myself less as a danger and more as an adventure.”

  He huffed out a laugh. “You are that.”

  “And if you are to be my guard on this adventure,” she said quietly, “perhaps the solution to this particular problem is a longer exposure.” The words fell between them, and she knew they were a risk, but she added, “An investigation, of sorts.”

  “Ah,” he said, lifting one hand to stroke over her cheek, back and forth in a slow, maddening slide. Imogen held her breath, waiting for his answer. And then he dipped down and pressed a hot, openmouthed kiss to her jaw, just beneath her ear, where he whispered, “We have established that I am very good at investigating . . .”

  “Tommy,” she whispered, wanting more. Wanting him.

  He stilled at the sound of his name, and then, with another low growl—frustration? desire?—he lifted her off her feet, into his arms. Imogen couldn’t remember ever having been carried about in her entire life, and this man had done it three times in a little over a week. She shouldn’t have liked it. She should have resisted it—she was perfectly capable of moving herself from place to place. She did not require some brute from Scotland Yard to carry her about.

  But every time he did, she couldn’t help but marvel at his enormous muscles—she was not small, after all—and the way he seemed to have absolutely no trouble at all with lifting her, carrying her, touching her . . .

  She loved it.

  Tommy set her on a nearby table, where she knocked into a heavy brass lamp.

  She gasped and turned, but before she could reach to catch the heavy fixture, Tommy was there, his reflexes instantaneous, grabbing it from midair with one large hand before it hit the ground and the glass shade smashed.

  In one smooth movement, he returned the lamp to the table and set his hand to the side of her face, pressing his thumb beneath her chin, and tipping her face up to his.

  She couldn’t help her breathless “That was impressive.”

  “Mmm.” He dipped his head and stole another kiss, acknowledging the compliment before he whispered at her lips, “I like impressing you.”

  “I am impressed,” she said softly. “By so much of it.”

  He pulled back, barely. Just enough that she could look into his eyes. “For example?”

  She gave him a little smile. “Are you searching for compliments, Mr. Peck?”

  He didn’t hesitate, his blue eyes going deep and liquid. “Yes.”

  She lifted a hand and stroked one finger down his nose. “This bump.”

  “Bar fight.”

  “Did you win?”

  His shoulders straightened, chest broadening at the question, as though he were a champion presented to his queen. Her guard. “Yes.”

  She nodded. “It suits you.”

  “Winning?”

  A little smile. “That, too.”

  He matched her smile. That suits you, too. But she didn’t say it. Instead, she let her fingers trail down to his beard, smoothly oiled, loving the sound that rumbled in his throat. “You like that.”

  He pressed against her hand, urging her on. “Mmm.”

  “It makes you look”—he took hold of her hand and pressed a kiss to the center of her palm, stealing her breath as she finished—“wild.”

  Another rumble in his chest and he leaned down to coast his lips along the soft skin of her neck, the barely-there kiss punctuated by the stroke of his beard and the slow slide of his tongue tasting the pulse that hammered there. Without thinking, she lifted her chin, giving him permission to continue, and added, “It makes me feel wild.”

  “Shall I tell you what makes me feel wild, my lady?” The words were low and lazy, as though they were not at a Mayfair ball at which she would be missed. As though he had a lifetime to be distracted by her shoulder, to trace the curve of it to the edge of her dress.

  She wanted to tell him not to call her that. Not to put the distance of her title between them. But she liked it too much, the claiming in it, the idea that she was his. That it was his choice. “Please,” she said, the word barely there as his fingers returned to the edge of her gown, tucking inside, setting her on fire.

  “Here?”

  She nodded, looking down at the place where he tugged at the rough silk, at the gold thread. “Wait—” She reached for the brooch she always wore—obsidian set in silver. Removed it, slid it into her pocket. And when that was done, she whispered, “Yes.”

  The fabric stretched as he followed her silent instructions, hooking his finger and tugging it lower. “You make me feel wild,” he said, and she could hear the surprise in his voice. “You upend all my good sense. I’m to question you. I’m to watch you. I’m to keep you at a distance.”

  She tugged on his hair until he looked up at her. “Why?”

  “You’ve been tampering with my crime scenes.” Another tug, and the fabric scraped across her nipple, baring it to the cool room and his hot gaze. He stared down at her, and she recognized the emotions on his usually well-guarded face.

  Recklessness. Chaos. Desire.

  “You’ve been tampering with my bodice.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t help myself.”

  She nodded. “You know what they say . . . best to keep enemies close.”

  Tommy didn’t reply, and for a moment, she wondered if there was something wrong. She had never done anything quite like this . . . never revealed herself to another, let alone a person who made her feel the way he did. But she’d heard plenty about the act—difficult not to with Sesily and Adelaide nearby—and as far as she knew, men did not . . . stay still for it.

  Was it . . . was she . . . acceptable?

  The thought crashed through her and she released him instantly, moving to cover herself.

  “No,” he said, the movement unlocking him. He caught her hand in one of his, strong and warm and unyielding. “Let me look.”

  Her cheeks went red with embarrassment. “Is it . . .” She paused. Rethought. “Am I . . .” Oh, no, she couldn’t ask that. She took a deep breath. “Are you . . . satisfied?”

  He looked up at that, meeting her gaze. “Am I satisfied?” He gave a little laugh. Barely there, but recognizable as a laugh nonetheless, and Imogen wondered if it was possible to perish from embarrassment. “No, my lady. I am not satisfied.”

  Perishing from embarrassment would not be the worst outcome, she decided. At least she would not remember that reply when she was dead. “Oh.”

  “Imogen,” he said softly. When she did not meet his eyes, he said, “Look at me.”

  The demand was raw enough to tempt her, and when she did, it was to find him stern and serious. “I am not satisfied by looking, because looking isn’t enough. I want . . .” He looked down at her breasts, bare and aching for him, and stroked one hand over his mouth, like he was starving. “Christ, I want to touch you more than I want my next breath.” His eyes found her, light with desire. “May I touch you, my lady?”

  That honorific again. Asking permission. Setting her on fire. “Yes,” she replied. “Please.” She bit her lip, unable to ask for what she wanted.

  She didn’t have to. Because he knew. He wanted it, too. And when he gave it to her, his tongue painting over the straining tip of her breast like a promise, it was glorious. She gasped, sliding her fingers into his hair, finding purchase as he bent her back over one arm and turned his attention to her other breast, taking the peak into his mouth and—Oh!—sucking in lush, lovely pulls, again and again, sending pleasure pooling deep within her, making her ache for more.

  “That is . . .” His gaze found hers at the words, but he did not stop, instead licking over her with the broad flat of his tongue, daring her to finish. She did. “. . . wicked.”

  He smiled at the assessment. “Not wicked so much as an adventure, no?”

  She couldn’t help the little laugh as he notched her legs wide beneath her skirts and pressed closer, worshipping her. He scraped his teeth across one nipple, soothing it immediately with tongue and lips, and her fingers clenched, holding him tight to her as she begged, “More.”

  He didn’t hesitate, his hands stroking down her legs as he lifted his head to claim her mouth in a wild kiss—one she matched until his fingers found her ankle beneath her skirts and she gasped at the sizzle the touch sent through her.

  His lips slid across her cheek to her ear, where he repeated on a low whisper, “May I touch you, my lady?”