The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(61)

A frown formed on his hard lips. “Is that what you believe, Cleopatra Killoran? That I spent the day avoiding you?”

“No.”

Some of the tension left his shoulders.

“That is precisely what I know you’ve been doing. You had your meeting with Black, and that was the end of ours.”

His back immediately went up. “I had an appointment with my builder.”

Cleopatra pursed her lips. “It ain’t my business.” She again made to leave, and he gripped her by the upper arm, staying her.

“Would you have the truth?”

“Are you capable of it?” she sneered, spoiling for a fight with this man. Wanting the safe, familiar comfort of the antipathy that had always existed between them. Hating him for not even relenting in this.

“Ryker still doesn’t trust you,” he said candidly. “He believes you wouldn’t hesitate to betray our family to benefit your own.”

And she wouldn’t. Would she? Only everything had become so very blurred these past three weeks. She itched to dig her fingertips into her temples and drive the confusion from her muddled mind.

“You didn’t ask me what I believe.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said tiredly, her voice heavy to her own ears.

He dropped his hip against a brocade armchair. “It doesn’t?” A frosty glint iced his eyes.

Moving closer, she spoke quietly, mindful of the sleeping child. “You might speak freely about your damned club and your plans, but ultimately, you can’t see past the fact that I’m . . . Killoran’s sister.”

She gasped as he shot a hand out, and capturing hers, began to divest her of one of her gloves. Cleopatra briefly froze and then began to wrestle her arm back. “What are you doing, Thorne?” she demanded, her heart pounding hard against her rib cage as Adair stripped away the satin fabric. A heavy pall descended over the nursery, broken only by the faint snore that periodically escaped the babe.

Cleopatra stared dumbly at the D seared into her flesh, a brand that marked her origins.

Soundlessly, he trailed an index finger over it.

Oh, God, does he know the significance of it? It was an inventorying process that, given his abuse, she’d never wholly understood. Why mark a person when one couldn’t be bothered to so much as assign them a name?

“My brother doubted . . . doubts you,” he corrected. He continued to run his finger over her palm, sending delicious shivers from that distracted caress. “Given our families’ history over the years, I should also have those same reservations, Cleopatra. I continually remind myself of that.” He paused his tender ministrations. “And yet, I don’t. I don’t believe you’ll use the information I’ve shared against me or my club or my family. Nor do I believe you’re capable of hurting”—Adair trailed his gaze over to the cradle—“anyone.”

At that affirmation of his trust, her heart sang. It was a gift given in the streets, more valuable than the fleeting coin one pilfered for the permanency of it. He lightly squeezed her hand, and drawing it close to his mouth, he brushed a kiss over the inside of her palm.

A vise squeezed her chest at the intimacy of that kiss. It defied the emotionless, driven-by-need-only exchanges she’d witnessed whores and patrons at her club turn themselves over to. And the tenderness of it threatened to shatter her.

This is too much . . .

Clearing her throat, Cleopatra neatly disentangled her fingers and made a show of pushing her spectacles back into place. “Oi—I’m still not going,” she said, hurriedly shifting the discourse back to what had brought him here in the first place.

Before he’d been forthright with her, and he continued working a dangerous hold inside her heart. With every day, she found herself one day further away from freedom. There would be no husband to speak freely with about the plans and ideas of a gaming hell. Given all she’d gleaned about the nobility over the years, they wouldn’t even allow a wife an opinion. And she would be crushed by that in ways that Diggory had never managed to defeat her.

Adair shook his head slowly. “I don’t understand.”

“Not that difficult to follow. Lady B-Beaufort’s ball,” she expounded. “This evening,” she said lamely, promptly curling her toes into the soles of her boots. As though there was, in fact, another Beaufort ball they’d been expected to attend. “I’m not going.”

Adair scratched at his creased brow. “Isn’t that the sole reason you’re here, to attend Society events?”

No. The sole reason she was here was to make a match with a fancy nob. It was an altogether vital distinction that sent desolation sweeping through her. “I said I’m not going.” She swept away in a whir of satin skirts. “Wot’s the point of it?” she demanded on a loud whisper. “Oi go and sit through ball after ball, and the end is always the same.” Such a realization should have her sick with the implications of what her failure would mean for her sisters. She briefly closed her eyes. I am a selfish bastard. I don’t want to make a damned match with a bloody stranger. Least of all, a nob . . . She sprang forward on the balls of her feet to take flight.

Adair settled his palms on her shoulders, grounding her, bringing her sinking back to her heels. His touch was both calming and strengthening all at once, and she who’d forever scoffed at needing another, leaned back against his chest, taking the support he offered. “I still say you’re better off without all that silly dancing nonsense,” he whispered against her ear. Delicious shivers raced from the sensitive skin on her nape, down to her back. An involuntary laugh escaped her—that husky, breathless sound she’d heard from too many of the prostitutes inside the Devil’s Den.