Dreaming of You (The Gamblers #2)(47)

“Tell me,” Sara said softly, but he shook his head.

“After my resurrection days I turned to other ways of making a profit—all of them nearly as unsavory. But not quite. Nothing’s as bad as what I did. Not even murder.”

He was quiet then. The moon was veiled by clouds, the sky painted in muted tones of gray and violet. Once it might have been the kind of night he had gone out to desecrate graveyards. As she stared at the man next to her, his hair gleaming like ebony in the lamplight, Sara realized that her heart was pounding and her palms were clammy. Cold perspiration trickled down her back and beneath her arms. He was right—she was revolted by the things he had done. And without a doubt there was more he hadn’t told her.

She struggled with many feelings at once, trying to understand him, trying most of all not to fear him. How terribly naive she had been. She would never have imagined him capable of such terrible things. The families of his victims, how they must have suffered—and it could just as well have been her family, her relatives. He was responsible for causing pain to many people. Had someone described such a man to her, she would have said that he was beyond redemption.

But…he wasn’t completely bad. He had come after her tonight, fearing for her safety. He had refused to take advantage of her at the club, when there had been nothing to stop him but the remnants of his own conscience. Just now when she had been crying, he had been kind and gentle. Sara shook her head in consternation, not knowing what to think.

Craven’s face was turned away, but challenge was clear in every line of his posture. It seemed as if he were waiting for her to condemn him. Before she was quite aware of what she was doing, she reached out to the black hair that curled slightly on the back of his neck. At the touch of her hand, he seemed to stop breathing. Muscle flexed beneath her fingertips. She sensed the smoldering beneath his stillness, and his battle to keep his emotions closed away.

After a minute he looked up at her with blazing green eyes. “You little fool. I don’t want your pity. I’m trying to tell you—”

“It’s not pity.” Hastily she snatched her hand back.

“I’m trying to tell you that all that stands between me and becoming that again is a pile of money.”

“You have a mountain of it.”

“Not enough,” he said heatedly. “Never enough. If you had the sense of a frigging sparrow, you’d understand.”

Sara’s brows knitted together. She felt the tightness in her chest expand until she burst with an anger that almost equaled his. “I do understand! You have the will to survive, Mr. Craven. How could I blame you for that? I don’t like the things you’ve done, but I’m not a hypocrite. If I’d been born in the rookery, I probably would have become a prostitute. I know enough to understand that there were few choices for you in that place. In fact…I…I admire you for lifting yourself out of such depths. Few men would have had the will and the strength to do it.”

“Oh?” He smiled darkly. “Earlier today you were asking about my committee of patronesses. I’ll tell you. Most of their husbands keep mistresses, leaving them alone in their beds night after night. I used to service those fine ladies for a price. I made a fortune. I was as good a whore as I was a thief.”

The blood drained from Sara’s cheeks.

Seeing her reaction, he jeered softly. “Still admire me?”

Numbly Sara remembered the conversations she’d had with the prostitutes she’d interviewed for Mathilda. They had the same look on their faces as Craven did now…bleak, hopeless. “When I needed more money to finance the club,” Craven continued, “I blackmailed a few of them. No proper lord would like to find out his wife had taken flash gentry like me into her bed. But the odd thing was, the blackmail did little to dull my charms. The ‘friendships’ continued until the club was built. We have very civilized understandings, my patronesses and me.”

“Lady Raiford—” Sara said hoarsely.

“No, she wasn’t one of them. She and I never…” He made an impatient gesture and retreated unexpectedly, beginning to pace around her as if a circle of fire separated them. “I didn’t want that from her.”

“Because you cared about her.” When the comment drew no response, Sara pressed further. “And she’s one of many people who care about you…including Mr. Worthy, Gill, even the house wenches—”

“It comes along with paying their salaries.”

Ignoring his sneering sarcasm, she regarded him steadily. “Mr. Craven, why have you told me all of this? You won’t accept my sympathy—and I won’t give you scorn. What do you want from me?”

Stopping in the middle of another pass, he crossed the invisible barrier between them and seized her. His hands clenched her upper arms painfully. “I want you to leave. You’re not safe here. As long as you’re in London you’re not safe from me.” His gaze raked over the rippling mass of her hair, her delicate face, her bewildered eyes. With a sudden groan he pulled her against him, burying his face in her hair. Sara closed her eyes, her mind spinning. His body was solid and powerful, hunching over hers to accommodate their difference in height. She felt him tremble with the force of his need. He spoke just beneath her ear, his voice thick with tormented pleasure. “You have to leave, Sara…because I want to hold you like this until your skin melts into mine. I want you in my bed, the smell of you on my sheets, your hair spread across my pillow. I want to take your innocence. God! I want to ruin you for anyone else.”