The Rogue's Wager (Sinful Brides #1)(80)

“We were in the streets, with nowhere to go,” she said finally. “The duke’s . . .” Hatred glinted in her eyes. “Man coordinated another protectorship, to a man who was . . .” She dug her nails into the fabric of his jacket, and even through the fabric, the bite of her fingers penetrated. “Cruel.” She lifted her eyes to his. “I did horrible things because of him. I was a thief. I robbed from your kind.”

His kind. The self-important bastards who’d been oblivious to a child’s suffering. Shame cloyed at him. “You survived,” he said gruffly. How easily she could have swung for her crimes. Acts of a hungry child she was forced to commit. Bile burned his throat.

“I set fires to establishments at his command. I am not a good person, Robert.”

He choked. “Is that what you believe?” With every admission, a spear struck his heart. He would have been a boy of fourteen, at Eton, his life wholly uncomplicated and carefree—as hers should have been. “You were a child,” he said, his voice a desperate entreaty. Surely she saw she was not to blame?

She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug, and casually continued over his protestation. “My mother died within a year of us living with Diggory.” Diggory. The monster had a name, which only made her horror all the more real. His fingers tightened reflexively. Helena winced, and he forced his hands open. “I could not stop crying.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth and bit so hard, a drop of blood pebbled on the flesh. Robert brushed his thumb over the crimson dot. “He wished me to thieve for him the day she died, but I just sobbed and sobbed until he . . .” She pressed her eyes closed and at the darkness there in her whisper, a chill went through him.

“What did he do?” Did that hoarse, painful inquiry belong to him?

“He taught me to be s-silent.” Her voice cracked, and the cold iced him from the inside out. “He held a candle’s flame to my face so that I was no longer crying.” Oh, God. Her body stiffened in his arms, and he drew her closer to him, wanting to absorb her pain, to make it his own, to take her suffering as his. “Whenever I cried, he’d touch the candle to me.” Had she taken an old broadsword from his ancestral estates and laid him open, it could not have gutted him more. He groaned, the ragged sound befitting a tortured beast.

Her hands.

A dark, unholy rage roared to life. A savage, primitive fury at the man who’d put his hands on her. And if he were here, Robert would sever the bastard’s limbs from his person and stuff them in his mouth.

“Oh, Helena.” His voice broke.

“It was a short time,” she said quickly.

She sought to reassure him? He sat, humbled by the depth of her strength and courage. With all she’d endured, she was far stronger than any man he’d known.

“My brother found me.” That man who’d have Robert’s eternal gratitude. “And we lived on the streets.” Stealing. “Until we moved to the Hell and Sin Club.” She shifted in his arms, and laid the back of her head against his chest.

Silence fell between them. Robert wound his arms around her, and cradled her to him. There were no pretty words or gentle teasing that could take away her suffering. It was, and would always be, a part of her, and he hated that he could not own all of it, sparing her that past.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

He rubbed his chin back and forth over her soft brown curls, which had escaped her neat chignon.

“I’ve not talked about that, ever. Not even with my brothers. You do not . . . talk of those moments.”

Just as he’d not spoken of Lucy’s betrayal until her. How very much alike they were. They’d both been indelibly marked by life and had allowed it to shape whom they’d become. She’d emerged triumphant, brave, bold, and powerful, where he’d simply moved along with a shiftless purpose—until her.

I love her . . .

He stilled, braced for the flood of terror. He’d resolved to never give his heart again. Yet, there was no fear. No trepidation. There was nothing more than an absolute sense of rightness. While his mind raced, Helena drew back and his arms went cold, empty at the loss of her. Except she shoved herself onto her knees, and framed his face between her hands.

“What—?”

Helena covered his mouth with hers, in a questing, searching meeting of their lips. The hint of lavender that clung to her satiny soft skin filled his senses, headier than any aphrodisiac, as it blended with the fragrant scent of flowers about them.



Helena would one day leave. In two months, three weeks, and a handful of hours.

But before she did, she could not leave without knowing this man in every way.

She wanted him. In her arms and in her heart. Forever.

She wanted to sear her mind and body with the heat of his touch and the power of his kiss. This was the madness that had driven her mother to sacrifice all. At last, it made sense. And in a world where women were largely powerless, Helena would have this with Robert. This she had control over.

He parted her lips and slid his tongue inside and a low moan escaped her, as she met his strokes in a bold parry. A shuddery gasp exploded from her, that sound lost in his mouth, as he worked her décolletage down and freed her breasts to the warm spring night air. The air caressed her skin, and then he lowered his head, dragging his mouth over her breasts.