Sweet Revenge Read online

A faint smile pulled on his lips. “It has its good and bad points.”

  More good than bad in Victoria’s opinion. She hadn’t known what to expect; however, a collection of hardcover books crammed into an entire wall of oak shelves would not have been her first guess.

  The living-room furniture was equally charming, overstuffed and comfortable, in varying shades of rust, blue and brown. There was a rolltop desk, open and brimming with files, a round table with chairs sitting in front of the dormer window and beyond that a wooden deck with a wonderful overview of Dockland. The kitchen was serviceable yet homey, the bedroom…well, she’d only glimpsed that, but she expected the windows would share the same dockside view as the living room. It was a fifth-floor walk-up in a crowded city quadrangle called Just-So-Square—and she’d trade her Tower Bridge apartment for it in a minute.

  What surprised her even more than the flat itself was the fact that Torbel had brought her here. They’d have stayed a great deal drier by returning to the storehouse with Keiran and Oswyn. True, it had eased her rattled nerves to stroll past painted windows and hear the prattle of Cockney shoppers searching for a bargain, but she’d been soaked by the time they reached the square, and Torbel’s arm was bleeding quite badly.

  He allowed her to deal with that problem now, though not, she noted, within the confines of the bathroom. He brought the bandages, tape and ointment to the table, then watched with seeming abstraction while she patched him up.

  “You’ll want a warm bath, I imagine,” he said when she was finished.

  That was one of the things she wanted, all right. Unfortunately she wouldn’t get the first by being too hasty, and she hesitated to ask for the second after that gin-and-tonic episode with Zoe at Gooseberries, so she opted for the third. Setting a hand on his good arm, she forced him to look at her. “He’s getting bolder, isn’t he?” Or she, she added silently. “That note was a trick, Torbel, and I fell for it. I shouldn’t have but I did. So did Tito.”

  “So did I,” Torbel said darkly. “It’s a game, Victoria, a deadly bloody game, and we’re caught in the middle of it. I’ve got Keiran dissecting the message that was left on Zoe’s answering machine, but so far he’s come up empty.”

  “You don’t think the police…?” At his tolerant look, her voice trailed off. “I guess not. Not in light of Fox’s nonexistent record, Sophie’s diary, Judge Hollyburn’s attitude, Peacock’s death and—” she shuddered “—Clover’s entire manner.”

  The phone rang before Torbel could respond. Reaching over her to the desk, he flicked a switch. Ron’s Scottish brogue cut through the lash of rain and wind outside.

  “I found an envelope,” he announced bluntly. “Someone pushed it under the kitchen door. I don’t know who or when.”

  Rubbing her arms, Victoria stood and began to pace. She didn’t want to hear this. So many more intriguing pastimes were possible in Torbel’s flat. She’d rather not be privy to any more ghoulish notes.

  Torbel massaged his closed eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. “Read it,” he said, his voice deceptively benign.

  Ron obeyed, ending with an eerie “‘Nine, ten, you lose, I win.’”

  Victoria’s blood felt like ice water; she wasn’t sure why. Obviously she’d survived the attack to which this latest note-rhyme referred. Pick up sticks, though? Lay them straight? She could see herself and Torbel being laid out straight in coffins, broken bone by broken bone.

  “Is that all?” Torbel demanded when Ron stopped.

  “Keiran says to tell you the tape was deliberately fixed and beyond him, whatever that means.”

  “It means,” Torbel said flatly, “that we’re being led around by the nose. Tell him to forget the tape, Ron, and concentrate on finding Boots.”

  “Right, aye.” Ron paused. “You, uh, coming back here tonight, then?”

  Was that the faintest quirk of irony on Torbel’s lips? It was gone before Victoria could be certain. “I doubt it,” he drawled. “But you never know, I might do. Concentrate on your work, Ron, and don’t worry about me.”

  Ron made a disgruntled sound. “See you whenever, then.”

  “Whenever,” Torbel agreed, ending the conversation.

  Victoria eyed him suspiciously from the windowsill. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

  His eyes came up. If looks could kill, those eyes would be a lethal weapon. “I do most things on purpose, Victoria.”

  “Don’t you trust him?”

  “We’ve been over this before,” he said heavily. “Why the sudden lack of faith in Ron? Or do all people with criminal records receive this treatment?”

  “That’s not fair,” she retorted, instantly defensive. “How many times have you found yourself hanging by your fingernails over what you’re sure is going to be a stony grave? Not very often, I bet. All right, so I suspect Ron. I also suspect Clover and Inspector Fox, and they’re cops. I’m not a pampered princess, Torbel. You’ve met my da—you know that. But I’m not used to going through doors and finding nothing except air on the other side, either. And the nursery rhymes I was told weren’t full of dire predictions about death and suffering and avengers sent by some higher—or lower—force to see that justice is served. You and I both know full well that our deaths won’t bring that end about any more than hope alone will end this horrible nightmare. We have to stop this crazy person, Torbel, and we have to do it before we really do walk through a door and straight into our graves.”

  She paused for breath at that point and to push the heavy mass of dark curls from her flushed face. The rain had sent the humidity level soaring to new heights. His flat felt like a Turkish steam bath. She was hot and irritable and scared and, after hearing that note, in no mood to be baited.

  She realized belatedly that he’d stood and shoved back his chair. His eyes, those deadly, beautiful blue-green eyes, were locked on her face. She’d gone too far—and yet she knew she really hadn’t. She’d only stated the obvious.

  So why was she suddenly trembling inside? Why was her spine tingling where it pressed against the window frame, her breath suspended hotly in her chest?

  Rain ran in rivulets down the glass. She heard thunder rolling over the Thames and saw a flash of lightning in the black night sky.

  When had full darkness descended? And why did it feel so close, so threatening to her heart?

  He reached her in two strides. Once there, he seemed infinitely closer than the night. She saw the lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes and recalled obscurely that he was thirty-seven. Not old by any means, but well lived. Or perhaps not so well, she thought, a small sensation of panic climbing into her throat. What did she know about the Rag Man?

  “Is that fear I see in your eyes, Victoria?” he challenged silkily. She would have said sensuously, had it not been for the ruthless cast to his face and the scar that stood out in bold relief against his skin.

  She lifted her chin and lied. “No.”

  “What, then? Uncertainty? Mistrust?”

  “Call it circumspection,” she retorted coolly. “I’m leery of human puzzles, Torbel, and you’re the biggest puzzle I’ve ever met.”

  Her fingers had wrapped themselves around the painted sill, as if by clinging to that she could hold on to the last vestiges of her sanity.

  He’d become a fever in her blood. She didn’t know how or when, but she knew she wanted to make love to him. Wanted to, and would have her way if it killed her.

  She held his unrelenting stare. It seemed to pierce right through her. Could desire kill, she wondered, or would it, in her case, merely deal the final, fatal blow to all her childhood ideals?

  A shiver she couldn’t hide worked its way across her heated skin. Carefully, because she had no idea how he would react, she reached out and touched his face, tracing the line of the scar that curved under his right cheekbone.

  His hand shot up instantly to grip her fingers. “You don’t want to do this, Victoria,” he said in a low voice.


  Her fingers curled in his iron grip, but her gaze remained calm on his face. “How do you know what I want?”

  “I don’t. But I do know you don’t know me.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  “You won’t like what you hear.”

  “I’ll chance it.”

  Using his grip for leverage, he drew her forward until she could feel his arousal digging into her softer flesh. With his mouth mere inches from hers, he said quietly, “You don’t know what you’re getting into. You can’t know. The truth of my life isn’t on computer.”

  Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her breath came in short, rapid spurts. Still, she had her pride. “You brought me here, Torbel,” she reminded him. “I can’t believe it was just to talk.”

  “I make mistakes, too, Victoria. I shouldn’t have brought you here. On the other hand, you shouldn’t have come. Shaken or not, you had sufficient good sense left to say no.”

  Her delicate eyebrows rose. “Yes,” she agreed. “I did. And yet I’m here, aren’t I?”

  A telltale muscle in his jaw twitched. The heat and humidity seemed to have doubled in the tiny flat. More thunder rumbled through the London sky. Rain tapped at the windows, like wet needles striking the glass. Victoria swayed but stopped short of actually falling into him. She’d made her choice; she wouldn’t let him accuse her of using her feminine wiles on top of that.

  He sighed at her stubborn silence. “You really are pigheaded, aren’t you?” he said, his free hand moving reluctantly to stroke the hair from her warm face. “You almost died an hour ago, and now you want sex.”

  She froze. “Is that how you see it, Torbel? Sex between consenting adults?”

  He regarded her with a steady expression. “It’s how I have to see it. Trust me, you wouldn’t be happy afterward.”

  Annoyed, she twisted her hand free. “Isn’t that for me to decide? Since when did sex become such a clinical topic of discussion anyway? You have no sense of romance, do you? I mean, it isn’t as if—”

  He cut her off with a resigned “Victoria…”

  “What?”

  “Shut up.”

  And before she could respond, he lowered his head, placed his mouth over hers and proceeded to kiss her as she’d never been kissed before.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He could be pushed so far and no further. And a black-haired Gypsy with accusations spilling from her lips and sparks of anger flying from her electric blue eyes was more than any healthy, sexually aroused man could take.

  He’d planned to put her off with his kiss, but he realized instantly, and with a vague sense of inevitability, that it wouldn’t work out that way. How could it when he loved her? Not that he was prepared to admit that to her—he was barely able to admit it to himself—but love it was, and would remain for as long as he lived.

  Such had always been the depth of his emotions. When he hated, he hated. When he loved, he loved all the way.

  His mouth moved hungrily over hers, his tongue circling, tasting, exploring the delicate contours. She reminded him of a violet. Beautiful, finely built and fragile. Which was to say she appeared fragile, yet in reality possessed the strength of ten women.

  The small sound she made in her throat caused his insides to constrict. He acknowledged the insistent throbbing in his lower limbs and pulled her closer, until his arousal dug into the soft skin of her lower belly.

  Her fingers twined themselves in his hair. She kissed him back eagerly now, her initial surprise and wariness vanishing as one by one his defenses fell away.

  He wouldn’t be able to wait long, his instincts told him. He wanted Victoria as he’d never wanted another woman.

  She was tugging his shirt from the waistband of his jeans and sliding her hands beneath it. Tantalizing, tentative hands that stretched his self-control to the breaking point.

  Hauling her closer, he tucked her more firmly against him, teasing her with his mouth, breathing in the warm, exotic scent of her skin and hair.

  The bedroom loomed to his left, a place of darkness and intrigue. For some reason, there was an element of mystery attached to the idea of making love to her. Mystery…and fear.

  “Victoria.” He tried again to find an excuse, a reason to prevent this thing from happening.

  But she merely shook her head and let her hands stray lower. He felt a groan rise in his throat and knew with a hazy, distant certainty that he was lost. Well and truly lost for the first time in his life.

  He wondered obscurely what old Goggy would make of that…

  VICTORIA’S ENTIRE BODY ached for him. She wanted to crawl under his skin, to be so close to him that no one and nothing could separate them.

  Rain pelted the roof and walls. The heat inside her soared. She kissed his face, his eyes, his nose, his mouth and finally, daringly, the scar that ran from brow to cheekbone.

  For once he offered no objection, just caressed her back and shoulders as she took the initiative. When her questing fingers found the hot, throbbing length of him, he caught back a tight breath, and she smiled even as a shiver of desire swept through her.

  She allowed herself to become bolder, kissing him first on the mouth, then on the throat, then lower still on his shoulders and chest.

  The tremor that gripped him also infected her. Her skin felt on fire. She was so aware of him that it actually hurt to breathe.

  At long last, she reached that most needful spot on his body. His fingers slid through her hair, and in the back of her mind she heard his murmur of encouragement.

  Her skin felt damp yet strangely seared. It was a delicious sensation, almost as heady as the one that enveloped her when she put her mouth on him.

  He reacted instantly, convulsively, his hips arching toward her. “Help me,” he moaned, and then more softly, “Victoria…”

  His hands, strong and sure, reached for her. She didn’t want to leave, but she allowed him to ease her upward.

  Her mind was a hazy jumble of awareness, of things both heard and felt, of the rain and thunder outside and waves of heat and light inside her head.

  She experienced a momentary floating sensation, then felt herself sinking through a soft cotton cloud. As if waking from a dream, she realized that they were no longer in the living room, but lying on his bed. A bed of clouds, it seemed to her fuzzy mind, like the one Mary Poppins must have slept on, because she lived in the clouds, didn’t she? A witch nanny sent to help bring families together.

  Boots had called Torbel’s mother a witch of sorts. If that was true, what was Torbel?

  A man, she decided, closing her eyes in pleasure as his roving mouth slid over her breast to her nipple.

  He suckled the hardened tip, gently yet with enough taunting force to make her neck arch on the pillow.

  Piece by piece, her already loosened clothing disappeared. First her tank top, then her bra, then her shorts and lacy briefs. When the last item had fluttered off to shadowy oblivion she ran her hands across his shirt and pulled it slowly over his head. She was groping for his belt when another, fiercer sensation gripped her.

  He was kissing her ear. She hadn’t known that ears could be erogenous zones, but evidently they were. It was all her fumbling fingers could do to deal with his fly.

  When she finally did, he kicked his jeans impatiently away. It seemed he was kissing her everywhere now. What he didn’t kiss with his mouth, he stroked with his hands. Victoria felt herself drifting upward, through a white-hot haze of awareness, heading for—she didn’t know what. She’d never had a real climax before, hadn’t been sure what to expect if and when she ever did.

  It was no longer in question. And when seemed imminent, exquisitely, painfully so.

  Her hair was wet, her head thrashing back and forth on the pillow. She pulled him closer and, through a murky haze, heard again his quick, indrawn breath.

  Now, she pleaded with him silently. Do it now.

  He did, as swiftly and surely as if she’d spoken the words o
ut loud. Maybe she had. She only knew that he was as hungry for her as she was for him.

  He entered her in a single, fiery thrust that had her fingernails digging into his shoulders and a gasp spilling from her lips.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered when he hesitated.

  She saw his eyes glittering in the shadows, heard the rain hammering the roof and felt oddly suspended in time. “Are you sure?” His voice was low and husky, his breathing harsh as he searched for an answer in her face.

  She gave him one, reaching up and pulling his mouth onto hers, then sliding her hands to his buttocks and urging him deeper inside her.

  He began the rhythm, that timeless male-female ritual, at a decorous pace. But Victoria wanted no part of decorum. She wanted to be in that place where she knew she’d never been. She wanted him to fill her with heat and energy and love. She wanted the Rag Man. Completely. Now.

  His movements became faster. Her heart raced, the blood pounding hot and frenzied in her veins. Her head swam, alive with sensations she scarcely recognized. The fever that seized her must have transmitted itself to him. The strain and pleasure were plainly written on his face. His hair was wet with perspiration; his half-lidded eyes shimmered in the dim light of the city.

  The docks of London hovered before her, wet and mysterious, an age-old city playing backdrop to an even older dance.

  For one brief moment, it seemed that her heightened senses hung in the balance. She felt nothing and everything. She forgot to breathe.

  Then, just when she thought she would burst, he moved again, exploding inside her with an intensity that brought a cry of exultation to her lips.

  It was beautiful, beyond anything she’d ever dreamed. She wanted to hold the moment, to make it last forever. Yet even as that thought flitted through her mind, she knew it wasn’t to be. Nothing in life was forever, least of all a moment as exquisite as the one she’d just experienced. She felt herself sliding downward, a slow, inexorable descent into the embers of their lovemaking.

  He collapsed on top of her, exhausted. He would have rolled away if she hadn’t caught and held him tight against her.