Page 277 of From Rakes to Riches

And just like that, they were no longer in a cage. No longer was she shackled by iron...but instead a velvet rope wound its way around her limbs, cording and knotting her to him.

She felt at once vulnerable and invincible.

Safe and in peril.

The fresh, expensive scent of him overpowered the staler odors of the carriage. His eyes were mesmerizing, taking up the entirety of her vision, forcing everything else to fall away.

Forgotten.

He moved with such swiftness, and yet when his lips sealed to hers, the press of it was astonishing in its gentility. His neck corded with tension, his shoulders bunched, and his grip tightened.

But his mouth. Oh, his mouth. It sampled her with a series of light strokes, restraining his ardent passion with well-practiced skill.

Mercy forever displayed the wrong reactions to stimuli. This time was no different.

Any space in her temper for anger or aggression was overtaken by an abject exhilaration. An undeniable excitement that bordered on impatience.

Though it was increasingly cold, they built their own fire, igniting something between them that had a portent of inevitability.

An inarticulate sound vibrated from somewhere deep within him, quickening her heart and rushing the blood through her veins with an injection of heat.

She surged closer, her fingers gripping his collar as the kiss deepened of its own accord. She couldn’t tell whose mouth opened first, but their tongues met and danced.

Sparred.

In this moment, they had their own language. One that was as lilting and lyrical as any that existed. It was guttural and tonal and it gathered responses from her she never thought herself capable of making.

She knew there was more. More of this wild storm building between them. More of this man she wanted to explore.

More of the world she wanted to see.

Wanted him to show her. To teach her.

Dangerous. A voice warned from somewhere far, far away. Someplace buried so deep in her psyche, she might have forgotten it even existed.

Her reason. Her wit.

He’d interred it beneath the avalanche of desire tumbling through her, tossing her end over end until she couldn’t decide which way was up.

Danger. You’re in danger.

The warning was closer now, more urgent. Enough to draw her back, breaking the seal of their lips.

She only had a moment of gratification at a similar haze unfocusing his stormy eyes before the clouds parted and he blinked down at her with an expression both alert and regretful.

“Forgive me,” he whispered, releasing the lock on her shackles and letting them fall to the floor.

She looked down at them in mute astonishment, not having even noticed he’d been working on them.

By the time she’d registered that he moved, he’d slid out the door and pulled it shut and secured the padlock just as she lunged for him.

“Wait!” she cried, wrapping her fingers around the bars. “You’re going to let me rot in jail while you go free?”

Now that they were in a busier part of the city, she could hear the astonished gasps and exclamations of the passersby.

He hung from the carriage by one hand at the hinges of the door and one foot on the ledge as he grinned into the cart through the barred window.

“I know who your family is, Mercy Goode, you’ll be back home in time for tea.” His eyes were no longer glinting, but ablaze with silver light.

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