Page 83 of A Treacherous Trade
“I’m not saving it for anyone.”
“Then give it to me.” He leaned back against the velvet of the coach seat, his legs still parted indecently.
“Why do you say such things?” I threw my hands up. “When you know it makes me less likely to do so.”
The smirk that made him appear both unthreatening and utterly treacherous returned. “I’m merely throwing my hat in the ring, as it were. I want you to not mistake my intentions when you’re making your decision. I want the experience to be… memorable.”
I held my hands up against him, my bodice suddenly too tight.
“You are surrounded by men who want to fuck you,” he said blithely, then counted off on his long fingers. “Aramis, Inspector Croft, me, the Ripper, vast and various men in your sphere you wouldn’t dare to imagine.”
“Please, stop.” I pressed cold hands to my flaming cheeks. “Why do you insist on being so absurd?”
He bared his teeth in half a sneer and half a snarl. “Becauseyouinsist on acting like you don’t know. Like you can’t feel the wolves sniffing at your skirts, howling to be allowed beneath them. It’s as infuriating as it is arousing.”
“What you are saying makes nosense,” I argued, yearning for him to take it back, to stop this if it was a cruelty, and to change his mind—to see reason—if he were truly so erroneous. “While I understand men are often indiscriminate in their tastes and would be as happy to take me to bed as any half-decent-looking woman who would have them, Idon’tunderstand why you flatter me like this. I own a mirror, Jorah. I’m ordinary in almost every way. I am not a perfect beauty like Sophia or Indira. I’m just… I’m pretty enough not to offend people.”
“What you don’t realize is how boring perfection can be. You are a woman of contradictions. Soft and hard. Innocent and informed. Delicate and strong. Careful and brave. You are like a fox, Fiona. Not just lovely, but clever, mysterious, and nearly impossible to capture. Even if trapped, you’d chew your own limbs off before you allowed yourself to be kept. Men who are worth anything, who know anything, they can tell that once you discover the power you hold, the passion that is banked within you, you will be a true vixen.” His gaze was enough to immolate me on the spot. “It is impossible for me to express how intoxicating that opportunity is.”
I attempted a swallow, failed, and tried again. “I hardly know what to say to something like that.”
“It is not a statement that demands a reply.” He shrugged. “It just is a truth that I want you to understand.”
I stared at him for an uncomfortably long time. Blinking. Breathing. Unable to do more than just that. “H-how… how would you speculate about someone like Croft and me? I can’t think of a time when you’ve seen us interact. We generally dislike each other.”
“You do not always know when I see you.” That was his disturbing answer. “And Croft has spoken of you to me. I could tell how much he wanted you then. He was like this Rottweiler I once knew, snarling over a treasure he found in a rubbish heap, warning everyone away from it.”
“When was this?” Croft hated the Hammer, for reasons neither of them would reveal to me. I imagined all their interactions were tense, to say the least.
“I forget the exact instance.” He waved this away.
I blew out a full breath finally. “Croft is heading up the inquest into Alys’s and Jane’s murders now. He’ll be so smug that I’m not investigating anymore.”
“As much as I hate to agree with that dullard, I agree that you should stop looking into these dead women. It has become too dangerous.”
“Because of the Ripper,” I agreed with a sigh, more disappointed than I’d expected to be.
“Dangerous before him, it seems.” His eyes touched mine, astonishingly earnest as he reached for my chin and inspected the split in my lip. “But yes, you want to be chasing the Ripper, not the other way around.”
“Why is he like this?” I lamented, the letter burning my fingers. “How can one take pleasure in such brutal violence? In such public degradation?”
Jorah frowned. “Why would you ask me? Because I, too, am a killer?”
My nod was a single dip against the fingers that held my entire being captive only by my chin.
The atmosphere around us shimmered, but I couldn’t exactly identify with what.
“I do not think as the Ripper thinks. I do not kill as he kills. I take no joy in it, only duty. The Ripper is ruled by his passions. His compulsions.” He traced a nearly imperceptible line over the edge of my lower lip, avoiding the wound. “I rule mine. And you should be glad of it.”
“Why?” I yanked my chin from his grasp. “Do you want to hurt me?”
“No. But there are other things I want to do. Impulses… yearnings, that even I do not understand. I want to capture you like a bird, sometimes. Hang your gilded cage from an ornate hook so I can watch you. Study you. The way you move. The way you sing. The way the light hits you at different times of the day and night.”
Somehow my face was captive in his hands again, his fingers charting a searing procession up my jaw, toward my neck.
My pulse raced in places I’d never known it could reach. My blood stirred about, not knowing where to flow. My thoughts evaporated like a morning mist against the brilliance of a man like Jorah David Roth.
“I want to dress you in every color, Fiona, and then unwrap you like a present…” His head tilted, and I’d not realized I was leaning forward until I could feel the wisps of his breath against my skin. “You would not allow this. And if you did, you would be other than who you are.”
