Chapter Fifteen

P eyton sat at the table where she, Chase, and Crewe had been working out the arrangements for their trap and taking notes of all that had to be done in the short time they'd given themselves to enact it. After all, delaying only gave Horrender more time to make another attempt on her life.

In only two days, their plan would be put into motion. She offered up a silent prayer that she had the strength to carry out her end of it. If all went according to plan, Chase, Crewe, Devlin and a half dozen of their men would be there to rush in, save her, and capture Horrender. But if it went wrong…

No. That was not an option. She'd come too far to fail now.

"That's it then," Chase announced.

He slid the top sheet of paper toward Crewe and gave a second set of instructions to Peyton. Devlin had already left them, to go downstairs and work out his frustrations there.

She folded her sheet. "We know what we have to do."

"Then best to get started on arrangements." Crewe pushed himself away from the table, and with a nod at both Peyton and Chase, he walked to the door. He paused and turned back, meeting Peyton's gaze across the room and confided, "I still place flowers on your grave, you know."

She forced a smile. "Hopefully, you can stop doing that soon."

With a grim nod, he left, closing the door behind him.

When she returned her attention to Chase, she found his dark eyes watching her. "You're more than strong enough to do your part," he said gently.

Her shoulders sank under his quiet compliment. "Thank you." She paused, then admitted, "I lost my parents, my friend Armand…now I've lost Betty Proctor." She swallowed hard. "If anyone else is lost because of me…"

"Then no blame will fall on you." He rested his hand on her shoulder. "Please understand. We don't do this for you. Well, not only for you," he corrected when she arched a brow to call him out on that statement. "I'm doing it for Devlin and Lucien, and they're doing it to protect their families."

"But you have no stake in this, yet you're willing to risk your life?"

"I'm a soldier at heart." He dropped his hand away as he shrugged. "It's what we do." He stood and picked up his black gloves resting on the table. "You'll be well-protected. My men will have the building surrounded and will keep you in sight at all times. We'll capture him when the moment is right. You need to trust in that."

She nodded, yet she wasn't completely convinced.

Neither was Devlin, apparently. When they had begun to plot out their plan, he'd excused himself from their planning and went downstairs to leave it to the three of them. His absence bothered her.

"Devlin said you trained with him," she murmured.

"Yes, at Eton under Anthony Titus."

"And you know why Devlin wanted to learn to fight?" she asked carefully. "So he could…harm his father if he had to?"

"No." His eyes grew somber. "He studied with Titus so he wouldn't."

Cold understanding fell through Peyton. Control —that's what Chase meant. Devlin needed to learn to control himself so he wouldn't kill his father. Just as he had needed to be anywhere but here when the others were planning the trap. For their plan to work, he had to cede control to Peyton, and apparently, he didn't like it.

"Thank you," she whispered. "For everything."

He nodded, not meeting her gaze. "If you'd like, I can hire some men to discover what happened to Mrs. Proctor, to find out if anyone saw her leave the house or if she's been reported staying at any of the nearby inns."

"You think she might still be alive?" Peyton whispered, hopefully.

"I think too many people have come back from the dead lately to write her off so soon."

"I would appreciate that very much." Her voice choked. "Thank you."

Without another word, he left, following after Crewe to carry out his part of the plan.

Peyton locked the door after him, then leaned back against it to give the troubled thoughts spinning through her head time to settle. But none did. Even in the quiet stillness of the old warehouse, her pulse pounded with an anxiousness she couldn't ease, and her skin tingled as if from the electricity of an approaching storm.

Wasn't that exactly what their plan was—a storm ten years in the making? On the distant horizon, she could hear the first low rumbles of thunder.

She pushed herself away from the door and went downstairs to find Devlin.

Stopping in the doorway of his training room, she leaned against the doorframe and watched as he methodically moved through a series of footwork and arm movements with a foil in one hand and a long dagger in the other. His body was bare except for a loosely fitting pair of trousers cinched tightly at the waist. The sheen of sweat covered the hard muscles in his chest and shoulders, and the muscles in his back rippled as he swung both foil and knife in deliberate movements. He moved fluidly, every position controlled, every breath carefully measured.

He turned and saw her, and he froze mid-step, the foil extended in his right arm and the dagger poised behind his head. Slowly, he lowered both weapons and straightened from the lunge.

"All done planning, then?" He set the weapons back into the rack along the stone wall. "Chase and Crewe have left?"

"Yes."

His shoulders remained as stiff as before, even though he'd ended his training session. He reached for a towel and began to wipe at the beads of sweat covering his torso, and she shamelessly watched him. She'd always remembered him as good-looking whenever she'd thought of him ten years ago. But the reality of the man he'd become… breathtaking .

"You're not happy with our plan, are you?" She noted the rough edge to her voice, and that her words weren't a question so much as an accusation.

He yanked off his gloves and stuffed them into a hole in the rack. "I'm not happy with what we're using as bait."

The pointed gaze he scoured over her from head to toe tingled her skin everywhere he looked.

"Are you certain you want to do this," he asked, "to reveal yourself to the world like that?"

Not at all. And yet… "It's the best chance we have of stopping Horrender," she said, as much to convince herself as him. "It's a good trap. I'll be protected."

She came forward to his side, took the discarded gloves from the rack, and slipped them onto her hands. The warmth of him lingered on the leather, and the musky scent of him, pungent with sweat, filled her senses.

He stepped up behind her and murmured, "Not if it exposes you to unnecessary risks."

She could feel the heat of him warming her back, and she trembled, suddenly hot and achy. To be in his arms, she simply had to lean back. That was all, just bring herself against him and surrender… The anxious swirl of anticipation that shadowed her before now simply engulfed her. It was all she could do to remember to breathe as she ran gloved fingers along the blade of the foil hanging on the rack. "I know how to take care of myself."

"That's what worries me." He caressed his knuckles along the side of her face, and her breath hitched. "You take too many risks."

"Because I know what I'm doing."

He gave a soft sigh that rumbled into her. "Because you won't let go of the past."

"I am letting go of it." In the grandest, loudest, most stunning way imaginable. "But you're not. You refuse to let the evils your father did come to light."

"I won't let him hurt any more people, including you." To punctuate his point, he touched his lips to her nape, and she shivered. Not a kiss of seduction, but a promise. "Not even from his grave."

She took one of the blunted training foils down from the rack and turned around, pointing the tip at his bare chest. "You can't stop me from doing this." His face remained frustratingly inscrutable as she tapped the foil against his breastbone. "Moreover, once Horrender is no longer a threat, there's no reason to keep secret what our fathers did."

"So many reasons you'll never know," he corrected beneath his breath.

Slowly shaking her head, she turned the thin blade and watched the metal glint in the lamplight. "One way or another, this has to end."

"Your life doesn't have to end with it."

"Actually, that is exactly how it has to end. Elizabeth Wentworth dies, and Peyton Chandler rises from the ashes. It can't happen any other way, and we both know it."

She stepped away from him, needing air to breathe and distance to think. Her skin tingled from his nearness, and her belly twisted from the masculine scent of him and the solidity he presented. It would be so easy to surrender, in every way… But he also represented all the secrets that had ruled her life for the past decade. She would never succumb to those.

She held up the foil. "Spar with me." Not a request. An order. She was determined to prove she could take care of herself.

"You'll lose."

"Probably. I'm in a skirt." She removed his ill-fitting gloves and tossed them to the floor at his feet, as if throwing down a gauntlet. "But I'll still give you my best go…unless you're afraid of losing to a woman—again?"

His lips curled at the challenge, and he kicked the gloves aside. "All right, then. Best two of three. Saber rules."

Saber rules weren't the finely executed moves of foil fencing. With sabers, contact with any part of the body above the hips counted as a touch, including glancing blows with the side of the blade. In other words, it was anything goes. "All right."

He snatched up a second foil from the rack and pointed it at an old but large rug covering most of the room's floor. "The rug serves as the piste . No touches outside its edges count."

"Agreed." She moved to the center of the long rug which was about half the length of a normal piste . Yet she didn't care. She planned on giving him the fight of his life. "En garde."

He took his position in front of her and raised the blade in front of his head in salute to her.

"Prêts?"

He lowered into his stance, and she mirrored his, despite her skirt. A simple dress wouldn't stop her from besting him.

"Allez!"

Peyton feigned an attack, only to catch Devlin off guard with a parry into thin air. He retreated a step, his eyes flashing.

"So that's how we're playing, is it?" he muttered.

"Saber rules." She shrugged. "Anything goes."

She attacked, this time coming full-on with her foil and easily parrying his defensive thrusts. His might be bigger and stronger, but all those broad shoulders and taut muscles took longer to move, leaving him constantly a half-step behind, which evened out the disadvantage of her skirt.

Only a few lunges and retreats later, she ascertained that they were equally matched in skill. She wouldn't win unless she found a chink in his armor. Easier said than done, too, since he wore no armor. He barely wore anything at all.

His foil slapped her shoulder. "Touch!"

With a faint curse at her lack of focus, she retreated a few feet so they could reset for the next volley. Concentrate! But she also needed to change her mode of attack. She'd never win by simply fencing.

She needed to attack his control. If he lost control, he'd lose the match.

They both took their ready positions, and she called out, "Allez!"

Devlin rushed at her, but she retreated, not because she needed to but because she wanted to draw him in closer.

"Titus taught you to fence?" she asked, expertly parrying his thrusts.

"And others here and there." He lunged. "That's why I'll win."

She thrust at his chest, only for her foil to be knocked away at the last moment. She laughed at how easily she'd set up the parry. "Not if you keep fencing like that."

She saw his eyes flare. Good. She needed to prick him, and not just with the foil, although she promptly did, right in his broad shoulder.

" Touché ," she purred and demurely flexed her foil on the floor at her heel, as if she'd just noticed she held a weapon in her hand and didn't know how to use it. "If you want to quit now before you lose, I'd be happy to accept your forfeiture."

This time when he smiled at her, his expression was tight.

A dangerous thrill raced up her spine. When she was with him, she often felt like a mouse being played with by a lion.

It was the mouse's turn now to taunt.

"What do I get when I win?" he asked.

"What do I get when I win, you mean," she corrected and took her en garde position. "Any opponent who bends his wrist when he parries shouldn't be hard to defeat."

He lowered into his stance. "I don't bend my wrist."

"No? Apologies." But the glance she shot to his wrist wasn't at all mistaken. Or apologetic. "So it all comes down to this next go, then. Do try to concentrate. I would hate to be able to tell everyone that Dartmoor was bested in both cards and fencing by a skirt."

The heated look he cast over her was scalding. "I don't mind being bested by a skirt," he purred in a husky voice that tingled through her like liquid heat. "I find it exhilarating when a woman comes out on top."

That turned the tingle into a pulsating ache. She pushed from her mind the unbidden, and thoroughly wanton, images his words created but didn't give him time to center himself. "Allez!"

She charged. They met in a flurry of thrusts and parries, charges and retreats, and the metallic clang of metal foil against foil reverberated against the cellar's stone walls.

Peyton side-stepped his slashing thrust. Had he been a real foe, she would have run him through with her foil or dropped to the ground and taken him out at the knees. Instead, she closed the distance between them, pressed the hilt of her foil against his, and pinned both foils between them. Neither could move back without losing the advantage to the other.

"You've trapped us both," he told her.

"But I know the way out, and it isn't by hiding." Emotion tightened her chest. "I've hidden from the past long enough. Soon, I won't be able to hide any longer."

"And you think I am?"

She gazed at him between the crossed foils. "As long as you keep secret what our fathers did, you're doing exactly that."

He let out a fierce growl and shoved her away, disentangling their foils and sending her staggering back a few feet until she regained her balance.

But he didn't claim the advantage and attack. Instead, he waited at the edge of the rug for her to regain her stance before charging. His control was snapping, his thrusts and parries less carefully measured than before.

She was winning the fight. Now she had to win the war. "I've lived too long with their secrets. So have you. I've made up my mind. I don't want to live in secrecy any longer."

The clash of foils punctuated her words as he went on the attack, never giving ground, never retreating. All Peyton had to do now was wait for his guard to slip, for just enough room in the movement of his arm to expose a vulnerable space—

"What you want isn't to reveal secrets. It's to continue your revenge against my father," he huffed out between rapid breaths. "But you can never have that."

She skillfully parried his thrust. "Dartmoor shouldn't be allowed to get away with what he's done."

"He's dead!" he half-shouted, his control slipping more with every passing moment. "You can't punish a dead man, but you will hurt the ones who are still alive. Give up your revenge before you're hurt again."

He lunged, and she retreated another step, then ground out, "Haven't I already surrendered enough to the dead?"

"But you're not dead, and you owe a debt to the living." He paced her around the room, relentlessly on the attack and seemingly not caring that they'd long ago left the boundaries of the rug. Each thrust was less controlled than the one before. "Is that the kind of revenge you want, Peyton—the kind that harms innocents? Then you'll be no better than our fathers. Including yours."

She halted in mid-retreat, stunned at his accusation. She froze for only a moment, but a moment was all he needed to knock her foil from her hand. It clanged against the stone floor at her feet.

Instead of taking the winning touch, Devlin locked eyes with her and threw his foil away. When he stepped forward, she retreated again, this time hitting her back against the wall behind her. But he closed the distance between them, placed his palms flat on the wall on both sides of her shoulders and leaned in until his blazing eyes were level with hers.

His mouth was so close that his warm breath tickled her lips. "You are not that person."

"You don't know that."

"I do." His rough voice trembled with the same intensity that shook his body. "Because I would never want someone like that as much as I want you."

Her pulse spiked, sparking a fierce ache between her legs. "You…want me?"

"God, yes."

Beneath his hungry admission, all the anger, retribution, and doubts she'd carried about him for the past ten years vanished, leaving her nothing in this moment but the man standing in front of her. A desperate need blossomed inside her, one she could no longer fight back. She ordered on a soft breath, "Then take me."

He lunged forward and seized her mouth beneath his in a blistering kiss that left her boneless. Heat sizzled her skin everywhere his front touched hers, and she returned the kiss as fiercely as he gave it.

When she tore her mouth away to gasp back her breath, the final threads of his control snapped. He dropped to his knees, yanked her skirt up to her waist, and buried his face between her thighs.

A cry of raw need tore from her, and she grabbed onto his hard shoulders to keep from falling to the floor as he kissed her intimately with the same intensity he'd captured her mouth only moments before. His tongue plundered her folds, licking and flicking against her. Just when she'd regained her breath, he spread her intimate lips wide with his fingers and then plunged his tongue deeply inside her.

She shuddered against his mouth, and the little muscles inside her wickedly tightened around his tongue to draw him even deeper. The pulsating ache he stoked inside her with each hot, wet thrust overwhelmed her. But she didn't want him to stop— please, don't stop! —and silently begged for more by wrapping her leg over his shoulder and opening herself wide to his wanton kisses.

His answering groan of pleasure thrilled her. She pushed herself back against the wall for leverage and tilted up her pelvis to bring his mouth as hard against her as possible. Oh, heavens, how wonderful the sensations he flared right there beneath his lips! How desperate she was for even more of him. A string of senseless encouragements fell from her lips, and she fisted his silky hair in her hands. The same man who was making the earth slide away beneath her was also her only anchor, and she clung to him to keep from losing herself completely.

His lips closed around the little bead of her clitoris and sucked.

"Devlin!" Her hips bucked shamelessly against his mouth.

Giving her no quarter, he slid his hands up the backs of her legs to cup her bottom in his palms and keep her pulled tightly against him as she arched out from the wall behind her. He sucked again, longer and harder, relentless in his pursuit to drive her over the edge.

Sheer joy shattered her as she found her release. Too quickly, far too quickly, the cry of bliss on her lips faded to a whimper of disappointment as residual waves of pleasure lapped at her toes. She didn't want the encounter to end, not this soon. She wanted him inside her, filling her completely, bringing her sheer bliss.

Knowing what her body craved, he lifted her in his arms as he rose to his feet and deftly unfastened his fall. He wrapped her legs around his waist and stepped forward to plunge himself inside her.

The cry of surprise on her lips transformed into a shuddering moan as he pinned her between the wall and his body. He began to move inside her in fierce, hard thrusts of his hips, his thick, hard length buried deeply inside her. Right where she longed for him to be.

"Let go, Peyton," he cajoled, his soft words contrasting against the hard thrusts that rocked her to her soul. "Stop fighting…for once, surrender."

Peyton wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held on tightly, shaking uncontrollably as each plunge and retreat of his body into hers brought her both new pleasure and new anguish. She knew what he wanted from her was total capitulation, and not only physically but emotionally. He wanted her to free herself from the past, but she couldn't. What he was asking of her—what he was begging of her with his body—she simply couldn't give him that.

"Devlin," she whispered and buried her face against his neck, his name a plea for mercy.

"Let yourself live again," he murmured hotly into her hair.

"I can't!" She clung tighter to him and summoned all her strength to keep from falling over the edge. "I don't…know how."

"Then trust me to show you."

But she refused this last surrender, with all her body, heart, and soul. What would she be if she let go of the only things that had sustained her since she lost her parents? What would she cling to then to simply keep living?

Not leaving her tight warmth, he wrapped his arms around her and carefully lowered her away from the wall. The red rug beneath her back softened the floor as he laid her down, then spread his tall body over hers.

The soft kerseymere of his breeches brushed against her inner thighs as he moved inside her. His hips teased at hers with deliberate circles of motion that spiraled raw need through her and left her teetering breathlessly on the edge. Once again, he was in control and carefully measuring each delicious plunge and retreat—for now. He was equally as gentle as he'd been fierce before, and he paused in his rhythm only to kiss her so tenderly that she feared a tear might slip down her cheek.

"Let the past go, Peyton," he murmured as he rocked into her. His rhythm increased, his thrusts growing harder.

The rising tide of pleasure inside her began to lick at the backs of her knees, and she knew he could feel her trembling around him, just as she could feel the shaking of his tense muscles in hard-fought restraint to keep from losing himself inside her.

"Let go." He nuzzled her ear with affection. "Send the past away and accept what's here for you now."

He shifted his hips and rubbed his pelvis against her already sensitized clit, eliciting a plaintive whimper from her.

"Take this moment, Peyton," he rasped. "With me."

He rubbed his hips against her again, and a jolt of electricity shot through her. She bucked beneath him, arching herself hard off the floor as the wave of release broke through her. She cried out, and he kissed her, drinking in the sound, even as he continued to swirl his hips against her to prolong her pleasure as long as possible, to keep the flashes of light dancing before her closed eyes.

Then his movements changed. She could do nothing more than cling to him as her pulse raced and try to catch back her breath at this wonderful melding of bodies and souls as his thrusts came fast and fierce. Just as his body tensed, every muscle hard and shaking, he suddenly pulled out of her warmth and squeezed his length between their bodies. With a groan, his buttocks clenched, and he released himself against her bare flesh just above her feminine curls, then collapsed against the floor beside her, gasping for breath. Completely spent.

Devlin gathered her into his arms and pressed her against him. When his lips lovingly caressed her temple, a single tear slipped from her eye. The terrible mix of pleasure and torture she found in his arms was nearly unbearable. Sheer joy tingled out from her fingers and toes, but it was tempered by overwhelming guilt—that she hadn't yet found her parents' killer, that she should have realized earlier the truth about the attack…that she should take such joy in being alive at that moment with Devlin when her parents were in their graves.

"Peyton?" Concern thickened his voice as he gently brushed away her tear with his thumb. He caressed her cheek. "Is something wrong?"

Everything. Yet she couldn't bring herself to utter that aloud. Instead, she gave a jerky shake of her head and buried her face against his neck where it curved so perfectly into his shoulder.

Silently, they lay together, their limbs entwined, with the heat of him still pulsating deliciously inside her and her scent now covering him. Yet in her heart, she knew they remained in separate worlds—and ten years apart.