Chapter 11
Ember departed just as Mr. Reed returned, muttering something to him about escrow slips and opening an hour later than usual.
Hannah was still behind the bar, watching it all unfold in a kind of frozen daze, not entirely sure that she was still rooted fully inside her body.
She knew that her mouth often ran away with words she hadn’t intended to say aloud, but what had just passed between herself and Mr. Beck was so far beyond the pale that she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to face him again.
Mr. Reed glanced at her in that knowing, endlessly amused way of his and shook his head. “Don’t fret,” he said as he passed her with an assortment of clothes over his arm. “You’re already winning.”
“Winning what?” she answered, desperation in her voice. “I’m not playing a game.”
He dropped the clothes on the back of a barstool and leaned on top of them. “We’re all playing games all the time, little fox. Best to accept it and learn your feints.”
She forced herself to swallow down any protest that threatened to arise, because she knew he was right. She nodded.
He smiled at her. Beautiful. Angelic. “Now you be a good girl and cover for me while I run out and do some things before the mistress gets back, eh? I promise to return before she does.”
“Mr. Reed!” Hannah called as he turned. “Have you really kissed other men?”
He only laughed, reaching up to give the bell above the door an extra jingle as he departed, and called over his shoulder, “I’ll be back very soon. Be good.”
She frowned, looking down at the sip of pink liquid left in her glass and the squeezed bit of lime floating in it. She closed her eyes and tipped it back into her mouth, forcing the sour bitterness down.
She could read Dot’s article. She could do that.
What in the name of God were they thinking, leaving her in charge of a gambling hell like this? She had no idea what she was doing at the best of times.
She swept the neat little stack of papers off the hazard table and carried them into her borrowed office, sitting behind the desk. When she tapped the stack into order, a little folded page fell out, separate from the rest of the writing.
It said, on the flap, For Hannah.
Curious.
She lifted it first and unfolded it. The paper was brittle, a bit dry and aged, gone beige at the edges. The date at the top was some six years prior, in Dot’s own handwriting.
She ran her fingers over it, her eyes scanning the sparse, spiky letters that covered the page.
The Ladies’ Revenge Club
Rules of Engagement
I - Harm None, Unless Provoked
II - Spill Ink, Not Blood
III - Begin With an End in Mind
IV - Valuable Allies Oft Lurk in Unexpected Places
V - Relish in Your Victories
She had no idea what it meant.
Not really.
But she knew immediately that it was the most valuable thing she’d ever been given.
She creased it back into its even trifold and tucked it carefully into the top drawer of the desk, setting a smooth paperweight over it. She would have to find somewhere safe to keep it. She would have to talk to Mrs. Cain about it sometime soon.
She couldn’t explain why, but it was making her heart pound, like she’d been handed the key to a palace. Like she’d just been blessed by the high priestess of a whole religion.
She was already following the rules, she thought. She was spilling ink toward the likes of Penrose and Woodville. She had an end in mind. Several, in fact. She was finding allies in many very unexpected places, too. Wasn’t she?
She ran her fingers over her face, shaking her head.
She was already doing it?
The door creaked. The one behind the office.
It startled her so badly that she almost slid right out of the chair. Instead, she came up to her feet, one hand slapping down on top of the gossip column as she spun around with her hand out, as though she might claw at whomever had surprised her.
Oh, but she had forgotten she wasn’t actually alone. How had she forgotten that?!
He was standing there, wet, beaded with water, his hair a glinting chestnut as he ran a towel over it.
The broad expanse of his chest was bare, with nothing but a large, thin towel slung around his hips and knotted just below his navel, because of course, the damned clothes were out in the gaming hall.
He had so very, very much skin. All of it a rich olive hue, his chest covered in a delectable pattern of more of that coiling, glistening black hair, trailing down the flat plane of his stomach in a fascinating, narrowing line that vanished beneath the waistband of that flimsy, draping, ridiculous towel.
She could see his calves, she realized, his ankles, his feet. She could see almost every sculpted, perfect piece of him that was not meant for the eyes of polite society. Almost.
“Oh, heavens,” she muttered, backing away instinctively to find only the desk behind her, firm and unyielding. “Oh, my God.”
If she hadn’t spoken, she might have been able to slip away while he was frozen in equal shock.
Once again, her mouth was ruining things. Once again, her voice was making choices before she could think them through.
He lowered the towel from his hair, which was still damp and curling now at the ends. His whole body coiled up with tension at the sound of her voice that sent an absolutely fascinating series of muscles moving under all that skin.
Those dark, dark eyes were fixed on her, not wide like her own, but with intent. Glittering. Hot.
She wondered if he was going to tell her what she deserved again.
If he would send her away. She wanted to make sure she remembered every detail of this before he could.
She watched the way his body moved as he shifted his weight, as he breathed.
She watched the play of tiny muscles over his ribs, the pattern his chest hair made when his ribs expanded.
She licked her lips, staring at the hollow of his throat. The dark shade of his nipples. The curving scar on his bicep.
She wanted to remember it all. She wanted to see, to feel …
He made a sound, a snapping rough thing in his throat, and flung the small towel he’d been using on his hair across the room with a surprising force.
It startled her, but she barely had a chance to feel the surprise before he was striding across the room.
His bare feet slapped the glossy planks of wood in three stomping strides, his face set with something that looked almost like annoyance.
She had time for one shallow breath, one attempt to explain, to beg him not to be cross, but he didn’t give her the chance to speak. He moved so quickly for someone so large. He moved like a city cat, darting between rooftops.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he muttered firmly, like he was disappointed with her. “You should have been kept away. You know better, Hannah.”
“I … oh,” she flustered, her voice melting away as his hand slid around the back of her neck, burying in the loose twist of her pinned hair, his big, damp body pressing against her dress.
She caught herself against him on instinct, her fingers curling against the warm expanse of bare flesh of his chest. She did not know if she should move. If she could look or touch or …
He tilted her gaze up to his, the heat of him, the little droplets of scalding water soaking through the turquoise fabric of her gown as those black eyes searched hers for an explanation.
“You shouldn’t be in here alone,” he said again, grinding it out like he couldn’t believe how remiss the entire world was being in allowing this to happen.
And then his mouth was on her, hard and reverent and hungry, pressing into her lips with a groan and a breath as molten as he himself was.
She stopped thinking entirely then, opening to the assault, melting into his arms like she was always meant to be there, even as he made another helpless, scolding sound like he did not at all approve of how good this was.
His hips pressed into hers, those big fingers tangling into her hair, rubbing the strands of it between the calloused pads.
She felt her knees start to buckle, her body aflame with it. She scooted herself back, lifting onto her toes to brace against the desk.
It made him rear back for a brief, terrifying moment like he was going to stop, like she had broken the spell and he wouldn’t kiss her anymore.
“The desk,” he ground out like it pained him. He gripped her around the waist and lifted her like she weighed nothing at all, seating her there, closing even more space between them as he walked between her thighs.
He looked furious. Absolutely enraged. But he continued touching her, those powerful fingers stroking her waist, those dark eyes drinking in her face. “You want to know if you fit on the desk?” he rasped. “You want to know what a man’s tongue tastes like, Hannah?”
“Yes,” she breathed, gasping as he came back to her, delivering exactly what he had offered. He slid his tongue between her lips and curled it around her own, moaning into her mouth like she was the taste of his ruin and his salvation, the lingering bite of lime and gin effervescent between them.
She touched him intentionally then. She indulged.
She lifted her arms and ran her palms over those broad, bare shoulders.
She stroked them down the front of his chest, gasping and whimpering at the texture of the curling hair there.
She rocked toward the heat of his body, returning the curl of her own tongue, wanting more. Wanting it all.
He rumbled, his thumb carving circles into her hip.
“Don’t,” he begged as she hooked an ankle around his waist. He said words, hot and wet between tastes of her, between sliding, indulgent tastes of her mouth.
“God,” he complained, letting her pull him closer, letting her feel him through that towel against her skirt. “Fuck. This is wrong.”
“More,” she breathed against his lips, the flats of her hands traveling down all of that glorious, expansive flesh of his chest, trailing over the twitching, bundled muscles on his stomach. “More.”
The bell in the outer room chimed. The door slammed.
Hannah barely heard it, and even though she did hear it, she did not care.
Nothing at all was as important as this.
She drew his bottom lip between her teeth and gently bit it, flicking her tongue against the captive flesh and lavishing in the thrill that erupted at the sound he made.
“Hello?” called Reed’s voice. “Anyone still here?”
Mr. Beck froze, his eyes popping open, his hands stilling on her hips. He drew back suddenly despite her sound of protest, his eyes wild.
“No,” he muttered. “No, no, no.”
“Ah, there you are,” said Mr. Reed, poking his head into the office and taking in the scene like there was nothing at all remiss in Hannah being seated on the desk and Thaddeus Beck standing between her open thighs. “Your clothes are out here, Tod.”
“Fuck,” Mr. Beck said again, whispered, resentful.
He flicked his dark eyes once to Hannah and backed away, gripping the towel at his hips into place and turning his back to her as he twisted around to exit the room.
She herself did not move at all. She sat there for quite a long time, legs dangling off the side of the desk, skirt wrinkled and bunched, mouth bruised and swollen.
She listened to the grumbling and exchange of voices beyond the door while her heart pounded and thrashed behind her ribs. Eventually, she heard the bell chime again. An entrance? An exit? It was impossible to say.
She slid off the desk and paced over to the window to retrieve the small bar towel that he’d been using to dry his hair. It was still damp. It still smelled of him. She held it and gazed out the frosted, blue window, even though she could not see anything beyond the room she was standing in.
She held the towel to her cheek and breathed in deeply. She wondered if her heart would ever slow again.
She could still taste him. She could still feel those hands on her waist.
She closed her eyes for a moment and recalled how he’d looked standing there. She summoned the ragged helplessness of his voice. The hunger in his eyes.
She turned back toward the desk and walked back to her chair. She pulled the papers back out and into order. She arranged her inkpot. She ran her fingers over the spot where she’d sat, just moments ago.
Slowly, gradually, she began to smile.