The London Deception Read Free Page B

with her other hand. “Go in front of me.”
    “What is that?”
    “Petroleum jelly.”
    His low whistle echoed in her ear at the same time their felled thug let out a large roar. “Time to go, Peach.”
    Rowan gave the knob one more swirl from the bag before slamming the door behind her and fled down the back steps. “Come on down here. Through the old mews.”
    He reached for her hand to drag her out the back garden toward the main road. “They’ll follow us that way.”
    “Not when we go up.”
    “Up where?”
    “The vines. All the houses back here have thick ivy. We climb it.”
    “Absolutely not.”
    If the situation weren’t so dire, Rowan might have laughed at his clear affront. “You’ve got a better idea?”
    “We keep on and make a run for it through the alley. Same way I came in.”
    “They’re going to follow us that way.”
    A shout behind them confirmed the truth of that and the man shrugged. “You sure about this?”
    “Positive. There’s a tree a few doors down for the descent. It’ll be more secure than the alley.”
    Another bellow echoed from the direction of the kitchen, and Rowan knew the thug had found his progress stymied with the doorknob. A quick smile flashed in the man in black’s eyes as he laced his fingers and put his hand out to give her a boost up the ivy. “Real nice trick back there, Peach.”
    “Thanks.” Rowan put her foot in his hands, but stopped, the question she’d wanted to ask back behind the curtain flaring up once more. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
    “Because you’re lush and ripe, like a fresh peach.”
    The cavalier words—delivered with a wicked smile that was visible even through the mouth of the mask—caught her up as a flood of warmth rushed through her.
    She knew it was reckless.
    Pointless, really, and terribly dangerous, but like the bracelet she couldn’t resist, she could no more stop the impulse than she could stop her heart from beating. With the quick fingers she was known for, she had his mask halfway off his face and her lips against his in the span of a breath.
    Whatever surprise he might have had at her move was quickly tamped down by the hard press of his lips and the quick heat of his tongue as it swept through her parted lips.
    A streak of heat flooded her belly before racing to the end of her limbs, and Rowan had the very real sensation of feeling her knees go weak.
    He lifted his head, his lips bright with wetness in the moonlight, but it was his eyes that truly captured her. The gaze that had teased mere moments before glinted with something else. Something elemental. Something that called to her and made all those empty places inside—the ones that clamored so loudly in their silence—still.
    And for the first time in four years, Rowan Steele felt an emotion that was stronger than the emptiness.
    Voice gentle, he nodded toward his still-laced fingers. “Come on, darling. Up you go.”
    Rowan placed a booted foot in his hands, their eyes meeting once more. In the moonlight she saw what had only been an impression earlier when she’d thought him as gangly as her brother.
    Likely because he was.
    He was barely a man, no more than nineteen or twenty if she estimated correctly. The half of his face she could see—over his hard jaw and past the thin scruff of beard—held a softness. Even more than that, she had the distinct sensation that he wasn’t quite done filling out the body that would ultimately be his.
    With a hard push and the determination to find out who he was when they reached safety, she launched off his laced fingers, grabbing the ivy. She worked her way up the side of the house, hand over hand. He did the same on several strands next to her, his grunts the only sounds breaking the silence.
    She cleared the second floor and turned to see him still struggling on the first. “Hand over hand and use your feet on the wall.”
    “Bloody vines are breaking under my weight.”
    “Grab a thicker