“Then… that’s what you were doing the night of the ball, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Something to do with these girls. Raids. Saving them—”
“From their masters and from the corrupt outsiders who’d take their own cut of this obscenity. The law is all but useless in stopping it. For a year the band’s been successful. Until the night of the ball, when the raid went sour. When someone betrayed us to the tongs.”
The informant. “Then you do have other enemies. These tong people—”
“And their ally,” he said. “Peregrine Sinclair.”
Oh, God. “Was he part of your group?”
“He wasn’t involved. He didn’t have to be.” Liam’s mouth set in a harsh smile. “I’ve had him watched since I returned to San Francisco. He was clever, but not clever enough. My men saw him with one of the foremost tong bosses. He was the one who undermined the last raid. He’s doing the tong’s dirty work for them and for himself at the same time.”
Mac closed her eyes. Impossible. That Perry was so utterly villainous, so heartless, so capable of deceiving her…
But even if he wasn’t, Liam’s danger had been real, and deadly. He could have died in that carriage accident, or on one of these raids. Cold lightning raced along her nerves.
“Are you finally convinced that your ally is a blackguard?” Liam demanded.
She couldn’t lose faith now. “No.”
He slammed his fist against the wall, shaking the light fixture overhead. “He could have killed you without a second thought. You played Perry’s game and helped rob a girl of her innocence—”
“I what?” Mac jumped to her feet. This conversation was moving almost too fast for her to follow, but she refused to be left behind. “You mean Caroline? You never let me get close enough. What happened? Did she finally shatter your image of the delicate, naive Miss Gresham? Did it finally get into your head that no one can protect anyone from life the way you wanted to protect her?”
She regretted her words as soon as she saw his stricken expression.
“I’m sorry, Liam,” she said. “Truly sorry. I never wanted to cause you pain—”
Even if she’d been listening she couldn’t have heard his footsteps, so quietly did he move. She looked up just as he reached her, as he caught her chin in his hand.
“Don’t worry, Mac,” he said. “You’ll make it up to me.”
She felt the heat reborn in him, burning away that all-too-brief insecurity, the doubt he couldn’t allow himself.
“Were you afraid I’d abandoned you?” he asked, stroking her cheek with startling tenderness. “I’d never have done that. I had plans to see you settled in a safe place, where you could live as you wished. You didn’t give me a chance to tell you. But now it doesn’t matter, does it?” He touched her lips with a calloused finger while his other hand began to work at the waistband of his trousers. “I don’t give a damn anymore who you are or what you’ve done. I don’t care if you worked for Perry or even if you’re crazy. You succeeded, Mac. You made me want you.”
The top button of his trousers popped free of the buttonhole. He let them fall, giving Mac an eyeful of magnificently aroused male. She remembered the way that sleek hardness had felt under her hand, and against her—
“No need to stare, darlin’. You’ll see plenty and get a lot more before we’re through.”
Darlin’. How long had it been since he’d called her that? Back in the jungle, when he’d played her for a fool…
“It works better when you don’t try to woo a woman with intimidation,” she said, managing a semblance of sarcastic bravado.
“You didn’t need wooing yesterday,” he said, trailing his finger to the hollow of her throat. “Pretty speeches are wasted on you. It’s something a little rougher that excites you, isn’t it?” He’d returned to that deep purr that made his blunt words unbearably erotic, lethally carnal. “Last night you were ready for me, wet for me.” He rested his palm on the swell of her breast. “You were right when you said it was good between us. It’ll be better this time. This time we won’t stop.”