“Madam?” I offer. Lark shakes her head. “Yeah, that’s not much better than ‘ma’am,’ I guess. Wait, I’ve got it. Duchess.”

“Ooh I like it. Somehow it works with the feather thing. Regal, yet saucy.”

Saucy. I don’t know why that word does something to my blood when she says it, as though she’s plugged herself into my veins and hit them with a jolt of electricity. Images fly through my mind of Lark in all kinds of regal, yet saucy scenarios, and even the ones that inexplicably involve Marie Antoinette wigs are sexy as fuck.

“You okay there?” Lark’s voice is soft but the amusement still colors every note. “You look like you’ve gone full brood mode.”

“Yeah,” I say as I clear my throat and force my hand to relax around my glass before I crush it. “I, um … I’m good.”

“You sure …? Maybe you’re not so bold after all.”

The heat of Lark’s body creeps into mine as she steps closer. When I turn to face her fully, a faint smile plays on her lips. Even though I can’t see the details of her features clearly at this near distance, the crystalline shade of her eyes is still piercing, cutting through the dimmest light.

“Seems like something I said has you a bit … flustered,” she whispers. Her head tilts as she regards me, her gaze falling from mine to fix on my mouth. “Was it the ‘regal’ comment I made? Maybe you have a thing for corsets and tulle to go with the feather fetish.”

Christ Jesus. Now corsets. “Not really—”

“Shame, that would have been super hot.”

“I mean, not really just corsets and tulle. Also wigs.”

Her rich, melodic laugh surrounds me.

Lark Montague crawls right into my brain and injects unexpected, wild fantasies into my thoughts every time she opens her feckin’ mouth. She’s taken control of some part of my mind I’m not sure I even knew existed, and I have no idea where she’s going to send me next. I just know I’m going to follow whatever trail she lays down. It’s unnerving. But it’s also irresistible.

“I think you could pull off a waistcoat and breeches,” Lark says with a grin as she takes a final step, closing any space between us. Her fingers curl into my shirt, one after the next, each touch a gentle rasp against my chest until she’s balled the black fabric in her delicate fist. “Those tattoos on your neck would look pretty hot peeking out from beneath a cravat.”

I swallow, my breath caught in my lungs as Lark rises on her toes, her eyes locked to my lips, my heart a hammer beneath her hand. Every one of her exhalations pours an electric warmth into my flesh. “Rakish, yet debonair,” I finally say on a gravelly whisper.

“Goes pretty well with ‘regal, yet saucy,’ don’t you think?” Her head tilts, and it feels like the whole world distills to this moment. “Maybe you’re not the bold one after all.”

Any clever reply I’m about to attempt is lost the moment Lark’s lips press to mine.

My brain is a black void behind my shuttered eyelids. Lark’s citrus scent floods my nostrils. She runs the tip of her tongue across the seam of my lips and I taste the echo of the orange soda she was drinking. The softest moan vibrates from her mouth to mine.

And I come undone.

My tongue plunders her mouth. Lark’s fist tightens in my shirt. The glass clutched in my hand is in danger of being crushed to dust or thrown over the balcony. I’m desperate to mold her flesh in my palms, but I settle for laying one hand to the side of her neck instead. The second my palm touches her skin, she whimpers with need. My erection is painful against my zipper as she presses her body against mine.

Our teeth clash. The kiss grows brutal. Within seconds, Lark has ripped through any restraint I thought I had. She kisses me with the kind of fevered desperation that makes me feel not just wanted. Or needed. It’s as though she craves me. She grips onto the back of my neck as though she’ll fall apart if she doesn’t hold on. When she sucks in a breath, she dives deeper, towing me into the dark with her. Every time I think I’ve gotten control of the kiss, she tears it from me. With a touch. With a bite or a suck or a moan.

Lark’s tongue sweeps over mine and then she pulls away, taking my bottom lip with her before she lets it slide from between her teeth, her bite the perfect balance between pain and pleasure.

“Lark …”

Her breathy laugh eradicates any thoughts of whatever plea I was about to make. She trails a line of open-mouthed kisses along my jaw. My fingers thread into her golden waves when she nips at my earlobe hard enough that I hiss. I tighten my hold on the strands in my grasp and she moans, her mouth dropping to my neck where she sucks on my inked flesh.

A growl rips free of my chest as I grip her hair. “Feckin’ Christ Jesus,” I groan.

Her lips go still on my pulse.

… Shit.

I immediately loosen the fist tangled in her locks. Did I do something wrong? Something definitely seems wrong. It’s obvious in the way she stiffens.

“What did you say?” she whispers, her breath hot on my skin.

Fuck. Fuck.

What did I do? Was it the whole thou shalt not use the Lord’s name in vain business? Maybe Lark is super religious. I can’t remember if she or Sloane mentioned if the boarding school was some strict Catholic thing. Nuns. Were there nuns?

I swallow. “Uh, I said ‘feckin’ Christ Jesus.’”

“Growlier,” Lark snaps.

“Feckin’ Christ Jesus.”

There’s a single heartbeat of stillness in the world.

And then Lark has backed away out of reach, the heat of her body gone, a chill left behind on my skin. Both of her hands cover her mouth but they can’t mask the shock in her eyes.

Shock and … fury.

“Oh my fucking God,” she hisses into her fingers.

“What …? Was it the Jesus?”

“No. No, it was not ‘the Jesus,’” she says with air quotes and a sneer as she leans close enough to jab a single finger into my chest. “It was ‘the Batman.’ The Budget Batman.”

Lark takes a step back. Crosses her arms. Raises a single brow.

My eyes narrow to thin slits. The words come out as a venomous hiss when I say, “Blunder Barbie.”

“Oh. My. God. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” Lark says, flapping her hands like she’s trying to get any residue of me off of her. “You had your tongue in my mouth.”

“I’d hate to remind us both, Blunder Barbie, but you kissed me.”

“And you let me. You fucking knew it was me.”

“Clearly, I did not, or I would have taken my chances with the fire escape.”

“There is no fire escape.”

“Pre-feckin’-cisely.”

Lark rolls her eyes before they sharpen on me in a lethal glare. “You are such a liar. You were all up in my face that night. With a flashlight. One that you smacked on my head.”

“Your face was plastered with makeup. And I didn’t smack—”

“My concussed head. Where I needed fucking stitches which I never got because I had to walk home, thankyouverymuch. And then you growled at me like some rabid trash panda that was about to gnaw my leg off and tossed me in the trunk of your car, you fucking psycho.”

“Oh I’m a feckin’ psycho, am I? You’re the one who jumped from a moving vehicle after you rammed some poor bloke into a lake and then fake teared up when I dropped his blimmin’ body at your feet. And they weren’t even good fake tears. They were sarcasm tears,” I snarl. I take a step closer and bend to meet her eye level, dabbing my eyes as I clear my throat for my best candy-sweet vocal impression. “Boo-hoo, I’m Blunder Barbie and I just feckin’ killed a man. My bad. But don’t worry, I’ll just get someone else to fix it so I can toddle on back to my perfect little life.”

“That is the biggest pile of hypocritical bullshit I’ve ever heard. How’s the contract killer gig going, by the way? Raking in some good cash with your murder-scuba skills, Batman?” Lark snorts and steps toward me, drawing a giant circle in front of my face with a dainty finger. “What you think you know about me, or anything, frankly, is this,” she says as she continues the circle. “But what you actually know is this.” She stops abruptly to hold her finger and thumb close together, only a whisper of space between them.