“Why didn’t you say anything?” she demanded. “If you’ve been in love with me for years, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did. The day you left, I said those exact words, on the rock—I love you. And you hugged me in a way that might as well have branded me brother.”
“That’s what I thought you meant! You could have corrected me.”
“It was for the best. What would I have done had you known my true meaning? I had no means to support us, and your parents would have never accepted it. I spent most of the next six years living in a back room of a broken-down theatre. You could have remained cozy with my parents, I suppose, but then we’d have rarely seen each other. By the time life had begun to be more comfortable, you’d stopped writing.”
“I thought I was annoying you with my letters.”
“I gave up hope entirely. But almost as soon as you returned, I fell again. I’m no good at resisting Tessa King. God, I’ve been jealous.
“I know.”
He shook his head. “Not just Tilbury. Grimsby.”
“You were not. That was years ago.”
“I was eaten up with it. Grimsby was a good decade older than me and not at all bad looking.” Now that she’d not laughed at him and thrown him out on his arse, the confessions came more easily, pouring out like water from a jug, as if they’d been on the edge of brimming over for years, and finally he’d tipped the jug. Just enough to spill every single secret. “He had a position that paid, the means to care for himself and to take a wife. And he had your parents’ approval. He had permission to sit alone with you, to take your full attention. I didn’t think he deserved it. I went to London to put your painting in that competition because I wanted to be your hero. I wanted you to rely on me the way Grimsby’s wife would be able to relyon him. I-I-I?—”
She rested her head on his shoulder.
The stutter stopped, and he leaned into the small embrace. “I wanted you, then. But I knew I couldn’t have you. So I did what I could for you.”
She curled her hands around the lapels of his jacket, and he wanted to trace every emotion streaming across her face with his lips then make her feel even more by tracing his tongue further south.
He’d done the hard thing. He’d made a fool of himself for her, and she was on her knees with him now. It wasn’t those three little words back, but it was good. He leaned close, set his lips at her ear.
“Tell me to leave,” he whispered, “or wrap your pretty little legs around my waist like you did earlier today.”
Her breath hitched, and slowly she wound her arms around his neck. He wrapped an arm beneath her arse, and she used it to take flight, to put those legs right where he wanted them. When he laid her on the bed, her dressing gown gaped open. A short, snowy white shift peeked through, and his cock twitched.
“Stay there.” The two words crawled their way up his throat.
“Again?”
“Again.” He needed to watch her, needed to make sure with every move he took that she wasn’t doing this out of pity.
He unloosed his cravat, tugged. The slide of the linen against his skin almost made his hair stand on end. With her eyes on him, it almost felt like her caress, sure and purposeful, teasing and seductive. He dropped it to the floor. The waistcoat next, then the shirt. She licked her lips, and his cock tightened.
When she sat upright, folding her legs beneath her, he made a warning sound.
She arched a brow, kept his gaze as she flicked open the buttons of her wrapper.
Bloody hell.
She shrugged out of it with a gentle roll of her shoulders that made it almost impossible to keep his distance. The only thing that rooted him to the floor was pure determination and the gnawing fear that if he looked away, got caught up in her body, he’d miss a flicker, a clue, a dropped-mask moment where truth lay.
She rocked from side to side, her breasts gently swaying beneath her shift as she freed its hem, lifted.
She paused, gaze dropping to his waist, his fall.
He released a button there.
She lifted the hem higher.
He freed another button.
Tessa gave him another inch—a revelation of creamy skin that included one lovely navel he wanted to lick and the top of a shock of red curls darkening between her legs.
