His gaze searched her face as though asking permission, and her body answered before her mind could intervene. She did not step back. Did not look away. If anything, she leaned the smallest fraction closer, enough that her breath brushed his throat.
His hand came to her waist.
Not decisively. Not yet. It settled there as though it had found something inevitable, something it had been seeking long before he allowed himself to name it. His thumb shifted—barely—against the fabric of her gown, and the contact sent a sharp, startling heat through her.
“Lorraine,” he said again, hoarse now.
Her hands rose of their own accord—hovered, then came to rest lightly against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat beneath her palms; faster now, matching her own.
The world narrowed to that point of contact.
To breath.
To heat.
To the unbearable, suspended knowledge of what would happen if either of them moved an inch further.
His head bent, just slightly.
Close enough now that she could feel the ghost of it, the almost of it, the promise of it.
Then—
He closed his eyes.
Drew in a sharp, unsteady breath.
And stepped back.
The absence of him was immediate. Jarring.
When he opened his eyes again, the fire had been forced down—banked, contained, but not gone.
“Not like this,” he said, his voice roughened to something almost unrecognisable. “Not in anger. Not in jealousy. You deserve better than that. You deserve…”
He broke off, swallowing.
“You deserve everything. And when I come to you—if I come to you—I want it to be because I chose it. Not because I was driven to it by my own weakness.”
Lorraine felt her throat tighten. It was, she realised, the most profound declaration she had ever heard—not of passion, but of restraint. Of intention.
“When,” she said quietly. “Not if.”
Something answered in his gaze. “When.”
She inclined her head once, the small formality absurdly unequal to the moment, and turned toward the door. Her steps were steady, though she felt anything but.
In the corridor, she paused, her back against the wall, breath unsteady in her chest.
It was a beginning.
She pressed her hands to her burning cheeks and smiled in the darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
“I leave in the morning.”
Julian stood in the doorway of the study, impeccably dressed as always. Dominic looked up from the estate papers he had been using as a barricade against thought, and found his friend watching him with an expression stripped of its customary ease.
