Footsteps on the gravel path. Measured. Deliberate. The stride of a man who had made a decision and was walking toward it before he could change his mind.
Lorraine looked up.
Dominic stood at the entrance to the alcove, framed by the bare rose canes and the pale sky. He was in his shirtsleeves—no coat, no waistcoat—as though he had left the house in such haste he had forgotten both. The cold did not seem to touch him. His gaze was fixed on her with an intensity that made the breath falter in her lungs.
“Thomas and Jenny have gone inside,” she heard herself say. “They will be back shortly.”
“I know.” He stepped into the alcove. “I watched them go.”
The admission hung between them—plain, unapologetic. He had been watching. Waiting. Calculating the precise moment she would be alone.
“Dominic—”
“I have tried to stay away from you.” His voice was raw, stripped clean of all careful control. “I have tried for days. I have told myself every reason I should keep my distance—duty, propriety, the thousand ways this might destroy you. I have paced my study until I have worn a path in the carpet. I have drunk enough whisky to float a frigate, and woken every morning swearing I should be stronger.”
“And?” The word emerged as little more than a whisper.
“And I am not stronger. I am not noble. I am standing in my garden in my shirtsleeves because I watched you from my window and I could not—” He broke off, his jaw working, his hands clenching at his sides. “I am here becausesoonis no longer enough. I am here because I am going mad, Lorraine. You have driven me completely, irretrievably mad.”
She rose. The book slipped from her lap to the frozen ground. She did not notice.
“I have tried as well.” Her voice shook, and she let it. Let him see the cracks in her composure, the need she had hidden behind competence and poise and the careful performance of a woman who wanted nothing. “I have tried to remember my place. Tried to remember what I stand to lose. Tried to remind myself that wanting you is the most dangerous thing I have ever done—and I have done some remarkably dangerous things.”
“Perhaps I will ruin you.” He said it like a warning. Like a confession. Like a man offering her one final chance to run.
“Perhaps I will ruin you first.”
Something detonated behind his eyes. She saw the exact moment it happened—the instant four years of ice met the heat that had been building between them for weeks and shattered entirely.
He moved. Two strides closed the distance between them, and then his mouth was on hers.
The kiss was not gentle. It was not tentative, or careful, or any of the things she had imagined in her quieter, more sensible fantasies. It was desperate—fierce,consuming, overwhelming—the kiss of a man who had been starving for years and had at last been given leave to eat. His hands came up to frame her face, tilting her head back, and his mouth slanted over hers with a hunger that made her knees buckle.
Lorraine caught at the front of his shirt and held fast.
He tasted of coffee and something darker beneath it—the lingering trace of whisky. His lips were firm, demanding, coaxing hers apart with a skill that suggested he knew very well what he was doing, even as the rest of him trembled with barely leashed need. When his tongue brushed hers, she made a low, helpless sound, and felt his whole body shudder in answer.
He backed her against the garden wall. The stone was cold through her dress; his body, blazing against her, made the contrast almost unbearable. She gasped. He swallowed the sound, deepening the kiss, one hand sliding from her face to the curve of her neck, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw.
“Lorraine.” He tore his mouth from hers, breathing hard, his forehead resting against hers. “I have wanted—for weeks—I could not—”
“Do not stop.” She dragged him back by the front of his shirt and kissed him with all the hunger she had been suppressing for weeks. Months. Years. Every lonely night in borrowed beds, every morning spent pretending she did not long to be touched, every carefully buried desire—everything rose at once and poured into the press of her mouth against his.
He groaned—a deep, rough sound she felt through her bones—and what remained of his restraint gave way by another measure. His hands slid down her sides, learning the line of her waist, her hips, the flare of her body beneath the modest fabric of her dress. His touch was reverent and desperate at once, as though he could not decide whether to worship her or devour her.
“Tell me to stop,” he rasped against her throat, his lips trailing heat along the line of her neck. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”
“Don’t you dare.”
His laugh was broken, breathless, barely a sound at all. His hands found the fabric of her skirts and gathered it, slowly, deliberately, his eyes locked on hers—giving her time to refuse, to push him away, to come to her senses.
She didn’t.
His fingers brushed against the bare skin above her stocking, and Lorraine’s world reduced to a single point of contact. His touch was featherlight—almost reverent—tracing the soft skin of her inner thigh with a gentleness that contradicted the fire in his eyes. She shivered, and he caught the tremor, his gaze sharpening.
“Tell me what you want.” The same words he had spoken in the library. But here, pressed against a garden wall with his hand beneath her skirts, they meant something entirely different.
“Touch me.” Her voice was steady, certain—a woman who had denied herself too long and was done, utterly done, with restraint. “Please, Dominic. Touch me.”
