“Oh, to hell with it,” he growled, and pulled her forward by the waist, claiming her mouth with his.
She didn’t hesitate before she threw her arms around his neck. Kissing him was wrong, all wrong, but it felt remarkably likecoming home—and how long had it been since she had had a true home? Had she ever had one?
“Ezra?” she asked, barely taking her mouth away from his, making the word come out garbled. It didn’t matter. He understood her. He always did.
“Hm?” he asked, one hand sliding up the curve of her spine so that his whole forearm was pressed against her back, urging her against his chest, not that she needed much encouragement.
“Thank you for breaking your promise,” she said, kissing his lips, his cheeks, his chin.
If every kiss between them had been a different exploration, this one was a frantic rush. It was messy and unrefined. Her caution had been tossed aside. His care had been forsaken. They were all lips, hands, teeth, and tongues.
She bit down on his shoulder. He sucked lightly at her throat. She kissed his collarbones, her hands fumbling with the buttons of his shirt as she undid them, one by one.
“You should not be this lovely,” she accused, her slip half hanging off her shoulder, her stays abandoned on the floor. “It’s unfair, really. You’re young, rich, and powerful. Can’t you have a few missing teeth?”
“Me?” he asked, laughing as he kissed his way across the slopes of her breasts, half on bare skin, half over the fabric of herchemise. “Youare unfairly lovely. And if I am the first to say it, it is only because other men are very, very foolish—and I am very, very lucky.”
“Ezra,” she sighed. “Do you think we will be sorry about this, later?”
She didn’t know if she meant the kissing or the parting or the tender words. Maybe all of it. Maybe she meant meeting one another in the first place. It had all gotten so terribly jumbled up in her mind.
“I don’t know,” he said, pulling back so that he could look at her. He looked rather lost, too. “But I think it is worth the risk, anyhow.”
“Agreed.”
They moved as one toward the bed, their inhibitions cast aside with their declaration. She knew that calling him worth the risk was as close as she could get to expressing her deep feelings, without risking herself opening to a wound that might never scab over, let alone heal.
She could not tell him. She could not think it, not even within the privacy of her own mind.
But she could show him, just for today.
She did not let Ezra lay her gently out on the bed like he had the previous time. Instead, when he guided her back, she kept her hold on him, tugging until he toppled along with her. The mattress was fortunately soft enough to absorb their dual impacts, but Letty let out a tinyoofof air as his weight came atop her.
It felt good, though, to have him pressed to her everywhere—his hands on her hands, his chest against her chest, his legs intertwined with hers.
It felt safe, and that was probably even rarer than the laughter they shared.
“You make me feel so…” She let the words dangle on a sigh. He made herfeel. So very much.
“I know, my beauty,” he murmured, his forehead against her temple. He slid kisses down her cheek. “Me, too.”
Her breath came out like more of a sob, but she hid it inside her next kiss.
They were unhurried, allowing desire to grow slowly and letting it burn hotter between them over time, like a pot set to a very low simmer. Letitia did not feel rushed. In fact, she felt the opposite—the longer she let this continue, the very last encounter, for it surely had to be the final one…
The longer they lingered, the longer it would be before she had to let him go.
They kept murmuring each other’s names as they kissed and caressed, as if the intimacy of informality was just as wonderful as the touches they shared. And maybe it was.
When they encountered one another again, he would be His Grace, and she would be Miss Knightley.
But not for right now.
“Ezra,” she murmured as she kissed his chest, memorizing the taste of his name. “Ezra,” she said again as she kissed his hipbone, memorizing the taste of his skin.
When her hands grew cautious as they neared the place where he was ready and waiting, he helped guide her. With her first grip around him, he let out a groan as if he were dying. She might have pulled her hand back, alarmed, if it were not for the way his grip tightened around hers, showing her how to touch him.
When her movements became more certain, he let her go, let her take control. He hesitated through one more gasp of pleasure, then reached down to touch her at the apex of her thighs.
