Page 56 of Atone, Adonis

“Touch me, please” she whispered when he’d pulled his hand free from that infernal glove.

His bare fingertips brushed lightly over her collarbone. That was all. Scarcely even a caress. Yet the world narrowed at once to the space between them, to the feel of his skin against hers.

Her nipples hardened beneath the linen of her chemise and she felt herself tremble. He tipped those blue eyes of his down to her and there was no mistaking the hunger she saw in them now. It was palpable, so intense as to be almost angry.

“If I took these fingers, Jules, and slipped them into your drawers, what would I find?”

His voice was low and his words were filthy, unlike anything she’d ever heard from him before.

“I want to know,” he said and lifted his fingers as if he might just put them there. “Would I find evidence of your desire for me? Would I find that you want me, Jules?”

“Yes.”

It was only the truth.

He pulled her in closer, so she was flush against his body. She could feel the hard length of him pressing against her. She arched into him, wanting to be closer, as close as she could get.

“And then what would you do?” she asked, her nearly bare breasts pressed into his body.

She might have kicked that gown off altogether and thrown herself at him had Madame Tremaux’s voice not called out, “Back in a moment, chérie! I have another customer to attend to.”

And then another voice cut through the quiet of the shop and the haze fogging her mind. “Madame Tremaux,” it said. “I am in need of a ball gown.”

It was a voice that was familiar to Julianna although she couldn’t quite place it. She glanced back at Fred only to find him frozen, a shocked, troubled expression on his face. “Fred? Are you ill?”

“No.”

But he stepped back from her and raked a hand through his hair. For one raw moment he looked like a lost child. Vulnerable and frightened and she didn’t understand the sudden turn in his demeanor. Nor the plummet in the temperature of the room.

“What’s happened?” she asked as his expression shuttered and he turned without a word, leaving her standing there alone.

Madame Tremaux appeared a moment later, her arms full of fabric. “My apologies, ma chère. I had a surprise visit from another Dorsetshire lady. The Baroness Van Austerleigh. Perhaps you are acquainted?”

“Only by reputation,” Julianna said, peering out from behind the velvet screen.

Fred was gone but there was another set of eyes on her. Those of the Baroness, that doyenne of Dorsetshire Society who had been Fred’s company the night of the carriage accident. She hated the woman on sight.

“Lady Chester,” the Baroness said, with cold blue eyes that were nothing like Fred’s. “What a pleasure it is to finally be acquainted.”

As if Julianna had come from some exotic locale and not lived a stone’s throw away in Dorset her entire life. But she inclined her head toward the Baroness anyway. She knew she didn’t have a reason to be rude. It wasn’t this woman’s fault that her memory had provoked Fred into leaving.

“Likewise,” she said, her gaze flicking once more to the empty chair where Fred had been moments before.

“And where did Chester run away to? I haven’t seen that boy in an age.”

Julianna reverted her attention to the Baroness then, unease prickling her spine. That boy?

“He’s gone out.” Julianna turned away. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Hell and damnation,” Fred growled to himself as he sat in the carriage.

He felt like he had whiplash. One moment he was trying to calm the rock hard cockstand he had and not ravage his wife in public and the next that voice had cut through his memories, dousing him in an icy shock.

The Baroness Van Austerleigh was in London. She was as beautiful as he recalled. A decade older, as was he, but she wore it exquisitely. Her hair—darkened now from the pale gold he remembered—was dressed beneath a hat trimmed in feathers and a day gown that had been immaculate. Exquisitely tailored to flatter her figure.

His stomach had recoiled on sight.

And he’d fled. Left Julianna alone inside the shop without a word. Christ. He should explain himself but he didn’t quite know how. Julianna was happy here, in London. For the first time since—well, since he didn’t know when because he’d been gone from her life for a decade, hadn’t he? And the reason for that absence had just walked through the modiste’s door.