Page 65

He said my name like it was the only word he had left. Then he stopped using words altogether. His hand slid into my hair, tilting my head back where he wanted it, turning the kiss deep and insistent. I heard myself moan against his lips as I squeezed my thighs together against the ache building between them.

My back met the wall and he followed me into it, one hand braced beside my head, the other still at my waist. His mouth left mine only to find the line of my jaw, and I turned my head to give him more of it.

“Your scent,” he whispered against my throat, “has been driving me mad since you mentioned rain beneath glass.”

As soon as he mentioned that, the memories came back unbidden. A masked man on a balcony, a low voice beneath chandeliers, the removal of my glove, a gentle kiss on the inside of my wrist.

Without ever realizing it, I had fallen for two men. The masked stranger who had known my name before I knew his, and the composed patron who ran this world with deliberate care. The elevator had shown me they were one. My heart had taken a little longer to believe it. I still wanted the stranger’s mystery and the patron’s quiet restraint. Here, against this wall, I didn’t have to choose.

Both of them were mine.

This knowledge broke loose all at once. My hands moved on their own, dragging down the length of his back through his shirt, nails catching, wishing there was nothing between my fingertips and his skin. The muscles of his back went taut under my palms, and I felt the war in him, the way he pressed closer even as he held himself still, wanting and refusing in the same breath.

His hand left my waist. It found the hem of my dress instead and pushed it slowly up my thigh. He stopped there, his palm warm against my bare skin, waiting.

“Emilia.” My name, half a question.

“Yes,” I said.

His fingers slid between my legs and found me wet. A sound escaped me. He caught it with his mouth before pressing his forehead against mine.

“Tell me this is what I do to you,” he said, and did not stop moving.

I couldn’t think. “Every time you say my name.”

He brought his lips to my ear. “Emilia,” he whispered, and pushed a finger inside me.

My knees stopped participating. He felt it and held me up with the arm around my waist. He let out a breath against my ear, unsteady.

“Do you feel what you’ve done to me?” He shifted his hips so that I did. “Since I walked into your office this morning. Sitting in front of you, asking about timelines while your team watched from a few steps away.”

I couldn’t answer. His hand kept moving, and the sound I made was not a word.

“That’s it, darling.” He had never called me that before. “Let me have it.”

My body was past the point of arguing. My fingers gripped his shirt even tighter and I pressed my forehead into his shoulder and stopped trying to be quiet.

“Look at me.”

I did. That was what finished it. His eyes on mine, dark and entirely unguarded, and his voice saying my name once more against my mouth. I came apart against his hand with my back against the wall of my own suite.

He held me through all of it. When it finally let me, my legs were unreliable and my breath was somewhere else entirely. He was still holding me up, shaking slightly, still hard against my hip and making no move at all to do anything about it.

“Emilia.” My name came out rough. He lifted his head enough to look at me, and whatever he saw there nearly undid the both of us. “If I don’t leave now,” he said carefully, “I’m not going to want to.”

I could have told him to stay. The words were right there. But I understood what he was giving me, the same thing he always gave me. The power of choice. He wasn’t pulling away because he didn’t want me. He was pulling away because he wanted me to be sure.

“Then go,” I said softly. “While you still can.”

“That,” he said, “is going to require a moment.”

He didn’t move. Neither did I. He let out a soft laugh and shook his head. He took two steps backward.

“I really should go.”

“If you must leave me, you must.”

“Quoting Jane Eyre?”