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The words hang between us.

Her expression changes. “Gabriel.”

“I could see you falling, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t reach you. I thought—” I stop again. Because I cannot finish that sentence. Because even imagining what might have happened makes something inside me twist painfully.

April’s hands slide from my shoulders to my face.

“Hey, I’m okay. No harm done.”

I nod.

“I’m right here.”

“Yes.”

“And you saved me.”

I swallow. “I would have done anything.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.

April goes very still.

I should say something else. Something less revealing. Something that doesn’t sound quite so much like a confession.

But I cannot seem to find the words.

Her thumb brushes my cheek. Slowly. Back and forth, as though she is committing the shape of me to memory.

And then she kisses me.

Not like the first time. Not a cautious experiment designed to test whether affection might break a curse. This kiss is warm and certain. Her mouth presses against mine, soft and unhurried, and for one extraordinary moment, I forget everything.

The curse. The house. All of the years spent merely waiting. There is only April. Her lips on mine. Her fingers sliding from my face into my hair.

The sweet little sound she makes when I tighten my arms around her.

I kiss her back. I would be a fool not to.

And while I have been accused of many things in my lifetime, foolishness has rarely been among them.

I slant my mouth over hers, and she opens for me on a soft sigh that I feel all the way to the base of my spine. She tastes of coffee and sugar, and beneath that, something sweeter. Something that is entirely April.

I had forgotten this.

No. That is a lie. I had never known this.

I kissed women before the curse. Elegant women in silk gowns who tasted of champagne and ambition. Women who kissed me for what I owned, and whom I kissed back for very much the same reason.

Not one of them ever kissed me like this. As though I, the man, were the thing worth having, rather than simply obtaining.

April’s fingers tighten in my hair. She tugs, only slightly, and a sound escapes me. Low and rough. A sound I have not made in a century and a half.

She smiles against my mouth. The minx.

“Do that again,” she whispers.

“Do what?”

“That noise.”