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“Shall I compromise you, Char?” he whispered against her ear, “In a way only I can?”
She hummed, unable to conjure anything more than a panting, woeful, “Yes.”
He kissed her again and ran that same finger up her seam, touching the spot that made the world flash white behind her eyelids.
“And will you come for me, Char? Will you let me watch?”
Again, not knowing what he meant, only knowing she would do whatever he asked of her, she breathed, “Yes.”
His finger slipped inside of her.
She could not commit to memory what came next, to the way he worked her, for the world slipped from beneath her—no more man and woman than they were two dark birds, headed toward their firmament. He drove from her all the evil she had felt consumed by, all the pleasure of which she had onlydreamed,with the artistry of his fingers. He writhed against her as he labored, so enslaved was he by his own need, too.
He played her to a crescendo, a rhythm of his making, quickening as her entire body coiled tight, holding onto him, never wanting to let go... only to release around him.
It felt like an endless fall.
It felt like rebirth.
It felt a little like dying, too.
She was everything and nothing as she moaned his name again, boneless and weightless against the stairs.
When at last her bosom stilled, her breathing not so harried, she dared to look up at him. He placed a finger in her mouth for her to lick clean and then caught her bottom lip.
“How maddening you are, Princess...” he drawled.
It was all it took for the dream to fall apart.
Her heart pinched in his chest at the word—princess. It summoned something dark: a memory, a fear, something she couldn’t name. It felt familiar butwrong, especially from Benjamin, like an apostle reading from the devil’s handbook.Why? What lay in that word that turned to ash all the majesty of the moment?
She stroked his head where he let it lay on her chest, too fearful to ask.
He looked up at her beneath his lashes, taking pains to still his breathing... but he seemed almost a stranger—if not a stranger, then a dream brought to life. Like a dream, it was twisted.
She hadn’t the time to bring sense to the instinctive rejection pitted in her belly as he tried to kiss her again.
Two sets of footsteps sounded from the hall, followed by a burst of cool laughter.
Benjamin tore himself away, taking Charlotte with him as though to shield her.
And then the laughter ceased.
When she looked back, her confusion gave way to horror.
Standing at the threshold between the party and their dark nest on the stairs… were her father and the Duke of Gamston.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
It felt too cruel for words, really, to have broken through the gates of heaven one moment and be clawing at life the next. He had tried to stop Charlotte from turning back when he had heard the first toll of mannish laughter. He knew, regardless to whom the laugh might belong, that the time had come to shake free the coil of their lies.
He needed a moment, just one moment more, to breathe her in, to hold her before they came to rip her from him. It was the most wicked execution of their plan.
The Duke of Gamston was the first to tear off his mask as he regarded the lovers caught in their tryst—one not of artifice, as had been their intent. Charlotte’s father merely stood behind him lifelessly.
Benjamin and Charlotte shot to their feet, but Gamston was quick to cut them off.
“Charlotte,” he breathed against the grumbling echo of the music from the hall, “And… Huxley. No, this cannot be.” He looked at Benjamin, and the fury in the Duke’s eyes only served to incense him. “What have you done to her?”
