“You disinvited me to the club,” he said.
“I apologize. You are welcome to be a member again.” For as long as the club exists.
“I don’t care about the damn club. I care about you sending me away.”
“I couldn’t have you close,” she said, setting the truth free. “I couldn’t have you near without wishing you near forever.”
That word again, insidious and tempting.
He swore, and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her like steel, making her wish that this was all there was. That there was no Chase, no Anna, no Tremley beating down the door with his deadlines and his secrets. No Fallen Angel.
Because she did not wish to use him. Not anymore. She did not wish for him to be anywhere near the falseness that was her future. Did not wish for him to have any more reasons to think ill of her.
He misunderstood. “Christ… Georgiana,” he spoke to the top of her head, his arms around her like steel, strong and welcome. “The paper. The reward.”
She turned her face into his chest, reveling in the scent of him. “Chase is done for.”
He had been since the moment Tremley had made his offer – her secrets for Duncan’s. It was an offer she would never refuse. A trade she would gladly make. Chase and Anna would disappear from the world, and they would be replaced by Duncan’s safety.
If only it would be enough.
He swore softly. “I did it. I ruined him.” He paused. “You. I ruined all you worked for.”
She would have ruined it herself – still planned to – but that was the final secret she could not reveal to him. Instead, she smiled. “He had to be done, eventually. I could not continue here and preach propriety for Caroline. I thought I could… but now, I see the ridiculousness in that plan.”
“I will find a way to keep you safe. To keep Chase safe. I’ll rescind the reward.”
She put her hands to his lips, silencing him, running her fingers over his cheekbones, down the long line of his jaw. “All this time… from the beginning, you have told me to trust you.”
“I have,” he said. “And now, you must believe that I will find a way —”
She stopped him. “It’s your turn, Duncan. It’s time for you to trust me.”
His gaze narrowed. “What does that mean?”
She leaned up to kiss him. “Exactly what I say.”
“I do trust you.” He took the kiss, returned it. “What are you planning?”
“That’s not trusting me.”
He started to reply. Stopped. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to talk.” He lifted her in his arms, her legs wrapping about his waist. “I just want to love you. All of you. Once, before it’s over.”
Before it’s over.
The words crashed around her as she took his face in her hands, and returned the kiss he settled on her lips, deep and longing. She didn’t like the finality in them. The sense that everything important was ending tonight.
Not sense. Truth.
Tonight would end the myth of Chase. It would end the fabrication of Anna.
And it would leave Georgiana alone once more, to face Society and its wolves.
To create a new future.
But she did not want the future. She wanted the present. This moment.
This man.
“I wish…” his words were low and dark in her ear, and she met his gaze.
“What?” She moved against him, rocked into him sending pleasure through her and, she hoped, through him.
It worked. He smiled, his eyes closing. “It sounds mad, but I wish we’d done this in a bed. Like ordinary people.”
“There is a bed.”
He tilted his head, looking pleased as punch. “There is?”
She nodded. “There is.”
He set her on her feet and she guided him into her apartments through several doors and into the room where she slept most evenings. He paused in the doorway, looking at the bed, upholstered and curtained in white. He shook his head. “All this time, London has wagered and sinned and bathed themselves in vice… and you have reigned from this white bed – fit for a pristine princess.”
She smiled. “Pristine no more.”
He turned his hot gaze on her. “No more.”
And then she was in his arms, and he was lifting her, carrying her, setting loose an ache deep in her. She – who’d spent the last six years giving the men and women of London everything they desired, who considered herself an expert in want – she’d never wanted anything more than this man.
Than this moment.
He stood her next to the bed and slowly undressed them both, boots and breeches and shirts, shucking his own and then hers, kissing the bare skin he revealed in long, lingering licks until she thought she might die from the pleasure of him.
Until she thought she might from her desire for him.
He laid her down, naked, back against the cool sheets, and climbed over her, pressing his face to the soft skin of her belly, breathing deep, pressing his open mouth to the swell there, to the faded marks that told the tale that he alone knew.
“I love you,” he whispered, soft and privately, to the skin there, so easy that she thought perhaps he hadn’t said the words at all.
She gasped as his mouth moved, finding the tip of one breast, and then the other, his hands cupping her, lifting, caressing, ensuring that she would never forget this moment, the way he touched her. The way he loved her. She held him, fingers in his soft golden hair as he whispered to the skin between her breasts, “I love you.”