She shook her head. “That’s not true. I came to you because I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.”
“You came to me because you fear that it’s not worth the fuss with him.”
“I came to you because I thought you were a man I would not see again.”
“Liar.” The word was harsh in the small space, at once accusation and accolade.
She looked up at him, those black eyes empty. “You would know. You’ve lied to me from the very beginning with your weighted dice and your false promises and your Mr. Cross.”
“I never lied, love.”
“Even that is a lie!”
“I told you from the beginning that I was a scoundrel. That was my truth.”
She gaped at him. “And that absolves you of your sin?”
“I’ve never asked for absolution.” He reached for the horrid mask, pulling it from her face, regretting the movement the moment he saw those enormous blue eyes, swimming with emotion.
Not regretting it at all.
Adoring it.
Adoring her.
“I told you to leave me. I told you never to come near me.” He leaned in, torturing them both—so close and still an unbearable distance. “But you couldn’t resist. You want me to teach you the things you should learn from him. You want my experience. My sin. My kiss. And not his.”
Her gaze was on his mouth, and he held back a groan at the hunger in those blue eyes. God, he’d never wanted anything the way he wanted her.
“You’ve never kissed me,” she whispered.
“I’ve wanted to.” The words were so simple, they felt like a lie. Want didn’t come close to articulating the way he felt. About her touch. About her taste. About her.
Want was a speck in the universe of his desire.
She shook her head. “Another lie. You can’t even touch me without pulling away as though you’ve been burned. You clearly aren’t interested in touching me.”
For someone who prided herself on her commitment to scientific observation, Philippa Marbury was utterly oblivious.
And it was time he set her straight.
But before he could, she added, “At least Castleton kissed me when I asked.”
He froze. Castleton had kissed her.
Castleton had taken what Cross had resisted. What Cross had left.
What should have been Cross’s.
Vicious jealousy flared, and six years of control snapped. He caught her to him without hesitation, lifted her in his arms, pressed her to the richly upholstered wall, and did what he should have done the first moment he met her.
He kissed her, reveling in the feel of her lips on his, of the way she softened instantly against him, as though she belonged in his arms—his and no one else’s.
And she did.
She made a small, irresistible sound of surprise when he aligned his mouth to hers and claimed it for his own, swallowing the gasp and running his tongue along the full curve of her bottom lip until surprise turned to pleasure, and she sighed—giving herself to him.
And there, in that moment, he knew he would not stop until he’d had all of her. Until he’d heard every one of her little squeaks and sighs, until he’d tasted every inch of her skin, until he’d spent a lifetime learning the curves and valleys of her body and her mind.
It was the years of celibacy. After six years, any kiss would be this powerful. This earth-shattering.
Lie.
It was her.
It would always be her.
Lifting his lips from hers, he whispered, “You do burn me, Pippa. You enflame me.” He pressed her into the wall, pinning her with his body so he could free his hands to explore, to cup her jaw in one hand and tilt her lips to his and gain better access. He took her mouth again, throwing himself into the fire, stroking deep, wanting to consume her, wanting to erase every memory of every other man from her mind.
He ran the edge of his teeth along her lower lip, adoring the way she sighed and lifted her arms to wrap around his neck. And then, dear God, she was kissing him back—his brilliant bluestocking—first repeating his movements, then improving on them until the student surpassed the master to tortuous, nearly unbearable effect.
She writhed against him—as eager for him as he was for her—rocking her h*ps into his, the rhythm promising more than she could possibly know. He broke the kiss on a groan—a low, wicked sound that rumbled around them in this small, private place.
He trailed kisses across the line of her jaw to her ear, where he whispered, “He might have kissed you, love, but his kiss is nothing like mine, is it?”
She shook her head, her reply coming on heavy gasps of breath. “No.” He rewarded her honesty with a long lick along the curl of her ear, pulling the soft lobe of it in his teeth, worrying it until she sighed, “Cross.”
He lifted one hand to the line of her dress and yanked the fabric down, baring one perfect, pale breast, tracing his finger around and around her nipple until it went hard and aching. He tore his gaze away to find her equally transfixed by his touch.
Watching her beautiful blue eyes, he moved, pinching the straining tip, loving the way her head tilted back resting against the wall as she sighed his name once more. He kissed her softly at the soft spot behind her jaw, tonguing the skin there. “His kiss doesn’t make you cry out his name.”
“No,” she said, pressing her breast into his hand, asking for more. As though she had to ask. He dipped his head, taking her nipple into his mouth, sucking until she cried out, the glorious sound muffled by curtains and the din of gamers nearby, who had no idea of what happened mere feet from them.
He rewarded her unbridled response with a deep, thorough kiss, reaching down to lift her skirts, fingers tracing along silk stockings and then silken skin as they climbed higher and higher. Her fingers tangled in his hair, clutching him to her as she gasped against his lips. He returned to her ear, whispering, “Tell me, my gorgeous, honest girl, does his kiss make you want to lift your skirts and take your pleasure here? Now?”
“No,” she confessed, soft and strained.
His hand moved higher, finding what he sought, downy hair and glorious wet heat. He stroked the backs of his fingers along the seam of her, wanting her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. “But mine does, doesn’t it?”
He slid one finger deep into her softness, and they both groaned at the pleasure of it. She was wet and wanting, and he couldn’t wait to give her everything she desired. He stroked, long and lush, through the wet, wonderful core of her as he whispered in the darkness, “It makes you want to hold your skirts high as I give you everything you deserve—as I teach you about sin and sex, with half of London a hairsbreadth away.”
“Yes.” She gasped, and he lifted her skirts higher with one hand, working his fingers high against her, making good on his promise, one finger pressing deep into her as his thumb worked a tight circle at the hard, straining center of her pleasure.
“This isn’t a lie, Pippa. This is truth. Wicked, undeniable truth.”
She clutched his arm, moving against him, not knowing what to do.
But he knew. It had been six years, but he had been waiting for this moment.
For her.
“Take your skirts, darling.”
She did as she was told, holding them high as he sank to his knees before her once more, as he had several nights earlier, only this time, he allowed himself access to her, to her heat and her scent and the magnificence of her body.
He lifted one of her legs, pressing a kiss to the inside of her knee, swirling his tongue against the finely spun silk there before hooking her knee over his shoulder and leaning forward to place a kiss against her beautiful mound. He stroked deep, first with one finger, then two as he blew a long stream of air over the spot where his thumb had been swirling. She sucked in a deep breath. “Cross,” she whispered. “Please—”
And in that plea, he lost himself. “Yes, love,” he said, inhaling her heady, glorious scent. “I’ll give you everything you want. Everything you need.”
He stroked into her softness again, and he wondered at the way she wept for him, not knowing what he would give her . . . what he could do to her . . . and wanting it nonetheless. “Do you feel it? The truth of it? How much you want me?”
“I want . . .” she started, then stopped.
He turned his head, nipping at the soft skin of her inner thigh, reveling in the softness there—that untouched, uncharted, silken spread. “Say it.” He would give it to her. Anything in his power. Anything beyond it.
She looked down at him, blue eyes fairly glowing with desire. “I want you to want me.”
He closed his eyes at that; trust Pippa to be forthright even here, even now, even as she bared herself to his eyes and mouth and hands. Trust her to strip this moment of all remaining shrouds, leaving it raw and bare and honest.
God help him, he told her the truth. He wasn’t certain he could do anything but. “I do, love. I want you more than you could ever know. More than I could have ever dreamed. I want you enough for two men. For ten.”
She laughed at that, the sound coming on a wicked movement of strong h*ps and soft stomach. “I don’t require ten. Just you.”
Even as he knew he would never be worthy enough for her, the words went straight to the hard, straining length of him, and he knew he would never be able to resist her—not when she asked with truth in her big blue eyes and passion on her soft, lyric voice.
He leaned in, and spoke to the heart of her. “And you shall have me.”
And then he was where he had wanted to be for a week. For longer. He removed his hand from where it had been working its irresistible rhythm, retreating slowly, killing them both until she moved to seek his touch. He couldn’t stop the wicked grin that spread across his face at the proof that she wanted him. “Easy.”
“No.” The word came out on a near desperate whine. “Now, Cross.”
“So demanding,” he teased, his blood running hot at her insistence. “Now, it is.” And he spread her gently, revealing the core of her, willing and wet and perfect.
He kissed her then, the way he’d promised he would that night in his office, the way he’d dreamed late at night as he lay in the darkness and imagined this vision of a woman rising above him, open and available for worship.
Just as she was now, standing above him, one hand holding her sapphire skirts, the other thrust into his hair, holding him against her as he pressed his tongue into her softness, savoring her taste, making love to her with slow, languid strokes that made her sigh and writhe and push against him. She was pleasure and heat and passion—the first, fresh drink of water after years in the desert.
He found the heart of her desire, working it first slowly, then longer and faster until time faded and he was wrapped in her sound and her feel and her taste, with no desire to move or stray from her. He’d promised her hours, and he could make good on it—he could worship her from here, on his knees, for an eternity.
She lost her grip on her skirts, and her thighs trembled against him as she arched away from the wall, a wicked, wonderful offering. He took it without question, reaching up to hold her, returning his fingers to the heat of her in one long, deep thrust.
She came apart then, against his hands and his mouth, crying her pleasure beneath his tongue and teeth, and he carried her over the edge, through her passion, working her with his touch and his kiss and every bit of desire and depravity he’d resisted over the last six years . . . over longer than that. He reveled in her softness and her sounds, not wanting to leave her. Wanting the experience with her.
She called out his name, her fingers tight in his hair, and he came with her, hard and hot and unavoidable. And in that moment, his own pleasure startled from him by hers, he should have felt embarrassment or shame or something infinitely more base. But instead he felt as though he’d been waiting for that moment.
For her.
And there, in the darkness, her soft cries echoed by the roar of London’s wealthiest gamers scant feet away, he caught his breath and ran his hands along her thighs, guiding her skirts back into place, and considered the startling possibility that Pippa Marbury was indeed his savior.
The thought rocketed through him as quick and unexpected as his cl**ax, and he bowed his head, looking down at her little sapphire slippers, shocked as hell, even as he knelt at her feet and reveled in the feel of her hands in his hair.
That’s how Temple found them.
He came up short just inside the door to the owner’s suite, six feet of muscle going perfectly still, his scarred face a portrait of shock. “Shit,” he said, backing up, propelled from the space by its intimacy. “I didn’t—”
Pippa’s hands moved like lightning, and Cross was na**d at the loss of her touch. “Your Grace,” she said, and Temple’s title startled him, a reminder of all their places. Of the wrongness of her being here. “I— We—”
He needed time to think.
He needed time to understand what had just happened.
How everything had changed.
He rose. “Get out.”
Pippa turned her wide gaze on him. “Me?”
No. Never her. But he couldn’t bring himself to speak to her yet. He didn’t know what he would say. How he would say it. She’d wrecked him, thoroughly, and he wasn’t prepared for it. For her.
For the way she made him feel.
For the things she made him do.
For the future she tempted him with.
“I think he meant me, my lady,” Temple cut in.
Then why was he still here?
Temple replied as though Cross had spoken the words aloud.
“Knight has arrived.”