“Lily,” he said, his chest aching with desire to erase all that time alone.
She’d never be alone again. He’d make sure of it.
“I would wonder sometimes—if I’d ever touch another person again. If I’d ever be loved.” Looked back to Alec, the truth in her eyes. “He made me feel loved.”
The words wrecked him, at once making him want to gather her close and set her far away. And then crush Hawkins into dust for taking advantage of Lily. “And you? Did you love him?”
She looked away again. “Who can say?”
Alec hated the words. The way they did not deny her feelings. He could say. He wanted to put the words in her mouth. The categorical denial. Instead, he said, “He did not deserve you.”
One side of her lovely lips rose. “You have a terribly high opinion of me, Your Grace. The rest of the world would say it was I who did not deserve him.”
“The rest of the world can hang.”
She raised a hand to the glass in the carriage window. Dragged a finger through the condensation there. “I did it, though,” she said, softly, lost in memory.
“Why?” He couldn’t resist the question.
“A tempting promise. Sometimes . . .” He wondered if she would finish, and she was silent long enough that he thought she wouldn’t. And then, “Sometimes, you wait for so long, that it all feels like love.”
His chest was suddenly, devastatingly tight. What was she doing to him?
He leaned forward, closing the distance between them and whispering, “I don’t wish to hurt you.”
“I know that.”
“I should never have come.” Nothing good ever came from being in London. Especially not when London came with this beautiful woman, who threw everything into chaos.
“There’s something rather noble about you coming. For me.”
Perhaps it was the way she said it that made it sound nearly magical, as though she’d stood naked beneath the stars like some pagan goddess and conjured him there. Perhaps it was the darkness, the wash of silver moonlight on her porcelain skin that made him reach for her hands even as he knew shouldn’t. Knew it was a mistake of the highest possible caliber.
Lily relinquished her hand without hesitation, and he turned it, palm up, revealing a little quartet of buttons on the inside of her wrist. Slowly, he unbuttoned the glove and, tugging on the fingers, slid it from her hand, revealing her smooth, bare skin.
At first, he simply stared at it, feeling as though he existed on a precipice, looking down into a deep abyss from which he would not return. Lily’s breath was coming in a quick, staccato rhythm—or perhaps that was his own, filled with desire to touch her.
I wondered if I would ever touch another person again.
The memory of the words whispered around them, and in their silent echo, Alec lifted his own hand to his mouth, pulling at the fingers of his glove with his teeth, removing it with efficiency, before tossing it aside and—before he could regret it—sliding his bare palm over hers.
Her breath caught at the touch, at the slide of their fingers, at the way he captured her small hand in his much larger one.
Her skin was so soft, like silk. Like the sound of the little sigh that came on a lovely exhale. He did not look up at the sound. Refused to, because he knew that if he did, he would not be able to stop himself from what came next.
Instead, he stroked her hand, his palm running over hers, his fingers tracing the dips and valleys of her fingers, until only their fingertips touched, before he once again took her hand, lacing their fingers together tightly.
“Palm to palm,” she whispered, and he heard the barely-there teasing in the words. The reference to their earlier discussion of Romeo and Juliet.
He should let her go. He meant to.
He didn’t mean to say, “The only part of the play that’s worth anything.”
He didn’t mean to look at her, to find her too close and still infernally far away. He willed himself to move. To sit back. To release her.
And then she whispered, “Let lips do as hands do.”
“Fucking Shakespeare,” he cursed, tightening his grip and pulling her to him, his other hand, still gloved, capturing her, sliding over her jaw, his long fingers curving around her neck and into her hair, scattering pins as he set his lips to hers and kissed her like he was starving and she was a banquet.
She tasted like sin and sex and . . . He didn’t know how it was possible, but she tasted like Scotland, wild and free and welcoming.
He stopped, pulling away just enough to put a hairsbreadth of space between them, and closed his eyes. He should stop. This wasn’t the plan. It wasn’t possible.
She tasted like home.
Just one more kiss. One more taste. Quickly. Just enough to tide him over until he could get back and breathe again.
“Alec?” she whispered, and the question in his name was his undoing. Not protest. Not confusion.
Desire.
He knew, because he felt it, too.
Alec groaned and pulled her closer, releasing her bare hand and hauling her across the carriage and onto his lap, where he could get a better taste. He put one arm around her, protecting her should the carriage hit a rut and send her flying, and he returned to her lips, playing over them gently, softly, teasing her with his tongue until she gasped at the sensation and he took full advantage, tasting her silken heat with long, luxurious promise.
She groaned, unexpected and unfiltered, and he went hard as iron beneath her, wanting that sound again and again—that proof of her pleasure. Of her passion.
Her fingers slid into his hair, then, and she held him close, meeting his tongue with hers, matching him with a kiss that threatened to send them both up in flames, along with the carriage.
He growled his pleasure and captured her face between both hands, holding her still as he kissed her, stealing her sighs like a thief.
And he was a thief. Taking without hesitation.
Or perhaps it was she who was the thief.
They stole together.
Marauded together.
Pillaged together.
And it was the most glorious thing he’d ever experienced. Her hands slid inside his shredded jacket as she moved against him, and he lifted her skirts, sliding his hands up her silk-clad thighs, lifting her again, setting her down astride him, scandalous and secret and everything he’d ever wanted.
The carriage bounced again, and she clutched his sides, gasping against his lips at the movement. “Alec,” she whispered. “Please.” No. She didn’t whisper. She begged. And how was he to deny her, especially when she lowered herself to his lap. To him.