His brother.
And he still needed something from him.
Griffin inhaled slowly. “I think you know, somewhere under that stuffy, stubborn hide, that I’m innocent of this heinous charge.”
Thomas started to talk, but Griffin held out his hand. “Let me continue.”
After a moment, Thomas nodded stiffly.
“Thank you.” Griffin looked at him. “You don’t love Hero. She has admitted being my lover. I don’t think you want to marry her. Let me have her, Thomas.”
“No.”
Despair clawed at his chest, but Griffin didn’t let the weakness show. “You don’t want her. I do. Don’t be a dog in the manger.”
Thomas laughed. “The tables have turned, haven’t they? Not so cocky now, are we?”
“Don’t. Don’t, Thomas.” Griffin closed his eyes.
“If Wakefield has decided we’ll marry this Sunday, I fully intend to comply.”
“I love her.”
Griffin opened his eyes on the stark words. They were true, he realized. The understanding should’ve been a shock. Instead, it felt strangely right.
He stared at his brother without hope, but without fear either.
Thomas looked startled a second; then he glanced away uneasily. “More fool you.” And he left the room.
HERO WAS LYING in bed that night, sleepless, her mind running in tight, erratic circles, when she heard the sound at her window. It was a tiny thing, something like a scratch, and if she hadn’t been wide awake and worrying, she wouldn’t have heard it at all. Could a cat have climbed up to her balcony? She propped herself up and stared toward the long windows. Her room was black, but muted moonlight lit the window dimly. She squinted. Surely—
A large shape suddenly loomed, silhouetted black against the window.
Hero gasped and choked, struggling to scream.
The shadow moved, the window opened, and Griffin calmly stepped into her bedroom.
Hero found her voice, even as her heart leaped in gladness at the sight of him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Hush!” he said, sounding like a disapproving schoolmaster instead of a midnight marauder. “Do you want to wake the entire house?”
“I’m most definitely contemplating it,” she replied, though he no doubt knew as well as she that she lied. Hero sat up in her bed and tucked the sheets primly under her arms. She wore a chemise, but she didn’t want him to get any ideas that she was wanton.
Well, even more wanton than she’d already shown herself to be.
He didn’t make a reply but prowled closer. The room was dark, and as he moved, she lost his shape behind the bed curtains. She felt an awful moment of panic as he disappeared from her sight, as if she’d never see him again. She reached out to brush aside the curtains and saw him by her dresser. He seemed to be studying the things on the top. Could he see in the dark?
“I’ve talked to your brother.”
She tensed. “Oh?”
“He tells me you’re going to marry Thomas on Sunday,” he said. “Our… conversation did not end well, I’m afraid.”
She was silent.
“Well? Are you going to marry Thomas?”
She squinted but still couldn’t make out his expression. “That’s what Maximus wants me to do.”
His head swiveled toward her. “What do you want?”
She wanted Griffin, but it wasn’t that simple. If she refused to marry Thomas, there would be nothing to stop Maximus from going after Griffin. Nothing to stop him from arresting Griffin and hanging him by his neck until dead. And even if that were not the case, could she marry Griffin knowing that she would have to give up her family? Perhaps never see Phoebe or Cousin Bathilda or Maximus again? A stifling panic rose in her throat at the mere notion.
“Have you decided to give up the still?” she asked softly, desperately.
“I can’t.” His voice was hard. “Nick died defending it. I can’t just walk away from him.”
“Then I’ll have to marry Thomas,” she said, feeling helpless. She let the curtain fall, deliberately cutting herself off from him. “Perhaps it’s for the best.”
“You don’t mean that.” His voice was low and gritty and sounded nearer.
“Why can’t I?” she asked wearily. Her heart had ached for days now, for so long that she didn’t notice it anymore. It was simply there: a constant pulse of sorrow. “I can’t marry you. We’re nothing alike.”
“True,” he whispered, and it sounded like he was close beside her, the breath of his words separated from her only by the gauze of her bed curtains. “We are nothing alike, you and I. You’re more similar to Thomas—staid, cautious in your decisions, careful of your actions.”
“You make me sound a terrible bore.”
He laughed, an intimate brush of sound in the dark. “I said you are similar to Thomas—not alike. I’d never find you boring.”
“How kind.” She touched the curtain with a fingertip, pressing gently until she felt the plane of his cheek through the gauzy fabric.
“I think that it’s our very differences that make us a perfect match,” he said, and his jaw moved under her fingertips. “You’d die of boredom with Thomas within a year. If I found a lady with a temper similar to mine, we’d tear each other apart within months. You and I, though, we’re like bread and butter.”
She snorted. “That’s romantic.”
“Hush,” he said, his voice quivering with laughter but also with an undertone of gravity. She cradled his jaw as he said, “Bread and butter. The bread provides stability for the butter; the butter gives taste to the bread. Together they’re perfect.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “I’m the bread, aren’t I?”
“Sometimes.” His voice was a thread of rumbled sound, low and ominous. She could feel his words as they drifted over her palm. “And sometimes I’m the bread and you’re the butter. But we go together—you understand that, don’t you?”
“I…” She wanted to say yes. She wanted to agree to marry him and turn a deaf ear to all the dissenting voices in her head. “I don’t know.”
“Hero,” he whispered, and she traced the movement of his lips through the curtain as he spoke. “I’ve never felt this way about any other woman. I don’t think I ever will again. Don’t you see? This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. If you let it slip through your fingers, we’ll both be lost. Forever.”
His words made her shudder. Lost forever. She couldn’t bear the thought of him lost. Impulsively she leaned forward and set her lips against his through the curtain, feeling his heat, feeling his presence.
But he drew his head back. “Do you understand how much you mean to me? What we are together?”
She shook her head. “Don’t you see how much you’re asking of me? To leap into an abyss on just your words. I can’t see how—”
“Then let me show you.”
The bed curtains were shoved aside, and he was in bed with her. He pulled the curtains closed, and suddenly her bed was small, intimate, and dark. They were enclosed in their own tiny world, just the two of them, outside of time and space.
He drew the covers from her grasp, and she let him without even token protest. The fabric made a shushing sound as it slid down her legs, and she swallowed, her body beginning to throb with want for him. She knew him now—knew what he could do to her. What he could make her feel.
His hands touched her ankles, encircling them, warm and firm. “Hero.” His voice was gritty, deep and threaded with intense emotion.
She felt his hands smooth up her calves, his touch almost too tender here in the dark. He was only a shadow, so she closed her eyes and concentrated on his fingertips, trailing over her thighs, trying to forget that this would surely be their last time together. He traced swirls on her skin, and when her breath hitched, it sounded loud in her ears. He reached the tops of her thighs, and she moved her legs restlessly, but his touch left her as he drew her chemise off over her head. She lay nude, her skin prickling with the chill of the night air.
Then his fingertips descended again, lightly skimming circles on her sides, almost tickling. Her skin seemed to tune itself to him, coming alive with tingling sensation.
She reached for him impatiently. “Griffin…”
“Hush,” he whispered. “Just let me show you.”
His fingers trailed from her sides to her belly, meeting over her navel. She sucked in a breath, unable to keep completely still under his touch. He breathed a laugh and scraped his nails lightly up to just under her breasts. Her nipples were tightly drawn already, pricking with anticipated pleasure. He traced the tender curve of the underside of her breast, tickling, faintly scratching, and she had to squeeze her thighs together to contain her own excitement.
When his mouth descended on one trembling nipple, hot and wide open, she jumped. She clutched at his hair as he traced around her nipple with his wet tongue, then sucked strongly. He was pinching at her other nipple, nearly painfully, his entire mouth over her breast, devouring her flesh in erotic hunger.
“Griffin,” she sobbed.
He nipped at her in punishment. She gasped and raised her legs, shocked to feel his breeches against her inner thighs. He was still dressed, but at this moment she no longer cared. She raised her hips and ground desperately against him. She found him, hard and big inside the fabric of his breeches, and she widened her thighs still farther to press her aching flesh against him.
But he dropped his weight on her, pinning her open and vulnerable beneath him.
“Not yet,” he murmured, and moved his mouth to her other nipple.
She tried to shift her hips, to rub against him somehow, but he lay, large and male and implacable, upon her. He held his upper body off her with his arms as he leisurely ravished her breasts, but his hips pinned her completely.
She grasped at his hair, trying to tug his head up. But his locks were shorn too short, and he merely chuckled against her nipple.
He was pulling strongly on her oversensitive nipples, and she was close—so close! If he’d just let her—
“Griffin!” she hissed in frustrated exasperation.
She felt herself heating from within, the entire surface of her body alert and ready for him. She could feel him, hard and long, against her clitoris, but he would not move.
“Shhh.” He raised his head and licked lazily at a nipple, his breath caressing her wet skin as he whispered merely another torment. “Easy, sweetheart.”
He spoke as if she were a mare in need of gentling, and at any other time, she would’ve made him aware of his insult. But at this moment she was entirely at his mercy.
“Griffin, please,” she whispered.
“Do you want me?” he asked.
“Yes!” She tossed her head restlessly. She’d explode if he didn’t give her release soon.
“Do you need me?” He kissed her nipple too gently.
“Please, please, please.”
“Do you love me?”
And somehow, despite her extremis, she saw the gaping hole of the trap. She peered up at him blindly in the dark. She couldn’t see his face, his expression.
“Griffin,” she sighed hopelessly.
“You can’t say it, can you?” he whispered. “Can’t admit it either.”
He rubbed his face against her breasts, and she thought his cheek might be wet.
“Griffin, I—”
He raised his head and tilted his body to the side. “Never mind.”
For a moment, she thought he meant to leave her, and her heart dropped in panic. She grabbed his arms desperately.
But she could feel his muscles moving beneath her fingers as he worked his hands between them.