Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(58)

“No?”

“No. I said your fight was mine.”

“And if I told you that I was all fight?”

A little sigh came from beyond, and Grace ignored it. Ignored, too, the way the words wanted her sigh, as well. “I would tell you that you’ve been a toff too long for that to be true.”

He watched her for a long moment. “And what if being a toff has made me a fighter? What if it has filled me with anger and venom and made me into the kind of bruiser you would have?”

She stilled.

“What if I’m all fight?” he whispered. “What if that’s all I have to give?”

The sun was low now, nearly over the rooftops, casting golden light through the alley, turning his golden hair, dusted with soot and mud from the Rookery, to the same color as his eyes, burning into hers. Those eyes that she knew as well as her own. Better.

The ones that haunted her in her dreams—the only place she could allow herself to remember them.

He lowered his voice. “What if you cannot claim my fight without claiming me?”

She couldn’t breathe for the images the words wrought. For the memories that came with them.

She didn’t want it. She didn’t want the whispers of their past. Didn’t want the confusion of the present. She didn’t want the taste of him on her lips or the memory of the way he unraveled her with his touch and his mouth.

He was close enough to touch. “Are you going to eat that?”

What?

He nodded between them, and she followed the line of his attention to the scone, still in her hand, half eaten. “The cake,” he said. “Do you intend to eat it?”

She clasped it to her breast. “Are you asking me for it?”

“’Twould be a pity for it to go to waste.”

She narrowed her gaze on him. “Are you deprived of treats, Duke?”

The question wrought an instant change. “Yes.” His voice was suddenly low and dark. “Christ, yes. I’ve had a lifetime of treat deprivation.”

Her jaw slackened at the words.

That half smile again. The one she knew so well from their youth. “But, I don’t want the scone.”

He lifted his hand to her face, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, and heat shot through her at the touch. She sucked in a breath. “What, then?”

“Only what you want, as well.” He changed his grip, and he was tilting her up to him. Then his lips were on hers, the hotly contested scone tumbling to the ground, and she was lost.

It was different from the kisses the other night—when she’d been masked and wigged and kohled beyond recogni tion. When he’d given her private pleasure for the sake of just that—pleasure. No past, no future, just present.

Of course it was different. Because this kiss was all time. This kiss was promise and threat, history and speculation. And it was the summation of twenty years of wanting him even as she knew that she would never have him.

It was aching and sweet and delicious and awful and it laid her bare there, in the golden light of the setting Covent Garden sun, where she’d never been bare before. Where she’d never been safe enough to be bare.

But now, as his arms came around her, collecting her against him, he was home. And she was safe. At least for as long as they kissed.

Don’t ever stop.

The thought raced through her as she lifted her arms to encircle his neck, to keep him there, against her, pure pleasure.

Please, don’t ever stop.

He didn’t seem interested in stopping. Instead, as she came up on her toes to even their height, his arms wrapped tight around her waist, pulling her into him, pressing her along the hard length of his body, all muscle and strength. She rocked her hips into his, the soft, aching part of her pressing along the straining length of him.

He wanted her. As much as she wanted him.

She sighed at the realization, the sound lost in their kiss even as he growled his pleasure and pulled her tighter, his large, warm hand coasting up her back and into her wild curls. There was nothing gentle about the caress, his fingers tightening . . . fisting around a mass of her hair, holding her still.

Good. She didn’t want gentle.

He deepened the kiss and she opened for him, his tongue sliding over hers as her hands mirrored his own, clenching in the silken strands of his hair as she licked across his lips and met him movement for movement. He couldn’t get enough of her. She couldn’t get enough of him. And then he was turning her, lifting her, walking her back behind a tall stack of crates and barrels.

He set her to the wall, barely out of sight of the washwomen, and planted his hands on either side of her head, caging her in for his kisses—more and more drugging, more and more desperate, threatening to pull her deeper and deeper into whatever it was that had brought him back.

Threatening to make her beg for him—

Don’t ever stop.

And then he fit his strong thigh between hers, the heavy weight of it against her aching flesh pulling a little cry from the back of her throat—only loud enough for him to hear, and still it seemed to set him aflame. She slid her hands down his chest, splaying her fingers wide across the broad expanse of him—so different now than a year earlier, when she’d mapped the lean contours of him.

There was nothing lean about him now. He was all muscle, fresh topography, worthy of a new map.