Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(86)

She opened her eyes, struggling to find words. “I chose it for you.”

“Mmm,” he said. “I know.” He stroked again, and her eyes began to slide closed at the delicious touch. “Ah—” He stopped and she opened them again. “Watch me.” Another stroke, this one a bit firmer. “I want to lay you on a bed like a feast, and take you in. I want to memorize the way this gold shimmers against your skin.”

She pushed her head back to the wall and took a deep breath, unthinkingly exposing her neck and chest to him like a sacrifice.

He let out another little growl of pleasure and took it, placing delicious, sucking kisses down the column of her neck, then over the sloping skin of her breasts. Her fingers slid into his hair, guiding him lower and lower, until he hit the line of her bodice and they both groaned.

Grace cursed in the darkness, and she felt the curve of his lips there, on her skin.

“That makes me want to tear this from you,” he said, running a tongue along the line of the gown. “And you deserve better than that.”

Her fingers tightened in his hair. “I don’t care.”

He lifted his head, setting one finger to the skin at the edge of the fabric, tracing over one breast and up the side to her shoulder. “I do,” he said. “I promised you spools and spools of gold thread. And I won’t take it from you. Not ever.”

She watched him. Saw the truth in his words. And in that moment, in the dark stairwell of her club, as the most scandalous set in London laughed and drank and reveled in reckless abandon mere feet away—as this man she’d spent a lifetime hiding from refused to rip her bodice—Grace fell in love for the second time in her life.

And the realization was so terrifying that she did the only thing she could think to do. She clasped his hand, and took him to bed.

They ascended the back, secret staircase of 72 Shelton Street, up past the rooms used by the club’s patrons, and then past the floor where, a year earlier, she’d nursed him back to health, only to take him to the ring and send him away from her forever.

Thank God, he had returned.

But on the top floor, she threw a little latch and opened the door, revealing her rooms. More than that. Because this particular stairwell did not simply lead to Grace’s outer office, with its desk piled high with papers and ledgers. It did not lead to her sitting room—where no one ever sat—or to the little library beyond, where she read most evenings. No, this door led to her inner sanctum. To her bed.

He followed her into the room, and this time, it was he who closed them in, the quiet snick of door against jamb setting her heart pounding. She turned back to him, expecting him to come for her again, hot and wild. She wanted that, so unsettled by the realization that she had tumbled into love—that she was willing to do anything to prevent herself from having to think about it.

Ewan appeared to have no such concern.

He came for her, but with the lazy certainty of a predator, as though he knew he had all the time in the world for what was to come, and that she wouldn’t leave him.

Watching him, tall and handsome, his jaw square and perfect beneath his black mask, his eyes on hers, as though there was nothing in the world he’d rather look at, Grace realized that she wouldn’t leave him.

She wasn’t sure she could.

And then, from nowhere, she wasn’t sure she ever had.

She took a step back, unsettled by her thoughts, anticipation coursing through her, and she was suddenly off balance. Gone was the slow predator; he caught her to him instantly, one arm around her back like steel. “I’ve got you.”

She caught her breath, not at the sensation, but at the words, unable to resist her own. “I know.”

He searched her eyes for a long moment. “Do you?” he whispered, lifting a hand to her hair, pushing a wild lock behind her ear. “Do you know that I will always have you? If you’ll let me?”

She went warm with the words.

“I will always be what you need,” he said.

“And what of your need?” she asked.

“Right now, I have it.” She took a deep breath, and he added, “But I warn you, I do not think I can take it in half measures.”

What if I want to give you all of it?

She held the question back, instead raising her hands to his face and removing his mask, revealing him to her. “No masks,” she whispered.

He smiled. “No masks.”

Grace didn’t know how she would ever wear a mask with him again.

“Turn.”

She did, instantly, his to command.

Gently, he gathered her hair and brought it forward, over her shoulder, giving himself full access to the back fastenings of her gown. The predator returned, slowly and methodically working the long line of buttons down her spine, each one loosening the golden fabric. She held it to her breasts as he leaned down, pressing a kiss to the curve of one shoulder, knocking one strap away.

His tongue touched her skin, and she was seared with fire.

And then he spoke. “That night . . . in my gardens.”

“You pretended not to recognize me.” She should be furious about it. But she wasn’t. There was a part of her that was grateful for it, because he’d freed her from the riot of conflicted thoughts she had held that night, and given her something else—the fantasy that they were simply lovers.