Darling Beast (Maiden Lane #7)(61)

“Ah. Ah.” He stretched over her head to set the pins on a side table, then resumed his position atop her. “We both are in agreement that we shared an uncommon accord. The problem, as I see it, is that you are under the delusion that I am somehow not the same man as I was then. I may not know exactly what I have become since Bedlam, but I know this: whatever I was in the garden I am now, new clothes or no.”

“You aren’t!” She parted her legs to give him more room, thinking she really oughtn’t to feel as comfortable as she did.

“Am I not?” He thrust his fingertips into her hair, massaging her scalp. “In what way am I different?”

Lily had to fight to keep her eyes open. The feel of his hands on her scalp after a day with her hair pulled tight was simply heaven. “Your name, for one.”

“But what’s in a name, truly?” he murmured, dipping his head to trail his lips over the sensitive skin below her ear. “You called me Caliban, but had you called me Romeo, wouldn’t I still be the same man? My mother named me for a god renowned for male beauty, but does it make me any more handsome? My mirror tells me daily, no.”

There was definitely something wrong with his reasoning and if she could only draw breath to think, she might figure it out.

“Cheat,” she growled, her voice weaker than she liked.

He pulled back enough for her to see the amused quirk of his lips. “Temptress.”

He bent to lay his mouth on hers, thrusting his tongue lazily past her lips until she sucked on the thick length.

“Are they any different?” he whispered against her mouth, “my kisses? Have they changed so much with my name?”

She cracked her eyelids to look at him and murmur into the humid heat between them, “I can’t tell. Perhaps you should demonstrate again.”

He licked at the corner of her mouth. “A scientific study, you mean?” His mouth trailed up her cheek, soft as a moth.

“Quite,” she breathed.

“As you wish.”

He kissed her eyelids, a mere brush of lips, before seizing her mouth again, swallowing her moan. His hands moved until he’d intertwined his fingers with hers, still at either side of her head. She opened helplessly beneath the surge of his intent, accepting his tongue, his heavy desire. His chest crushed her breasts and she wanted all the material between them gone so that she could feel his skin against hers. She arched under him, attempting to get closer, wanting to rub her naked nipples against him, but the stiff fabric of her stays prevented even the illusion of touch.

She sank back, whimpering.

He rose to his knees at the same time, eyeing her with an obnoxious twist of his lips that she’d have slapped away if she didn’t want him back so much.

“The same?” he asked, and at least his voice shook just the tiniest bit. He wasn’t unaffected, either.

She tilted her head against the coverlet, trying to catch her breath. “I suppose.”

She’d tried to sound nonchalant, but by his sudden grin she knew she’d not been entirely successful.

“I am the same man I was in the garden,” he said into the silence of the bedroom, his grin fading to something solemn, almost severe. “My limbs move as they did then, my lungs fill with air exactly the same, and my heart…” He paused as if to swallow, continuing lower, “My heart beats constant and true, and if you believe nothing else, Lily Stump, believe this: my heart has changed not at all since the garden.”

She stared up at him. His words were beautiful, but she’d had nearly a lifetime’s distrust of the upper classes. Such a thing wasn’t vanquished in moments.

He nodded at her silence as if she’d made a rebuttal—and then he shrugged off his coat. “Did you fear Caliban?”

She shook her head slowly.

He flipped open the buttons on his beautiful waistcoat. “Caliban and Apollo are the same.”

“No,” she husked. “Caliban is dead.”

“Do you truly believe that?” he asked nearly indulgently. “I am Caliban and I am Apollo. We are the same.”

“No.”

“Yes.” He stripped off his waistcoat.

“There never was a Caliban to begin with.” She felt sad, as if she truly mourned for that gentle giant, that enigmatic mute man she’d apparently made up from whole cloth.

He actually laughed, the cad. “Do you think I pretended to dig holes and hack down trees? I am Caliban and I am Apollo and I am Smith.” He pulled his shirt over his head, laying his chest bare. “Is this not the same body you saw emerge from the pond?”

She couldn’t help it. She did now what she hadn’t been able to do then—she touched his chest, running her fingertips lightly over his shoulders, down into the wedge of short hairs between his nipples.

He took her hand and moved it so her palm lay over his left nipple. “My heart beats here,” he said, pressing until she could feel the steady thump. “The same heart, the same beat as in the garden.”

He lifted his hand, but she kept her palm there, feeling the pulse beneath his warm skin. Slowly she curled her fingers until she could trace lightly around his nipple. It puckered beneath her touch, a tiny brown bead, and she felt a sudden urge to feel it beneath her tongue. Instead she raised her other hand and circled the corresponding nipple as well, fascinated by how his flesh responded. It wasn’t until she heard the sharp inhalation that she looked up and realized what she was doing to him.