Notorious Pleasures (Maiden Lane #2)(85)

“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.