“So close,” she said, wistful. “Until you ruined everything.”
Though they sat nearly shoulder to shoulder, Sebastian felt an unbridgeable chasm open between them. “Delilah—”
Her crystalline azure eyes met his, stopping unformed words in his mouth. “And saved me.”
And like that, the space between them collapsed, as if the elements of his and her bodies had dissolved—any barriers between them gone.
He needed to touch her.
He needed to make her his.
*
It was inthe black flare of his pupils that Delilah first intuited the shift in Sebastian’s intention.
She’d come to understand a few things about this man.
He knew what he wanted.
And he took what he wanted.
And in the taking, he gave.
A shiver of anticipation whizzed through her.
“Delilah, what do you want?”
“What?” she asked, filled with sudden nerves. She knew what he was asking. She also knew she wouldn’t get what she wanted if she played coy. She took a bracing sip of air and leapt. “To be utterly ravished.”
His eyes searched hers and must’ve found what he was looking for. “Who am I to deny a lady what she wants?” he spoke low, reaching out to cradle the back of her head, to pull her closer.
It was the look in his golden gaze. It had shifted into the dark and determined, the unknowable, yet…not.
Her body knew it.
Desire.
And she knew something more: why the ladies of thetonpractically swooned when the Duke of Ravensworth so much as entered a room. It wasn’t as simple as his dashing good looks and title. It was that something else in his gaze—the dark and determined…the unknowable. Women who had experienced something of life—something of men—went wild for Ravensworth.
And in this moment Delilah understood why.
In this moment she’d become one of them.
A woman absolutely mad for the Duke of Ravensworth.
He tugged her close, his breath now grazing across her mouth. Her lips parted, and her eyelashes brushed the tops of her cheekbones in anticipation of that first touch. Just as their lips met, she breathed a sigh into his mouth. His tongue darted inside and immediately deepened the kiss, his other hand sliding around her waist and pulling her forward so it wasn’t only their lips that met, but their bodies, too.
This was no tentative kiss.
This kiss knew where it was going.
And, oh, how desperate she was to follow its lead.
His mouth never left hers as he shifted, turned, and landed on his feet in a smooth motion, parting her knees with one hand, and moving into the space between.
The faint voice of reason sounded within Delilah, and she tore her mouth from his. Cheeks flushed, panting, they stared at one another. The dark intention in his eyes hadn’t abated one bit. “Won’t we be seen?” She had to ask.
He looked utterly nonplussed. “Of course not.”
