“I don’t understand you,” she said. With her eyes closed and him touching her, even just a little, it made it easier for her to speak honestly.
“Strange. Because I think I am perfectly comprehensible.”
Her eyes opened. He was looking at her now with unmistakable desire. So, he wanted her, then. For whatever reason, after discarding her thirteen years ago, he wanted her now. He had apologized for what had happened years ago, how he had dismissed her, because he wanted her in the present.
“Not to me. The way you treated me—in the past—and what the papers say. You’re the Downstairs Menace. The scandal sheets might think it is humorous, a nobleman lowering himself habitually to the lowest of servants, but for a woman who has—who still does—work in service—it is anything but. I don’t understand how you couldn’t see it.”
His eyes continued to bore into her and his hand had moved down to the side of her face.
“Olivia—” he began. “It’s not—”
But she wasn’t finished.
“When I came back to England, I feared seeing you. But I thought I could make myself feel nothing when we met again. It had been so long. The reports of what you had become, and how you had treated me—how could you be anything to me still? But now you’ve shown me and Eloisa and Natasha and Nathanial so much generosity—you’ve been so civil. It’s not what I expected.”
His grip on her face tightened. Her mouth fell open, the gesture involuntary. His thumb brushed over her lip, his eyes fixed to the sight.
Olivia couldn’t deny that his touch made her quake. That she wanted to give into the warmth of his broad torso and run her hands through the hair that glinted in the light.
But what did it say about her if she accepted him again after how he had treated her? And wouldn’t that lead her back to the place where she had let herself get so hurt? Vulnerable and open to him? She had no evidence to suggest that he wouldn’t do exactly what he did before once he’d had his fill of her again.
And yet those thoughts did not seem to make it to her body. She did not step away from his touch.
“Olivia, I—” he stopped, “You must know how much I want you.”
The words sent a spasm through her. Her mind screamed at her to step away, but she was drawn hopelessly towards his gaze. What would it be like to kiss him just one more time? Would it be as good as it had been years ago? Or was it just a mirage, that memory?
“I am not sure I do,” she managed, but the words clanged against the hard reality of their near embrace. She could feel how taut he was holding his body. He was restraining himself from coming nearer to her and it clearly cost him great effort.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked. The words emerged on a new gasp, nearly unintelligible, and, for a moment, she thought how odd it was that this man, regarded as the most hardened seducer by the rest of the world, wouldask—and her of all people—for such an innocent favor.
But she couldn’t keep that thought in her head.
Because she had already saidyes, pushing out the words on a gasp.
He kissed her, tentatively, and yet she could feel the force of desire behind that restraint. She put her hands on his chest and felt him trembling. Shocked, she broke the kiss and looked into his eyes.
“Please,” he said.
There was so much between them that she didn’t understand. But she understood that, in this moment, he was inherpower.
She kissed him this time, letting him envelop her in his arms as she did so, and—as she had in the alleyway—she could feel him hard and pulsing against her. He groaned when her body, bare underneath the flimsy material of her evening gown, collided with his. She arched against him and the kiss deepened, his tongue edging her lips, and then tangling with hers.
To her surprise, he broke free. His breath was ragged and his hands came down to her forearms, holding her in place.
“Olivia, I have to tell you,” he said, gasping, “I don’t know how to explain and I know you have no reason to believe me but—what the scandal sheets say. It’s not true. What they say about me. It’s not what it seems.”
“What?” she said, marveling up at him. At first, she didn’t understand what he was saying. Once she did, she felt angry. Did he really think she would believe such a lie?
“I can explain more, later,” he said, looking down at her again. “It’s too much to explain here and—I need to kiss you again.”
She didn’t know if he was lying about the scandal sheets or why he would try. She didn’t know why he wanted her again, inexplicably. But she wasn’t strong enough to resist the ardor in his words and the pleading in his gaze.
He kissed her again, hot and fast this time. She knew, from the pressure he exerted, that she would feel the remainder of the kiss on her lips for hours afterward. She gave herself over to it, letting the waves of pleasure wash through her, giving into the reality that, yes, it was just as good as it had been all those years ago. Their passion was real, not a distorted memory. The heat between them, that lust that had always felt so close to love, still lived there. Even after all this time.
“Olivia!”
The sound of her name, in a shocked tone that she recognized, drew her out of her erotic stupor. She broke the kiss with Augustus and saw Eloisa standing before the open door of the balcony, her mouth open.
