But love and hate mixed so potently could destroy Stenfax. They had already nearly done so.
So Gray was left with a choice: leave his brother to marry Celia and risk the harm she might do, or free his brother from this trap only to leave him open to a far more damaging one.
“Bollocks,” he grunted, slamming a fist down on the tabletop.
At almost the same moment, there was a light knock on his door. He glanced at the clock on the mantel in surprise. It was after two in the morning. Far too late for anyone to trouble him unless…
Unless it was an emergency.
He pushed to his feet and hurried to the door, throwing it open with the expectation that he would see a concerned servant or ragged family member on the other side.
Instead, he found Rosalinde standing in the hallway. She wore a robe tied tightly around her waist, the same robe she’d been wearing that night in the library when the desire between them had overflowed and he’d surrendered to the need he had to touch her.
“Rosalinde,” he whispered, her name a benediction and curse all at once. Saying it warmed him to his core, but it also reminded him of the decisions he’d made earlier in the day.
He had to let her go. But staring at her in the hall, seeing her looking up at him, lips slightly parted, hair down around her shoulders, he couldn’t do that. Not yet. Not yet.
She was silent as she slipped past the space next to him at the doorway. She said nothing as she took his hand and led him back inside.
He shut the door. He knew what it meant to do so and he still did it. She wound her fingers through his, leaning in until her body brushed his. She lifted to her tiptoes and kissed him. He shut his eyes with a shuddering breath and just sank into the feeling of her soft lips brushing his. He wanted so much to have this. To have her.
Even if he knew it was yet again, a stolen moment. And that was all they’d ever have in the end. Moments that hadn’t belonged to them. If this was to be the last, then he was going to take it.
He caught her upper arms, not tightly, gently, letting his thumbs brush over the soft cotton of her robe, feeling her arms tense beneath. He deepened the kiss, opening to her tongue, meeting her with his, tasting the sweetness of her and memorizing it as best he could.
They backed together toward his bed, and he shivered. It had been a long time since he’d been able to take his time with her. Tonight he intended to do just that.
He broke the kiss and backed up, looking at her in the dim light of his dying fire. She smiled, just the slightest expression, and he was lost. He was hers.
He never wanted to be anyone else’s. But he squashed that thought and instead reached out to untie her robe. When he parted the fabric, he gasped. She was naked beneath. Utterly, beautifully and completely naked.
“Rosalinde?” he groaned.
She smiled again. “If I found the courage to knock on your door, I couldn’t leave without having you. I knew I couldn’t. If you refused, this was to be my ammunition.”
“I can’t refuse you,” he whispered as he leaned in to brush his lips along the column of her throat. “You should know that by now. Even when I should, I can’t.”
She shuddered when he pushed her robe away, but as soon as her arms were free, she lifted them around his neck, leaning into him with a shuddering sigh. Surrender was in her body, on her lips, in her taste, and he took it gladly.
“Won’t Celia notice you’re gone?” he asked.
She shook her head. “She’s asleep. I can’t talk about her now. Later, later we must. But right now I want you. You and only you. I want you to make the rest go away.”
His brow wrinkled, for there was a soft desperation to her words, her tone, her expression. And it mimicked his own. Like her, he wanted to forget everything else, all the decisions he had to make. She was the only one capable of such a thing.
So he shut down his mind, shut down his arguments and kissed her once more. Everything else was silent. Silent as he tasted her, molding her to him by gliding both his hands to the curve of her naked backside. Silent when he somehow forced a space between them to unbutton his shirt.
Silent when she shed that same shirt and stared at his bare chest.
“The first time I saw you like this,” she whispered, staring at the plane of muscles, “I wondered if you were real. I wondered what I had done to deserve you wanting me.”
He laughed softly. “You deserved it by being extraordinary and undeniable. By being Rosalinde Wilde.”
She lifted her gaze to his face. “I want to give you pleasure, Gray. I want that so much.”
“You already have,” he assured her, reaching up to touch her face with the back of his hand. “Every time I look at you or touch you or taste you, it is pleasure beyond imagining.”
“Not like that,” she said, her cheeks flaming. “A different kind of pleasure.”
