“You,” she finally whispered.
His eyes went wide and then a broad grin spread across his face. It was feral and possessive and hot and so damned real that she fought not to launch herself into his arms. That end seemed inevitable, but she was going to lean away from it as long as she could.
“You were distracted by me?” he practically purred. “You flatter, Lydia.”
“It isn’t meant as a compliment, Graham,” she retorted, then clapped a hand to her lips. He had toldAdelaideto call him Graham, not Lydia. “I-I’m sorry, my lord—Y-Your Grace,” she stammered. “That was spoken out of turn.”
His smile hadn’t faded. “I like that you call me by my given name,” he drawled. “I would much rather be that which you moaned than my title, which was last held by a bastard whose very memory turns my stomach.”
Adelaide hesitated at that unexpected confession, a brief glimpse into a past she found she desperately wanted to know. He didn’t give her the chance, though, for he continued talking. “I came here because I can’t stop thinking of you either, Lydia. You are all that has been in my head since the last time I touched you.”
Adelaide frowned, unexpected jealousy ripping through her. Jealousy of herself, which was ridiculous and incredibly confusing. But he was saying that while he danced with her-Adelaideher, while he talked to her, while he teased her and winked at her and generally made her feel…nervous, he’d been thinking of Lydia Ford.
Who wasn’t even real.
Except right now shefeltvery real, especially when Graham was reaching out a hand and sliding his fingers along her jawline. His touch was electric, and she shivered at the power of her body’s immediate response. She felt hot and cold at the same time, her nipples tingled and her sex felt heavy and full and wet. There was no controlling that. In truth, she didn’t want to control it, because it had been a very long time since she felt such a need, and never before had it been so earnest and powerful.
He leaned in and she didn’t pull away. She just lifted her mouth to his and let him kiss her.
Unlike the first time he’d claimed her mouth, this time he didn’t sweep her away. He didn’t back her into a table. He didn’t grind against her like they were animals in undeniable heat. This time he kissed her gently, his tongue probing her lips and then her mouth when she opened on a sigh.
When he pulled back, his pupils were dilated until there was only a sliver of blue remaining, and his breath was short. “Lydia, come home with me.”
Her eyes went wide. There was no mistaking him. He wasn’t asking her to his home for tea. If she took his offer, he would make love to her. And every rational part of her screamed at the dangers of that. The dangers of entering an affair with a powerful man, the dangers of him discovering her true identity, and the dangers of involving more than her quaking body once she had surrendered to this man who already set her entirely on her head, whether she was Lydia or Adelaide.
And yet her rational voice was so easily quieted when he glided his hand down the slope of her neck, pushing aside her hair and tracing her collarbone with gentle strokes of his fingertips.
“Please, Lydia.”
She swallowed. Despite her wicked foray into the theatre, her life was truly set in stone. She was a spinster who lived with a guardian who despised her, and had no prospects for a future. Not ever again would she be offered this kind of passion.
And she wanted it. She wanted him.
“Very well,” she choked out. “Yes. But I—I’ll take my own carriage.”
He seemed surprised both by her acquiescence and her caveat, but he didn’t argue. He only nodded as he slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and led her from the relative safety of the dressing room and toward the wild and unpredictable abandon of what would happen next.
Graham had arrived home first and waved off his servants, telling them to go to bed. He didn’t want politeness and pretending tonight. He just wanted Lydia.
Now he paced in his foyer, glancing occasionally through the window as he waited for her carriage to arrive. The small, unmarked one she hadn’t allowed him to help her into. She’d just asked him to tell her driver the directions, then slammed the door in his face.
He didn’t know how to read the woman. Perhaps that was part of the draw. She was alive and unpredictable and nothing like anyone he’d ever known. He needed that after the past few months. Hell, after the past few years. He needed it more than he needed spinsters who challenged him, certainly.
He stopped his pacing at that thought. Where had it come from? Images of Adelaide, in a moment like this, just as he was about to bed a woman who was her polar opposite? It was unseemly.
Well, perhaps not herpolaropposite. They both had blonde hair, not that he could really tell the true color of Adelaide’s thanks to her relentlessly stern chignon. And their eyes were blue. But Lydia’s were wide and sensual, where Adelaide’s were hidden beneath those spectacles she never removed.
“Why are you comparing them?” he growled out loud, jolting himself back in line. “Ridiculous.”
Lydia’s carriage turned into his drive, and he straightened as he moved to the door. He opened it to watch her driver help her down. She looked up at his townhouse and he awaited her reaction. It was magnificent. Every woman said so. He hated the place, but that was another story entirely.
But Lydia simply pursed her lips, seemingly unaffected by the huge building, and her eyes lowered to settle on him. In that unguarded moment, lit only by the lights in the house behind him, she looked…afraid. Uncertain. His stomach clenched at that sight, for it was almost innocent.
But she couldn’t be innocent, could she? Most ladies of the stage weren’t. And she wasMrs. Ford. He still wasn’t sure if that was a lie or the truth.
The look flitted away as she moved up the stairs toward him, and his brain emptied of all questions and thoughts and all feelings except for that renewed drive to claim this woman in the most primal way he could muster. His cock ached as she stopped before him and stared up into his face.
“Are you going to invite me in?” she asked.
