“Graham,” she whispered. “Please don’t.”
He reached for her and she braced for him to catch her arm. To yell and demand and reveal. Instead, he silently slid his fingers into the tight bun that was bound up at her nape. She went weak at the touch, the feather-light pressure of his hand against her scalp, gliding her pins loose to scatter on the floor below her, spreading her hair out and down across her shoulders.
His nostrils flared.
“Graham,” she repeated weakly, tears filling her eyes.
He slid his hand around to her chin, forcing her to look up at him. Then he brushed his fingertips across her jaw, over her cheekbone, and caught her spectacles. Slowly, slowly he glided them down over her nose and away.
And he stared at her. Without her armor, without her costume, without her barriers between them. And he saw her. Because there was nothing left to keep him from doing so.
She stopped breathing entirely, mostly because she couldn’t remember how to do so when she was so exposed. This wasn’t how she’d wanted him to find out her secret. This moment when he was juststaringat her, his expression one of coiled emotion.
She braced for him to yell at her. To demand she explain herself. Or worse, to simply walk away in pure disgust.
But instead he let out a long breath and whispered, “Thank God.”
Then his mouth was on hers with a crushing desperation that was unlike any way he’d ever kissed her before.
Chapter Fifteen
If there had been any doubt left in Graham’s mind, and there hadn’t been, all of it fled the moment his lips touched hers. Adelaide and Lydia were the same person. And he’d never been so confused, so stupefied or so relieved in his entire life. The idea of losing one of the women had been physically painful to him.
Now he knew he wouldn’t have to lose either. And he dove into the kiss, tasting Adelaide’s desire, feeling it in the way she arched against him with those tiny sounds of pleasure that always rocked him all the way down to his very core.
Reason fled, questions fled, all that remained was this burning desire to have her, to claim her. Not as Lydia, but as Adelaide. As whatever woman she was when she allowed those two sides of her to combine.
He pivoted, backing her toward the settee in the middle of the room. She never resisted as he lowered her onto the cushions, his mouth not leaving hers as he delved deeper and deeper into the ocean that was this woman. Body and soul. He wanted it all. He wanted it now.
She reached up and started tugging at his cravat as his mouth moved away from her lips to her throat. She managed to loosen it and he sat up, shrugging out of his jacket and tearing open the buttons of his shirt until he could tug it over his head.
She lifted her hands to his chest, tracing the lines of muscle there as her eyes went wide. He smiled at the expression, for she’d seen him like this a few times and yet she still seemed shocked every time. It gave a man a swelled head to have a woman look at him like that.
Especially this woman.
He pulled her to a seated position and glided his hand down her spine, flicking open her buttons one by one even as she lifted her mouth back to his with heated, desperate need. They tugged the dress and chemise down together, and he shoved her back on the settee as he latched his lips around one tight nipple. She arched beneath him, her hands coming into his hair as she shut her eyes with a shuddering sigh.
He watched her face as he pleasured her—there was Lydia, there Adelaide. And he tamped down all his questions for the moment.
“Please,” she murmured, her hips jolting up against his in time to the way he suckled her breast. “Please.”
He nodded and got up, yanking off his boots and fighting with the buttons on his trousers as she shimmied her dress off her hips. She blushed as she slowly opened her legs and revealed herself to him. He stopped what he was doing and stared.
In that moment, she was all Adelaide. And even though he’d had this body before, he’d never known it was her. Now that he did, it was all new again. She was new. And he wanted her with more power and passion than he’d ever desired Lydia.
Which was saying a great deal.
“My God, you are amazing,” he muttered as he dropped his trousers, kicked them away and slowly lowered himself over her. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
She smiled as she reached between them and gently cupped his rock-hard cock. “I have a little idea.”
He shook his head. “Not that. I acknowledge you do that, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about this.”
He took her hand and lifted it away from his cock, sliding it between their bodies until her fingers rested against his chest, just over his heart. She swallowed hard and met his gaze as he positioned himself against her sex. As he drove forward, his heart rate ratcheted up and her eyes went wide.
She held her hand there, his heart pounding against her palm as he took her with long, slow strokes. Her sex clung to him, squeezing as she lifted against him, her gaze going blurry with pleasure as he took her. He drove deep, circling his hips as she squeezed, and raw sensation rushed up his cock and spread through his entire body. He was alive, he was on fire, and there was nothing like it.
Nothing like her.
