He opened the terrace doors and led her onto the wide stone parapet. She sucked in long breaths of cool night air as she walked away from him and stood at the edge, gripping her hands against the low wall. He moved up beside her and for a moment they were quiet.
The air around them was not. Off in a dark corner, there were muffled sounds of heavy breathing, of soft sighs, and Isabel blushed as she glanced up at him. It was clear he was just as aware of the others outside with them. And what they were doing. His jaw tightened and he shifted uncomfortably.
“Have you come here often?” she asked, searching for something to say so that she wouldn’t be distracted wondering what the other couple was doing to each other in the dark.
Wishing it was her and the man before her.
He shook his head. “No, I told you before the first night you saw me was my first night here,” he said. “What about you?”
The heat in her cheeks flared hotter. “I-I’ve come before,” she admitted. “Not very often, but a few times before tonight. I have a membership.”
His eyebrows lifted. “I see. So the ladies are charged for their patronage, as well?”
“Less than the men, I think,” she said. “But yes. I inherited a very little sum, so I took it from that.”
“Inherited,” he said softly. “From your father, your brother…your husband?”
She shifted and turned away from him. He was asking her for personal details about her life. Things she should not share if she hoped to remain anonymous. And yet where was the harm, if she was careful? Talking to this man made the heat between them a little less disconcerting.
“My husband,” she whispered. “He died a year and a half ago.”
Something in the man next to her shifted. His demeanor changed, his hands tightened at his sides, his eyes grew faraway and filled with a riot of emotions. At last he said, “I am sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “It was an arranged marriage. He was much older than I was and—and it isn’t as if I wanted him to die, but I suppose I should have felt more when he did.” She hesitated a moment, and then what she had said sank in. She glanced up at him. “I don’t know why I’d say such a thing. I don’t even know you.”
He shrugged. “It’s the moonlight,” he said softly. “It’s the fact that we’re wearing masks and whatever we say cannot be held against us. It brings out the truth, that little lie.”
She pondered those words for a moment and then nodded. “You’re probably right. The secret is the key to the truth.”
“So what were you looking for in coming here?” he asked, moving a bit closer. Close enough that his warmth teased her. Beckoned her.
“I—” She bent her head. “I can’t say it out loud.”
“Yes you can,” he insisted. He touched her chin, and he lifted it so that she was looking up into his face. His fingers spread across her jaw, brushing her cheek, and she was lost in a sea of gray.
“I just wanted to watch,” she choked out at last, mesmerized by him. “Watch…them.”
He jerked his head toward the corner of the terrace where the moans of their companions were becoming louder and more insistent. “Them?” he repeated.
She nodded. “Yes. Until you, I’d never even talked to another person at the masquerade. Certainly I’d never danced with anyone or kissed anyone. I didn’t expect such a thing.”
“Neither did I,” he mused. “To be honest, I didn’t want to come here the first night. My friend insisted and he is hard to deny. But I expected I’d stand along a wall and just be uncomfortable while I waited for him to do whatever he does here. And then there was you.”
“So what you are saying is that we are two people who don’t belong here and yet when we entered each other’s orbit we…do?”
His fingers slid higher, into her hair, against her scalp, and she almost moaned like the woman in the corner was doing. This was an intimate touch and it woke deeper desires than to merely watch ever had.
He dropped his head, so slowly that it felt like time itself had stopped. Then his mouth was on her again, like it had been three nights ago. This time she wasn’t as surprised and she lifted on her tiptoes immediately, winding her arms around his neck and opening for him to deepen this kiss.
He whispered something against her lips as he did so. A word, but she was too addled to recognize what it was. Especially when his tongue swept over hers and her entire body went liquid and ready for what would come next.
He dragged her closer, molding her body to his, letting her feel the hard planes of him against the softness of her. And there was a great deal of hardness. He was tall and lean, but muscled, strong. And she was lost to his taste and his touch and his smell in that moment.
At last he drew away, but he kept her in his arms as he stared down at her. His breath was as short as her own, his body shaking like hers.
“Does it feel like we belong?” he whispered.
She nodded, for she could form no words. She could hardly remember words.
