She shook her head. Now that she’d begun, she realized shewasn’tfinished. She wanted to say all these things. To be honest instead of afraid. She’d almost died today, so the consequences of anything else now paled in comparison.
“No!” she said, and he jolted in surprise. “I realize that I was very wrong with your sister today. She almost…” She blinked violently against the tears that returned to her eyes. “She almost died because of me. And if you sack me for that, it is no less than I deserve.”
One eyebrow lifted and he stared at her a long time before he said, “Are you arguing for or against my dismissing you?”
She blinked at the question. Then she shrugged. “I-I don’t think my opinion on the matter makes any difference. You shall do as you please. As you said to me earlier today, I serve at your pleasure.”
He let out his breath in a long, almost painful sigh, and to her surprise he sat down on the foot of the bed. His weight changed the feel of the mattress, his warmth seemed to seep through the blankets. Her breath was suddenly short and she tried to pretend that was only because of her precarious personal situation, but it wasn’t true.
He was just too close to breathe.
“Of course your opinion matters,” Kit said softly. “You—you would have died today for my sister, yes or no?”
She bent her head as memories flashed through her mind. Her terror for Phoebe, for herself. The horrible weight of her gown. The little girl’s thrashing. The way the water had felt as it filled her lungs.
“Yes,” she whispered as a tear slid down her cheeks.
“You did die,” he said slowly. “That means everything to me, Sarah.”
She caught her breath. In three years, he had only once called her anything but Miss Carlton. It kept a distance between them. But now her name was a caress. A prayer. And it moved her far more than it should have when he said it.
He got up but didn’t back away. He came closer, settling back into a seat next to her. Now she could smell him. A soapy, clean, fresh and masculine smell.
“I pulled you out of the water,” he continued. “And my world shattered when you weren’t breathing.”
She blinked. It was all she could do in the face of this unexpected confession, in the face of all the emotion in his voice and his dark eyes. She watched his hand lift, hesitate, and then he touched her cheek.
It was like someone set her body aflame. He slid his fingers along her cheekbone and tingles flared in their wake, making her aware, once more, of what a precarious position they were in. He ought not to be touching her while she lay in his bed.
But she wasn’t about to stop him.
Nor did she stop him as he leaned in, closer, close enough that his breath stirred her lips. And then he kissed her. For a brief moment, it was the lightest of touches. A chaste brush of lips on lips. Then his fingers burrowed into her hair, cupping her scalp as he tilted her head, and the world exploded.
His mouth became insistent. She opened to him without understanding why and tasted his tongue as he breached her lips. She reached for him, trying to find an anchor as she lost all sense of time, of space, of propriety, of everything but the feel of him as he touched her.
She was alive. Back from the dead. And she understood it now, felt what she had nearly lost under that dark water. This. This pleasure, this wicked bliss, this dark desire that pulsed through her entire body and settled in the most private and inappropriate places.
But she didn’t care about appropriateness anymore. Or whether he liked her or judged her. All she cared about was that she didn’t want this heated, sparkling moment to end.
All she wanted was more.
Chapter Eight
Kit knew he had to stop kissing Sarah. He had to stop because the desire that was burning in his blood was too powerful and in a moment it would sweep him away. Then God knew what he would do.
But pulling back felt physically painful, and it took every ounce of control in his shaking, throbbing body to do just that.
He remained close to her, though, their faces inches apart. Their lips so close he could almost still taste her. She stared at him, blue eyes bleary with desire that he’d tasted in her kiss. And confusion, which he understood. Five minutes before they were talking about his dismissing her, about their history…
And then his mouth had been on hers and nothing else in the damned world mattered.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said, his fingers still tracing her impossibly soft skin. He wanted to touch all of it in that moment. Feel her body beneath him as proof that she was safe and whole.
He had never been a libertine, but there it was. The truth in stark terms.
There was a knock on the chamber door and he released her, rising and turning away just as the door opened. Phoebe stood with one of the maids, twisting with discomfort as she peeked into the room.
“Phoebe!” Sarah called out, her voice slightly hoarse.
