“Without saying goodbye?”she said, chin lifted.A challenge.Her bare toes peeked out from the hem of her wrapper.
They were dirty and probably cold, and if he looked at them any longer, he’d cry.
He tried a laugh, tried a lazy grin.Both felt wrong, but they kept away the tears.“Thought it would be easier.”
Her gaze flicked to the satchel slung across his shoulder.“I saw you… In the conservatory.I saw…” She extended her hand.“Give it back.”
The device.“No.”
Her hands became fists at her sides.“It’s mine.”
“As I see it, the ownership is precarious.Stone stole it.You stole it?—”
“And now you’ll steal it?”
He bowed low.“It’s what scoundrels do, princess.”
“No.”She took a few steps closer, her fists opening like flowers blooming.Too soon, though.The petals would meet frost from a winter not yet done with the world.“Give it back.Stone will only use it for his own gain.”
“I’ve heard your arguments.I have my own.”
“I’m safe.”
“He’ll come for you.Over and over again.He’ll come for you.”Somehow, he’d moved closer to her while talking.He could reach out with a bent arm and touch the tip of her impertinent chin.“I’m giving him the device.”Her lips thin and hard, but he could soften them.He leaned forward, missing a breath and a heartbeat.Didn’t need either with her lips to keep him alive.
She would have met him.Let him.Melted against him.
But he pulled back toward the horse.
She scrambled after him, fury splashed red across her cheeks.“You don’t care about me!You want the device for yourself.Power.Isn’t that what you’ve always dreamed of?A return of everything you once lost.”
He turned his back to her.“That’s right, princess.”One foot in the stirrup.One heart beaten and bloody in the dirt.
“No.”Her hand on his back, the lightest touch.The most painful, too.“No, I’m sorry.I don’t think you would… well, you might, but… Apollo, please don’t.Let us talk about this.”
His foot hit the ground with a thud, and he spun around.They were chest to heaving chest now.“And what?Have your brother discover us naked in your bed?I can’t stay.You know that.”
“Yes.”So soft, so breakable.“I know.But do not leave like this.What if we?—”
“There is nowe, Sybil.There is nothing to us but a few weeks of memorable fucking.”
Her face screwed up, little wrinkles sliding up her nose.
“Yes,fucking.”He crowded her, and she stumbled backward, but still he kept going, step by step, trying not to lift his hand and smooth those disgusted wrinkles with the pad of his thumb.Then her back hit the wall beside the doors, and the breath escaped her lungs on a gusty exhalation.He slapped a hand above her head and leaned in even farther, trapping her.“That’s what men and women do when there’s no future for them.They have a good time then they wave goodbye.Did you think it was anything else?Anything more?”
Her throat bobbed and her bottom lip quivered, but she bit into it, tamed it, and damn the sight of her little white teeth shot right to his cock.“I… I don’t know.Maybe there could be.You can’t simply go back to Stone’s forge.What will you do?Be his pawn the rest of your life?Bow to small, mean men to grasp whatever power you can?”
“If that’s all that’s left to me.”But the image, the prophecy, sliced through his skin like a blade.“I could ask you the same questions.What will you do when you return?Hide away in corners with a bright smile?Sneak off to an abandoned forge when you think no one is looking?”
Her jaw ticked.
“When you return to London, will you stand up to your brother?Live your own life?Defy all those rules you honor but secretly wish to smash?If I am doomed to live a small life, so are you, Sybil.”
Her chest seemed to cave in.If she looked up at him, he knew her eyes would be shiny with unshed tears.
With a breath, he mastered his temper.He’d not wanted to leave her like this.He’d hoped to leave with their time tucked into his memory like a diamond he would bring out and shine now and then.
But he’d just proved it was nothing more than a paste jewel—beautiful but fragile.And he’d destroyed it.
