“You do not know.I’m enraged because you see me better than you see yourself!”The words seemed to hang in the air.She’d not known they’d sat at the bottom of her anger, hot coals giving it life and power.
“What does that even mean?”
She turned around, feeling calmer than before.And sadder.“It means you are enough.As you are.You are…” She stepped toward him, one tiny shuffle of a step that wanted to tumble into ten more—the number of steps, surely, that would take her across the room and into his arms.“You are breathtaking just are you are.Right now.No title.No money.No influence to speak of.”
His lips twitched.A sneer flashed across them, but it would not stay, and the curve that ultimately claimed his mouth was crooked and awkward and untrue.“I do cut a rather dashing figure but looks fade.Power does not.”
“Looks?Bah.I’ve seen more handsome men.”
“No, you have not.”
“And they do not have your wit.Or your resilience.They do not have your worried heart or your adaptability.You make things grow.You whisper endearments to plants?—”
“Don’t tell anyone that.”
“And you… you warm a room just by standing in it.You’re a sun, Apollo.Only you cannot see your own light.And as long as that’s true, you’ll continue to betray everyone around you.You’ll continue to betray yourself.”
In a flash, he marched her backward toward the window.When the backs of her legs hit the sill, he kept coming, pressing his hands into the glass on either side of her, so close she felt the air of each word.“You and Diana, you keep saying that.As if you see some hidden worth in me, somesoul.But you’re both blind.Do you not recognize the man who held a blade to your neck?”
She licked her lips, dove into the deep wells of his eyes.“I think not.And who was he?Ah, yes.I remember an old Marquess did something like that.He was a scarecrow of a man, though.Didn’t look a thing like you.He looked like he’d been to hell and back.You look like heaven.”
“Stop.”
“The marquess… you’re not him, are you?Fordham?”
“No,” he spat.
“That’s what I thought.Well, the marquess, Fordham as you say, couldn’t wipe his own arse, I’m sure.Had never been taught how to.He simply gadded about, everything having been given to him in the cradle.He’d never worked a day in his life.Was more of a… puppet for a title than a man.But you… I’ve seen the results of your work.”She reached out and was close enough, just barely, to touch his outstretched forearm.Oh, how she’d always salivated over that forearm.Still did.
Golden fire flared in his blue eyes.
“You’re not Fordham,” she said.“But who are you, then?”
She dragged her fingers down the length of his forearm, without touching, past his wrist, up the sinuous tendons of his hand, to the base of his fingers.Raw knuckles.
Golden ring.
She stroked the pad of her thumb over it, felt an answering vibration in her pocket, felt a flash of longing that almost brought her to her knees.
She clasped his hand, and when she tugged him toward the door, he followed, bent and beaten like an old tree in a tangled, forgotten garden.She opened the door, and they stood in the low, square frame together, leaning toward one another as she outlined the hills and valleys of his knuckles with her thumb, avoiding the ring, running from the longing that was both her own and not her own.
A groan slipped from between his lips.
And she slipped out of the small embrace, nudging him into the hallway as she stepped back into the bedchamber and shut the door between them.
Almost.
His foot shot out, saving a narrow space between door and frame that she peeked through.He dropped his forehead against the opening, and darkness swallowed his face.
“I want to kiss you,” he whispered.“So damn bad, Sybil.I want to kiss you until you can’t remember your name, until I can’t remember mine.I want—” He hissed, paused, and when he started again, his voice was so unsteady her heart nearly broke in two.“I want to hold you.Just tonight.Please.One last time.”
One last time.Ah, yes.“We already had a last time, Apollo.”There went her heart anyway, breaking and breaking and breaking.“Besides, I do not know the Marquess of Fordham.I do not wish to sleep in his arms.But if you happen to come across another fellow…” She whispered his name, so, so softly.“If you meet that man, I should gladly let him in, and…” So difficult.But she was being bold these days.Why not in this way, too?“And not just for one last time, but… but forever.”
She closed the door, and he let her this time.Pressing her ear to the door, she thought to hear the rough clip of his boots down the hall and into nothing.But she heard the softthunkof his head and back against the door, theshushof his slide to the floor, the muffled hit of his backside on the wooden floorboards.
Still trapped, then.
But worse off than before because now she knew.
