“Gabriel…”
Her protest dissolved when he moved, slow and deliberate, guiding her hips forward with his hands, making her feel every heartbeat of distance disappearing between them. Her fingers tangled in his hair, holding him close as his mouth found her throat, his teeth grazing lightly before his tongue soothed the spot.
“Look at you,” he whispered, his voice a low rasp against her skin. “You tremble as if you’ve been waiting years for me to touch you.”
She turned her face toward him, eyes unfocused. “You shouldn’t…”
“Shouldn’t what?” he asked, his lips dragging up the column of her neck. “Touch you? Want you? You think I haven’t imagined this every night since you walked into my house?”
Her breath stuttered; she pressed closer, unable to stop herself. His hands held her there, steadying her even as her body leaned into every shift of his.
“We’re going to be late,” she said, her voice breaking on the words.
“Splendid.”
“Your aunt will…”
“Let her,” he murmured, brushing his thumb along her jaw, tilting her face back up to him.
When he kissed her again, it was slower and deeper, reverent and ruinous all at once. He didn’t rush; he tasted, learned, lingered. Her hands slid to his shoulders, gripping hard, and for a moment, neither of them remembered where they ended.
He finally rested his forehead against hers, their breaths mingling. “You undo me,” he said softly.
“And you,” she whispered, voice trembling, “make me forget how to breathe.”
“Thus, the score is tallied.” he murmured, his lips ghosting over hers once more.
Clara’s pulse refused to steady. Her body leaned toward him of its own accord, betraying every rule she’d built to keep herself sane. She pressed a trembling hand to his chest, feeling the heat of him through the fine wool of his coat. “Your coat,” she said finally, her voice thin and unconvincing. “You’ll wrinkle it.”
“My coat does not concern me.”
“You shall regret this,” she whispered, her voice lacking all strength.
“When you are obliged to present yourself in company, appearing as if you have been…”
“Manhandled?” he suggested, a devilish glint in his eye. “Most eagerly and with utter relish, if pressed for details.”
“Gabriel…”
“Very well then,” He stepped back at last, and the absence of him was agony as her skin prickled where he’d been, her breath catching at the sudden cold. “But tonight, after this ridiculous farce, I want you in my bed wearing nothing but moonlight and that look you get when you’re trying very hard not to confess how much you want me.”
Heat surged through her with shame and longing tangled so tightly she couldn’t tell one from the other. “That’s... extremely specific,” she whispered, her cheeks aflame. “And wholly inappropriate.”
“I’m always precise about the things I desire,” he said, voice low and velvet-rough. “Especially you.”
Her heart gave a painful twist. “We have rules.”
“We have suggestions that we disobey on principle.”
She swallowed hard. “Gabriel, if we cross that final line…”
“Then we face the consequences together,” he said simply, stepping closer again, the space between them humming.
Clara turned from him, smoothing her skirts with shaking hands, every brush of fabric against her skin a reminder of where he’d touched her. “I must leave,” she said, forcing the words through a throat still raw from wanting. “People will notice if we arrive together.”
He smiled, slow and sinful. “Let them notice.”
She looked back over her shoulder, caught between temptation and terror, the good sense she prized fraying like ribbon in his hands. “You’ll be the ruin of me.”
