My fingers itched to touch her, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I could only watch as she lifted her hand and pressed it to my chest, her own rising and falling with measured breaths.
This had to be a dream. I’d drowned in the sea. Her attention, her focused touch was paradise.
Then her eyes fell to my mouth. She bit her bottom lip, and my stomach clenched, my entire body ignited.
“Graham,” she whispered.
We needed a chaperone. Someone to keep her safe, to have her best interests in mind, because the more she looked at me with that longing in her eyes, the less I worried aboutlaterand the more I wantednow.
“Anna—” I started. My voice came out pained, with all the longing I felt but dared not speak.
She smoothed her fingertips over my lapels, then up and over my shoulders.
I couldn’t breathe. My arms were frozen.
Do not move. Do not touch her. Don’t do anything that might make her stop.
But how was a man to stay silent when the only woman who’d ever made him feel alive was showing him, clearly, that she was feeling it too?
I lifted my shaking hand to her hair and wrapped one of those silky brown curls around my finger.
She held my gaze as she lifted her hand to mine, pressing her cheek softly into my palm.
This cannot be real.And yet it was. Anna. Everything I wanted.
The greatest risk.
But was it a risk? I was good at calculations, at determining whether or not I’d lose, and there were always consequences, but she was leaning closer. Her free hand moved up my shoulder to my neck, her eyes measuring something in mine, and my frozen limbs were thawing, melting.
A risk, perhaps, but one with consequences I would willingly face.
“I want to kiss you, Graham,” she whispered, and my breath hitched, my stomach flipping over itself.
“You’re tired,” I breathed. One last chance for her to change her mind and retreat.
Her fingers played with the hair at the nape of my neck. “On the contrary, you have me wide awake. I have never thought more clearly in my life.”
My shaking fingers brushed the soft fabric of her bodice, and I was wholly encompassed by the feeling of her body inmy hands. But I had to think this through. I had to be sure she knew what she was doing.
“Anna, you are not ignorant. You can see that my life is vastly different from yours. I will never have what your father has in money or connections or holdings.”
“I do not care,” she breathed. Her perfect little nose bumped mine. “I love—”
“I love you, Anna. I want nothing as badly as I want you.”
She kissed me firmly then, so sure, so intently that I forgot to breathe. Her lips were soft—softer than I’d ever imagined—and so warm as they pressed against mine once, then again.
Anna.
A rush so strong jolted me to my senses, and I took her fully in my arms. Took her lips with mine and breathed her in. My thumb grazed her jaw as I tasted her lips—sweet like honey and salty from the sea—and she tasted mine. We were two candles burning, she and I, melting together, growing brighter with confidence by the second. She grasped my lapel, her other hand tightening around my neck, both of us untethering, unafraid to show our hands for once and beg.
I wanted more of her, all of her. Recklessly, eagerly, with a fiery urgency I’d never before felt. Her lips, her hands, her body pressed up against mine. I moved up a step, standing even with her, then angled her back and pressed her up against the wall, so I could—
“Graham?” A door squeaked as it opened.
In a breath, Anna pushed me back, eyes wide and set upon mine, like she couldn’t believe what we’d just done. She was flushed, chest heaving, frozen.
It took a full ten seconds for me to come to my senses.
