“Bee?” the silhouette asked.
I stood and stepped out into the aisle. “Nolan?”
He stepped into the church in the same Duke of Frostmere costume he’d done his interview in.
His whole body froze, his lips parting and his gaze dripping over me.
I smoothed my hands over the bodice of the dress, feeling both uncertain and also radiating excitement, because I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted this. For him to see me in this dress. In this church.
The door swung shut behind him, leaving us in the silvery almost darkness of the sanctuary. Moonlight filtered in through the windows, leaving slanted rectangles on the floor, glimmering islands in the dark.
I heard him take a breath, and not the kind of breath that came before speaking, and not the kind of breath that came in a moment of reverence. It was a rough breath, a deep breath.
The breath of someone fighting for control.
I had heard that sound a thousand times in my job. It was part of my profession to make people lose control, after all. But any other time someone had made that noise in my presence, I’d been stripped down and—I don’t know—available, with my mouth or hands or body. Never wearing a dress that symbolizedpromises and forever and cuddling and making dinner together and shopping for fitted sheets and towels and things.
This feeling was something new, something that sank deeper into my body than physical lust, deeper than knowing I was craved. This was the type of want I’d never known anyone could have for me.
Nolan did also crave me, that much was clear. He stalked toward me now, his strides purposeful and hungry, the knee-high boots of his costume gleaming and his eyes glittering in the dark. But desire wasn’t the only thing scrawled across that gorgeous face, and his stare wasn’t burning along my breasts or my mouth. No, our eyes were locked instead, and the only time his gaze left mine was to drop to the train of my gown where it rested in a filmy swirl around my feet.
When he reached me, I started to speak, even though I didn’t know what I wanted to say.
Do you like my dress, maybe. Or maybeWere you going to leave Christmas Notch without telling me?Or maybe my deepest fear, the loose end that could unravel me if tugged just right.
Will I only ever be a fantasy to you?
But Nolan didn’t let me speak, he didn’t let me do anything. He dug his hands in my hair and slashed his mouth over mine in a scorching kiss.
“Nolan,” I murmured, finding the lapels of his costume jacket and pulling him close. He was already inside my mouth, licking and tasting me, and then his hand dropped to my hip and fisted in the silky fabric there, yanking our pelvises flush together.
Every bit of me burned at the feel of him. At the artfullytousled hair and his hot, firm mouth. At the possessive grasp of his hands and the evidence of his need pressed against my stomach.
“You can tell me anything right now,” he said roughly. “But don’t tell me to stop.”
Stop? When all I wanted was for him to keep going? For this moment to fractal out like a snowflake and never, ever end?
“Don’t stop,” I breathed against his lips, and then again. “Please don’t stop.”
He leaned down, his lips burning over my throat and collarbone as he did, and scooped my train over his arm before he straightened and slowly walked me backward. Backward until I hit the thigh-high rail separating the altar area from the rest of the church, and I was trapped.
Nolan draped the train over the rail, and before I could anticipate what he might do next, he dropped to his knees like a sinner and shoved my skirts up to my waist.
No. Not like a sinner.
Like agroom. Like a groom who couldn’t wait another goddamn second to have his bride, who couldn’t stand one more moment without her taste on his tongue. That’s what we looked like right now, with him in his formal duke clothes and me in a wedding dress, situated in front of the altar, right where a couple would stand.
A bride and a groom.
With a ragged noise, Nolan used his thumb to hook my seamless thong to the side and kissed the curls he found underneath. My hands searched for the rail behind me and grippedhard as he kissed me again, seeking out the wet heat of my body and licking a hot stripe up my center.
I let out a begging moan as he impatiently pushed my thighs apart and began eating me properly, his hands fisting in my skirt once more and keeping the fabric rucked to my hips. His hands were trembling in the silk. Shaking, like he was overcome.
Like he was dying and this moment was his heaven.
Pleasure curled up from my core, whorls and eddies of it, spun into being by his hot mouth and his clever tongue. Nolan Shaw was an artist at his canvas, painting sensation with his mouth, sketching lust with his teeth and lips. But even Nolan’s wonderful mouth wasn’t enough to explain what I felt right now—which was a dangerous cocktail of lust and misery and... andnostalgia, maybe? Nostalgia for something that hadn’t happened yet?
Nostalgia for something that would never happen?
