“Always.” He fell back dramatically on the grass, his chest rising and falling with excitement and exertion. “I knew I shouldn’t have left my position. I was lying in wait up ahead.”
She’d known. Had seen the broken branches where he’d carelessly walked.
“You forget, Duke, how many times I crossed into Grandfellow lands, and how many poaching snares the groundskeeper set.” The old man had taken his duty to extremes. Anna had once tripped a bait trap that would have taken off her leg if she hadn’t been paying attention. She’d become very good at seeing traps before they sprung. “Ones I had to avoid, most of the time at night.” And one of the reasons they’d always met closer to Grandfellow Hall; she hadn’t wished the duke’s son to wander too far into the woods and lose a limb.
Jackson raised up on his elbows, his eyes wide with understanding. “There was no hope of me catching you, then?”
“None whatsoever.”
He fell back to the ground with a sigh and threw his arm over his eyes. “Trained like an assassin since childhood. How can I compete with that?”
“Stop competing?”
An eye peeked out from under his arm. “And miss out on my sound trouncing? Never—wait.” His arm fell away as he sat up suddenly. “How is it you can shift through these woods like some incorporeal wraith, but you can’t manage the London streetswithdirections?”
“God has a sense of humor?”
His laugh was full, deep, a rich baritone that made something in her lower belly clench.
Her gaze snagged on his lips. They were full for a man, with a deep bow in the lower lip, almost as deep as the cleft in his chin. With delicately curved brows and thick lashes, he’d be considered pretty if it weren’t for the square line of his jaw.
He’d always been a combination of soft and hard: the pampered son of a duke, but one who braved the woods at night. A young man with refined tastes but who never saidnoto the cheap meat pies she’d buy at the market stall every week.
A man with his finger on the pulse of the upper echelons of society.
The same man who’d once looked at her as if she—outspoken and as stubborn as a mule—were his own personal sun.
His gaze caught hers, and his humor faded.
She swallowed hard, her heart turning over in her chest. He wore that same look now, as if everything else in the world had faded away.
Another crack formed in the wall around her heart. One she could not tolerate.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she ordered.
“Like what?” he whispered, his body leaning forward ever so slightly.
Anna herself couldn’t resist the pull. Her body drew closer against her will. She ground her teeth, the pain keeping her from closing the distance. “Like I mean something to you.”
“‘Something,’” he said, his breath tickling her skin. “Allow me to clarify something, my lady.” His lips brushed hers. “You never meantsomethingto me.”
His hand came up to tip back her chin, but it was his eyes—blue and piercing—that held her captive.
“Once upon a time, you meanteverything.”
His lips pressed hers, and Anna choked back a whimper at the explosive contact.
No, it wasn’t his kiss that had her insides a riot of sensation.
“Everything.”
“You meant everything.”
His words echoed around her, through her, deep into her soul, where not even she would accept the lies of her claimed indifference.
He nipped at her lower lip, and she gasped.
And again as his tongue slid across hers.
