She gazed up at him. The firelight caressed him, trailing glowing fingers over one side of his face and burnishing his shoulders and chest to a deep gold. His hands hesitated over the buttons on his falls as he awaited her answer.
Want him. Didn’t he know everything in her ached for him? Not just for his body, but forhim, body and soul, for everything he was, and everything he would become. She wanted him beyond reason, and beyond any right she had to want him. “Yes. So much, Julian.”
So much it breaks my heart.
Some emotion flitted across his face—pain, almost as if she’d spoken the words aloud, but there would be time for pain later, a lifetime, and she wouldn’t give it a place here and now.
She held out her arms to him. “Come here.”
And his face, ah, her heart did break then, for there was such yearning there, and she knew it was mirrored in her own face just as desperately, but hopelessly.
He came to her, moved over her, and she pushed the thought from her mind. Nothing else mattered but this moment, his legs twined with hers, his skin under her fingertips as her hands roamed over his back to his hips, his thighs—
“Ah Charlotte,yes,” he groaned as her hand closed around his cock. His hips surged forward as she stroked him. Triumph darted through her as she tightened her fingers around him and he gave another guttural moan and arched into her caress. Dear God, she wanted to make him shatternow, with just her hands on him, his magnificent body so much stronger than hers, but a body she’d rendered weak with desire as he panted and strained for his pleasure—
“Inside you.” He covered her hand with his own to still it. “Inside you, here.” He slipped his hand between her legs, slid a finger inside her, and brushed his thumb over the aching center of her, once, then again, until she abandoned any thought to bring him to pleasure with her hand and wrapped her legs around his waist to urge him closer, gasping when the head of his cock nudged inside her.
He hissed in a sharp breath and sank into her with one urgent thrust. “Ah, you’re so wet for me…always this way, sweetheart,” he murmured to her as he moved inside her, whispering words of passion and desire tangled with love. She clung to those words, hoarded them greedily, deep in her heart as she held him deep inside her body, his surging strokes taking her higher and higher until, with a low moan she found her pleasure and Julian followed, burying his face in her neck with a hoarse cry as he shuddered over her.
He gathered her close against him and eased over onto his side, his arm wrapped around her waist and his face buried in her hair. “I’ll find another way to take care of Jane,” he murmured after a moment. “I won’t let you go, Charlotte. I can’t. I love you.”
She said nothing, but watched the fire and listened to his breaths grow deep and even. Just before he drifted off to sleep he sighed, long and low.
Charlotte turned her face into the pillow.
Chapter Twenty-four
Even in the dim light of the room, with the curve of his lips lost in shadows and his exquisite dark eyes closed in sleep, Julian’s face could still break her heart.
She’d woken hours ago. For a long time she lay next to him and listened to the sound of his deep, even breathing, but at some point she’d risen in the dark and quietly moved the chair to the side of the bed, and now she sat, fully dressed, her arms wrapped around her knees, and watched his chest rise and fall under the white coverlet.
I won’t let you go, Charlotte. I can’t. I love you.
He loved her so much he was about to sacrifice everything for her. His chance to make amends to Colin, his chance to forgive himself.
And his love was based on a lie.
She had to tell him the truth. All of it. Whatever it led to, whatever might happen afterward she would tell him, because if she didn’t tell Julian, she’d never tell anyone, and she couldn’t live that way. She couldn’t live a lie.
She loved him. She’d never stopped loving him. Even when she didn’t trust him, even when she hated him, she’d loved him. For her, it would always be him.
And now she was going to break his heart.
She pressed her hand against her lips but a sound escaped—a sigh, a quiet sob—and Julian stirred and reached an arm across the bed, groping instinctively for her sleeping form even before he’d fully awakened. When his hand met only cold sheets, he rolled over and squinted into the dark. “Charlotte?”
She eased onto the edge of the bed and stroked the unruly dark curls away from his forehead. “I’m here.”
“What are you doing out of bed?” He caught her hand and tried to pull her down beside him. “You must be freezing. Come here, and I’ll warm you.”
Charlotte gently freed her hand from his grip and wondered if she’d ever be warm again. “Not right now. There’s something…I need to tell you first.”
Julian hesitated, then rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Why are you dressed?”
“I—I thought it would be best.”
“It’s never best for you to be dressed, sweetheart.” His tone was light, but some of her dread must have communicated itself to him, for he struggled upright against the pillows, his shoulders suddenly tense. “All right. What’s so urgent it can’t wait until sunrise?”
Charlotte opened her mouth, closed it again. How could she tell him now, like this, with his naked body still warm from sleep and his hair tousled like a boy’s? Dear God, she felt like a criminal, as if he’d tried to wrap her in his arms only to find she’d plunged a knife into his chest. Perhaps she should wait, tell him when they were in the carriage on the way to Bellwood—
