“No, I…may I come in?” Samuel swallowed, his heart pounding with hope and fear as he waited for herto answer him.
She didn’t speak. Instead, she drew away from the door, opening it wider, one slender hand beckoning him inside. As he crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him, he realized in some dim corner of his mind that he’d go anywhere if it meant she’d be on the other side, waiting for him.
He’d cross oceans for her.
She gazed up at him, her eyes two mysterious pools of darkness, so close he could inhale her scent with each breath he drew into his lungs, vanilla, delicate and warm.
Samuel devoured the lines of her face, his heart pounding. There was no coy smile this time, no tantalizing glances from beneath her thick eyelashes. There was no teasing, no practiced flirtation. She looked just as she’d done that day in the rose garden, right before he’d kissed her, her blue eyes wide, her body trembling for him.
His mouth went dry as he gazed down at her. Emma hadn’t closed her drapes and the moonlight streaming through the window set her bedchamber aglow, gilding her hair to the softest gold, her skin luminescent, a delicate hint of cream beneath her white nightdress. Lace edged the modest neckline, teasing her skin, the hem billowing aroundher bare feet.
She looked like the wraith he’d once thought her, so delicate and ethereal, yet at the same time she was more alive than anything Samuel had ever known. He ached to draw her into his arms, press her slender, curved body against his, and take her mouth until she was pleading for him, breathlessand trembling.
But he only took her hand, and pressed his mouth to her knuckles, his lips touching her scars. Emma let out a soft sigh at the gentle caress. Samuel stilled before slowly raising his eyes to hers, and what he saw in those dark depths made hisbreath catch.
Uncertainty, hope, desire, and something else that turned her eyes the deepest midnight blue. He reached for her then, cradling her cheek in his palm, and brought his mouth down on hers. Emma let out a soft moan as her hands came up and sankinto his hair.
He’d kissed her before, in the rose garden, and again in the darkened alcove at Vauxhall, but this kiss was different, becausehewas different. Samuel held her as if afraid she’d break, overwhelmed with a tenderness that made his throat close, even as she drove his desire to a fever pitch with hersoft whimpers.
He caught her hungry exhalations as they left her lips, devouring them as if they were the air he breathed, the blood in his veins. He kissed her for long, slow moments until at last her lips parted, welcoming him into the blissful heat of her mouth.
Samuel darted inside, tasting every corner of her mouth, his head spinning as his body grew more desperate for hers. After a battle that seemed to go on for ages, he drew back with a groan, and rested his forehead against hers.
He couldn’t kiss her again. If he did, he wouldn’t stop. “Emma—”
“Don’t go, Samuel.” Emma gripped the front of his shirt before he could draw away, her fingers desperate. “Stay with me tonight.”
A sound tore loose from Samuel’s chest—a groan, or a sigh—he didn’t know which. He knew only that he wanted to sink to his knees for her, and stay there forever. “Yes. I love you, Emma.”
Samuel had never thought about what it might feel like to fall in love, but now he knew it should feel just like this, gentle but inevitable, as if he’d been standing on the edge of the sand his whole life, waiting for the waveto reach him.
* * * *
Love. It was, at once, the one word she wanted most to hear Samuel say, and the last word she ever thought he would.
It had only been a week since she stood alone in Lady Crosby’s darkened hallway, and thought of love as a spike straight through the tenderest partof her heart.
She’d thought it dreadful—the worst thing she could ever feel, and she’d felt suspended between the real world, where people cared for and loved each other, and the shadows of her past, not a part ofeither of them.
It had always been thus, for as long as she could remember. She wasn’t one thing, and she wasn’t the other, but lost somewhere between them. Madame Marchand’s ambitions for her had made her an outcast at the Pink Pearl. A courtesan like the others, yes, but kept apart from them and reserved for the exclusive use of a single gentleman.
Things had been much better after she’d gone to Lady Clifford, but even then, she’d been the last of the four of her friends to arrive—too old to be a schoolgirl, too wounded to be of much use, hiding a cold, damaged heart beneatha pretty face.
A failed courtesan, a pretend schoolgirl, now a mockery of a debutante…they’d all been disguises she’d worn, identities she’d pretended to, until she no longer knew who she was without them.
Until Samuel.
He leaned closer so he could look into her eyes. “Emma?Say something.”
Emma’s throat worked, but she couldn’t speak. Even if she could, she wouldn’t know what to say. How could she tell him he’d given her something she’d never thought she’d have, that she’d never dared dream of? How could she put into words that being here, with him, with the moonlight streaming through the window, felt like coming home?
She couldn’t say it. She didn’t know how to put such emotions into words, so she didn’t try. Instead, she took the hand that was stroking her cheek, and ledhim to her bed.
“Emma?” He searched her face in the moonlight, so hesitant, even as his hands closed around her waist.
“Shhh.” Emma moved closer, rising to her tiptoes. She let her mouth hover over his just long enough so she could feel the warm drift of his breath across her lips beforeshe kissed him.
She hadn’t told Samuel she loved him, but she put all of her love into her kiss, and surrendered everything to him. He let out a low groan, his fingers tightening around her waist as he took her mouth desperately, coaxing her lips apart, his kiss possessive, as if he would claim every inch of her.
