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Juliet turned his hands over in hers. She looked at them—the size of them, the roughness at the heel of each palm.

“You kept Eloise close,” she said.

“I kept her safe.” He nodded.

Juliet’s lips curved into a soft smile as she looked at him. “You gave her a life inside walls so the world couldn’t reach her.”

“Yes.”

“And you haven’t told her anything about her mother because you didn’t want her to feel she wasn’t worth staying for.”

He was quiet, unable to agree with those words, even though they both knew they were true.

“I know,” Juliet said. “I think you have been carrying that for both of you.”

He stood up. She rose with him, and they were standing close again—the room dark at its edges, the last of the candlelight between them. He looked at her, his hands loose at his sides, his eyes on hers, the lines of him entirely still.

“I told you all of this,” he said, “because you deserve to know what haunts Ravenlocke.” His thumb moved across her knuckles. “You deserve the truth. And… and I don’t think I was prepared for you. At all.”

Her pulse beat quickly at the sheer, gravelly seduction in his tone.

And he kissed her.

Chapter Sixteen

This kiss was slower than before. Both hands at her face, his mouth on hers without any hurry. She reached for his shirtfront and pulled him closer, and he walked her backward by degrees until her knees met the mattress. She sat, and he followed. He kept his weight on one hand braced at her side. His mouth did not leave hers.

“Adam.” She pulled back, breathing unevenly. “Your coat.”

He was already shedding it. Then his hands found the row of hooks at her back and worked through them as her loose hair fell against his forearms, and when the front of her gown came open and fell from her shoulders, he stopped.

She was in her shift, her collarbone bare, the freckles along it visible in the low light.

He looked at them. Then he ran one finger along the line of them, from the curve of her shoulder inward, slowly. “Here. And further.”

“They are generally held to be a defect,” she said, and her voice had gone unsteady.

“They are generally held in such regard by people with poor judgment,” he said. He bent and set his mouth to them—one, and then the next, following the line of them toward the center of her chest.

She gripped his shoulders and abandoned composure entirely.

He drew her shift down one side, his mouth closed over her breast, and the sound that came out of her arrived before she could catch it. His tongue worked the peak—not tentatively, but finding its purpose at once—and she pressed toward him. He made a low sound against her and drew more of her into his mouth.

His free hand cupped the other, his thumb moving in tight, firm passes, and she had both hands in his hair and was no longer thinking about the quiet of the house.

She muffled the next sound behind her closed lips. He lifted his head.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Adam,” she gasped, her fingers digging into his skin.

“There’s no one here but me.” His thumb pressed down once, with emphasis. “And I want to hear it.”

“Ah, Adam…please.” She gasped when he went back, unable to keep her voice inside any longer.

His hand slid from her breast, fingers spreading flat across her stomach, and she knew where it was going. Down past her waist, between her thighs. When his fingers found her, wet and already aching, she screamed out his name.

“Yes,” he said, low against her skin, his voice thick with satisfaction.