“Ah.” He cleared his throat. Never, in his wildest dreams, had he thought he might have to explain to the lady whose stocking he had kept, precisely why he had kept her stocking. In truth, he didn’t know himself.
“Well,” he said and halted. “You see.” Again, he stopped. “I suppose the reason behind it is largely to do with… you.”
She was on his side of the desk now, and he couldn’t look away from her eyes. They were great pools of light in the darkness, the candlelight looking like gleaming stars, or perhaps suns. “Me?” she whispered.
“I don’t know why I kept it, Sybil.” He made an impatient gesture because the excuse sounded idiotic even to his own ears. “You left it and it was a memento to one of the greatest chance meetings of my life. I like to keep souvenirs from places I’ve been to and things I’ve experienced. This was a souvenir of—”
“Of me,” she whispered. Stocking still in her hand, she advanced even closer. “Tell me,” she said, now so close that he could reach out and touch her—and it was everything he could do not to draw her into him. “Tell me what that night meant to you.”
Face to face with her, he couldn’t lie. “Everything.”
As though she had been waiting for the confession, a breath shuddered from her and she took hold of his face in her hands, holding him in place as she kissed him.Shekissedhim.
Perhaps it was merely that it had been a long time—ever—since he had hungered after a woman in this way, all raw need and panting desperation, or perhaps it was because she had never once initiated. She had accepted his kisses, wanted them, even, but she had never done this.
And fire thundered through him. The strength of desire knocked the breath from his lungs. He took her waist, holding her to him, wishing the dress was not in his way so he could have her skin against him.
The way he wanted her now was different from anything he had ever experienced before, and it would have terrified him if he was not falling so absolutely with her. For everything he took, she offered more. At his possessive, eager hands, she held him ever closer. It felt as though the path they were blazing through his life and heart was one they were engaging on together.
“I never thought that day meant so much to you,” she said against his mouth, and his words surprised him enough, he eased back.
“Why, did it mean so little to you?”
If he wasn’t mistaken, she blushed. “I didn’t saythat. But you were a… you wereexperienced.”
“Ah.”
“And I knew nothing. I hardly suspected… I never thought—”
“Sybil,” he said seriously, catching her face and holding it in place. His palms entirely eclipsed her cheeks, and for the first time in a long time, he appreciated how small she was compared to him. How delicate. “I have never wanted a woman as much as you.”
Her breath caught on a gasp, and he loved every inch of the fiery blush that spread across her cheeks. This, he knew, trulywasa blush. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
She rested her forehead against his chest so he could only see the burnished gold on the top of her head. “I was a fool.”
“I kept your stocking and you call yourself a fool?”
Her fingers wrapped around his coat, holding him closer, preventing him from seeing even a flash of her forehead. “Because I’ve been hiding from what I want for so long.”
“What do you want, Sybil?” he asked, unable to raise his voice. It felt as though his entire world was hinging on her answer.
Finally, she raised her head, tipping her chin back so he could see her eyes, her delicate nose, and her wide, lush mouth he had seen in his dreams so many times. “Everything,” she whispered.
Sybil could hardly believe her boldness, asking him for everything. She did not just mean his hands, his smile, or his mouth. All were appreciated, all were wanted, but there was more to her desire.
She wanted his early mornings. She wanted his late nights. She wanted his ten years and his fifteen years and the rest of his life. The very force of that thought hit her, and she blinked several times.
But George just brought his mouth to hers. “You can have it,” he said as soon as she was granted leave to breathe—something she had no intention of indulging in for long. “Everything. It’s yours.”
The study was perhaps not the most conducive place to lovemaking, but Sybil refused to quibble.
“I want you to show me, as you did once before,” she said.
He exhaled a long breath, and she wondered if she had gone too far before he murmured, “There is more than we experienced by the riverside, Sybil.”
“Show me.”
