Chapter Fourteen
The moment Giles had struck Rafferty, Alyssia’s whole body had gone hot.
It was absurd—utterly, scandalously absurd—but Giles had never been more handsome than he was in that moment.
The way he moved without hesitation, the protective fury in his eyes, the bite of his jaw.
That stubble . . . It was vindication, justice, and a confession all at once.
He’d struck not only for her honor, but for her.
So when Annabelle had cried “Run!” Alyssia hadn’t thought twice.
She’d grabbed Giles’s hand with one of hers, her skirts with the other, and cut a direct path toward the door.
Titters followed them like a trail of fireworks, whispers sparking behind in their wake.
For once, she welcomed them. Even looked forward to what the gossips would say next.
For the first time in years, she didn’t care what anyone thought.
Now, the ballroom was a memory swallowed by the clatter of hooves, and all she could think about was kissing him. Her eyes couldn’t leave him either. He still wore his mask, as did she, but he’d worked his cravat loose and tossed it aside, revealing the expanse of his throat.
Alyssia swallowed.
With her mask still on, she could pretend she was another version of herself.
Someone freer, someone untouched by the expectation she’d set for herself.
The mask gave her permission, absurd as that sounded.
Behind it, she wasn’t the duke’s disgraced daughter or the woman whispered about in drawing rooms; she was the wife of Giles.
She did not need to pretend she wasn’t affected by all his touches and teasing, or by how his voice always dropped when he called her wife. With her mask still on, she could stop pretending she didn’t want him more than she’d ever been able to admit.
She could lift herself up from the seat of the carriage.
Giles cocked his head at her.
She could pull up her skirts and place a knee on either side of him.
He inhaled sharply, brow furrowing.
She could settle on his lap, grab his face, fingers splaying into the rough prickles of his stubble, and plant a kiss on his lips before a single word left them.
She kissed him like a woman who had finally stopped lying to herself. And oh, lawd. His mouth was warm, and she could tell she’d startled the man into a frozen icicle, but only for a second, before he answered with a deep sound that rumbled through his chest and into hers.
“Liss—” he managed, his voice thick.
She swallowed it. Opened to him. The first shy slide of his lips became a deeper claim, unhurried and consuming, as if he meant to taste the very shape of her soul.
She certainly meant to taste his. His hands gripped her thighs, squeezing tightly before moving up to her waist. He didn’t simply hold.
He gathered. Drew her closer with a sure strength, as though he’d known from the first moment that she would fit right there, astride his lap.
Merciful heaven.
It should have frightened her. It didn’t. It set a match to the tinder of everything she’d been denying thus far. Desire flared, a ribbon of heat winding through her belly, slipping upward through her chest and into her throat, spilling forth into him.
He was the reason she’d never wished to marry another.
He was the reason the word spinster had once sounded like sanctuary.
He was the reason she could not, would not, imagine a lifetime with any man who wasn’t him, and the reason why, when her hand had been forced, to insist on a marriage in name only.
She loved this man.
She could no longer overlook this truth. She had always loved him. She could no longer hide it away. She would always love him. Her heart knew it, had always known it, and now her mouth confessed it in the language of kisses.
“You hit Rafferty,” she murmured against his lips.
His mouth hitched upward. “I did.”
“I put him in his place, too.”
“You did,” he said against her mouth, the words a rough scrape. “Little temptress.”
“No,” she denied. She wanted him unmade. She wanted herself unmade. “Seductress.”
Something wild leaped in his eyes. He kissed her again, and she felt the shift of him under her, the set of his shoulders, the whole of his attention narrowing.
He learned her body quickly, where to touch her so that her breaths faltered, so that her fingers curled in his hair.
He chased her gasps and once he caught them, redoubled his pursuit.
His hands mapped the lines of her, and everywhere he touched, heat and gooseflesh erupted, sparks and shivers.
When his palm spread between her shoulder blades and urged, she followed the guidance without question, pressing closer, learning that there was no space left to bridge between them and still burning to bridge it.
She broke away to rub her cheek against his stubble, then trail her mouth along the strong column of his neck, tasting a faint trace of his cologne.
His head tipped back, offering, and that small encouragement unmade her afresh.
His hands slid lower to cup her derriere, and he rocked his hardness against her.
Feel, he seemed to say without words. Feel what you do to me.
She smiled against his skin, giddy, powerful, terrified—in equal measure.
This was madness. Wonderful, necessary madness.
She nipped at him.
“Liss,” he warned on a ragged exhale, hands tightening as if torn between lifting her away and anchoring her more completely. “I am not a bloody saint.”
“I don’t want a saint,” she whispered. “I want my husband.”
“Christ, Liss.” His thumbs stroked slow circles that set every nerve singing. “Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked roughly.
“Yes.” Very much so.
He cursed again, lifting his head a fraction, breathing hard, eyes dark behind the cut of his mask. “If you continue, I won’t remember to hold back.”
“Then forget,” she answered, boldness surprising her with its cool clarity. “Forget every rule but me. Is that not a convenient benefit of his marriage?”
“God help me.” His eyes bore into hers. “Tell me what you want, Liss.”
“You,” she admitted, the word leaving her more easily than her own name. “I want you.”
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, then opened them again, blazing. “You’ve always had me.”
Heat rushed down her body. The sensation shocked and thrilled her with its force. She wanted more. Of him. Of this. Of the way wanting didn’t feel like shame with him; it felt like a right she’d been born to claim. “You’ve always had me, too.”
“Liss,” he said, almost a laugh, almost a groan, “I am going to carry you upstairs the moment this door opens.”
She slid her fingers to his jaw again, thumb stroking that sinful stubble she loved. “Then carry me, because I am done pretending. I want the whole of you.”
His answering grin was fierce and boyish both. “As my wife commands.”
On cue, the carriage rocked to a halt. Giles gathered her closer, one arm strong at her back, the other securing her against his chest as if she were the only treasure he had ever wished to possess.
And for once, Alyssia had no objections to being possessed.
Bishop thought he’d go mad while carrying Alyssia to their bedchamber. The house had never seemed so narrow, nor the stairs so infernally long. He took them two at a time. How he’d made the rest of the way, God alone knew.
Your mouth hardly left hers, that’s why.
What could he say? He was a man addicted to the skin of his wife, her every damn breath.
And with her three words, I want you, she might as well have turned him into the rogue she always claimed him to be.
He couldn’t stop kissing her, touching her, memorizing her.
He was even inclined to believe he’d been the one knocked senseless at the ball and dropped into a dream. If it is a dream, may it never end. Let the world spin on without him; he would remain here, arms full of his wife.
He should be gentle. He would be gentle.
He meant to be gentleness itself. But when he shouldered open the bedchamber door and set her on her feet, kicking the door shut with his foot, something fierce and long starved surged to the surface.
He backed her against the door, braced a hand beside her head and kissed her.
How many nights, how many times during the day even, had he dreamed of this moment?
Too many to fathom.
He’d thought it would take years for her to accept him so fully.
Very well, not years. But at the very least weeks, months, and yet here she was, owning him, the answering press of her body making it seem as though she could not choose distance even if she tried.
And she didn’t. That was the biggest damn blessing.
“God help me,” he broke away to brush his lips against her jaw, “You have utterly bewitched me.”
She seized his lapels and drew him in for another kiss, quick and honest. “Then be bewitched,” she breathed. “But don’t you dare stop for anything. Take me, Giles.”
He nodded and bent to lift her up, but she stopped him. “Right here.”
“Christ, here? It’s your first time. The bed is seven steps away.”
“Seven steps too far,” she countered. “I don’t want to wait even that. Now, take me, you can be gentle later.”
What the devil could he say to that? What his wife wanted, his wife got. And quite honestly, with words like that, he couldn’t hold back much either.
His hands found the back of her gown, fingers deft at the tiny hooks and laces. He needed more skin. “Tell me if I hurt you, and I’ll stop,” he said, voice rough.
“Don’t worry, I know what to expect.”
“Expecting and experiencing are two different worlds.” As they’d once again learned tonight.
She chuckled. “I’m counting on that.”
Damn little temptress.
He freed the bodice enough to bare the curve he’d been dying to worship with hands and mouth. He lowered his head, breath stuttering as the first taste of her breast met his tongue. Her sigh spilled over him, fingers thrusting into his hair.