Chapter Four #2
“Tell me to stop,” he said, low, rough, “and I will. I need to hear you say it, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t want you to stop.”
The kiss, when it came, wasn’t gentle. It was hungry in a way that startled her, his hand sliding from her jaw into her hair as he angled her head to deepen it, and she felt the low sound he made against her mouth more than she heard it, felt the careful restraint he’d worn all week finally give way entirely.
His fingers tightened in her hair hard enough to sting, sharp and unthinking, a flash of something that wasn’t quite controlled, and for one disorienting second the pain and the wanting blurred into the same unbearable thing before his grip gentled again, deliberate, like a man catching himself mid-fall and remembering, at the last possible second, what he was holding.
She kissed him back just as fiercely, her hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt, some part of her distantly aware that this was exactly the kind of reckless she’d promised herself she wouldn’t be and finding, in this exact moment, that she didn’t care at all.
He backed her against the counter with a control that felt anything but controlled, one hand braced beside her hip, the other still tangled in her hair, and when he finally broke the kiss it was only to press his forehead to hers, both of them breathing hard in the dark kitchen, the wind still pressing insistent against the windows like the house itself were exhaling along with them.
“That,” he said, voice wrecked in a way that did something dangerous low in her stomach, “was considerably harder to stop myself from doing than I’d like to admit.”
“Who said anything about stopping?”
Something dark and pleased flickered behind his eyes. “Careful, Miss Cole,” he said, and the return of the formal address, murmured like that, against her mouth, felt more intimate than her own name had. “I already told you. I’m rapidly losing interest in being responsible.”
He kissed her again anyway, slower this time, deliberate, like a man savoring something he’d denied himself far longer than he should have.
His hand slid from her hair to the curve of her jaw, tilting her face just slightly, and she felt the low sound he made against her mouth when she pressed closer instead of pulling away, one hand fisted in his shirt, the other coming up to rest against the uncovered side of his jaw — the first time, she realized distantly, that she’d touched any part of his face at all.
He went very still at the contact, and for a moment she thought she’d misjudged, that she’d crossed some line he hadn’t meant to offer along with everything else tonight.
But he only exhaled, slow and unsteady, and let her hand stay where it was, some old guardedness in him loosening by degrees like a knot finally given permission to slip.
“You’re allowed to touch that much,” he murmured against her mouth, answering the question she hadn’t asked aloud. “Just that much, for now.”
“And the rest?”
“The rest,” he said, low, rough, pulling back just far enough to look at her properly, “is a conversation for a night when I haven’t already promised myself I’d behave like a gentleman until after the gala.
” Something wry curved at the edge of his mouth, self-aware in a way that made her laugh despite the charged air between them.
“I find that promise growing more difficult to keep by the second, if I’m honest.”
“Maybe don’t keep it, then.”
“Sienna.” Her name again, rough at the edges, half warning and half plea. “If you keep saying things like that, I am going to forget every reasonable argument I’ve made to myself about waiting.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to remember them.”
Something in him seemed to break open a little further at that, and when he finally pulled back it was with visible effort, his hand lingering at her waist like letting go cost him something physical.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I’m going to walk into that gala with you on my arm, and every single person in that room is going to see exactly what they’re not supposed to see.
That I want you. That I have wanted you for considerably longer than either of us has been honest about.
” His thumb traced her lower lip, slow, almost reverent.
“I find, standing here now, that I’ve stopped caring what any of them think about that. ”
“And after the gala?”
“After the gala,” he said, low, promising something in the words that made her breath catch, “we’re going to finish this conversation properly. Somewhere with considerably fewer counters and considerably more privacy.”
She laughed, a little breathless, a little disbelieving that this was actually happening, that the careful distance of the last week had finally, entirely collapsed. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise,” he said, and kissed her one final time before stepping back, putting deliberate distance between them like a man rationing the last of something precious. “Go to bed, Sienna. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day, and I intend for tomorrow night to be considerably longer.”
He walked her to the base of the stairs, the same courtesy he’d offered after dinner, though nothing about tonight felt like a repetition of that earlier caution.
The house around them seemed to have gone even quieter than before, as though it too were holding its breath, waiting to see how the night would resolve itself.
At the bottom step, he caught her hand before she could start climbing, turning it over gently to press a kiss to her knuckles, old-fashioned and deliberate in a way that made something in her chest ache in a manner she didn’t have a word for yet.
“For what it’s worth,” he said quietly, “I haven’t wanted anything this badly in longer than I care to remember. I’d nearly forgotten what it felt like, wanting something enough to risk this much of myself over it.”
“And now that you remember?”
“Now I find I’m not particularly interested in forgetting again.
” He released her hand slowly, reluctantly, the loss of contact settling between them like something physical, and for a moment neither of them moved, the quiet of the stairwell stretching out around them like it was reluctant to let the night end either.
“Go carefully tomorrow, Sienna. Not because I doubt you. Because I intend to spend most of the evening distracted by you, and I’d rather not discover too late that my attention was somewhere it shouldn’t have been.
” “Sleep, if you can. I have a feeling neither of us is going to get much of it tomorrow night.”
She climbed the stairs on legs that didn’t quite feel steady, touching her own lips like she could still feel the shape of him there, and didn’t sleep for entirely different reasons than she had the night before — replaying not fear now, but the low, rough promise in his voice, and wondering, with something closer to anticipation than dread, exactly what tomorrow night was going to cost either of them.
Somewhere below, she heard him linger at the bottom of the stairs a moment longer than necessary, as if reluctant to let even the sound of her footsteps go without him.
Somewhere past three in the morning, she finally drifted, and dreamed not of the west wing’s pale light across the garden, but of warm hands and low laughter and a mask that, in the dream at least, she’d been allowed to finally, gently, remove.
She woke once more before dawn, heart racing from some fragment of the dream she couldn’t quite hold onto, and lay in the dark a long while afterward, one hand pressed to her own mouth, still faintly certain she could feel the ghost of his kiss there, patient and waiting for the night still to come.
Outside her window, the garden sat silent and dark, no pale light burning across it tonight — as if even the house understood that whatever this was between them no longer needed the distance of glass and lawn to survive.