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It is that same soaring, freewheeling piece of music that I last heard in the Miravakia Investigation offices. That night I nearly pressed my face to the glass so I could continue to look at the beautiful man lounging there on the sofa.
It takes me a long, stunned moment to realize that it is the same man playing that same song. And I feel like I might break wide open.
Because he plays with an intensity, a creative flair, and a brooding specificity that reminds me of nothing so much as being in bed with him. Naked. Wild with desire.
And him so deep inside me that it’s like he made himself a part of me, forever.
I can still feel him now.
The music stops. And I jolt a little at the silence that follows, seeming stretched wide to fit the space the music left behind it.
He stands up from the piano, and I know who he is now. Taio de Luz. The Eighteenth Marquess of this place, these lands.
I know what he was hiding from. I even have a few guesses as to why.
But mostly, I realize that part of me never expected to be in the same room with him again. I can feel that ache inside me, sharper now. And everything else hums, the way it seems I always will when in his presence.
“I’m afraid you have strayed from the public part of the house,” he says, in that voice of his, low and deep and so welcome—so missed—that I almost feel as if I might cry.
Hormones,I tell myself flatly.It must be hormones.
I want to say something suitably cutting. I want to start this off by ripping into him the way he richly deserves.
But I can’t seem to say a word. I watched as his gaze sharpens. He tilts his head to one side in a show of arrogant astonishment, and I understand that even though I have seen that particular gesture before, what I am seeing now isthe Marquess.
Not the Marquess playing the role of a lesser man.
As if on cue, he moves his hand to his lapel. And I have seen the entire march of his personal history out in the gallery. Generation after generation of men with precisely this stature and sense of themselves.
It is all right there.
He allows his mouth to curve, another gesture. This time toward courtesy. “I will call a member of staff to come and collect you, shall I?”
I realize that he has not yet realized who I am.
I wait.
He takes a step in the direction of another graceful arch in the opposite direction of where I came from, then stops.
Dead.
My heart picks up speed.
He turns back and I watch as recognition dawns. I watch the expressions that move in rapid succession over his face.
Shock. Bewilderment. Something that looks far too much like a lightning bolt of joy, one that I can feel echo in me—
But maybe I’m imagining that, because too quickly, he scowls.
“What are you doing here?” he demands, his voice low and raw, and nothing like that aristocratic hauteur he used only moments ago. “You can’t be here.”
“It’s nice to see you, too,” I replied, impressed with the coolness of my own tone.
I wait for a beat. Then I take my time looking around, taking in this room, and the enormous palace directed all around. I look back at him.
Then I use what I discovered is his proper address, complete with a deliberately awkward curtsy. “Excelentísimo Señor.”
And I’m sure that I see him pale.