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She’d always wondered why Andrew danced the dissolute path he had. But he was so much more than his wicked reputation. He was good and loving and loyal to his family and his friends. Her.

He frowned. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“I just… feel like I know you so much better,” she said softly.

An endearing blush spread across his cheeks. “You never knew the reason I am the scandal that I am is because my father was a wicked rotter?”

“I never knew that you became what Society expected of you,” she murmured as Andrew now made sense to her in ways he never had before.

His frown deepened as he bristled. “I became what I was always destined to be.”

“Because they made you believe that was your future.” A life of sin and debauchery.

His features iced over, his expression hard in ways she’d never before witnessed from this man, and a tremble went through her.

In one fluid movement, he slipped an arm about her waist and drew her closer, and she trembled again at his touch.

“You don’t want Society’s pity, and I certainly don’t want that sentiment from you either, Marcia Gray,” he gritted out in a furious whisper.

She shook her head frantically. “No! That isn’t—”

“You claim you had some grand revelation,” he cut her off. “Telling yourself what? That the only reason for my wickedness is because I felt compelled to be so because I was hurt by Society’s opinions of me?” He didn’t allow her a chance to answer. “You saw me,” he said silkily, and then she gasped as he drew her onto his lap and sank his fingers into the curve of her hip.

Her heart thumped… and not from fear, but from the reminder of the kisses and almost kisses they’d shared.

“You see the pleasures I find. I take them because I want them,” he whispered against her mouth, his chest moving hard, his breath coming quick against her lips, blending with her own raspy breaths. He moved a sharp gaze over her face. “So do not go entertaining any grand illusions that I am who I am because I was wounded. I am who I am because I’m my father’s son.”

She knew little to nothing about his father. She’d heard vague whispers, but never details, for when people had begun talking, she’d chastised them or walked away.

Marcia rested her fingertips upon his sleeve. Such tension rolled through his frame, his perfectly contoured muscles jumped.

“I know what it is to share the blood of someone who is evil.”

Andrew chuckled, and it was a cold, harsh, mocking sound devoid of mirth, and that rejection cut like a knife, worse than any cut direct she’d been given after the truth of her birthright had been found out. “You just learned the identity of your father. You’ve had an entire life of being you, Marcia. I knew from the moment I came into this world who and what I’d one day be. They are not at all the same.”

She drew back in hurt. “You know nothing,” she bit out, hating the slight tremor in her voice.

Andrew stopped caressing her hip, and brought that same hand up to stroke the curve of her cheek. “You want to think that, but you know I’m right. We are not the same, and for you to conflate the two, to speak as if we somehow share something we don’t and never will is disingenuous, Marcia.”

How had she ever failed to see that ice in his eyes?

Because he’d never turned it on her before.

He’d only ever shown her warmth, and she felt a great need to cry because of it.

He was like a stranger.

His distracted touch slowed, and Andrew moved his gaze over her face. Suddenly, something shifted. His eyes fell to her lips.

He is going to kiss me again.

And she wanted him to. She wanted his lips on hers desperately. She wanted more of this new intimacy she’d shared with him. He lowered his mouth, his breath kissing that flesh first, and her chest quickened.

“You know we are different, Marcia,” he whispered and lightly touched his lips to hers in the most fleeting of kisses that wrought only a desperate hunger within her. “You know I am wicked,” he breathed between each kiss, “where you are good.”

The carriage rolled to a stop.

Andrew set her from his lap and, with no further words passing between them, helped her don her mask.