Page 48 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

He must have been in so much pain, he must have had to survive such unimaginable suffering, and here he was. And here she’d been, attending balls and getting betrothed. But he wasn’t looking at her like she was guilty of anything reprehensible, anything at all, there was love in his eyes.

Chest heaving, she said, “But you’re alive.”

His throat bobbed. “It killed me to be apart from you.”

Her hands found his lapels. “We died the same death. Come here. Let me bring you back to life.”

She drew him in with her mouth, his lips crashing over hers possessively. She wanted to possess him. She wanted to be possessed, by him, by this moment, by madness; she didn’t care, just not possessed anymore by grief and the unforgiving hands of fate.

She pulled at her skirts, one of her legs wrapping around his.

She pressed her body closer, he let out a little groan that she could taste inside her own mouth, mingled with the taste of champagne.

This was where he’d belonged, she’d been saying it since before he left, and him trying to save the world and her trying to save her image had only caused suffering and heart ache.

No longer.

“I love you,” she cried into his mouth.

He was holding her, he was kissing her back like she was the one who was a phantom, he was touching her. She wondered if he’d dreamed about holding her like she’d dreamed about being held.

“Still?” he pulled back to ask.

She ran a gentle hand over the scar on his face. “Is this why you didn’t immediately come to me and tell me that you were alive?”

He didn’t say anything.

She wrapped a hand around his jaw and brought his eyes to hers. “Answer me,” her voice was part plea, part protest.

“I’ve gone through months of rehabilitation to stand, to walk. Don’t know if I ever will fight, or ride, or hold a sword properly. I would have crawled to you, if I thought you’d still have me.”

She pulled back as though he’d slapped her. But she would never compare her pain to his; she knew her engagement to another man, a Duke no less, had only been a liberal sprinkling of salt in a festering wound.

“That isn’t fair,” she injected steel into her voice, enunciating her words. “I wish you’d told me. I wish I knew that you’d—”

“Would it have stopped you from becoming engaged to the world’s most perfect man?” His voice was laced with anger.

“Is that what you came here to ask me?”

He muttered profanity under his breath. Shook his head.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if I ever did deserve you, but how could I ever claim to now?

I’d just go on without you and let you have the perfect life you always wanted,” he swallowed, tracing a rogue tear that fell out of her eye.

“Only I just can’t stop loving you. From afar doesn’t seem like enough.

But I had to tell you, figured you’d find out anyway, in case there was a chance you weren’t disgusted by me. ”

No tears came. No words came. What could she say?

She poured all the words that were locked away, buried under years of neglect and dust and trauma, into his mouth. Her lips formed the words tangled breathlessly with his like she could scourge the pain away with a kiss.

“I need you.” She groaned the words into his mouth.

He shook his head. She pulled his hair, pulling him closer, till their noses touched. If he couldn’t see a world behind or beyond this alcove, this time-stopping box they were in, he couldn’t say no.

“You need me,” She said.

He could go to war, he could nearly die and let her believe that he did even after he’d been back, she’d not even asked how long he’d been back, but she did know him.

“Show me where the pain is, or where you can’t feel my touch anymore.”

She traced a gloved finger softly over the bisecting scar from his hairline down to the hollow at the base of his throat.

He closed his eyes. “Nowhere. I feel you everywhere, Moria. The hollowed-out parts of me that feel nothing can still feel you.”

She placed his hand at her waist. She raised her eyebrows at him, his throat bobbed again.

“Not here.” He shook his head, but his hand at her waist drew her tighter into him.

“When we went to the opera,” she breathed next to his ear, “Did you think about having me behind the curtain?”

He took her hand, placing it against his erection, the hard proof of how badly he wanted her. “There are hardly any ways left I haven’t thought about having you,” he said into her ear.

“Did you think you’d have me tonight?” she said against his lips, undoing him.

She wasn’t sure what her plan was, with him, with George. She wasn’t sure she had one.

He closed his eyes, breathing her in.

“You did, didn’t you?” she said in his ear, nipping at his earlobe and then licking down his neck. She kissed his scar like he’d kissed hers that single night they’d had together. He groaned against her, swore her name like she was the god he was taking in vain.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “You break off your engagement, then? That why you’re dressed…” he eyed her like he was looking at her costume for the first time. “Like some kind of ghost bride?”

Moria couldn’t help it. It wasn’t the champagne.

Watery laughter bubbled out of her like so much joy that had been locked behind a cupboard.

He started laughing with her too. They were here, together, behind a curtain at her sister’s book launch masquerade where she’d come with her sister and friends, and they were laughing, and his hand was still on her waist.

She wiped at the tears in her eyes. Were they from pain or grief or joy or some intertwined concoction?

“It’s part wedding gown and part mourning dress.”

His face fell. “God, that’s….” he shook his head. “Devastating.”

“It’s a visual depiction of my heart at the moment.”

“I know I don’t understand women’s fashion; but your heart is tragically unchic, I’m sorry to say.”

She laughed again. She’d always laughed easily with him. It was everything else that was difficult.

“I missed you,” she said, the words just ushered themselves out like visitors who’d stayed too long.

“We’re always missing each other,” he said in a solemn voice.

“We don’t have to.”

“You still want me?” he said, looking into her eyes with intense focus, her answer critical to their survival.

A choking sob came out of her. She gave him back his words. “The hollowed out parts of me that can feel nothing can still feel you too.”

He kissed her. More accurately, his mouth crashed into hers like something had been unleashed in him.

He lifted her so that she was up against the wall, and then it was quick work from there.

Hands grasping, mouths licking and teeth nipping.

Her leg slung over his, his legs pushed between hers.

His mouth at the pulse point of her neck.

“Fuck this thing,” he said, removing her veil unceremoniously for good. And then he pushed up her skirts.

“Does that mean I’m next?” she questioned, and he chuckled against her exposed breasts before taking them in his mouth. His fingers found her entrance amidst all the black and white fabric, he swallowed her moans into his mouth to silence her as he undid her at last.

And then she stilled his hand. “I want you. I need…I need you.” her voice was strangled with need.

“Say it,” he said. “Tell me what you need.”

“I need your cock shoved deep inside of me so I know you’re real.”

He blinked a couple times like her response was more than he expected. “Whatever you want, use me.”

And it was her hand that unfastened his breeches, guided him to her entrance, both of them gasping at the fit of it as he made his way inside. And they were moving with urgency again, fast and needy and desperate.

“Take what you need,” he said, eyes locked onto hers.

He was notched inside, then pulling back, in, out, rhythmed like breaths that were coming faster and faster.

The fabric covering of the bookcase she was perched on created friction against the bare skin of her back, but she didn’t care.

She wanted to be close to him forever, to feel all of him and not feel everything that was waiting behind the curtain.

Her fingers dug into him for purchase, he moved one of her hands to his hair. Moria pulled at his dark strands, missing the long locks he’d had before; but his shorter hair was devastating with that scar.

He tilted his head back, ramming deeper into her. Moria let out a low moan.

“That’s it, I want to hear all your sounds.”

He held her backside in both hands. One finger slid from behind to stroke her center as he slammed into her.

She looked from his fingers, meeting his eyes, the wicked satisfaction had her taking his mouth in her possession again.

He thrust deeper this time, finding a place inside of her that made her back arch off the bookcase.

Then she was clutching him, screaming his name into his mouth, spasming around him.

She felt like she was floating somewhere above this scene for a moment, lost in another time where they weren’t lost to one another, until he convulsed and groaned against her.

He quickly pulled out and came into a handkerchief with one hand, holding her with the other.

His lips kissed her neck, and then he was kneeling in front of her.

His lips disappeared for a moment, between her legs.

She closed her eyes at the exquisite lathe of his tongue, at the memory of how he’d care for her like this before, afterward.

And then he placed a kiss at her inner thigh.

His hand adjusted her stockings and replaced the layers of her skirt, retied her slippers, and shook her skirts out around her.

He took her hand and kissed it, still breathless.

How was she meant to walk away from that?

“That was…” she breathed.

“I know,” but she barely heard him.

His voice was low and far away as he stared at her. She now wished they had done this somewhere else, somewhere they had privacy and time and space. She’d had Devyn back if only for a moment, and her relief had taken hold of her before she’d thought about the aftermath.

“I can’t lose you again.” His voice sounded even farther away, like she was already losing him.

“You never lost me,” she said in an urgent voice. She wrapped a hand around his stubbled cheek.

“Moria,” he started to say something that would damn whatever they still had left to hell and she couldn’t hear it. She kissed him again, longer and slower this time. And then he pulled away.

Her pride was the only soldier she had left now, and so she let him let her go, and made him watch as the curtain fell behind her for the last time.