Page 56 of How the Belle Stole Christmas

“You are titled.”

“A title that only exists because my grandfather made excellent weapons for the king. I’m an alchemist. A laborer. Your kind waste no love on mine.”

“Because of my birth, I am not one of them, either. Not truly. And I labor, as well. These differences do not matter.”

“I…” His exhale quivered somewhere between a snort and a growl. “I am in no position to take a wife. The king offered me my father’s old munitions contract, and I refused it. My annuity is not enough to keep you in any sort of comfort.”

“I do not need comfort.” Just security, the knowledge her brother or future husband would not rip away the very ground she stood on over and over and over again.

“You say that, but—"

“Do you snore?”

“No.”

“Are you secretly cruel?”

“No.”

“Then, if you propose, I will accept.” Better him than a man she did not know.

The lines of his body loosened, drooped.

A surrender? He did not pull his hands away.

His thumb swept back and forth across her cheekbone as if his palm meant to settle there permanently, and his hand on her shoulder had crept onto her neck, cradling her jaw.

The way he looked at her… A promise of passion he would never make but with his starving eyes.

His thigh pressed against her, though she’d not noticed when his encroachment had begun.

Hard thigh, warm and tempting. Closer, closer, until her hand could not help but flutter up and settle on his chest. Ah, his heart beat madly, a bird whose wings fluttered defiantly against its cage.

His lips were so very near, and darkness was dropping around them.

They could kiss and no one would see. But perhaps the embarrassed donkey and the sly, adorable fox. They could kiss in the dark and no one would know. Like that other kiss. A secret. Its only lingering evidence left in the skin.

His lips so close now she felt him breathing, his air becoming hers.

And then he was gone. Her neck and jaw abandoned, her cheek without a friend. Her lips grieving.

He stood and turned from her, marching toward the house. His hands shoved into his trouser pockets seemed to magnify the broad length of his shoulders, the trim angle of his waist.

Rejection.

She’d thought Sir Nicholas might protect her.

Apparently, no one would. She was too powerless even to win her friend’s help.

Anger hit her like a punch to the gut, entirely unexpected and driving her to her feet.

Hands fisting in her skirts, she hurried after him, caught him with a hand—gloveless because he still had that article of clothing in his pocket—to his naked forearm and swung him around.

She grasped the edges of his cravat and looked at a life with so little control, a life that made her helpless, kept her that way.

She looked at the life, and she cursed it. And she took something for herself.

She kissed him, dragging him down to meet her lips. Determined and demanding. His heat, his breath, like a warm cup of mulled wine… spicy, invigorating.

Familiar?

She broke the tiny kiss with a gasp to search his face. In the shadowed evening, his blue eyes had been robbed of their color. Dark now. They glittered. They devoured.

Familiar.

Unfamiliar hands conquered the nape of her neck, fingers digging deep into her coiffure as he dragged her closer, as he broke through the distance between them to take her mouth once more. Harder this time.

She melted against him, into him, without a single by-your-leave from her brain.

That organ had stopped working. Thought shattered beneath the demand of his hard body against her, the iron chain of his arms holding her tight.

He shifted until his leg parted hers, until his thigh pressed against her center, made her gasp.

Made her moan. She had not even known she could produce such a sound.

Kisses scattered along her jaw, scattering doubt and objection. Scattering wits and wisdom.

Scattering sense until his lips moved on the shell of her ear, and he said, “I knew it would be good between use, brave beauty. I could never have guessed how good. Would you moan for me if I dropped to my knees?”

“S-sir Nicholas,” she mumbled, her lips tingling.

“Would you cry out if I threw up your skirts and dedicated myself to kissing you here.” He lifted his leg, grinding his thigh against the pulsing center of her.

“What do you smell like here, I wonder? Taste like? I could find out now. Drop to my knees, lift your skirts and lap up your desire. Would you like that, brave one?”

“A-ah!” She bit her tongue, bit her lip.

Anything to keep his name from escaping, to keep an answer from escaping.

Yes, oh yes, she would like that, naughty as it was.

He shocked her. Never in all their conversations over the last year had he gone past flirting.

He was as naughty as a young boy was, saying ribald things to elicit a reaction.

Naughty in a new way now, a dangerously sinful way.

No boy, this. But a man who spoke lusty, erotic promises he would not fail to keep. Promises she wanted him to keep.

“I have what you need,” he whispered hot against her ear. “Will you take it?”

I have what you need. She’d heard those words before.

That night and this one converged, two drawings on transparent paper overlapping to create a single image.

She knew. She knew.

She ripped out of his embrace, one hand flat on her belly, the other covering her mouth.

His jaw tightened and he looked to the sky.

“Go, Jane. Back to the hospital where you’re safe.

I’ll send a footman to follow you for protection in the dark.

” He turned from her, his broad back curved.

“Do not return to tempt me further.” He froze mid-step.

“I have nothing you need, but I don’t trust myself not to take it anyway. ”

She stumbled into the darkness, the truth blinding her.

If she was right, if her lips knew what her useless brain had not for an entire year of friendship, then Sir Nicholas was the Christmas intruder, a man who broke rules with a wink and a chuckle. The man she’d fantasized about at night and the one she respected during the day were one in the same.