Page 45 of Lady and the Butcher

I looked at the back of the driver’s head. He was obedient. Eyes forward, shoulders square, every inch of him pretending we didn’t exist.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

“You already are.”

He was right. I hadn’t noticed. My body had made the choice while my brain was trying to function.

“Do you know what I see when I look at you?” he asked.

“An easy mark,” I said. The joke tried to land and broke apart. I was too breathless for humor.

“I see a woman who spends her days giving every piece of herself away,” he said, voice low and certain. “Always on call. Always holding someone else’s body together when they can’t. You live like the whole world depends on you being steady.” His hand slid higher, heat blooming under his touch. “And now, finally, you want to be the one who’s held. You asked for what you needed, and you hate that you did.”

“I don’t hate it.”

He tilted his head. “No?”

“I hate that I like you.”

He smiled. “Better.”

We bumped over a seam in the road. His hand steadied me. He didn’t stop moving.

“Do you trust me, Lady?”

My throat tightened around the truth. “Yes.”

“Good.” He lifted his hand away.

I almost cried out. It came out as a broken inhale instead.

“Put your heel on the edge,” he said, voice quiet enough that it felt like it lived inside my chest. “There. Now the other.”

The dress fell like water around my hips. Night hid us and didn’t. The suggestion of exposure made every nerve burn hotter.

“Atticus,” I said, because his name was a lifeline and a dare.

“Hm.”

“This is crazy.”

“That’s what you wanted.”

“I didn’t want—” I stopped because the carriage turned and the wind lifted the hem of my dress and he slid from the bench to the floorboards in one clean, fluid motion that knocked the rest of my sentence into the dark.

He knelt between my knees like prayer looked good on him. The carriage rocked. The horse snorted. Far off, someone laughed from a porch. In our pocket of shadow, he pushed my dress higher with careful hands, as if the silk might bruise.

“Eyes ahead,” he said to the driver, voice even as weather. The man’s shoulders went straighter.

My lungs forgot how to work. “Atticus?—”

“Be quiet now.” No threat in it. No heat. Just care wearing authority’s clothes. “You’ll scare the horse.”

I choked on a laugh that didn’t survive. My head tipped back against the cushion. The sky above us was a smear of indigo and bloom. I looked at it because looking down and seeing him like that would undo me.

He started with the inside of my knee. A slow kiss that burned. The other knee next, same reverence, same ruin. Then higher, inch by inch, as if he had divided my skin into a map with stops he refused to skip. My hands found the edge of the bench and held.

“God,” I whispered.