Page 49 of Love a Lady at Midnight

Her hand found his hair, tugged him down, and her lips found his ear. “Touch me.” She found his hand and placed it on her breast.

Hell. He’d already been hard, but now he knew the aching pain of desire.

He swept his thumb over her breast until her nipple pebbled and she hissed. He continued slanting his mouth across her own, biting her bottom lip with the gentlest tug, nipping her earlobe now and then, invading the cavern of her mouth and claiming her.

He squeezed, and she arched into his hand.

He grinned. He did not need a book to know how to please her. Her reactions—the pulsing movements of her body and the hissing moans from her throat—told him exactly what to do.

He squeezed again and whispered in her ear, “You like that?”

“Yes.”

“And do you like this?” His hand slipped beneath her bodice, lifted her breast. He’d seen it once before, but still, it almost brought him to his knees. “Perfection.” He set his mouth to it.

Her hands in his hair tightened, tugged, and the leg around his waist did, too. He could drop to his knees, slip beneath her skirts, and she would welcome more kisses there. He shuddered, wanting that more than he wanted air.

But… he replaced her breast in her gown, nudged her leg off his hip, and offered a final, worshiping sip of her lips before he rested his forehead against hers and let air slip between their bodies.

“Again,” she said, barely a word with every sound melted together. “Again, Jackson, please.”

“Tell me what you did not like.”

“Nothing,” she breathed. “I liked all of it. I like everythingyoudo.”

“The truth.” His hand curled into a fist at her waist, gathering the folds of her gown so he could pull the center of her body against the hard center of his own.

“Do it all again.” Her words with the tenuous tremor of almost weeping. “I am selfish, and I want more. Of you.”

He crushed her to him, kissed the top of her head. Again. God, he wanted to. “Will it make you happy?”

“Always.”

But she did not mean it. She thought physical connection fleeting. She found in it no lasting joy.

“Will it help me keep you?”

He held a statue of a woman in his arms, even her lips burned cold.

He released her, stepped backward into a shadow that fell across his parents’ portrait.

She stepped backward, too, into the shadow that fell between windows. The moon sliced through the glass, landing on the floor between them, a space of light where they might meet if they took a step each.

She never would. She was leaving.

“Gwendolyn, I’m done.”

“Wh-what?”

“I cannot chase you any longer. I cannot say I’ll ever stop loving you, but each time I hold you and lose you it’s a killing blow, and I… I wish to live. For my brothers. For myself. I want to enjoy a sunrise with someone who I can watch a sunset with as well.”

He waited for an answer, any response.

She gave none.

“You are leaving,” he said, “but I have decided that I am staying.”

“What do you mean?”