Page 55 of Forgery, Love, and Other Lies
“Leave? I’m supposed to design a bracelet for Lady Ankling.”
“No. I mean… should you leave the country? Flee to the Continent? Farther, if necessary. I would miss you terribly, but better that than—”
“Please do not say it. I’m only in danger if someone notices they are not real.”
“You’re terribly good, yes?”
Fiona nodded, though even the most skilled forger had weakness. Being caught was always a danger.
“I wish you’d never—”
“Me as well.”
Fiona stumbled toward the workroom, and Posey returned to her place behind the counter as the shop door creaked open. The chair Fiona pulled from beneath the workbench made a screeching noise, but Fiona barely heard as she slouched into it. With numb fingers, she pulled her notebook to her and opened it to a blank page, took up her charcoal, and began a mindless design. When done, she turned the page and sketched another. And another. And another, and she did not stop until Posey entered the room and reminded her of the time. They closed the shop and returned home arm in arm.
Fiona ate dinner in silence, and she prepared for bed in silence, donning a clean shift and wrapper and brushing her hair out in mindless strokes. She braided her hair and laid in bed until she heard the clock strike the midnight hour. Then she donned her boots and her pelisse to hide her dishabille and her cloak to hide her identity and made her way back onto the street before their house.
“Hell!” A hiss like an angry snake. “You are not so daft as this suggests, Fiona.” A hand wrapped around her elbow and pulled her into the shadows.
She was not afraid, and she did not jerk away because she knew who held her arm, wanted him there. Well, not precisely there—holding her elbow angrily in the street—but this was moving in the right direction. And her numbness from the entire day began to shake away.
“I’m glad you know it,” she snapped, yanking her arm away and setting her steps toward the shop.
He followed with long, angry strides, his boots slapping the street. “But this,this, makes me question everything. You’ve snuck out to walk the London streets past midnight. Alone. That is precisely what I consider daft behavior.”
“I am aware of the risks. I was willing to take them. Besides, I’m not alone.” She hated to sound smug. But also… she didn’t.
“You did not know I would be here.”
“But you are.” Oh, he was, and that meant tonight they would continue what they’d begun at the auction. Her stomach flipped over, and her stride lengthened. She nearly ran.
He didn’t though. His long legs strode beside her at a normal pace. “I almost wasn’t. But in the end I couldn’t let you traipse to the shop alone in the middle of the night.”
She stopped and grasped his arm to stop him, too, then she looked up into his face. “Is that the only reason you came? Because if so, I suppose I should return home.”
“Double hell.” He jerked her forward. Toward the shop.
A thrill rippled through her, and she almost skipped the rest of the way. She unlocked the door quickly and pocketed the key before the world went upside down. His hard shoulder beneath her belly, his backside in the very center of her line of sight. The brute had tossed her over his shoulder!
“Put me down,” she demanded. Useless. She’d had to whisper it, hadn’t she? So no lurkers on the street would hear her. But he likely didn’t hear her either.
He kicked the door closed and carried her all the way back to the shop. When the world tumbled around her once more, she landed on a hard surface with a thud that shook the breath from her.
The worktable. She sat on it.
His angry face, hovering above her.
He slammed his hands down onto the table on either side of her and leaned in close. No candle or fire gave light to the room, and she felt him more than saw him, the warmth of his breath on her cheek, the heat of his body everywhere else. “I’m enraged. At you for risking yourself as you’ve just done. And at me. Because I can’t say no.”
His lips. On hers like a magnet. He needed no light to find her.
She moved like the slash of charcoal against paper when the ideas poured forth with ease—quick and without thought—wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling herself up to deepen the kiss. He’d parted her lips with his tongue last night. She did the same to him now, and he did not hesitate to let her, then to push her legs apart and step between them.
“I need closer,” he growled.
She ran her hands down his back. Was that allowed? It felt right, and it was the best way to give him what he wanted. She wrapped her hands low around his back, just before that muscular rise of his backside, and used the long strength of his body anchored to the floor to pull herself across the table until high on her inner thighs met his hips. He arched toward her, increasing the pressure of their bodies against one another. His hands flew from the table to the line of buttons closing her pelisse, and he made short work of them, flicking the fastenings open and peeling the pelisse down her shoulder, discarding it.
“You,” he growled as he did so, “vex me.”
