Page 20 of A Touch Wicked
“What sort of dishonest means?”
“I leave my life, meet you here, and I wear this mask.”
When he didn’t respond right away, she wondered if he was going to risk everything. If he was going to suggest taking off their masks.
But in the end, he only kissed her and whispered against her lips, “Are you lonely, Selene?”
Emma’s chest squeezed. “Yes.”
She hadn’t realized she was crying until he kissed away her tears. “Perhaps I have a bit of the devil in me,” he said, “to want you to keep being deceptive. To keep meeting me and to stay until morning.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“I know.” James kissed her again, harder this time. His hands skimmed down her body. “But you leave too soon. You always leave too soon, no matter the hour.”
“Are you lonely, James?”
He settled on top of her and rested his forehead against hers. “Yes. On nights without you, and every morning.”
Their lovemaking this time was slow, quiet and lovely. When it was over, Emma left. Again, too soon.
* * *
“You never toldme why you came to the Masquerade,” Emma asked James another night.
She had only caught part of the conversation between James and Mr. Grey.
They were in bed, the candlelight burning around them. Emma had her head on James’s shoulder, and he stroked her hair, her neck, her back. Emma was beginning to understand why people came here, why they rented out rooms and met lovers in secret.
It still didn’t feel real after all this time. Even with him touching her like this, Emma swore she could have been dreaming. It was so easy to come here and forget her life, her name, her upbringing, and only exist from the moment his eyes met hers.
“I suppose I didn’t,” James said.
Emma lifted her head and looked at him. “What a sigh that was. Did someone hold a pistol to your temple? A blade to your throat?”
“They might as well have. I’m getting married.”
Emma drew back in surprise. Alexandra hadn’t mentionedthat. “My congratulations to the lucky, nameless lady.”
“That makes two of us,” James told her. “I don’t know who she is yet.”
“Well,” Emma said with a bit of amused sarcasm, “that makes perfect sense.”
James kissed her nose. “Oh, sarcasm. I adore it, particularly when it’s in French.”
He was trying to distract her from the conversation at hand. Emma wasn’t about to fall for it. “If you consider matrimony to be a terrible fate, then why are you bothering before you’re ready?”
James stared at her, and his thoughts were so clear. Emma deliberately never answered his question about whether she had a husband. Though some debutantes were willing to risk attending the Masquerade, most women members were married or widowed.
“I have to marry at some point. Why not now?”
“Why not six months from now?” she countered. “A year from now?”
“It wouldn’t make a difference, would it? It’s putting off the inevitable.”
Emma propped herself on an elbow and met his eyes. She wanted so badly for him to take off that mask, to ask her to remove her own. That would mean seeing each other in the light and choosing their path from there. No dreams, no anonymity, just him and her. Names and pasts and the great, yawning chasm that separated their stations.
Too real.
