Page 34 of A Touch Wicked
James stepped closer and grazed his fingertips across her cheek. Emma shut her eyes at the touch; it was so soft, as soft as a dream. She could have imagined it.
But then he spoke, and she knew it was real. “So was I,” he whispered.
His lips brushed hers, a tentative caress. Emma answered with her own kiss. Her body couldn’t help but sway toward him as a branch would in the breeze. This kiss was not like before at the Masquerade — there was no certainty here, no assuredness of the result. He kissed her as if he were asking a question, giving her the opportunity to answer in her own way, in her own time.
But for Emma, it had already been given. He had already learned her body. James was not a frontiersman on the edge of discovering her, but a man who had already studied her depths: her customs, her language, her song. Everything, every part of her, he knew it all by heart.
Emma could not stop herself from deepening their kiss. From letting her hands rediscover his body as if running her fingertips along an instrument, plucking the keys. Relearning his song. And she knew his; the way he groaned when she pressed herself against him. He turned them so her back was to the willow tree. The bark abraded the skin of her neck, but she didn’t care because oh, she wanted, she wanted, she wanted.
“Miss Dumont,” he breathed against her lips. “Emma.”
She could have him again, like this. He’d moan her name as he came this time — her real name. He’d—
Emma tore her lips from his, turning her face. “Stop. Please stop.”
Without hesitation, James pulled away. The distance between them felt so vast. Each fraction a whole country between their private worlds.
“I’m sorry.” James shoved a hand through his hair, his chest rising and falling with his breaths. “Christ, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I . . .” How could she word this? Why was language so difficult, so inept? “I can’t do this to you.”
“Tome?” James’s smile was small, but amused. “Nothing that happened just now was against my will, I assure you.”
“It’s nothing to do with that.” It embarrassed Emma that her eyes had begun to fill.
James noticed and stepped toward her in concern. “Emma—”
She shrunk back against the tree and put up a warning hand. “No, don’t look at me like that. I’m not . . . I’m not who you think I am.”
“And who do I think you are?” he asked her.
“Your sister’s co-writer, her secretary and maid,” Emma said with a sigh. “Your staff. You asked me how I received my reference, and that alone will tell you everything you need to know about my character. The Duke of Southampton is my father, and I used the information my mother wrote about him in her journals for blackmail. I threatened to destroy him publicly if he refused me a good reference for work. So now you know. I am not a good woman.”
James stared at her, and for a moment she thought he might walk away. But in the end, he shook his head, “His Grace is well known to be a crooked, deceitful blackguard, Miss Dumont. He and my father ran in the same circles, so if you had destroyed him, I would have been there to cheer you on. I don’t care about what you did in the past.”
“It’s not in the past. I’m sorry, it’s not. I’m sorry.” Emma shook her head, whisking away tears. She repeated the words as if they could take away the ache in her chest.
But there was nothing for it. Deception had felled even gods, after all. No one was immune to its venom.
Emma met his eyes. “James.”
She had never said his name before now, and she deliberately kept her native accent. The way he froze, the low catch of his breath . . .
He knew now. He knew.
She could only whisper another apology, barely above a breath. “Je suis désolée.”
As Emma retreated to the house, the breeze swept through the gardens and whispered across her skin once more.
Only this time, it chilled her.
Chapter 19
James stared after Miss Dumont as she walked briskly past the rose bushes toward the house.
Miss Dumont. Emma.Selene.
His mysterious masked woman, his dream lover, had been her all along. Was it all some little amusement, then? Wrap him around her finger, watch him pine after her as she pretended to be demure, prim Miss Dumont?
