Page 35 of A Touch Wicked
And the book. That fucking book. She’d had him read it, seeking some deeper meaning in the passages when it was all a game to her.Shewas Icognita.Shewas a woman who hadplayed with himand he was just some fool who had —
God, he’d proposed to her. He’d told her his secrets. And she had known it was him all along.
“Fuck.” The curse slipped from his lips as he strode after her into the house.
If the stares of his servants were any indication, he must have looked halfway to madness. Every muscle in his body was coiled tight, and he no doubt seemed close to snapping.
Hewas.
In the servants’ wing, he found the door to Miss Dumont’s room and flung it open.
She was throwing clothes into a old, beaten leather suitcase with impressive speed. After all this, she was going to run away. She even had tears trailing down her cheeks, which he ignored, because what right did she have to cry?
What right?
James shut the door behind him and Miss Dumont’s head snapped up. She didn’t say anything. After all, what could she say? If you stripped away a liar's falsehoods, what words remained?
Apologies were insignificant. They were meaningless to a liar. And even the boy who cried wolf knew what happened when he tried to tell the truth in the end. He lost the right to be believed.
Shehad lost that right.
“So you’re leaving.” His voice was cold, but calmer than he felt. His heart was rioting.
Miss Dumont paused. “Do you want me to stay?” she asked quietly.
“If you weren’t Alexandra’s servant, I’d consider throwing you out.” James crossed his arms. “I want you to tell me everything. No lies, no secrets. How did you know I would be at the Masquerade?”
“I heard you and your brother the day the invitation came,” she said with a lift of her chin. “And I read it when you left the room.”
“Eavesdropping. Reading my personal correspondence. Lying to me. My, madam, what an effort. If you wanted to fuck, all you had to do was ask. I might have hesitated, but Richard will bed any willing woman in St. James’s as long as her virtue isn’t intact. Unless, of course, you only wanted to bed a man with a title. Personal goal of yours, Miss Dumont?”
She was retreating into herself, her face a mask of composure. Perhaps she knew her tears would not sway him, or perhaps they, too, were lies. Miss Dumont was an actress, after all.
Even now, James stared at her and tried to figure out her true face, her true self. Was she shy Miss Dumont, or the seductive Frenchwoman who stood naked before him, whose vocabulary was filthy and he’d liked it that way? Or was she Marie Christine, his sister’s brilliant co-writer?
Or maybe she was someone else, someone he’d yet to discover. A thief who had come into his home, stolen his heart, smashed it to pieces, and reveled in her victory over him — twice.
James considered loathing her for it. But he loathed himself most of all, for falling into her trap. For wanting to tear off her dress even now, bend her over that writing desk in the corner, and fuck her until he didn’t think, didn’t feel, didn’t care.
“Of course not,” Miss Dumont snapped. “I wanted—” She pressed her lips together in a thin line, then shoved more clothes into her suitcase. She closed it with a hard thump. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
James didn’t know what possessed him to approach her, to grasp her wrist and pull her closer. He heard her soft intake of breath and wasn’t certain if it was surprise, frustration, or . . .
Oh, yes.Need.
His fingertips pressed to her pulse and its wild cadence was a small victory. Arousal. She might say nothing but lies, but her body could only tell the truth, and its truth was desire.
“It matters,” he repeated. “Tell me what you wanted.”
“You,” she whispered. “Not your brother. Not your title. You.”
God. How could he believe her after everything? Why did that one word steal his breath?
“Why?” She shut her eyes when James slid his fingertips up her arm. “Did you lust after me, Miss Dumont? Was that all?”
“At first,” she admitted, to his surprise. “It wasn't supposed to last beyond one night, James. Believe whatever you will about me — liar, fraud, villain. I am all of those things. But I am telling you the truth when I say I did not intend for it to go on that long. By then, it was no longer lust that motivated me to see you each time.”
