Page 36 of A Touch Wicked
James had to know. He tipped her face up. “What was it?”
“Oh, James. Did you not think on the happy dreams that I didn’t deserve? Why I chose Selene to your Endymion, a lover who was mine and yet still lost to me? Haven’t you realized?” She opened her eyes to meet his. “You were my someone.”
James almost staggered back in sudden understanding. All those times at the Masquerade that she had mentioned her someone, a man she wanted and yet couldn’t have.
Him.
It was him.
Oh, she was a liar, yes. She was deceptive. She deserved his anger for her secrets. But this had been the small bit of truth wrapped in the lies she had built. Truth she tried to explain throughFantomina, knowing that once her identity was revealed, the stations they were born into would create a wall between them. An imbalance of power.
Anonymity had made them equals, and now it was gone.
“Emma—”
She flinched when he said her name, reaching for her suitcase. “Now you know why I can’t stay.”
“No.” James grasped her hand. “Not this time, Emma.”
Then he was kissing her. James didn’t know how it happened, how she ended up in his arms. But once she was there, he marveled at his stupidity. At how easily he had dismissed the similarities between her and Selene, when it should have been all too clear that her body fit his precisely right. That her lips had the texture of rose petals and that, no matter what she had been drinking, she always somehow tasted of exquisite red wine.
When she sighed against his lips, it was always with a hint of resignation. As if she had considered resisting but could do no more to stand against him than a reed to the wind. She just bent. She yielded.
And when she ceased caring — ceasedthinking, he suspected — oh, how exquisite it was. Her lips pressed harder to his. There was something frantic to her movements, the way she fumbled to undo his trousers.
“Now,” Emma said against his lips as she eased out his cock. “Please. Please, now. I need you inside me.”
“Yes.” It was the only word he was capable of as he reached beneath her petticoats to take off her drawers. “Yes.”
James walked her backward, lifting her onto the writing desk. Then he jerked up her skirts and thrust into her.
They moaned together, held onto each other with the desperation of two people cast into the sea with a single lifebelt. The only sound in the room was the rough rhythm of their breath as their pleasure grew.
When she slid her legs around his waist and whispered nonsense words between kisses, James knew he was gone. He was lost. What did it matter who this woman was? Whether she was mortal or goddess, dream or real?
All the lies in the world could not contrive this, the way their bodies craved contact.
When she came, she dug her fingernails into his jacket and his only regret was that they would not mark his skin. He wanted reminders of her, of this single truth: his name on her lips as she tossed her head back.
He was her someone.
It had always been him.
He returned her truth with his own. “Emma.” He said it as if it were a revelation as he spilled inside her. “Emma.”
When she pulled back to kiss him again, he brushed his fingertips down her cheek and realized it was the first time they had made love in the light.
Chapter 20
What could Emma say to him now?Thank youwas no longer enough.
As he stroked her hair, she was tempted to tell him that she loved him. That she had loved him since that night he had taken off her mask in the darkness and spoke of her beauty through touch.
“Stay with me,” he whispered in her ear. “Don’t leave too soon, like every other time.”
Emma went still. “What are you asking me, James? I’m a commoner, so it’s not a proposal, is it?” His hesitation told her everything she needed to know. “I thought not.”
She pushed him away and slid off the desk, then pulled up her drawers. James righted his own clothes.
