She kissed him again.
The priceless susurrus of her acquiescence fanned over his lips. “Yes.”
He kissed her harder, and then he took her hand and wordlessly led her from the library.
For the second time in one day, Isabella found herself squarely within Benedict’s territory. Even without his presence earlier when she had deposited her goodbye letter on his dressing room table with shaking hands, the room had been overwhelming. Everything about it, from the bold, stark colors of the wall hangings to the pictures on the walls, to the heavy, baroque-style wooden furniture, was him. His scent had lingered on the air.
But now that she was in his chamber, alone with him, in the midst of the night, her senses alight, their fingers entwined as he tugged her over the threshold, her earlier, clandestine visit could hardly compare.
She felt as if she had entered the lion’s den.
One more time, her foolish heart said.
This would have to be their goodbye, and she knew it. Being here in his chamber with him was wrong. The risk was great.
The reward—Benedict—was greatest of all.
The door closed softly behind them. The light in his chamber was warmer and lower than the library’s lamps had been. The book she had been reading was abandoned, and she neither knew nor cared where. All she cared about was the man whose fingers had tightened upon hers.
He thought he wanted to marry her. In the morning, he would regret his haste, but she would not be here to witness it or to suffer a broken heart. She would be gone.
But he did not know that yet, and his glimmering eyes were upon her, hard, searching. Seeing more of her than she wanted, as always.
“You are serious, sweetheart,” he observed solemnly.
If he were a cruel man, she could resist him. If he were as arrogant and unkind as she had once supposed, she never would have been vulnerable to him. But beneath the façade of handsome, golden god, he was not fashioned of cold stone at all. He was all too real. Warm flesh, breakable bone, a heart that pounded beneath her hand when she flattened her palm over his chest.
“I should not be here,” she said simply.
“I do not want to be alone tonight.” The admission seemed torn from him. Pink stained his cheekbones.
The Duke of Westmorland was flushing.
Not long ago, such a weakness would have been unthinkable. But she knew him now. He was the older brother who adored his sister. The younger brother who mourned the brother he had lost. He was the man who had swept her into his arms when she had returned from the cold. The only one who made her feel safe. As if she belonged.
Leaving him in the morning would be akin to tearing her beating heart from her own breast. And still, she knew she had to do it. For the both of them. She loved him enough to see what he could not.
“I do not want to be alone either,” she admitted at last.
“Good,” he said, tugging her into him.
Her heart gave a pang at the way he looked at her, his expression as unguarded as she had ever seen it, raw and real. She took his handsome, strong face in her hands then. “Kiss me.”
The request had scarcely left her lips before he was chasing it with his own. This kiss was deep, branding, powerful. She came to life. All the fire burning inside her, all for him, reignited. An inferno, that was what she was. For this man. All for him.
How she loved him.
Their tongues tangled. The belt on her dressing robe came undone. He slid it from her shoulders. She shrugged it away. His fingers found the buttons on her night rail, starting at her throat. When his touch grazed her bare skin, she shivered and sucked on his tongue.
She wanted his skin. If this was to be her last time with him, she was going to forget her inhibitions. She was going to be reckless and bold and wild as she had never been before, and she was going to revel in every second of it. She would remember it forever, carry these memories inside her heart when she returned to her staid life as Miss Isabella Hilgrove, proprietress. She would remember the man who had turned her to flame with his clever hands, wicked mouth, and impossible heart.
She attacked the buttons on his shirt with equal fervor, all while she drank in his kiss. Benedict’s kisses ruined her for all others. But his kisses ruined all those which had come before his as well.
Together, they shed his shirt. Her night rail went next. Then his trousers and smalls. Until they were naked. Completely, gloriously naked as they had never been before. Bare skin on bare skin. He was a marvel of planes and sinews, his skin dusted with fair hair on his chest. She kissed him everywhere her lips could reach, in a delicious fever. His flat nipples, his sculpted shoulders, the protrusion of his collarbone, the jut of his Adam’s apple. And then she was feasting upon his beautiful face, his jaw, his ear, his chin, the corners of his lips. His brow. She kissed his slashing cheekbones, the perfectly carved philtrum that rendered his mouth so tantalizing. She used her teeth on him, feeling wild. Feeling dangerous.
He made a low, keening sound of desire when she nipped his shoulder. Because she liked the way his skin tasted, she licked away the sting. He was salty and masculine and Benedict.
Delicious.
He caught her face in his big hands, holding her still while he devoured her with his gaze, as if committing her, this moment, to memory. “You make me mad with wanting you.”
She was about to tell him he made her feel the same way, but his mouth was on hers in a kiss of bruising force. He moved them across
