“It’s nothing,” he muttered, and he turned again, fully expecting his feet to carry him out of the gallery. But they didn’t. He stood breathlessly still, his back to her as his mind screamed at him to just . . . move. Take a step. Go!
But instead he turned, some traitorous part of him still desperate for one last look at her.
“As you wish,” she said quietly.
And then, before he had a chance to consider his actions, he found himself striding back toward her. “Precisely,” he said.
“I’m sorry?” Her eyes clouded with confusion. Confusion twinned with unease.
“As I wish,” he repeated. “That’s what you said.”
“Lord Winstead, I don’t think—”
He came to a halt three feet away from her. Beyond the length of his arms. He trusted himself, but not completely.
“You shouldn’t do this,” she whispered.
But he was too far gone. “I wish to kiss you. That is what I wanted you to know. Because if I’m not going to do it, and it appears that I am not, because it isn’t what you want, at least not right now . . . but if I’m not going to do it, you need to know that I wanted it.” He paused, staring at her mouth, at her lips, full and trembling. “I still want it.”
He heard a rush of air gasp across her lips, but when he looked into her eyes, their blue so midnight they might as well have been black, he knew that she wanted him. He had shocked her, that much was obvious, but still, she wanted him.
He wasn’t going to kiss her now; he had already realized it was not the right time. But he had to let her know. She had to know just what it was he wanted.
What she wanted, too, if only she allowed herself to see it.
“This kiss,” he said, his voice burning with tightly held desire. “This kiss . . . I wish for it with a fervor that shakes my soul. I have no idea why I wish it, only that I felt it the moment I saw you at the piano, and it has only intensified in the days since.”
She swallowed, and the candlelight danced across her delicate neck. But she didn’t say anything. That was all right; he had not expected her to.
“I want the kiss,” he said huskily, “and then I want more. I want things you cannot even know about.”
They stood in silence, eyes locked.
“But most of all,” he whispered, “I want to kiss you.”
And then, in a voice so soft it was barely more than breath, she said, “I want it, too.”
Chapter Nine
I want it, too.
She was mad.
There could be no other explanation. She had spent the last two days telling herself all the reasons why she could not possibly allow herself to want this man, and now, at the first moment when they were truly alone and secluded, she said that?
Her hand flew up to cover her mouth, and she had no idea if it was from shock or because her fingertips had more sense than the rest of her and were trying to prevent her from making a huge, huge mistake.
“Anne,” he whispered, staring at her with searing intimacy.
Not Miss Wynter. Anne. He was taking liberties; she had not given him permission to use her given name. But she could not summon the outrage she knew she should feel. Because when he called her Anne, it was the first time she felt as if the name was truly hers. For eight years she had called herself Anne Wynter, but to the rest of the world she was always Miss Wynter. There had been no one in her life to call her Anne. Not a single person.
She wasn’t sure she’d even realized it until this very moment.
She’d always thought she wanted to be Annelise again, to return to a life where her biggest concern was which dress to wear each morning, but now, when she heard Lord Winstead whisper her name, she realized that she liked the woman she’d become. She might not have liked the events that had brought her to this point, or the still present fear that George Chervil might someday find her and try to destroy her, but she liked herself.
It was an amazing thought.
“Can you kiss me just once?” she whispered. Because she did want it. She wanted a taste of perfection, even if she knew she could pursue it no further. “Can you kiss me once, and then never do so again?”
His eyes clouded, and for a moment she thought he might not speak. He was holding himself so tightly that his jaw trembled, and the only noise was the labored sound of his breath.
Disappointment trickled through her. She didn’t know what she had been thinking, to ask such a thing. One kiss, and then nothing else? One kiss, when she, too, knew that she wanted so much more? She was—