The human heart weighs (on average) eleven ounces and beats (approximately) one hundred thousand times per day.
In Ancient Greece, the theory was widely held that, as the most powerful and vital part of the body, the heart acted as a brain of sorts—collecting information from all other organs through the circulatory system. Aristotle included thoughts and emotions in his hypotheses relating to the aforementioned information—a fact that modern scientists find quaint in its lack of basic anatomical understanding.
There are reports that long after a person is pronounced dead and a mind and soul gone from its casing, under certain conditions, the heart might continue beating for hours. I find myself wondering if in those instances the organ might continue to feel as well. And, if it does, whether it feels more or less pain than mine at present time.
The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury
March 31, 1831; five days prior to her wedding
That night, Pippa did not sleep.
Instead, she lay on her bed, Trotula warm and solid against her side, staring at the play of candlelight over the pink satin canopy above, and wondering, alternately, how it was that she had so thoroughly misjudged Cross, herself, and their situation, and how it was that she’d never noticed that she loathed pink satin.
It was a horrid, feminine thing—all emotion.
A lone tear slid down her temple and into her ear, unpleasant, wet discomfort. She sniffed. There was nothing productive about emotion.
She took a deep breath.
He was marrying another.
She loved him, and he was marrying another.
As was she.
But for some reason, it was his impending marriage that seemed to change everything. That seemed to mean more. To represent more.
To hurt more.
Silly, pink satin. Silly canopies. They didn’t serve a single useful purpose.
Trotula lifted her soft brown head as another tear escaped. The hound’s wide pink tongue followed its path, and the quiet canine understanding set off a torrent of the salty things—a flood of wretched drops and hiccups that Pippa could not halt. She turned onto her side, tears obscuring the silver mask from Pandemonium where it lay on the bedside table, gleaming in the candlelight. She should never have accepted the invitation to the event. Should never have believed it would come without cost—that any of this would come without cost.
The candle’s flame burned as she stared at it, whites and oranges barely wavering above a perfect blue orb. She closed her eyes, the memory of the flame bright even then, and took another deep breath, wishing the ache in her chest would go away. Wishing thoughts of him would go away. Wishing sleep would come.
Wishing she could go back to that morning, eight days earlier, when she’d decided to approach him, and stop herself.
How a week had changed everything.
Had changed her.
What a mess she had made.
Aching sadness rolled through her like a storm, cold and tight and bitterly unpleasant. She cried for who knew how long—two minutes. Maybe ten. Maybe an hour.
Long enough to feel sorry for herself. Not long enough to feel any better.
When she opened her eyes, she returned her attention to the candle, still and unmoving even as it burned unbearably bright. And then it did move, dancing and flickering in an unexpected draft.
A draft followed by a great woof and a thud as Trotula left the bed, tail wagging madly, and threw herself at the doors that led out to the narrow balcony just off Pippa’s bedchamber. Doors once closed, now open, now framing the man Pippa loved, frozen just inside the room, tall and serious and beautifully disheveled.
As she watched, he took a deep breath and ran both hands through thick red hair, pushing it off his face, his high cheekbones and long straight nose stark and angled in the candlelight.
He was unbearably handsome. She’d never in her life longed for anything the way she longed for him. He’d promised to teach her about temptation and desire and he’d done powerfully well; her heart raced at the sight of him, at the sound of his heavy breath. And yet . . . she did not know what came next.
“You are beautiful,” he said.
What came next was anything he wished.
Trotula lifted herself onto her hind legs and planted her forepaws on his torso, whining and sighing, quivering with excitement. He caught the dog with strong hands, keeping her upright and giving her all the affection for which she begged, instantly finding the soft spot on her temple that turned her to mush. She groaned and leaned into him, thoroughly smitten.
For the first time in her life, Pippa wished she did not have a pet. “She is a terrible protector.”
He stilled at that, and the three remained that way for a long moment, silent. “You require protection from me?”
Yes.
She did not reply, instead saying, “Trotula, enough.” The dog returned to all-paws, but did not stop staring up at her new love with her enormous, soulful gaze. Pippa could not fault her traitorous nature. “It seems she likes you.”
“I have a special talent for ladies,” he said in a warm, kind voice she at once loved and loathed. A vision of Sally Tasser flashed. And the prostitute at the card table that evening. And Knight’s pretty daughter.
She swung her legs off the side of her bed. “So I’ve seen.” His attention snapped immediately to her, but she changed tack. “This room is on the third floor.”
Another man would have hesitated. Would not have instantly understood. “I would have climbed farther to see you.” He paused. Then, “I had to see you.”
The ache returned. “You could have fallen. Hurt yourself.”
“Rather that than hurt you.”
She looked down at her lap, hands twisted in the white linen of her nightgown, and whispered, “You once told me that if Castleton hurt me, he wasn’t doing it right.”
He stilled. “Yes.”
She met his eyes. “You’re not doing it right.”
He was across the room in an instant, on his knees at the side of the bed, his hands on hers, sending rivers of excitement and heat and elation through her even as she knew she should push him away and return him, immediately, out the window through which he came, three stories be damned.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he whispered. “I should be anywhere but here.” He bowed his head, his forehead coming to rest on their hands. “But I had to see you. I had to explain.”
She shook her head. “There is nothing to explain,” she said. “You are marrying another.” She heard the hitch in her voice, the slight hesitation between the first and second syllables of another. Hated it.
Closed her eyes. Willed him gone.
Failed.
“You told me you wouldn’t marry. Another lie.”
It was as though she hadn’t spoken. He did not deny it. “You’ve been crying.”
She shook her head. “Not on purpose.”
One side of his beautiful mouth rose in a crooked smile. “No, I don’t imagine it was.”
Something about the words, soft and filled with humor and something else, made her suddenly, startlingly irritated. “You made me cry,” she accused.
He went serious. “I know.”
“You are marrying another.” She repeated the words for what seemed like the hundredth time. The millionth. As though if she said them enough, they would lose their meaning. Their sting.
He nodded. “As are you.”
She’d been engaged for as long as they’d known each other. But somehow, his impending marriage was a greater betrayal. It was illogical, she knew, but logic did not appear to have a place here.
Another reason she did not like it.
“I hate that I’ve made you cry,” he said, his fingers flexing over hers.
She stared down at the place where their hands were intertwined, loving the play of freckles over his skin, the soft down of the ginger hair there, between the first and second knuckle. Her thumb rubbed across his index finger, and she watched the strands move, stretching and bending before they snapped back to their original place, instantly forgetting her touch.
She spoke to those hairs. “When I was a child, I had a friend named Beavin.” She paused, but did not look at him. He did not speak, so she continued, not entirely knowing where she was going. “He was kind and gentle, and he listened ever so well. I used to tell him secrets—things that no one else knew. Things that no one else would understand.”
His grip on her hands tightened, and she met his gaze. “But Beavin understood. He explored Needham Manor with me. He helped me discover my love for science. He was there on the day that I stole a goose from the kitchens and dissected it. I blamed him for it. And he never minded.”
His gaze darkened. “I find I don’t care much for this perfect companion, Pippa. Where is he now?”
She shook her head. “He went away.”
His brows snapped together. “Where?”
She smiled. “Wherever imaginary friends go.”
He exhaled harshly, lifting one hand to her temple, pushing a mass of hair back from her face. “He was imaginary.”
“I never understood why others couldn’t see him,” she whispered. “Penny used to humor me . . . pretend to interact with him, but she never believed in him. My mother tried to shame him away.” She shrugged, then said, simply, “But he was my friend.”
He smiled. “I like the idea of you and your imaginary friend dissecting a goose.”
“There were a great deal of feathers.”
The smile became a laugh. “I imagine there were.”
“And not near as much blood as one might think,” she added. “Though I did scare a maid nearly to death.”
“In the name of science.”
She smiled then. “In the name of science.”
He leaned forward, and she knew he was about to kiss her. Knew, too, that she couldn’t allow it. She pulled back before their lips could touch, and he immediately retreated, releasing her and sitting back on his heels. “I am sorry.”
She stood, placing distance between them, Trotula coming to stand sentry beside her. She let her fingers work the dog’s soft ears for a long moment, unable to look at Cross. Unable to stop looking at him. “I don’t know why I told you that.”
He rose, but did not come closer. “About Beavin?”
She looked down at the floor. “It’s silly, really. I don’t even know why I thought of him. Except . . .” She trailed off.
He waited a long moment before prompting her to continue. “Except . . . ?”
“I’ve always been different. Never had many friends. But . . . Beavin didn’t mind. He never thought I was odd. And then he disappeared. And I never met another person who seemed to understand me. I never thought I would.” She paused. Gave a little shrug. “Until you.”
And now you’ll go away, too.
And it would hurt more than losing an imaginary friend ever could.
She wasn’t sure she would be able to manage it.
“I can’t help but think,” she started, then stopped. Knowing she shouldn’t say it. Knowing, somehow, that it would make everything harder. “I can’t help but think . . . if only I’d . . .”
He knew it, too. “Don’t.”
But she couldn’t stop it. She looked up at him. “If only I’d found you first.”
The words were small and sad, and she hated them, even as they brought him to her—his hands to her face, cupping her cheeks and tilting her up to him. Even as they brought his lips to hers in a kiss that robbed her of strength and will and, eventually, thought.
His long fingers threaded through her hair, holding her still as he lifted his lips, met her gaze, and whispered her name before taking her mouth again in long, lavish strokes. Again and again, he did the same, whispering her name against her lips, her cheek, the heavy pulse at the side of her neck, punctuating the word with licks and nips and sucks that set her aflame.
If only she’d known that she might find someone like him.
A match.
A love match.
They did exist. And here was the proof, in her bedchamber. In her arms. In her thoughts. Forever.
She closed her eyes tight at the thought, even as the tears came, and he sipped at them, whispering her name over and over, again and again. “Pippa . . . don’t cry, love . . . I’m not worth it . . . I’m nothing . . .”
He was wrong, of course. He was everything.
Everything she could not have.
She pulled away at the thought, pressing her palms flat to his chest, loving the warmth of him, the strength of him. Loving him. Looking up at his wild grey eyes, she whispered, “My whole life . . . two and two has made four.”
He nodded, utterly focused on her, and she loved him all over again for paying attention . . . for understanding her.
“But now . . . it’s all gone wrong.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make four anymore. It makes you.” Heat flared in his gaze, and he reached for her again, but she pulled back. “And you’re to marry another,” she whispered, “and I don’t understand.” A fat tear escaped, expelled by fear and frustration. “I don’t understand . . . and I hate it.”
He brushed the tear away with his thumb, and said, achingly soft, “It’s my turn to tell you a story. One I’ve never told another.”
Her heart in her throat, she met his gaze, knowing with keen understanding that what he was about to say to her would change everything.
But she would never have dreamed he’d say what he did.
“I killed my brother.”
He’d never said the words aloud, but somehow, remarkably, saying them to Pippa was easier than he imagined.
Saying them to Pippa would save her.
She had to understand why they couldn’t be together. She had to see why he was utterly, entirely wrong for her. Even as every ounce of him ached to claim her as his own, forever.
And the only way to show her these things was to show her the worst in him.
She stilled at the confession, her breath catching in her throat as she waited for him to go on. He almost laughed at the realization that it hadn’t occurred to him that she might not immediately exit him from the room. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might want more of an explanation.
That she might believe in him.
So few ever had.
But here she was, waiting for him to continue, quiet, serious, scientific Pippa, waiting for all the evidence to be laid out before drawing her conclusions.
Perfect Pippa.
His chest tightened at the thought, and he turned away from her, imagining that he could turn away from the truth. He went to the doors he’d left open, closing them softly as he considered his next words. “I killed my brother,” he repeated.
Another woman would have launched into a litany of questions. Pippa simply watched him, eyes wide and stunning and unimpeded by spectacles. And it was her eyes on him, sure and without judgment, that spurred him on.
He leaned back, the cool windowpane comforting against his back. “Baine was perfect,” he said. “The perfect son, the perfect heir, the perfect brother. He was full of all the honor and dignity that came with being the future Earl Harlow, and none of the crass entitlement that seemed to accompany titles in other men. He was a good brother and an even better heir.”
The words came easier now. He spread his hands wide, looking down at them. “I, on the other hand, was the perfect second son. I loved vice and loathed responsibility, I was highly skilled at spending my father’s money and my own allowance, and I had a knack for counting cards. I could turn ten pounds into a thousand, and took any opportunity to do so. I had little time for friends, even less for family.” He paused. “It never occurred to me I might someday regret that lack of time.”
She was close enough that he could reach out and touch her if he chose, but he didn’t—he didn’t want her near this story, near the boy he’d once been. He shouldn’t want her near the man he was now.
She watched him carefully, riveted to his story and for one, fleeting moment, he allowed himself to look at her, taking in her unbound hair and her blue eyes—full of knowledge and more understanding than he deserved.
He couldn’t imagine how he’d ever imagined her ordinary or plain. She was stunning. And if her beauty weren’t enough, there was her mind. She was brilliant and quick-witted, and so perfectly different than anyone he’d ever known. Two and two made him. On anyone else’s lips it would have been gibberish, but on Pippa’s it was the most seductive concept he’d ever considered.
She was everything he’d never known he wanted.
And he did want her. Enough to make him wish he were someone else. Enough to make him wish he were more. Different. Better.
Enough to make him wish that he did not have this story to tell. “It was the start of Lavinia’s first season—she’d received her vouchers to Almack’s, and she was ecstatic—certain that she would be pronounced the jewel of the ton.”
“She is beautiful,” Pippa said.
“At eighteen, she was unparalleled.” His voice went raw as he remembered his flame-haired sister, all flirtation and winning smiles. “It was her first night at Almack’s—she’d been presented at court the week prior.”
He stopped, considering the next words, but Pippa cut in. “You chaperoned her.”
He laughed bitterly at the thought. “I was supposed to. But there was nothing I wanted to do less than spend the evening at Almack’s. I hated the idea of the place—wanted nothing to do with it.”
“You were a young man. Of course you hated the idea of it.”
He looked up at that, met her eyes. “I was her brother. It was my duty.” She did not reply. Knew better. Smart girl. “I refused. Told Baine I wouldn’t go.” He trailed off, remembering that afternoon, when he’d laughed and taunted his older brother. “She wasn’t my problem, after all. Would never be my concern. I was the middle child . . . the second son. The spare and thank God for that.
“Baine was furious—a rare event, but he’d had plans to see . . .” he trailed off. A woman. “There was a Greek opera singer looking for a new protector . . .”
Pippa nodded. “I see.”
She didn’t see. Not at all.
You’ll have to see her another night, Cross had said with a laugh. I promise, a few more hours won’t alter her assets . . . or yours as a future earl.
I don’t give much credence to your promises, Baine had snapped in reply. Did you not promise our sister your chaperone tonight?
No one ever expects me to keep my word.
Cross could still remember the fury and disappointment in Baine’s gaze. You are right at that.
“We argued, but I won—it mattered not a bit to me if Lavinia had her chaperone, and because it did matter to Baine, he had no choice but to take her. They went to her party. I went to Knight’s.”
Her jaw went slack at that. “To Knight’s?”
“To Knight’s, and then . . .” He hesitated over the confession . . . knowing it would change everything. Knowing he’d never be able to take it back. Knowing she had to know—that it would do more to save her than anything else he could say. “And then to Baine’s opera singer.”
She closed her eyes at the words, and he hated himself all over again, now, seven years later. The betrayal long assigned to his brother now had a second owner—Pippa. But this was the goal, was it not? To chase her away from Knight—away from him—into the arms of her earl?
Every ounce of him protested it, but he’d spent years controlling his body, and he would not stop now.
“I was in the arms of his future mistress when the carriage threw a wheel while turning a corner.” His words were firm and without emotion. “Baine, the driver, and one footman were killed instantly. A second footman died the following day.”
“And Lavinia,” Pippa said quietly.
“Lavinia was crippled, her bright future extinguished.” His fists clenched. “I did it to her. If I’d been there . . .”
She reached for him then, her soft hands coming to his, grasping tight. “No.”
He shook his head. “I killed him, as surely as if I’d put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. If I’d been there, he’d be alive.”
“And you’d be dead!” she said harshly, drawing his attention to her blue gaze, swimming with unshed tears. “And you’d be dead.”
“Don’t you see, Pippa . . . I deserved it. I was the wicked one. The one who sinned. I was the one who gambled and lied and cheated and thieved. He was good and she was pure and I was neither; Hell came looking for me that night, thinking it would find me in that carriage. And when it found them instead, it took them.”
She shook her head. “No. None of it was your fault.”
God, how he wanted to believe her.
“I didn’t even stop after the accident. I kept at it . . . kept going to hells . . . kept winning. Tried to bury the sin with more of it.” He’d never told anyone this. Didn’t know why he was telling her. To explain who he was, perhaps. Why he was wrong for her. “Don’t you see, Pippa . . . It should have been me.”
One tear slid down her cheek. “No,” she whispered, throwing herself at him, letting him catch her and wrap her in his long arms, letting him lift her from the floor, press her against him and hold her there. “No,” she repeated, and the anguish in the sound made him ache.
“That’s what my father said. He hated me.” She started to interrupt, but he stopped her. “No. He did. And after the accident—he couldn’t look at me. Neither could my mother. We did not know if Lavinia would live or die—her leg had broken in three places, she was out of her mind with fever. And they wouldn’t let me near her. For a week, my mother said nothing to me, and my father . . .” He hesitated, the pain of the memory burning for a moment before he continued, “My father said the same five words. Over and over. It should have been you.”
“Jasper,” she whispered his given name in the darkness, and a part of him, long buried, responded to the sound of it. “He was grieving. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t have.”
He ignored the words . . . the pain in them. “They couldn’t look at me, and so I left.”
He met her blue eyes. Saw the understanding in them. “Where did you go?”
“The only place I could think to go.” He stopped, knowing that this was the part of the story that most mattered. Considering his words.
He did not have to hide from her. She was already there. “To Knight’s.”
“I gambled for days. Straight. No sleep. I went from the tables on the floor of the hell to the beds above—tried to lose myself in gaming and women.” He paused, hating the story. The boy he’d been. “I swore not to look back.”
“Orpheus,” she said.
One side of his mouth kicked up. “You’re too smart for your own good.”
She smiled. “It helps when I’m with you.”
The words reminded him of how much he liked this woman. Of how much he shouldn’t. “Orpheus in reverse. From Earth into Hell. Full of pain and sin and every kind of vice. I should not be alive now to tell the tale.”
“But you are.”
He nodded. “I am alive, and Baine isn’t; I am well, and Lavinia suffers.”
“It’s not your fault.” She came into his arms again, wrapping her arms about him and repeating the words to his chest. “It’s not your fault.”
He wanted to believe her so badly. But it wasn’t true.
“But it is.” He held her to him and confessed his sins to her beautiful cornsilk hair. “I killed my brother. That is the cross I bear.”
She heard it . . . stilled. Looked up at him. And his brilliant Pippa understood. “The cross you bear.” His lips twisted in a wry smile. “That’s why you took the name. Cross.”
“To remember whence I came. To recall sins past.”
“I hate it.”
He released her. “You shan’t be around it much longer, love.”
Her beautiful blue eyes grew wide and sad at the words, and it was he who hated . . . hated this night and their situation and himself. He swore, the word harsh in the candlelight. “I couldn’t save them,” he confessed before vowing. “But, goddammit . . . I can save you.”
She jerked back. “Save me?”
“Knight knows who you are. He will ruin you if I don’t stop him.”
“Stop him how?” He met her gaze, and she knew. He could hear it in her voice. “Stop him how?”
“I marry his daughter, he keeps your secrets.”
She stiffened in his arms, brows snapping together. “I don’t care a fig if he tells the world my secrets.”
She would care, of course. She would care when Knight planted the seed of their time together in the ear of the aristocracy. In Castleton’s ear. She would care when it ruined her marriage and her future and her sisters’ happiness. She would care when her parents could no longer look her in the eye. “You should care. You have a life to live. You have a family to think of. You have an earl to marry. I won’t have your ruination on my head. I won’t have it alongside all the rest.”
She pulled herself up to her full height, caring not a bit that she was half-dressed and could likely not see very well. It didn’t matter, of course. She was a queen. “I am not in need of saving. I am perfectly well without it. For a scandalous, wicked man, you are all too willing to assume the mantle of responsibility.”
“You are my responsibility.” Did she not see that? “You became my responsibility the moment you entered my office.”
She’d been his from the start.
Her gaze narrowed. “I was not looking for a keeper.”
Irritation flared. He took her shoulders in hand and made his promise. “Well, you haven’t a choice. I have spent years atoning for my sins, desperate to keep from wreaking more destruction than I already have. I will not have you near it. I will not have you touched by it.” The words came on a flood of desperation . . . panic that he could not deny. “Dammit, Pippa, I have to do this. Don’t you see?”
“I don’t.” There was panic in her voice as well, in the way her fingers gripped his arms tight. “What of me? What of my responsibility? You think I will not feel the heavy weight of your marrying a woman you don’t know out of some false sense of honor?”
“There is nothing false about this,” he said. “This is what I can give you.” He reached for her, pulled her close. Wished it was forever. “Don’t you see, love? Saving you . . . it’s my purpose. I have tried so hard . . .” He trailed off.
“To what?” When he did not immediately answer, she added, “Jasper?”
Perhaps it was his name on her lips that made him tell the truth . . . perhaps it was the soft question—and something he was too afraid to name—in her blue eyes . . . perhaps it was simply her presence.
But he told her. “To atone. If not for me . . . Baine would be alive, and Lavinia would be well.”
“Lavinia has chosen her life,” Pippa argued. “She’s a husband and children . . .”
“A husband in debt to Knight. Children who must grow in the shadow of their useless father. A marriage born of my own father’s fear that he’d never rid himself of his crippled daughter.”
She shook her head. “That’s not your sin.”
“Of course it is!” he burst out, spinning away from her. “It’s all mine. I’ve spent the last six years trying to rewrite it, but that is my past. It’s my legacy. I am the contact for the girls at the Angel . . . I choose to be. I try to keep them safe. The second they want out . . . the moment they choose another life for themselves, I help them. They come to me; I get them out. I’ve helped dozens of them . . . found places for them, work that can be done on their feet instead of their back. Country estates where they can be safe . . . every one of them a placeholder for her.”
For the sister he could not save, whose life he’d destroyed.
For the brother whose life he’d taken as surely as if he’d crashed the damn carriage himself.
“It’s not your fault,” she said again. “You couldn’t have known.”
He’d thought the words a hundred times. A million. But they never comforted. “If Baine were earl . . . he would have heirs. He would have sons. He would have the life he deserved.”
“The life you deserve as well.”
The words came on a vision of that life. Of those little blond, bespectacled girls and laughing boys capturing frogs in the heat of a Devonshire summer. Of their mother. Of his wife. “That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t deserve it. I stole it from him. I robbed it from him while I was in the arms of his mistress.”
She stilled at the words. “His mistress. That’s why you didn’t touch me. Didn’t kiss me. Why you don’t . . . with other women.” How the hell did she know that? She answered before he could ask the question. “The lady at the card table . . . and Miss Tasser . . . they both implied that . . .”
Dammit. “Did they.” It was not a question.
She pinned him with that knowing blue gaze. “Is it true?”
He could lie. He’d spent half a decade convincing London that he hadn’t stopped the rakish behavior. That he’d made women his life’s work. He could lie, and she’d never discover the truth.
But he did not want to lie to her. Not about this. “It’s been six years.”
“Since you’ve lain with a woman?”
He did not speak, and the truth was in the silence.
She pressed on, eyes wide. “Since you’ve lain with any woman?”
She sounded so shocked. “Any woman.”
“But . . . your reputation. You’re a legendary lover!”
He inclined his head. “I told you that you should not believe everything you hear in ladies’ salons.”
“Forgive me, but if I remember correctly, you did divest me of my clothes without the use of your hands.”
The image of her in his office, draped over his chair, flashed. More welcome than he’d ever admit. He met her gaze. “Luck.”
“You don’t believe in it.”
She was incredible. His perfect match.
“Six years without touching a woman,” she said in awe.
He paused. “Until tonight.”
“Until me,” she breathed.
He wanted to share that breath, to touch her again. “I can’t stop myself with you.”
Her lips curved into a smile of utter feminine satisfaction, and Cross was instantly heavy and stiff, even as he renewed his vow not to take her. Not to lose himself in her. Not even now, when she owned him inch by unworthy inch.
“It is your punishment, then? Your penance? Celibacy?”
“Yes.” On her lips, it sounded idiotic. Celibacy had no place near Philippa Marbury. Not when she was so obviously made for him.
Fifteen minutes in an alcove at the Angel had not been enough.
A lifetime would not be enough.
“I cannot. Not with you, Pippa. You’re to be married.”
She hesitated, then whispered, “To another.”
He ached at the words. “Yes. To another.”
“Just as you are.”
“Yes.” His ultimate penance.
She lifted one hand, settling the soft palm on his cheek and he could not resist capturing it with his own hand, holding her touch there. Savoring it. “Jasper.” His given name whispered through him, and he loved it on her lips. Wanted to hear it over and over again, forever. If he were another man, he might have a chance to.
But he had to leave her.
She was not his to touch.
“Jasper,” she whispered again, coming up on her bare toes, wrapping her other hand around his neck, pressing her beautiful body against him, nothing but a scrap of linen between his hands and her soft, lovely skin.
He shouldn’t.
Every inch of him ached for her—the product of too long a time without her followed by too brief a time with her. He wanted to lift her and throw her onto her bed and take her . . . just once.
It would never be enough.
“If you really want to save me . . .” she whispered, her lips disastrously close.
“I do,” he confessed. “God help me . . . I can’t bear the thought of you hurt.”
“But you have hurt me. You hurt me even now.” Her voice was low and soft, with a thread of irresistible wickedness he did not expect.
His hands came around her waist, adoring the heat of her through her night rail. “Tell me how to stop it,” he said . . . knowing the answer.
“Want me,” she said.
“I do.” He had wanted her since the moment he met her. Since before. “I want every inch of you . . . I want your mind and body and soul.” He hesitated, the words an ache in the room. “I have never wanted anything like you.”
Her fingers slid into his hair, tangling in the strands. “Touch me.”
He couldn’t deny her. He couldn’t resist looking back.
One glance. One night.
It was all he could have. It was more than he had ever deserved.
One night, and he’d leave her to her perfect, ideal world.
One night, and he would return to his Hell.
“I won’t ruin your life, Pippa. I won’t let you be destroyed.”
She pressed her lips to his, her soft skin making him mad, and whispered so quietly he almost didn’t hear it. “I love you.”
The words rocketed through him, and he couldn’t stop himself from lifting her into his arms and giving them both what they wanted. What would change everything and nothing at the same time. He lifted her against him, adoring the way she followed his lead, pressing herself to him, running her mouth across his jaw, setting him on fire.
She shouldn’t love him.
He wasn’t worth it.
Wasn’t worth her.
“You are a remarkable man,” she said, lips at his ear. “I cannot help it.”
One night would destroy him.
But there was no resisting her. Her brilliant mind. Her beautiful face.
There never had been.