Silence Breaking (Storm and Silence 4)

His hand captured my chin, turning my face straight towards him. Through the shadows I could just barely make out the dark, sea-coloured pools of his eyes. ‘What makes you think I’ll ever have enough of you? Now…’ Leaning forward until his forehead touched mine and his eyes were burrowing into my soul, he whispered: ‘Say. It. Again.’

Feeling a wave of need sweep over me, I gazed into those dark eyes - and the words left my mouth before I could catch them.

‘Come inside, and I will.’

The offer hung in the air between us, heavy with meaning. Inside. Into my bedroom.

For a long moment there was nothing but silence. Then…

‘Miss Linton!’

‘Yes, Mr Ambrose, Sir?’

‘You can’t seriously be suggesting that I…!’

Standing up on my tiptoes, I pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek.

‘Oh yes, I can.’

His body shuddered under my touch.

‘I know what you’re trying to do!’

‘Do you?’ Slowly, I let my lips slide from his cheek, down over his lips, onto his throat in a gentle caress. ‘Do you really?’

Because I didn’t. Someone else had taken control of my body. Someone brave and fearless not just on the outside, but on the inside, too. Someone who wasn’t afraid to grab what she wanted when it was right in front of her.

Mr Ambrose slammed his fist into the wall. ‘I can’t! I’m a gentleman! A gentleman mustn’t….a gentleman can’t…’

‘And I am a lady,’ I heard myself tell him. ‘I know we mustn’t. I know we can’t.’

‘I have to leave.’

‘I know. Me, too.’

‘Then go! Go now, before it’s too la-’

His words drowned as I reclaimed his lips. Fumbling for the doorknob behind me, I twisted, and kicked the door open. Half-dragging, half falling, I pulled him into the room. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been able to move him an inch. But right now…

I had just admitted to loving a man. And he loved me back.

Circumstances weren’t normal.

Not at all.

‘It’s already too late,’ I told his shadowy form towering above me in the darkness. ‘It’s been too late for a good, long time.’

‘I must leave.’ His protest was nothing but a raspy whisper now. ‘Right now! It’s time to say good night.’

I pressed my forehead to his. ‘Oh, it will be a good night, all right. A very good one.’

Under my touch, I could feel his entire body harden, his muscles tensing deliciously. Capturing his face in my hands, I leaned forward, until our lips brushed against each other. ‘I love you.’

All I got in return was silence. Silence and that soul-piercing, dangerous look of his.

‘Well?’ I swallowed. I needed to hear him say it again. ‘Do you still love me, too?’

‘How about,’ he growled, taking hold of me and pushing me backwards towards the bed that held such a dangerous, delicious promise, ‘if I just show you?’