The Promise in a Kiss (Cynster 0.50)

They broke the kiss.

Both of them. They needed to breathe, needed to think. Had to pull back from the brink.

They were both breathing rapidly, each one’s gaze locked on the other’s lips.

Simultaneously, they lifted their eyes; their gazes met, held.

They searched each other’s eyes; her thoughts were reflected in his—she felt as if he could see into her soul.

This was not the right place, not the right time.

Whether there would ever be a right place, a right time, neither knew, but they could not go further tonight.

They both knew it. Recognized the fact.

Whe

n the pounding in her ears eased enough for her to hear, Helena drew in a deep breath and softly said, “Let me go.”

Not an order, but a simple direction.

He hesitated. Then his grip eased, bit by bit. As his touch left her skin, she eased her hands from under his, lowered her arms. She ducked under his arm, stepped away from the wall, out of the cage of his arms.

He turned his head but didn’t otherwise move.

She took another step away, already missing—regretting the loss of—his heat. Then she lifted her head; without turning around, she said, “For your help with Markham—thank you.”

She hesitated for an instant, then walked to the door.

Her hand was on the knob when she heard him murmur, soft and low, “Until later, mignonne.”

Sebastian let himself into his house in Grosvenor Square in the small hours. After leaving Lady Castlereagh’s, he’d repaired to his club, then gone with friends to a hell. No game of chance had been able to distract him from his thoughts; the hours had served only to crystallize his resolution.

Leaving his cloak and cane in the front hall, he went into the library. After lighting a lamp, he settled behind his desk—settled to the letter he’d decided to write.

He addressed it to Thierry. Helena was staying under Thierry’s roof, nominally in his care; his wife had introduced her to society. De Sèvres’s relationship to Helena he was less sure of, and when all was said and done, he didn’t trust the man. Thierry, despite being a Frenchman, was a straightforward soul.

The scritch-scratch of his pen across the page was the only sound discernible; the silence of the huge house, his home from birth, lay like a comfortable blanket about him.

He paused, looking down, considering what he’d written, what he had yet to say. Then he bent and wrote again, until he reached the end and closed with his flourishing signature: St. Ives.

Sanding the letter, he sat back. Looked across the room to where the embers of the fire glowed in the grate.

He didn’t know if he could do it—if he could make the concessions she’d demand, the concessions she might indeed need in order to become his duchess. But he would try. He had accepted that he must, that he had to do everything within his considerable power to ensure she became his.

His wife.

The equation was a simple one. He had to marry. And at the last moment, he’d met her, the only woman he’d ever wished to possess for all time.

It was she or no one.

He’d wanted, waited for, some sign that she wanted him, that she recognized the fact that she did. Tonight . . . tonight they’d come very close to stepping over that invisible line, taking what had thus far been an acceptable interaction into another arena, an illicit one.

They’d drawn back, but only just, and she’d known it, realized the truth as well as he.

It was enough—sign enough. Confirmation enough, if he’d needed any reassurance.

She wanted him in precisely the same way he wanted her.