“What if I want to be yours?” she asked hesitantly, tipping her head back to skewer him with her bright-blue gaze. “What…if I wish for you to keep me here with you when the week is over?”
She may as well have dealt a blow to his midsection. He felt for a moment as if he could not breathe, so strong was his sudden and instinctive longing for her words to be possible. For one wild, stupid, impossible, reckless moment, he imagined keeping her here with him as she had suggested. He imagined her every night in his bed, imagined her lips always his to claim, her dulcet voice and tender concern his to keep rather than borrow.
But then he chased the fantasy. Because he had a brother to find, and Lady Emma had a life to return to. Ladies were born to twirl about ballrooms, not walk the streets of the East End in borrowed boots. Tonight could not be a clearer illustration of that.
“As what, Em?” he asked. “My mistress? A man like me doesn’t keep a lady in a tidy town house and drape her in jewels. It ain’t my way. And a woman like you ain’t a man’s mistress to begin with.”
“I do not require a grand home or jewels,” she said shyly. “All I want is you.”
If she knew the truth…
If she knew the truth of what he had done, she would not say those words. She would not want him any longer. He had known that from the moment he had first brought her to The Sinner’s Palace. The understanding had haunted him with every moment that passed. He had risen this morning to the agony not just of the wound he had received the day before, but to the anguish of knowing he would soon have to surrender her to her glittering, sheltered Mayfair world.
It was also why he had chosen to reserve the last day of their agreement as the time for the game her father would not be able to refuse. He wanted more of her time, more of her sweet concern. He wanted more days of her looking at him as if she cared for him. More nights of her in his bed.
Aye, he was every bit as much of a scoundrel as the cutpurse who had accosted her, Lily, and Hugh in the streets. Because he too wanted to steal something that was not his and make it his own. Only, there was a vast difference between the theft of a few coins in a pouch and the theft of a woman with the face and heart of a bleeding angel.
“Will you not say something?” she asked, her cheeks going pink. “If I have been too forward, I must beg your pardon.”
Saint Hugh’s bones, she was so polite. So polished and perfect and caring and considerate and kind. And he was lying to her. Using her. He hated himself. But he also could not deny the intensity of the desire for her searing him from the inside out.
“Did I disappoint you?” she prodded. “Have I done something wrong?”
“God no,” he bit out. “From the moment you first appeared in my life, Em, you have done everything right. Impeccably, perfectly, beautifully so, and I don’t deserve you. You’re an angel.”
Hisangel.
For now.
The next minute.
The next hour.
The next few days. Christ, he was going to lose her, and the knowledge, whilst it had been dancing at the periphery of his every deed and thought, hit him with so much more poignancy now.
He kissed her. Took her mouth with his, claiming her with a fierce intensity that even took him by surprise. Words had failed him, so he would show her how he felt, what she meant to him. It was the best he could do. She returned his kiss with an ardor that went straight to his groin, her tongue tangling with his.
Her fervor ignited a fire in him, even if he had promised himself he would not bed her again now that he had set his plan into motion. He was lost. Lost in her kiss, lost in her sweetness. Helpless to stop.
Until a knock at the door reminded him he’d called for a bleeding bath to be brought up for her, and he forced himself to end the kiss and step away from her. Her lips were dark and swollen from his kisses, and he wanted nothing more than to cover them with his again. He told himself he could wait. That he had to wait.
He went to the door, opening it and letting the lads bearing buckets of heated water step inside. Then he told himself he would not touch her again this night, or any day after.
But as he glanced in Lady Emma’s direction again, he knew it for a lie. He had to get out of this bleeding room, out of her presence. Now that she was safe, he needed some distance between them.
* * *
Emma steppedfrom her bath at the hearth, feeling warm and clean and relaxed and…confused.
Hart had fled the chamber after the last bucket of steaming water had been poured into the tub, leaving her to spend her bath frustrated and alone, her lips still tingling with the possession of his kiss. He had been curt and cool, almost withdrawn, as he had told her he had some matters which required his attention.
She toweled herself dry, wringing the ends of her long hair into the tub, and wondered what she had done wrong. Wondered when he would return.
A distinctive rap on the door interrupted her musings.
“Hart?” she called out, frowning as she wrapped the towel more firmly around herself for the sake of her modesty.
“Aye,” he said, his voice a low, welcome growl on the other side of the door. “Have you finished with your bath?”
“Yes,” she called, not bothering to fret over her nudity beneath the towel.
The door opened and he crossed the threshold, his hazel gaze impenetrable as it met hers. “Saint Hugh’s bones, you’re Abram.”
By now, she recognized the word. How strange to think that the language of the East End—the easy, descriptive cant—Hart’s language, had begun to become her own. She understood it.
If only she understood him.
She smiled at Hart, feeling unaccountably shy as a fresh surge of love moved through her. “Not quite naked. I do have a towel.”
The cossetted, privileged lady she had once been would never have uttered an undignified word such as naked. Nor would she have ever dared to stand before a man like Hart Sutton, her nudity scarcely shielded. She most definitely would not have dreamt of the longing coursing through her, the way her body came to life whenever he was near.
“I thought you would be dressed by now,” he grumbled, averting his gaze as he closed the portal at his back.
Perhaps, despite the passion in his kiss earlier, she had displeased him.
“You have already seen me naked,” she said, trying to discern the root of his disgruntlement. She studied his handsome face, noting the manner in which his jaw clenched, the way his hands were balled tightly at his sides, as if he were preventing himself from reaching out. “I did not think you would object.”