She did not turn to face him when he let the door to the kitchens close behind him, shutting out the empty house that had haunted him since the day she left. Instead, she remained still beneath the snow, and he found himself envious of the flakes that had permission to caress her face.
He watched her for a long moment, unmoving. Perhaps if he never moved…if he never spoke…perhaps then the moment would not end, and she would not leave, and he would not be alone once more.
But he had to speak. “I am sorry.”
“For what?” She spoke to the sky, and somehow, madly, he turned and looked to the clouds, as though they might answer for him. They didn’t, however. Perhaps because there was too much for which he must atone.
For everything.
“For being an ass.”
Her full lips, kissed by snowflakes, curved in a tiny smile, there and gone before he could savor it.
Then she said, “Why haven’t you married?”
“I’ve never wanted to.” It was a lie.
“I’m sure countless women have courted you,” she said. “I’m sure they were beautiful and droll and rich and perfect.”
They hadn’t. And even if they had, it was difficult to imagine a woman more perfect than Jack. But he couldn’t find a way to say that. So instead, he repeated himself. “I’ve never wanted to.”
She looked to him then, her cheeks flushed red with the cold. “Not even to me.”
Yes to you. Always to you. “What did you mean when you said people change?”
She turned away again. “Did I say that?”
“Inside. At dinner.”
She smiled, small and knowing. “I wondered if you were eavesdropping.”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping.”
She slid a look at him. “No?”
His cheeks grew warm. “No. It’s impossible to eavesdrop inside one’s own home.”
“Well, that’s absolutely incorrect.”
When he did not reply, she seemed to consider her next words carefully—un-Jack-like. He hated that. He wanted the immediate answer and not the crafted one. The truth, and not the lie. “I suppose I meant that it isn’t impossible to imagine that you might find happiness once more.”
He didn’t like that, either. Like he was a stray to be cared for. “So that’s it? You’re here to try your hand at mending me?”
She did not rise to the challenge in the words. “Are you mendable?”
“Not by you.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He let the words trail off.
Because I don’t wish to be mended for another.
He sure as hell wasn’t telling her that.
Her enormous eyes seemed to see it anyway, to see all the bits he’d been trying to hide since he’d found her in his kitchens in the dead of night. Since before that. Finally, she nodded, turning back to the snow. “It’s getting dark. Soon we shan’t be able to see the snow.”
He was riveted by the flakes tangled in her hair, his hands itching to pull it down and complete her transformation into a Christmas angel. “You always wanted snow on Christmas.”
She smiled, breaking him. “And now I have it.”
“Perhaps—” He caught the words before they cracked. Cleared his throat. “Perhaps it’s a sign.”
She turned to him. “Of?”
“That the future might bring you everything you want.”
“Starting now?”
He shrugged. “Seems that a marriage is a good time to begin a future.”
“So, tomorrow, then.”
He nodded, hating the knot in his throat. “One more day of the past, and then, the future.”
She faced him. “One more night, you mean.”
Was she saying what he imagined she was saying?
We were always better at night.
He nodded.
Was there anything he wouldn’t give to spend it with her?
What would she do if he asked her for it? For old time’s sake. Or, better yet, if he reached for her and took it? He could. His fingers were eager for her. Eager to reseat themselves in her hair and scatter her pins and pull her close. How many times had he done it? What was once more?
It took every ounce of his strength to keep still.
She looked back to the gardens, her eyes full of secrets. “We were last in Greece. There is an island in the Cyclades, in the heart of the Aegean Sea, called Naxos. The water there is blue as sapphires, and the buildings white as clouds. The main town is a fishing village filled with old men who play table games with shiny, smooth stones, and children who shout and splash in the water, and young men who bring in the catch and young women who clean it.
“The town of Chora is built on a hill with streets so convoluted, they are a literal labyrinth—your travels might lead you to a home, or to the town surgeon, or to a bookshop, or a restaurant, but they might also lead you right back to where you started—the locals say that the town chooses who may remain. At the center of the labyrinth, there is a market that sells trinkets and treats and honey candy and cones filled high with fish, and there must be a hundred cats, all waiting to weave through your ankles for a taste of your lunch. And it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”
He was jealous of that place, for having her memories. And angry that such a place was so much a part of her and he hadn’t been there. Even though she made him see it as though they were there, toes in the warm sand instead of the cold snow.
“A half mile north of the town is the Portara, a massive marble door, rising thirty feet high from the sea into the sky. It’s what is left of a temple that is no longer there, and no longer remembered. But those who live there call it Apollo’s door.” She stopped. “Do you know the story of Apollo and Daphne?”
“No.” His voice was all gravel.
“Apollo was”—she waved a hand vaguely—“god of basically everything. The flock, the hunt, music, poetry, sickness, health, sun, knowledge. And a great warrior to boot.”
“He sounds like a git.”
She smiled. “As a matter of fact, he was a git. And a proper braggart.”
“And did Daphne bring him down a peg?”
She turned back to the fast-darkening sky, and spoke. “Apollo didn’t like the fact that Eros received such accolades from humans—”
“Eros, as in Cupid? The portly baby?”
She cut him a sly look. “A portly baby with very sharp arrows.”
Something came loose in him and he grinned, enjoying himself. He’d always loved her stories. “Go on.”
“At any rate…It seems you’d best learn from this tale, as Apollo also thought Eros less deserving of respect than himself, and told him as much.”
Eben put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “I’m guessing our infant friend did not care for it.”
“In fact, he did not. He immediately strung one of his golden arrows and shot Apollo right in the heart—and the god fell madly in love with a nymph, young and beautiful beyond words. Daphne.”
Eben could easily imagine the moment. “Lucky Apollo.”
“You forget this is a Greek myth, Your Grace,” she teased. “No one is ever lucky.”
“Don’t tell me. The baby strikes again.”
She laughed, and he fisted his hands to resist pulling her to him to kiss the sound from her lips. “Quite literally,” she said. “While Apollo stood, breathless, stymied by Daphne’s beauty and his own nearly unbearable love, Eros strung a second arrow, this one of lead.”
Embarrassing as it was, Eben found himself unable to breathe, stymied by a different beauty and her story.
“His aim was true, and the leaden arrow filled Daphne with a powerful hate for Apollo.”
Eben cursed, soft and muted in the snowfall, but Jack heard him and nodded. “Exactly. So Apollo chased the woman he loved, and Daphne ran from the man she loathed. And Eros laughed and laughed, for he had proven his power.” She paused, then added, “They say that if you stand in t
hat doorway on Naxos, you risk the same fate as Apollo and Daphne. You risk being struck by one of Eros’s arrows.”
“Gold? Or lead?”
She shook her head. “There’s no way to tell. You must risk it. Give yourself up to love or hate. To the two clearest markers of our humanity.”
“And did you? Give yourself up?”
She turned to face him, her eyes clear and beautiful. “I did.”
“And so? Was it gold or lead?”
She held her hand out to the snow once more. Then said, quietly, “I wished for lead.”
The words struck like the arrow they referenced. “And did you receive it?”
She shook her head. And Eben’s breath grew more harsh. They’d returned to England after that. To London. To him. “And what did you think of, inside that door?”
She remained focused on the snow in her hand, falling in wild flakes, melting into her skin. Becoming part of her. Christ. He was jealous of snow and Greece and cats and an ancient door that had seen the wind of the past whip her hair and skirts into a frenzy.
“I thought of the same thing I thought of everywhere we went.” She paused, then, softly, “Every time we saw something beautiful. Or magical. Or unspoiled. Or flawed.”
He drew closer to her, and she lifted her gaze to his, clear and honest. He raised a hand and placed his fingers to her cheek, rosy with cold. “What was that?”
Her eyes closed, and a snowflake landed on her lashes. He was consumed by that little white speck; it seemed the weight of it kept her eyes closed as she whispered. “I thought of you. I thought of you, and I came home.”
Eben kissed the snow and the words from her lips, soft and full, lingering just enough to taste the cool liquid against his heated breath. When he lifted his mouth from hers and opened his eyes, it was to find her watching him again, eyes full of tears. “I missed you so much,” she said again. “Every minute.”
The words cracked him open. He pressed his forehead to hers and whispered, “Not like I missed you. Not like air. Not like heat.”
She took a deep breath, letting it out on a long exhale, and he heard the tremor in it—saw it in the puff of air she released into the cold night. And then he was reaching for her, desperate to kiss her again, to hold her, to make her warm. To make her his.
He pulled her closer, as he had a hundred times before—a thousand if he counted his dreams—and she went, fitting herself to him, her fingers finding their place in his snowy hair, as he took her mouth again in a rough, searing kiss. The kind of kiss he’d wanted to give her for twenty-four hours. The kind of kiss that marked her. That marked them both.
She was his.
She had been, from the start. Shot with a golden arrow. Just as he had been. She was his, and it was Christmas, and he would have her tonight, and tomorrow be damned. For once in his life, he would have what he wanted.
And he would give her everything she wanted in return.
“Not like heaven.” He kissed her again and again, his hands running over her skin, cold from the snow, pulling her tighter to him, kissing her until they were both gasping for air, and he pulled away enough to speak. “You are mine,” he said, pulling back and finding her gaze, glassy and distant in the darkness. “Tonight, Jack, you are mine again.”
She nodded without hesitation, pulling him down to meet her lips. “Yes,” she said against him. “I am yours.”
Then she was kissing him, and it was everything he had forgotten and everything he had remembered for twelve long, empty years—her magnificent taste, her wild enthusiasm, the way she set him aflame with the stroke of her tongue. Her little sighs, the way her fingers and teeth and tongue claimed him even as he claimed her.
He let her take the lead for a while, reveling in her touch and her kiss—in the proof of her passion for him, of the desire that matched his.
No. Not matched.
Nothing could match how he wanted her. How he’d longed for her.
Nothing could match how he ached for her now.
Nothing could match the pleasure he would give them both.
And then she was in his arms, and he was carrying her back into the house, letting the kitchen door slam behind him as he took the long strides to the back staircase and carried her up, up to the place she haunted every night, like a ghost.
But there was nothing ghostly about this Jack when he set her on her feet and they undressed each other, every movement a memory. His jacket and shirt were gone in an instant, her hands stroking over his shoulders as he pressed a soft kiss to the place where her neck met her collarbone.
He turned her and set his hands to the ties of her gown, unwrapping her like a gift, peeling away the red velvet and then the whalebone and linen, until he was staring at the long line of her back, mouth dry, fingers raised to touch her.
It was his turn to tremble.
For twelve years he’d ached for this. For free access to her. For another chance to touch her. To pleasure her. To love her. How could he let her go tomorrow?
He couldn’t.
He’d never let her go again.
As he hesitated, she turned to face him, holding the fabric he’d freed to her, hiding herself from him. His gaze fell to the gold locket against her skin, and then lower, to the place on her chest where brown skin dusted with freckles shifted to white, the line stark and sultry, the border of what belonged to the sun and sky and what belonged to him.
He reached for that line, unable to resist setting his fingers to it, being singed by it. “I wish I’d been with you. I wish I’d known the sun that marked you here.”
“I wish it, too.”
“I want to take you back to that place. I want to stand in the door.” Something flashed in her eyes—something like disbelief. And he kept talking, eager to keep it at bay. “I want to lie in the sun and count the new freckles it gives you.”
A flush rose beneath his touch. “You’re not supposed to like freckles.”
“Says who?”
“Ladies’ magazines. They say freckles are undesired.”
He couldn’t help the little laugh that escaped him. “Jack, I assure you, your freckles are desired.”
She laughed, the sound fading into a sigh as he leaned down and brushed his lips across her sun-kissed skin, taking the fabric she clutched into his own grasp. She relinquished it, her fingers coming to his hair again, threading into it, her touch threatening to lay him low.
“Shall I tell you why I desire them?” he asked, his voice hoarse with it.
“By all means.” Her voice was low and full of desire, and he grew impossibly harder at the sound.
“I want them because they show where you’ve been. The world you’ve seen. I want them because they are all the years I missed. I want them because I might learn them, and live those years again, but this time, with you.”
He lowered his mouth to her skin and offered his own kisses there, worshipping every mark as he followed the line of them to the paler skin below, and then to the straining, aching tip of one breast. “Do you know how many times I’ve dreamed of this?” he whispered to the puckered skin begging for his touch. “Do you know how many nights I’ve imagined taking you into my mouth again? How many hours I’ve spent trying to remember the precise pitch of the cry I know I can wring from you here?”
“Eben…” she whispered, her fingers tightening in his hair. “Please.”
“Shall we see if I remember correctly?” he said, dark and teasing as he set his mouth to her, suckling with long pulls, loving the way she threw her head back and gasped, then sighed, and then—when he ran his tongue and teeth over her sensitive flesh—cried out.
It was everything he remembered.
It was infinitely better.
He was hard as steel and threatening to come right then, at the sound of her pleasure, and he didn’t care. Not as long as he could bask in her satisfaction.
Releasing her nipple, he took her mouth once more and brushed her clothes to the floor bef
ore lifting her to the edge of his bed—high enough to leave her legs dangling above the floor. She reached for him. “Come…join me…”
Not yet. Not after twelve years of forsaking her. And in truth, as much as he wanted to join her, he wanted something else more.
He wanted to worship her.
He went to his knees, pushing between her thighs, pressing kisses to the soft skin beneath her breasts and over the perfect swell of her belly, even as she moved to stop him, to hide whatever she perceived as imperfection on her perfect body.
He would not be stopped, settling between her thighs and pressing her back to the bed. She sighed again, her fingers sliding into his hair, another memory. “I’ve dreamed…” she began and trailed off as he tongued the soft crease where her thigh and hip met.
He lifted his head. “What, love?”
Her fingers tightened, directing him. Did she mean to? The thought made him ache with the need to spend. Christ, he hoped she meant to. He’d let her guide him for the rest of their days. He’d devour her whenever she wanted.
He set his lips to her.
“I dreamed of this,” she whispered, lifting her hips to meet the touch of his tongue. She was so sweet—so magnificent. “I ached for this,” she added, letting her thighs fall open as she confessed her need again and again above him.
All as he consumed her, holding her wide as he licked and sucked at her, making love to her with slow, savoring strokes. She tasted the same. Rich like wine, dark like pleasure. And he wanted to drink her forever. He was slow and gentle, exploring the soft, slick lines he’d dreamed of for years, rolling his tongue over the places he remembered she liked, again and again, over and over, until she was gasping his name and pulling him to her and pressing her lips to his, letting him devour her until she was wild with need, begging him for her pleasure.
And he gave it to her. Slow turning to fast, his tongue working in time to his lips, and then, when she lifted her hips to him and her fingers clenched in his hair, fastest—until she screamed his name and he held her and let her take her pleasure, and he reveled in his ability to give it.
He stilled against her, prolonging her climax with a gentle, steady suck, until she released the breath she held and relaxed onto the bed, boneless. Perfect.
How the Dukes Stole Christmas Page 16