“That’s not trusting me.”

He started to reply. Stopped. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to talk.” He lifted her in his arms, her legs wrapping about his waist. “I just want to love you. All of you. Once, before it’s over.”

Before it’s over.

The words crashed around her as she took his face in her hands, and returned the kiss he settled on her lips, deep and longing. She didn’t like the finality in them. The sense that everything important was ending tonight.

Not sense. Truth.

Tonight would end the myth of Chase. It would end the fabrication of Anna.

And it would leave Georgiana alone once more, to face Society and its wolves.

To create a new future.

But she did not want the future. She wanted the present. This moment.

This man.

“I wish…” his words were low and dark in her ear, and she met his gaze.

“What?” She moved against him, rocked into him sending pleasure through her and, she hoped, through him.

It worked. He smiled, his eyes closing. “It sounds mad, but I wish we’d done this in a bed. Like ordinary people.”

“There is a bed.”

He tilted his head, looking pleased as punch. “There is?”

She nodded. “There is.”

He set her on her feet and she guided him into her apartments through several doors and into the room where she slept most evenings. He paused in the doorway, looking at the bed, upholstered and curtained in white. He shook his head. “All this time, London has wagered and sinned and bathed themselves in vice… and you have reigned from this white bed – fit for a pristine princess.”

She smiled. “Pristine no more.”

He turned his hot gaze on her. “No more.”

And then she was in his arms, and he was lifting her, carrying her, setting loose an ache deep in her. She – who’d spent the last six years giving the men and women of London everything they desired, who considered herself an expert in want – she’d never wanted anything more than this man.

Than this moment.

He stood her next to the bed and slowly undressed them both, boots and breeches and shirts, shucking his own and then hers, kissing the bare skin he revealed in long, lingering licks until she thought she might die from the pleasure of him.

Until she thought she might from her desire for him.

He laid her down, naked, back against the cool sheets, and climbed over her, pressing his face to the soft skin of her belly, breathing deep, pressing his open mouth to the swell there, to the faded marks that told the tale that he alone knew.

“I love you,” he whispered, soft and privately, to the skin there, so easy that she thought perhaps he hadn’t said the words at all.

She gasped as his mouth moved, finding the tip of one breast, and then the other, his hands cupping her, lifting, caressing, ensuring that she would never forget this moment, the way he touched her. The way he loved her. She held him, fingers in his soft golden hair as he whispered to the skin between her breasts, “I love you.”

He repeated the words like a benediction as he licked and sucked and worshipped until her breath was coming in short, nearly unbearable pants, and he lifted himself over her, covering her with his body, hard and warm and perfect in every way.

He looked into her eyes. Spoke. “I love you.”

And she loved him back, desperately, reaching up, pulling him down for another kiss, into which she poured everything she had ever felt for this brilliant, magnificent man.

He slid into her slow and true, as though they had done this a thousand times, as though they belonged to each other, as though he owned her and she owned him. And he did own her, she realized. He always would.

His movements were deep and thorough, long, lush strokes that had her craning for him. For more of his touch. For more of his love. He seemed to know it, leaning down, repeating his vow again and again at her ear. She did not know if it was the words or the movement, but soon she was begging for release that only he could provide. He stilled, rising up over her, eyes closed in pleasure and pain and she knew he steeled himself to leave her, refusing to release inside her. Refusing to risk her.

“Duncan.” He opened his eyes, stealing her breath with the emotion in them. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Not this time.”

He watched her for a long moment, as if searching for the truth in her words. She shook her head. “Not this time,” she said, tears welling as she was struck by the keen knowledge that this was the last time they would ever do this.

He took her mouth in a scorching kiss, deeper and more passionate than anything they had shared before, and he reached between them, setting his thumb to her, stroking over and over until she was crying out her release. Only then did he move, thrusting deep, spilling inside her, and she was lost to herself, to the world.

He came down over her and she wrapped herself around him, cradling him as the tears spilled over, and she wept. She wept for the beauty of this moment, the two of them against the world, she wept for herself, for the sacrifice that had set her on this path… the one she had vowed to make, somehow infinitely more devastating now that she understood what it was she gave up.

Love.

When he woke, she was gone.

He should have expected it, but it still rankled, the fact that she had left him here, in the heart of her casino, as she went to fight God knew what battle on her own.

I was on my own. I had to fight for myself. For Caroline.

No longer.

Did she not understand that he was her champion? That he would fight her battles? That he would do anything he could to save her and this place she loved?