He kissed her then, the way he’d promised he would that night in his office, the way he’d dreamed late at night as he lay in the darkness and imagined this vision of a woman rising above him, open and available for worship.

Just as she was now, standing above him, one hand holding her sapphire skirts, the other thrust into his hair, holding him against her as he pressed his tongue into her softness, savoring her taste, making love to her with slow, languid strokes that made her sigh and writhe and push against him. She was pleasure and heat and passion—the first, fresh drink of water after years in the desert.

He found the heart of her desire, working it first slowly, then longer and faster until time faded and he was wrapped in her sound and her feel and her taste, with no desire to move or stray from her. He’d promised her hours, and he could make good on it—he could worship her from here, on his knees, for an eternity.

She lost her grip on her skirts, and her thighs trembled against him as she arched away from the wall, a wicked, wonderful offering. He took it without question, reaching up to hold her, returning his fingers to the heat of her in one long, deep thrust.

She came apart then, against his hands and his mouth, crying her pleasure beneath his tongue and teeth, and he carried her over the edge, through her passion, working her with his touch and his kiss and every bit of desire and depravity he’d resisted over the last six years . . . over longer than that. He reveled in her softness and her sounds, not wanting to leave her. Wanting the experience with her.

She called out his name, her fingers tight in his hair, and he came with her, hard and hot and unavoidable. And in that moment, his own pleasure startled from him by hers, he should have felt embarrassment or shame or something infinitely more base. But instead he felt as though he’d been waiting for that moment.

For her.

And there, in the darkness, her soft cries echoed by the roar of London’s wealthiest gamers scant feet away, he caught his breath and ran his hands along her thighs, guiding her skirts back into place, and considered the startling possibility that Pippa Marbury was indeed his savior.

The thought rocketed through him as quick and unexpected as his climax, and he bowed his head, looking down at her little sapphire slippers, shocked as hell, even as he knelt at her feet and reveled in the feel of her hands in his hair.

That’s how Temple found them.

He came up short just inside the door to the owner’s suite, six feet of muscle going perfectly still, his scarred face a portrait of shock. “Shit,” he said, backing up, propelled from the space by its intimacy. “I didn’t—”

Pippa’s hands moved like lightning, and Cross was naked at the loss of her touch. “Your Grace,” she said, and Temple’s title startled him, a reminder of all their places. Of the wrongness of her being here. “I— We—”

He needed time to think.

He needed time to understand what had just happened.

How everything had changed.

He rose. “Get out.”

Pippa turned her wide gaze on him. “Me?”

No. Never her. But he couldn’t bring himself to speak to her yet. He didn’t know what he would say. How he would say it. She’d wrecked him, thoroughly, and he wasn’t prepared for it. For her.

For the way she made him feel.

For the things she made him do.

For the future she tempted him with.

“I think he meant me, my lady,” Temple cut in.

Then why was he still here?

Temple replied as though Cross had spoken the words aloud.

“Knight has arrived.”

Chapter Fourteen

Oh, my.

It seems that all the discussion of brute beasts and carnal lust addressed in the text of the wedding vows was not just for the groom.

I have never in my life felt anything so . . .

Remarkable.

Magnificent.

Emotional.

Unscientific.

The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury

March 30, 1831; six days prior to her wedding

He left Pippa immediately, releasing her into Temple’s protection, even as he loathed the idea of her in his club with another man, outside of his own protection. Outside of his sight.

Outside of his embrace.

He wanted her home. Safe. Far from this place, and these villains. He wanted to be with her. He paused in the process of fastening the fall of a fresh pair of trousers, the thought throwing him.

He wanted to be with her in his home.

Not in his cluttered office, on his inferior, makeshift bed. At his town house. Where he’d never taken a woman. Where he rarely was in residence. Where the demons never ceased to threaten.

Pippa wouldn’t stand for demons.

One side of his mouth kicked up at the thought. Pippa would exorcise every one of his demons with her logical mind and her incessant questions and her impossibly sure touch. A touch he found himself rather desperate to experience once more.

He wanted her to touch him everywhere. He wanted to touch her everywhere. He wanted to explore her, and hold her, and kiss her and make her his in every imaginable way.

She wanted to understand lust? He could show it to her. There was time. She had six days before she married Castleton.

Not enough time.

Something tightened in his chest at the thought.

She was going to marry Castleton.

He sat to pull on his boots with vicious force.

I shall do it because I have agreed to, and I do not care for dishonesty.

Goddammit. She was engaged to the ordinary, uninspiring, idiot man.

Not so much an idiot now. He’d proposed to Pippa, after all. Snatched her up while the rest of England was looking the other way.

But she had come apart in Cross’s arms. Against his mouth. Did that account for nothing?