Page 41 of The Tyranny of our Longing

There was a moment of silence, and Phaedra peered out into the haze of candlelight, her vision blurring with the heat. There was no sound, no movement, no sign of⁠—

The door burst open, its wings crashing against the walls.

Phaedra’s hands clasped around the cry bursting from her throat, and she pushed herself back, urging her body to merge with the hard wall, praying that it would close around her not as a cage, but a refuge.

But there was no refuge. No escape. He had come for her. Again.

She heard his steps thud against the floor, his easy gait an assurance that he had already won. That she had nowhere to run.

The look in his eyes as he came into the line of light was like a storm, dark and menacing, the gold of his hair the halo of some vengeful angel come to claim what was rightfully his.

A whimper broke through her clenched throat, and she screwed her eyes shut, her arms clasping around her body as if it would make a difference. Her heart hammered against her skin, her head, the very floors beneath her, its beat multiplying with the hurried pace moving toward her.

“No,” she croaked. “Please, no!”

“Phaedra!” He dropped to his knees before her, his hands flying to her cheeks, forcing her face to his.

“No, please, let me go!” She clawed at his hands, choking on her own breath.

“A dream,” he said, his voice low but urgent, his hands firm yet gentle. “Look at me! It’s just a dream.”

And when her frantic eyes finally found his, she felt the world turn around her, the murkiness of reveries bleeding into the crispness of reality, candlelight diffused into the fire of a sunset sky breaking through the drawing room windows.

A sob broke from her chest, and Nathaniel pulled her to him, his arms stifling the tremors rocking her body.

“My God, you’re frozen stiff,” he murmured against her hair, and as if on cue she felt it, the ice in her limbs, the chill in the room seeping in through the thin layer of her nightgown, and a violent shudder raked through her, despite the warmth of his body.

His arms tightened around her for a moment, then she felt him shift, turning his head to scan the room.

“Wait here,” he said, then stood to walk back toward the table she had nearly upturned in her flight. Beside it stood a chair, something like a shawl draped over its back, and as he pulled it free, allowing the burnished light to fold around it, she knew exactly what it was.

The color undulated from light to shadow, like a living thing tumbling from his hands, and Phaedra rose, unable to pull her eyes away, her body drawn forward by the single unrelenting desire to touch it. To feel it against her skin.

Nathaniel stepped closer, draping the fabric over her shoulders, and it was an effort to bite back the sigh of pleasure as the weight of it met her body. But she could not mask the hitching of her breath as he pulled it closed around her chest, and his eyes shot to hers, their previous worry slowly morphing into something very different. Something searching. Something hungry.

Something dark.

She almost missed the clench of his jaw, before he pulled on her arm to turn her around, and she froze as his fingers grazed the nape of her neck, lifting her hair over the fabric.

It spilled over her shoulders in an ebony wave, and she felt him close at her back as his hands followed the dark curls down her arms. And when his cheek finally rested against the side of her head, a long breath slowly expanding his chest before cascading like fire down the column of her neck, she knew this would be it. The moment of her surrender.

The heat of his body enveloped her almost to the point of incandescence, and when he spoke, his voice was low and deep, as if made for poetry.

“I know I should apologize for my boldness. That this is not the way gentlemen behave. But you see…” He dipped his head, his lips grazing over the shell of her ear. “I cannot seem to stop myself when I am around you. The touch of your skin, the sound of your voice, the very sight of you possesses my mind like no one ever has. You make me forget all my manners in favor of the things I wish to do to you.”

She sucked in a breath as his hand slid around her waist, and she was pulled back, flush against the hardness of his body. The haze of desire descended upon her like a dark net, and she felt unable to move, to think, only to sink into the need crashing against her.

Her head fell back against his shoulder, eyes fluttering closed on a ragged exhale.

“You cannot imagine what you have made me suffer. The torture you’ve put me through. Yet the only thing I can truly call unto my defense is that I know you feel the same.”

She made a sound deep in her throat as his lips met the flushed skin beneath her jaw. The ache in her core deepened with every movement of his hands roving over her body, and the tremor in her limbs was no longer a sign of the cold, but of a fire moving through her, consuming her whole.

“Ever since I heard you, I could not think straight. All I could think about—all that I want—is to hear my name shatter on your lips like that again.”

Need ignited like a fuse reaching its end, and Phaedra thrust her fingers into his hair, her lips claiming his with hungry abandon. A groan rumbled through his chest, his body tensing behind her, and in a moment she was turned to him, her back pressed against the wall.

His mouth devoured hers as he pulled the fabric open around her, gathering the hem of her nightdress. His hands were searing as they met the backs of her thighs, and she moaned at the hardness pushing against her as he lifted her legs around his waist.