Page 94 of Souvenir Heart

“You…what you’ve been through…seen…it’s traumatic.” He cleared his throat. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“And yet, you’re the one speaking in incomplete sentences.”

“That last one was complete.”

“But wrong. Indeed, M’sieur possibly-named Tyndale, you seem to be alternating between the impressions that I’m either out of my mind or an inanimate object, like my art, to be packaged up and carried about willy nilly. As if I have no say in the matter.”

“I assure you, inanimate is the last word I would use to describe you.”

“Good. Now, stop treating me that way.”

“You are, however, in my care. I would be taking advantage of you…”

She slid her arm back around his neck. “Says who?”

He set his hands on her hips. “This is but a moment. What if you regret it later?”

If he thought the pressure of his hands on her waist would restrain her, it was having the opposite effect. His grip was warm, firm; it made her think of all the sketches she’d done of him before they’d even met. “Lives are made of moments.” What if these were among her last? “What if I don’t regret it? What if this is the perfect moment?”

A muscle in his jaw worked.

Marguerite wondered why he was trying so hard to resist her. “You were buried alive. Being in the Conciergerie felt like being buried alive to me.”

“You think I’m some sort of second chance?”

“And if you are?” She thought of her drawings. Was he her fate? “Would that be so very wrong?”

“The choices I made after I survived the pit…” the muscle in his jaw worked again. “They didn’t all turn out so well…”

“But you made them. You don’t have to live with the regret of wondering what if?”

“I live with so many other regrets. Marguerite,” his voice was desperate. “I’m not a good man.”

“You keep telling me things to make me believe the worst of you. But your actions don’t match your words. Whenever there’s a chance I might fall, there you are, ready to catch me. Why is that?”

“Force of habit?”

She smoothed a lock of hair from his brow, revealing a bruised lump smeared with blood. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“It looks painful. Let me clean it for you.” She glanced around for a cloth. Some water.

He caught her wrist. “It’s nothing.”

“Do you not feel pain? Do you think pain is what you deserve?” She cocked her head, studying his face. “Or do you simply refuse to allow yourself to feel?”

“I feel.” A sound that might have been a laugh, or possibly a moan, escaped him, as his resistance crumbled. And then his mouth was on hers and all reason fled. His lips, his mouth, his tongue teasing with hers. His hands. One sliding up her back to cup her head, the other sliding around her waist, pulling her closer against his body. “God help me, I feel.”

She pressed against him, wanting—needing—to feel him too, more of him, the length of him against her.

He was cradling her, laying her down on the blankets. She reached for him, unbuttoning his waistcoat, untucking his shirt, sliding her hands up under it to feel the silken heat of his skin, the tensed muscles of his stomach, the soft fur of his chest. His own hands reached for the sash of her gown, untying it, pulling it down off her shoulders, revealing her chemise and stays. “Too many clothes,” he groaned, and Marguerite couldn’t agree more, her fingers moving to the ties of his breeches.

She was distracted by the delicious feel of his mouth on her neck, warm kisses on the hollow of her collarbone, his hands on her breasts, tracing her nipples through the thin fabric. And then his mouth was on them, sucking through the fabric, even as his fingers worked at the ties of her stays. She felt her corset loosen, felt him drag it down, along with her chemise and her gown, around her hips.

She wanted to continue removing his clothes, but he was bent over her, his hands and his mouth adoring her breasts. The sensation was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Neither rough and painful, the way Gerard had groped her, nor soft and exploratory, the way she’d touched herself.

It was…he was… “Oh,” she sighed in heated wonder. His mouth, his hands continued downwards, like tendrils of fire snaking around her ribs, her belly, her hips. She felt her core melting and she arched upwards. He yanked the tangle of clothes off her, leaving her in nothing but her shoes, stockings, and garters. She kicked her shoes off, tugging at his shirt before he could return his attentions to her body. He pulled it over his head, and she gasped.