starting to feel something now. Anger. And Will was as good a target as any.
“Why did they tell you?” she demanded. “Why tell you and not me?”
Will slowly pressed the door shut behind him with a click. Each movement was precise, controlled. When he turned, the heat in his amber eyes was almost magnetic.
“Blade tole me,” he replied. “Thought his lordship were Honoria’s lover before he realised the truth. Put him all out of sorts.”
The idea of prim and proper Honoria having an old lover was ludicrous. “Blade didn’t think much of my sister then, did he?”
That made Will’s eyes narrow. “Thought the world of her.” He grimaced. “Men do stupid things when they’re blinded by love.”
“How would you know? You’ve never loved anyone.” Oh yes, she was starting to feel something now.
“Seen enough o’ their foolery to understand it.” Will sank down onto the sofa and leaned back against it, resting his long arms along the top as if he owned it.
“You always watch what people do. It still doesn’t convince me that you understand it.”
“Are you tryin’ to act the fishwife, or am I just the poor sod who’ll bear the brunt o’ your anger?”
Lena’s mouth fell open. Will stared at her with a hard, cold expression on his face and she realised that she had pressed him too far. He wasn’t human and he knew it. Watching how people acted was the only way he could pretend some sort of humanity himself.
“I’m sorry. That was unkind of me.” Shame burned in her throat. “I’m…angry. I shouldn’t take it out on you. You were only trying to help.”
The molten gold in his eyes flared then died back to its normal golden amber. Will looked puzzled as he sat, folding his arms across his chest. “Aye. I’m used to it.”
“Used to what?”
“The blue blood’s collar my kind, Lena. Ain’t the first time I been called less ‘an human.”
Lena swallowed hard. She had never been an unkind girl but then, she’d never had to deal with so much unwanted emotion before. Her life on the edges of the Echelon had been simple, happy. Full of laughter, light and dancing. Girls who giggled at their lessons and silk gowns and fluttering fans. She’d never been required to think too much, or even expected to, and nobody was angry there. It was hardly polite to exhibit such emotions.
“I wish I could go back,” she whispered. “I wish I didn’t have to know all of this…to feel…like this. I’m sorry, Will. I never think of you as less than human.” Slowly, she pushed to her feet, her skirts falling in a circle around her ankles. They swished against her legs like a whispering caress as she crossed toward him.
Will looked up, a wary expression on his rough-hewn face. He froze as she reached out, not quite a flinch, but a sudden stillness that warned her. Don’t touch me, his body said. His eyes however, lit up like molten whisky, a frown drawing his thick eyebrows together.
Lena’s hand hovered by his face. Something in his expression caught in her chest. Almost as though a part of him yearned for her touch.
It was ridiculous. Will had made it quite clear he wanted nothing to do with her. Still…
Lena let out the breath she’d been holding. Did she dare? Perhaps she’d been wrong? She couldn’t read him at all, which was unusual for a man.
Heart pounding in her throat, she reached out and let her fingers trace his cheek. A strangled sound echoed in his throat but he didn’t move. Indeed, the stillness seemed to leech through his entire body, his eyes wild as they raked the room for escape.
Her fingers danced over the rasp of his stubble. A tickling prickle that fascinated her. And he hadn’t said no.
Turning her palm, she cupped his cheek, tilting his face up toward her. Their eyes met, the heat of him burning through her palm. She wanted to run her hands all over his body, to roll in that heat, to capture it. To finally feel as though she wasn’t alone anymore, in a world full of people.
“Lena,” he growled, capturing her wrist.
The touch burned through her. Lena sank toward him, her skirts pooling over his knees as she slid into his lap. Will let her go as if she’d attacked him, his hands coming up between them, helpless, pushing at the air in front of her as if he didn’t dare touch her.
His eyes were wild. Searching hers.