her eyes twinkling in the dim light of the garden lanterns. “I can hardly believe you’ve not done this before.”
“A liar,” he confessed ruefully. “My mother did teach me a bit before she died.”
“Oh?”
A pang lanced his heart at the memory. His lovely, young, ebony-haired mother trying to teach an impatient boy of eight a new waltz. “That was very long ago. I hardly thought to remember.”
“It sounds like the memories of your mother are good ones.”
“All of them,” he murmured.
“And your father?”
The last thing he wanted in this conversation, in this moment with this woman so close to his body, was the intrusion of his father.
“None of them.”
Observant as she was, she seemed to accept discussion on that account was closed.
They were silent a moment, lost in the steps. In their thoughts.
“Do you really not have a sweetheart?” she ventured. “I think that’s an awful shame.”
Lord, but did she think to poke every bruise his soul possessed?
“No. I do not.”
“Why not?” Her mouth drew into a vague little pout. “Did someone break your heart?”
No, but she would eventually.
“My heart is not sweet, Miss Goode,” was all he could offer by way of explanation.
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t know who I am.”
She considered that for a moment, narrowing her eyes in thought. “Who are you, then?”
Gabriel swallowed over a gathering lump in his throat.
He could tell her.
I’m the man who took a bullet for you. He could say. I’m a gangster used to wielding power and precedence over an organization of ruthless criminals. I am a damned soul who has done unspeakable things to survive. My brother is married to your sister and I’ve been watching you for longer than Raphael even knew the two of you existed.
Who am I? I am Gabriel Sauvageau. The fallen prince of a dismantled empire.
And I love you.
He said none of that as he gazed down at her upturned face. He was too selfish a bastard to utter anything that might drive her from his arms.
He loved her.
He wasn’t certain how to describe the phenomenon before now.
But he loved her. He did. He thought about her every morning upon waking. Every night before sleeping. He pictured her when pleasuring himself. He’d kept her image on the backs of his eyelids during the months of suffering through the several surgical procedures that left him only just palatable to be seen in public without a mask. Her safety and comfort were his first priority, a responsibility he assigned to himself without a thought of asking for anything in return.
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” he whispered, distracted by the light gilding the soft moisture on her lips with an ethereal sheen. “Not tonight.”
All the reasons he shouldn’t touch her disappeared into the darkness, fleeing before the creature of primitive instinct the moon and the music seemed to make of him.
His blood roared. His cock filled. His muscles tensed and built into a straining, pulsing machine, overwhelmed with the need to find other, more primal rhythms.
But he would rip out his own heart before he succumbed to any of that.
Because the soft cling of her fingertips against his shoulder was enough to keep the entire monster leashed with unbreakable chains.
Everything that was hard and horrible about himself, rough and possessive, selfish and violent, he beat back with all the considerable strength he possessed.
Which left him powerless to resist her.
Only when her hand left his grasp to rest against his jaw, did he notice that they’d stopped moving. That her mouth had parted, and his shoulders had already curled forward.
His head lowered.
Her toes lifted.
The breath that feathered across his face was warm and vaguely flavored of fruit from the punch. Her intricate coiffure gleamed like gilded braids of gold and he imagined her skin was as smooth as cream whipped to a froth.
But it was the way her lids became heavy across eyes darkened with the very same need roaring through him, that unraveled the last of his sanity.
The invitation he read there.
His mouth hovered above hers for the last futile moment, if only to give her a chance to pull away. To deny him. To retreat.
Because once he tasted her, he wasn’t certain when he’d be able to stop.
Her response suffused him with absolute shock.
She placed the shortest, gentlest, barest of kisses on his lower lip. One little, encouraging sweep accompanied by the scarcely audible click of her mouth puckering and releasing.