in the curls gathered at her temple, as if he were desperate for her scent. He kissed his way to her throat, his mouth opening hot and insistent upon her bare skin.
“You smell of summer,” he murmured against her wildly thumping pulse.
Their hearts matched now.
The only response she could manage was to run her fingers through his hair, tip her head back, grant him more access to feast upon her starved flesh. Who had ever known such attention could be paid to something as simple and serviceable as one’s neck? Or that it would incite a frenzy within her?
The rasp of his whiskers—likely not shaved since that morning—was enough to make her knees weaken. Her every sense was alive, heightened to exquisite, almost painful awareness. She wondered, quite deliriously, what it would be like to know the sweet abrasion of his jaw lower still. Upon her breasts.
Her belly.
Between her thighs.
He licked the hollow at the base of her throat. The wet glide of his tongue was as unexpected as it was decadent. He sucked her skin, then grazed her with his teeth. She exhaled a humid breath she had not realized she had been holding, her lips—still burning with the memory of his kisses—parted.
How could she have known what was awaiting her in these midnight gardens? Heavens, he was wearing a banyan, in the gardens in the midst of the night, having rescued Lady from the roses. And yet, he kissed and touched and wooed her as if it had been his intention all along to undo her.
When she knew, without a doubt, it had not.
“My lord,” she said when he nibbled at the cords of her neck.
“Tom,” he corrected.
She could not call him that, could she? Not just his given name but a diminutive? It seemed so…personal. So…intimate.
But when he kissed the underside of her jaw, before working his way back to her lips, how could she do anything other than surrender to him? What could possibly be more intimate than her body pressed against this man, his delicious lips upon her?
“Tom, then.” A plain, abridged name for a man who was anything but ordinary. “We must stop. You have had your kiss.”
Yes, common sense told her to say those words. The rest of her… The rest of her very much wished she would cease her protestations.
Still, this was too much.
Too much, too soon.
Dread assailed her. Suddenly, unexpectedly.
Old dread. Not meant for the man who had kissed her so skillfully. But wrought from the demons she could not seem to shake. Demons bestowed upon her by the man she had married as an idealistic, youthful fool.
That fool had seen all her dreams crushed beneath a boot heel. Slapped away by an unforgiving hand. Burned in the grate and turned to naught but ashes.
Lord Sidmouth seemed to understand her tumult before she did, stepping back, releasing her abruptly. Through the darkness, she felt his gaze boring into her, searching.
Knowing.
Shame crept over her, hot and miserable. She wanted to disappear into the darkest corners of the garden, where no moonlight shone.
“Forgive me, madam—Hyacinth,” he said. “If my attentions were unwanted—”
“They were not unwanted,” she interrupted, hating the notion of him somehow believing himself in the wrong when his kisses had been everything she had ever longed for without knowing what she truly needed. “You were not unwanted. Indeed, you are not unwanted. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am merely…forgive me, my lord. I am not myself this evening.”
“Understood.” He rubbed his jaw, watching her from three paces away. Decidedly the opposite of menacing. “I am hardly myself either. I have not been for some time now, I expect.”
She wondered what could have upset such a man as Tom, Lord Sidmouth. He certainly seemed infallible to her now. A god descended by night, inhabiting her garden. Stirring her thoughts and desires. Bringing her back to the girl she had been, once upon a time.
Before everything had changed.
A precipitous longing hit her. To take away the sadness in his voice. To kiss away the demons he possessed as well as her own. She wanted to banish anything that would upset him. To stalk into the darkest corners of his life like a knight of old, chase the shadows with her sword. How silly when she could not force her own shadows to retreat. They hovered on the periphery of her every minute, every hour. No hope of escape any time soon.
And yet, Hyacinth felt a connection with the man before her. Inexplicable