grin crept across Matthew’s face, causing me to blush in response. We were thinking of the same thing. An evening when we were trapped by some absurd circumstance in a faulty elevator in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had believed I’d never see him again, but fate had thrown us back together—just as my claustrophobia attacked like never before. Somehow, his presence had calmed me. His entire body had calmed me.
Desire, I had learned that day, is stronger than any fear.
Or maybe that’s just love.
He dropped the sides of his jacket and began a slow crawl across the bed, caging me into the pillows once more.
“I didn’t mind being trapped in an elevator with you.” His lips were soft against mine, the rub of stubble delicious on my skin.
Instinctually, my hands slipped over his shoulders, feeling the grace of taut muscle under the refined cotton. I wanted to strip it all off again—not to repeat what we’d just done, but more to hold him close. When I was in the hospital after giving birth, the nurses had suggested bringing Olivia to my bare chest, skin to skin, to utilize the bonding effects of oxytocin. It’s the reason we should hold our children so close from the start.
I was never touched as a child. My father was gone, my mother more familiar with her wine collection than with me. So I never understood how much I was missing. Not until I met him.
Touch heals. And none so much as Matthew’s.
“I don’t want to go,” he said between kisses. “But I have to. Fuck, it feels wrong.”
Reluctantly, I let my hands fall. “Go. I’ll try not to call again. I’m sorry I did this time. I just couldn’t…”
“Help it,” he completed with a bittersweet smile. “Trust me, I know the feeling.”
The heaviness of the circumstances descended all over again. The reasons that made even sneaking around like this so dangerous. Some weeks ago, my husband’s name, and mine, had been splashed all over the local papers. Sometime soon, likely in a matter of months, it would happen again once the trial began (although Matthew assured me there were all sorts of ways to delay the inevitable).
On the one hand, I was eager. If he was successful, I’d finally be rid of the nightmare I was chained to. But in a way, I was also dreading it. Because there was another truth neither of us was willing to say out loud: this was our last remaining connection. Even after the trial was over and I could file for the divorce I desperately wanted…we still couldn’t be together. I wouldn’t put Matthew’s career in jeopardy. And he wouldn’t risk bringing me under possible investigation.
We were written in the stars, he said.
But apparently that just meant we were star-crossed.
“I love you,” I whispered as I framed his beautiful face between my hands. This time it was almost painful to admit.
Matthew sighed, nuzzling into one palm. “I love you too. Goddammit, but I do. I’d give you the whole fuckin’ world if I could, baby. You deserve it.”
He kissed me again, this time slower, as if it might be the last time. I didn’t rush him, just enjoyed the last few tastes he was willing to give me. I didn’t fight it when at last he stood up, grabbed his hat off the floor, and set it on his head.
Matthew paused, drawing his eyes over me one last time, as if to memorize what I looked like in this bed, still rumpled from the effects of his passion. Of his love.
I didn’t look away. Didn’t assume any sort of mask or attempt to hide a single bit of what I was feeling.
“I’ll see you, doll,” he said as he turned for the door.
It was then I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to watch him leave. “Goodbye, Matthew.”
When I opened them again, he was gone.
Chapter Seven
“This looks amazing, Marguerite. Thank you.”
The diminutive cook nodded politely and backed out of the dining room to let me eat. She had never had very good English, but that mattered less than the fact that she was excellent at making just about anything we possibly wanted. A meal for one or forty.
This room, much like every room in the apartment, was ridiculously over-decorated. Part of my husband’s never-ending campaign for legitimacy in this social set. Sweeping window treatments, Romanesque statues beside the ornate wainscoting, bright teal jacquard wallpaper, and an enormous chandelier suspended above a table for eighteen…all for