And who could blame him, he thought as he gazed down at her.
At her proximity, his flesh had become suffused with a heat that traveled all the way to his cock, filling it with warm need. The memory of last night was too fresh, the taste of her had yet to fade. The primal hunger still growled within him. His heartbeat toppled over itself as his gaze locked onto her pale, perfect lips.
They’d been a lush pink before she’d fainted.
Christ preserve him, he was a rank pervert for lusting after an unconscious woman covered in soil and crushed poppies. And when a dead woman lay on the other side of that wall.
He attacked the tangles caught in his joints with renewed vigor, taking the utmost care to be gentle in his haste.
Her scent invaded his lungs. Lavender and lilacs. Bitter and sweet. The combination intoxicated him as it mingled with the particular scent of her flesh. Warmer than a flower, muskier than the earth.
Her shallow yet even breaths feathered over his cheek in damp little puffs, and Cole battled a slew of disquieting and humiliating urges. Ones that somehow reached beyond the primitive.
As a virile man, he should want nothing more than to ravish her. To hone in on the press of her soft breasts to his chest and to fantasize about all the indignities a mouth so lush could perform upon his person.
And he did. Sweet Christ, he did.
But he also was strangely aware that if he turned his neck just so, his rough cheek would press against her astoundingly smooth one. Her neck, just below him, was the perfect size and placement to rest his weary chin. Her hair was a sheet of smooth silk the color of the sunlight behind the pall of coal smoke on a still London day. Though caught in the cogs of his metal prosthetic, it sifted through his fingers as fluid as water.
Her color returned in slow increments, roses dusting her prominent cheekbones.
Lord but she was lovely. He’d never truly stopped to study her before, especially not up so close. Never had he seen such flawless skin. Not even upon the pallid women who’d rather die than allow a glimmer of sunlight to pierce their parasols.
She was covered in the sun, burnished that unfashionable shade of honey, and dusted with a sparse array of freckles. Why was porcelain skin so admired, anyway? Who had gazed upon a sun-kissed beauty with such vivacious hues and wished her to be one of the colorless waifs so ubiquitous in England?
An imbecile, he decided.
You did, his inner voice reminded him.
Ginny had been white as the driven snow, and it had suited her. He’d pined for her pale delicacy and the contrast of her dark, unruly locks.
But the woman beneath him was a different shade. Her shape, her scent, even her manner was quite singular, and the sun worshipped her for it.
How queer that he should like to do the same. That he should want to peel the garments from her if only to ascertain just how much of her was burnished dusky and how much remained pale.
He thought about kissing all the places the sun had touched.
And then the places left untouched.
She did not remain placid in his arms for long. Her lids twitched and trembled, her fingers curled against his vest a heart-stopping moment before her multifaceted irises were uncovered, and she regarded him with an unfocused gaze.
Cole froze like a thief caught in torchlight.
Then she whispered the absolute last thing he expected.
“Hello.”
“You fainted,” he blurted rather witlessly, then cringed.
“Don’t be silly,” she gently admonished with a tongue that sounded heavy. “I don’t faint.”
“You did today,” he gently explained. “Now be still, my prosthetic is tangled in your hair. I’m almost free.”
“You’re tangled in my…” A wrinkle appeared between her brows and she was silent for a protracted moment.
“I carried you here when you fainted,” he repeated.
She put a hand to her forehead. “I fainted?”
“That’s what I said.” Had she sustained a head wound?
“I fainted … because … someone wants to hurt me,” she whispered. “Maybe even … murder me.”
“That isn’t going to happen.” The words left him with more vehemence than even he realized he felt. But as she blinked up at him in uncertain assessment, he realized he was in earnest. This woman was not the Machiavellian opportunist he’d initially judged her to be. And even if she were, no one deserved what had befallen Lady Broadmore.
She winced as he accidentally tugged at a lock of her hair in his struggles.
“Forgive me,” he muttered, feeling both awkward and churlish.
“Of course I forgive you,” she replied, and he had the absurd notion she meant she’d forgiven him for more than just the damage he’d inflicted to her scalp just now.
Turning to look, she reached up and covered his fingers with hers. “Let me,” she gently admonished, and proceeded to untangle her own hair in three deft movements.
To his astonishment, she sat up when he did, following his movements, keeping them close. Somehow, she retained a hold on his prosthetic, and her gentle grasp held him more captive than any chain or manacle ever had.
Silently she plucked at a few solitary strands of her hair that had broken off and remained entwined in the intricate metalwork, and allowed them to drift to the carpet beneath them.
Cole remained motionless as his senses abruptly sharpened, his body tensed as everything became louder, clearer, as though he’d awoken from some bewildering dream, or surfaced from beneath the water. The tick of the ornate clock on the mantel raced his pounding heart. The soft butter and sage hues of the solarium somehow became more vivid. The sunlight shafting in through the open windows broke upon her with a brilliance he’d never before seen.
And when she spoke, her voice was like a melancholy concerto, filtering through him as only music was capable. The vibrations plucking at his very soul.
“It pains me that we humans can be so terribly inhumane to one another.” Her fingers wandered from his cold, metallic hand to the round fitting. Sliding beneath his cuffs, they didn’t stop until she met his flesh. “What horrors we can wreak on someone who is more or less exactly like ourselves. The lies we conjure to justify the infliction of such deeds.” Her damp eyes met his, swimming with a potent emotion that made him catch his breath over an answering burn in his own throat. “It hurts my heart,” she whispered, and blinked out a tear that swiftly fell from her chin.
Gentle thunder growled in the distance, warning that their sunshine was not to last.
Cole’s heart reverberated in time to the gathering storm. Were her tears for Lady Broadmore? Or for the mangled wrist she held in her hand. “Are you not afraid of me?” Cole breathed. “Of this?” He glanced down to where she touched him, the sensation more intimate than if she’d reached into his trousers.
She shook her head, her fingers threading through the fine hairs on his arm, drifting upward. “There was a time that I was afraid of the whole world,” she said. “But not you.”
“Maybe you should be,” he warned. If she knew what he was thinking right now. If she realized how close he was to ripping her night robe off her … Despite the mess in the backyard, or the open doors, or the inherent wrongness of it all.
He wanted his mouth on hers again. He wanted her beneath him, just as she’d been, her sweet breath on his damp flesh as he took her.