“Gray, you’re a very passionate dancer,” she whispered close, beguiling his senses. “You know perfectly well how to seduce.”
“Am I seducing you, Miss Darling?”
She nodded, looking up at him, pressed to him. “Don’t you feel my heart beating?”
“I thought it was mine,” he said, close. He dipped his head and pressed his lips to hers. Harper’s warnings about touching her grew fainter and then were gone altogether.
He lifted her chin and deepened their kiss. She curled her arms around his neck, standing on the tips of her toes to receive him. She tasted of warmth and desire.
He felt himself going a little harder when she darted her tongue into his mouth. He cupped one of her buttocks in his hand and drew her in closer until he could feel all her soft curves.
They heard someone moving about outside the front door. They separated and stood apart staring at each other until whoever was out there passed.
“Come,” he said, taking her by the hand. “It’s getting late. I’ll walk you to your chambers.”
“Let me change back into my petticoat and shirts—and all the rest of it.”
Gray waited while she disappeared behind the partition. She didn’t like all the clothes women had to wear. He didn’t like them either.
When they left the hall, he wouldn’t let her hold his hand on the way to her rooms. She proved she wasn’t from his time by not taking the threat of danger to her life seriously enough. He would speak to her about it tomorrow. For now, they didn’t touch or speak on the way toward her door.
The silence was not awkward or uncomfortable, especially since sometimes—Gray believed—more could be said without words. A lingering glance, an intimate smile, a warm gaze—or a heated one resounded off the walls of the heart and sank deeper than any words.
That was why, for so long, his expression remained impassive and unreadable. He’d been careful not to communicate anything to the people around him. But that didn’t mean he was passionless. He took delight that it seemed Aria from another lifetime understood and remained silent, save for a soft round of giggles here or there, like bells of celebration to his usually somber ears.
He liked the sound of her, not just her laughter, but her voice and the cadence of it that often made him want to tip his head, smile, and move his feet.
“Tomorrow let’s spar.”
He turned to her and nodded. “Alright. Do you want me to teach you how to wield a sword? It’s not likely something you learned in the twenty-first century.”
“I want to fight you,” she clarified with a hint of playfulness gleaming in her eyes.
He smiled. The more time he spent with her, the more she tempted him to toss aside every concern, every speck of hatred within him, and dance without the weight of any of it. “You don’t have to wait until tomorrow to do that, my darling.”
“Gray?” she said, wide-eyed.
“Hmm?”
“You called me your darling.”
He never wanted to stop looking at her. “Yes, I know.” Reaching her door, he dipped his head to hers to kiss her.
He was stopped by two of Dartmouth’s guards.
Chapter Twenty
“Forgive us, LordDartmouth,” one of the guardsmen said, sparing a nervous glance at Aria. “Your father sent us to take Miss Darling away.”
Away? Gray thought he was hearing wrong. But when one of them put his hand on her arm, Gray yanked the hand away. “How dare you touch her!”
“My lord, your father—!”
“Touch her again and I’ll cut off your arm,” Gray warned, stepping between the soldier and Aria and resting his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Grayson!”
Gray turned, surprised to hear his father’s voice on the stairs.