“Why?” she asked.
He turned. She was standing beside the table, her hands at her sides, and she made no attempt to hide what she was feeling. No attempt to maintain the careful composure that was expected of her.
“Why what?”
“Why does it matter if this one counts?” She took a step towards him. “Why bring me here at all if the list is meant to end tonight?”
She watched him struggle with the answer, his throat working as he swallowed because he knew that the wrong admission here would change everything between them irrevocably.
“Because,” he said, “I want you to remember it.”
She went very still. His words made it difficult to breathe. Because this was not just about completing the list. In fact, it had not been about the list for a very long time.
He crossed the room to her, slowly, and she stood her ground even though every instinct told her to step back, to protect herself. She watched him with wide eyes. When he stopped in front of her, close enough to feel the warmth of him, she tilted her head back to meet his gaze and felt the world narrow to just this: his eyes, his breath, and the barely perceptible tension in his jaw.
This close, she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and smell the faint scent of sandalwood that clung to his skin. Caroline could feel the heat radiating from his body, separated from hers by mere inches and an entire world of reasons why this was a terrible idea.
He had kissed her before. At the circus, with a drunk man stumbling past them and the noise of the crowd pressing in from all sides. That kiss had been reckless, unplanned, stolen from a moment that should not have existed.
This would be different. This would be the kiss he gave her, knowing it was the last one, and that knowledge settled in her chest with a finality that made it difficult to breathe. It made her want to memorize every detail of this moment before it slipped away.
“I will remember it regardless,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I will remember you, Anthony.”
“Good,” he said.
Then he kissed her.
This time, there was no hesitation. No testing the waters, no careful choreography. He cupped her face in both hands and kissed her with everything she assumed he had been holding back for weeks, months, since the night she had walked into his house in a man’s coat and demanded he help her with her list. Since that night, this had all begun.
She opened for him with a small, breathless sound that came from somewhere deep inside her, and felt the last threads of her own restraint begin to unravel like thread pulled from a seam.
He kissed her slowly at first, allowing her to relearn the shape of his mouth. Caroline tasted wine on his tongue and felt the particular way he angled her head to deepen the kiss, felt herself falling into it with a completeness that should have frightened her.
She gasped against his mouth, and he swallowed the sound. His tongue slid against hers in a slow rhythm that hadeverythingto do with claiming. Her hands came up to fist in his shirt, pulling him closer, needing him closer, and he angled her head and deepened the kiss until she was trembling in his arms and could not remember why she had ever thought this was a bad idea.
He kissed her like he was memorizing her, as if she were something he could not afford to lose, even though they both knew he had never had any right to keep her in the first place.
Her fingers moved from his shirt to his hair, threading through it with a desperation that matched his own. She felt the small tremors running through her body, felt the way she pressed herself against him as though she could not get close enough. As though proximity alone could bridge the gap between what this was and what she desperately wanted it to be.
When he finally pulled back, they were both breathing hard. She could feel her lips were swollen and see the darkness in his eyes.
“Anthony,” she breathed.
He kissed her again, softer this time, a long, drugging pull that left them both unsteady. Then he traced his lips along her jaw tothe curve of her neck. She made a small, desperate sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her, and she felt him tense against her.
“Tell me to stop,” he said against her throat, the words constructed from undiluted torture.
“No.”
“Caroline—”
“Don’t stop.” Her fingers tightened in his shirt, her words as desperate as the need flushing through her blood. “Please, don’t stop.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
He lifted his head and looked at her, and she saw something crack open in his expression, something raw and unguarded.
He backed her toward the sofa, his hands at her waist, his mouth finding hers again in a kiss that was all heat and hunger. When the backs of her knees hit the edge of the cushion, she sank down, pulling him with her, and he followed without hesitation.