Her back met the stone wall of the alcove. She did not flinch, did not look away. Her hands hung at her sides, her fingers curled against her skirts, and her breathing had quickened in a way that matched his own.
“Lucien.”
He cradled her jaw in one hand. His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone, and she pressed into the touch, a small, involuntary lean that undid the last of whatever he had been holding in place.
He kissed her.
Not like the first time, in the office during the storm, when the kiss had been fierce and sudden and fueled by panic. This kiss was slower, deliberate, his mouth moving against hers with a patience that surprised even him. He wanted her to feel what he could not say, the weeks of watching her and wanting her and pretending that the wanting was part of the act.
His hand slid from her jaw into her hair, tilting her head back, and Elinor’s fingers found his waistcoat and twisted into the fabric, pulling him closer.
She kissed him back with a hunger that stole the breath from his lungs. Her spectacles pressed against his cheekbone, and he did not care. Her mouth was warm and open beneath his, and when she made a small, desperate sound against his lips, something animal and possessive rose in him that he had no interest in controlling.
He broke the kiss long enough to look at her. Her eyes were half-closed, her lips swollen, her chest rising and falling in short, uneven breaths. The spectacles sat crooked on her nose. She looked wrecked, and so beautiful it hurt.
“I want you,” he murmured against the corner of her mouth, his voice rough in a way he could not have disguised if he tried. “Not as part of the act. Not because anyone is watching. I want you, Elinor, and if you do not tell me to stop, I am not going to.”
Her fingers tightened on his waistcoat. “Do not stop.”
His hand slid down her waist, gathering the fabric of her skirt, and Elinor’s breath hitched as his palm found the warmth of her stockinged thigh above her knee. She trembled beneath his touch, her head tipping back against the stone, and Lucien pressed his mouth to the column of her throat, tasting her pulse.
“Lucien.” His name left her mouth like a prayer, broken and breathless, and it was the most dangerous sound he had ever heard.
He pulled back.
Elinor’s eyes opened, dazed and questioning, her lips still parted. She reached for him, but he caught her wrist and held it.
“Patience,” he murmured.
Above them, the jasmine tumbled in thick, fragrant ropes along the garden wall. Lucien reached up and broke a trailing stem free. It was slender and supple, dotted with small white blossoms that released their scent at his touch. He brought it down between them, and Elinor’s gaze followed the movement, her breath suspended.
“What are you?—”
“Trust me.”
He guided her away from the stone wall, one hand at the small of her back, and lowered her onto the soft grass beneath the alcove’s overhang.
The ground was dry, sheltered from the evening dew, and the jasmine canopy closed above them like a curtain drawn against the rest of the world. The distant sounds of the garden party, the quartet, the laughter, the clink of glasses, faded to nothing.
Elinor lay on her back, looking up at him, her hair fanning across the grass. Her spectacles sat crooked on her nose. Her chest rose and fell with the quick, uneven breaths of a woman who did not know what was coming but had chosen not to stop it.
Lucien knelt beside her. He gathered the hem of her skirt and drew it upward, slowly, past her ankle, past her calf, past the ribbon that held her stocking at her knee. The night air met her bare skin, and she shivered.
He brushed the jasmine stem along the inside of her ankle.
Elinor made a sound that was half gasp, half laugh, her fingers curling into the grass. The blossoms trailed over her skin in a whisper of petals and green, so light it was barely there, and her body responded to the ghost of it.
Her knee bent. Her thigh tensed.
“Lucien.” Her voice had dropped to something raw. “You are?—”
“Shh.”
He drew the stem higher. Along the curve of her calf, over the sensitive hollow behind her knee, and then up the inside of her thigh in a slow, deliberate line that made her back arch off the ground.
The jasmine left a faint trail of scent on her skin, and Lucien followed it with his eyes, watching the way her body reacted to each inch of contact, the way her breath shortened, the way her hands fisted in the grass as though she needed something to hold onto.
“You are trembling,” he said. “Tell me, darling. Is it the flower, or is it my hand you wish were there instead?”