The remaining thread of Gabriel’s control snapped in spectacular fashion. A tremor went through him. He took her mouth harder, held her tighter, lost whatever semblance he’d had of strategy or finesse.

Effie gave herself over to the tender assault. This was exactly what she needed; this scorching, possessive heat. She yearned to be consumed by it. To let it burn, unfettered, until all the wrongness in her world had been extinguished by the rightness of whatever this was between them.

It was a hazardous alchemy. Ladies were taught to abhor a loss of control. Excess passion, they were told, was undignified and unseemly. But there was nothing insulting or undignified in Gabriel’s embrace. They had found each other; that’s all that mattered.

For the first time in memory, the loneliness Effie had always felt subsided. It was replaced by something else—deep, elemental, powerful.

Gabriel must have felt it, too. “What have you done to me?” His voice was a husky, baffled rasp against her mouth.

“I?” She slid her fingers in his hair, wishing she could feel the thick locks between her fingers. There was already so much between them. She couldn’t tolerate anything more. “Drat these gloves,” she muttered.

He chuckled. The sound turned into a low groan as she deepened their kiss. “Effie—”

“It wasn’t a game,” she said.

His breath came hard. “What?”

“Inviting you here. I wanted to see you again so much.” Her half-parted lips clung sweetly to his. “Though if you ask me tomorrow, I shall deny it.”

He pulled back a fraction to meet her gaze. The expression in his eyes was strangely serious, oddly vulnerable. “I wanted to see you, too,” he admitted. “Since the night we met…not a day has passed that I haven’t thought of you.”

Effie’s heart clenched. She smoothed the hair at his nape. “Not all happy thoughts, I’d wager.”

“Have your thoughts about me all been happy ones, then?”

“Bewildered ones. I don’t know quite what to do with you.”

“I have a few ideas.” He kissed her again.

She sighed against his mouth, returning his kiss. For a moment, she lost herself in the searing honeyed heat of it. The first real intimacy they’d exchanged, their defenses down, and their longing for each other partially laid bare. He’d been thinking of her every day. He’d been wanting her, too. The knowledge had the power to strip away the last of her inhibitions.

But even in the aching midst of it, there in his arms, her breath mingling with his, Effie retained a particle of awareness. All women must do so. Like it or not, in this world, a lady’s reputation was currency. Once lost, there was little that could be done to redeem it.