He stroked her face. They didn’t have time to linger. At any moment, a servant might enter Compton’s room or one of the guests might wander out into the garden. “What? Don’t you trust my climbing ability? I’ve got nine lives, me.”

“One of us will fall.”

“Neither of us is going to fall.” He bent his head to hers, still holding her face in his hands. “Do you want to know the secret to it? Don’t think of how high up you are.”

She gave him a pained look. A tear spilled from her brimming eyes to slide down her cheek. “I can concentrate on nothing else.”

Gabriel brushed the hot tear away with the pad of his thumb. His face was inches from hers. He felt her sweet breath puffing softly against his lips. She smelled of honey and black currants. Of everything he’d ever wanted in life but never received. Never deserved. He bent his head closer, his voice deepening to a husky scrape. “Concentrate on this,” he said.

And his mouth captured hers.

11

Effie’s fear-paralyzed brain registered Gabriel’s intention a split second before he acted. She inhaled a startled gasp. The faint trembling sound was muffled by his mouth claiming hers.

He kissed her gently to start. As gently as the way he had held and caressed her face to reassure her. But finding her willing, the tame character of his kiss transformed in a quicksilver instant. The intensity increased by dizzyingly swift degrees. No longer soft and searching, his mouth took hers with a hungry desperation, kissing her fiercely, deeply, urgently.

A rush of yielding warmth flooded through her. Her brow creased and her eyes fell closed. The frozen panic that had immobilized her only seconds before burned away at the edges. The cool night around them was reduced to a single pulse point. To the two of them here, on the terrace floor, his knees crushing her skirts, and his large, calloused hands framing her face. And his lips—

His lips.

They angled over hers, engulfing her in an all-encompassing heat.

Her heart thumped wildly and her blood ignited. She’d been kissed before, but never like this. There was no calculation in it. No chaste deference or rakish strategy. Only the barely leashed passion of a man who had resisted the desire for too long. A man who wanted to touch her, to taste her, to breathe her in.

She surrendered to the scorching pressure of his mouth, her lips softening and parting beneath his. Fear was eclipsed by the heart-quaking sensation of their mingled breath. A soft moan escaped her throat as she kissed him back.

It was ill-advised. Nonsensical. But a small, distant voice in the furthest recesses of Effie’s soul whispered that this was where she belonged. Not on the terrace, but with him, this dangerous, merciless, unfathomable man who had climbed three stories to save her.