Sophie’s eyes went wide. “What happened?”

“The Duke of Lyne visited his first dairy that night. Told Lorna’s father what had happened. Made it clear that if she set foot on Lyne land again, he’d see them both punished for trespassing.”

Her mouth fell open. “What did her father do?”

King shook his head. “She arrived, gown torn, lip bleeding. She came to me, terrified.” He paused. “Threw herself into my arms and begged me to save her. I can still feel her quaking. I packed her into a coach, her father on our heels. My father at his back, the greatest threat of all.”

Dread pooled in Sophie’s stomach as she began to see the way the story ended. She captured his hands in hers, clutching him tightly, wishing she could take away what he was about to say.

“I drove the coach. She was inside. It was dark and rainy and the roads . . .” He hesitated. “Well, after this week, you know the roads.”

“King,” she whispered, clutching his hand.

“I took a corner too fast.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“The horses were unmatched. I’d hitched them too quickly, without enough care.”

That was why he spent so much time checking the hitches on the carriage. “You were a child,” she said, holding his hands tighter and tighter, until her knuckles were white.

It was his turn to shake his head. “I wasn’t a child, though. I was eighteen, old enough to inherit an estate. To sit in Parliament. She relied on me. And I did the last thing in the world that would protect her.”

She lifted his hands to her lips, raining kisses down upon them. “No,” she whispered between the caresses. “No. No. No.”

“The coach toppled, bringing all of us down—the coach, the horses, me—into a ditch not a mile from here. I’m not even certain if we made it over the border.” He shook his head. “I don’t think we did.”

“Were you—”

He looked to her. “I was fine. A few bruises. Nothing to speak of.”

“And—” She couldn’t say the name.

“She screamed,” he said quietly, and she could tell that he was no longer here, in the library, but there, on the rainy road. “I could hear her as we flipped, but by the time we’d stopped, it was silent. She was silent. I climbed back, tore at the coach doors, but—” Sophie pressed a hand to her lips, tears coming as she imagined him screaming for the woman he loved. “—the way the coach fell, the doors were bent shut. There was no way in. She was stuck in there. I couldn’t hear her. I broke a window, finally.” He looked down at his knuckles, flexing his fingers, as though the wounds from the glass were still there.

Sophie had never heard anything so horrible in her life. Tears streamed down her face as she watched him, as he finished his story.

“She died inside the damn coach, at my hand.”

No wonder he hated riding in coaches. “That’s why you race the curricles,” she said. “You pay your penance. You risk yourself.”

He didn’t reply to the words, instead saying, “I told you that my father killed her. As though he put a pistol to her head.”

She nodded, not knowing what to say.

“It wasn’t his hate that put the pistol to her head. It was my love.”

She reached for him then, taking his handsome, shadowed face in her hands and turning him to face her, waiting until he met her gaze, until she was certain he was paying attention. “It was an accident.”

“I shouldn’t have—”

“You were a child, and you were doing what you thought best. What you thought right. You didn’t kill her.”

“I did.” The confession devastated her, and suddenly she understood so much about him. She did the only thing she could think to do ease the ache in her heart. In his.

She drew his face to hers, and kissed him, at first soft and tentative, as though he might push her away at any moment, as though she was intruding. She lifted her lips once, twice, a third time before she deepened the caress, letting her tongue slide over his bottom lip, loving the way he inhaled at the sensation, his mouth opening, his hands coming around her.

And then he was kissing her back, taking and giving, stroking and sampling, groaning as he took over, turning what had begun as a tentative caress into a wicked, wonderful claiming. It was glorious.

He released her lips, pressing warm, wet kisses down the column of her neck as her fingers found purchase in his hair, guiding him to places she did not even know were kissable. He licked at the place where her neck met her shoulder, his hands coming around to the front of her dress, fast and furious, working at the laces there. There was nothing controlled about this moment, nothing thought out. His hands and lips tempted and touched and promised, sending shivers of pleasure through her without thought. Without hesitation.

It was sheer, unadulterated desire.

Desire for another person who understood.

Who did not judge.

Who wanted.

Sophie understood that better than anyone.

And then the laces on her dress were free, and her breasts were spilling into his palms, and his thumbs were sliding over the tips as he lifted them up and he stared down at them. “You’re magnificent.”

She believed him as he leaned down and sucked one rosy, pebbled tip into his mouth, working with lips and tongue around and around until she was squirming on his lap and he was lifting her to rearrange her until she was on her knees, above him, and he was worshipping her.

It felt like worship every time his tongue worked its slow orbit.

It felt like worship every time his fingers stroked across her skin.

It felt like worship when he opened his green eyes and stared up at her, as though she were his anchor in the storm.

She wanted to be that. Now.

Forever.

“Yes,” she whispered.

He released her. “Yes what?”

“Yes anything. Whatever you want.”

He blew a long, wonderful line of air over the place where she wanted him. “But what do you want, Sophie?”

She put her fingers in his hair, marveling at its softness. “I want your tongue.” Later, she would be shocked and a little embarrassed by the words, ladies did not say tongue, she was sure. But now, she didn’t care.

He groaned and gave it to her, long, lingering licks that threatened her sanity. “You are dangerous for me.”

She smiled. “Dangerous how?”

His fingers slid into her hair, her pins scattering across the chair, across the floor of the library, her curls falling down around them. He stared deep into her eyes. “You make me want . . .”

She lowered herself to his lap, feeling him hard and strong beneath her. He growled low in his throat, and power thrummed through her. “What do you want?” she asked, repeating his words, shocked at the sound of them on her lips, low and full of desire.

She was a different woman when she was with him.

He took her mouth again, in a deep, shattering kiss, and when he released her, they were both panting. “You make me want,” he said simply. “Christ, Sophie. You make me want.”

The words shattered her as much as the kiss had.

She nodded. “I want, as well.”