It was different from the kisses the other night—when she’d been masked and wigged and kohled beyond recognition. When he’d given her private pleasure for the sake of just that—pleasure. No past, no future, just present. Of course it was different. Because this kiss was all time. This kiss was promise and threat, history and speculation. And it was the summation of twenty years of wanting him even as she knew that she would never have him. It was aching and sweet and delicious and awful and it laid her bare there, in the golden light of the setting Covent Garden sun, where she’d never been
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