And then she did scream, just as he promised, it was in view of none but the stars high above—beyond the glass ceiling that caught the sound and sent it echoing around them both, the only two people in all of London. In all the world.
He stayed with her as she returned to the moment, his lips soft and full at the curve of her thigh, his tongue tracing circles there, slow and languid, as though they could slow her rioting pulse.
She opened her eyes in the stunning room, made orange in the light of the fires behind her and within her, and realized that there was nothing ridiculous about this place—it suited him. A glorious temple to this man who wielded pleasure like power.
And perhaps it was power.
It was certainly more dangerous than anything she’d ever faced before now. He was too much. And not enough. She could never have him, and somehow, in this moment, she knew that she would never stop wanting him.
He would ruin her, as surely as she had been ruined the last time a man had touched her.
She stiffened at the thought, and he felt the change in her. Lifted his lips. “And there it is,” he said, the words cooler than she would have expected. Cooler than she would have liked. “Memory returns.”
She hated that he so easily understood her. She sat up, pulling her feet from the water, her knees to her chest. Wrapping her arms about her. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He raised a brow. “You know precisely what I mean. If you didn’t, you would have reentered the pool instead of leaving it.”
She smiled. “Would you not prefer a bed?”
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t bring her here. Not now.”
“Who?”
“Anna. Don’t offer me her false smile and her falser words. I’m not—”
When he did not finish, she asked, “You’re not what?”
He swore, soft and furious, and swam backward, distancing himself from her. From the moment. “I’m not Chase. I don’t want her. I want you.”
“We are one and the same,” she said.
“Don’t insult me. Don’t lie to me. Save your lies for your owner.” He spat the word, and she heard the anger in it. The hurt.
When she had invented Chase years earlier, she’d never imagined she’d have to play such a delicate, difficult game as this one. She stood, following him down the pool, to the place where they’d entered. Where they’d begun this night. The place to which they could not return. He came out of the water, opened a nearby cabinet. Gave her a thick length of Egyptian cotton. She wrapped it about herself, searching for the right words.
Settling on, “Duncan, he doesn’t own me.”
She couldn’t see his face any longer. He was the backlit one now, when every word she spoke was a lie. His words came from his great, looming shadow, inches from her, the frustration in his voice clear as crystal. “Of course he does. You are at his whim. He gives you a package, you deliver it. He tells you to marry, you do so.”
“It is not like that.”
“It is precisely like that. He could have married you himself. He could have protected Caroline. He’s the most powerful man in London. He could do any of those things. Instead, he foists you on Langley.”
She should tell him the truth.
“There.” He took her arms; his grasp warm and wonderful, and turned her into the light. “Just now. Tell me that. Tell me what you were thinking just then.”
She knew the words were stupid. That they would wreck them both. But she said them anyway. “I was thinking that I should tell you the truth.”
He stilled. “You should. Whatever it is—I can help you.”
It seemed so simple to tell him the whole truth. That she was Chase. That she had protected that identity without hesitation for all these years because of Caroline. Because Caroline would need something more someday, some kind of perfect, pristine name that would help her have the life she wanted. The life she deserved.
It would be easy to tell him. He wielded power just as she did—he would see the threat her identity had to her life. To Caroline’s. To the Angel. To her world. But he was too dangerous. He was the kind of person who threatened her with his very breath, not because he made his living on secrets, but because once he knew, he would hold Georgiana in his hands—her secrets, her name, her world, her heart.
It did not matter that he made her want to trust him.
It did not matter that he made her want to love him.
She had been betrayed by love—by its fleeting imperfection, by its lasting damage.
It was not to be trusted.
And the threat of it made him not to be trusted.
There was too much that hung in the balance, and Duncan West did not owe her enough to balance her secrets. He had too many of his own—too many that she did not know herself.
And this was their dance, secret for secret.
Tit for tat.
And so she did not tell him the truth. She chose to remind herself that more than security, honor, and respect, she needed someone who would not search for her secrets. She needed someone whom she would never trust.
Whom she would never love.