Not that he hadn’t imagined unbuttoning everything else and leaving her in nothing but those long, silk gloves.
Except imagination paled in comparison to reality, at least when it came to Mara Lowe, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from touching her. From kissing her. From tasting her skin. From making himself impossibly distracted and unbearably hard in the process.
In his life, he’d never been so thrilled and so furious to arrive somewhere. Except, as he climbed down from the carriage, reaching back to help her descend, the silken glove sliding through his grasp, he realized that he’d made an enormous mistake. After all, he’d have to touch her all evening, and every stroke of silk against his skin would be a lick of flame.
A reminder of what he’d touched.
Of what he would never touch again.
He guided her up the extravagantly decorated steps to Leighton House and inside, where he watched as a footman removed the fur-lined cloak from around her shoulders, revealing an extraordinary expanse of smooth, pale skin.
A too-bare expanse.
Shit.
He never should have pushed Hebert to keep the line of the dress so low. What had he been thinking? Every man in attendance would be watching her.
Which had been his plan all along.
Except now, as she adjusted that stunning golden mask that only highlighted her strange, beautiful eyes, and faced him with a quiet smile, he did not like the plan at all.
But it was too late. He had handed over his invitation, and they were inside the ballroom in moments, part of the teeming mass of revelers, all of whom had made special return to the city to attend this event. Which was why he’d chosen this event for her unveiling.
For his own return.
His hand fell to the curve of her lower back, and he shepherded her through the throngs of people clustered around the door, resisting the urge to throttle the men nearby whose roving eyes lingered on the high swell of Mara’s breasts.
He cast a sidelong gaze at the bosom in question, considering the perfect pink skin there, the three small freckles that stood sentry just above the edge of the jade green silk. His mouth went dry.
Then watered.
He cleared his throat, and she looked up at him, eyes wide and questioning behind the mask. “Well, Your Grace? You have me here now—what do you intend to do with me?”
What he wanted to do to her was to take her home and spread her bare in his bed and rectify the missing events of that evening, twelve years prior. But that was not the answer she was expecting. And so instead, he captured her gloved hand in his and led her into the crowd. “I intend to dance with you.”
She wasn’t in his arms for half a second when he realized that the idea was nearly as bad as gifting the woman gloves. Now she was warm and smelling of softness and citrus, and she fit perfectly in his good arm as he fell into the steps he shouldn’t remember. And there, in thinking of the steps, he hesitated over them.
He captured himself, but she noticed the misstep as she had his prior smoothness. She met his gaze, her eyes light inside gold filigree. “When was the last time you were somewhere like this?”
“You mean inside a legitimate aristocratic ballroom at a legitimate aristocratic event?” She inclined her head as he executed an elaborate turn to avoid another couple. “More than a decade.”
She nodded. “Twelve years.”
He did not like the exactness of the answer, but he could not say why. When Temple rubbed elbows with the elite of the ton it was most often on the floor of the casino after a fight, when he’d proven his worth with muscle and force. He was the strongest of them. The most powerful.
No longer.
His bad hand flexed in the sling, unfeeling and unsettling. And he hated it, in part because of the woman in his arms. Because he might never feel her skin with it. Her hair. And if she discovered his new failing, he might be less than a man for her.
But he should not care; after all, he would never see her again after tonight.
It was what he wanted.
Lie.
“Tell me about it,” she said, and he wished she hadn’t. He wished she was not interested in him. Wished she did not so easily draw his attention. His regard.
Wished she did not make him feel so goddamn out of control.
“Now is hardly the time for a conversation.”
Her beautiful gaze turned wry and she looked around the room at the couples dancing around them. “You have somewhere to be?”
She was entirely at his whim. He could tell her to remove her mask that moment. He held all the cards, and she none of them. And still, she found room to tease him. Even now, minutes from her destruction, she stood her ground.
The woman was remarkable.
“I was forced to attend the coming-out party of a neighbor.”
Pink lips curved beneath the mask, underscoring the provocativeness of her costume. “You must have enjoyed that. Being forced into little mincing quadrille steps to even the ratio of males to females at the ball in question.”
“My father had made it clear that I had no choice,” he said. “It was as future dukes did.”