She laughed, and it blew away all the thick implications of the moment.
“Now that’s something I’ve never had before. By the way, I wasn’t kidding about getting out of this dress. I can hardly breathe, and it’s heavy.”
“Would you like a T-shirt?”
“Um, not really. What I’d really like is your help.” She stepped out of her heels, crossed the room and sat on the couch facing away from him. “The laces in the back are too hard to reach.”
“What would you have done if we hadn’t connected? Slept in it?”
Connected. That hit her in all the soft, warm places again. This was a connection, a greater one than she’d been looking for, or had expected, and far more precious—thanks to the custom of wearing masks for Carnevale. She’d never have let her guard down otherwise.
“I would have figured out something,” she murmured as he gently lifted her curls and swept them up over her shoulder. Her skin prickled as she felt his gaze on the bare expanse from her hairline to the strapless bodice.
His hands skimmed down her back on either side of the wings, stoking the fire he’d built on the balcony, which hadn’t extinguished at all. Those strong fingers pulled on the threads, unknotting them and drawing them through the grommets with deliberate, aching leisure.
She kept expecting to feel his lips on her shoulder, on the column of her neck, or at the place where fabric met her skin. But the longer he held back, and the longer her skin burned for his touch, the crazier it drove her.
Yes, he was a master at this anticipation game. Among other things. When she finally got him naked and under her, she’d show him a thing or two.
Except she still wasn’t sure they were headed for the bedroom. It was disorienting to have her temporary, surface-level liaison morph into something undefinable. Something so much more than a quick fix for loneliness.
So what was it?
Finally, after an eternity, the laces pulled free from the bodice, loosening the corset and spilling her breasts partially over the neckline of the dress, and he still hadn’t made a move.
“It, uh, has to come over my head,” she said without turning around. She raised her arms. “Can you...?”
He grasped the bodice but she was sitting on the skirt, so she wiggled and he pulled, until the yards and yards of lace tulle eased past her waist. The mask popped up onto her forehead, but she repositioned it before the skirt fully came off.
Then she was naked except for her thong. And the mask. What would he do first? The way he’d answered that question back on the balcony had been maddeningly vague.
He draped her dress over the back of the couch. She faced the canal, away from Matt, and he had yet to say a word. Screaming sexual tension whipped through all her nerves until she thought she’d pass out.
“So. What did you want to talk about?”
His soft laugh settled inside her. “I’m wondering about this.”
He traced the trail of eight notes tattooed in a string at the small of her back. The smooth touch unleashed a tremor she couldn’t control. “It’s a tattoo.”
“The notes are all the colors of the rainbow. I like it.”
No one had ever noticed that before. “Music is important to me.”
It was more than she’d meant to say and communicated none of the shock of pure grief the words had unearthed. She shoved the grief back, like she always did, shoved back the longing for a voice to express the pain. If she had a voice, she’d have no pain to express. It was a cruel, vicious circle she couldn’t escape.
Except this was one night she didn’t have to face the darkness alone. “Matt.”
“Angie.”
The smile in his voice warmed her. “Just making sure you’re still there. Are we going to talk some more or is there something you’d like to do instead?”
“Was that a line?”
“Yes. It was.” The ache at her core spread, and only the man behind her could ease it. She’d never wanted to be with someone more. What did she have to do to get him to make a move? “Obviously not a good one since you’re still sitting there like yo—”
“Stand up and turn around, Angie.”
She did slowly.
His hooded gaze swept her from head to toe, lingering along the way and unleashing a delicious tingle in all the places his eyes touched.
“You are the most beautiful woman alive. Come here.”
He grasped both her hands and stood to meet her. In one breath, he drew her into his arms and kissed her.
Flames exploded at their joined mouths, between their bodies, crackling down the length of her bare skin where the soft fabric of his suit brushed it. Oh, how wrong she’d been. He was a man who took what he wanted. And he wanted to consume her whole.
She wanted to let him.
They connected. On every level.
When he tilted her head back to access her throat with his firm, gorgeous mouth, their masks caught at the corners. Patiently, he disentangled them and glanced down into her eyes, suddenly still. “No expectations. Does this feel right?”
Without warning, he skated a hand down her spine and fanned it at the small of her back, cradling the tattooed music notes in his capable hand as if he knew he held her very center.
Her eyelids fell closed and she moaned. “More right than anything I’ve ever felt. Please don’t say you’re really in the mood to talk.”
He laughed against her throat, and she felt the caress of his lips clear to her toes. “I’m not. But I would be happy to talk, if that’s what you wanted.”
She shook her head almost imperceptibly, terrified she’d dislodge his mouth from her skin. “I want you.”
“Good. Because I’m about to make love to you.”
Yes, she wanted that, too. To be filled by this very different man, to the brim. To connect, bodies and minds. Souls.
He threaded a hand through the hair at her neck, his fingers solid and firm against it. “Angie,” he murmured, almost reverently.
“Stop.” Tears stung the corners of her eyes. Baffling, irrepressible tears because she wanted something else from him, something she’d resisted all evening. “Just stop.”
“Okay.” His hands withdrew and the sudden lack of support buckled her knees.
“No! Don’t stop touching me. Stop calling me Angie.” Before her subconscious could come up with one of the hundreds of reasons it was a dangerous idea, she reached up and yanked off her mask. “My name is Evangeline. Make love to me, not the mask.”
“Evangeline.”
It flowed from Matthew’s mouth like a prayer. Yes. That fit this angelic, winged woman who had bared herself to him in more ways than one.
He drank in her face, and it jolted something inside, as if his soul had done a double take and said, There you are.
“Angie is a nickname. Evangeline is who I am.”
A nameless emotion tightened his throat. “I’m honored you trusted me with it.”
She’d done far more than simply remove her mask. The significance of it sent a flood of guilt through him. Guilt because he