“Fair enough.” Their eyes met. “You are an odd creature, Honoria MacCallan.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He turned in a circle, observing the walls. “This room feels like a dream.”
It certainly felt as if Honoria was traipsing around in a dream. “Boyd once told me to pour my heart in everything I do no matter how hideous. So I poured.”
“Your paintings aren’t hideous, merely different.” He smiled down at her. “I am both baffled and intrigued by your mind.”
What she saw in his gaze pulled the air from her lungs. “Hugh says the gallery gives him night terrors.”
“Hugh is one of your brothers?”
“Aye, my twin.”
He nodded, thoughtful. “Do you resemble each other?”
“As much as a man can resemble a woman.”
His lips curved.
“How are you feeling?” Honoria asked.
He inched a step closer to her and dared to reach out and tuck a wayward curled behind her ear. “I cannot say.”
Suddenly he was close, so close her skin tingled with delightful anticipation. Droplets of moisture glistened on his skin, displaying his exertion, but still he smiled down at her. The moment seemed suspended in time.
Honoria fought the urge to blink. This man with his foreign brogue and piercing green eyes truly dazzled her.
“Did I pass your test?”
“Test?” she breathed. Mere inches separated them now. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep, slow breath.
“For my health.”
Oh. That.
Her lashes fluttered, their eyes meeting once more, and she found herself holding her breath. The corner of his mouth quirked, and he lifted one finger to skim over her cheek.
“Not yet,” she murmured.
“Are you sure?”
Then he uttered words Honoria did not understand. Mysterious, foreign, dangerous. Words that almost sounded like a wild oath before his lips crashed down on hers and all else was forgotten.
He was kissing her.Kissingagadji. Lash did not know what the hell possessed him or what he was doing—only that it had been imperative that he crushed his lips against hers.
Never had he been overcome by such a profound urge to possess anyone. It wasn’t natural. Not for him. They had no hope for a future together. He could not get tangled up in her life. She belonged with her kind. Not a full-blooded Roma. So why was he kissing her?
Even knowing how wrong this was, it still did not stop him from molding his mouth against hers, tasting her lips with his tongue. She did not hold back either, as he’d thought she might. Had not slapped him or called him a filthy bastard. Not her. Not thisgadji. Instead, she wove her hands around his neck and returned his kiss as though he were her lifeline.
Lash knew, long after he left here, he would remember the auburn-haired beauty with the angelic voice, even after she had forgotten him. One day, he’d be nothing more than a vague recollection of a brief moment in her life. But she, she would stay imprinted on him.
He pulled her up against him, his tongue coaxing her lips to part.
There was no urgency to the kiss. It was the slow melding of two people falling into each other, and it felt so wretchedly good knowing it was so utterly wrong.
Time became irrelevant. The world tilted. His breathing became a series of ragged inhales. His knees buckled.
Mierda!His angelic creature had been right after all.
The ground hit him with teeth grinding force before all went black.
