One of her hands was released, and seconds later, she felt Magnus’s long and gentle fingers stroking through the wetness between her thighs.
His eyes were dark when he raised his head to look at her. “Are you sure you want this, Sophia?” he whispered. “I can still stop. We can—”
“I do not want to go back to the sterile world I have lived in for so long.” Sophia freed her other hand to reach up and place it against his nape before pulling him down to her and kissing him, the taste of each other on their lips seeming to ignite an even deeper passion. She gazed into his eyes when the kiss finally came to an end. “I want you, Magnus. I want to feel you inside me.”
He nodded. “Then you shall have me. In future, I intend to ensure that you have anything and everything you want.”
Sophia wasn’t naïve enough to believe those words meant the two of them had a future together. But for now, that didn’t matter. If this, here and now, was all the two of them ever had, she would spend the rest of her life knowing she’d once held perfection in her arms and inside her body.
Magnus placed that magnificent cockhead against her opening. “Slowly,” he coaxed when Sophia would have arched up and taken him deeper inside. “Gently,” he promised as he pressed forward and into the tightness of her channel.
Sophia’s teeth bit into her bottom lip as that wide cock moved deeper still, stretching her opening and the walls of her pussy, the only sounds in the room that of their deep, ragged breathing.
Magnus’s gaze held hers captive as he pressed in inch by silken inch until he was fully inside her. He stilled only when golden curls entangled with dark, his balls drawn up tight as he waited for her to become accustomed to that fullness. “Now?” he finally breathed.
“Now,” she confirmed in a shaky voice, glowing blue eyes gleaming up at him.
Eyes the color of the heaven Magnus felt as if he were drowning in. Sophia’s softness. Sophia’s consuming heat. Sophia’s surrender. Sophia’s cries of pleasure as he slowly began to stroke his cock inside her before drawing back and then slowly thrusting back in. Endlessly taking as Sophia gave. Giving as Sophia took. Then Sophia writhing and mewling as pleasure once again consumed her and took her over the edge.
It took every ounce of Magnus’s considerable willpower not to follow her over.
He wanted this to last, wanted to give Sophia the pleasure long denied her, for that pleasure to become her whole world, if only for tonight.
Every thrust took his cock deep into Sophia’s convulsing heat, stroking along the length of his cock, until the pressure became too much to bear a moment long, the pleasure overwhelming. “Come for me again, Sophia.” His hand moved between their tightly locked bodies, stroking her swollen clit, his cock rubbing along that bundle of nerves inside her with every pull back and thrust forward. “Come with me, Sophia,” he encouraged achingly, feeling the convulsions of her release as the cum shot down the length of his cock like a never-ending pulse that matched the rapid beat of his heart.
Chapter 11
“Well, that was far more enjoyable that the mechanics of lovemaking I teach my girls,” Sophia murmured in satisfaction as her head lay upon Magnus’s shoulder, his arm about her waist holding her securely to his side, her own arm resting on the tautness of his stomach.
Magnus looked at her from beneath heavy lids, dark hair in disarray across his brow. “Will you be teaching Clarissa those things too?”
She chuckled. “I will. Although I doubt Clarissa is quite the innocent you think she is.” At almost seventeen, Clarissa already possessed a certain…sensuality not always evident in young ladies of her age. “I do not mean she is experienced already,” she added hastily as Magnus looked slightly alarmed. “Only that she is on the brink of womanhood and ready to leave home and spread her wings a little.”
He eyed her quizzically. “How did you become Miss Marchment when the school has existed for twenty years or more?”
“Did your private investigator tell you that?” she teased.
Magnus had the grace to look slightly guilty. “He did, yes.”
Sophia made herself more comfortable in his arms. “When I left my parents’ home ten years ago, I used a little of the money I had to take the first available carriage out of London. It happened to be going to Portsmouth. Miss Marchment was one of the other passengers in that carriage. We started talking. I did not tell her everything, but she seemed to sense how at a loss I was as to what I should do next with my life and offered me a position in her school, teaching the young ladies deportment and social etiquette. To my surprise, when she died three years ago, she left the school to me in her will. I had been Miss Smith until that time, but decided, out of affection for that lady, that I would become Miss Marchment of Miss Marchment’s School for Young Ladies.”
“She sounds as if she was a very discerning and kind lady.”
“She was,” Sophia agreed affectionately. “And now your daughter is to become one of my pupils.”
Magnus gave a resigned sigh. “To be honest, I am pleased at the delay in introducing her into Society. It will be hard, but I do not believe the day is far away when I will have to give Clarissa into the care and love of another man.”
“Clarissa will always be your daughter,” Sophia assured. “She adores you.”
As Magnus loved his daughter and always would. But it was a different love from what he felt for Sophia. His feelings for her were so intense, along with this craving he felt for her all the time, it was hard for him to contain them.
Sophia’s feelings toward him were still something of a mystery, but the fact she had allowed him to make love to her, and made love to him in return, gave him hope she might one day come to love him too. Until then, he intended to keep her as close to him as she would allow.
He turned on his side to look at her. “I did nothing to alarm or distress you just now?”
She smiled at him in the candlelight, her arms moving to curl about his neck, her fingers threading lightly through the hair at his nape. “It was all wondrous, Magnus.”
His arms tightened about her. “I am glad.”
The fingers of one hand trailed a path across the hair covering his chest. “Indeed, I am inclined to do it all again.” She looked at him from beneath silky lashes as those fingers continued to follow that vee of dark hair down his muscular abdomen and then lower still.
Magnus chuckled huskily. “As I said, I intend to personally ensure you have anything and everything you want or need.”
If Sophia noted that Magnus did not say “in future” this time, then she was inclined to overlook it. Being here now with Magnus was far too pleasurable to worry about what the future might bring.
It brought, as Sophia should have known that it would, more distress and emotional pain.
“Will you let me see?” Magnus held out his hand for the letter Sophia held in her shaking hands.
It had been delivered as they ate breakfast together, Sophia’s heart sinking as she saw the familiar printed handwriting on the front of it. She now handed that missive to Magnus, the eight words there already imprinted on her brain:
THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. LEAVE LONDON NOW.
“What the hell!” Magnus’s face darkened with anger before he rose to his feet and strode from the room. He returned only seconds later. “Simms says the letter was delivered by some street urchin who was paid handsomely for doing so,” he related furiously.
As, no doubt, had the other letters, Sophia acknowledged dully, and probably not by the same street urchin. Whoever was doing this was clever enough to cover their tracks so their identity would not be easily discovered.
“Will you allow me to keep this?” Magnus tightly gripped the letter.
“Of course.” Sophia nodded. “Magnus, perhaps I should—”
“You are staying here,” he stated firmly.
Her lips tilted at his ability to know what she was about to say before she said it. “You are grown extremely masterf
Magnus allowed some of the tension to ease from his shoulders, willing, for the moment, to allow Sophia this diversion in their conversation. Which was not to say he did not intend getting to the bottom of this situation as soon as possible.
He leaned forward across the table until their lips almost touched. “Perhaps you would care to return upstairs and learn exactly how masterful I intend to continue being?”
A delicate blush colored her cheeks, but her gaze remained locked with his. “Perhaps I would.”
“In that case, I suggest we return to my bedchamber— What is it, Simms?” He glared at the butler as the other man stood in the doorway.
“Mr. Henderson is here to see you, Your Grace.”
The private investigator!
Hopefully with the information Magnus needed to proceed in his search as to who was threatening Sophia. He had not broken any promises to Sophia, but it was important that he learn the name of the man who had raped and ruined his Sophia ten years ago. Once he had the man’s name, he fully intended paying him a visit and learning if he was once again daring to hurt her.
His Sophia?
Yes, if Magnus had his way, Sophia would be his.
His love.
His everything.
“It is very rude of Papa to absent himself in this way when you have only just arrived to stay with us,” Clarissa chastened.
“I am sure your father has his reasons,” Sophia dismissed.
Whatever those reasons were, she felt sure they had something to do with the visit of Mr. Henderson, Magnus having excused himself immediately after speaking with the other man.
“Besides,” Sophia continued briskly, “my reason for being here is to get to know you better,” she added not quite truthfully. She had known when she accepted his invitation that Magnus intended for the two of them to continue to explore their budding relationship, as they had done last night.
And if that time together should be all they ever had, Sophia knew she could and would live on that memory for the rest of her life. That there would be no other lover for her. Magnus had been perfection, everything she could ever have wished for in a lover. Gentle. Passionate. Concentrated solely on her comfort and pleasure above his own.
The same might not be true once he returned from pursuing whatever information Mr. Henderson had given him earlier.
In the meantime, she had Clarissa to distract from her worry at Magnus’s absence. “I am sure your friends who are already pupils there have told you much about the school, but even so there must be questions you might like to ask me?”
Those questions were many, it seemed, and the two of them happily conversed about the school and Portsmouth during the next couple of hours.
Indeed, Sophia was so exhausted by the conversation and lack of sleep the previous night that she was making her way up the stairs to her bedchamber when she heard the front door opening below in the entrance hall and Magnus’s voice as he greeted the butler.
Eager to see him again even after such a brief parting, Sophia leaned over the banister to call down a greeting. Only to give a gasp and feel all the color drain from her cheeks as she recognized the gentleman who accompanied him.
Magnus glanced up as he heard a noise above, just in time to see Sophia’s accusing blue eyes glaring down at him before she turned on her heel and ran up the rest of the staircase.
He heard a door slam overhead as he reached the bottom of the staircase, taking those stairs two at a time until he reached the top and then almost ran down the hallway to knock on the door to Sophia’s bedchamber. “Sophia?” He turned the handle only to find the door was locked. “Sophia, open this door immediately.”
“Go away.” The sob could be heard in her voice.
Magnus gave another rattle of the door handle. “Unlock the door, Sophia, or I shall be forced to break it down.”
“Do as you wish. It is your house. But you should know that I do not want to see you nor do I have anything to say to you.”
His heart plummeted at the finality in her tone. “The situation is not what it looks like, Sophia.”
Her dismissive snort could be heard from inside the bedchamber. “It looks to me as if you have invited my rapist into your home!”
Magnus winced at her unmistakable vehemence. “I have only done so because I believe you need to hear what Harrogate has to say on the matter. Something I do not believe your parents allowed him to do ten years ago.”
“At least they possessed that much decency and care for my feelings.”
Magnus stilled at the unmistakable accusation in her tone. “And I do not?”
“Your actions speak for themselves.”
“My actions were made only with your future welfare in mind.”
“By forcing me confront the man who raped me?” she scorned.
“No!” Magnus protested. “Sophia, this is not what it seems.”
“You are the one who are not what you seemed to be,” she stated coldly. “Now go away and take that—that man with you!”
Magnus’s hand dropped from the door handle. Carrying out his threat to break down the door would only make the situation worse than it was.
A situation he realized, too late, he could have handled better. But he had thought he would have chance to talk with Sophia first and explain events to her.
He had been wrong, so very wrong, and now Sophia not only distrusted him and everything he said, but she appeared to openly dislike him.
He drew in a ragged breath. “I shall be waiting downstairs in my study when you are ready to talk to me.”
She gave another disgusted snort. “Then you will be waiting a long time.”
Magnus’s shoulders slumped in defeat as he turned away and slowly made his way back down the staircase to the entrance hall, where Lord Zachary Noble, the Earl of Harrogate, waited for him.
Chapter 12
The school seemed particularly unwelcoming without the presence of pupils, other teachers, or the cook and other kitchen staff. The pupils had all gone to stay with family for the summer, the teachers and staff likewise, or possibly on holiday in different locations in England.
Only Sophia, it seemed, had nowhere else to go or people to be with.
There was the married couple who acted as caretakers, of course, but they lived in the coach house at the bottom of the driveway leading up to the main school building. But after calling in to inform the Brewers of her return two days ago, primarily so they would not be alarmed if they saw candlelight within the school building, Sophia had refused their invitation to dine with them and instead shut herself away in her private apartment at the back of the school. She had remained in bed for the past two days and nights, all the time aware, in the deep silence of the night, of every creak and movement of a house that was normally awash with the noise and chatter of the forty or so young ladies who usually resided here.
Sophia’s journey back to Portsmouth had necessarily been made in the dead of night.
Weston House had been deathly quiet when Sophia crept stealthily down the hallway and stairs and then left through the servants’ entrance at the back of the house. All, thank goodness, without rousing any of the inhabitants.
There had been a candle burning in Magnus’s study as she passed the window. A glance inside the room had revealed he was fast asleep on the chaise, as he had said he often was, an empty decanter of brandy on the table beside him as testament as to why he was sleeping so deeply.
Sophia had taken several minutes to drink in the sight of him. Possibly her last, other than when he brought Clarissa to the school. If he brought Clarissa to the school. Which was possibly now in question.
Magnus’s hair had been tousled, as if he had run his fingers through it roughly and often before falling asleep. There were shadows beneath his closed lids. His mouth was set in a stern line even as he slept. His clothing was the same as he had been wearing at breakfast that morning.
Sophia did not believe Magnus to be a vindictive or deliberately cruel man; he was far too bluntly honest for that. But, nonetheless, his having brought Lord Zachary Noble into his home had hurt her deeply.
And for what reason?
What could Magnus possibly hope to achieve by forcing her to confront the other man?
Whatever Magnus had hoped, his actions had succeeded only in hurting Sophia beyond anything that had happened in her life before. Beyond even that event ten years ago which had stripped her of her identity and the only life she had ever known.
Because, for as little time as they had known each other, Sophia knew she had fallen in love with Magnus.
She loved him still, despite what he had done.
She believed, as deeply as she had fallen for him, that she might always love him.
But she had survived losing everything ten years ago, and she would survive this time too. She had no other choice when she had a responsibility to both her pupils and the other teachers to remain healthy and strong. Besides, whatever daydreams she might have had regarding Magnus were now well and truly over.
And there had been no more insulting and hurtful letters delivered, thank goodness.
Sophia dragged herself from her bed on the third day, washing and dressing before taking the path into town to buy the necessary supplies to last her until Cook and the kitchen staff returned to work next week. She was perfectly capable of catering for herself until then.
It was, thankfully, a beautiful summer day, perfect for the mile walk to the nearest shops. Sophia’s spirits lifted as she was greeted by name by many of the shopkeepers when she made her purchases, a smile curving her lips by the time she carried her parcels back to the school.
This was who she was, Miss Sophia Marchment, headmistress of a reputable school for young ladies. The school had been her life for the past ten years, and would continue to be so. Nothing had really changed, except her heart ached with a longing she had never known before. For Magnus. But that, she hoped, would ease with time. As her deep love for him would become a part of her that no longer hurt as much as it currently did. She—
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