by Evie Dunmore
She was still limp and pulsing when he rose over her and braced his elbows on either side of her head. The hot, hard nudge at her entrance sent a jolt through the daze.
She flattened a hand against his chest. “Please.”
He made a strangled sound, his handsome features stretched taut with the effort to stop.
She said it quickly. “Please don’t get me with child.”
An unintelligible emotion passed over his face. Then he gave a nod.
She gasped when he pushed forward. It had been too long, and he was big, and there was the instinctive trill of feminine apprehension right on the brink of letting someone in.
He sensed her struggle beneath him, and his movements gentled, became endlessly tender and slow.
“Don’t, my love,” he murmured, “just let me come to you . . . yes . . .”
His body belied his even voice. Beneath her palms, the muscles in his back were trembling.
It was that, or the husky murmur of his voice near her ear, or the soft scrape of his cheek against hers, but something in her gave, and she watched his eyes glaze over as he sank into her.
He filled her utterly, body and mind, and he planted himself deeper until she had no more to give. Her gaze was riveted on his face, taut with a primal tension, until the feel of his thrusts dissolved any boundaries, left no beginning or end between them. She felt him shudder and wrench away from her just as she peaked again.
His head dropped to the crook of her neck and he slumped against her.
Her hand curled over his damp nape.
He rolled off her and lay like a dead man.
* * *
She watched as he crossed the room to the corner with the pitcher and basin and washed, then returned to the bed with a damp cloth. She should feel embarrassed at seeing him wander around stark naked. Most definitely at him carefully wiping her down. But she must have lost the last of her inhibitions somewhere between his chamber door and his armchair.
She placed her hand on her belly, where he had spent himself earlier.
He had kept his word. He had protected her. Wild horses wouldn’t have pulled her from the path to ecstasy on which he had set her with his talented mouth, so she had a good idea of what it had cost him to hold on to his wits. Wonderful, trustworthy man.
The mattress dipped when he stretched himself out by her side again.
Raised on his elbow, his chin in his palm, he studied her with half-lidded eyes. He looked different. Younger. She couldn’t stop her hand from drifting up to trace the curve of his bottom lip with her fingertip. His mouth, too, looked different, soft and full. This was intimacy, knowing he could look this way. Very few people would ever see him like this, Montgomery the man, not the duke. How she wished he were only a man.
He captured her inquisitive hand and began toying with her fingers. Too late, she remembered to pull back. He wouldn’t let her. “You always try to hide your hands,” he said. “Why?”
She sighed. “They are not nice.”
He gently pried her fist back open. “What makes you say so?”
“The ink stains,” she muttered.
He kissed them. “Hardly blemishes.”
“And I have calluses,” she said, all at once strangely driven to point out her flaws to him.
“So do I,” he said.
Her gaze flew to his in surprise.
He spread the fingers of his right hand wide and pointed at a small bump near the top of his middle finger. “From holding the pen.” He placed her finger between his middle and ring finger. “From holding the reins.”
Watching their fingers stroke and entwine triggered a longing pull low in her belly again. She was greedy all right, especially where he was concerned.
“What about this?” She touched a hard spot in his palm.
“That is from the mallet.”
“The mallet?”
“Yes. A big hammer for driving fence posts into the ground.”
“And do you do that often, Your Grace, drive fence posts into the ground?”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “Often enough. Working on the land takes my mind off things.”
“That explains these,” she murmured, and traced her fingers over the curve of his biceps. It hardened reflexively under her perusal. She smiled, also because she was now entitled to touch him like this.
“Did you really give a man a nosebleed?” he asked. He had turned her hand over and studied the pink knuckles.
The smile faded from her lips. “Yes.”
She could feel the languor leaving his body.
“Why?” he asked.
“I suppose because the village lads I ran with as a girl didn’t teach me how to slap like a lady.”
He leaned over her, not a trace of humor in his eyes. “What did he do?”
She evaded his gaze. “He was . . . hurting a friend.”
Montgomery’s face set in harsh, unforgiving lines. “I see.”
“I won’t object if you dismantle the entire London Metropolitan Police,” she said softly, “but could it perhaps wait until tomorrow?”
Only when she dragged a wanton foot up his calf did his frown ease.
“Minx,” he muttered. He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm, then carefully returned it to her. “This is a very capable hand,” he said. “Don’t ever hide it.”
She made a fist, to keep his kiss. How could she ever have thought of him as cold and severe—he could be that, but she also couldn’t feel more charmed and cherished if she tried.
And yet. There were a few heartless things he had done that were facts, and not just opinions.
“Montgomery. May I ask you something?”
“Sebastian.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Call me Sebastian.”
She hesitated. “Why?”
“It is my name.”
She knew. Sebastian Alexander Charles Avery, to be precise, followed by a lengthy array of grander and lesser titles. She had memorized it when she had first spied on him in the Annals of the Aristocracy. She was also fairly certain that only his oldest friends, and perhaps his wife, would ever call a man of his station by his Christian name.
“I’m afraid I don’t know you well enough for that,” she said.
An ironic smile curved his lips. “I have just been inside you. And I intend to do it again in about fifteen minutes’ time.”
She could feel her face turn rosy. “That’s different.”
“Hardly,” he said. “Indulge me. Then ask.”
She sighed. “Sebastian.”
His lashes lowered and he made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a purr.
“Sebastian,” she said huskily, just to see what he would do.
His eyes slitted open. “Am I amusing you?”
She giggled, she who never giggled. He slowly smiled back, crinkling the corners of his eyes and showing straight white teeth. Ah, but a smiling Sebastian was a devastating sight.
She almost regretted having to ask.
“Sebastian. Why did you divorce your wife?”
Chapter 25
There was a clock in his bedchamber. She could hear it now, loudly and clearly tick-tocking away another minute of uncomfortable silence as Sebastian lay still as stone. Sharing his bed evidently did not entitle her to ask nosy questions.
“I hadn’t much choice in the matter,” he finally said. He was staring up at the bed canopy, looking thoughtful rather than annoyed. “Six months into our marriage, she ran away with another man. A baronet’s youngest son, of the estate that bordered her father’s. It turned out she had fancied herself in love with him since childhood. I found them in an inn on the way to France.”
Oh.
“That’s dreadful,” she finally said.
He gave a shrug. “It is what it is.”
But the images came with startling clarity, of Sebastian taking a pair of creaky stairs, a distressed innkeeper hard on his heels . . . of him bursting into a dimly lit room to the shrieks of the terrified lovers . . .
“Why did you not . . .” Her throat became strangely tight.
Strong hands locked around her waist, and he pulled her on top of him. Her thoughts scattered at the feel of his hard, warm body beneath her. But his expression was pensive and wry; clearly lovemaking wasn’t on his mind.
“Why did I not shoot them when I found them?” he suggested.
She gave a tiny nod.
“Because it would not have been worth it, neither in this life nor the next.”
Oh, Sebastian. What did it take, to make him lose his head?
Her face warmed. Well, she now knew one thing that made him lose his head.
“Most men would not have thought that far,” she said. “Most wouldn’t have thought at all.”
He stroked her flanks, his palms pressing deliberately as if to draw comfort from the soft feel of her.
“I stood there at the foot of the bed, and they stared back at me with a look in their eyes that said they fully expected me to shoot them,” he said. “But in that moment, I felt nothing. Nothing at all. So I could weigh my options. I had them apprehended. I made it a condition that she move to Italy not to return. But I didn’t lay a finger on either of them. She always felt I had a heart of ice, and lucky for her, she was right.”
“No,” she said, “I cannot believe that about your heart. She sounds like a—a rather disloyal person.”
His roaming hands began to brazenly fondle her bottom.
“How fiercely you come to my rescue,” he murmured. “She was disloyal, yes, but most of all, she was an overemotional girl, and I should never have married her.”
“You must have loved her very much to propose,” she said, resenting how hollow she felt at the thought.
He shook his head. “I married her because my father had sold her father one of our estates, and the man knew how to play his hand. He wanted a duchess for a daughter, and I needed a wife, so acquiring one with my rather expensive estate thrown in as a dowry seemed efficient.”
“Oh.”
“A strategic move, but it backfired.”
How calculating he made it sound. But that was how his class used marriage, didn’t they? To secure alliances that brought more of the same: money, power, land. For pleasure or love, a man might keep a mistress.
“I thought taking lovers was commonplace?”
His gaze darkened. “Not until there is an heir. Any boy child she would have conceived while married to me would have officially been mine, but short of incarcerating her in her chambers, there was no way I could have guaranteed that my heir would be my son. She had already proven that she was willing to risk everything. Besides . . .”
He fell into a brooding silence, but his body had gone tense beneath hers. She brushed her lips against his throat. When that didn’t help, she used her tongue.
He gave a soft grunt, and his member stirred against her belly. There was a responding flutter between her legs, and she sat up, straddling him, shifting aimlessly until he stayed her with a firm grip on her hips.
His cheeks were flushed as he stared up at her. “I didn’t see it. She either loathed me enough to risk everything to get away, or loved the boy more than anything. Either way, I had not expected it to happen.”
She was tempted to tell him that most husbands did not have to expect that their wives would run away to France, but there was more to it, wasn’t there.
She slid her palms over his hands on her hips and entwined her fingers with his.
“How do you ever trust anyone?” she whispered.
He moved unexpectedly, and she was on her back and he on top of her. She gave a startled wiggle. And found she could not move. The hard ridge of his arousal was pressing demandingly between her thighs, and her knees came up to cradle him on their own volition. She groaned. Yes, no morals or modesty when it came to him, none.
His eyes lit with a knowing gleam. “I pick my confidants carefully,” he said, “and when they look me in the eye, and are hopelessly incapable of keeping an opinion to themselves, I find myself inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
She gave a laugh. “Don’t ever let it be known. Your life would become infinitely more difficult.”
The sudden intensity in his stare should have alarmed her.
She only felt a powerful throb of anticipation.
He flipped her onto her belly.
His hand brushed the tangle of her hair over her shoulder and his tongue was hot against the side of her throat. There was hunger in his kisses, in his exploration of downy skin and sensitive places that came throbbing to life again. She arched her back, enthralled by the feel of firm muscle and crisp chest hair against her shoulders.
“I like hearing you laugh,” he murmured between nips. “It’s a beautiful sound.”
“Better than Mendelssohn?”
She gasped when he bit down on the curve of her neck, lightly enough, mind.
“Yes,” he said, “better.”
His hands slipped between the mattress and the silky weight of her breasts, and the caress of his palms against the excited pink tips tore a surprised moan from her lips. He knew things about her body she hadn’t known, and the more he showed her, the more she could give over, until she was nothing but sensation, until . . . his thighs pressed against hers from behind, spreading her open to fit himself against her.
She stilled when his intention sank in.
His voice was dark and smooth like midnight silk against her ear. “Will you have me like this?”
She swallowed.
His mouth was so soft, so eager, against the curve of her jaw, nipping gently, grazing her tender skin with golden stubble.
“Yes,” she whispered. Yes and yes and yes.
She’d be saying yes to everything soon, so deeply was he already under her skin.
There was no struggle this time, only a smooth, hot glide, the relief to be joined to him again. She buried her flaming face against the cool sheets when he hitched her hips a little higher. Her fingers helplessly curled into the mattress.
Plato was wrong. It wasn’t a satire, the missing half of a soul. The sense of completeness as Sebastian filled her was frightfully, joyfully real. So right, so real, it should never end. But again he nudged her steadily onward with the slide of his thrusts, with his fingers sliding over the slickness between her legs, until she was dissolving to the distant echo of her own cries. In the thick of her pleasure, there was a pang of regret when he pulled away rather than finding completion inside her.
* * *
They lay in a graceless tangle of limbs, him on his back, her tucked against his side with one lethargic leg flung over his thighs. Her cheek rested on his chest. His delicious scent seemed to concentrate there. It’s the hair, she thought, sifting her fingers through it. How clever of men to have a little pelt to trap their fragrance exactly where they want a woman’s head.
He was trailing lazy fingers up her nape, scraping gentle fingertips against her scalp, and she wanted to purr like a contented cat. Sure, morning would arrive in a few hours. But she hadn’t felt this fulfilled in years, if ever—a deep, quiet calm, as if a constantly niggling question had finally been answered and now everything had slotted into place. She might regret it later, her failure at resisting temptation once again. But not now.
She splayed her fingers over his chest, right where his heart was beating an even rhythm.
“What I did earlier,” she said. “When I came to you . . .”
He tipped up her chin with his thumb. “Yes?”
This was more embarrassing than she h
ad expected. “When you were in the armchair,” she said.
“Ah,” he said, and his eyes heated. “That.”
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve never . . . what I mean is, I’ve only ever read about it before. Accidentally.”
“Accidentally,” he echoed, one brow arching.
“Yes. Sometimes one accidentally stumbles upon . . . depictions . . . in ancient Greek documents. Or on Greek vases.”
“I consider myself indebted to Greek pottery, then,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to her mouth.
And, incredibly, she knew she would have him again this moment, if he wanted to.
He gathered the wayward locks of her hair in one hand behind her head.
“Who was he?” he asked softly.
Her heart stuttered to a halt. She had not expected him to broach that subject. Ever.
Her throat squeezed shut. She had probably opened that avenue of discussion just now, with her inane desire to convince him that she was not overly experienced.
But tell him about William?
It made her feel ill.
She sensed that he was waiting, and the longer she said nothing, the more she felt like a shrew, after all he had told her about his duchess. But he was asking to see the ugliest parts of her, while she was still naked and sore from allowing him in. Her meager defenses would not stand his contempt tonight.
“He doesn’t matter,” she managed.
His fingers began manipulating her shoulders, and she realized her body had gone rigid as a board.
“He does not matter,” he said quietly, “unless you need me to put something right for you.”
“What do you mean?”