“Sebastian,” she pleaded.
“Hmm?” He lifted his head from her breast. “Yes?” His fingers stirred, but his hand did not move one bit lower. “Was there something you wanted?”
“Yes, yes,” she panted, arching her hips up. “Touch me.”
“But would that be romantic?”
She gave a frantic nod, for a nod was all she could manage between her panting breaths.
He eased his hand down between her legs, then slid his fingertip back up along the crease of her opening, and then, much to her frustration, he pulled his hand away.
“Sebastian!”
“Patience, my sweet.” His hand glided upward, then slid along her hip, nudging gently as his other hand slid beneath her. “Roll onto your side,” he ordered, moving her as he spoke.
She obeyed, and within moments, he was positioning himself behind her. His hard penis pushed between her legs at the curve of her bum, but he did not enter her. Instead, he began to move his hips, using the hard and aroused part of himself to arouse her as well.
As his penis slid back and forth along her opening from behind, he caressed her in front, murmuring things in her ear that heightened her arousal in the most delicious way.
“Do you like this?” he asked, rolling her nipple between his fingers. When she nodded, his hand drifted down over her stomach, brushed the curls at the apex of her thighs, and finally, eased between, parting her.
“And this?” He eased his finger into her opening, then back out, then back in deeper. “This doesn’t hurt, does it?”
“N…n…no,” she somehow managed to answer.
“It feels good?” Once again, his finger slid out of her opening, then along the crease of her sex to the nub at the top that seemed to be the center of all her sensations. “What about this?”
“Yes, yes. Oh, yes.” Her body moved with the rhythm of his hand, a helpless slave to the sensations he was evoking. Her hips jerked, striving toward what she now knew would come. She felt it in the rising, thickening pleasure.
“Roll onto your stomach,” he said, his own breathing ragged against her ear. As she obeyed, he slid his arm beneath her, lifting her hips and positioning her on her knees. “Open your legs,” he ordered as he moved behind her. “I’m coming inside you now.”
With that brief warning, he cupped her mound with his hand and pushed hard with his hips. She cried out as she felt his hard, hot shaft enter her, but it was a cry of surprise, for she felt no pain, only a wave of pure bliss. He began to move, caressing her from the front as he thrust into her from behind. Daisy pressed her hot cheek against the pillow, but she could not smother her own frantic, inarticulate sobs of pleasure. Her body pulsed with wave after wave of it, again and again, and yet again, until at last she was sated, and so was he. Slowly, he eased her down, moving with her, rolling them both to the side.
They lay there, cradled like two spoons in a drawer, for a long time, the only sounds his breathing and hers, harsh, panting breaths that mingled in the quiet room, easing slowly back to normal.
“Better?” he asked at last, still inside her, his arms around her waist, his hand caressing her stomach.
She nodded. “Yes, but…” She paused, twisting her head to give him a doubtful look over her shoulder. “Sebastian?”
“Yes, petal?”
“I still don’t think it’s very romantic.”
It wasn’t romantic at all, but he couldn’t bear to tell her that. Sebastian stared at his typewriter, unable to concentrate. He couldn’t see the page before him; all he could see was her face, looking at him last night with all that adoration shining in her eyes. Her voice, so sincere, kept echoing in his ears, shouting past the rapid rat-tat of her new typewriting machine.
I love you.
He lifted his gaze to her, but unlike him, she seemed in a frame of mind to work this morning. She seemed happy with the Crandall, and she was quite skilled with it, for she was writing at her usual breakneck speed. He studied her face, remembering the radiance in it last night—the aftereffects of her first sexual experience. She’d looked utterly beautiful, with her hair all tumbled down around her shoulders like liquid fire in the candlelight.
I love you.
He tore his gaze away. He knew she didn’t love him, not really. He knew what she felt wasn’t anything deeper than infatuation and desire and the afterglow of lovemaking. And yet, for a moment, for one brief, shining moment, he’d wanted to believe what she felt for him was deeper than that. He’d looked into her shining eyes, and he’d wanted to believe that what she felt for him was real, that the way she saw him now was the way she’d see him forever. That love like that could last, that it could endure the inevitable disillusionments that came when passions cooled and reality set in.
I love you.
How many women had he said those words to in his life? Ten, perhaps more. But how many times had it been true? He didn’t know. It had always felt true; every time he’d declared his love to a woman, he’d believed it to be true. But then, when the affair fell apart, he always came to understand it hadn’t really been true after all. He couldn’t pinpoint which love affair, which woman, had finally made him stop believing in love altogether, but he supposed it didn’t matter. He had no romantic illusions left. In fact, he had no illusions left about anything.
Sebastian leaned back in his chair with a sigh, staring at the ceiling. God, he thought wearily, when did I become such a cynical bastard?
“Is something wrong?”
“Hmm?” Sebastian came out of his reverie with a start, realizing she had stopped typing and was watching him.
“No,” he lied. “Nothing’s wrong. Why do you ask?”
“You’ve been staring at your typewriter for at least an hour, but you haven’t written a thing.” She smiled, her face lit again with that radiant glow. “Having trouble concentrating this morning?”
It hurt to look at her and see that smile. She didn’t understand, he thought with a hint of panic. She didn’t understand that he was the same man he’d been before, but that for her, last night had changed everything. She was no longer innocent. She thought this was love, and when she found out it wasn’t, the knowledge would break her heart.
He’d known that all along, known it ever since the day when she’d proposed exchanging kisses for pages. But he’d done it anyway, deliberately ratcheting up the stakes, knowing the result, knowing she hadn’t a clue. And now, heaven bless her, the lamb was gazing at him as if he were king of the earth. Guilt slid through him, and he once again forced his gaze away, but he could feel her adoring gaze on him, and he knew he had to say something.
“I’m just…umm…” He paused and gave a cough, thinking hard. “I’m considering the…um…plot in light of…in light of…” Desperate, he reached for her revision letter and glanced at it, “The ending,” he said, relieved to have a subject to discuss. “I’m reaching the halfway point, and I must start plotting out the ending. I’m rather at a loss.”
“You’ll work through it,” she said with confidence. “You’ll find a way.”
With his abysmal inability to write for the past three years, he wondered how anyone could be so confident in his ability. He certainly wasn’t.
“Perhaps,” he allowed, “but I’m not sure what I come up with will satisfy you. After all, you are my staunchest critic.”
“Whatever you write will be wonderful, I’m sure.”
He was on the pedestal already, he realized with dismay. She’d never been inclined to put him there before. The feisty, impudent woman who loved to set him straight was giving way to a different sort—a woman who looked at everything he did and said in the most favorable light, who gave him more credit than he deserved, and who could no longer see his most glaring flaws.
How long before he fell off that pedestal? How long before he saw disillusionment in her eyes, and he wasn’t wonderful anymore?
“Don’t,” he said with sudden savagery. “Don’t gush, for the l
ove of God!”
He looked at her, expecting to see hurt. But no, she was still smiling, looking at him with patient gravity. “Would you like to discuss your problem?” she asked.
He sighed and fell back in his chair. Talking about the book, he supposed, would at least be a productive use of his time. “You hate my ending.”
“You’re exaggerating. I don’t hate it.”
He leaned forward, tapping the appropriate paragraph of the letter on the desk with his finger as he read from it. “The ending is unsatisfying, disappointing, even infuriating,’” he quoted, then he looked up. “That sounds like hate to me.”
She made a grimace. “Did I really say that?” Without waiting for an answer, she rose from her seat and circled his desk to read her words over his shoulder. “Hmm,” she murmured when she’d finished, “I was a bit harsh, wasn’t I?”
“Just a bit, yes, but that’s fine. I can take it on the chin. The problem is that I don’t understand why you dislike it so much.”
Daisy seemed surprised by that. “Amelie abandons him,” she said as if that explained everything.
Sebastian remained unenlightened. “Yes, of course. Why is that a problem?”
“Why?” she echoed, sounding amazed he could even ask. “Because it’s a crushing disappointment! When I read the end, it was so depressing, I didn’t know whether to hurl the manuscript across the room or go leap off a bridge.”
“Depressing?” His hand tightened around the letter, crumpling it. “Well, what were you hoping for?” he asked before he could stop himself. “True love and happy ever after?”
“Yes, damn it all, I was! I followed you through nearly five hundred pages of trials, tribulations, pain, and desire, and for what? For a heroine who goes off alone, being noble, giving up the man she loves because she’s married and she can’t bear to create a scandal for Samuel? Aren’t you the one who’s always saying people aren’t that self-sacrificing?”
“But she has to abandon him.”
Daisy folded her arms, leaned her hip against his desk, and set her jaw. “Why?”
That took him back, rather. “Well, because…because…” He paused, thinking how to explain. “Samuel has to learn that one can go on. That love isn’t everything.”
Daisy looked at him as if appalled. “But love is everything!”
He took a deep breath, tilted his chair back on two legs to look at her, and forced himself to say it. “I know women always want to think that, but it isn’t true. There are other things in life, things more important than love.”
She didn’t seem impressed. “I can’t think of any.”
“Spoken by someone who’s never been in love before.”
The words were out of his mouth before he’d had the sense to stop them. He watched her stiffen. “Don’t make fun of me.”
Her hurt shimmered through him like a physical blow, and he couldn’t bear it. He raked a hand through his hair with a heavy sigh. “I’m not making fun of you, petal,” he said, thinking to explain, to let her down gently. “But I’ve been in love, and it doesn’t last. And when it’s over, it’s hell for a while. And then one discovers that life goes on. Eventually, one falls in love again. This pattern repeats itself until one is too jaded to believe in it anymore, or too old for all the upheaval.”
“How terribly depressing.”
“Life is depressing a lot of the time.”
“Which is why your book shouldn’t be. No, listen to me,” she added as he groaned and brought the chair back to the floor with a thud. “You’re creating something wonderful here, a beautiful, moving love story.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “Despite the flaws in the book, it was good because Samuel and Amelie seem real to me. I care about them as if they were my own family. When they suffer, I suffer. At the end, I want to put the book down knowing that these two people are going to spend their lives together, in love and happy.”
“And all’s right with the world?”
She lifted her chin a notch and that stubborn glint came into her eye, reminding him of the day they’d first met. “I like happy endings.”
His artistic soul, colored no doubt by his cynical nature and the unhappy endings of his own love affairs, rebelled. “It’s too neat,” he complained. “It’s too tidy, too pretty…too wrapped up with a ribbon and a bow and placed under the tree for Christmas. I can’t write it.”
She made a sound of impatience. “For heaven’s sake, Sebastian, some people do fall in love and end up happy for life! It does happen, you know.”
No, it doesn’t.
The words hovered on his tongue, but he bit them back. He couldn’t say that love’s destiny was to die like everything else. He just couldn’t say it. Not to her. He’d fall off the pedestal soon enough. It didn’t have to be today.
He reached for her instead. “You’ve really thrown a spanner in the works with that one, you know,” he murmured.
She smiled, cupping his face in her hands, her aggravation with him fading away at once. “How?”
“I’ve never written a happy ending before.” His hand slid to her hip, and if there had been any doubt in his mind that he was an utter cad, it was gone now. He had to be a cad, because he’d just spent the entire morning thinking of all the reasons he should end this, and all the ways he was setting her up for heartbreak, and yet, the moment he touched her, any thought of ending their affair became unbearable. “To write it, I fear I’m going to need heaps of inspiration.”
She cut him off by pressing two fingers to his mouth. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, laughing, and shoved his hand away from her hip. “No kisses for you. I’ve been softhearted enough as it is. You don’t receive another kiss until I receive one hundred more pages of revised manuscript.”
Undeterred, he kissed her fingers, and she pulled her hand down with a reproving look. “One hundred pages,” she repeated firmly, then turned and started back toward her own desk.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her down to him. She laughed and started to rise, but he pulled her down again, turning her to sit across his lap, ignoring her indignant protests about playing the game fairly. “I’ll write the hundred pages,” he promised, “but I want a kiss now.”
She shook her head, but even as she did so, she was pressing her lips together to stop her laughter from bubbling out. “No,” she said, but not quite so firmly as before.
His hand slid up her back, sank into the coil of her hair. “C’mon, Daisy,” he murmured and tilted her head back. “Just one.”
“No.” But her eyes closed and her lips parted even as spoke. “You always want more than one. You’re greedy.”
“Well, yes,” he agreed and kissed her before she could make any more protests.
As always, she was luscious, her lips warm and soft, her kiss as heady and potent as any drug. He slid his free hand to her breast, and he closed his eyes, remembering the night before, feeling the thick heaviness of lust begin to overtake him.
He wasn’t sure what made him open his eyes—a sound, the soft sound of a gasp, he fancied. His lips still locked with Daisy’s, his hand still in her hair, he glanced up, and found Mathilda standing in the doorway, hand on the knob as if she’d just come in, an expression of utter shock on her face.
Their eyes met, and Sebastian felt her condemnation hit him with the force of a physical blow. She said nothing, however. Without a word, without a sound, she stepped backward out of the room and closed the door.
Chapter 18
Love is a misunderstanding between two friends.
Oscar Wilde
Mathilda wasted no time. Sebastian was dressing for dinner when the note from her arrived on a salver, brought by one of the footmen.
There was no need to read it, for he could already guess the contents, but he opened it anyway, and when he did, he found that the few lines written there confirmed his intuition. Lady Mathilda requested he join her in her private sitting room for a glass of Madeira before dinner
.
The formality of the request did not escape him, and as Sebastian set the note aside, an image of his aunt’s shocked face and the condemnation in her eyes came back with painful force. He’d lived away for so long, avoiding the condemnation of the people whose good opinion mattered to him, and the realization that he’d lost the good opinion that had always mattered most sickened him.
Still, he had to face his aunt some time. It might as well be now. He went to her boudoir at the requested time.
She reached for a crystal decanter as he came in. “Close the door, Avermore,” she said as she poured Madeira into two glasses.
The use of his title was not a good sign. Nor was the fact that she did not invite him to sit down. She also remained standing, and she did not meet his gaze as she handed him his glass of Madeira. He knew he was about to be raked over the coals good and proper.
Surprisingly, however, she did not blister him with a scathing storm of criticism. Instead, it was herself she condemned. “I have never thought myself to be exceptionally dense,” she said, staring meditatively into her glass, the chiffon draperies of the open balcony door behind her fluttering in the September breeze. “But today, I have been given cause to reassess my own character. All these weeks, I thought you and Miss Merrick were working in that library.”
“We have been working.”
Nothing in the world, he supposed, could make a grown man feel more like a fool than the reproving glance of a maiden aunt.
“I thought,” she went on, “that having the library doors closed was a wholly innocent thing—designed to allow two authors to write their prose undisturbed by the petty annoyances of the household.” She gave a self-condemning laugh. “Now I see how stupid I have been. I’m no green girl. I should have known—a man and a woman thrown together all the day long with no one watching. I berate myself most bitterly for my obtuseness.”
“It was just a kiss,” he said, thankful that kiss was the only thing of which Mathilda could be aware. “Harmless enough, I dare say.”
“Harmless?” Her gaze raked over him with disdain. “I thought I could trust you to behave like a gentleman.”
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