“Oh,” Eleanor said softly. “I thought that was exactly what you intended to do.”
Hugo let out a breath. Or perhaps it was a laugh. Either way, it shimmered in Eleanor like light.
“You’ll be the death of me,” Hugo muttered.
And then he was moving. He hooked an arm around Eleanor’s waist and hauled her along with him as he crawled toward the center of the bed. And then, marvelously, he stretched out on top of her and settled the whole of his lean, hard body between her legs.
“Breathe,” he told her, and she knew she wasn’t mistaking that unholy amusement in his dark gaze. His eyes looked even more like whiskey tonight, or perhaps it was just that this close, she couldn’t pretend that she was anything but drunk.
On him.
“I’m breathing,” she whispered.
“See that you continue,” Hugo ordered her in his lazy, aristocratic way. “I haven’t killed a virgin yet.”
And Eleanor loved the fact that he knew. That she didn’t have to make any long, drawn-out confession. When she’d thought about this moment—in those few and far between moments when she still imagined that this was any kind of possibility, that she might give herself to a man—she’d always assumed that she would have to offer extensive explanations. She would have to tell a reasonable story about why a woman her age had never quite managed to get here before, horizontal on a bed. She would have to talk about how distant she’d always felt from others her age, in part because she’d felt so responsible for Vivi, and how that had always seemed to leave her on her own. And she’d never been able to conjure up a way to tell someone that story without coming across as some kind of freak. Better to lock all that away. Better to convince herself that not only didn’t she care, but she didn’t feel the same things others did.
But Hugo didn’t seem to care about any of that. Not why she was a virgin at twenty-seven. Not how. The only thing he seemed to care about was that he was the one braced over her, gazing down at her as if she was a treat. As if he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her.
As if it was only a matter of time before he did.
It took Eleanor long moments to realize what that sensation was that snaked his way through her. A blistering sort of relief.
Because she felt safe. Somehow, someway, Hugo Grovesmoor made her feel safe, here in his bed where that should have been the very last thing she felt.
She hadn’t known that was possible.
“Stop thinking so hard, little one,” he said then.
“That’s easy for you to say,” she retorted. And his mouth was at her neck, so she felt it when he smiled.
“This is very simple,” he told her, and there was a serious note beneath all that lazy heat. “If I want you to do something, I’ll tell you what and how to do it. Otherwise, all you need to do is enjoy yourself.”
Eleanor frowned at him, and he must have sensed it, because as he looked up that smile of his widened.
“That sounds very selfish.”
“Eleanor, please.” Hugo shook his head. “You cannot possibly be more selfish than I am. I promise you.”
And then he put his mouth against her skin again, and Eleanor stopped thinking about anything.
Hugo took his time.
He tasted her everywhere. First he ran his hand over every part of her he could touch. He traced her collarbones. He tested her figure, spending a lot of time on her waist and the generous curves above and below. He made her writhe side to side beneath him, and when he had enough of that, he stripped her of her wrapper and her silky little nightie, and he did it all over again.
But this time, he used his mouth too.
He took her nipples in his mouth and sucked on them until she sobbed. He played with her. He made her arch up against him and cry out, over and over, and only when she felt limp and outside herself did he shift down the length of her body.
And then put his mouth between her legs.
Shattering the world into a white hot panic.
He licked into her. What he’d done with his fingers in the library had been astonishing enough, but this was worse. Better.
This was unlike anything Eleanor could possibly have imagined.
And when that wall came at her this time, she wasn’t afraid of it. She let him throw her over the edge once, then again, and she shook and shimmered all the way down.
When she opened her eyes again, Hugo was naked too. And he was crawling his way over her again, his eyes locked to hers.
“You’re holding up beautifully,” he said, that curve in his lips. “I haven’t even had to tell you to lie back and think of England.”
“I always thought that would be unsanitary,” she blurted out. That curve in his mouth bloomed into a real smile.
“You may well be the death of me, Eleanor. Here. Tonight.”
“It always sounded so...” She trailed off, aftershocks still shuddering through her.
“It is so,” Hugo told her. “That’s what makes it so much fun.”
And then Eleanor’s attention was stolen away by the way Hugo settled himself against her once more.
And this time, she could feel everything.
That beautiful chest of his, chiseled and perfect and hot to the touch. But more than that, there was that heavy, foreign part of him that she could feel nudging up against the place where she was soft and melting. It made her shudder.
She reached down between them and wrapped her hand around him. His breath hissed out of him, hard. And there was that strange glitter in his eyes.
Eleanor pulled her hand away. Guiltily. “I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” Hugo’s voice was strangled. “I promise you, there’s no possible way you could hurt me. But hold off on that for now.”
Eleanor realized in the next instant what she’d done. She did read, after all. And she had certainly watched enough television in her time. But nothing had prepared her for how different it was in real life. Hugo was big and sculpted and stunning, and still he shuddered when she touched him. How could she have known? A thousand Hollywood movies were nothing next to the feel of his body above hers, and the way that silken length of his had burned itself into her palm.
Hugo shifted. She felt the tip of him nudge its way between the folds he’d licked, and then begin to move. Up and around. Nudging against the place that made her shiver the most, wilder and wilder each time.
“Will it hurt?” she asked.
Hugo’s dark gaze glittered. “Hideously.”
“Is that meant to be reassuring?” she asked him, and it was hard to catch her breath. But not because she was afraid of the potential pain.
“You strike me as a woman who appreciates the truth, Eleanor. Are you not?”
“Surely it can’t be that bad or people wouldn’t do it all the time.”
“If you already know,” Hugo drawled, “then why did you ask?”
Eleanor scowled at him. She opened up her mouth to snap something at him, and that was when he slid himself inside of her.
All the way inside of her.
Eleanor choked back whatever she might have been about to say. Pain lanced through her—
But it wasn’t pain. In the next instant, she realized that it was sensation, certainly, and almost too much of it. Still, it wasn’t pain.
It was somehow sharp and full at once. She felt exposed, even though Hugo covered the whole of her body with his. She felt shaky and taken, and still, somehow, fragile and precious at once.
“Did it hurt?” Hugo asked, his voice little more than a growl.
Eleanor tested it. She shifted her hips a little bit this way, then that. Then again.
And each time she moved, the sensation changed. The fullness remained, but the sharpness eased. Until she started to suspect that the fullness was warmth. She tried it again, and again, and sure enough the more she moved, the warmer it got.
And it spiraled out from th
at place inside her, and set the rest of her on fire.
“Hideously,” she whispered up at him.
Hugo grinned. And then he began to move.
And Eleanor understood that she’d only known sparks.
This was the fire.
Hugo was thorough. He set a slow, easy pace, and Eleanor met it as she wrapped herself around him. And then she mirrored him. She did what he did.
He put his mouth on her skin and she returned the favor. When he thrust deep into her, she lifted her hips to meet each stroke. And the more she did it, the less smooth and studied he became.
Until he seemed as out of breath and outside himself as she was.
Something cracked wide open inside of her. She felt it happen as he slammed into her, sending that impossible joy dancing all through her veins.
“What the hell you doing to me?” Hugo whispered fiercely, his face in the crook of her neck.
And that crack only widened further, and filled with light.
He’d chosen her. And here, beneath him, with him deep inside of her and everything fire and need and all that beautiful hunger, she couldn’t help but believe that maybe he needed her, too.
Not because she was a woman to scratch some itch. He was Hugo Grovesmoor. He could have any woman he liked for that kind of thing, she knew that. But because she was her, specifically.
Because together, they were them.
And that was more precious than anything, even all the priceless things cluttering up this rambling old house.
With every deep stroke, every life-altering thrust, she believed it more.
And when she found herself falling this time, cracked wide open and full of him, it felt like love.
Especially when Hugo followed her over, shouting out her name.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS VERY early the next morning when Eleanor finally slipped from Hugo’s bed, placing her unsteady feet on the floor beside the massive bed where she’d slept in snatches and learned a whole lot of things about pleasure.
Dark, delirious, wondrous things that still moved in her, making her flush hot and red all over again, just remembering.
She ached everywhere, she realized as she stood. Places she’d had no idea could ache were half on fire, making her feel as if she’d woken up in someone else’s body. There were tugs here and vague abrasions there, and she could remember something wild and carnal and inexpressibly beautiful to explain each one.
Eleanor thought she ought to be ashamed. Maybe she would be, later. When the reality of last night had time to settle. But right here, right now, she didn’t regret a thing.
She found the nightclothes she’d worn last night and pulled them back on, trying hard not to remember exactly how Hugo had pulled each of them off her. Trying hard not to slip off into that same red haze again, all flushed and needy.
She peeked over her shoulder at the bed again, some part of her still unable to believe that any of this had happened. One red-hot image after the next chased itself through her head, in case her body couldn’t tell her what had happened, inside and out. But if she’d had any lingering doubt, the sight of Hugo sprawled out there across the better part of his bed got rid of it.
She had tasted every inch of him. She’d taken that enormous length of his deep into her mouth, and had learned how to taste him and tease him the way he’d done to her. He’d taught her how to kneel up over him, and had taken her that way. He’d taught her all the wicked things he could do with his hands, and she’d tried to do the same to him. Over and over again.
She had no idea there were so many different ways—an infinite number of ways, apparently—to do the same thing. Crack apart like that and fall together, sleep entangled, then wake to do it again.
And the greedy part of her wanted to experience all of them. Every last possible way to explode like that. Here and now, though she was a little bit stiff and still achey. Eleanor didn’t care, as long she got to experience it all with Hugo.
Hugo, who lay on his back with his arms splayed wide, as commanding in his bed as he was out of it. Hugo, who looked more approachable when she slept. No smirking. No mocking tone of voice. No reminders that he considered himself the biggest monster in England, because everyone else did.
Everyone except Eleanor, that was.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and forced herself to turn around. To walk toward the bedroom door, and then, harder still, to walk out and leave Hugo there behind her when that was the last thing she wanted to do.
Because whatever else happened, she had a job to do. A little girl who had enough of people in her life abandoning her in one way or another, and didn’t need more of that from Eleanor.
And if there was a part of her that didn’t want to be there when Hugo woke, well. She told herself that was nothing but her inbred practicality. The man might not have had the relationship everyone thought he’d had with Isobel Vanderhaven, but that didn’t mean he been a saint.
Eleanor refused to be that silly virgin she’d certainly read enough about and seen too many times on-screen. The one who fell head over heels at the first hint of a man’s interest and made a complete fool of herself.
There wasn’t much she could do about the first part of that, but she’d be damned if she’d make a fool of herself. Not if she could avoid it.
Once outside of Hugo’s rooms, she ducked her head down and moved as quickly as she could through the house without actually breaking into a run. It was still early, so she thought it was likely that no one would be up and around yet. Even so, she took the back stairs whenever possible, the better to be sure no one saw her wandering around, so far from her own rooms, in her revealing sleepwear.
“Better safe than sorry,” she muttered to herself.
And then she let out a huge sigh of relief when she made it to her door. All she could think about, then, was that enormous tub in her bathroom and slipping her whole, sweetly aching body into the deep embrace of it. She pushed her way through the door, already piling her hair on the top of her head in anticipation.
“Where have you been?”
Eleanor flinched at the sound of that voice. It startled her so badly that it took her longer than it should have to realize that it was Vivi, of course. Because who else could it be?
She dropped her arms, the hair she hadn’t quite managed to put into a knot tumbling down around her shoulders, and she told herself she had no reason whatsoever to feel guilty. About anything.
And yet that was exactly what she felt as she found her sister standing there in the doorway to the bedroom, her arms crossed and a flat sort of look on her face.
For a moment, they stared at each other across the stillness of the early morning.
“Sometimes when I can’t sleep,” Eleanor said with as much quiet dignity as she could manage, “I walk in the halls. It gets the blood moving, at the very least.”
Vivi let out a small sort of laugh that suggested she didn’t find anything funny at all.
“You can’t possibly expect me to believe that, can you? I’m your sister, not your seven-year-old student.”
“What are you doing here, Vivi?” Eleanor asked softly. “The guest suites are clear across the house.”
Vivi’s mouth was a taut line, and that flat look was still making her new gold eyes look a bit more tarnished than usual. “I went looking for you. I was after a little bit of sister time. And guess what? You haven’t been here for hours.”
“You wanted sister time in the middle of the night?” Eleanor asked, and she didn’t try too hard to keep the skepticism out of her voice. “Did you imagine that I would be awake? Or did you think you would wake me up, even though I have to get up and work in the morning?”
Neither one, she was well aware, said great things about how her sister saw her. Hugo’s words swirled around in her head, and it seemed she couldn’t banish them the way she wished she could. And something sour was sloshing around in her belly, making it worse.
Because Eleanor didn’t know that it would really be all that out of line if Vivi had assumed that Eleanor would be perfectly all right with being woken up at all hours. Wasn’t that what her role had always been? And there was only one person who had demanded Eleanor stay in that role. Eleanor herself.
She had always been so desperate to be needed, because love was tricky and people died and took their love with them. Need was better. Need made her indispensable.
But it had never made her feel as alive as Hugo had. As if she’d been sleepwalking for years.
“Do you think I can’t tell what you’ve been up to?” Vivi asked. Her voice was strange. As flat as her gaze, and yet there was that sharp undercurrent. “How could you do this?”
“I don’t know what you think I’ve done.” Eleanor squared her shoulders and forced herself to ignore the part of her that had always been afraid to square off with Vivi. Because if she lost Vivi on top of everything else she’d lost, what would she have? She clarified. “To you.”
Vivi shook her head. “All the things I’ve done, all the trouble I’ve gone to for us, Eleanor. And you can’t even tell me the truth.”
“I think that’s unfair.”
“If you had something going on with the Duke, you should have told me, so I wouldn’t have bothered making a fool of myself at that dinner last night.” Vivi shook her head. “Am I just a party trick you like to trot out to amuse yourself and your aristocratic friend?”
The sweeping injustice of that was almost enough to knock Eleanor back a step or two.
“I don’t have any ‘aristocratic friends,’ Vivi,” Eleanor managed to say, her voice on the verge of trembling. It felt a lot like anger, something she’d always swallowed down before. Something she’d always pretended she didn’t feel, no matter what. “I think we both know that’s you, not me. I work at Groves House. You’re on holiday. It’s been years since we decided it would make sense for you to make like a socialite and land a rich husband, and all you’ve done since is go to parties and spend the money I make. Which one of us is the party trick?”
She heard her own words hanging there in the quiet of the room, and could feel them shaking around inside of her, like a new kind of shivering. And she didn’t know if she needed to lie down. Or possibly get sick. Or apologize, instantly.
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