She would have argued if her lips could form words, but they could not.
Small sounds escaped her instead, wanton and utterly foreign. Each one embarrassed her, yet she could not hold them in when his fingers found a new place that made heat flicker and gather. It felt foreign and sinful, and she wanted more.
They were not coarse touches; he did not grip or drag. Hecoaxed. Hecircled. Helistenedto her body.
He pressed just enough to send sensation spiraling through her until she felt as if she were coming undone stitch by stitch.
“Breathe,” he reminded her again. “Do not fight it. Let yourself feel it.”
“I am,” she whispered, her voice shaking.
He shifted closer.
She could feel the firmness of his shoulder beneath her hand, his solid figure between her knees. It made everything worse and better at once. The fire at her back, his warmth before her, the cocoon of the small room, all seemed to press in, narrowing her world to touch and breath and the steady murmur of his voice.
His focus sharpened, his hands attuned to every subtle arch of her spine, every fluttering gasp. He seemed to know when she needed gentleness and when she was ready for more.
The rhythm of his touch, soaked in her arousal, changed. It grew more purposeful, concentrating where her body strained helplessly toward it.
Her knuckles whitened around the edge of the chair. She did not recognize the woman making those sounds, tilting her hips for more of that pressure. She only knew she could not have stopped if the fate of the world depended on it.
Heat gathered, a tight, spiraling ache that stole sense and speech. It coiled and coiled until she thought she must break from it. And still he watched her, his eyes fixed on her face, guiding her higher with that relentless, devastating care.
Something snapped.
The pleasure crested, not sharp but immense, sweeping through her from the inside out. Her head fell back against the cushion, her lips parted on a soft cry.
The room blurred. Her whole body clenched, held for a heartbeat in a bright, shattering suspension, then released into a rush of trembling relief. Tears stung her eyes, then slipped free without her consent.
“Victor,” she gasped, the name barely more than a breath, but it felt like a vow cast into the firelit air.
His touch gentled at once, turning into soothing strokes, as if he understood instinctively that she had gone as far as she couldbear. The pleasure ebbed gradually, leaving behind a strange, floating warmth that made it hard to remember how to move her limbs.
When he stilled, she sagged against the cushions. Her chest rose and fell too quickly. Her cheeks felt damp. She lifted a shaking hand to them and found them wet with tears she did not even remember shedding.
Mortification surged, faintly delayed.
“Do not hide from me,” Victor said quietly.
He rose from the floor and sat beside her, his arm coming around her in a gesture so natural that it startled her more than her climax had. He gathered her against his side as if she belonged there. One hand settled between her shoulder blades, broad and warm. The other rested low on her waist, anchoring her.
For a little while, Gwen could only hear the crackle of the fire and her steadying breaths. She felt utterly different, as if a tight band inside her had finally loosened after years of strain.
Safe was not a feeling she trusted, but wrapped in Victor’s arms, she came unsettlingly close to it.
“No one has ever…” she trailed off, almost choking on the admission.
“I know,” he murmured against her hair. “You told me.”
“It was different when I said it then,” she said. “It was only words. Now, it is an event. A before and an after.”
He went very still. “Do you regret it?”
She thought of convent walls and Howard’s hand on her arm. She thought of cold, loveless matches and the way her life had been narrowing, inch by inch, for years. Then she thought of Victor’s hands on her, his careful attention, the way he had watched her as if she were the only thing that mattered.
She shook her head against his shoulder. “No.”
His breath left him in a rush that might have been relief. She felt it more than heard it.
