His eyes met hers for the first time all evening. They were lit with an emotion she did not quite understand. That otherworldly blue appeared even stranger under the cast of this emotion. “If you think I am angry with you, you needn’t worry. Nothing in our arrangement has changed. I have no claim on you and you have done nothing wrong. Another man wants to marry you and you have nearly accepted him. That much is clear.”
“I have notnearlyaccepted him,” she insisted, even though she knew his assessment was not inaccurate. “And he is—his view on the matter is not the same as mine.”
“Very well. It is your business. I am not entitled to know of your affairs. It is I who ruined our relationship the first time. I do not pretend dominion over you. If you seek only to enjoy yourself with me and then return to France to marry this man, I cannot stop you. I certainly cannot keep myself from you or what you will offer me. I am a desperate man. Desperate for you. I see no reason to hide that truth from you. I have made clear that you can do with me what you wish.”
The words, so liberal and generous, cut her. She was not sure what she had expected from him. It was not this vulnerability. She had supposed he would be full of masculine bitterness and reproaches. Instead, she felt torn open by his gentleness.
“Augustus.” She leaned towards him. He looked at her, immobile, his body completely still. “Mr. Laurent has proposed to me. But I have not accepted. Our relationship is not—it is not anything like—what you and I share.”
“What does that mean?” His tone was soft, but his eyes were blazing. “I do not presume to ask questions of you, Olivia, but if you insist on speaking of this matter, then you cannot blame me for asking them.”
“I do not blame you—”
“If you mean you have not fucked him, that you have not found your pleasure again and again with him, as you once did with me, as you did with me yesterday in the park, I cannot pretend to be sorry. I am not that generous.”
“Yes,” she blurted out, “We have not—that is not the nature of our relationship.”
“Good. As I said, I cannot regret it.”
It was curious, she thought, staring at him as he absorbed this information. She knew, intellectually, that he had no right to be jealous over any liaison she had had in the years since their parting. He was a rake, a renowned one, even if he wasn’t a seducer of servants. Before her now, he didn’t feel any inch his reputation.
Instead, he was someone else. Augustus.HerAugustus. The one she had known as a girl of twenty. With whom she had eaten caramel. The boy into whose chambers she had snuck, night after night, and with whom she had shared every intimacy. Not just the physical things, but about her past, too. She had told him, she remembered, about her childhood at the orphanage. She had explained her loneliness when she had worked for the rich widow. He had held her as she had talked about such intimate things. Before him, no one had done that for her.
ThatAugustus, who she had not been able to see in so long, sat before her now.
This feeling, more than anything, made her reach out towards him. She placed her hands on his knees. As she did so, he made a slight sound of content.
“Can I kiss you?” she asked.
“Of course,” he retorted, as if offended by the question. His tone almost tempted her to laughter.
But she wanted him too much to laugh.
She leaned forward and placed her hands on his face, kissing him softly. Almost at once, she found herself pulled into his lap, the carriage swaying slightly with the shift in their movements. He groaned when her bottom made contact with his groin and she felt his hardness there, grinding, insistent, against her.
She kept kissing him, exploring his mouth, enjoying the simple sensations and the stark intimacy of the act. As she did so, she rocked against him, and he groaned into her mouth once more.
She loved that sound.
It made moisture pool between her thighs.
Olivia kept at it, kissing and grinding against him, until she was so distracted by the heat between them that she lost focus on the kissing.
“Stop,” he said, at the exact moment when she had been unable to bear the tension. “You’ll make me spend. You know you will.”
“I want that.”
And she did. In Hyde Park, he had not let her touch him. He had found his pleasure anyway, as he used to do, from pleasuringher. But it was not the same. She wanted to give him that.
“No. You will not give to me. Not yet. I haven’t earned it. I am not worthy.”
“Augustus—”
“No,” he repeated, gently, positioned her so that she was back on the opposite seat. Then he slid to his knees. “And you know that I cannot help but take my pleasure from you. It is natural to me as breathing.”
He had his hands on her ankles now, pulling up her skirts.
“Your legs,” he said, “You can’t know how I have missed them. How I have fantasized about them.”
