She hummed her approval again and slide him deeper into her mouth, into the back of her throat, and that did it. He felt himself release, propelled over the threshold, and then, with a little flick of her tongue, he was coming in earnest. He felt the hot seed pour from him, torrential in its release, a deluge of pent-up desire and fruitless yearning thirteen years in the making.
He cried out her name, threading his hand through her hair.
As he did so, he felt tears, too, prick at his eyelids, the intensity of the release so insane that he couldn’t batten back the swelling emotion. He clenched his eyes shut as she continued to suckle him.
He rode his ongoing release, more cum rushing from his bollocks into her mouth, unstoppable.
It was perhaps unsurprising then, that in this moment, when she had so completely dominated him, that he was left with only one thought.
He needed to marry her.
To lose her again would kill him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Augustus,
I refuse to stop writing to you. Of course, I do not write toyou, as you actually exist, the man you’ve actually turned out to be. I know that. But I refuse to stop writing to the idea of you, the man to whom I became so attached. I will not give you the satisfaction of killing him, of taking him from me, when I still need him. Perhaps, he was not real, but that does not mean that you, or him, my Augustus, can’t be of use to me still.
The passage to France was horrific. Not only was the sea choppy, but everyone on board came down with the ague. Even Eloisa’s children, Natasha and Nathanial, who are six and eight, were ill. I felt so badly for them and tried to nurse them, but then I came down with it myself.
At one point, I was so ill, it occurred to me that I could die. Is it wrong that I thought of you? I thought of what you might say to me. How you might hold me and encourage me to get better. I know thatyouwouldn’t really do that—it just that, once, I merely thought you would. But still, the notion comforted me, and I did get better. So maybe there was something in it.
Olivia
*
Olivia had notthought that Augustus Carrington could surprise her any more than he had already done.
She was shocked to find that she was, once again, very wrong about him.
Not only was he not the servant-bedder of repute, nor the hardened scoundrel known as the Ten Guinea Earl or one of the Rank Rakes, but he was not even a rake at all.
He hadn’t had another woman for thirteen years.
For all that time, he had waited for her.
No, that wasn’t right. Because he had had no idea if she would ever return. He could not have expected that he would ever see her again. The mere memory of her had kept him from moving forward. Such was the depth of his loyalty and regard for her.
His confession moved her beyond her powers of verbal expression. It destroyed the last of her reservations about him. She understood now. His insistence on courting her, his frantic response to her return, and his sensitivity to her touch—all the pieces fell into place. He was not the man anyone thought him to be. He was something much greater, much rarer.
And so she had worked to give him the best orgasm that she could. It wouldn’t have mattered to her if they had come together and he had spent in an instant, but she understood that he did not want it that way. So, instead, she gave him all she could with her mouth and swallowed his sweet release, cherishing the intimacy of his total surrender.
Once he was completely spent, she pulled level with him. His eyes were still closed, but she saw, to her surprise, the track of a tear on his cheek. She moved to kiss it, tasting the salt and letting it mingle in her mouth with that of his release.
In response, he drew his arms around her and pulled her towards him. He buried his face into her neck and the simple intimacy of that gesture felt so good that she wanted to weep herself.
She did not notice herself drifting off to sleep. But when she awoke, hours later, the candles burned lower and he was hard again against her backside.
When she stirred, she felt him do the same.
She turned to face him.
“Good evening,” she said, smiling at him. He looked so peaceful, so beautiful, waking from sleep that it rent her heart. No man had any right to look as tempting as he did half-asleep.
“Good evening,” he replied, returning her smile.
“I hope you understand,” she said, snaking her hand once more down to his groin and being rewarded by his sharp intake of breath, “that I am not done with you tonight. It is not often that I have such a handsome man in my bed.”
