“No,” she said softly, surrendering to the desire that swelled in her chest as he palmed her breasts. “Please, Ambrose.”
“Your wish is my command, Goddess. You are perfect,” he whispered. “I’ve barely been able to keep my eyes off of your perfect breasts since I first saw you.”
“Oh, Ambrose!”
When he lowered himself, the shift in his weight sent a jolt of anticipation through her that made her knees weak, even as she lay pinned against the chair. His focus was absolute; a terrifying and beautiful intensity directed entirely at her.
For the first time in her life, Imogen felt like the center of someone’s universe.
I am not a ghost in a hallway, a ward in a library, or a servant in a kitchen.
She was at least in that moment a woman worthy of a Duke’s undivided devotion, and the sheer weight of his regard felt more substantial than the fabric of her gown.
As he moved beneath the heavy, rustling layers of her skirts, the world outside ceased to exist. The suffocating propriety of London was swallowed by the shadows of the night. There was no weight of a name she wasn’t allowed to carry, no debt she had to pay in labor.
There was only them: the friction of his touch, expert, patient, and demandingly thorough, and the staggering heat he coaxed from her skin.
She felt her breath catch and hold as he pulled her undergarments aside and set his tongue in the deepest part of her. He lapped at her, like she was a fine dessert, then alternated with plunging his fingers deep inside of her. Finally, he settled his lips on the soft bud that would plunge her over the edge, her lungs straining as the pleasure began to coil into a tight, shimmering wire.
Her fingers tangled in the thick silk of his hair, her knuckles white as she anchored herself to him, and let him have his way with her. She was terrified that she might drift away or shatter into a thousand fragments if she let go. He was the only solid thing in a world that had turned to liquid fire. When the sensation finally tightened to its limit and broke, her back arched off the chair, and his name broke from her lips in a breathless, frantic gasp.
“Ambrose, I feel as though I am going to burst,” she cried.
“Then burst, beautiful,” he growled as he put his mouth on her once more, lapping up every drop of her release.
It was a flight, a beautiful escape into a sky where she was finally free, unburdened by the gravity of her station, of her past, and no care of the future. There was only then.
In the quiet that followed, the only sound was the jagged, desperate rhythm of her own breathing as she tried to come back down to earth. Ambrose didn’t move away. He lay his head on her and stayed there in the dim light, his forehead resting against her thigh in a gesture of humility that shocked her more than the intimacy itself.
Imogen reached down with trembling fingers, smoothing his hair, her heart still hammering a frantic beat against her ribs. She felt cherished, raw, and appreciated.
The man who held the keys to the estate, the man who commanded respect from the highest lords in the land, was currently bowing before her.
But as the heat began to recede from her flushed cheeks, the cold reality of her life began to seep back through the cracks in the door like a winter draft. The silence of the house, which had felt like a gift just moments ago, now felt heavy and judgmental.
Did someone hear me?She thought self-consciously.
The distance between a Duke and a governess, a gap she had briefly leaped over, suddenly felt like a canyon that could swallow her whole. A deep crimson flush crept up her chest and stained her throat.
She looked away, toward the dark, looming shadows of the wardrobe, feeling a sudden, sharp pang of exposure. She was a ruin in the making, a woman who had surrendered the onlything the world allowed her to keep, her reputation, to a man who could never truly belong to her.
The realization made her want to run to her bed, pull the covers over her head, and disappear into the mattress.
Ambrose must have felt the change in her, the way her muscles tensed, and her touch grew hesitant. He sat up, the floorboards shifting and groaning under his weight as he began to stand and gently hooked a finger under her chin to turn her face back to his. He didn’t look at her with the smug triumph of a woman had, but with a terrifyingly soft affection. He kissed her lips once, a light and fleeting thing, before lingering with a long, tender press of his mouth to her forehead. She blushed at the taste of her on him.
“I only wanted to make you feel good,” he whispered, his voice vibrating against her skin and settling deep in her chest. “I will let you rest now. This was about you… and I enjoyed every moment of it.”
He took her hand, his thumb stroking over her knuckles, tracing the faint marks of her hard life before he pressed a firm, lingering kiss there. It was a gesture of knightly devotion, like something out of an old King Arthur story. It was utterly out of place in a bedroom such as hers, yet perfectly suited to the man he truly was. One that Imogen was just beginning to see beneath the surface of the Duke of Welton.
When he stood, he didn’t just leave her to the cold. He helped her to her feet and guided her to the bed. She lay down, andhe reached for the duvet and tucked it carefully around her shoulders. But the air between them had shifted irrevocably. The polite boundaries of master and servant hadn’t just been crossed; they had been burned away, leaving something raw and unidentified in the ashes.
“Rest now, Imogen,” he said softly, his voice a low anchor in the dark. “Sleep well. You deserve it.”
The click of the latch as he slipped out sounded like a final sentence in the quiet room. Imogen lay back, her body still humming with a phantom heat, staring up at the shifting patterns the rain made against the ceiling. The silence that rushed in to fill the space he’d occupied was deafening. It was the silence of a house that held too many secrets, a silence she had lived in since she was a child in her father’s library, yet tonight, it felt different. It felt heavy with the weight of a threshold crossed, and she did not know how to get back.
There is no going back, she cursed herself.
She no longer had any secrets to keep. Not from him. For the first time since the fever took her father, she felt the terrifying weight of being truly known. There was a certain peace in disappearing into servitude. Now, Ambrose had seen the scars on her hands from the scullery and kissed them. He had heard the tremor in her voice as she confessed her mother’s death. And then, in the most devastating act of all, he had focused entirely on her pleasure, as if she were a creature of worth and consequence.
