“That too, I suppose.”
I look up at him in surprise.“What else is there?”
“You.Spending time with you is a pleasure all on its own, without the need of any secondary benefits.”
“You can’t say shit like that, Leo.”I give him a half-hearted punch to his shoulder to emphasize the point, but not to make him go further away from me.
I like him where he is.Maybe he could even be closer.
“What?The truth?”He obliges my thoughts and gets closer, his voice getting lower.
“Did they teach you all this charm at Eton?Maybe from the Cambridge days?”
He nods solemnly.“Yes.Right about when they taught us Plato’sSymposium.When Aristophanes told everyone his thoughts on the origin of love.”
“There were three types of people.”I pick up the story, whispering as he moves closer.“A man and woman connected, back-to-back, and two women and two men, joined in the same way.And Zeus thought they were getting too big for their giant, conjoined britches and cut everyone in half and scattered them across the globe.”
“And love is finding your literal other half,” Leo finishes.“Maybe some of the matches were sent to different times, as well as different places.”Leo reaches out to tuck back some of my hair that had escaped Anne’s elaborate hairdo.He tucks it behind my ear, grazing the top of my ear in the process.Heat pools, warm and liquid and viscous, low in my belly as my head shifts to get closer to his hand.
Hie eyelids lower to half-closed as he sways a little closer to me.
“Maybe.”He still hasn’t retracted his hand, and I’ll agree to almost anything as long as he keeps it on me.The other joins its friend and both move down my neck, until he’s wrapped his hands around it, caressing the skin with his thumbs.
That’s it.I’m no Victorian about sex.Not that they even followed the propriety they liked to talk about so much.
A lot has gone wrong this week, but tonight, I’m getting what I want.
WhoI want.
CHAPTER27
“Do you know where my chaperone is?”I ask suddenly.
That takes Leo aback.Physically, unfortunately for me, as his hands drop.“She’s most likely in her rooms in the servants’ wing.Do you need her now?”
I curse my own awkward-ness as he takes another step back.
But this is the new, forward, Victorian Meera, so I grab his hands and put them back where I want.No subtlety involved.No suppressing what I want because I’m afraid of how other people will react to me.
He doesn’t resist.Always a good sign.
“No, I don’t need her.”I say it as emphatically as I can.“I want to make sure no one is in the room behind this door.Because I want to go into it and spend approximately an hour getting out of all these damn clothes, with you.And then I want to become one person with you.Just like Aristophanes said.And I want to not traumatize Anne while I do it.”
Leo is so still I worry this became a superhero movie instead of a time-travelling one, and a villain has frozen him with a freeze-gun.Right before potential coitus, the bastards!
But new, forward Victorian Meera isn’t done trying for what she wants.I step closer to Leo and close my eyes while I raise up on my toes, hoping I land on his lips.
Before I make contact, Leo proves he wants this as much as I do, his hands tightening on either side of my neck as he pulls me forward until we’re touching from chest to knees.Still with too many layers of clothes on, but it’s a start.I don’t have time to enjoy the new position before his lips meet mine, and my world shifts.
It’s not just a metaphor for his kisses, whichareworld-shifting, but also a literal explanation of what’s happening.His strong arms lift me up a few inches off the ground.Just enough so he can move us back to my door.He shifts me again, this time to one side and to one arm, as his other opens the door and lets us into the room.I feel his erection against me and spend all my energy focusing on arching against him, each stroke making my vagina clench.
Unlike the last time I entered this room, when the only thing I was thinking of was taking notes for my research, my mind is now completely on Leo.Still taking notes, but only in my head and just for me, about what his body feels like against mine, what his lips taste like (dessert and whiskey, the last things he consumed at dinner—my new favorite combination), and how my body melts against his in reaction.
More instinct than intelligence, a big departure from how I usually operate, I start tearing at clothes, pushing when I encounter buttons and pulling when I encounter knots.Leo makes a noise, not appreciating the haphazard approach to peeling back his layers of clothes and gives us some distance.
But I’m assertive now, so I close the distance again.
Except Leo is an aristocrat, not used to his will being thwarted, even by a woman who just discovered assertiveness.So he deftly and firmly turns me around, pushing me against one of the columns of the four-poster bed.He starts pulling at the fastenings on my back, shedding layer and layer with speed and efficiency, showing more than a passing acquaintance with the garments.
