“I think she does on some level. Her exchanges with my mother made it clear what she was, what she is. But…but that doesn’t change that I abandoned her. That she was alone. Still, I think we have a chance to rebuild. Though perhaps it would be better if I stay away so I don’t taint her life as a gentleman’s wife.”
Ripley stopped in the hallway, ignoring that Hugo and Nora had disappeared into a parlor. He cupped Jane’s cheeks and tilted her face toward his gently. “She would be lucky to have you in her life.”
When she looked into his face, she could almost see herself through his eyes. Could almost believe him. She smiled.
“Do you know any card games that a gentleman might play with his lady wife?”
“None that aren’t slightly filthy,” Ripley said with a chuckle.
“Well, then I suppose they’ll teach us the rules,” she said, and turned her face into his hand to kiss one of his palms. “Let’s join them.”
And so they did, and indeed her sister and Ripley’s brother taught them to play. It was a good night, one she knew she’d treasure for a long time to come.
But it didn’t change that now she had to decide what her own future looked like. And if she was brave enough to fit Ripley into it.
CHAPTER 20
Ripley could help but find amusing the fact that when Nora had arranged for the rooms for them for the night, she had given him and Jane separate chambers. Something a lady would do.
Despite that large difference, Nora was very much like her sister in a great many ways. Their laugh was the same. When they laughed together, he was fascinated by that fact. And her eyes were similar, that blue that felt like the depths of the sea. They tilted their heads the same way when they listened, Nora even fluttered her hands when she talked, which Jane occasionally did when she was truly excited by a subject.
But when it came to their lives, they were almost different creatures entirely. Jane was jaded. Of course she would be after the life she’d led. He didn’t view that as a negative, of course. He, himself was jaded. It was a way the two of them matched.
Nora was innocent. Jane had succeeded in that by secreting her away at the school. And she had learned refinement there, too. She poured tea like a lady, she spoke like a lady, she acted like a lady. Even when she told the occasional story of rebellion during her years at the seminary for girls, they were gentle insurrections. Taking extra sugar for her tea, sneaking into the headmistress’s office.
And so now Ripley lay on a bed in a finely appointed chamber aside from a little peeling wallpaper here and there, staring at a carved ceiling…alone. He had no idea what would happen next. Jane had found Nora. He could see they would ultimately repair the damage done by their separation. They would become closer and that would be good for Jane.
But his part in her search was over and he feared more than anything else that she would push him away for good. That she’d run from the feelings he’d shared with her before, as was her nature.
There was a soft knock at his door and he glanced at it. He knew instantly that it was Jane there, like a tracker on a scent. He just knew.
Slowly, he got up, trying to slow his racing heart and opened the door. Her blonde hair was down around her shoulders, she had a dressing gown that had to be her sister’s tied tightly around her. She looked up at him, her face soft in the dim light of the hallway lamps.
Wordlessly, she reached for him and he drew her into the room as she kissed him. There was no desperation to her kiss, but there was yearning. Need, and not just of the physical kind. So he gave, drawing her to the bed, untying her robe and finding her gloriously naked beneath.
He drew back to look at her in the soft firelight, memorized all the wonderful curves of her, just as he was always doing any time he was with her like this. He was clad only in his trousers and she touched his chest, sucking in a breath as she traced the lines of his muscles, the little tracks of scars from fights both in the ring and in life. Her fingers sparked pleasure, as did her lips when she pressed them to his throat.
He bent his head back with a little moan and drew his fingers into her hair, combing through the silky length of it as she tasted and teased him. She drew her mouth lower, over his chest, down to his stomach. She was unfastening his fall front as she did so and lowered it slowly. His cock brushed her stomach and he gasped with the ricochet of pleasure the contact created.
She smiled up at him and then she dropped to her knees before him. He might have protested, but she caught him in hand before he could and all words emptied from his sensation-addled mind. She stroked him and then she licked him, swirling her tongue around the head.
“Fuck,” he groaned, low and long.
It seemed to urge her on for she took him deep in one long stroke, until he hit her throat, and then withdrew. The wet heat of her, the glide of her tongue, the suction she balanced so perfectly, it was all heaven and he surrendered. He supported himself with one hand on the high edge of the bed behind himself and held her in place with the other. She worked him with all her experience, taking him over and over, edging him toward release and then backing off to drag out the connection longer.
The pleasure was unreal, building up to a peak he wasn’t certain he’d ever experienced before. She burned through his veins, every nerve ending was triggered and alive with her touch. He fought for purchase, but it was becoming a losing battle with every sweet sweep of her talented tongue. At some point he would lose control and while he wanted that, he also wanted more. He wanted her. He wanted mutual pleasure, he wanted to feel her ripple around him as she gasped out his name, his given name, in the flickering light.
He caught her elbows and she looked up at him, eyes wide. When he tugged, she didn’t resist, but dragged her mouth back up the same path she’d followed down until their lips met. He reversed their positions swiftly, putting her against the edge of the mattress, lifting her to perch there. She wrapped her legs around him instantly and their bodies fitted like they were meant to do so.
Perhaps they always had been.
He adjusted slightly, reached between them to spread her wider. She moaned against his lips as he slid home into her tight body. And home it was, for she was home. She always would be, even if she convinced herself otherwise and walked away.
He shook that thought aside. Not tonight. Not now. That was a war to be fought later. For now he wanted this connection. He drove into her, loving how she lifted to meet him. Their short breaths mingled between kisses, their eyes held as they collided and withdrew. It was animal, but also gentle, it was heated, but also loving. They were tangled together, not just in passion, but in tenderness.
He never wanted it to end, but he only had so much control. When her pace quickened, when pleasure made her body grip and ripple around his, the sensation was too much for any man to bear. He gritted his teeth so he could ride out her release, draw it out until she was weak and panting with its power. Only then did he withdraw and let himself free. She stroked him until he came in a powerful burst of pleasure.
He collapsed forward, half on the bed, her legs locked around his waist. He kissed her neck, the spot behind her ear, she smoothed her hands along his spine and it was like everything in that moment was perfect. A space frozen in time, separate from whatever would come next.
