Nathaniel bit back a curse when his feet froze to the floor at her command, as though she truly possessed some sort of fae magic to bend him to her will.
Nothing so fanciful, an inner voice sneered. She only asks you to do what you already wish to, and you are too weak to fight both yourself and her.
“I only mean to say,” she bit her lip, worrying the plump flesh. “Go if you must. I would not prevent you, if you truly wish to leave. But I would rather you stay.”
Weak. He was so weak for her, in the face of her plainspoken sincerity.
“I don’t wish to leave,” he admitted, feeling as though he confessed to murder. He struggled to make sense of it, even to himself. “But even more, I don’t want you to regret anything that happens here tonight.”
“The only thing I could regret about tonight would be missing the chance to share everything that can be shared between a man and a woman. I told you I longed to be your prize. That means I want you to claim me in every way possible.”
Bess held out a hand. Her eyes were calm and clear. “Then I will claim you in return.”
He looked so torn, the poor man. Bess had no desire to torment him. She almost opened her mouth to release him from it, but she had felt the leashed ferocity of his hunger. She knew, beyond a doubt, that he wanted her.
All that remained was to convince him to take what he wanted.
Bess wondered how he usually went about his affairs, for there must have been affairs. The Duke of Ashbourn was no monk—though there was about him a certain ascetic tendency to deny himself.
She had noticed it before. He would escort Lucy to the confectioner’s for ices, but would not partake. He did not overindulge in wine or spirits. He did not play cards or race horses, and he danced only for the sake of propriety.
The one time she was sure she’d seen him enjoy himself had been at a musical evening thrown in honor of a violinist on tour from Italy. Amidst the soaring, throbbing notes of a Bach sonata, Bess had felt a wild and unnamed emotion grip her by the throat.
She’d glanced across Lucy and found Nathaniel listening with every part of his being. Extraordinary eyes closed, face tilted up, the sharp edges of his rigid features somehow softened by his attention to the musician.
But there again, while he so clearly loved music, he did not play.
He must have had women. He must have had affairs, or a mistress, as all men of his station did. Though Bess did not see when he would have the time.
All he did was work. Even his social engagements were work, in service of the goals he pursued in the House of Lords and his business concerns.
In fact, his only recreational activity appeared to be a brutal underground fight club that routinely left him battered and bruised.
Well, Bess refused to be another way for Nathaniel to deny himself.
To punish himself.
She couldn’t see the point of it. Life had taught her to seize enjoyment and happiness when offered, and to wring every drop of joy from them that she could. Everything from the contentment to be found in small, mundane things like the daily miracle of transforming flour, water, salt, and yeast into bread…to the life-altering, earth-shaking pleasure he’d given her in that chair earlier.
So she held out her hand to him, and where he hesitated, Bess did not.
Keeping one hand outstretched and her eyes on his, she lifted the other hand to the tie closure of her dress at the nape of her neck. One swift pull there and another at the back of her waist, and the bodice of her serviceable old gray dress loosened and drooped from her shoulders.
He closed his eyes for a moment as though the sight gave him pain, but when he opened his eyes again all she saw there was a determination that burned away any hesitancy. He strode the few steps back to her side and clasped her hand, drawing her to him even as he knelt beside her on the bed.
Flushed with success and the titillating brush of air across her bared shoulders, Bess tilted her head up for a kiss.
Deep and drugging, he gave her the taste of herself with every stroke of his tongue. Bess moaned into it and kept undressing, shoving at her gown and kicking it off the bed until she was in nothing but her chemise and drawers.
Nathaniel swept his hands from where they’d been cupping her jaw all the way down her sides, burning through the thin lawn of her underthings.
Grasping the fabric in great bunches, he pulled the crumpled lawn up and over her head, baring her from the waist up.
She gasped, hands fisting at her sides. Bess resisted a contrary urge to cover herself, to turn away from his heated gaze.
It had been a long time for this, too, but she wanted it. She wanted to be seen.
She wanted him to see her.
