Their second coming together was easier but no less annihilating than the first.
When she shivered and cried out, the tight clasp of her muscles milking him and her hands clutching at his shoulders, Nathaniel let himself follow her with a groan that felt as though it turned him inside out.
They collapsed together, dazed and drained. Nathaniel honestly didn’t know if he had the strength to move them to the bed. She seemed in no hurry to go anywhere, curled in his lap like a contented kitten.
Perhaps they would simply stay there, on the floor of this shabby bedchamber above an illicit bareknuckle boxing ring. Forever.
It was a disconcertingly appealing thought.
“God, I needed that,” she sighed into his neck, then stiffened slightly.
Nathaniel wanted to hold her more tightly; instead, he loosened his grasp in case she wanted to disentangle herself from him.
But she made no move to stand up. “I suppose that sounds dreadful.”
“No.” He’d needed it, too.
“It’s been a long time for me, you see,” she explained. “A long time since I’ve been touched like that. And if I’m being honest, which I might as well be since if you can’t be honest with a masked stranger who’s still inside you, who can you be honest with? I’ve never been touched...quite like this.”
Oh no. Nathaniel liked hearing that far too much. He liked the coy flirt of her tone and the trusting, confiding weight of her against his chest. And he damned well loved the knowledge that he’d made her feel something new. Something more.
It was only fair. She’d made him feel far more than he wished, too.
“It’s exactly what I came to London, hoping to find,” she went on, blithely unaware that she was systematically dismantling Nathaniel’s defenses with every word. “And here you are.”
Nathaniel’s attention snagged. He’d asked her once why she’d come to London. She hadn’t wanted to answer him then. This was why?
“You came to London to take a lover.”
He couldn’t see her blush with the way she’d tucked her head into the crook of his neck, but he could practically feel its heat. “To have an adventure. To feel alive, to feel like a desirable woman, to be seen—yes, to take a lover.”
Nathaniel frowned. The word lover conjured up images of the romantic heroes of literature and poetry. Romeo, Abelard, Childe Harold. Men who spouted poetry about their feelings easily and often, wooing their beloveds with soft touches and softer words.
That was not Nathaniel.
But he had been silent too long. She pushed herself up, struggling to get her feet under her. Nathaniel lifted a hand to help her with a sinking sensation in his midsection.
“I daresay you’re shocked, that a woman would admit to having desires like those.” She would not look at him, instead busying herself with righting her disheveled clothing. “But I’m not ashamed. Women have bodies as well as hearts and minds. Why should we deny ourselves the pleasures of the body?”
“You shouldn’t,” he agreed, standing and tucking himself away. “You shouldn’t deny yourself, nor should you be ashamed.”
“What a very progressive attitude.” Her eyes were wide behind the mask when they met his at last. Then she gave a rueful laugh. “Though I suppose it would be awfully self-defeating, as well as hypocritical, of you to say otherwise at this moment.”
He shrugged, his shoulders twinging and reminding him he’d fought a worthy opponent downstairs not an hour ago.
“This enlightened response of yours is limited to me, I take it?” she asked, with a lightness he did not trust. He sensed a trap. “For my type of woman, at best. I daresay if you had a sister, you would not be encouraging her to throw shame to the winds.”
Nathaniel fought to show nothing, either in his masked expression or in the tensing of his body. “You’re right. For a young, untried innocent, I could not be as permissive.”
“But we all start out young and untried, don’t we? I wonder, when does it become all right to let go of shame and embrace our pleasures?”
Frustrated, he ran a hand through his hair. It was bait and he knew it, but he couldn’t see how to avoid it. “After marriage, I suppose.”
“Ah, but what if one has no inclination, or no opportunity to marry?” She smoothed her skirts and looked at him with an oddly defiant tilt to her chin. “Take me, for an example. I have never been married.”
Nathaniel felt as though he’d taken a hit to the head from one of Gentleman Percy’s fists. “You’re not…married? Or a widow?”
She shrugged. “There was a boy, once, when I was very young. He died before we could wed. And since then, I have been…very alone.”
