He’d slept.Next to another person, for hours.
With no dreams.
Before he could begin to decide what that meant, the woman in his arms stirred, tickling his nose with her dark hair.It was the smell of candied lemon peel that brought him fully awake.
Lucy.
He’d had her.She’d taken everything he had and magnified the pleasure a hundredfold until Thorne hadn’t been able to form a coherent thought.It was a bloody miracle he hadn’t spent inside her like a mindless, rutting animal, but thank God it was ingrained in him to never, ever take a chance on getting a woman pregnant.
He’d seen the heartbreak that resulted from an unwanted babe, as well as the indiscriminate way some gentlemen spread their seed, and he’d sooner cut off his own balls than be one of them.
Lucy stretched against him, wiggling her bottom delightfully, and Thorne realized he’d trapped her in their sleep with his arm across her ribs and his hand covering one of her small, perfect breasts.She shivered, beginning to rouse, her puffy little nipple tightening and poking into his palm.He closed his eyes and remembered how they’d gone from pale pink to a lush, swollen raspberry from the attention of his fingers and tongue.
Lucy sighed and arched her back, which pressed her arse more fully against his hard prick.Thorne gave a pleased hum—and Lucy abruptly panicked.
She flailed, nearly bashing him in the nose with a flying elbow.Thorne swore and released her to bring a hand to his face and ensure that his mask was still in place—it was, by the grace of God, even after the vigorous fucking and subsequent unplanned drop into unconsciousness—and Lucy rolled out of bed and onto the floor with a muffled thud.
“Are you all right?”he said, alarmed.
Lucy’s head popped over the side of the bed, eyes like saucers and hair curling wildly around her shocked face.“You’re still here!”
A light scratching at the door had them both freezing in place.She turned to give the doorway a fearful glance before hissing, “The maid!Come to lay the fire!”
“Send her away,” he said, running his hands over the scarf that still hid his hair.It was slightly askew, so he straightened it.
“One moment, please,” Lucy called out to the maid in the hallway.
While she raced across her bedchamber to wedge the chair from her vanity beneath the doorknob, Thorne climbed out of bed and gathered his scattered clothes as swiftly as he could.
“You need to go,” she whispered.
“Go where?”he asked, struggling to get his feet into the correct trouser legs.
“Not a morning person, are you?”Lucy threw on her dressing gown.“I suppose that is to be expected, given your regular nighttime routine.”
He finally got his pants on, grimacing as he buttoned them over his still half-hard cock.Feeling more in command of the situation with his private parts covered, he said, “No, I mean what time is it?Clearly I cannot exit through the front door.Is the whole house awake?”
“About six thirty, I would guess, based on when Daisy usually starts making her rounds.You should be able to sneak out through the garden, but only if youmake haste.”
Thorne jammed his feet into his boots and shoved his arms into his black shirt without bothering to tuck it in.Grabbing his coat and cloak, he made for the open window, through which filtered the murky gray light of a London dawn.
He paused, straddling the windowsill, and looked back at Lucy.He wouldn’t see her again as The Gentle Rogue, or as Thornecliff either if he could help it.Perhaps he’d go for an extended stay at the family estate, he thought, until she went back to the Continent.
He controlled his reflexive surge of tension.No, perhaps not the Thornecliff estate.He never went there if he could help it.But somewhere, away from Lucy and the temptation she represented.
One night was what he’d promised her and himself.One night was all it could ever be.
That didn’t make it any easier to leave.
Pausing in her frantic rushing about the room, tidying away all evidence of their spent passion, Lucy came over to the window.There was a complicated look on her face.Thorne realized with a pang that he didn’t know her well enough to parse it, and now he never would.
Just go, he told himself sternly.But one light touch of her hand stopped him.
Lucy looked at him in the chilly light of the spring morning, her eyes thoughtful as she lifted one slim hand to his masked face.“Thank you for last night.It was a dream come true.”
She kissed him softly, once, then again.His fingers flexed on the windowsill so hard that the wood creaked.
“But now it’s time to wake up,” she whispered and stepped back.
