She was both delicious and responsive. Lucien drowned himself in her, listening intently to her soft sounds, feeling her body's tension twist tighter and tighter, until...
She came with a shocked cry, her fingers gripping fists of his hair. Lucien panted on his knees, a smile of satisfaction crossing his face as he looked up at her flushed face.
This time, her pleasure was real.
Afterward, he drew her into his lap, letting her head rest against his chest. There was no help for it. Ianthe was going to look breathless and utterly ruined when they arrived. It made his chest clench a little. From her relaxed pose, it seemed she hadn't thought of it herself yet, but he didn't like the idea of her arriving at Balthazar's Labyrinth and having hard eyes notice the disheveled state of her hair or the flushed skin at her throat where his whiskers had grazed, of people assuming what she had called herself.
Whore. It was an ugly word, but one in which the men he knew cast too easily. And one which she knew, far too well, it seemed.
A finger traced the buttons on his waistcoat. "Do you want to...?”
God, yes. He wanted to tumble her to her knees and drive himself into her willing body. Instead, he shook his head. “Tonight. There’s time for that later tonight.”
Miss Martin’s gaze dropped to his lap, sighting the evidence of his lack of composure. She looked dubious. And guilty.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Miss Martin said. "I just feel... like I shouldn't have enjoyed myself. Not when everything's going wrong."
"And energy-wise, how do you feel?"
She frowned. "Wonderful."
"Your affinity lies with sexually charged sorceries. Consider what we just did a way to strengthen yourself. Not something to be ashamed of. Here, sit up. We're nearly there."
Miss Martin sat up quickly. Lucien busied himself with fixing the buttons at her throat, and then turned her in his lap, so he could smooth her hair back into place. It wasn't perfect; he was far more skilled at unraveling a woman, rather than putting her back together, but it might do to fool all but the most practiced eye.
When he had finished, she glanced at him from underneath those thick, dark lashes. There was a question there.
Lucien shifted her to the seat beside him. "I swore to protect you. That includes your reputation."
Ianthe considered his words, the moment drawing out. "You're a...complicated man."
Their eyes met and held for long moments.
"Yes," he replied, "I am."
Chapter Nine
The girl was crying again.
Morgana set aside the letter she had been writing and glared at the door separating her sitting room from the room that Louisa was currently attempting to flood.
She'd been trying to ignore it, but the exhausted half-sobs reminded her only a little too well of all the times she'd been locked away in small rooms as a child, after she'd been beaten by her uncle. The only difference was that she'd soon stopped crying.
Tears earned you nothing, and this was hardly comparable.
After all, the girl had an entire bedroom with a nice bed and soft blankets. Not a small closest tucked under the stairs, or even the box that her uncle liked to put her in for the day. She wasn't being starved. She wasn't being beaten for not being a boy, or for being another burden, another mouthful to feed when food was scarce. There could always be bloody worse things to cry about.
Morgana scraped back the chair, stood in a swish of dark aubergine skirts, and rapped sharply on the door. "Cease that noise at once, or you won't get any supper!"
It worked. Silence descended, golden, blessed silence. Thank goodness.
"Threatening children again, are we mother?"
Morgana stifled the leap of her heart. Visits from Sebastian always required a steeling of the nerves, but he'd taken to the habit of sneaking about on cat-quiet feet. Sometimes she wondered if he knew how much his presence unnerved her. "You're late."
He always was.
