The crackle of the fire was the only sound in the quiet room for what felt like ages. Alexander was just as happy for the silence. There was something powerful about lying tangled in this woman, her mouth brushing his shoulders, his tongue tasting her sweat as they came down from a high unlike anything he’d ever experienced.
“Am I crushing you?” he murmured against her throat.
She laughed. “I like the weight.”
“Hmmm.”
He continued to nuzzle her skin, memorizing how her hands felt as they moved across the planes of his back. This was more than wanting now, this connection in the quiet of this room. He knew it.
Slowly, he rolled away. He should have gotten up and broken the bond, but instead he dragged her with him so that she half-covered him.
“You’re right, the weight is lovely,” he said as he put his arms around her.
She didn’t move or pull away, but tangled her bare legs with his and rested a hand on his chest. “I needed that. It’s been a while.”
Considering that her last lover was his own cousin, Alexander almost didn’t want to press that topic. But he wanted to know and understand more about her. The second won out over the first. “Laurence told me you insisted you not go to bed until after the wedding.”
She lifted her head a little and looked at him, her lips pursing. “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that he was so easy with private facts about me. It turns out he had no interest in protecting me one way or another. Did he often share details of our affair?”
“Not those kinds,” Alexander said, and was glad it was true.
She sighed. “I was trying to become the lady I would never be. Proper ladies are not meant to go to bed with men, even their future husbands. They protect their virtue. I had none of that, obviously, but I still wanted to attempt decency. He was very angry.”
Alexander cuddled her closer. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, in that you had no part, so you needn’t apologize for his actions.” She traced a circle against his chest for a moment before she spoke again. “Why do you live with your mother?”
“Technically, she lives with me,” he said.
“Oh?”
She wanted to know the story, he could feel it, but the limits she put on herself as a courtesan, that idea that she could never push or ask for more…it seemed to stop her. The truth was, though, he wanted to tell her. To give her some understanding of himself. That meant more than anything now.
“My father was the younger son of the Earl of Heathfield, Roland. He was…” He trailed off as memories mobbed him. “He was a complicated person. He could be warm one moment and cold the next. He had high expectations and very little patience.”
“He sounds mercurial.”
“He could be. All the men of that line could be. They learned it from the best.”
“From the earl, you mean,” she said, her fingers still playing along his skin even if they faltered for a beat.
“Yes. I was lucky not to be raised by my grandfather, as Laurence ended up being after my uncle died. I was twenty-one when my own father passed, after a drunken accident that left him to drown in the middle of a lake.” He pursed his lips and struggled to continue.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I know from experience that the death of a parent who you have…difficultfeelings for is hard. You both mourn them and feel relief at their being gone.”
He glanced down at her. No one had ever said those words to him and he’d kept those exact feelings to himself in the decade since his father’s passing. Not even his mother knew.
“Yes,” he said, brushing her dark hair away from her forehead and then letting his fingertips skim her cheek. “My mother was, of course, settled as to be expected. We assumed the amount would be enough for her to have a comfortable living for the rest of her life. We soon discovered how wrong we were.”
Her lips parted. “He didn’t settle her well?”
“No. I don’t think he ever considered that she might need support after his death. He couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t outlive her, so why would he provide? There was little money and a three-year lease on her home already paid. I tried to give her what I’d been left to support her, but she refused.”
“That was when you invested it with Gray Danvers.”
He nodded. “Yes. But of course, that leaves me with little left to live on and to support her with. Her situation has gotten worse since the house was taken. She couldn’t afford the rent. For a while she lived in a smaller place, but even that became too much. So last year she came to live with me.”
“And how do you get along with her?” she asked. “It isn’t a very big house.”
