“I missed you,” he murmured against her lips.
“I was gone for three hours.”
“Three hours too long.”
She laughed and kissed him again. This, she thought. This was what happiness felt like.
But the laughter barely faded before something in him shifted. His hands tightened at her waist, sliding lower, then back again as though reassuring himself she was truly there.
“Sophia…” Her name left him like a warning to himself.
“What?” she breathed, smiling up at him.
Instead of answering, he bent and lifted her clean off her feet.
She gasped, clutching at his shoulders. “Edward!”
He was already striding down the corridor. Not toward the staircase.
“Edward,” she said again, breathless with surprise. “The bedchamber is the other way.”
“Too far,” he growled softly, not slowing.
The study door swung open with a decisive push of his shoulder. He carried her inside, kicking it shut behind them. The fire had burned low, the room warm and shadowed, his desk a broad expanse of polished wood beneath the lamplight.
She laughed again, though it came out unsteady. “You are entirely unreasonable.”
“Hopelessly,” he agreed, setting her on the edge of the desk but not stepping away.
There was no careful unfolding this time. No measured patience.
He kissed her like a man starved, hands framing her face before sliding to her waist, drawing her closer. The urgency in him pulled a soft sound from her throat, half protest, half surrender.
“Edward,” she whispered, fingers tangling in his hair.
“You said you were happy,” he murmured against her mouth. “Let me show you how happy you make me.”
The desk creaked faintly as he pressed closer, his mouth trailing to her throat, his breath warm against her skin. Her earlier composure dissolved entirely, replaced by heat and laughter and breathless little protests that carried no real conviction.
“Someone might hear,” she managed.
“Let them,” he said roughly. “They’ll know their mistress is adored.”
Her hands slid over his shoulders, holding him to her as firmly as he held her. The world beyond the study door ceased tomatter. There was only the scrape of wood beneath her palms, the warmth of his body, and the way he looked at her as though she were something fierce and precious and entirely his.
He lifted her skirts and entered her with one swift thrust. Sophia bit back a cry of pleasure. She slid closer to the edge of the desk and wrapped her legs around him.
Edward rocked hard and fast into her. And Sophia let him take her, grasping his hips with her hands and pulling him into her until the flame of desire became a firestorm in her core. She arched against him as her body merged with his in a frenzy. Their desire for each other flared with the firelight, savage and urgent.
Later, when the lamp flickered low and the room settled into quiet again, she rested her forehead against his.
“Three hours,” she murmured.
He brushed a kiss to her temple, still breathless. “Never again.”
One afternoon, Sophia found Alice and Thomas in the drawing room with their daughters.
Rosie and Nancy had descended upon Oliver like a pair of benevolent hurricanes, and the three children were now engaged in an elaborate game involving Thunder the horse, a tea set,and what appeared to be a diplomatic negotiation between two warring kingdoms.
