Chapter Thirty-One
Bea woke slowly.
For a long moment, she didn’t know where she was, only that she was warm, cocooned in linen, surrounded by heat not entirely her own, and her body felt…different.Languid.Satisfied.Intertwined with something that hummed beneath her skin like an echo of thunder.
Her eyes opened.
She was in Nicholas’s bedchamber.
She had no idea how long she’d been asleep, but she needed to get home before her parents began to worry.
The curtains were drawn, but light slipped between them to strike the foot of the bed.Thank God.It was still daylight.Afternoon.The fire in the grate had burned low, embers glowing faintly.
And on the pillow beside her?—
Him.
Nicholas lay on his side, propped on one elbow, bare-chested, watching her with a look that made her breath catch.
He’d done it again.Twice more.Taken her in ways that made her gasp his name and wonder how she’d ever lived without him.But the look he gave her now wasn’t hungry, not anymore.
Something worse.
Something better.
Something that terrified her to the bone.
“You’re awake,” he murmured.
Her face flushed so hot she was surprised the sheets didn’t smolder.
She pulled the blanket higher, not because it covered anything he hadn’t already seen, but because she needed something between herself and the intensity of his gaze.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He reached out and brushed a strand of mussed hair from her cheek.“How do you feel?”
How did she feel?
Ruined.Melted.Reassembled.Terrified.Weightless.Anchored.Adored.Seen.Worshipped.
“Fine,” she said, which was possibly the most ridiculous understatement ever spoken.
His mouth quirked.“You look…better than fine.”
Heat spread down her throat.“How do you feel?”she countered.
“Wonderful,” he murmured, leaning closer, kissing her shoulder.Making her want him all over again.
“Nicholas,” she said, half-smothering a smile that shouldn’t have been there, because reality was waiting, heavy, sharp, and unavoidable.
He kissed her shoulder, slow and devastating.
A tremor went through her.
Focus, Beatrix.
Today’s pleasure flickered in the back of her mind like a candle, and with it came a jolt of guilt so abrupt she sucked in a breath.She’d allowed him to make love to her, begged him for it even, without telling him the truth.She was lower than low.
