No one had everwantedher like that.
Certainly no one had ever listened to her the way he did.No one had cared what she thought about anything, Parliament, the country, the injustices she secretly sketched in ink.Her father dismissed her.Her mother soothed her into silence.
But Nicholas…
He watched her as if she were not merely present, but essential.
The thought made her breath catch painfully.
Bea shifted under the covers, her thighs brushing, and the spark of sensation that followed was almost too much.She exhaled sharply, her breath unsteady.
This was madness.She was a grown woman, not a schoolgirl sighing over a handsome face.She had a mission—an actual mission—to influence Parliament, to undermine dangerous legislation, to expose hypocrisy wherever she could.
Nicholas was not part of that mission.
He was not part of any plan she had ever made.
And yet her mind refused to quiet.Her body refused to forget.Her pulse refused to settle.
Her gaze swept through the darkness above her bed.What would it feel like—if she let herself imagine it—to have him here?In this room?On this bed?His hands braced on either side of her, his voice a low, rough whisper against her ear?
The image struck her with such force she let out a sound, soft, breathless, dangerously close to a whimper.
Her legs drew up beneath the sheets without her conscious permission, thighs pressing together in sudden, helpless need.
He had done this to her.Nicholas and his wicked mouth and his wicked confidence and the wicked things he’d murmured against her skin.
“Future wife,” he had called her.
She should find that infuriating.
Instead, she found herself picturing his lips trailing down her body, his breath warm against her chest, his hands spreading heat everywhere they touched?—
“Oh…” The whisper escaped her before she could swallow it.
Her body curled inward, the tension coiling low, hot, insistent.Each remembered sensation sharpened the next, the weight of his torso pressing her down, the soft velvet of the seat beneath her back, the warm rasp of his breath as he’d whispered her name like a vow he had no right to make.
Her nipples tightened painfully as she pictured his mouth on them—slow, reverent, unbearably focused—and she arched off the mattress, chasing a memory that felt far too vivid for comfort.
Bea pressed a hand to her mouth, as though she could contain the unspooling ache inside her.
This was madness.It was dangerous and foolish, and entirely improper.
And she wanted it so badly her bones were liquid.
Her breath shuddered out of her as she dropped her knees apart and sought the aching spot between her legs with the tip of her finger, seeking relief she could not allow herself to name.
She touched herself.Slowly at first.And then more quickly.The tension built.Climbed.Twisted through her like a silken thread drawn tighter and tighter.
She tried—for one last, futile second—to banish the image.
But she still saw him.
His dark hair mussed by her fingers.His mouth swollen from kissing her senseless.His eyes heavy-lidded, hungry, focused on her like she was something he’d dreamed of too many nights to count.
Bea let out a shaken, desperate sigh, and the tension snapped.Not gently.Not quietly.
It broke over her like a wave, hot and shivering, stealing her breath and arching her spine as the world went white behind her eyelids.Every muscle tightened, then trembled, and she melted into the mattress in a warm, liquid collapse.
