“Leave,” he said, yanking his shirt off over his head and tossing it to the hay-strewn floor. He didn’t want to know what she would say next, how she would dismiss this interlude and him in one oblivious sentence. If she left now he could imagine…
Her fingertips coasted over her lips, and her gaze riveted on his mouth. The way she rippled so easily to life beneath his touch… Her body did not see him as a friend. If only her mind agreed. The hazel of her eyes shifted—like sunlight breaking through fog.
“Go,” he growled, hands fumbling at his fallwhere his cock strained the buttons. He wanted to embrace her, tell her he loved her, but that might ruin this floating sensation, ruin the way her laugh was seeping into him, making him almost giddy. Softer, he said, “Go, Tessa, before someone discovers us.” She wanted choices, and if they were found out, she’d have none but for him. He wished he loved himself as well as he loved her, then he’d ruin her without compunction and take what he wanted most by forcing her hand.
She paused in the stall door, her gaze caught on his hands, his fall. Then she left, and God how he hated watching her walk away. But… after this morning, she could never use the wordsisterwith him again.
And that made him unaccountably happy.
Chapter Eight
Tessa had not reached the advanced age of six and twenty without picking up some small bits of carnal knowledge. Secondhand, of course, and all of it in the last six years. As a rector’s daughter, she’d found most people reticent around her. The boys she’d felt her belly flutter over kept their distance, and the girls she’d been allowed to have tea with minded their manners better than she did. She’d been too embarrassed to ask Remmy. The body and its topics of conversation had always seemed forbidden between them, as if they’d both known, without saying so, that to acknowledge such things would change everything.
They’d been right.
She left the stables without caring what direction she walked in. She simply needed to walk off this energy Remmy had left inside her.
Thank heavens for Lady Chattaway, who’d spoken frankly with Tessa about the pleasures of two bodies together.
The mechanics of sexual congress.
The natural consequences of it.
That it could be done in a variety of ways.
Including under one’s own power with a clever hand and a vivid imagination.
That women, when with the right kind of man—a selflessman, Lady Chattaway insisted—could find many delights in the act.
Because Tessa met Remmy the Rake as more of an equal. In knowledge if not in practice, and for some reason, that was important to her.
Over the last six years, she’d coasted her hands over her body in the dark of night, touched and teased, but she’d never produced anything more than gentle, frustrated buzzing.
Until now.
Remmy had ruined her.
Or brought her to life.
Remmy who’d supported her, saved her. Remmy who’d loved her when no one else would.
Of course it would be him who’d pushed her past the point of fruitless buzzing.
The breakfast table had made her deranged. How could he be so different and so himself at the same time? How could he kiss her breasts then flirt with another woman the next morning? Tessa used to have all his attention. She’d followed him to the stables as much to regain that as to figure him out.
But Remmy was right—neither of them were as they used to be, and it solved nothing wishing things were. The only person to ever love her was gone, replaced by the thoughtless kind of man who cared for only one thing—the reckless pursuit of pleasure.
The rectory appeared before her like a good scolding for that particular wayward thought. The red brick, the clean windows, the climbing ivy—all of it scowled in disapproval.
She’d not meant to wander in this direction, but it was an excellent reminder. Remmy meant nothing with his kisses, rakes never did. And trying to figure him out was a distraction from her own problems. She had a choice to make.
The front door opened.
And there was her mother, looking just as Tessa remembered from the last time they’d met face to face.
“Good morning, Mother.”
“Tessa.” Her mother’s first word to her in six years. Those two syllables landed almost deafeningly in Tessa’s ears.
