“Very well.”
His tone was indecipherable.
She didn’t want to explain now, when her body was still humming like the final notes ringing in a symphony. She didn’t want to explain at all, in fact. The idea of another time meant there would be still more times, as it was inconceivable at the moment not to want that again and again. And now that she knew precisely the kind of wizardry involved, how the race toward release dissolved one into the purest, most vulnerable self, she could imagine losing just a little of herself every time. Until she was all his.
And therein, alas, lay the potential for destruction.
It was easier to end it now.
“Thank you for... this time.”
“No trouble at all.” He sounded amused.
The sweat was cooling on her body and the official start of their morning was hours away. The cook’s heart would give out if she walked into the parlor and found this.
“If I’m to be wanted for only one thing,” she mused, “I am glad there’s such pleasure to be had in it.”
Once again, every muscle in his body went so rigid she nearly bounced from him as though he were a carriage seat.
Then he drew in a long, long breath. Released it at length.
It was wrong, but she loved the feel of his chest rising and falling beneath her when he did. His control was formidable. Unleashed, he was.
“And they sayI’ma brute,” he muttered.
“Whosays you’re a brute?”
He didn’t answer the question. Which almost made her smile dryly. Exasperating man. The arrogance of him! He chose what to answer and when, as if he were the sole arbiter of what was important in the world.
“Your husband, he...” he began carefully. She waited. “Delilah, he ought to have been more considerate.”
And even though they’d been groaning and begging and bouncing away on each other like wild animals a moment ago, her face went hot. It wasn’t shame. Not precisely. It was for having a vulnerability exposed. It was for the care with which he chose those words. It bordered on tenderness.
But surely not. Surely it was mere accuracy from him.
She suspected whatever it was he felt was considerably stronger, and her own ferocious protectiveness unnerved her.
For a moment she couldn’t speak.
“I thought it was me,” she whispered. “That maybe I should have known, or—”
“No. He ought to have... you are... you are marvelous at this.”
Funny. In another time, another place, when she was another person, that might be one of the most appalling things she’d ever heard about herself: that she was marvelous at boisterous sex on a velvet settee in a boardinghouse by the docks. With someone whopatentlywasn’t a gentleman.
She certainly wouldn’t feel exultant. Yet she was. Whatever brutal forces had shaped this man into this taciturn, unyielding person, she was glad to take and give comfort and surcease.
I need you, Delilah.
She wondered if he’d realized he’d said that.
Then again, the thingsshe’dsaid shocked her.
She stirred to rise.
He shifted to allow her.
But first he laced his hands through the mussed wreckage of her braid and kissed her, so slowly, so softly, that delicious, wicked pooling of heat started up between her legs and she was amazed to realize that, given the slightest encouragement, she’d do it all over again on this settee, which likely wouldn’t be able to stand the strain.
