He smiled, and he could feel her smiling against his chest.
Their clothing was a shambles; her dress was mostly around her waist, his trousers trapped his legs. Together they helped each other out of the last scraps of decorum and it all ended up on the floor. He reached for her and she reached for him and utterly naked they held each other and savored the miracle of breathing together, of the feeling of bare skin all the way down.
The outrageous beauty of her. The wild gift of her passion. The cataclysmic pleasure. The generosity of giving her whole self to him when he was facing yet another unthinkable loss. Hugh could not think of a thing he’d done to deserve this moment, but perhaps, like fairness, deservedness wasnot a useful concept by which to live one’s life. Perhaps the animals had indeed gotten it right. When such gifts were provided, the only sin was failing to be grateful. And the only safety was not thinking beyond this moment, her flesh hot against his, her trusting, sated, vulnerable body in his arms.
Her new life would begin—or continue, he supposed—tomorrow evening, with a proposal from an aristocrat. He wouldn’t dwell upon the notion of some other man lying next to her any more than he’d love to dwell upon slowly bleeding to death from a bullet wound. There was comfort in knowing that he’d in the most unlikely fashion made sure she was getting the life she’d long wanted. And he would go back to America. He had a plan, after all.
But for this moment she was his. Only his. And no one knew how to appreciate a moment better than he did. It was all there was of life: moments of grace between the upheavals and changes.
Her hands had begun to softly, slowly move over him. Her fingertips traveled the deep gullies between his muscles, finding the raised scars, dragging her nails along him. Memorizing his textures. Her palms savored the texture of the coarse hair over his chest, the leather of his nipples. To the incomparable comfort and bliss of being so touched, he submitted, drowsily inebriated by the pleasure of it... then the gathering tension as desire was inevitably stoked and they were both reaching for each other and for more again.
He stirred and turned and her lips found his and it was his turn to savor. To revel in her discovery of all that his lips and hands could do, feeling her body ripple beneath him, or her eyes go dazed with wonder, then closed as she withstood the pleasure. And to glut his eyes and hands on the splendors of her body. He slid his lips down her throat, to her breasts, and gave each one a thorough appreciation, stroking the satiny weight of them, drawing his tongue around, then closing his lips over her nipples. He followed the silky divide between her ribs with soft fingers and his lips and breath, over her belly, and when he reached the triangle of auburn curls, he dipped his head to taste her and her gasp of shocked pleasure inspired him to do it again, and again, until her thighs had fallen open to abet this feasting. She moved with him, her hands curling into the counterpane, her coppery head thrashing back against his pillow, murmuring his name, turning it into a plea.
Nothing had ever been more erotic. The saw and cadence of breathing, her sighs and pleas, the curl and flex of her fingers in the counterpane, told him she was about to come apart, and he guided his cock into her and she did, her body bowing, her head thrashed to bury her scream in his pillow. She was still pulsing around him as he moved in leisurely, deep strokes, an attempt to postpone that moment of his own release, to build it to a mad crescendo. She turned her head again to meet his eyes. They reveled in each other’s enthralled, lust-hazed expressions. He savored that view of her rippling body, the lift of her sweat-sheened breasts and throat as she once again arched helplessly, another release building. And then his own had its talons in him. He unleashed his restraint and he plunged again and again, hips drumming, until he was nearly blind with need. And then all at once he was fragments, shattered by the ecstasy he’d been chasing.
Side by side, they dozed. Lillias slipped in and out of dreams, naked in her sleep for the first time, apart from the warm arms around her.
She stirred and came fully awake when she realized his heat was gone.
Alert now, she sat up, clutching the counterpane to her.
His clothes were missing from the heap on the floor. Her heart gave a jolt.
And then she saw him, murmuring to someone through a crack in the door.
There was no clock, but the quality of the light through the blinds told her it was just before dawn.
He closed the door and turned and saw her and was still. As if he were memorizing her.
He sat down on the bed next to her.
The kiss was tender and lingering; his hand at her back, a slow caress. But then he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. Turned his cheek to press against hers. His breath shuddered.
“I will never forget this, Lillias,” he said. His voice was raw.
The breath stilled in her lungs.
She had a premonition about what he would say next.
“And... I am sorry. I ought to have... perhaps I shouldn’t have...”
“What? What are you sorry for?” she whispered.
Her heart was jabbing at her rib cage now.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He swallowed. “I am so grateful for the comfort. I perhaps ought not to have taken it when we don’t love each other. But it was extraordinary and I will be forever grateful for . . . the beautiful gift of this night.”
He looked into her eyes then.
She was falling and falling and falling without moving. Except there was no one there to catch her or to hold her close. Her limbs went cold. Her gut was cold. Her heart stopped beating.
And still somehow she was able to remain upright.
And somehow, words emerged from her mouth.
“Do not apologize. It was my decision, too. I wanted it. I came here of my own accord. And I enjoyed it thoroughly.” Her words were raw and clipped.
She would claim it.
