Fast. Hot. Deep. Rough. Urgent.
Angry.
Cathartic.
Extraordinary.
But not tender.
And not loving.
And not again.
Never again.
Transfixed, they regarded each other silently.
Neither of them allowed their expressions to reveal a thing.
He turned away from her, toward the window, as if he was concerned she would read his thoughts. Which were likely very explicit at the moment.
She sipped her coffee. “I wasn’t aware... that extraordinary pleasure... would make me scream.”
He slowly turned back to her. His expression now suggested a man who had been clubbed in the head.
Finally he said both the best and the worst possible thing:
“It can be even better.”
At the town house, a crew of cheery men were patching the ceiling where water had begun todrip into the foyer. They greeted her with deference as she made her way up the stairs.
She’d thought visiting the place she’d spent her sort of mild social purgatory might be a little painful, given that she was leaving it behind, but then everything was painful lately, so what would it matter?
She realized as she scaled the stairs to what she already considered her soon-to-be-former bedroom that “painful” wasn’t precisely the right word. She was simply suddenly excruciatingly more sensitive to everything, as though an obscuring defensive layer had been stripped from her and she wasfullyseeing and feeling certain things for the first time in a very long time. Grief and fury and regret and epiphany and bliss and joy.
And sorrow.
The reward for the end of this sorrow would be peace, eventually.
She would not stay with a man who could want her, but not forgive her. Obviously, shecouldnot stay with him, if he didn’t want her to.
And it wasn’t as though she’d forgiven him entirely, either. Although she was so much more accustomed to yielding than he was, to finding that way to make everything better for everyone.
And speaking of pain—she hadn’t told Magnus the complete truth. Shewasa little sore between her legs. She felt it now as she climbed the stairs.
Ironically, it seemed the kind of soreness that could only be cured by wrapping her legs aroundhis broad back again and digging her nails into his shoulders until they were both out of their minds with pleasure.
This notion sent such a rush of blood to her head and regions south of her head she was forced to grip the banister. She would know in the future not to entertain those kinds of thoughts on a staircase. Death by swooning from lust and tumbling down a flight would be embarrassing.
Had she enjoyed living here? She could not quite say. It was a fine, comfortable house, in a fine location. The floors were marble; crystal and gilt abounded in the furniture and fixtures. He had bought it furnished, many years ago, he’d told her; he’d chosen nothing, as he hadn’t had the time or the knowledge to choose the right things. It had never felt likehers; it decidedly wasn’t. She hadn’t allowed herself to feel she had a right to it. It was the place where Colonel Brightwall had stored his faithless wife, and where she’d slept alone night after night. A comfortable, luxurious purgatory.
To her, it would always be the physical reminder of the way in which she’d been punished for kissing another man on her wedding day.
And today, it reminded her acutely of how lonely she’d been here, because the last few days she’d spent with Magnus and everyone at The Grand Palace on the Thames she’d had a taste of the kind of life she might have had.
But like this town house, that life didn’t belong to her, either. It was only temporary.
Hence the sorrow.
