What were the chances that the two people who slept deeply and had such dreams would end up in a bed together?
What a grotesque twist of fate.
As she sat there on the bed, in her stupor, her body still pulsed with want.
She felt him behind her again, how sinful it was, and how delicious.She had been dimly aware throughout their conversation—or was it more of an argument?—that she was slick between her legs.She had likewise a dim conception of what occurred when a man found bliss, and she had felt a slippery sensation between her own thighs.
Scarlett pulled up her chemise and investigated for the first time.Between her thighs, she was very wet, and she realized it must be a combination of the evidence of his spend and her own desire.
Could he really find her so unattractive, she thought, if he had found ecstasy against her?Perhaps it was merely that, in his dream, he imagined another woman completely.
But the idea was too tempting.Perhaps, on some level, he did find her comely.Comely enough, anyway.
She ran her fingers through the slipperiness that coated her upper thighs and then up to her core.There, she found more of a familiar wetness.She parted herself easily, gasping at how wet and wanting she was.
Scarlett couldn’t help it.She began to touch herself in quick, desperate strokes.She let her fingers trail downward to the seed he had left on her, and brought that up to her core, filling herself with this remnant of him.
She was already plenty wet, but the thought of his seed inside her, that he had found pleasure against her, hastened her onward.She filled herself with her fingers and imagined that it was the hard, blazing cockstand she had felt for a moment between her legs.
She gasped and came, barely able to stifle the cry that flew out of her mouth.
She leaned back on the bed, panting, utterly exhilarated and flushed with shame.
When she caught her breath, she felt the urge to cry.
But she didn’t.
She didn’t understand what had happened between her and Mr.Malcolm Brown.But she knew she had been right when she told him that they must forget it.
She must try not to think of the man, she decided, as she began to drift off to sleep once again.
She must let him vex her no more.
She must forget that it had ever happened.
Chapter Eleven
Malcolm could notforget it.
Nor could he sleep.Not that night.Not after what had occurred.
He found the bedroom at the end of the corridor completely unoccupied—he checked this time—and realized that this one must have been the chamber set aside to receive Miss Scarlett Perkins.
The servant who had shown her to his room must have gotten confused.Not surprising, given that they had many servants who had come up from London with Beatrice and who did not know Parkhorne well.And Malcolm kept his room so neat that it might have looked easily like a guest chamber.
He was now lying down on the crisp, clean sheets and had his palms pressed into his eyes.He could not believe that he found himself in these circumstances.Of all the women that he could have had such a mishap with, did it have to be her?The one woman whom he found more attractive than any other he had yet seen in his life?Whom he had immediately coveted with a ferocious, primal desire, that he hadn’t even known he was capable of feeling?On the first night of their disastrous acquaintance?
He returned again and again to the vision of her unclothed before him.He grew hard again at the thought and swore at himself.He thought of her flushed, pink face and bit his own lip so hard he tasted blood.
And then, lying there in bed, a new anxiety broke through his desire.
What if she had gotten with child?
He understood that he hadn’t spilled within her, which he knew, of course, was usually necessary for such a thing to occur.But he realized he wasn’t sure that it was impossible for such a near miss to result in a pregnancy.
He would need to speak to her of it.
He would need to reassure her that he would do the honorable thing if it came to it.
