Page 52 of The Luckiest Lady in London

So she took another step forward. And then another. And placed her hand over his heart.

His fast-beating heart.

She gazed into his eyes. For some reason she could see no contempt in them, only a barely leashed desire. Her hand moved to his jaw, followed by her lips. A chaste kiss, then a touch by the tip of her tongue.

He jerked away, but she only moved closer. This time she put her lips to the side of his neck, just above his starched collar. The rain-fresh scent of him made her light-headed with yearning. She grazed him with the moist inside of her lower lip.

And found herself picked up and pushed against a wall. They stared at each other. Her beautiful lover kept a tight grip on her shoulder, merciless enough to hurt, except she could feel only a desperate thrill.

“I seem to have married the horniest girl in all of England,” he said softly, but with a sharp edge to his words.

“You knew it long before you married me.”

His eyes were now on her lips. “Yes, I did, didn’t I?” he murmured.

“Kiss me,” she heard herself say. “Kiss me as you did the other night.”

“But how will a kiss satisfy you? It is satisfaction you want, isn’t it? Say yes, and I will give it to you.”

She almost could not believe what she was hearing. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. And yes again.”

His hand moved lightly down her arm. For a brief moment, he encircled her wrist with his thumb and middle finger. But the next second he was dragging her skirts up, his motion swift and efficient.

His hand parted her legs, seeking her through the slit of her combination. She was caught off guard. She wanted him to touch her everywhere, of course, but the way he went about it seemed so…focused, as if there were no other pleasure to be had except through that one place.

But she could not quite deny that it was a quick and instant source of pleasure. She was glad now of his hand that still pinned her to the wall at her shoulder—without it, her knees just might not support her weight. His fingers, God, those clever fingers, gentle and forceful by turn, knowing just what to do.

Her eyes fluttered closed. The sound of herself panting filled the room. Then she was crying out, her pleasure peaking and cresting.

His lips were close to her ear. His breaths, too, were shallow and irregular. She opened her eyes and turned toward him, his forehead against the wall, his eyes tightly shut.

She put a hand on his arm. But before she could say a word, he pulled back. Just like that, dropping her skirts and walking away. Halfway across the room, he took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hand, as if he’d touched something dirty.

And then he tossed the handkerchief into a wastebasket.

She was suddenly shaking.

“I believe my work here is done,” he said coolly.

She was too stunned to move—or to cry. She’d never once in her life considered herself unfortunate: She had a healthy, loving family; their roof might leak but it was still a good enough roof, and they’d always had money to buy food and enough left over to look respectable.

But not until this moment did she realize just how fortunate she had always been.

She had never before been dealt such deliberate cruelty. He had meant to humiliate her. He had meant to mock her desire for him. And he had meant to show, once and for all, how little he cared for her.

She pushed away from the wall and walked out without another word, or another look at him.

* * *

Felix stood in place for what seemed half the night.

He’d always known that he was every inch his mother’s son. But still he was stunned by his own viciousness. Being The Ideal Gentleman meant that his cruelty was treated like a piece of ancient weaponry at a private museum, an objet kept inside a glass cabinet, sometimes studied in the abstract, but rarely handled and never actually wielded.

But he had such paltry defense against her. Keeping himself away and otherwise occupied had made him think about her more, not less. The entire time in the drawing room, as he saw to his guests, he was acutely aware of where she was and what she was doing—each time she laughed, it was as if she touched him.

And when she actually put her hand on him, he almost could not remember why he must keep away. All he wanted was to spend the foreseeable future in her arms—make love, make her laugh, then make love again.

Already he thought of how best to make amends. He could write her family for a list of her favorite things. He could show her all the features of her new telescope. He could teach her the mathematics she needed to calculate the orbits of comets and the gravitational pull of planets.