Page 62 of The Luckiest Lady in London

The only thing he didn’t know was the exact strength of this sorcery he wielded.

He removed her drawers and parted her thighs. There had been a time when she would have gladly opened her legs to tantalize him, when the pleasure he brought her did not immediately touch off a cascade of pain in her heart. But now she had to bite down on her lower lip in order to not clamp her limbs together again.

“And the grapes were too tart,” she said when he still didn’t reply.

He pushed her legs farther apart, kissed her on the inside of her thigh, and made love to her with his lips and tongue. The wickedness of it shocked her, as well as the intimacy. The pleasure made her gasp and moan. His tongue was so clever, so demanding, and he knew exactly where to stroke with his fingers and when to apply the pressure of his teeth.

The peak he took her to was sharp and voluptuous. But he did not stop. As if that initial burst of pleasure were but a foundation on which to build ever bigger climaxes. And he created those ever bigger climaxes, until they came right on the heels of one another, until she was but one sustained vibration of extraordinary pleasure.

Afterward she kept her eyes shut, unable to face him. He rearranged her skirts so she was decent—if one didn’t inquire too closely into the whereabouts of her drawers. And when the heaviness of her breaths no longer blocked out all the other sounds, she heard the soft pops of several grapes being detached from the bunch.

“You are right,” he said half a minute later. “The grapes are too tart, especially compared to the sweetness of you.”

Her face, already warm, turned hot.

“I will also concur that my method is crude. And if you still feel this proves nothing, let me know, and I will gladly repeat the experiment and see if we can’t generate better results.”

She forced herself to open her eyes and sit up—she had to face him at some point. He was on the far side of the picnic blanket, reclined with his weight on his elbows, studying her from beneath his eyelashes in just such a way as to make her heart thud. Reminding her that even when he seemed somewhat humbled, he was still every inch the predator.

“Can I serve you something?” he murmured solicitously. “You’ve scarcely touched any food—and of course the grapes must have been terribly unsatisfying.”

She flushed again. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”

He drank from his wineglass. “I am. For you, that is.”

She swallowed. “Then you must exercise your husbandly prerogative.”

He held her gaze. “Do you want me to? And do not answer as an obliging wife—I already know I have an obliging wife. Do you wish it?”

Yes. No. “I don’t know.”

“Hmm,” he said. Then he beckoned her with one finger. “Come here.”

She should remain exactly where she was, at a safe distance. But she was pulled in by the same undeniable force that had had her revolving around him from the very beginning, a once freewheeling asteroid caught in the gravitational pull of a ruthless planet.

There was no such thing as a safe distance from him.

She lay down next to him. He shifted his weight so he was on his side, his head in his palm. His other hand took hold of her chin, keeping her face turned toward him—as if she could look away.

“You have such pretty eyes,” he murmured, “and such pretty skin.”

His words invoked a black pain not unlike the one she’d experienced whenever she’d thought of his eventual wife. She was his wife now, but the anguish remained the same, that of being replaced and forgotten.

“If you were trying to preserve your interest in me earlier, it must mean now you are trying to weary of me sooner,” she heard herself say.

He kissed her on the lips. “Do you believe I could ever weary of you, my dear Louisa?”

Of course she believed it—as much as she believed in the elliptical orbit of the Earth around the sun. It was the reason she could never trust him. The reason she would never tell him that she loved him.

“As long as we weary of each other at the same rate, I’ll have no complaints.”

His hand tightened on her jaw. A moment later he let go of her face altogether to trace a finger down the center of her bodice. “How you punish me, my dear.”

He lifted aside her skirts and, still fully clothed, entered her, his eyes never leaving hers—a man who wanted to see his power over her reflected in her features.

She let him see it. Because they were in the middle of lovemaking, and she could justify her hunger as that of the body, and not that of the soul. Her hunger, her need, even her fear.

“Spread your thighs wider, darling,” he told her, his voice only a little unsteady. “I want to be all the way inside you.”