Page 37 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
“Benedict?”
“I…”
He needed to put distance between himself and his no-longer-nameless lover. He took a step to go as his gaze landed and locked on a telltale sanguine stain upon the stark white satin sheets.
He went hot and then cold all over. His belly roiled. His mouth moved, but nothing came out beyond a sharply hissed exhale.
There was a worrying whooshing sound in his ears like the time he’d been learning to swim and the tutor teaching him had thrown him into the lake as a trial by fire.
There appeared to be more reasons for the lady’s disappointment in him and upset with him. Wakefield wanted to rip himself apart.
“Oh, God,” he whispered, anguished and horrified. He lifted a stricken gaze to his lover’s. “I hurt you.”
“No!” Cressida flew to her feet, and as she did, she got tangled in the silk bed linens. Before he could catch her, the lady came down hard on her knees.
Befogged, feeling like he was swimming upstream, Wakefield finally reached her but too late. By the time he managed to move, she’d only gotten herself to her feet, but she had the protective cover of her sheet back in place.
“You didn’t hurt me, Benedict,” she entreated. “You were thoughtful and tender and kind.”
A harsh, half-mad laugh oozed past his lips.
“You were,” she insisted, earnestly defending Wakefield, a man wholly undeserving of her mercy.
Delicate fingers caught in his, and he glanced down where her long, graceful but curiously callused digits interconnected with his larger hand.
Cressida lightly squeezed, forcing his eyes back to hers. “I have no regrets, Benedict. You were the only man who I’d have ever wanted to give myself to this way, and I’m grateful to you, and I’m thankful you were my first.”
Her first? Wakefield tried to make sense of that cannonball she’d just fired into his head.
“…you were my first…”
“…you were my first…”
“…you were my first…”
He replayed those four words over and over in his mind, thinking if he said them enough times, they’d eventually change. But they didn’t.
“…you were my first…”
He’d been herfirst? Which meant…
Horror kicked him hard in the gut and pulled Wakefield from his dumbstruck state. He forced his gaze back to that damning patch of red.
The implications of what she’d confessed and what he’d done, and what she’dbeen, hit him with all the force of a runaway carriage.
“You were a bloodyvirgin,” he whispered, horror and shock wreathing his voice.
His virginal lover—or hisformerlyvirginal lover—gave a shaky nod. Her eyes bled with more of that earlier suffering.
Wakefield scraped an unsteady hand through his damp hair.
Then, unable to look at her, unable to speak, he stumbled back several steps, righted himself, and spun around in a full circle. Somehow, he managed to steady himself enough to walk straight for the door and continue walking without looking back.
Chapter 7
Click
Cressida stared at the painted Juno-Jupiter door panel Benedict exited through.
