Page 49 of Miss Dashing
“Beyond my most passionate imaginings.” He gently tackled her, and she lashed her legs around his flanks. Phillip commanded himself to go slowly and cherishingly, even as he longed to ransack Hecate’s wits and reave her control.
The lady wasn’t having any of that go-slowly nonsense. She wiggled lower, shifting the fit between them, and on the next glide of her hips, she nearly took Phillip into her body.
“For God’s sake, woman.” He stilled and held himself away from her. “A moment.”
She stroked his hair back from his brow. “For God’s sake, man, another moment’s delay will wreck me.”
As Phillip commenced a slow nuzzle from her throat to her shoulder, he identified the source of the last increment of his hesitation. He was not concerned that he’d fall short as a gentleman. The situation had passed the point where any sort of propriety applied.
He was concerned that he’d fail her as a man. That she’d try his gaits, consider a lifetime in harness with him, and then let the pull of family obligations serve as her excuse for waving him on. His own father had found him wanting, his Crosspatch Corners neighbors considered him eccentric, and he’d left a trail of faux pas in Mayfair wider than the Thames.
“I want to get this right,” he said, lips pressed to Hecate’s brow.
“You already have. Please, Phillip.”
Never, ever did he want to hear Hecate begging. He gave himself up to the intoxicating pleasure of joining his body to hers, and the whole world came right.
Here, on the good earth, under the summer stars, the robins serenading the darkness, everything came right, and Phillip was home at last.
ChapterEleven
The pleasure Phillip wrought with Hecate was beyond her wildest, most private imaginings. He was inexorable in his loving, relentless, like the approach of nightfall or a gathering storm.
Nothing distracted him, and to be the sole object of his adoring focus brought an intensity to his loving that scoured Hecate’s defenses. She fought for control even as she moved with him, fought for reason even as she grabbed with her entire body for bliss.
She lost those battles in a glorious cascade of sensation blended with emotion, a bonfire of oneness in pleasure, that by degrees became oneness in peace and no less wondrous. She was sweating—sweating—and naked beneath the stars and beneath Phillip, who had wrapped her close and cradled her gently against his chest.
Hecate kissed the nearest available part of him—his throat—and opened her eyes to behold the heavens over his shoulder.
“I’m crushing you.” His voice had acquired a lovely rasp.
“Don’t you dare move.”
He sighed and pressed his cheek to hers. That he’d await her pleasure even now, even in this, made Hecate tear up. Nobody took orders from her, nobody awaited her pleasure.
“If you farm half as well as you make love, then Lark’s Nest is the premier rural estate in all the world,” Hecate said, stroking his bum.
He kissed her cheek. “So well I’ve moved you to tears?”
She was warm and safe in his embrace, and yet, if he moved, if he got all brisk and satisfied, or rolled over and had himself a restorative nap, she’d dry her tears and be brisk right along with him.
Which her heart could not allow. This softness of spirit, the glow in her heart, was too precious to part with.
“I open my eyes after enduring the madness you visited upon me, Phillip, and I behold the stars. The entire heavens are awash in nocturnal splendor, and that is how I feel inside right now. It’s too much.”
Too much for a woman who’d devoted herself to ledgers, investments, allowances, and pensions because those had been the only means she’d had of mattering to her family. How little, how small she’d become, trying to fit into the narrow box they’d allotted her.
How exhausted and lonely.Spent.
I love you.The words welled with greater conviction than any Hecate had ever uttered, but she hesitated.Please don’t leave mecrowded close behind them, and she would not spoil the moment with pleading.
“What if,” Phillip murmured near her ear, “I go only far enough to allow us to tidy up, and then we can admire the stars together, until my strength is restored? You have loved me to flinders, Hecate Brompton. I am a man at his last prayers, and they are prayers of gratitude.”
“If I had the strength to pray, mine would be as well.” Blasphemous, no doubt, to offer thanks for a tryst that was so much more than a stolen moment, but Hecate felt no remorse. In fact, she predicted more blasphemy in her immediate future and contemplated the prospect with relish.
Phillip produced a plain linen handkerchief from a jacket pocket, a white flag amid the night shadows, and dealt with practicalities. He rummaged in the wicker hamper, found the flask of lemonade, and passed it to Hecate.
“This was the right place,” he said as Hecate sat up to enjoy a drink. “The right hour, the right everything. I am so drunk with wonderment right now, you will have to lead me back to the manor house by slow, small steps.”
