Page 73 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
Nicholas was not in the bed. He was sitting at the window with a blanket about his nakedness and his long hair loose, one curtain drawn back so that he might look out into the night.
A fierce night, she thought, with the raindrops hitting hard against glass and the stripped branches of bare-leaved trees swaying in the force of breeze.
The fire was banked now, only embers, small flares of occasional orange banishing back darkness. Suddenly she was afraid for them both, unreasonably and forcibly.
As if he knew what she was feeling, he turned, the scar on his cheek in the moonlight raised in a relief so that the shadow of the wound enveloped the whole of one side of his face.
* * *
He had remembered other things in the night as he sat at the window, darker things and less ordered. He recalled feeling full of shame and regret the first time they had made love because he knew that he was not worthy of Eleanor and yet he had taken her virginity without a backward glance. She made him hopeful and foolish for things that might never come to pass, good things, proper things in a lifetime that had been remarkably dissolute and disordered.
Once he’d had nothing much to forfeit, but now...
‘If I ever lost you again, Eleanor...’ He stopped, unable to carry on. He did not hold back his honesty though he wished there was more warmth to his words instead of a bleakness, empty of belonging, devoid of hope.
He had never had someone stay in his life. Not since his mother had kissed him goodbye and told him she would be home before he knew it, the mis-truth in her words still there in his mind. Love did not conquer fear at all, it amplified it and made it stronger, the loss a hundred thousand times worse because the promise had sounded so very sweet.
Eleanor had risen, the quilt draped about her. ‘You won’t. You won’t lose me again.’
His heart was beating so fast at her words he wondered if she might hear it and when she came against him he opened the blanket and she sat upon his knee, all warmth and softness and violets. He pulled the quilt tightly in about her, banishing any drafts. She felt the tension in him, rippling through his body.
‘You are cold?’
‘No, not cold, but fearful.’
‘For us?’ she questioned and he nodded, because her confession of love was still ringing in his blood.
‘If anything happens to you because of me...’
Her hands came around him, sealing off the loneliness. He felt a finger reach out and take his nipple in a hard grasp and with a start he leaned back.
‘I liked it when you did this. Is it the same with you?’
Her other finger flicked the opposite nipple and it was suddenly harder to concentrate on the yawning desolation inside him.
‘If we have only now, Nicholas, we should use it wisely.’
There was a tone in her voice he had never heard there before, the tone of a courtesan, perhaps, who knew that even a moment of pleasure took care of every other doubt.
‘Wisely?’
Her hand trailed downwards and she cradled his growing hardness between her fingers.
‘You are ready and so am I.’
‘For an untutored lover, Eleanor, you are surprisingly bold.’
‘When you have society’s very best teacher, is there any wonder to it?’
He laughed then and the sadness was pushed back further, quick desire left in its place.
‘This time let me show you another way of loving.’ He removed the quilt and the blanket and stood her before him, kneeling in front of her and parting her thighs, pleased as the skin he could see rose up into goosebumps of delight.
* * *
She could not believe such a thing was possible, his lips against her femininity and his tongue penetrating the place between her legs.
She’d wanted to give him comfort and instead... Every thought flew from her mind as other feelings began to build and her hands moved down to hold him there.
