Page 55 of A Proposition for the Comte
His hand had fallen to her stomach now, arching in circles that were ever expanding. She felt her breath hitch as he dipped lower.
‘Relax, my love, and just feel.’ Such an endearment was unexpected and she bit down on a reply.
Love me, Aurelian. Let me forget. Take me to a place where it is only us.
Her hands clung to him even as his fingers came within her, potent and life-giving, catching her between this world and another one as the broken edges of her life softened. She was no match for him, no match for all the things that he knew, but his grace was surprising.
He would not take that which she did not wish to give, he would not hurt her, either. She could feel her wetness on his fingers and wondered at the way her body rose upwards seeking release, finding the place where thought turned into feeling. Then she was there riding the waves, understanding the elation, breathless and fluid, closing her eyes tight and looking inwards.
She was like no other woman he had been with. She was elemental and earthy as much as she was refined and careful. Such opposites attracted him and made him wonder how many more secrets were inside waiting to be discovered. He undid his breeches front with an unbecoming haste.
‘My turn now.’
He was in her quickly, the finesse he was lauded for lost under desperation as he came. God, he was like a green boy fumbling in anxiety, pumping in as if he had never lain with anyone before. His mouth came down across hers, sealing the sounds he might make into silence, claiming home.
Violet had him imagining things he had not ever thought of before. The cross at his neck hung between them and he vowed to remove it when he got back to the town house. Veronique was gone, but she had never branded him like Violet Addington did, never made him fretful and impatient, anxious and worried. He wanted to bundle her up here and now and place her into his coach to race through what was left of the night to Sussex. He wanted to wrap her in isolation safe from those who might hurt her, away from the gathering forces of greed and politics that he was so much a part of.
‘There is a finality in making love, isn’t there?’ Her words were soft and he smiled before speaking.
‘La petite mort, we call it in France. The little death in a brief weakening of consciousness. Some never feel it.’
Her hand came up and she stroked the skin on his cheek, cradling his face. ‘I did not...before.’
The yearning in her words made him sad.
‘Let me take you to a luncheon tomorrow at Wake’s. It is a private hotel in Brook Street.’
He should not ask this, he knew, after her refusal for his hand in marriage. His personal life would always be overshadowed by his professional one and any vulnerability would be noticed. But he wanted for once to feel...normal. A man who might take his woman somewhere beautiful and elegant and discreet, to dine together as if no demons lapped at their heels.
‘I would like that.’
A log in the fire shifted, sending sparks across the back of the grate, and they both looked over at it.
‘When I was young I used to imagine fairies lived in flame. My mother had hair the same colour as mine and she told me that they did.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She died in childbirth along with my baby brother. He was called John.’
‘And your father?
‘He married again shortly after. I think my new stepmother wished it was only Papa and her in the marriage for I was ten at the time and...difficult.’
‘How?’
‘In all the ways a girl might be who had just lost her beloved mother. They sent me off to boarding school in Bath and after that I was seldom home.’
‘So you were lonely?’
When she shifted position a lock of her hair fell across the side of her face. The colour always surprised him and he lifted the curl of it away from her eyes.
‘“It is observed that the red haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they may exceed in strength and activity.”’
She smiled and watched him directly. ‘Where is that from? I think I have heard it before.’
‘Jonathan Swift’sGulliver’s Travels. Summerley Shayborne and I devoured that book at school. I think he might be right, by the way.’
‘Who?’
