Page 71 of A Proposition for the Comte
‘It wasn’t.’
His mouth came down across hers, warm and tender with the underlying flavour of a wildness tempered and she met him halfway with her own need, unhidden and primal. An equal taking and giving, a touch that was wanted and returned, her insides melting into heat.
They were a part of the scenery around them, melded into the greenery and the silence as they lay down, alive completely, even in the winter cold. The bed made from brush and blankets was surprisingly comfortable and as the light faded into darkness the lines all around them blurred into charcoal. Aurelian pulled the thick blankets up so that only their heads were visible as she clung on to his warmth and strength.
Above them the stars were strewn across an endless sky, quick bursts of cloud cover only fleeting. The beauty of the wide open enormity of the heavens was something that Violet had seldom given much thought to before. She’d always had walls around her and barriers. Here the freedom brought tears to her eyes.
‘They drugged me when they took me from Lackington’s. I think it was laudanum, sweet smelling and fast acting.’
‘Yes, probably laudanum.’
‘Have you ever used it?’
She felt rather than saw him smile. ‘To kidnap someone? No.’
‘How did you know they had taken me? Who found the ring?’
‘Tucker. He was waiting for me when I got back to London.’
‘But to find that particular inn on the road among all the others...?’
‘I guessed.’
‘Then you must be good at guessing, Comte de Beaumont.’
Again, he smiled. ‘Oh, I am, Lady Addington. I am good at other things, too.’
She moved towards him, face-to-face and pressing in. ‘What sort of other things?’
His hand unbuttoned the fall of his breeches and he pushed them down. ‘Loving you. Wanting you. Needing you.’
‘Now?’
‘All day while we were riding. All the hours of searching for you, too. Nothing can stop it.’
‘Even my inability to bear children?’
He turned her beneath him and positioned himself to enter her. ‘Least of all that.’
Then they were joined, heat rising in the cold, a gasp of breath, the race of blood, heartbeats gathered into a single rhythm. She cried out and the sound echoed back to them in the hollowed glade, over and over, the sweet release that took her making everything right again.
It was morning when she opened her eyes, Aurelian was nowhere to be seen. The birdsong was prolific and shrill and the hundreds of small insects awakening to the new day twirled and zinged in the breaking arcs of sunrise.
Stretching, she felt reborn and it delighted her, the dry and brittle woman she had been for all six years of her marriage softened now and receptive. She liked the scent of him and the feel of him and the taste.
This was how God had made people, she then thought, all her senses startled into notice, every fibre of her being wanting him.
He returned after a good quarter of an hour, three fish dangling from one hand, a man at home anywhere and well able to provide for himself.
‘You look like Poseidon home from the sea.’
‘Come to seduce a nymph with fish?’
‘If you can provide me with breakfast I think I shall succumb.’
‘Give me a moment, then.’
He started a fire with the same ease as he had yesterday and proceeded to fillet the fish he had caught.
