Page 91 of When He Was Wicked
“I like you too, so damn much,” she whispered, touching his mouth with shaking fingers.
He leaned forward onto one forearm and adjusted the angle of one of her legs, lifting it higher to wrap around his back, the position taking him impossibly deep. The feel of him inside her, stretching her, filling her, was the most glorious sensation Henrietta had ever felt. She didn’t have the breath for speaking as he rode her to bliss.
He lowered his head to capture an achingly sensitive nipple as he thrust deeper and harder. She strained against him, chasing the pleasure she knew would tear her apart.
“Simon,” her cry of his name was needy, desperate.
A deeper and harder thrust from her lover, and then she found it. Henrietta’s entire body tightened, and she cried out as she convulsed with shattering pleasure.
He went still, his head down and his muscles shaking.
“You are incredible and passionate and so damn sweet, Henrietta.” Lowering his head, his mouth danced over her collarbone and the tops of her breasts.
She moaned and twisted under his weight, trying to draw him closer, deeper. His teeth scored her shoulder as he thrust into her with rough, driving motions, chasing his release. Simon brought her to the same pinnacle at least three more times until, with a deep groan, he fell with her.
I love you, she thought with a silly smile curving her mouth.
He caught her hand and rolled, resting half on her, his face buried in her hair.
“I will never forget today,” he said hoarsely.
Simon tucked her close, his arm around her waist and his chest like a furnace against her cheeks.
Neither will I. Yet she did not say the words because too many emotions clogged her throat. The heat of his body and the warmth of satisfaction combined to lull her toward sleep. He held her like that, and Henrietta scandalously fell asleep clutched against his chest. Gran might faint with shock if Henrietta did not return home, but she did not want to move. Being in his arms felt perfect. She yawned and allowed sleep to pull her under.
Several hours later, the warmth of the sun on her eyelids roused Henrietta. She stretched, wincing at the ache deep inside her core. She stilled as the memory of urgent hands rousing hersometime close to dawn this morning came to her. Simon had taken her again, tenderly but almost with a roughness that had to convey some desperation she had not understood.
Was it that he also had strong feelings for her? Henrietta clasped the rose quartz and sleepily looked around the cottage.
Simon was gone, and so was the painting. Her chest cracked open, and the tears she promised never to shed coursed down her cheeks. As she pressed her face into the pillow and sobbed, hating the cleaving sense of loss tearing through her, Henrietta recalled a soft brush of his mouth on her temple and his whispered farewell words.
“Goodbye, you damn fool,” she said raggedly into the pillow, sobbing until she fell into an exhausted sleep.
CHAPTER TEN
Driving back to Town with Henrietta’s painting which had been carefully padded and wrapped propped up against the seat opposite him, Simon felt morose. He tried to investigate that emotion and admitted that he would miss the natural companionship he had with her. He would miss the way her eyes crinkled at the corner when she smiled and the way she prettily frowned when she concentrated. Simon would damn well miss riding with her in the early morning, reading, and fishing with her.
And he damn well knew he would miss the taste and feel of her in his arms.
He found his body stirring again at the thought of her responding to him without restraint. Simon had not wanted to leave her and had wanted more, far more of enjoying her lush curves. However, he could not take Henrietta as his mistress. She was a lady and would be stigmatized by society. It was not only that he had loved the sweet and sensual kisses they had enjoyed together, nor that he had taken her virginity which he felt rather a cad about. It was far more than just bedding Henrietta; he wanted to be with her, and he did not want their brief affair to end.
Simon tried to shift his thoughts to Vivienne. After all, she was the reason he had Henrietta paint the picture. Simon found he could not even keep his mind on Vivienne. The mere thought of enjoying her or any other woman carnally had dampened his arousal.
He acknowledged that it felt damn foolish going back to town, for Vivienne was no longer the prize he had so determinedly sought. Henrietta meant more to him than any doxy, no matter how beautiful she was.
He tried to sleep as the miles bounced along, but as he dozed, Simon found himself back at his main estate in Lancashire, which was fifty miles away from the one he had been refurbishing for his sister. He was running along a corridor, chasing a small boy, whose hair was dramatically red. The child chortled and lurched after a small dog that ran around him. The child squealed something like, “Zussie, come here!”
The small dog teased coming close and then frisking away. No matter how fast Simon ran he did not seem to catch up and then a woman came from the other end of the corridor, a small baby girl with raven locks in her arms and the boy and dog stopped, moving up to her…
“Mummy,” the boy cried, “Zussie won’t let me cuggle ‘im,” he wailed and then Simon realized the woman with long auburn hair was Henrietta.
His heart lurched with the carriage over a particularly rutted part of the road, and he sat up. And Simon awoke knowing that in his dream, Henrietta had been his wife and the mother of his children.
“Pull yourself together, Hardwick,” he said aloud to himself. “You are ruthless, single-minded, and relentless. You are not ready to be married and don’t need to for many years yet…”
But the words hung hollow in the air, and Simon could not believe them himself.
He determinedly pushed all thoughts of Henrietta from his mind and concentrated on how jealous his friends and fellow claimants for Vivienne’s contract would be when he cut them out. His charm and his fortune were a match for them and with the portrait to swing the matter in his favor, he was bound to win the fair Vivienne.
