Page 68 of An Affair with a Notorious Heiress
To the remarkable sensations that his efforts elicited. To the fire that burned, to the glorious unfolding of pleasure in its purest, most basic form: uncivilized, feral. She couldn’t control the scream, the arching of her back, the wracking of her body that overtook her as splendor engulfed her.
Never before had she experienced anything like it. She was left lethargic, gasping for breath, barely aware of his moving up to hover over her.
Then his eyes met hers. Reaching up, she cradled his beautiful face. “Take me.”
“With pleasure.”
He glided into her smoothly, her body stretching to accommodate him. She lifted her hips and he sank deeper with a groan, his arms closing around her as his hips pistoned, fast, hard, sure. She’d thought it impossible, but the pleasure began building again, tighter, more intense.
She clutched him, buried her face in his neck, pressed her mouth against his skin as the cataclysm overtook her, overtook him. The force of his release nearly slammed her into the headboard. If he hadn’t been holding her so tightly, she’d likely be unconscious now. She was fairly close to that, to not being able to think.
Smiling, she held on to him, wishing this moment would never have to end.
She’d never simply lain there afterward, snuggled against a man’s side, his arm around her, his fingers lazily stroking and circling over her upper arm. It was a devastating moment to realize what she’d never truly possessed, what she might never possess for longer than a few nights, for however long this affair lasted. She rather regretted now that she’d insisted they’d be done by the end of the Season.
“I was never intimate with Griggs,” she felt compelled to confess. She needed him to know how truly unique, how special it was that she was in this bed with him. She was keenly aware of his stilling.
“Griggs?”
“The footman who is now my butler.”
He shifted slightly, his arm coming away from her, as he rose up on his elbow and looked down on her. Even though his hip rested against hers, she wished she’d held silent, that she hadn’t disturbed the lethargic spell that had encased them.
“People witnessed you kissing him.”
She nodded. “But it was never more than a kiss. And only that once.” She’d gone this far. She might as well go all the way. “I was so terribly unhappy. As I mentioned, Griggs was kind, because it was his way. He had no romantic feelings toward me, and I had none toward him. Our relationship was distant, but respectful. In the beginning, when I was learning my way around, he would cover for me if I made a mistake. I came to trust him. So I asked for his assistance, to help me stage a situation in which we’d be caught kissing. I promised him he’d always have a position in my household if he would do me this one favor. Public humiliation was the only way to force Downie into divorcing me.”
“You wanted a divorce?” His tone implied he found the notion inconceivable. Most did. The shame of it, the embarrassment it brought. It signaled failure, loose morals, lack of loyalty.
“Desperately. I’d asked him for over a year, pleaded with him to end the farce of our marriage, but he had too much pride to go through something so scandalous. So I created a scenario that was more ruinous, one that allowed him to garner sympathy.”
“You made him look a fool.”
“I was the fool.” In so many ways.
“The men you met at the Nightingale...” His voice trailed off, but she knew he was asking a question, wanted details.
“I didn’t meet men at the Nightingale. Other than Downie, you’re the only man I’ve ever been with.”
“But you knew of the place. Its location isn’t known by many. Most don’t believe it even truly exists.”
“Something was amiss in our marriage. I knew that. He was so distant. I thought the fault was mine. He invariably left me alone in the country. When we were in London for the Season, he would often go out at night. We’d been married a year. I was all of twenty and growing more despondent, because I couldn’t determine how to make him happy, how to please him. So one night when he left, I followed. I’d heard rumors of the Nightingale Club, but I thought it was myth.
“I was standing in the shadows, trying to determine if I should go in and confront him, worried that perhaps it wasn’t what I thought, perhaps it was much worse. A woman approached. ‘Is it your first time, love?’ she asked. ‘I’ll show you how it’s done.’
“She escorted me inside, introduced me to the matron who kindly took me under her wing, loaned me a mask, arranged for a servant to help me change. They thought I was in want of adventure. I walked into that parlor and saw a woman sitting on Downie’s lap. They were laughing. Somehow that hurt worst of all. He never laughed with me. To be quite honest, I can’t remember him ever smiling at me once we were married. I could do little more than stand there like an idiot and watch as she slid off his lap. He stood, tucked her beneath his arm, escorted her from the room and up the stairs. He looked as though he anticipated being with her. Coming to my bed was always a chore.”
He grazed the backs of his fingers along her cheek. “He couldn’t have seen bedding you as a chore.”
“‘Just lie still and endure it,’ he said on our wedding night. So I did. Still, I always dreamed it could be so much more.” Reaching up, she cupped her palm over his jaw, feeling the slight tickling of his stubble. He’d shaved before he retrieved her, but his beard was making itself known. “Tonight for the first time, it was what I’d always believed it could be.”
“Christ, Tillie,” he growled before taking her mouth with an urgency that alerted her this time they would not go slow.
She hadn’t been unfaithful. She didn’t have a taste for the rough, hadn’t been bedded by a footman, soon to be butler. She hadn’t had affairs. She’d sacrificed her reputation, her standing, her place in Society for a chance to be free of Landsdowne. She’d forced a life of solitude, an absence of friends, onto herself.
He adored her for it. For not staying with the unfaithful bastard, for recognizing she deserved better, for using whatever means necessary to free herself.
For taking a chance, for being with him now.
