By the time the dinner party broke up, it was past eleven; the meal had been followed by a rousing, somewhat inappropriate game of charades in the library —Jane, in particular, had proved surprisingly ad ept at imitating a seagull, to Penvale’s mystifying horror—which had been fueled by several glasses of port and sherry. At last, however, only West, Sophie, Violet, and James were left, Violet being helped into her wrap by James, who was admonishing her to be careful not to take a chill “for the sake of your delicate lungs” with an entirely straight face. West took a de ep breath. He’d made up his mind—and he trusted James and Violet to be discreet—but still... “I have something I wish to discuss with Sophie,” he said carefully, flicking only the slightest glance in her direction as he spoke. “I can send her home in my carriage afterward.” “All right,” Violet said, borderline gleeful, and wasted no time in seizing James by the arm and practically dragging him from the house, barely giving poor Briar enough time to bow them out the front door before they’d gone. “You’re very quick, Briar!” Violet called admiringly over her shoulder. “It is helpful to have a butler with such youthful legs!” Briar’s face was carefully blank as he shut the door behind them; he turned to West, said simply, “I can’t decide if that was an insult or not,” and bowed himself out of sight. “Briar will be much more at ease once he is old and gray, I think,” Sophie said, a note of amusement in her voice. West turned to look at her, then inclined his head in the direction of the library, from which they’d just come. “Would you like to speak privately?” Sophie walked toward him slowly; she was wearing a gown of red velvet that sat tantalizingly low on her décolletage, and her cheeks were a bit flushed from sherry and laughter. Her golden hair was piled high atop her head, a few curls having been allowed to frame her face, and he curled his fingers against his palm to resist the urge to reach out and tuck one of those curls behind her ear. “All right,” she said simply, coming to a halt when she was close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. “Or... we could go upstairs?” She looked at him directly as she said it, the faintest hint of a challenge in the words. She was testing him, he realized. She wanted to see how far he was willing to take this.
He lifted a brow at her, then offered her his arm. He saw the faintest hint of surprise register on her face before she took it, and he led them up the stairs. The click of the door as he shut it behind them sounded loud in the silence between them as they entered his suite of rooms. It was a warm evening, and there was no fire in the grate; lamps were lit about the sitting room, encasing them in a rosy glow, and Sophie wandered around slowly, coming to a halt before one of the large windows overlooking the back garden. Slowly, she began to remove her gloves; West, standing on the opposite side of the room, could not have torn his eyes from the motion of her hands if his life d epended on it. She glanced over her shoulder. “I take it you wanted to speak to me about my... proposal?” Her eyes crinkled slightly at the corners. “Otherwise, we’ve shocked Violet and James for absolutely no reason, if this is a conversation that could have waited until morning.” He began to take slow, measured st eps toward her, the thunk of his cane muffled by the thick carpet. “I don’t believe Violet and James are very easily shocked. He did compromise her on a balcony on the very night they met, after all.” Sophie turned back to the window, leaning down to drop her gloves on the armchair situated before it. “True.” Her voice was amused. “Perhaps that’s what I ought to have done, the night we met.” “Compromised me?” He was only a few feet away from her now, and he paused to appreciate the straight line of her back, the slight curves hinted at beneath her dress. Still, she did not turn, though she must have been aware of his proximity. “Yes. Ruined the r eputation of the upstanding Marquess of Weston, turned you into a despoiler of virgins—we’d have been engaged before your father could have taken it into his mind to have an opinion on the matter.” “I was a bit less upstanding back then, if you’ll recall.” He’d had a brief phase of wild-oat-sowing prior to meeting her, an attempt to relieve the pressures of his position. She cast him a saucy glance over her shoulder. “I do recall, thank you. Who would have thought that the alcove behind a potted fern could be so terribly... educational?” He recalled the interlude in question with almost painful clarity. It was the first time he’d got a hand beneath her skirts; looking back on it, it had been terribly risky, but they’d been young, and as good as engaged, even if he hadn’t officially asked her yet. If only he’d asked her. He’d been a fool. He shook his head to clear it. She turned now, and the suddenness of the movement did not give him time to carefully school his features into the more neutral expression he usually tried to adopt in her presence. One that would not frighten her—not
make her realize that he felt the same way about her now as he had seven years earlier. Exc ept... He was growing weary of pretending. Sophie’s gaze skittered off of him, and she began a deliberate perusal of the sitting room. He watched her take it in: the polished mahogany furniture; the blue wall hangings; the stack of books on one of the end tables; the open door behind him that led to his bedroom. “Shall we have something to drink?” she asked, her gaze having alighted on the sideboard beneath an ornate gilt mirror. Without awaiting his r eply, she made a beeline for the decanter of brandy and the bottles of wine arrayed there; in the mirror, he could see the faint furrowing of her brow as she reached for one of the bottles, scrutinizing the label. “Perhaps a glass of claret?” she tossed over her shoulder, waving the bottle in question. “If you wish,” he said, approaching her slowly; she turned at the sound of his footst eps, bottle still in hand. He watched her for a moment, then cleared his throat. “What are you doing?” “I am opening it for you,” Sophie said, her hands busy. “I am not certain that is, in fact, what you are doing.” Sophie, for all that she was generally a lady for whom the word “competent” seemed to have been invented, was struggling with a corkscrew—this was clearly a task with which she had limited experience. “Did you want any help with that?” he asked after another moment. “No,” Sophie snapped. “All right,” he agreed politely. The struggle continued; Sophie was growing slightly red in the face. A strand of golden hair had fallen into her face, and she blew an irritated breath at it. “I know it would be impolite for me to sit,” he said after another long few moments, “but my leg is beginning to ache—” “For heaven’s sake!” She thrust the bottle at him; he mentally congratulated himself for successfully guessing that mentioning his leg would end this farce. He acc epted the bottle from her and, in a few twists of the corkscrew, had it open. He filled two glasses, set the bottle down, and raised his glass to her. “Cheers,” he offered. She clinked her glass against his, still thoroughly out of sorts. “I’m even more irritated now that I’ve learned that you look very attractive whilst opening wine bottles.” She took a seat in one of the armchairs before the empty fir eplace, and he sat in the chair opposite hers. “I have often thought that brandishing a corkscrew is indeed the surest way to woo a woman,” he murmured. She rolled her eyes, and he nearly smiled.
“I can tell you are trying not to smile,” she informed him. “And I wish you wouldn’t.” “Smile?” “No, try not to. You have a very nice smile, you know. On the rare occasion it makes an appearance.” “I smile when the situation merits it,” he said, taking a sip of wine. He’d been saving this particular claret for a special occasion—which, upon reflection, he supposed this evening qualified as. “As if it’s a particularly fetching coat you only wear for the nicest events,” she said, and she was smiling, and if his smile was nice, or however she found it, hers was radiant. He looked back down into his glass. A brief silence descended upon them; she was gazing into the empty grate, evidently de ep in thought, which gave him the opportunity to look his fill. For so many years, he’d had to take her in in hasty, furtive gulps: a quick glance across a crowded ballroom, or down a dinner table, careful that no one should observe him doing so. It felt almost dizzyingly luxurious to look at her for as long as he pleased. “I enjoyed dinner tonight,” she said absently, taking another sip of wine. “With your brother—and my sisters—and all their friends. It was... nice.” She sounded mildly surprised by this realization, that the display of domestic harmony they’d put on tonight had been enjoyable. He was tempted to push at this, but instead broached another topic he’d considered often, these past weeks —and months. “You have become closer with them. With Violet’s friends, I mean. I recall you used to only be close to your sisters.” He remembered something she had told him once, years earlier: Why should I need other friends, when I’ve four sisters? Who could possibly be better company than them? He remembered the pang her words had caused; he’d grown up in a household with a dead mother, a controlling father, and a single younger brother who seemed to resent him half the time. He could not imagine calling a large, loving family like the Wexhams his own. But he’d gone off to school, and made friends with David Overington, the future Marquess of Willingham. They’d met at Eton, and continued on to Oxford together, and he had found the joy that came of belonging, of having another person on whom one could rely. The thought of David sent a pang through him. But he realized with a start that over the course of this past year—since he’d r epaired his relationship with his brother, become closer to his brother’s friends, too—the pain of David’s absence had lessened, like an old wound that was slowly healing. “I’ve discovered there’s something to be said for being intimate with someone who didn’t know you when you were in leading strings,” Sophie said now, drawing West back from his own maudlin thoughts. “And, besides, my sisters are adults now. They’ve all married and are starting families of their own. They don’t... need me. Anymore.” He set down his wineglass and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, leveling his gaze directly at her. “Sophie. Your sisters will always need you.” “But it’s not the same.” She took another sip of wine. “After I—after I married Fitz, I turned my attention to them. Now they needed to marry well. They needed to be happy. I chaperoned them for events—I hosted balls
for Alex and the twins, the years they debuted—I gave them advice when they had suitors. And all along, I thought, if I could ensure that all of them were happy in their marriages, then it wouldn’t matter that I—” She broke off, as if suddenly realizing what she was saying. What she’d been about to say. He waited. “That I wasn’t happy in mine.” She spoke each word very carefully, very deliberately, without ever allowing her gaze to waver from his—so that he’d know that she meant it. That the words hadn’t slipped out by accident. He’d known, on some level, that this was true. He was not a vain man, but he flattered himself that Sophie hadn’t gone from loving him to marrying another man without more than a moment’s regret; he’d known that her marriage to Bridewell must have hurt, in both the same and an entirely different way to the manner in which it had hurt him. But she had never admitted it to him, until now. And he knew, somehow, that he must proceed very, very carefully. “Did they—do they—know that?” He deliberately leaned back in his seat, as if the topic didn’t matter very much to him at all, as if he were approaching a particularly shy cat. For years, all he had wanted—more than to kiss her, or hold her, or make love to her—was simply to talk to her. She was his favorite person to talk to. She was, he feared, still his favorite person, period. She gave a sort of half-shrug, one that seemed helpless, somehow, even though that was nearly the last word he’d ever use to describe her. “I don’t know—somewhat, I think. They were very puzzled when I married Fitz. Particularly with you being so ill—they thought me heartless. Maria and I quarreled about it, and we’ve never fully recovered from that quarrel, I don’t think.” “Because you let a future duke slip through your fingers?” he asked, thinking of Sophie’s status-obsessed younger sister. “Because she knew that I was in love with you,” Sophie said quietly, and gazed down into her drink for a long moment. “I mean, yes, she also thought I was a fool to throw away the chance to be a duchess someday—she is Maria, after all—but more important to her was the fact that I loved you, and I was marrying someone else. She thought it monstrously unfair to Fitz, for all that I tried to tell her that he didn’t love me, either. Maria is surprisingly romantic. She didn’t know the truth of what happened with the duke—she still doesn’t— because I knew she’d feel guilty. But since I couldn’t inform anyone of why I’d done what I’d done, they... disapproved. “And then, once I’d been married awhile and hadn’t had a baby, they started to worry about that, too—I think that was what made them finally forgive my impetuous marriage. They felt so sorry for me that they managed to get over their disapproval, I suppose.”
Something in her tone confused him; it was somehow wry, almost guilty. “And you didn’t want their pity?” He was hazarding a wild guess, feeling his way along in the dark. It made him uncomfortable; he was unaccustomed to speaking without being entirely sure of what he was saying. Future dukes did not speak unless they were sure. Future dukes were always sure. But that was the magic of Sophie, he thought—it had been seven years ago, and he felt it again now: With her, he did not need to be certain. She did not think any less of him for this. “I did not think I deserved it,” she said, very quietly, and she lifted her eyes to meet his. “Fitz and I... ours was not a particularly passionate marriage. We entered it heartbroken, both of us, and he soon developed interests that lay elsewhere, and made sure I was aware that I could do the same—but he liked the idea of children, and we were both lonely, and it was convenient enough, having another warm body on the opposite side of the connecting door. So we—we went to bed together. Often enough, over the years, that it began to seem odd to us both, when there was no resulting child. It bothered him.” Her gaze on him was steady. “But it never bothered me.” West was silent for a long moment, taking in what she had just told him. He had never heard anyone, male or female, express such a thought. In his experience, couples who were unable to have children were to be pitied; the wife was always to blame, though he’d personally always found this assumption on the part of most men of his acquaintance to be based on some rather flawed logic. But whether a child was something to be desired was never in question— and anyone unable to produce one must feel the loss quite de eply. He had never, not once, considered that anyone might feel otherwise. But then, he was a marquess, would be a duke someday; children were, in his world, not so much beloved additions to the family as necessary acquisitions, like a new horse or a particularly fine carriage. He’d never once, in the whole of his life, paused to consider whether he wanted them. “You do not want children, then?” he asked, finding his voice, his mind still full of these thoughts. “I had never thought to want or not want them,” she said. “It’s not as if I’d have much of a choice in the matter, once I was wed—that is what a wife is for, is it not? Providing heirs?” He nearly flinched at the last word. Heirs. Most men would wish for a wife to provide them with children, it was true, but he could not help but think her word choice had been deliberate. After all, how many men had to worry as much about their future legacy as he did? As another man’s wife—as Bridewell’s, for instance—she would not feel the weight of this so heavily. He suddenly appreciated what a bold and presumptuous thing it had been, expecting her to marry him. “But then, when no children appeared, I realized that I didn’t... mind. And as I thought about it more, I realized that I’d never looked at other women’s babies and longed for one of my own. I love my nieces and n ephew, but I have never felt a pang of loss that my marriage did not produce a baby of my own. “So you see, West, it’s just as well that we never wed—you can’t possibly have a duchess who can’t produce an heir. But you also needn’t worry that I’ll fall pregnant from any... recreational activities, shall we
say, that we might choose to engage in.” She was still meeting his eyes very steadily, but he felt certain that this was in some sense an act; she was stating this boldly to shock him, to put him off, to see how he’d react. He paused a moment, to gauge his own emotions: How did he feel about this? He wasn’t entirely sure; but he knew, with utmost certainty, that when he’d wanted to marry Sophie seven years ago—when he’d spent all those years since longing for her—it was not because he wanted her to supply him with an heir and a spare. He’d wanted her for herself, because she made him happy. Everything else was... well, everything else was negotiable. “How do you know that you’re barren, and it wasn’t Bridewell who was the problem?” he asked now, the thought belatedly occurring to him. She rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it always the woman who is at fault?” “I am no doctor,” he said carefully, “but it seems to me that there are two sets of organs in volved in the act, and it seems just as likely it could be the husband as the wife.” “Would you be willing to risk it, though?” He rose from his seat then, and approached her with slow, deliberate st eps; he leaned down and braced his hands on the arms of her chair, bringing his face close to hers. “Need I remind you that, until recently, my father was under the impression that I could not have children?” She frowned. “I know, but—well, you just told him that to irk him. It wasn’t true.” “I told him that,” he said very deliberately, “so he’d abandon any hopes of me marrying and providing him with an heir, when I’d no desire to do so.” Not unless it was with you. He did not speak the words aloud, but they hovered between them, understood. She swallowed. “You would have changed your mind eventually—you will change your mind,” she corrected. “You can’t mean to be a monk.” “If I have done so for the past four years—and then close enough for the three before that—then I don’t have any notion of what I mean to do,” he said evenly. Her frown de epened. “But then—” Her eyes widened. He waited, ignoring the ache crawling up his leg. “You have not—that one night—” “Afternoon, really,” he said. “But yes.” He hesitated. “There were—during the years that you were married, once I recovered, there were other women. Not frequently, but when I... I couldn’t bear it.” He’d closed his eyes, and tried not to picture her face. “But after that afternoon... there’s been no one.”
“But why?” “Because,” he said simply, “you had ruined me.” And then he leaned down and kissed her. There was less hesitation in this kiss than there had been a few nights earlier, on Lady Worthington’s terrace; their bodies remembered each other now, and fell back into the rhythm that had once come so naturally to them: his hand cupping her cheek, their tongues tangling together, her fingers curling around his neck. Time seemed to slow, and all he was aware of was the feeling of her warm body pressed against his, the silkiness of her hair in his hands. Another feeling, however, was slowly beginning to crowd in around the edges, an arc of pain lancing up through his leg as he rested more of his weight upon it. It had been a long day, and he’d gone riding that afternoon, and his leg was letting him know in no uncertain terms that it did not appreciate this treatment. “Is something wrong?” Sophie asked, pulling away from him in response to some infinitesimal signal from his body. She was flushed and utterly lovely, her golden hair mussed and slipping out of its coiffure. “No,” he said, and reached out to pull her up out of her seat. She tugged him by the cravat and drew his mouth down to hers. This time, she controlled the kiss, and he was happy to let her; he, who had to be in control in so many other aspects of his life, who k ept himself so perfectly contained at all times, was pleased enough to relinquish that control here, where there was no one else to see. Her hands were at his cravat still, hastily unknotting it, and soon she had it loose and the warmth of her hand was at his throat, leaving goose bumps in its wake. He shrugged out of his coat, and then her hands were at the buttons on his waistcoat and he was sliding it off a moment later, and then she was unbuttoning his shirt, and her fingers were greedy on his skin, the muscles of his abdomen tensing under her whisper-soft touch. They stumbled drunkenly backward, West drawing her with him through the doorway that connected to his bedroom. It was darker in here, fewer lamps burning, and the low light made her eyes look like dark pools, drinking him in as she broke their kiss and surveyed him for a long moment. She st epped back, her gaze on him hungry, and he felt himself grow harder under her scrutiny. “Why do you look... like that?” she asked, gesturing at him in indignation. She sounded almost annoyed, and also appreciative, all at once. “I started an exercise regimen, when I was recovering from my accident,” he said. “In an attempt to regain my strength. I found I liked the way it helped me... stop thinking.” Of David, and his death, and his own terrible, overpowering grief and guilt; of Sophie, at first, when all he’d wanted to do was think of her, and doing so was a constant agony; and then, later, when his longing for her had become less all-consuming, he’d come to appreciate the way his mind went blank of everything when he was physically exhausted. It was a relief, when he could allow the rest of the world to fade away, even for a little while.
But there were other ways to do that. Ways that he’d once loved—once made a very frequent habit of. Ways that had lost their appeal, once he’d lost her. Until now. He shrugged off his shirt and walked toward her; when he concentrated, he could control his limp, make it nearly unnoticeable, even if doing so caused him an added degree of pain. Now, however, his limp was heavy, but nothing in her face indicated that she minded it. That she was thinking of the man—nearly a boy—she’d once loved. Instead, appreciation for the man before her was written in every line of her face. “Now your shoes,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest, regarding him with some anticipation. He sat on the edge of the bed, and tugged at his shoes; a quick glance at Sophie confirmed that she was watching this display with some appreciation. “Now your trousers.” “Are you planning on joining me at any point?” Her gaze narrowed. “Eventually.” Something about that look on her face, and the curtness that cr ept into her tone when she ordered him about, sent more blood rushing south, and he fairly flung off his trousers and smalls and a moment later he was sitting before her, entirely nude. He rose to his feet and took a st ep toward her, but she held up a hand to stay him. “Sophie—” “Wait,” she said slowly, a smile playing at her lips, and there was nothing in her expression but open appreciation, and lust, and need. She made a slow circuit around him, and he grew, if possible, even harder under this scrutiny. She came to a halt directly before him, so close that he could have reached out and seized her with the slightest movement of his arm, but he remained still, allowing her to look her fill. There was color in her cheeks, and her chest was rising and falling more rapidly than usual. Her gaze dropped to his leg, and he instinctively reached out a hand to cover the ugly scar that crisscrossed one thigh, where a jagged piece of wood had gouged him badly in the crash, then froze mid-motion, and allowed his hand to drop. She reached out a hand instead, her fingers tracing the angry scars on his thigh; they had faded with time, but would never vanish. Her gaze flicked up to his. “Does this hurt?” His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “No more than usual.” A lie, in some sense; his pain today was certainly worse than normal. But her cool hand on his skin eased him somehow, even though all she’d done was trace a gentle line along the map of his pain.
Her gaze lowered again, down to his shin, where the break had healed poorly, causing the limp that plagued him to this day, and her hand continued its progress, down nearly to his knee and then back up again—and then farther up, and farther. Her finger reached his inner thigh, and he closed his eyes. “Sophie—” Her hand curled around him, and he bit off her name on a groan. Her grip tightened, and he inhaled sharply; a moment later, it was gone, and he opened his eyes to protest— In time to see her, gazing directly at him, lick across her palm with slow deliberation, and then return that hand to his length, giving him a slow, agonizing stroke. “Jesus Christ.” “Mmm,” she said, her eyes following the motion of her hand. “I do love when you talk.” “I talk all—bloody hell—all the time,” he managed. Her smile, smug as a cat who got the cream, widened. “Not like this.” Another deliberate stroke. Her hand loosened and she st epped back, then sank to her knees. He reached out and gripped the bedpost just before she engulfed him in her mouth. It was warmth, and heat, and gentle suction, but also there was a growing pain in his leg, an agony mixing with the pleasure in ways that at first almost heightened it, then slowly, surely became more of a distraction. “Sophie—wait,” he said, the words more of a gasp than anything else. She drew back, looking up at him in question. “It’s—I need to sit down. I don’t think my leg can take this.” He’d long since stopped feeling much in the way of regret when it came to his bad leg; if occasionally he longed for the days when he could race his brother or friends across a field and beat whoever was foolish enough to agree to his challenge, he didn’t dwell on this feeling, as it did little to serve him in the moment. Now, however, he felt frustration bubbling up as Sophie shuffled backward on her knees, allowing him to gingerly sit on the edge of the bed. He so desperately wanted her, of all people, to see him as whole, unbroken. Not someone to be gentle with. Some of what he was feeling must have shown on his face—itself an alarming notion, given how he prided himself on never allowing any such thing to occur—because a frown creased hers. “What’s wrong?” He shook his head. “Nothing—obviously,” he added, gesturing at his lap, where his cock was making it quite plain that it objected to this interruption in the evening’s entertainment. Her frown did not ease at this attempt at levity, however, and he sighed. “I’m annoyed about my leg,” he said honestly. “And I do not wish it to make things... that is, I do not wish you to worry about it, while we...” “I can promise you, West, if you’d let me get back to what I was doing, I will not be thinking of anything exc ept trying to make you spend, and how much I like doing so.”
“Do you?” he asked, his voice hoarse but coherent, which he thought quite a feat after nearly swallowing his tongue. “Shall I show you?” she asked, her voice coy, and he swallowed, a curt nod all that he could manage under the circumstances. And then she was on her feet again, turning her back and casting him a flirtatious look over her shoulder. “If you could just help me, perhaps...?” She lifted her arms and a moment later he was tugging the dress over her head. Then his fingers were on the laces of her corset, loosening them until that, too, was cast aside. She turned then, revealing a chemise made of whisper-thin linen, nearly transparent in the lamplight, the silhouetted curves of breast and waist and hip a tantalizing promise through the fabric. A moment later, however, that barrier was gone, too, and she was standing before him, entirely naked, and if he’d thought his memories of her were accurate, he realized that he’d still, somehow, forgotten the absolute glory that was Sophie, all bare skin and golden hair— which, even now, she was removing the pins from, shaking out around her shoulders—and saucy gleam in her eyes. He braced his hands behind him on the counterpane to disguise their trembling. “You are beautiful.” It was not the most elegant or smooth of compliments, merely three simple words that felt as though they’d been wrenched from de ep within him, but it was what he had thought every single time he had laid eyes on her for the past seven years, and he’d never been able to say it. Had gone out of his way to avoid saying much of anything at all to her. To speak those words now felt like a privilege he had not earned. The rosiness in her cheeks de epened. “Thank you.” “Come here,” he said, and she walked toward him slowly, her hips swaying, just enough for it to seem seductive rather than exaggerated. “I thought I was giving the orders this evening,” she said lightly, coming to a halt before him and reaching out a single finger to trace down his shaft. He jerked at her touch, biting off a curse before it could cross his lips. “In that case,” he said, looking directly into those beautiful brown eyes, “I’d very much like it if you told me to taste you.” “I—I think I’d like that, too,” she said, a slightly breathless note to her voice that stoked some innate masculine pride that he did his best to ignore most of the time. “Then come here,” he said, pushing himself back a bit on the bed as she approached. When she was standing directly before him, he reached out and seized her by the waist; it took a bit of awkward maneuvering, but a few moments later she was on the bed, straddling him. He leaned back and, with a firm grip on her thighs, urged her forward, until she was straddling his face. “You might want to hold on to the bedpost,” he said, and then, without a moment’s further hesitation, buried his head between her thighs, and licked. “Jesus Christ,” she said, and then, “God.”
A few moments later, he came up for air. “Did you wish to pause these activities and attend a church service instead?” “No,” she said, quite fervently, and then her hand was in his hair, tight enough to send a fresh rush of blood to his cock, and she was urging him back to his purpose. “Don’t stop.” He had no intention of stopping, not when she was ordering him about in that commanding tone, and for some time he was conscious of nothing more than the taste and smell of her, and the small, urgent noises she was making in the back of her throat, mingled with an occasional burst of profanity that delighted him more than it probably should. His hands were tight on her thighs, ke eping her firmly anchored in place, and he felt them beginning to tremble, her grip on his hair growing nearly painful, and a moment later she was cresting, and he saw her through it, ke eping her pressed to his mouth, until she at last pushed herself away and collapsed limply on the bed next to him. He raised himself up on an elbow just as she reached an arm out to twine around his neck, pulling his mouth down to hers, the kiss messy and heated. She rolled onto her side, flinging her leg over his hip, and— “Are you sure?” he asked breathlessly, nearly out of his mind with wanting. “Yes,” she said, kissing him again, and then he was sliding into her, wet and slick, and then there was nothing but tightness and heat and mindless pleasure, the sound of her gasps in his ear. They were slow at first, finding their rhythm, but then after a minute they worked it out, her hips rising to meet his, his hand against the flat of her back, holding her tight to him. He closed his eyes and focused on nothing but the warmth of her, the softness of her skin pressed against and around him, the pleasure arcing down his spine as he moved within her. And then, all too soon, his thrusts grew erratic as he chased his release, and he slid his hand between them, pressing his thumb to a certain spot, and she shattered around him with a wordless cry, just in time for him to withdraw and spill on her stomach. For a moment—a minute, five minutes, ten?—there was nothing exc ept the sound of their heaving breaths. “Good God,” Sophie managed at last. “I’m not going to be able to walk tomorrow.” “That was the goal,” he mumbled, the words not as cocksure as they might have been, given that he could not yet muster the strength to open his eyes. After another lengthy pause, he willed himself to a seated position, and then—though the thought was not appealing, given the jumbled state of his own mind and limbs—he rose, crossing to the basin against one wall where there was a cloth he could dampen and then hand to Sophie. She wiped at her stomach, a wry smile crossing her face as she did so. “Gentlemanly of you, considering it likely wasn’t necessary.” “We don’t know that,” he said mildly, settling beside her on the bed. “And I didn’t want you to be forced into anything you’re not willing to do.” Like motherhood—or marriage to him, for that matter. He could not bear it if she married him solely because she was expecting a baby she wasn’t even certain she wanted; he thought the pain of this knowledge would be even worse than the pain of losing her had been. She flung the cloth aside, and scooted backward on the bed until she was reclining against the pillows, looking like a queen, for all that she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.
And West—who would later think that perhaps his brain had not been functioning quite normally, given the circumstances—said, without thinking twice, “That was worth the wait.” She went still, then slowly sat up, lovely and unashamed of her nudity—she scarcely even seemed to notice it, as all of her attention remained fixed upon him. “West,” she said carefully. “I wonder if we ought to have discussed this ahead of time—what this would mean to me. Versus what it would mean to you.” He felt the strangest desire to laugh, of all things. How many firstborn sons of dukes had to worry about going to bed with women who were appalled by the notion of marrying them? Instead, he merely said, “I’ve not asked anything of you, Sophie.” “But—for you to have given up other women for four years—” “I didn’t precisely decide to do so, you know,” he said. “There were a number of women, over the years, who made their interest known.” Sophie huffed, leaning back against the pillows once more. “I don’t doubt it.” His mouth curved up slightly at the corners. “Jealous?” She crossed her arms and looked at the ceiling again. “Certainly not. You can bed every woman of the ton, for all I care.” “Of course,” he agreed, stretching out beside her and tracing a single finger down her arm, leaving gooseflesh in his wake. “I kissed a couple of them—no one marriageable, but a couple of discreet widows. But whenever I closed my eyes, I saw your face.” She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “West.” It was soft, pained. “I can’t help it,” he said. “I’ve tried to forget you—I’ve tried to move on— I’ve tried to convince myself that I’d be just as happy without you, eventually. But I can never quite manage it. I only want you—I’ve only ever wanted you.” “I want you, too,” she said softly. “But not enough to toss everything else about my life into a blazing fire.” She pushed herself up onto her elbows. Small frizzing tendrils of hair, mussed from his fingers, formed a golden halo around her head. “Your father was willing to ruin my sister’s marriage prospects if I married you—he was willing to destroy the one thing you care about the most, that gives you a sense of purpose.” “Your sisters are all married now—quite happily, I believe—with one exc eption, and I know Blackford well enough to know that there’s nothing my father could do to convince him not to marry Alexandra, at this point.” “But you,” she pressed, sounding frustrated. “Even if my sisters are safe from him, you aren’t. He could still sell Rosemere, could cast the tenants off the land, all for the sake of spiting you.” “I don’t believe he will,” West said levelly, even as the thought caused a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, one that had recurred ever since his father had first issued this threat. He didn’t think his father
would—it was ultimately pointless—but he disliked the possibility all the same. He was not a gambling man; he played low stakes at the card tables, when he played at all; he did not consider it his right, given the privilege he was born to, to risk the fortune that countless people d epended on, in some way or another. “But there’s risk, all the same,” Sophie said, as if reading his thoughts. “And I do not want you to risk that for me—I do not want a future with you, not if it means you’ve given up something so great, something you care for so much.” “I care for you,” West said, frustration cre eping into his voice to match the frustrated note in hers. “And I do not know why you value your own happiness so little—why you are so quick to give it up.” “Even if I weren’t,” she said evenly, “the fact that I cannot guarantee you an heir should be enough to make you see reason.” “I don’t care about a bloody heir.” He pushed himself to a sitting position, and then rolled off the bed entirely, ignoring the sharp pain in his leg that resulted from moving too quickly. He leaned down and scooped up his smalls and trousers from the floor, pulling them on with a furious energy that coursed through his limbs. Sophie watched in silence. “I have a brother—I have cousins —I don’t care who inherits the bloody title after me, not if caring means that I don’t get to spend the rest of my life caring for you. When will you realize that you are worth it, to me? When will you stop putting your happiness last, behind everyone else’s?” “Easy enough to say, when one is to inherit a dukedom,” she said coldly. He eased himself back down onto the bed and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “You knew my position the night we met,” he said softly. “It did not bother you then.” “Perhaps I’ve changed my mind.” “Then if that’s the case—if I cannot convince you that the man I am is worth all the bother that comes from the title I hold—then I do not know what else I can say to persuade you.” She rose, too, and reached for her chemise, pulling it over her head, hiding her bare skin from his view. “Neither do I,” she said softly, reaching for her corset, and after a long moment of silence, without another word, West leaned forward to help her with the laces.