Page 21 of Ruined by her Marquess (Seductive Mysteries #3)

CHAPTER 20

“ I t has to be the answer,” Frances burst out the moment the door to their room at the tavern was closed behind them. “A mysterious mill, suddenly occupied at the same time that Grace disappears? And then her handkerchief appears? It must be the answer.”

She whirled, expecting to find Evan’s face limned by the same excitement she felt. Instead, she found him frowning at her censoriously.

“What?” she asked, her own face dropping into a frown. “You don’t think this is interesting?”

His expression grew even more thunderous.

“This is exactly what I warned you about, Frances,” he said, his tone grating and snappish. “You’re being na?ve.”

Frances felt her hackles rise in an instant, but something in Evan’s tone stopped the angry retort that threatened to leap to her lips. This wasn’t movement backwards, returning them to the combative places they’d occupied at the start of the house party. This was something different. There was an edge to his tone that felt…more fragile.

“You warned me that nothing might come of this,” she said carefully. “And I know that. I know it still might turn out to be nothing. We might find some perfectly normal if uncommonly reticent people at that mill tomorrow. But it’s not na?ve to be optimistic. It isn’t wrong to hope.”

If she’d thought her measured tone would settle him, she would have been disappointed.

“It’s stupid is what it is,” he snapped back. “You’re being a silly little girl, setting yourself up for disappointment. Then you’ll find yourself moaning and whining. Oh, poor Frances, who didn’t get the answer she wanted.”

This stung, in all its unfairness, but Frances refused to falter. How long had she spent, shrinking away from being seen, fearing it would lead to criticism? Well, here she was, facing criticism so outrageous it boggled the mind. And she would not yield . Not this time.

So she squared her shoulder and lifted her chin and stared Evan Miller straight in the eye.

He held his sneer in place for a moment longer before he crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut. He sunk onto the edge of the small, neat bed, his head in his hands.

“Fuck, Frances,” he muttered, grinding the palms of his hands into his eyes. “I’m sorry. Fuck.”

She sat gently beside him and pulled his hands away from his face before he did himself an injury.

She waited until he glanced in her direction, his expression anguished, before she said, “It’s all right to be afraid, you know.”

“I’m not af—” The denial was instinctive, but he stopped himself. “Yes,” he whispered, hanging his head again. “I’m afraid. Every time I have found some hint of her—from that very first night she went missing—it has all turned out for naught. And every time it cuts something out of me. I don’t know how it hurts anew every time. I know answers won’t bring her back, but…”

Frances reached around his back as he trailed off, pulling him toward her until he could rest his head on her shoulder.

“But what if?” Frances finished for him. “You cannot help but wonder.”

He hummed his agreement. They sat in silence for a long moment before Evan spoke again.

“I am afraid—you were right. I’m afraid we’ll find out that she was killed in an instant, and that even in those first, awful days, I was searching for a ghost. I’m afraid we’ll find that she lived for days or weeks after, and that if only I had found her sooner, I could have saved her. I’m afraid we’ll learn that she died afraid, afraid we’ll learn that she died cursing our names for not rescuing her. I’m afraid we’ll find her body, and it will be solid, irrefutable proof—and afraid that we’ll never find it, and that I won’t be able to bring her home and lay her to rest.”

He paused, and Frances felt the hard bob of his throat as he swallowed. “I’m afraid I’ll never learn the answers and I’ll never be able to recover. I’m afraid that I will learn the answers and won’t know who I am anymore without this hanging over me.”

This last admission was scarcely more than a whisper, and Frances’ heart broke for him—and for herself, and for Emily and Diana, and for everyone who had lost Grace and still ached from it.

“I know who you are,” she told him. “And if your grief changed you—well, good. If our grief didn’t change us, it would be like saying Grace didn’t matter. And she did. She mattered so much.”

“I loved her,” he said. “I still love her. I miss her so much.”

Frances reached her other arm around his broad shoulders and squeezed with all her might. “Me too,” she said into his head of dark hair. “So much.”

Quiet spilled between them again, though this time it was soft and comforting instead of fraught with pain. Frances’ arms scarcely reached around Evan, and he had to bend at a no doubt uncomfortable angle to get his head down to her shoulder. But neither of them moved for a long time, not until Evan’s arms crept up to caress Frances’ where she held him, not until his head tilted back until he was the one pressing a kiss against her hair.

“Thank you, Frances,” he said, voice thick. “For helping me. And for loving her.”

“Always,” Frances promised, afraid that she really, truly meant it.

When Evan kissed her this time, it wasn’t the passionate embrace of their first encounter. It wasn’t the teasing build-up of their time in the library or the temptation in the woods. It wasn’t a case of Frances battling for her own power, as it had been the night before.

This kiss was like a breath of release, a sigh, a homecoming. Their lips slid together like they’d done this a thousand times before instead of a scant handful. Frances needed no prompting to lay back against the mattress. Evan needed no encouragement to stretch out, half on top of her, pressing her down wonderfully without crushing her beneath his weight.

They kissed and kissed like they had all the time in the world, even if the opposite was true. They kissed like lovers, like friends, like people who knew one another’s pain and met it with their own.

They kissed as Evan grew hard against Frances’ thigh, as Frances held back her writhing and whimpering with all the struggle of Atlas holding up the world.

It was only when she felt she could take it no longer that he asked, “Can I?” and she sighed out, “Please.”

Their kiss did not break as they sat back up, joined by the way Frances’ arms twined around his neck. It did break, however, when Evan tugged helplessly at the laces of her corset, pulled back with a frown and said, “Good Lord, woman, I cannot untie these backwards. It’s impossible.”

She laughed, bright and sudden, as she turned her back to him, none of the intimacy lost with the advent of levity in their encounter.

As he mumbled and cursed at her laces, which had grown knotted desperately tightly with the day’s activities, Frances paused to think what this would all mean. She knew where they were headed; she was not a fool, and after she’d spent the night naked in Evan’s arms, she knew that lovemaking lay ahead of them. Her body was hopelessly compromised. Her reputation would be in tatters. She did not care about any of that.

But what of her heart? If she did this, would it hurt something far more precious and lasting than her prospects at marriage?

It might, she allowed. But she was going to do it anyway. It would be worth it, to have this time with him.

And so when Evan turned her back to face him, a boyish, hopeful smile on his face, she smiled too, and let herself feel everything he had to offer.

“You are so beautiful, do you know that?” he murmured, voice almost reverent as he ran a hand down the curves of her body.

“Nobody thinks that but you,” she protested, her words breaking off in a gasp as he toyed with one of her nipples with his lips.

He kissed down to between the valley of her breasts. “Then I shall have to say it more often.” Two more kisses and he was up, skimming his nose against her other puckered bud in a way that made her shiver. “Until you are sick of hearing it.”

Despite her open-minded acceptance of the emotional risks of their coupling, this kind of talk—the kind that made it sound as though they might have more time together—threatened to crush her.

“Less talking,” she said, her teasing tone undercut by how heavily she was panting. “More kissing.”

“As my lady commands,” he said wickedly.

When he kissed her, however, it was not on her lips. Instead, he dropped his head between her legs as he’d done the night prior, riling her higher and higher until she could feel the crisis upon her.

“Wait!” she gasped.

He pulled back from her at once.

“What? Frances, did I hurt?—”

“No, no,” she interrupted. “I just wanted to—” She stammered, blushing. “I wanted to—when you?—”

Fortunately, Evan followed her glance to the place where he was rigid between his legs. His smile was seductive, masculine, arresting.

“You want to climax while I’m inside you?” he asked slyly.

Lord above, his words alone nearly pushed her over the peak.

“Yes,” she cried, clenching the coverlet in her fists. “And I want… Evan, please. I want you to make me wait. ”

This time, he looked like he might be struggling with the effects of her words. His head dropped forward, hair covering his eyes so for one, heart-stopping moment, Frances could not read his expression. When he looked back at her, however, his gaze was pure hunger.

“You’re so perfect,” he said, crawling up to cover her with his body. “So goddamned perfect I don’t know how I can survive it.”

This was quite the way to put it. Frances wasn’t certain she was going to survive, either. She wasn’t sure she minded.

The blunt press of him against her was strange at first, something that both made her eager for more and cautious. As he eased himself inside her she continued to teeter on the precipice between multiple sensations. The stretch became marvelous, then slightly painful, then incredible again. The feeling of penetration was at first uncomfortably foreign, then something she felt she could not get enough of.

Her desires became clear only when he had seated himself fully inside her, their hips pressed together, and he began to withdraw again.

Slowly.

“Evan,” she moaned as he pulled back until he was nearly free from her body’s clasp, then slid back forward with the same purposefulness. “More. Please. More.”

“You told me to make you wait, my sweet girl,” he murmured, though she was gratified to note that his voice sounded strained, too. “But it shall be worth it. I promise.”

Frances let out an inarticulate cry of fury that quickly changed into a moan of desire as Evan began to move fractionally more quickly.

He kept up this pattern with consummate self-control, gaining speed in miniscule increments while Frances wound tighter and tighter and began babbling nonsense like “Evan” and “please” and “yes, yes” and once, in a rare moment of articulation, “Why did you listen to me when I asked for this?” This last one made him laugh before he seized her mouth in a searing kiss.

When Frances felt certain she would die from the pleasure of it, when minutes had passed without her able to do more than gasp, Evan’s control began to slip. His movements grew more ragged, grew faster, and then he slipped his hand between them. It took one swipe, two, three over her sensitive bundle of nerves before Frances became nothing but her crisis, before the pleasure burst out of her with a ragged cry that seared her throat and dazzled her nerves.

They were both damp with sweat when they fell together, but Frances found she didn’t care the slightest bit. She’d earned that, she thought giddily. Any exertion was a sign of her triumph, that they could both be patient—and yes, Evan was a bit more responsible for that, she could admit—enough to achieve that kind of blinding release.

It was a kind of release that left her shattered down to her bones, one which, after a breathless moment, led Frances to giggle, quietly at first and then helplessly.

Evan lifted his head in a halfhearted sort of way, giving her a glare that was undercut but the well-pleased look on his face.

“Christ, you’re tough on a man’s pride, aren’t you, sweet Frances?” he muttered, letting his head drop back down to the mattress.

“Oh, hush,” she chided, rolling over and pulling his face between her palms so she could lay a kiss upon his mouth that said she had no complaints about their lovemaking, no matter her unstoppable mirth.

“Well, if you put it like that,” he murmured against her mouth, and then kissed her back, just as thoroughly.

She laughed and he smiled and they lay there together, stealing kisses back and forth, until the sum of their exertions overtook them and they fell into a blissful sleep, legs intertwined and breath mingling in the cool night air.