Page 59 of Scandalous Nights With the Earl
‘God knows, because I certainly do not.’
When he said no more she leant forward and kissed the scars, running her tongue gently across the hurt. He stayed silent, though she felt a heavy tremor run through him.
‘Sometimes life is unfair.’ Her words were soft as her hands went to his belt and the flap of his trousers. With only a small effort both fell away and he bent to unbuckle his boots.
Then he was as naked as she was, the lamp on the sideboard slanting across him, his muscles catching light and shadow in startling definition. Not an indolent lord but a man who had used his body in all of the right ways. Tears came to her eyes at the thought of the lonely miles he must have endured in America after the death of his wife.
With all the care in the world she took his nipple between her thumb and forefinger, slowly rubbing at first and then whenshe increased the speed their eyes locked on to each other’s. She saw shock there and then delight, she saw the smouldering flame quicken and burst, his breathing deeper, his other nipple hardening in unison.
‘Take me.’ His words now.
And so she did. She made him lie down on the rug and she sat astride him, guiding him into her and rolling her body, the slick, wet sound of their joining urging them on. Two halves making a whole. It was all she could give him now. Beauty and memory and truth. It was no longer just carnal and fleeting, the eroticism changed to something so much more.
Us, she said without words and with a tenderness that had been missing before, a soul touching honesty that could not be misinterpreted.
I love you.
For a moment she thought she might have said it out loud but she had not. It was her insides welling with a knowledge of all she would miss out on and all she would lose. She could not tell him because it would be his ruination and she had enough sense still to know it.
And when they both rose to the heights of ecstasy she let every part of herself go in a way she had not before and felt his seed fill her with the pleasure of release as she gripped him with her thighs, her breath taken, her thoughts scattered into just this moment,now.
In the very early hours of the morning they woke and went to the kitchen to find something to eat because they were hungry.
‘This reminds me of the first time we met,’ he said as she laid out some bread and cheese on a platter before him.
‘I was overwhelmed by you, I remember. I talked too much.’
‘I never minded that.’ He smiled as he said it. ‘I liked the way you surprised me. I still do. Oliver sent word today that he and Esther will be in London next week. They are staying with the Duggans but would like to see us.’
‘I am glad for it.’
He frowned at her tone and took her hand. ‘You sound sad.’
‘I just know how quickly life can change from one thing to another, and family is important.’
‘Do you miss yours?’
‘No, because we were not a close group, but I sense with Oliver and you that it was different.’
‘I know I will never have offspring to inherit Elmsworth and so it is important for me to understand their children.’
Wilhelmina took his hand and kissed the back of it. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he should have heirs and a wife and a chance at the life she could never give him, in Society amongst all that he knew as the Earl of Elmsworth. But she could not get the words out and was too selfish to even try.
Not now, not after their lovemaking, not in the darkness of night after such perfection. For this moment she could still pretend it was just them against the world and no one was crouching in the shadows, getting ready to ruin everything.
For this moment she liked the feel of him on her body, the wetness between her legs, the swelling fullness of her lips, the pink whorls on her breasts where he had sucked her as she had gone to sleep.
She was a woman who had known the very pinnacle of everything that was sensual, the pain and the pleasure, the soft and the hard.
So when he led her up the stairs after their late-night snack and laid her down on her bed she could only welcome him in, another time, a further wonder, an inexplicable and miraculous union that she had no words to even try to describe.
She shut her eyes instead and let herself simply feel.
Him. Them. Love.
Chapter Twelve
The following morning Wilhelmina sat down to write to Phillip explaining that she had business out of London and would be back in a week. She knew he would have questions and that he would not be pleased but she couldn’t risk a continuation of their relationship in its current form.