Page 21 of The Courtesan’s Protector (About An Earl #4)

CHAPTER 20

R ipley could help but find amusing the fact that when Nora had arranged for the rooms for them for the night, she had given him and Jane separate chambers. Something a lady would do.

Despite that large difference, Nora was very much like her sister in a great many ways. Their laugh was the same. When they laughed together, he was fascinated by that fact. And her eyes were similar, that blue that felt like the depths of the sea. They tilted their heads the same way when they listened, Nora even fluttered her hands when she talked, which Jane occasionally did when she was truly excited by a subject.

But when it came to their lives, they were almost different creatures entirely. Jane was jaded. Of course she would be after the life she’d led. He didn’t view that as a negative, of course. He, himself was jaded. It was a way the two of them matched.

Nora was innocent. Jane had succeeded in that by secreting her away at the school. And she had learned refinement there, too. She poured tea like a lady, she spoke like a lady, she acted like a lady. Even when she told the occasional story of rebellion during her years at the seminary for girls, they were gentle insurrections. Taking extra sugar for her tea, sneaking into the headmistress’s office.

And so now Ripley lay on a bed in a finely appointed chamber aside from a little peeling wallpaper here and there, staring at a carved ceiling…alone. He had no idea what would happen next. Jane had found Nora. He could see they would ultimately repair the damage done by their separation. They would become closer and that would be good for Jane.

But his part in her search was over and he feared more than anything else that she would push him away for good. That she’d run from the feelings he’d shared with her before, as was her nature.

There was a soft knock at his door and he glanced at it. He knew instantly that it was Jane there, like a tracker on a scent. He just knew.

Slowly, he got up, trying to slow his racing heart and opened the door. Her blonde hair was down around her shoulders, she had a dressing gown that had to be her sister’s tied tightly around her. She looked up at him, her face soft in the dim light of the hallway lamps.

Wordlessly, she reached for him and he drew her into the room as she kissed him. There was no desperation to her kiss, but there was yearning. Need, and not just of the physical kind. So he gave, drawing her to the bed, untying her robe and finding her gloriously naked beneath.

He drew back to look at her in the soft firelight, memorized all the wonderful curves of her, just as he was always doing any time he was with her like this. He was clad only in his trousers and she touched his chest, sucking in a breath as she traced the lines of his muscles, the little tracks of scars from fights both in the ring and in life. Her fingers sparked pleasure, as did her lips when she pressed them to his throat.

He bent his head back with a little moan and drew his fingers into her hair, combing through the silky length of it as she tasted and teased him. She drew her mouth lower, over his chest, down to his stomach. She was unfastening his fall front as she did so and lowered it slowly. His cock brushed her stomach and he gasped with the ricochet of pleasure the contact created.

She smiled up at him and then she dropped to her knees before him. He might have protested, but she caught him in hand before he could and all words emptied from his sensation-addled mind. She stroked him and then she licked him, swirling her tongue around the head.

“Fuck,” he groaned, low and long.

It seemed to urge her on for she took him deep in one long stroke, until he hit her throat, and then withdrew. The wet heat of her, the glide of her tongue, the suction she balanced so perfectly, it was all heaven and he surrendered. He supported himself with one hand on the high edge of the bed behind himself and held her in place with the other. She worked him with all her experience, taking him over and over, edging him toward release and then backing off to drag out the connection longer.

The pleasure was unreal, building up to a peak he wasn’t certain he’d ever experienced before. She burned through his veins, every nerve ending was triggered and alive with her touch. He fought for purchase, but it was becoming a losing battle with every sweet sweep of her talented tongue. At some point he would lose control and while he wanted that, he also wanted more. He wanted her. He wanted mutual pleasure, he wanted to feel her ripple around him as she gasped out his name, his given name, in the flickering light.

He caught her elbows and she looked up at him, eyes wide. When he tugged, she didn’t resist, but dragged her mouth back up the same path she’d followed down until their lips met. He reversed their positions swiftly, putting her against the edge of the mattress, lifting her to perch there. She wrapped her legs around him instantly and their bodies fitted like they were meant to do so.

Perhaps they always had been.

He adjusted slightly, reached between them to spread her wider. She moaned against his lips as he slid home into her tight body. And home it was, for she was home. She always would be, even if she convinced herself otherwise and walked away.

He shook that thought aside. Not tonight. Not now. That was a war to be fought later. For now he wanted this connection. He drove into her, loving how she lifted to meet him. Their short breaths mingled between kisses, their eyes held as they collided and withdrew. It was animal, but also gentle, it was heated, but also loving. They were tangled together, not just in passion, but in tenderness.

He never wanted it to end, but he only had so much control. When her pace quickened, when pleasure made her body grip and ripple around his, the sensation was too much for any man to bear. He gritted his teeth so he could ride out her release, draw it out until she was weak and panting with its power. Only then did he withdraw and let himself free. She stroked him until he came in a powerful burst of pleasure.

He collapsed forward, half on the bed, her legs locked around his waist. He kissed her neck, the spot behind her ear, she smoothed her hands along his spine and it was like everything in that moment was perfect. A space frozen in time, separate from whatever would come next.

And it was in that perfect moment that she let out a shaky sigh and said, “I’m a mess.”

* * *

R ipley lifted his head when she said those words. “No, you are beautiful and perfect and lovely.”

She smiled at how easily he said it. “No, I don’t mean how I look. I mean… I’m a mess, Cam.”

His brow wrinkled, but she could see he understood. Of course he would. They were the same in so many ways. They’d walked through fire and they both knew that it was a fairytale that someone could do that and not be burned. Permanently scarred. She didn’t want to scar him even more.

“Love, everyone is a mess,” he said with an almost indulgent smile.

She shifted from beneath him and scooted up to the pillows. She bent her knees and held them as she stared at him. He moved to lay on his side, watching her without trying to touch or distract her.

It seemed the time had come to say all the things they’d been waiting on.

“I’ve hurt the people I care about,” she explained further.

“Of course you have,” he said, and she flinched. He rushed to continue, “Because everyone does. It’s a side effect of loving people, letting them in. It means we’re vulnerable to being hurt and occasionally hurting them.”

“But the last person I want to hurt is you, Cam. Because…” She drew a shaky breath. She couldn’t avoid this anymore. Part of her didn’t want to. “Because I do love you. And you scare me more than anyone I’ve ever known.”

She could see him fighting his joy at her admission of her heart. See him trying to focus on her fears. “Why do I scare you?”

“Not because you’re a fighter.” She hesitated. “Well, perhaps because you’re a fighter. Not just physically, but in other ways. You’ll fight even when it hurts you.” She reached up and touched the scar that slashed his eyebrow. “You are the kind of man who could fill up all those painful spots in me. It’s so bewitching to think you could. And it’s terrifying to think that I’d hurt you as a reward for that. That I’d take away from your life rather than add to it.”

He nodded slowly. “But what if we healed each other?” he suggested, his tone gentle. “Because, my love, we’ve already done that for each other more than we’ve ever hurt each other.”

She blinked. There was no denying he had helped her heal in these past few weeks. And before that, too. He had become the center for her, a place that was always soft when she fell there. A place that could bring light when it was dark.

“How have I healed you?” she asked.

“Do you think I would have gone to my father without you at my side?”

“Is that healing or tearing open a wound?”

He smiled. “Sometimes you need to do the second to get the first. I’ve hated him for so long, I’ve made him up to be this villain. But he was just a man. He’s flawed, deeply flawed, and I’ll never be close to him. But he doesn’t loom as large in mind, and I doubt he ever will again. And my brother? Hugo? I think he was worth meeting. I’ll meet the others, too. I’ll come to know that part of myself because you gave me the strength to risk it.”

She bent her head and moved on to her second mark against being together. “People will know what I was. Your father found out, others will do the same. Or untitled gentlemen will come into your club and recognize me as a lady who they passed time with in a hell. Will it bother you?”

“No. Not unless they bother you. And then they’ll be very sorry they came into my club,” he said. “Because my wife will not be bothered, not by anyone.”

“Your wife,” she repeated slowly, letting that word roll around in her mind. The most beautiful word she’d ever heard said by the voice she adored more than any other.

He nodded. “I never want to be without you, Jane. My Janie. I never want to wake up and not see you tucked into my side. I want to tangle up our lives so they’ll never be separated. I want to share my name with you. I want to give you children—if you want them—that mix all the best parts of us. Children who will give us a chance to do better and give more than we were given. That’s what I want. You and only you for the rest of my life.”

Jane had known happiness in her life, very often at the side of the very man who said those words to her now. But until that moment, she’d never fully experienced joy. It was louder than anything else she’d ever experienced, it overwhelmed all else, all fear, all worst-case possibilities. It overtook everything but him. He shone at the center of it.

“Do you know why I learned to read?” she asked softly.

He seemed a little flummoxed that this was her response to what could only be called a proposal of marriage. But he, game as always, shook his head. “No. Why?”

“Because you wrote me letters and notes. Esme read them to me at first, but I…I wanted them to be mine . I wanted a part of you to be mine , Campbell Ripley. And now you’re offering all of you. I couldn’t refuse that. I won’t. If you want to marry me, all I can say is yes. Forever yes to you, no matter what comes.”

He did move on her then, almost with relief, like he’d wanted to touch her all this time and finally he could. His arms came around her, he drew her into his chest and their mouths met in what felt like the sweetest kiss of her life.

“Joy will come, Jane. Happiness will come. Good things will come. And we’ll face the rest together.”

“That sounds perfect,” she said before she moved to cover him and celebrate this union, this surrender, the way she wanted to most.