Page 164 of The Ladies Least Likely

He reached up a hand to cup and knead her breast, rubbing his palm over her nipple, and she gasped and curled a hand in his hair, greedily holding him in place, rising against the press of his tongue as the wave gathered and gathered and then broke over her.

She cried out as she was swept away beneath it, shuddering and thrown on the pounding torrent.

She tugged at his hair, urging him up over her body, and as he obliged, grinning with male satisfaction, she curled her fingers tightly around his cock and urged him toward her.

He was long and hard, aroused by pleasuring her, by her climax, and the knowledge added to her wildness.

The pleasure was delicious but there was the sense of an eye of a storm, an emptiness in the vortex, and she wanted him inside her to fill it. She wanted him to share it with her.

“This. Inside me. Now,” she gasped, insisting.

He chuckled and positioned himself, hard and hot at her opening. “You’re sure?”

“Oh, please, Ren,” she groaned, and he laughed and drove inside her. She gasped at her own wetness, at the ease with which he slid completely inside, sheathed to the hilt.

“Oh, Jesus, Rhette,” he whispered, and she felt it too, her body shuddering around him, her climax deepening with his fullness there.

“Come with me,” she whispered.

He groaned and closed his eyes and abandoned himself to the pursuit of his own pleasure, reaching for the same ecstasy that enveloped her, and she met him thrust for thrust, welcoming him, reveling that even in the wake of one orgasm, she felt the tension gathering again, the friction building quickly to another wave of heat.

“Oh— Ren —” She felt his thrusts pushing her up the bed, not painful, a strength and a depth she welcomed, that she matched.

“Are you—going to—” He panted, opening his eyes to look into hers, and that connection stoked her building inferno. He was on the brink of climax and his pleasure fed hers, his need the last spark she needed to fall over the edge again.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed, closing her eyes against the intensity, and his thrusts deepened as he reached his own release.

She felt him shuddering inside her as the pleasure rippled madly through her, the tide carrying them together, and their sharing the flood together moved her so deeply that a lump came to her throat.

The waves lasted and lasted, diminishing but slowly as she lay clasped in his arms, his head buried in her hair, her sensitive nipples pressing into his chest, their bodies joined in the most primitive of rites. Harriette opened her eyes and found tears on her lashes.

This was perfection, and she had known it. This—Ren, in her arms, heavy with sated passion and their shared release: this was right and true and everything good. This was a gift from God.

“I hurt you?” He wiped a thumb over a tear that squeezed free from her lashes, his voice rough with concern.

“No.” She hugged him fiercely, with her whole body.

Her legs were locked about his buttocks.

She released them gently, sliding her bare feet down his legs, tracing her toes over his scars.

She hooked her ankle over the lump above his clubfoot, as if she could hold him in place. “That was…” Again she had no words.

“Yes, it was.” Firmly he kissed her forehead, then rolled off her, withdrawing from her body. “And now you must feed me.”

She laughed. “I thought men were supposed to fall directly asleep after exhausting themselves.”

“I am hungry, and I want to keep you awake and talk to you all night. Any man who would waste his time with you sleeping is a fool.”

She drew her fingers down his back as he reached for the tray of food she’d set beside the bed.

His back was as beautifully muscled as the rest of him, shoulders narrowing to his waist, his flanks long and lean, his buttocks just the right shape for her hand.

She squeezed, and his shoulder twitched.

“The duchess has roving hands.”

“There’s no one like you, Ren,” she whispered.

She loved that she had her own name for him.

His sister called him George, and everyone else, including his mother, addressed him by his title, as was custom.

She had a part of him no one else could have.

Just as she knew parts of him no one else would ever know. Not even his wife.

“You’re one of a kind yourself, Harriette—” He stopped.

His stammer was gone, as was his self-consciousness about his scarred and twisted leg.

He made no attempt to cover himself, and he regarded her with an expression of surprise.

“I was going to say Smythe, but that’s not your last name, is it? That’s an alias your mother adopted.”

“So she did.” She propped herself on one elbow, accepting the slice of cheese he passed her. “Can you fathom I did not even know my family name? It was on my mother’s travel papers. Ulrich. I wonder if?—”

She caught herself, not wanting to bring another man’s name into their bed. “I will have to ask if there are more of us once I get to Lowenburg.”

He rolled toward her, holding a second slice of cheese toward her mouth, and at the same time he slipped his hand between her legs, cupping the place he’d laved with his mouth and tongue and body. “Have I left a big enough imprint yet? Or do you need more?”

“I want more,” she clarified. “After we’ve both recovered.” She supposed it wasn’t fair to begrudge each other past or future lovers, but she felt as possessive as he. “I want you to remember this night as glorious.”

“I already do.” He laid a slice of cheese in her cleavage and proceeded to eat it. She laughed as his tongue tickled her skin, but at the same time her nipples tightened and sent a signal to the heavy, satiated bud between her legs. He could arouse her so easily, with simply a touch, a look.

“Will you write me letters?” The words slipped out of her before they had fully formed in her mind. “Since you didn’t send the ones you wrote me before.”

He leaned on his elbow and searched her face with his eyes. “Do we d-do that to our future spouses? It does-doesn’t seem fair.”

She dropped her eyes. She knew what he meant.

Unfair to feed the connection they had between them, to ensure a husband or wife had no real chance to gain purchase on their hearts.

She hated that he said it, and she loved that he was the kind of man who would see the cruelty in it.

They would nourish each other in a half-life of fantasy instead of allowing the person in their life to have a claim on their affections.

She loved him, and to be fair to him, she had to let him go.

She turned on her side, but he read her easily and didn’t let her withdraw.

Instead he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her close against his body.

With the heat of his chest and legs against hers, her bottom nestled in his groin, she felt the tinge of annoyance and selfishness melt into a quiet grief.

“Tell me what you wrote to me,” he whispered into her hair.

She closed her eyes. “Dear Renwick. Having a fantastic time at school. Scads of handsome men posing nude for me. Have fun blazing your trail through the courtesans of France and the Italian states. Yours, Harriette.”

His throaty chuckle ran all through her body, a thrill that went deep.

“Dear Rhette,” he answered. “Miserable in Paris. Paying for prostitutes who I pretend are you. Dreaming of you in the dark. Wish you were here to wander through the King’s art collection with me at the palace of the Louvre.

Please climb my balcony and rescue me. Yours, Renwick. ”

He snugged his arm around her waist, tucking his hand beneath her, holding her tight and safe against him. Tears squeezed again from beneath Harriette’s closed lids. This was heaven, and the sweetest torment at the same time.

“I don’t know where to go from here, Ren,” she whispered.

What she meant was, she had no idea how she could leave him.

How she could physically unlock her arms and let him go, and move on to another country, another life that didn’t include him.

If the pain in her chest at the very thought were an indication, the effort would shatter her heart and she would expire from it.

And then what would happen to Lowenburg? What would happen to him?

“I know,” he murmured. She had the sense that he knew precisely what she meant.

“You know, when Scarpa did his first surgery, I didn’t see how I could ever walk again.

If I didn’t die from the pain, or from infection, I was convinced he had truly crippled me.

I cursed him for making me think he could improve me, for trying to change my fate.

Before him, I’d at least been a cripple who could hobble about on his own legs.

I was sure he’d consigned me to a wheeled chair. ”

“Jock refuses one,” Harriette murmured sleepily. “Says he wants to be able to look another man in the eye.”

“But I lived through it,” Ren said after a while.

“I healed, after a fashion. It was the most furious pain I had ever known, and I had to endure it several times, as he kept trying new things and then correcting what he’d done.

But I am walking now, and I have Scarpa’s shoe, and while I will never win a footrace, or promenade with you through a country dance, I have something.

And I still have my dignity, or so I like to think. ”

Harriette told herself to breathe. She knew what he meant.

Parting from him would break her completely, but she would heal and go on, limping and scarred.

And so would he. In poems and novels, girls withered away when they couldn’t have their love, like poor Echo pining for Narcissus.

Harriette was practical and sturdy; she would survive, and she would have a life.

But for the moment she had Ren. She clasped her arm over his.