Page 26 of The Lyon Loves Last (The Lyon’s Den)

Fingers first, up and down, just her fingertips.

Soft and hard, her touch making him pulse.

She’d not planned this tryst beneath the trees, not this exploration.

But the way he knotted his fingers in her hair, the way he moaned her name—so good.

Her own need was gathering, her breasts aching, her lips needing his kisses. Not yet. Not now. She’d still not…

She kissed the head of his shaft, and he jerked, groaning. “I like it when you stop thinking, Caro-mine.”

So she kept not thinking, doing instead, licking the long length of his shaft then closing her mouth over the head.

His hips jerked. “I cannot—God, Caro, it feels so good. Teeth.”

Really? Very well. She dragged her teeth up the length of him, loving how she made his jerk and groan, how his hips rolled with every touch and taste. She grasped his thighs to hold him still. Warm skin, course hair, thick, hard muscle. She groaned around his shaft, and then inhaled, sucking him.

A curse, her name, his hips bucking, then he fell forward, planting his palm into the tree at her back. She was curved over to reach him, but it might be easier if… She hit her knees before him. Ah. Much better.

“Damn, Caro.” He panted, struggled to speak.

So she did it again, sucking as she ran her tongue along his length, explored the seam of the head with the tip of her tongue. No thoughts, simply action. Simply desire. She let it consume her.

“Your little mouth is not big enough,” he whispered. “How will you fix that?”

She couldn’t. She paused, lost.

“Think, my creative Caro.” He scraped his fingernails up and down her neck, his rough voice scraping across her skin. “I have a problem. I want every bit of me wrapped up in you. How will you make it happen?”

Her hand moved without thinking, as if eager to solve this challenge.

He’d… risen to the occasion. So could she.

But… “I would be better at this if I had time and means to study.” She stroked her hand up his inner thigh.

Smoother there, warmer, then she cupped him, squeezed, thrilled at his reaction.

She would never hear him moan her name too many times.

She continued upward, wrapping her hand around the base of his shaft.

There. Between her mouth and her hand, she covered his length entirely.

She began to stroke him, and he rocked with her.

“That’s it, Caro.” His words so soft, she almost didn’t hear them. “I’m not going to last.”

She removed her hand, her mouth, looked up at him. “There’s another way, too.”

His fingers curling under her chin, he said with a hazy grin, “What’s that?”

“You. Inside me.” She stood and turned, pressing her backside against his shaft. Doing what pleased her body, refusing to think. He’d taken her this way before, in the folly. But this felt different, the breeze and sun and risk of the moment intensifying everything.

He inhaled the curve of her shoulder, his hands bracketing her waist. And then he lifted his knee between her legs and pressed upward.

Ah, merciful heaven, such perfection. No thought necessary. No plan. Just them. Just doing. Just the air warm on her legs as he lifted her skirts and her hands sank to the bench, supporting her weight. He sunk into her from behind with one hard thrust. Pleasure pulsed all over her body.

“Is this what you want?” he murmured in her ear. “Your second solution.”

The solution to all her ills. “Yes.”

“My clever Caro.” He stroked in and out, raking her pleasure higher as one hand found her naked hip beneath her skirts, passed over her belly and rubbed right over her pulsing pearl.

She moaned, and he circled her higher and higher.

He placed kisses on her neck, her shoulder, tugged her earlobe between his teeth.

“You do not need a plan. You are enough. Brilliant wife.” He pulled out to the very tip and rocked back home to the hilt.

“Beautiful wife.” Again. “You are more than enough.” Again and again.

“You are everything.” Words of love, so close to those she ached to hear, those he had not yet said.

When he thrust home one final time, her body quivered into completion.

She may have screamed his name. She certainly rolled her backside as close against him as possible. He may have bitten her neck. He certainly kissed adoring words into her skin as he pulled from her and released against the curve of her rear.

Not precisely the words she wanted, but glorious still. She gathered them up like she’d have to gather up the pieces of her shattered body. She held them fast to her heart, let them rearrange the shape of it.

And when he gathered her into his arms and collapsed on the bench pulling her safely onto his lap, she was still hazy with heavy pleasure. It ran thick through her veins.

“Well, Caro,” he said, cradling her to his chest. “What think you of improvisation?”

“It has its delights,” she managed to say.

“I’ll consider giving it another try in the future.

” She chuckled. “Perhaps you have the right of it. Perhaps I do not need to know immediately how we’ll use the nursery or if we’ll convert the conservatory into something else.

Or who will run Hawthorne during the Season.

What we might do if we have children.” Whatever it was she must decide, she’d have this man to help her, to give her the confidence she needed to grasp her desires and make them reality.

He stiffened. No more languid muscle beneath her.

Marble now, cold and hard. He set her to the side then stood, buttoning his fall and tucking in his shirt.

“I do not care one way or another. About the conservatory. The nursery.” The words were like bullets spit into the ground.

His boots kicked up gravel as he strode away from her. “Children.”

She righted her skirts, smoothed them as she stood. “Where are you going?” She followed him to the house where he hesitated on the threshold. She followed him up the stairs, which he took slowly, as if his ascent were a funeral procession.

He found the old nursery and threw the door open, tried to step over the threshold. But couldn’t. One boot hung in the air, and he stepped back out. “It looks…”

Dusty windows let in dim light, and Caroline took a few halting steps toward him. Some demon rode him. Hard. And she did not know how to stop it. His shoulders so rigid… he did not invite touch. Even after what they’d shared mere moments ago, he seemed a world away from her now.

“I’m told they were found here.” The words low and grating, and almost as if he thought himself alone. He shuffled over to a window and placed a hand on the glass.

She mirrored him, placing her palm on his back. He’d gone cold when only moments ago, he’d been on fire for her.

“Caro… I’m not sure I can stay.”

She jerked her hand away from him, curling her fingers into a fist so she didn’t grab at him. Disbelief rocked her backward. “What do you mean?”

“Here. I’m not sure I can stay here.” He turned to look at her over his shoulder, but he wasn’t looking at her.

Chin in shoulder, he seemed to gaze at nothing at all.

“I have been trying to see Hawthorne the way you see it. So that I can follow your plan for it. For us. It is a plan I desperately would like to follow. But…” He turned back to the window as his voice cracked.

A pane of glass in the window was cracked, too, and he traced it with a bare finger.

She joined him, standing shoulder to shoulder. “Hard to see anything past this dirt, but”—she reached out, drew a line on the windowpane through the dust alongside the crack—“light still makes its way in.”

“I told you that I’m looking for them . That I can… almost feel them when I’m closest to losing my own life.”

Them . His family. “I remember.” And she hated it. Surely his family would have preferred he search for them in life instead.

“I feel them here most of all, and that’s how I know this place… it is more dangerous to me than anything I’ve ever done.” Such sorrow packed into that flat tone. “I was happy here. My happiest memories come from here .”

What changed? She wanted to ask it. Couldn’t. Waited instead.

He drew a square around one windowpane, following its thin frame.

“We all got sick. Smallpox. My father sent the servants away. He didn’t want to infect them.

I do not know how long we were alone. Days.

More than a week. Mostly I remember silence as footsteps stopped and doors never opened.

The fires died out, and there were no sounds but for the wind at night and birdsong during the day. ”

She held her breath, and in its absence heard birdsong beyond the window. Inside, she cried.

“My mother was in here, so I’m told,” he said, “with my young sisters, nursing them, and my father tended to me in another room. My brothers had quarantined themselves alone in their rooms. I don’t remember much.

Too feverish. Unconscious mostly. But then even the wind and birdsong stopped.

And I heard… wailing. And then I think… he must have…

my father left the room. He must have been too sick.

And there was more wailing and more and more.

My mother’s. I think. And then silence. And when I regained full consciousness, it was to a face I didn’t know.

Not my father’s or my mother’s. Someone from the village.

And but for him, I was alone in the house. ”

Alone. Meaning… the only one alive. “Felix,” she whispered, lying her head on his shoulder.

“I hate this house.”

She understood now why.

“I want to be here with you, but I… I do not know…” His arms were chains around her, holding her fast as if afraid she might slip into the darkness while he was not looking.

“I understand.” She did. She did . But it hurt so much. The house that was her dream was his nightmare. She pressed her eyes tightly closed, holding back biting tears.

He cleared his throat, body still but for the fierce pounding of his heart. It beat like a hammer. Surely it hurt him.

“They are well and truly gone,” he said, “and that is… somehow worse than the ghosts I’ve come to expect.

You asked once why I do not wish for children, and I did not answer you.

But perhaps now you can guess. What happens if”—his words ground to a halt as if his throat was clogged, and he swallowed audibly—“they grow sick? What if I lose everyone again? It is better to never have anyone to lose at all. I think. I would not survive. But you… Just now in the garden. In your voice. If all our efforts to avoid conception proved to be in vain… you would not be devastated.”

She shook her head. “No, I would not.”

“I would.” He turned to her, pulling his arm gently from her hold.

“I do not know if I can stay here. Not even for you.” Curling his fingers beneath her chin, he lifted her face, kissed her soft and slow and sweet.

She closed her eyes and sighed, wavering toward the solid warmth of his chest. If she could lay her head there, perhaps she could keep him, make him see—

But then he was gone. Fingers beneath her chin dissipated like smoke. The clip of his bootsteps echoed behind her. They stopped. “I am off to London. I need time to… breathe.”

Breathe? Ha. She barely could. Each inhalation seemed ragged and raw, each exhale like a cutting blade. Somehow, she kept the creeping despair from her voice. “When will you return?”

“I… I’ll write to you, Caroline.” The bootsteps started up again, and this time they continued until they vanished down the hallway.

Alone with the dust, Caroline realized for the first time in a week of happy moments, that those moments might be numbered. Felix had never promised to stay for good. Clearly, he never could.