voice.
She raised her hand palm-up, offering it to him.
He gripped her wrist and drew her first and second fingers into his mouth, sucking them down to the webs between her fingers and lapping up every bit of her tart-sweet nectar. The rose-red blush on her cheeks became an erotic bloom of crimson across her throat and breasts.
“Ash,” she whispered. Her dark eyes were pleading.
Teasing her this way was sublime, but even he had his limits.
He reached between them, fumbling with the buttons of his trouser falls and freeing his cock. She moved closer, trapping his erection between his pelvis and hers, sliding over his shaft on the dewy sheen of her aroused sex. Grinding against him in tiny circles to heighten her bliss.
He could have wept with the beauty of it.
Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she wriggled until the tip of his cock fit just where it needed to be, sinking down on him with a breathy sigh. He grasped her by the hips, guiding her up and down his length. She removed his hands and pinned them to the armrests. She didn’t need his guidance, apparently. She rode him in a lazy yet relentless rhythm.
“Don’t stop,” he moaned.
She stopped.
He growled with frustration. “Don’t don’t stop.”
She began to move again, accelerating her pace.
“You are incorrigible.”
“And I’m yours. Entirely yours. You won’t be rid of me.”
God. The pleasure was keen, and he was tempted to surrender to it, arching his hips to pump her hard and fast until she came around him and he spent into her. But he forced himself to hold back.
Not yet. Not yet.
He wanted more than pleasure right now. She was giving so much of herself to him, freely and without reserve. In ways he’d never given himself to anyone—not before, not after. The courage within her small frame was profound, her generosity boundless. He felt like a coward in comparison.
Make love to me. Be brave with me.
“Don’t touch me,” he whispered. “Don’t touch me everywhere.”
One of her hands slipped beneath the shredded linen of his shirt, drawing the panels aside to expose his chest. Her fingers skimmed over his skin. And his scars. Her touch pained him in places, and he was dead numb in others. In moments, his blood sang with bliss. No matter what the sensation, each moment was exquisite. He closed his eyes, lost in her caress.
Emma. My love, my love.
“Don’t kiss me,” he choked out.
Without hesitation—as though she’d been waiting and hoping for the invitation—her lips were on his, softer than her touch. Warmer, too. Each brush of her lips was a blessing he didn’t deserve, but he was powerless to turn her away.
She kissed her way up the ruined side of his neck, tracing his misshapen ear with her tongue and running her fingers through his patchy hair. Then she blazed a path down the other side, from his jaw to his shoulder, dragging openmouthed kisses over his skin.
She lavished both sides of him with equal attention and sweet, sweet tenderness, until he felt his two halves knitting together in the center. Somewhere close to his heart.
Her brow pressed to his, and she held him tight.
It was time.
She braced her hands on the back of the chair. He framed her waist in his hands. Pulling her down, straining upward—not content any longer to let her take the lead. He wanted—needed—to battle out of himself, find refuge in her. Reach the place where they could be one.
“Don’t love me.”
The words came unbidden from his throat. Not a thought, but a plea.
“Too late,” she whispered in his ear.
“Don’t tell me so. Don’t say the words.”
“I love you.” She cupped his face in her hands and brushed a kiss to his lips. “I love you so much.”
There was nothing left for him to resist. He held her to him, and as they tumbled over the edge together, no joy could have been more complete.
He was complete.
He held her tightly in his arms, pressing kisses to her hair. “I love you. You will never know how much I love you. There aren’t words.”
She levered herself to a sitting position. Her drowsy eyes came into focus. She stared down at her hands where they lay against his red, twisted scars. All color drained from her face. The expression that overtook her face was no longer one of love or pleasure, but one of faint disgust.
“Emma?”
God, please. Not again. Not you.
Don’t leave me. Not now, not ever.
“I’m sorry,” said, slipping off his lap. “I’m so sorry, I . . . I have to—”
She fled the library in a rush, darting into the connecting room.
As he drew to his feet and pulled up his trousers, he heard it.
The wrenching, unmistakable sounds of his wife being sick.
Emma straightened, pushing the hair from her face. The perspiration on her brow and chest had turned ice-cold. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her face and neck. Then she poured herself a thimble of sherry from a decanter on the sideboard and rinsed her mouth before spitting it into the unlucky potted plant she’d befouled.
“I tried to warn you,” he said from behind her. “You should have listened. I told you it was for your own good. But you insisted anyway.”
She turned to face him. “I don’t understand. What are you going on about?”
“It was the same with—” He broke off.
With Annabelle, she finished in her mind.
He pulled together the torn sides of his shirt. “I knew this would happen. Not that I blame you. It’s repulsive, and that’s a simple fact. I’m not angry.”
“Is that what you think?” She put a hand to her brow, then dropped it. “Oh, Ash. You darling idiot. I am not sick with revulsion. I am pregnant.”
He blinked and stumbled sideways. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand?” She smiled. “I’ll explain it. On nearly every night since we married, and a goodly number of the days as well, you penetrated me with your manly organ and spilled your seed in the vicinity of my womb. That particular act—especially at the frequency we’ve practiced it—commonly results in conception.”
“But you had your courses.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You said you were feeling poorly. You kept to your bed for four days.”
“I was feeling poorly. I’d caught a cold.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I did tell you. In the note. I worried the ailment might be catching, and I didn’t want to pass it to you or the servants. Do fine ladies really take to their beds for days every month? I can assure you, seamstresses don’t have that luxury.”
“Let’s move on from the menstruation habits of the upper classes, please. What I’m saying is, you should have mentioned this to me