Chapter 21

Chapter 21

"Besides, you look happier than I think I've ever seen you."

Her mother's voice rang in her head long after having uttered that sentence, the words repeating over and over again until they almost didn't feel real.

She was happy, Josephine realized. Well and truly happy.

Not because of the duke's promise to take care of her parents. Not because of her future being so secure. Not even because of Lady Brisby being removed to London.

Those were all very good reasons, certainly. Perhaps even contributing factors. But Henry was the real source of her happiness. Henry and how he looked at her like she was the only woman worth looking at in the room. Henry, whose hand seemed to find hers anytime that he was able to let it. Henry, who had danced with her until her feet hurt, and she had had to cry off of participating in another number. Henry, who made her laugh until she felt like her ribs might split inside the confines of her corset.

Henry, Henry, Henry.

His name was like a salve filling in pieces of her that she hadn't even known needed to be filled.

Her auburn hair gleamed from where she had taken it down, the boar-bristle brush gliding through the strands as she stared into the vanity she sat facing.

Her reflection looked like a stranger sitting across from her.

Surely, she hadn't always smiled so widely. Surely, the pink in her cheeks had not always been there. Her eyes were too bright, too blue, and her smile tilted as if she held a secret in those key-shaped wells at the corners of her lips.

"You're a silly fool," she murmured crossly to her reflection, pulling a face as if it could make it look any more like her. But it didn't. No matter what she said, her smile stayed.

"Don't say it," she muttered, shaking her head and brushing through her hair with more force. "Don't even think it!" Because if she thought it, if she allowed that four-letter word to even so much as cross her mind, there would be no pretending that she didn't know. And if she couldn't pretend that she didn't know, she would agonize over it and obsess until she could understand it.

Or try and talk herself out of it.

As if such things were possible.

"You silly, senseless girl."

She'd said from the very beginning that she wasn't going to do this. She'd promised both herself and the duke. And the duke–

Her thoughts skittered to a halt as knuckles rapped against her bedchamber's door, the sound carrying and making her jump all in the same breath.

"Just a moment," she said breathlessly, jumping up from the vanity to grab the dressing gown she'd laid across the back of the chair where she'd been sitting.

It was too heavy a hand to be her mother's. Too heavy a hand to be a maid, even.

But who, at this hour–

The door opened before she could finish the thought, Henry's large form ducking through the opening and closing the door behind him before she could even fully register what was happening.

"I – You – Your Grace," she stammered, pulling her dressing gown tightly about her and fumbling to tie a knot to secure it. "I did not expect–" Well, of course, she hadn't. She stopped mid-sentence as she realized how ridiculous that was.

Oh, Lord. Why did he look so much larger all of a sudden?

"I know this is peculiar," Henry muttered. He looked almost as nervous as she felt, his eyes darting to the closed door behind him and then back to her before he went suddenly and fully still. His eyes darkened as they swept along her, moving up and down as he took in her obvious state of undress.

Josephine felt as if the dressing gown was rendered irrelevant, her throat closing up and heat flooding her at how hungry his expression suddenly became.

"I know that this isn't done," Henry continued, his voice deeper and his words slower as he took one deliberate step into her room. "I could assure you that my servants are discreet or that none saw me. I could assure you any number of things, really, but that isn't what I came to talk to you about."

Good God, he could stop looking at her like that ...

She didn't know what to make of how his eyes lingered on such seemingly innocent parts of her body. Her collarbone, her neck, the slope of her wrists. She swore she could feel his fingers tracing those areas as he ran his eyes over them, the heat in her belly pooling all the more thickly.

"And what is it you wanted to discuss, Your Grace?" Her tone was breathless, her words forced. She felt bold even asking that. Bold and embarrassed, a different kind of heat flooded her face as she tried not to fidget under his gaze.

"We've danced around it a number of times, these past few days." He took another step forward, his eyes hooded and full of heat as he watched her reaction to his every move. "It is forward of me, maybe, to come to your bedchamber and talk about it with you, but there is no other moment we have that is private enough in which to. And given that it is a change in what we had previously agreed to, I need to discuss it with you before it is … appropriate for us to be alone."

The way he said ‘appropriate' sent gooseflesh along the exposed portions of her skin, her belly flipping at the dark promise in the word.

"Our agreement?"

God help her; she sounded like a simpleton. Addlebrained and sheepish. But words were hardly the first thing on her mind as he stepped even closer still, crowding her in a way that should have made her feel anything but the sudden rush of excitement that it did.

"You said that you wanted a marriage of convenience. One devoid of emotion, of sentiment. We agreed to be friends. The way I've come to feel about you, Josephine, is hardly that." His voice dropped even lower as he stopped just in front of her. Toe to toe until she could feel the heat emanating off him.

It was everything she wanted to hear, but a small sliver in the back of her mind asked how she could trust such a thing.

Two big M's instead of just the one.

Martha, Murder.

Desire overrode both of them.

"What is it you feel for me then, Your Grace?"

She barely recognized her own voice, deep and throaty, as she stared back up at him despite the horses galloping through her chest … despite the butterflies that had taken up residence in her belly and were threatening to try climbing up and out of her throat.

Could he see how nervous she was? How important the next words out of his mouth would be?

"Interest," Henry murmured. He reached between them, his hand lifted until he could make contact with her face. His thumb brushed against her cheekbone, tracing the line down as his eyes bored into hers with an intensity that made it nearly impossible to draw another breath. "Fondness. Desire. I could categorize it any number of ways."

And not one of the words he used was the one she most wanted to hear, but her heart leapt with the utterance of each of them all the same.

And her thighs pressed tighter and tighter into one another as well.

"I make you feel things?" she teased, repeating his words from the other night back to him.

He laughed, the sound a gravel-filled chuckle as his thumb changed its path and skipped over to the bottom-most swell of her lips.

"A great many things," he agreed, his thumb pressing down on the soft flesh as he walked them towards the vanity she had only just stood up from. "The more I'm around you, the more that you do. The more that I want you."

Want.

She had only the very basest understanding of what that meant and what that entailed. But after the last handful of days, she knew exactly what it felt like to want. To desire something she barely even knew the mechanics of.

"I'm yours, Your Grace." And she meant those words more fully than she could explain.

Her saying them seemed to snap something in Henry, his lips parting and something feral moving beneath his features as he took one final, quicker step forward.

The back of Josephine's hips hit the vanity, the bottles and jars she had on it rattling, but any thought to check to see if anything had fallen was stayed by his sudden lowering of his head.

He claimed her lips with a heat she didn't know was possible, his teeth pulling against her lips as his tongue claimed hers almost immediately.

Her breath gusted out of her, her hands coming up to steady herself against the sudden onslaught of his lips. And her fingers twisted into his shirt almost just as quickly.

Oh, God.

Her whole body melted into his, the hand at the belt of her dressing gown forgotten as she felt Henry's body press against hers.

There was no restraint to his movements like there had been previously. There was no tempering the way that he held her face, his desire pressing into her belly as she fought to know how to answer his heated passion.

She didn't know what to do with her hands, gripping his shirt like they were.

She knew he was going to stop, that they were nearing that point where he would pull back and stare into her eyes with them both breathing raggedly as they tried to come back from that edge.

But the moment didn't come.

She thought that maybe his hand might be closed over her hip, his fingers digging into the thin fabric covering it as his thumb slipped past her chin where it had been resting to her throat.

His palm flattened against the skin there, his thumb tracing a wide arc over the expanse of visible flesh there until his fingertips could work down into the fabric she had pulled so tightly over her in the seconds after he had entered her room.

"I've thought about this since that first moment in my sitting room," Henry groaned, breaking away from her lips to run his instead across the line of her jaw. "Thought about you, how you would taste, how you would feel."

Oh, she was a harlot. Because she had wondered the same about him.

And now, with his lips at the corner of her jaw, with his hand pushing down lower and lower, snagging on that fabric over her breast as he palmed it … now she wanted more.

"Henry," she breathed, arching into his touch and gasping as his thumb traced the sudden, raised edge of her nipple.

"Again," he commanded, his voice rough as he allowed his lips to trail lower, his tongue to trace the line of her throat. "Say my name again."

"Henry." He didn't have to ask her twice. Not with his hand still going lower, the one on her hip tracing until it hit that knot she had tried to make of her belt.

"Tell me what you want, Josephine," he begged, his teeth scraping against her throat as he undid that knot with a simple twist of his fingers. He pushed her dressing gown from her leaving her in the thin shift of her nightgown alone.

"I–" She didn't know what to say. She didn't know how to tell him what she wanted or what words to use. Her words were turning into odd noises, breathy moans lifted out of her throat with each press of his lips, teeth, and tongue against her flesh. "You," she moaned. "I want you."

And just like her saying that she was his, that seemed to do something within him.

She gasped as he lifted her off her feet, the stuff on her vanity shoved to the side as he sat her atop it and pushed her knees apart so that he could come to stand between her thighs.

She could hear the ribbons of her gown being ripped out, the fabric falling from her shoulders as his lips moved even further down.

"I want you, Josephine," he growled, his hand moving in front of him, his fingers working between her thighs and beneath the fabric pooling now about her waist. "I want to be inside of you; do you know what that means?"

She struggled to breathe, to nod yes, despite that she didn't. Not really.

But he knew.

Without her having to say a word, he knew.

His lips were hard as he took hers again, but his fingers were the exact opposite. Soft and slow as they pushed against the wet folds of her centre, as he found the sensitive bit of flesh hidden there and ran his finger down the uppermost part of it that had her jerking and gasping on top of the vanity.

"It means I want to be here," he moaned into her lips raggedly, his thumb taking over that part that was making her jerk as two other fingers slid down even further. "It means I want to feel you around me here." He slid his fingers inside of her with her next gasp, his thumb arching as he twisted them up into her and–

"Oh, God. Oh – Oh, Henry." She didn't know what nonsense she was moaning as she cried out, arching into him as her head fell back with a loud, resounding crack into the mirror.

"Tell me to stop if you want me to stop," he growled. His fingers pushed up further into her, his thumb circling in an opposite rhythm. And further still. Until she was writhing with his thumb and–

"Oh."

Something snapped inside her. The pain, a slight, uncomfortable thing that was quickly overridden by that motion his thumb was still making against her. By the press of his lips into her corner as she shook.

"Tell me to stop, Josephine," he groaned. "Or I won't be able to."

Josephine's head rolled back further, her hips pressing into his hand as she heard more fabric rustling. She couldn't open her eyes. She was chasing something. Chasing something elusive, she didn't know what, running towards it despite not having a name.

"Don't stop," she breathed, her chest tightening as that desire pooled even further in her belly. "Oh, God, Henry, please don't stop."

It was wanton. The way that she clung to him was needy.

And as he withdrew her fingers, she made a noise of protest, stayed only by the fact that his thumb kept working that magic that it was.

And when he stepped into her, when he spread her thighs further, she was all too eager to welcome him there. To feel something hot and heavy pushing against where his fingers had just been, to hear the way he groaned into her ear. To feel the way his body tensed as he pushed forward and–

"Oh!"

She didn't have a name for the sensation that rolled through her then.

Not a name for how hard her body seized around his as he pushed into her, his hips jerky despite how sure and steady his thumbs remained.

His hips pushed forward until they were flush against hers and then stopped, a litany of curses and praises falling from his lips as he shuddered into her.

And something broke within her.

She cried out as she fell forward into him, her body quaking as he pushed her hair back and whispered sweetly into her ear.

"Come back to me, Josephine," he muttered, framing her face with one hand as he lifted her chin to force those colours from her vision and his face back to the forefront again. "I know that was short. Come back to me." He pushed his lips over hers, his thumb never ceasing its movement as she came back down to earth and felt those same stirrings low in her belly once more.

"Come back to me so that I can make it better. So that I can make it last …"

Last!?

Her eyes shot up to his, confusion filling her.

At least until he captured her lips again. At least until he pulled her off the vanity and onto his hips as he walked the two of them towards the bed.

Again?

Heaven help her.