Chapter 11

S he came to the library every morning.

She’d taken to arriving prior to normal operating hours, and a large part of him believed—hoped, even—that her reason for doing so had to do with her wanting to be alone with him.

Sometimes she asked for his help selecting books.

Most times now she did not. Most times she fetched her own, filling her arms with volumes and bringing them to that same table…and then she’d call him over and speak to him.

Every time, excitement filled her voice and lit her eyes, as she spoke so quickly her words tumbled together, rolling as one long sentence that had the ability to make him laugh with her contagious enthusiasm.

He learned she loved the works of the Enlightened Thinkers—especially Mary Wollstonecraft.

He learned she also had a penchant for gothic novels, romantic in nature.

He knew when she spoke of either, her hands moved like little whirlwinds, as she gestured wildly.

This was one of those moments.

“Did you know that this only came to be,” she lifted up the slender copy of the book he’d come to recognize as her favorite, “is because she was engaged in a war of words with Mr. Burke? She attacks not only hereditary privilege but also the words Mr. Burke uses to defend it.”

Outside ice-tinged snowflakes pinged against the window.

“Burke didn’t deny the existence of natural rights,” he pointed out. “He simply thought they were too abstract to be applied to societies.”

She drew back. “Surely you aren’t defending Mr. Burke?”

Had he condemned Old King George and vowed a revolution, Glain couldn’t have sounded more shocked and horrified.

Seated opposite her, Abaddon leaned in. “You sound like a regular ole’ revolutionary, Glain.”

“But you have to admit, there’s merit to everything Miss Wollstonecraft says,” she went on, and it didn’t escape his notice that she didn’t deny those claims. She didn’t allow him a word edgewise.

“At first, when Miss Wollstonecraft published anonymously, everyone took her seriously. But the moment they printed her name in publication, people called her ideas emotional, and impassioned. Every analysis I’ve read of her works calls her incoherent and illogical, and yet, I cannot think of anyone who makes more sense than she.”

Glain did. This woman right here. Being with her made more sense in the world than anything.

She continued, wholly oblivious to the thoughts spinning through his head. “She—”

Abaddon leaned in and kissed her.

And then, as if it were more natural than breathing or completing that unfinished though, she kissed him back. He moved his mouth against hers, drinking of her. She sighed softly, and he slipped inside to taste of her, too. Their tongues met.

“I want you, darling,” he whispered hoarsely between kisses, needing her to know so she understood his want, and so that she had the sense to halt all of this—stop when he was too much a coward and selfish bastard to break this connection.

Abaddon kissed a path down the curve of her cheek. He reached that soft, sensitive skin of her neck that he’d come to learn drove her wild when he worshipped. “You should go.”

Glain’s head fell back, and she groaned low and long and wonderful. “I want to stay.” She paused, angling away until their gazes met. “I want to stay here…with you.”

He searched her face, attempting to understand what she was saying. Did he merely imagine what he wanted her to be asking?

Not breaking contact with his eyes, Glain took his hand, and guided it to her breast, placing it over that organ that thumped and pounded wildly—for him. And his own matched and then rivaled her heart’s rhythm.

And he was lost.

Surrendering on a groan, Abaddon stood caught Glain up in his arms, and carried her through the library to his offices. All the while, he kissed her. She whimpered and moaned, and he devoured the breathy sounds of desire that escaped her.

He let them inside to his private office, headed to the small cot at the far back corner of the room, then he laid her down.

“Do y-you live here?” she panted against his mouth. She sounded more intrigued and relieved than horrified.

His lips twitched. “No, darling. I’ve in a townhouse.” Not on the fine end of Mayfair where she and her sort lived, but on a respectable enough side. “On days I work longer, I occasionally take to staying the night.” He slipped his tongue inside her mouth, swirling the flesh with hers.

“W-Well, I am very glad you have a bed,” she breathed between each glide of flesh.

She chatted as much while making love as she did when conversing about books. It was an endearing detail about her, and a new discovery of her, too. And he found he yearned for all those intimate details of what made Glain who she was. He knew she snorted when she laughed and he knew the books that made her smile widest, but he wanted to know all there was to know about her: whether she snored when she slept or how she took her tea.

He froze.

His heart thumped frantically for a different reason.

A reason that had nothing to do with this hungering to make love to her, and everything to do with the even more intimate yearning he had for her.

Dazed, Glain’s lashes fluttered wildly. “Am I doing it w-wrong?”

Her hesitant question filled with such doubt, it chased away the panic clamoring in his mind.

He groaned. “You’re doing everything right, love.” Drowning out the voices jeering at him for loving where he oughtn’t, Abaddon surrendered to the moment.

Their lips met again, and this time, as he kissed her, he reached between them, working her modest neckline down, baring her skin to his gaze and worship.

Abaddon paused only long enough to drink in the sight of her, filling his palms with the gently rounded, silken flesh.

Under his scrutiny, her chest rose and fell harder and faster.

He brushed the pads of his thumbs over the pebbled pink tips. “You are magnificent,” he said huskily, his breath pitching faster, too.

Glain sank her teeth into her lower lip and moaned low and long. Her head fell back as she reflexively pressed herself against his touch.

Emboldened, Abaddon drew the peak of her right breast into his mouth, suckling deeply of her.

A shuddery gasp exploded from her lips, as she arched up. Tangling her fingers in his hair, she clasped him close, holding him in place. “Mmmm.”

That incoherent dissolution of her speech sent the heat of his hunger spiraling, and he growled his approval.

He worshiped that flesh, only pausing to switch his attentions to the previously neglected breast.

Glain moaned. Her hips moved with an increasing franticness as she pressed herself to the hard ridge of his arousal.

Abaddon edged her skirts and chemise up higher, then higher, and with every swath of skin exposed, he caressed his fingertips along that silken soft flesh. Her calves were surprisingly muscled as if she were secretly a Spartan warrioress who raced about wild lands. He moved his quest higher, sinking his fingers into her supple hip.

“Abaddon,” she groaned, the pace of her gyrations grew.

He slipped a hand between her legs, cupping her center, and Glain went suddenly, absolutely still.

Abaddon paused and lifted his gaze, determining whether she wished to stop. “Tell me what you want, love,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and desperate to his own ears. “Do you want me to stop?” Even as he asked it, he started to withdraw from the thatch of silken golden curls that covered her mound.

Glain laid her fingers over his, anchoring him in place, keeping him there.

Her eyes locked with his. “Do not stop.” Hers was a command of a queen, and he was more than content to spend the rest of his days as her subject, answering her desires.

He teased the entryway of her femininity, sliding his fingers through her damp curls, and then slowly, slid a digit inside her.

Glain stiffened, and then with a sharp hiss, she moved her hips once more, lifting wildly into his touch. “You’re so wet for me,” he praised, and she whimpered, the thrusting of her hips grew increasingly frenzied. His shaft ached, and he wanted to slip a knee between her thighs, part her, and plunge inside the only place he wished to be.

But even more than that, he wanted her pleasure.

He plunged another finger inside her wet, warm sheath. She cried out, that incoherent echo of her desire ratcheting around the room.

Sweat dotted his brow.

His body throbbed, his shaft aching from the need to make love to her in every way, but he continued to tend her hungering—stroking her over and over again. Inside and out. Slow and then fast, and then slow, once more. Until Glain was rocking her hips from side to side, gyrating against his touch.

Then sliding down her body, he lowered his mouth between her legs.

She gasped and pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Wh-What are you doing?”

He paused, looking up at her. “Do you trust me?”

She parted her legs in answer, in invitation, and then leant a breathless confirmation. “I do.”

Abaddon scooped under her buttocks, filling his hands with that voluptuous flesh. Then he guided her higher and lowered his mouth.

The scent of her—all desire and pure woman—flooded his senses, and he stroked his tongue over her warm, wet flesh, suckling of the little nub, lapping of her.

“Abaddon,” she gasped. Then as if his kiss had sapped her of all energy, she collapsed on the small bed and tangled her fingers in his hair, guiding him, riding his tongue.

In the past, sex had been sex.

It had always been nothing more than a physical need to tend, as basic as eating or drinking.

But that had been before Glain. With her, with this woman, all that mattered was her pleasure.

Glain who curved her fingers sharply in his scalp, tensing and relaxing, as she urged him on, and then guided him on, pressing him deeper when she yearned for it, and edging him back when the sensation became too much.

She was close.

He felt it in the frantic, disjointed thrusting of her hips, and knew by the tension in her body. “Come for me,” he coaxed.

He increased his strokes, and then her entire body stiffened, and a wicked little curse exploded from her lips as he slipped his tongue inside her tight sheath once more.

“Abaddon,” she screamed, his name a prayer and a plea, and she ground herself against his mouth, over and over, and he continued to drink of her, draining every last drop of her desire, until she collapsed, sated.

His heart thundered in his own ears, and his cock throbbed, aching for more. Aching for all of her.

Instead, he gently lowered her skirts and joined her on the narrow cot.

A soft, sated smile teased at her lips. “That was magnificent,” she said, her voice still breathless, her breathing still quickened.

“ You are magnificent,” he said, tugging her against him, and she went, resting her cheek against his chest.

“I never knew anything could be like that,” she said softly, stroking her fingers up and down, back and forth, over the place where his heart still pounded for her. She paused, and slowly lifted her gaze to his. “Like the books.”

He flashed an uneven smile. “Either that’s the greatest compliment for books in the history of compliments, or an indication that my efforts in lovemaking are lacking.”

Her lips twitched, and a light blush filled her cheeks. “Hardly. They’re different types of wonderful, but both splendorous.” Her eyes, locked with his, grew serious. “I just never knew I could feel passion, or that I could love books the way I do. And you,” she pressed her palm firmly against his chest, emphasizing her words. “You opened my eyes to all of it, and I can never repay you.”

He caught her hand and raised it to his mouth. “I don’t want repayment,” he murmured, pressing a kiss against the seam of her wrist. You. I want…you…

And God help him, that terrified the everlasting hell out of him. The last thing he knew anything about, and the last thing he wished to be part of, was Polite Society.

Glain’s eyes darkened. She ran her gaze searchingly over his face. “What is it, Abaddon?”

And he found himself unnerved in a new way: by her awareness of the tumult running through him.

“We should get you straightened up,” he said, too much a coward to talk to her about the thoughts knocking around his brain. “The library will open soon, and…I’d not see you ruined.”

Disappointment lit her expressive gaze.

The moment suddenly stilted when it had never been so between them—not even at their first tense meeting. Abaddon and Glain presented their backs to one another, each of them straightening their garments.

When they’d finished, they faced one another once more.

And all the breath in his body lodged somewhere in his chest at the sight of her.

Her cheeks were flushed a shade of cherry red, much the way they had when they’d frolicked in the snow. The sapphire and emerald peacock hair combs tucked in her hair had become loosened, releasing several blonde strands that hung enchantingly about her shoulders.

“What is it?” she asked, patting her face. “Do I look a fright?”

“You look…” Perfect. Breathtaking . “Just fine,” he murmured those safer words. “Just a couple of hairs out of place.” He proceeded to straighten those fine jeweled pieces in her hair, worth more than anything he’d owned for the first twenty years of his life, and still finer than anything he’d worn or possessed in his entire twenty-seven years. A tangible, material reminder of the different worlds they belonged to.

They headed from his offices, just as the tinny bell at the front door jingled announcing his latest patron.

Glain stopped abruptly, as her gaze landed on the figure framed in the doorway.

Abaddon followed her stare.

He silently cursed.

The Duke of Strathearn moved his gaze between Abaddon and Glain before ultimately settling on the lady. “Good day, Lady Diamond,” he greeted, with an aloof chill Abaddon had never recalled of the other man in all the years he’d known him. “Mr. Grimoire,” his friend said, not taking his focus off Glain.

A blush climbed up Glain’s prominent cheekbones, and she dropped a queenly curtsy. “Your Grace,” she returned in clipped tones to rival the duke before them, and also not ones Abaddon had heard in so very long from her. “Mr. Grimoire, I thank you for your assistance.” She made a show of gathering up some of her books and tucking them into her satchel.

Avoiding his eyes, she hastened around Strathearn, making a graceful beeline for the door.

His friend didn’t waste any time. “What are you doing?” he asked, the moment Glain had gone.

“I think it should be clear,” Abaddon said with a grunt. “I’m working.” To demonstrate as much, he proceeded to collect the two books Glain had left behind. He stacked them, putting them away for when she returned tomorrow.

“You know that isn’t what I’m talking about.”

Of course, as a notorious rogue, with a reputation for charming actresses and widows alike, Strathearn would have recognized the wrinkles in Glain’s gown.

“I’m talking about the lady. Nothing can come of that,” his friend said matter-of-factly. “Her sort? They’ll only break your heart.”

Her sort. “And what sort exactly is that?” he asked, infusing a steely warning there.

“A pompous lady,” Strathearn said bluntly. “One who is icy and cold and—”

“You don’t know her,” he said tightly.

“Actually, I do. I know both her type, and the lady herself.”

That reminder set Abaddon’s teeth on edge for a host of reasons.

His friend persisted. “She’ll take her pleasure with a man outside her station, but—”

“Have a care,” Abaddon warned in soft, steely tones that managed to briefly silence the other man.

“Think, man. Even if she did want a respectable future with you, would you want with one her ? One that requires you to be part of Polite Society? Not on the fringe of the ton, dealing in books, but dancing attendance on lords and attending balls and—”

He saw his own horror reflected back in the other man’s eyes.

“Precisely,” Strathearn said. “You don’t need her sort in your life. As it is, her father has her marked for a prince’s wife.”

A prince’s wife. She’d be royalty in every way.

And Abaddon found himself wanting to hiss and snarl like a wounded beast, and then hunt down the man who’d be the better match for her.

The duke rested a hand on his sleeve. “You need to let this go.”

His friend was right.

Abaddon needed to let her go.

And even understanding that truth, knowing he and Glain were two people born to two vastly different universes, he found himself secretly wishing there could be a future with her.