Chapter Nine

Caroline hadn't expected to miss George the way she did. After the picnic, she didn't see him for another four days, during which point she started to wonder if the distance had made him lose interest. This was, naturally, the best-case scenario, but the pinching sensation in her chest didn't feel like best case.

When she sought out books on Greek plays so she might discuss them with him when he visited her again, she knew things were worse than she ever could have imagined.

To act as an equilibrium, she took some of his more outrageous gifts and pawned them, sending the money into the countryside. That, unsurprisingly, made her feel no better. This was the first time she had ever felt guilty for selling another man's gifts. Usually, she was offered gifts as a form of payment; their arrangement was transactional. Yes, she enjoyed it, and had she enjoyed a little more wealth she would have taken lovers regardless, but she knew they were paying for the pleasure of her company.

George, she knew, was giving her things because he wanted to see the joy they brought her. Items that were not merely expensive fripperies, but things explicitly in her style, or that he thought she would like.

That was what made parting with them so hard.

That, and because she found herself ridiculously attached to the items in question.

It was madness.

But nothing, not even poetry, could soothe the ache his absence left behind.

On the fourth day, the madness infected her brain, and she could not have stayed away even if she had wanted to. Whether she was going to end their arrangement or claim his attention, she didn't know, and still didn't when she arrived outside his house to find his carriage on the street.

"Here for Mr Comerford?" his valet asked, holding the front door open for her. She smiled quickly at him, ducking inside, and came face to face with George. He looked tired, his coat a little creased from having sat in the carriage, and his face careworn. At the sight of her, a wide smile broke across his face.

"Caro," he said, catching her around the waist and pulling her close. The valet disappeared through a door behind them, his butler melted away as though he had never been there, and suddenly it was the two of them again.

Caroline fisted her hands in his waistcoat. No, now was not the time to end their arrangement; perhaps she was condemning her heart, but so long as he remained unmarried, she would continue to see him.

"Did you walk here?" he asked.

"Yes."

"What for?" He tweaked her chin. "I was intending to come and see you tonight."

"I could hardly have known that without prior warning."

"No," he murmured, brushing her flyaway hair from her face. "Am I to infer that you missed me?"

"Stop asking such ridiculous questions and kiss me."

He laughed, but then he was tugging at the ribbons of her bonnet, dragging it roughly from her head and pressing her against the door. His mouth settled on hers, demanding and biting, and it was as though the tension in her body simultaneously loosened and tightened. She was beer in a stopped bottle, shaken and frothing, fizzing with urgency and need.

"You did miss me," he said, dragging her skirts to her hip. "Admit it."

"Never."

"Why else would you be here?"

"I have an obligation to fulfil."

"Is that so?" Without warning, he picked her up, carrying her through to the drawing room and depositing her on the low sofa there. As she lay back, catching her breath, he closed the curtains and returned to kneel before her.

"Next time," he said with a dark smile, pushing her skirts up to her waist, "I will not wait the week."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard." His finger found her slick centre, and his lips curved into a satisfied smile. "If you want me, Caroline, you can have me. Whenever you want, no matter what your body is doing."

She rolled her hips against his fingers, urging him inside. He needed little convincing. "Don't you mind the mess?"

"I'll bathe you before and after." His mouth followed his finger, and she bit her lip at the hot lick. "Have sheets put down."

"I pity the servants who have to wash them."

He nipped the skin at her thigh. "I pay my staff well."

There was too much about this conversation to disturb her—the assumption that in a month, this arrangement would be continuing, his arrogant assurance that they would be doing this act in his home, that she would even consent to him touching her then—but she couldn't focus on them when his busy hands were wreaking such havoc across her body.

And his tongue.

He knelt before her, one hand cupping the pale flesh of her bare thigh, fingers sinking into her skin, his other hand working her. He was everywhere at once, and her head spun with need. Her heart kicked as he drew her into his mouth and sucked.

"Yes," she gasped. "There."

He barely so much as paused to breathe, or so it seemed to her, as though he was somehow as hungry as her. As though he needed to see her fall apart as much as she needed to do the falling.

His fingers plunged into her one last time, hitting right where she needed, and she shattered so completely, she became mindless. His name was on her tongue—she had been calling it, begging and cajoling and gasping, whispering it in the throes of her climax as though their joining meant something more than pure pleasure.

If he suspected the turmoil of her mind, he never said so, merely rising up her body to press a kiss against her mouth, letting her taste herself on his lips. "There," he said, fingers curling around the hinge of her jaw. "Is that better, love?"

Frighteningly so. Internally shaken, she forced a teasing, indulgent smile to her lips and nodded at his breeches. "For me, perhaps, but not for you."

"That's not necessary."

"On the contrary." She was losing control, and this was the only way she could think to regain it. "Allow me." With a low, wicked laugh, she urged him onto a seat and sank to her knees before him. He was already erect, and it was easy to unbutton the fall of his trousers and take him into her mouth. Deep. He groaned, thrusting reflexively, and sank his hand into her hair. Not to guide her movements, but to hold her there as he rocked into her.

Perhaps he had thought he could go without, for whatever misguided reason, but this proved otherwise.

She should not have delighted in it.

She opened her mouth, relaxed her throat, and let him use her as he would. Her submission was a sign of her trust in him, and she knew he understood it even as it aroused him. In his everyday life, he was the usual indolent lord, but when it came to pleasure, he preferred to hold the reins. And she liked the way he found his pleasure in her, the sensation gratifying in its own right. She loved the way her eyes watered, the way he praised her even as he demanded more from her.

Her own pleasure built again, and she reached down her body to her core, touching herself as he guided her head down on him, pushing himself to the very back of her throat, filling her so she couldn't breathe.

"I love seeing you like this," he said, easing free. "Do it again."

She obliged, taking him as deep as she could. On her knees before him, rubbing frantically, wanting to find completion before he did. As though sensing it was a competition, he gave a gritty laugh and loosened her hair from its pins, wrapping it around his fist as he moved her up and down.

Tears streamed down her face, her nose stung, and she was so lost to pleasure she could have drowned in it.

Her climax hit with almost terrifying intensity. It was impossible to moan around him, but she tried, shuddering and gasping, her body another beast entirely, out of her control.

He thickened in her mouth as he slowed, giving her time to breathe and recover. Distantly, she knew that he was close, throbbing and needy. But he waited until she dropped her hands from herself, and then he nodded from his position on the sofa.

"Hands behind your back, Caro."

She obeyed, locking her fingers around her other wrist.

"Now take me," he commanded, and thrust into her mouth. Relaxing her throat, she gave herself over to him utterly, and it only took a matter of seconds before his breathing shattered. She looked up at him as he moaned her name and spilled himself down her throat.

#

In the early hours of the morning, George lay on his side, Caroline's back against his chest, and wondered how he should go about proving to her that he would make a good husband—and that she was the only wife he had any desire for.

Marrying for love had once been a pipe dream, but she could make it a reality, if only he could persuade her to accept she loved him in return.

Seeing her here when he had returned from Bath had proven to him that her feelings ran deeper than she would confess, and it gave him hope that she would accept.

"Where were you?" she asked sleepily.

"Hmm?"

"When you were gone. Where did you disappear to?"

"I went to Bath."

"Oh?"

"My father lives there."

She stiffened a little. "I see."

"I'm sorry for leaving no note, love." He kissed her hair and inhaled the scent of her. There was nothing so right as the feel of her here in his arms. But much as he enjoyed her in his bed—and he enjoyed that a lot—he wanted her on his arm. For her to bear his name and wander his library as though she owned it, asking him questions that made him pause to think. He wanted every day of challenge that a life with her would bring.

And in return, he wished to remove any burdens that sat on her shoulders. Perhaps the world was not equal, but he could do that for her, at least. Even without his father's fortune at his heels.

"You don't need to apologise," she said, but instead of settling beside him again, she sat up, drawing the sheets around herself. Her blonde hair was ruffled, her curls tangled and in glorious disarray. He adored every knot he had put there. "I don't own you or your time."

He gave her a lazy smile. "On the contrary, my sweet. You have but to crook your finger and I will come."

"Be serious."

"I'm perfectly serious. You are the sun to my moon—I would not glow without your light. I adore you." He said the words lightly, not wanting to scare her too much. "Come back to bed, love."

"Perhaps I shouldn't have stayed."

"Nonsense. Why must you fight this, Caro?"

"Because I cannot bear to grow accustomed to you only to lose you." She sat very straight. "And I will lose you, George. That's the nature of these things."

"Must it be?"

"Yes." Her tone was firm. "We both knew the score before we ever embarked on this agreement. I set boundaries—I established rules. When you are married, this ends." She frowned. "Your father must be very ill if you visited him in Bath."

George took a long breath. "No more ill than before. Death has come knocking, but I doubt he will answer the door just yet. He has too much spite to die."

"That changes very little except the timeline."

"What if there were no timeline?" he asked, looking at her steadily.

"There must be! That's your duty as heir. It's—it's expected. And your father—"

He would rather not think of his father at present. "Let us set aside his expectations for now. Allow me to be honest with you, Caroline. I have no desire for our arrangement to cease. And if you will not consent to being my wife, then—"

"Your wife?" she interrupted, sliding off the bed and taking the blanket with her, still held against her chest although he knew she had no aspirations to modesty. The sight stung. "Why in heaven's name would you think I would marry you?"

This was not how he had envisaged his first proposal going. At the very least, he had imagined flowers, and a marginally more positive answer. "Is the idea of marrying me so repulsive?"

"It's—it's ludicrous. Consider. What will your father say?"

"My father," he said through teeth that were suddenly gritted, "has already said all there is to say on the matter."

"You have already asked him?"

"Informed him, rather. Regardless of what you think, I do not require my father's permission."

She stared at him through wide, grey eyes. He had never seen her look like that, fragile in an indescribable way, as though he had sliced through every layer of defensive sensuality to find her softly beating heart. "But he cannot have taken it well."

"Not well," he conceded. "He threatened to cut me off if I married you, but I care little for that. After I heard what he had to say on the matter, he lost all rights to my respect."

She shook her head, slowly at first, then faster. "George you must—I'm sorry, but I cannot marry you."