Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

T he sunlight hit Sophia’s eyes as it peeked through the library window, the morning’s kiss waking her up. She cringed and shifted in place, groaning, and her hands instinctively pulled up the coverlet closer.

Hold on… Why do I have a coverlet?

She opened her eyes and assessed her situation. It wasn’t a coverlet at all, but the thick, brocade housecoat that Thomas had worn last night.

She ran the events of the previous day in her head, her eyes widening in realization.

Did… did he do this?

The garment smelled faintly like him, woodsmoke and warming vetiver. Ugh. She hated that she didn’t hate the smell.

What had begun as a pretense of sleep while he had ranted about her privilege and spoiled upbringing had evidently, somewhere along the line, lulled her into real slumber. She certainly did not remember him putting his housecoat over her. She would have remembered, because it would have left him with nothing to cover his upper half at all.

Goodness…

She gripped the armrests, unable to stop herself from imagining the splendor of it. It infuriated her that she cared—and more, that she was disappointed to have missed it.

Having a stern, silent word with herself, she propelled herself out of the chair and planted her feet on the ground, the cold parquet sending shivers up her spine, making her teeth chatter.

As if she was a dog who had just heard her master wake up, the maid, Miss Wright, peeked her head into the library with a timid smile.

“Your Grace. You are awake,” she said superfluously.

Sophia smiled back. “It appears I am, yes.” She paused, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry I fell asleep in the library. I imagine I am in your way—you have fires to light and books to dust, and I am thoroughly ruining your morning routine.”

“No, no, Your Grace, there’s no issue.” The maid approached and took the housecoat. “His Grace instructed me to keep an eye on you. Did you sleep well?”

Sophia frowned at the care with which the maid held the housecoat, holding it to her in the same way she had held her master’s tailcoat the previous day, as if it were precious.

Was there a reason beyond maidly efficiency? Did the maid know Thomas more intimately than even his wife? Did she savor the scent of him? Did she know what it was like to wake up with him?

So what if she does?

Sophia scolded herself inwardly. It would be one less thing for her to worry about if that were the case. But the odd twinge of something like jealousy was not remotely helpful to her cause.

“As well as one can in a chair,” she replied blithely. “I don’t really mind. I can sleep anywhere.”

Except for my husband’s bed apparently…

She scolded herself a second time, appalled by her silliness. One night in another house had clearly addled her mind.

“Will you do me a favor, Miss Wright?”

The maid hesitated, as if anxious of what might be asked. “Of course, Your Grace.”

“Will you make sure to… pass my gratitude to His Grace?”

Miss Wright seemed confused by the request. “Your Grace, with all due respect, wouldn’t that be a matter between you both? I’ll still do it, of course, but it’s just… I don’t usually speak to him much. I fear my voice would shake if you were to make a messenger of me.”

So, not so intimately knowledgeable…

Sophia loathed the little tremor of satisfaction that shuddered in her chest.

She braced to admit defeat and let the maid off the hook when Thomas himself stepped into the room, already immaculately dressed and accompanied by his usual dark cloud of grumpiness. Not the half-dressed, barefooted, soft-spoken man from last night.

“Quite correct. This is not a matter to be resolved through the servants.” He turned to the maid. “You are excused, Miss Wright.”

The maid bowed and exited the room, leaving them alone. Again.

Sophia gave him a furtive sideways glance, finding it hard to meet his gaze. Not without thinking of his housecoat on her and not on him anymore, or the taut muscles that she knew lay hidden beneath his fine attire.

“Would you prefer me to stand at the bottom of the stairs and yell my gratitude? That is how you prefer your ladies, isn’t it? So very grateful for the smallest thing,” she muttered.

“Let me stop you right there,” he said in a commanding tone, again. She hated that, but he continued. “I don’t expect gratitude. I expect nothing from you, except for one thing.”

Her stomach flipped. “And what might that be?”

His eyes darkened for a moment. “I do expect you to act as a lady. You need to start thinking about how your actions reflect on me. I had to find Miss Wright and tell her to make sure that no one but her entered the library and saw you like this. What if the staff saw you and thought I made you spend the night there and treated you horribly?”

“If propriety is so important to you, then… why didn’t you wake me up and tell me to go back to bed?” she challenged, failing to muster the nerve to mention the housecoat and his very improper attire the previous night.

“Because I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Well… well, thank you for that!” she blurted out, blushing furiously.

A few seconds passed as they stared directly at each other, his face unreadable, hers undoubtedly a mortifying shade of red. They both clearly knew how silly their quarrel was, yet neither of them was laughing.

At length, his posture relaxed and her face cooled.

Thomas spoke again, this time his voice a husky murmur. “Say it again, as if you mean it. Say it the way you would if you didn’t hate me.”

A few more seconds passed, his expectation thickening the air between them. It would have been simple enough to meet his request, but latent pride stayed Sophia’s tongue. She had thanked him once; she would not repeat it.

“If you can’t obey…” he said, moving towards her, his gaze roving from her bare feet to the disarrayed collar of her nightdress and everything in between. A vivid reminder that she was not dressed for company.

She swallowed tightly. “Then what? Let me guess, there will be consequences, and I won’t like them very much?”

“I wouldn’t be so certain about the latter,” he replied, now as close as he had been when he stopped her fall. “If you don’t thank me properly, I will kiss you again.”

She blinked, tense silence crackling with electricity that surely needed dampening. Yet, she did not speak, did not move.

“I will count to three,” he told her, pausing before he began. “One.”

“I won’t repeat myself,” she said thickly.

“Two,” he murmured, his hand skimming up her arm—not quite touching, but brushing the fabric of her sleeve in such a way that she felt that thrilling friction everywhere.

“You can’t command me,” she urged, anticipating that final number.

He raised an eyebrow, his mouth forming the shape of her deadline.

Not content to let him dictate the rules, she suddenly rose on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the mouth. A clumsy peck, nothing more. A compulsion she couldn’t resist.

He chuckled in the back of his throat, his hand stopping at the curve of her neck. “That wasn’t a kiss, Sophia,” he said, a hungry gleam in his eyes. “ This is a kiss.”

His hand slid into the back of her hair, cradling the nape of her neck, and his other arm slipped around her waist, pulling her roughly to him. She barely had a moment to catch her breath as his lips sought hers in a slow, searing graze that ripped the net of butterflies in her stomach.

He caught her mouth again, more insistent this time, crushing his lips to hers, demanding her obedience.

Three…

Eighty years of feuding fell away as she kissed him back, pouring all of her anger and irritation into their kiss. When she felt him smile against her mouth, she grabbed his lapels and kissed him harder, her instinct and the ebb and flow of his lips guiding her.

She had always considered herself a passionate person, but this was a different kind of passion. This was ravenous and urgent and frenzied, like another type of duel where there were no losers and no injuries. In truth, she felt triumphant, victorious as his kiss matched the pace and ferocity of hers. The only thing she risked losing was her sense of reason, her usually clear mind now brimming with the feverish haze of whatever the sparking, straining, blazing feeling inside her was.

Thomas growled in the back of his throat as he swept her up into his capable arms, carrying her over to the bookcases she had perused the night before. For balance, or so she told herself, she locked her legs around his waist.

She gasped as her back bumped against the boring tomes about finance and accounting and the wild stories of pirates and damsels. Thomas caught the stilted breath in his mouth, kissing her with renewed fervor. She kissed him back in kind, forgetting with every press of his lips that she was supposed to hate him body and soul.

How could she think about anything but the friction of his rough palm as it ran along the back of her thigh, squeezing the soft flesh of her backside? How could she remember anything bad when her entire being was alight and alive in a way it had never been before? How could she hate his stirring grip on her waist, or the delicious downward slide of his hand as he skimmed the curve of her hip and eased his touch beneath the flimsy skirt of her nightdress? How could she hate any of it when it felt like magic, igniting fireworks within her, coaxing sounds and sensations from her that she had never known before?

All the while, he kissed her. Kissed her lips, her neck, her throat, her jaw, her exposed collarbone. In the moment, she did not care if he left a trail of marks, as long as she could feel more of the fire in her veins.

“Oh…” she panted, her back arching away from the spines of the books as his fingertips danced up the inside of her thigh… and came to rest on a part of her that was entirely unknown.

“Say thank you properly, and I’ll stop,” he purred, nipping her earlobe.

She clamped her lips shut, subtly shaking her head. It was no longer a matter of pride but of experience, and she was not ready to be returned to reality, to have that flickering flame of bliss blown out.

Taking her silence for what it was, Thomas’s fingertips began to move against that unknown part of her—a bundle of nerves that pulsed with want, sending shivering bursts of pleasure up into her belly and down her thighs as he drew slow circles around it.

As the circles became a potent strum, playing her pleasure like an instrument he knew intimately, the tempest spread out, gathering and building into a feeling of utter, simmering anticipation. Only, she did not know what she was waiting for.

Something big. Something transformative. Something that would make this lapse in judgment worthwhile.

“Say thank you properly, or I’ll stop what I’m doing,” he growled, those throaty words sending her bliss soaring to new heights, bringing her to the edge of an unknown precipice—the conclusion to that thrumming anticipation.

She did not know how she knew that; she just did.

“Thank you,” she moaned, running her hands through his silky dark hair, clawing at his broad back, pressing herself closer to him, feeling the breathtaking muscles through his clothes. “Oh, thank you.”

“That’s better,” he murmured, keeping up those tortuous, measured strokes, driving her swiftly towards her conclusion as his mouth and tongue tasted her skin, lightly nipping her neck.

When the feeling came, she was not prepared at all. It struck her in a fierce wave, her every nerve and limb pulled into the intense current until she couldn’t breathe, her body trembling from toe to crown. She clung to him like he was an anchor in the thrashing maelstrom of her bliss, muffling her cries of ecstasy against his shoulder, biting the fine fabric and the muscle beneath to temper the sound so that the staff wouldn’t hear it.

Thomas held her there against the bookcases as her euphoria ebbed, his kisses slowing with the retreat of it. She felt both weak and as if she could uproot the ancient oak tree in the grounds singlehandedly, unable to even consider standing on her shaky legs for a while.

“Was that so difficult?” he asked, setting her down.

She gazed up at him, her mind a soup of emotion with every ingredient thrown in haphazardly. The passion that had sent him into a frenzy before had subsided, his expression as stony as ever, his lupine eyes revealing nothing at the very moment she needed them to say something .

“Why did you do that?” she said, bewildered. “That was… not just a kiss.”

His eyes flickered ever so slightly as he leaned in, kissed her cheek, and replied, “Your gratitude is appreciated.” He hesitated. “And, please, put your book back where it belongs.”

Without answering her actual question, he left the library immediately, abandoning her for the second time. Only, this time, he was leaving her with thoughts and memories that had her torn, his actions not matching pretty much every word he had ever said to her.

He had given her a taste of something sweet, only to sour it.

And yet…

Sophia flushed with heat, disturbed to discover that she wanted another bite. Perhaps that was what happened when a wife was starved of a wedding night.