Chapter 9

A s many times as Victor had imagined enjoying a woman, enjoying Isabel far exceeded every dream he had ever had.

He had never imagined how intimate it would be. Every time he tasted her he felt satisfaction down to his core. Every time she made a gasping moan, it felt like his .

His in more ways than one. He had pulled those sounds from her. And he felt the same way.

No sound could convey how desperate he was for the feel, the taste, the delight of her. He had felt her shake through the peak of pleasure on his body, on his mouth. He was desperate to feel it again on his fingers, on the core of him. He wanted to feel her ripple around him more than he wanted to breathe.

It was impossible not to rush, even when he wanted every second to last.

Sailors said the night women charged extra for the gifts Isabel was giving him now. She opened her rich thighs to his gaze, to his touch.

It was too incredibly easy to slide one finger into the soft, wet depths of her. He tried two. She writhed in a way he had to see more of; he decided to try three.

The cry she made only drove him into her deeper.

Everything was so soft, so slick, so welcoming. He wanted to explore everything he could feel with his fingertips. There were curves here too, like everywhere on her, little hills and valleys he wanted to map with more exactitude than legal language could specify.

When he curled his fingers toward himself, his glowing, giving Isabel surged upwards, one hand covering her mouth and muffling a scream. Over her fingers, her eyes were wide, shocked.

“Good?”

She nodded. He liked that she didn’t seem able to speak.

He would do more of that. He did.

And wonder of wonders, she lost all control.

He had thought he had all of her before. He was wrong. The way she twisted now, gathering fistfuls of the coverlets, writhing her hips against him in blatant, wanton desperation—this was hunger. Satisfaction, too, the satisfaction that all her attention was on him, all her pleasure was for him.

This was everything.

Abandoning her just for a moment to move her till her hips tilted forward over the edge of the bed—she let him do anything he liked—he slid his fingers back inside and this time moaned with her.

He tugged ever so gently on the soft flesh inside, feeling a secret bone curving there, feeling as if he knew things no one else had ever known or would ever get to know about this lavish woman.

He gave in again to his hunger and kissed the swollen nub peeking from her lips.

Fist shoved against her mouth to muffle her own cries, she curved toward him again with an incredible strength and spent over his hand, his mouth, his life.

He had never even heard of a woman’s satisfaction reaching such an extreme. The sailors spoke reverently of being deep inside a woman, but never about this.

Perhaps he had discovered something other men didn’t know.

Pride and a dark curling animal satisfaction grew in his belly every time she reached her peak and drew him onward, inward.

He was dying to be inside her.

“Will you have me?”

“Yes,” she gasped, this time as hard as if she had been underwater and was desperate to breathe. “Oh, yes.”

It was better than winning a war.

Swiftly he stood, positioning himself between her soft, open thighs and thrusting in.

It was all-encompassing, yes. It was everything sailors talked about. The wet heat pulled at the base of his spine, pulled him forward into her, till he could go no deeper and was forced to retreat.

It was a terrible loss. He recovered by thrusting forward again, willing to fight for his gains, forever if need be.

Each of his strokes seemed to send this delectable woman flying somewhere he could not reach. But he could see it, in the red of her skin, in her open mouth, in her outflung arms. He had caused this. He was making her fly.

Making her his.

For him, every stroke felt like a claiming. Her pleasure spiraled wide while his contracted into the thrust of convinced, determined muscle. He would do this for her forever. He would do this to make her his.

Her gasps grew shorter, higher; she clenched her hands over her mouth again. He wanted to hear her noises. He wanted to hear her scream.

But more, he wanted to give her everything.

He felt the peak coming, felt the clench of her inside. It was insane, how good that felt.

The peak of success.

When she spasmed around him, her grip tight around the white-hot hardness he turned over to her service; when he felt her pouring hot wetness around him again, felt her take him as deeply as she could; he felt that he had given all he could in her service and perhaps had earned his rest.

Gently he held her legs against him, not letting them go, reveling in how her bones had melted for him, how flushed and peaked he had made her breasts, how spent and gasping he had made her.

With another thrust, another, and another, he felt all the pleasure she had, all she gave, gathering inward from the tips of his fingers to the base of his spine; it exploded there, and the inescapable flood pulled him under.

It pulled him closer to her, pulled him deep. He was under but she was there to welcome him and it was a very welcome drowning.

When his mind cleared, gasping, mouth lax against her soft shoulder, she still had him in her grip, and she in his. He half-lay, draped over her body, wrapped around her, pulling her up into him and against him, forsaking the bed.

He wanted more of her throat. He wanted to feel that fluttering pulse in his tongue. Hungry for so many things he had never even realized he was missing.

He settled for a gentle kiss between her magnificent breasts. She looked utterly destroyed, utterly spent.

“You wish to sleep?” He would give her anything she wished right now. Rubies from Persia. Delicate fruits from the Maghreb. Silks from China. She was richer, sweeter, softer than them all, but if she wanted them, she would have them.

She laughed.

Victor had never imagined a laugh like that before either. Helpless, gleeful, innocent and very wicked all at once.

“I cannot stand, much less stay awake,” she admitted, while holding out her hand to him again.

Another picture he would remember for the rest of his life. Isabel, flushed and dewy as a peach on a spring morning, golden hair spilling over the linen upon his bed, wicked and sweet and spent.

He kissed the palm of her hand, reveling in her fingertips upon his cheek.

His bones had melted too; he must sleep. But first he fetched one more linen and gently washed her and himself again, dropping the cloths upon the hearth where they would dry and not burn.

Lifting her against him—another thing he had never imagined; she was so lush, yet so much smaller than he—he pushed the coverlets away and laid her against the sheet, then rolled in beside her.

There was a corner of his mind spinning with facts, and contracts. Marriage contracts, specifically. He had read them but never studied them; now he felt like he needed to dive into all their details.

But first, he repossessed her little hand, and she let him have it.

She touched him so sweetly, and he wound his fingers among hers again even as he pulled her into the space against him for which she seemed made. Once her head settled against his shoulder, he kissed the top of her golden head.

“Thank you,” she whispered against his skin, and he wanted to say so many things, but before he could choose a deep dark sleep claimed him.

It was still dark when Isabel woke from a deep, dreamless sleep.

Confused at first, she grasped her surroundings piece by piece. A man’s arm over her waist. Lord Hartwick.

Damask bed curtains shone dully in the last of the banked firelight. The heavy wood of the house’s ancient timbers and floors. The mullioned windows that might once have served princes, looking out over forests of deer, now watching the road to London and smaller houses all around.

Isabel held still and let him sleep, even as she craved his company.

She wanted to peel back the layers of a life with this man in it. She wanted to know him the way her fingertips knew the endpapers of a book. She wanted to lose herself in the colors of his life, in the flowers and silver and satin, of everything he touched, of his skin.

And she knew with more certainty than she had every known anything before that none of those things would be hers.

Yesterday excitement had been traveling to a bookshop all on her own. Yesterday, if someone had asked her to stretch her imagination, she might have imagined excitement would be a house like this, servants like this, a bed like this next to an ever-burning fire.

Today, excitement was his voice, his body, his eyes, and she wasn’t sure if she was blessed or cursed never to have imagined them before.

The gilt edge of the last Lady Hartwick’s portrait gleamed in the orange firelight. Isabel was glad she couldn’t see the portrait’s face.

How presumptuous she had been, imagining any part of him could truly belong to her. She’d spun little daydreams of reading to him, feeding him in her room on Leicester Square. The daydreams embarrassed her now she’d seen the bounty of his kitchen. Unbound by tradition, the servants would feed him as he pleased, better than Isabel ever could.

And what else would lure him to Leicester Square? Her body?

It felt new to her, fresh and unfamiliar and a bit raw all at the same time. She’d heard old women whisper about blood and pain of a woman’s first night, but Isabel had none of that.

Lord Hartwick might not even believe he had been her first.

She did not regret. Her daydreams would be richer now, and Isabel was glad of that. She might have died in that little room, years from now, without ever knowing what... all that felt like. Whatever happened now, she would be glad.

Slowly she breathed in and out, fascinated by the feel of his heavy arm around her waist.

Would a night like this have been such astonishing pleasure with any other man? She thought not. Their conversation had been so easy, their secrets, their touch. Easy in a way no evening spent in a parlor with Mr. Ball or Mr. Wheelock had ever been. She had no other experience of earls, but this one was easy to be with, easy to laugh with...

...easy to love.

That was a path she would not take. The house warned against it, comfortable as it was. It would be one thing to be a mistress who fed her lord eggs and buttered bread and read him to sleep. It would be quite another to be a lovelorn nightbird weeping at his gates. Even though the house had no gates.

She had no idea what would happen after tonight. He hadn’t been the risk she’d expected to take. She had only planned to buy a book.

She was not suitable for a mistress or a wife, but Lord Hartwick was so honorable, so straight, if there were a child, he would not let it starve. He would see it housed, fed, perhaps even loved. Whatever happened to her, no matter how far she fell, she had only risked herself. Her life. Her love.

A risk she was glad she’d taken.

Isabel told herself sternly—the voice in her head was her mother’s—that it was silly even to think of love. She had known the gentleman mere hours. If she grasped one thing about what they had just done, it was that it did not require love.

And the more she thought on it, the more she remembered that he had told her something of his history, his secrets, but had asked very little of hers.

It made perfect sense; he was an educated man of the law, she was a brewer’s daughter. She had no conversation he’d care to hear. They had met through his chivalry, brusque as it was, not her charm. She was fairly sure she didn’t have any.

She had simply lucked into the adventure of a lifetime, and a lifetime’s worth of memories in one night.

The sleepy man beside her stirred and made a purring sound and pulled his arm tighter, bringing her closer.

The first time she’d indulged herself. Likely also be the last. She wouldn’t waste it.

She rolled into him, reveling in the feel of her softness against the hard, furred lines of his body, unable to resist nuzzling the cup of his ear and smelling the scent of him there.

She felt light despite the shortness of their time together, the blood in her veins full of bubbles trying to float away.

But his eyes, when they opened in the deep dark of the bed, were serious.

He surveyed her smile as if studying a letter, put up a hand to stroke his fingers through the wild tangle of her hair. “You are so beautiful.”

“So are you,” she whispered back, not caring if it sounded foolish to call a man beautiful.

A little frown drew his heavy brows together, and she knew he was confused. He did not think himself beautiful.

Yet he was. From his sleep-tossed hair to the angles of his shoulders and hard-muscled arms, the dips and power of his hips and thighs to the lightly-furred shins and the top of his feet, he was beautiful, every inch of him.

He contradicted her. “I am too thin.”

“You are an earl now. Your cook will fill your table with bread and dry beef, if you so desire.” She tried to make her voice lightly teasing, as if she wouldn’t worry about his table every day for the rest of her life.

He only shook his head, deep dark eyes for once wide with wonder. “How is it you do not judge me?”

Isabel didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t wish to remind him she had known him only a matter of hours, or that if she were in a position to judge anyone, she would judge him a fascinating man and a magical lover.

In the dark, their faces inches from one another, he seemed able to say things he otherwise could not. “I never could bear the feel of food in my mouth. Going down my throat. Horrifying. My father called me stupid, he called me weak. Every meal was a battle. Perhaps I won, because he never lowered himself to forcing food in my mouth. Perhaps I lost.” He shook his head, looking now into the distance, perhaps at years past. “I find it confusing now. It cannot have been solely rebellion, for I kept to my ways when I traveled. Even when he died.” He looked young, and lost. “He died before I could reach him. And I cannot discern if I am sad.”

She could not bear the space between them.

Snuggling close into his arms, she buried her face into the space that seemed made for it atop his muscled chest. “Perhaps you are sad. Or guilty. Or regretful, or glad. He was not kind.”

“No, he wasn’t.” His arms tightened around her. “Thank you for saying so. Truly I have more regret that I left the treaty unsigned. Though I do regret... I regret that he never cared for me.”

In the quiet dark of their luxuriant bed, Isabel’s heart broke for him.

“He was not kind—” she felt that was understating the truth, but did not wish to say too much that was above her station, “—but more than that, he was foolish. He wasted all the time he had with his magnificent son. He was a very foolish man.”

The truth, or perhaps the startlement of hearing it on her lips, loosened the shadow that clung to him and he laughed, squeezing her close. “Ah,” he sighed into her hair, “perhaps I have waited a lifetime for someone to say so.”

Satisfied with herself, Isabel pressed closer, and enjoyed the feel in his chest when he made the purring sound again.

“That noise is so unlike you.” She could not resist kissing the spot at the base of his throat she had so longed to see. It was indeed strong with muscle and sinew, fascinating hollows calling for her investigation, for her touch. “Hawks do not purr.”

“I am not a bird, madame.” With one swift motion he rolled above her, keeping his weight on his arms even as he slid slowly, slowly down the length of her body, making her shiver with the feel of every inch of him. Now he was shadowed by the dark of the night, but even so she could see his lazy smile. “I have never felt more like a man. A lucky, lucky man.”

Settling his knees between her thighs, which seemed to open for him of their own accord, he pressed himself to the core of her again. Isabel thought she might feel sore, and she did, very slightly, but it faded fast. She swelled again just from the feel of him, the scent of him in the air.

Never in her life had she imagined a man could be so hard and so welcome.

He spoke as if he’d heard her thoughts aloud, answering them. “I never imagined I could feel like this. At peace and hungry at the same time.”

She wiggled against him, reaching for the side of the bed. “I recall where to find the kitchen. I could fetch you something to eat.”

“I am not hungry for food.”

With that he lay full against her, still somehow balancing his weight on arms and knees as if not to crush her, as if he wished to be careful of her.

All at once, Isabel did not want him to be careful.

The years ahead drifted out of sight and she didn’t care about them any more. She cared about this, him, tonight, and if he were only hers for one night, she wanted all of him. More of him.

Undulating against him with a wanton thrust of which she would never have suspected herself capable, she slid against him, slick waiting swollen wanting against his matching evidence of desire, and with a groan he obliged her, sliding inside.

He leaned down to kiss her sweetly, warm intoxicating breath like cherries and brandy, but Isabel wanted more. She wanted to be greedy. She wanted to be selfish.

Reaching around his hard body she pulled him into her, thrusting against him with all her might, encouraging him, urging him on, till his groan sounded again, welcome in her ear, and he reached out, seizing her hands and pressing them to the bed in his and plunging into her over and over again, deeper than she had suspected possible.

She only wanted more of him, longer, forever.

They were so shockingly close. No one had ever been closer. Listing the parts of him did no justice to the feel of all of him, skin, muscle, blood, everything pulsing against her, inside her, making her pulse in rhythm with him.

“Yes,” she whispered, feeling she was making too much noise but unable to stay silent.

He made that little purring noise again, more like a growl this time, and muttered into her throat, “Thank you,” as if he had waited his whole life to hear her say that one little word.

“Why thank me?” Gasping, nearly laughing, Isabel opened herself to him and gave him everything she wanted him to take.

“I never imagined this,” he said again, so serious, his body driving into hers and winding the pleasure tighter, higher, till the heat pooled in her hands and feet like fire and, to the extent she could think at all, she thought she might melt, or explode.

She wanted to keep her eyes open, to look into his, to remember this moment that way, but the inevitable end defeated her, arched her back, bent her neck up to his mouth and closed her eyes as it seized her again in its unforgiving, devouring, devastating pleasure.

When she could breathe, shaking, tears in her eyes for no reason she could fathom, she found him still there in her arms, his kisses touching and stroking her throat, his yes and thank you storming around her like quiet thunder.

And he stilled too, deep inside her, throbbing, his silent moan against her skin, and dimly she thought he felt how rare this was, how precious.

“Thank you,” he breathed heavily, rolling the two of them so she was atop him, banishing her moment of self-conscious nerves with more kisses lighting upon her face, her shoulders like butterfly wings, belying the strength of his relentless grip.

She might have passed him the butter, except that he did not like butter, and if she was sure of one thing, it was that he had enjoyed what had just passed between them.

“Sshhh.” Isabel stroked the side of his face, marveling at the drops of sweat, how hard he had worked for her pleasure, feeling the heat of him subside a little. It did not matter how high the fire burned as long as he was here.

And again, he drifted away to sleep.

That must be something men do, thought Isabel as she slid down to lay beside him, studying his near-invisible profile in the dark.

It felt so wicked to know what men did in the throes of passion and just after.

A little voice in the back of her mind—and this one sounded like her, not her mother—said that if he woke again, they would do that again, and though she did not believe in old country tales, it seemed obvious that three bouts of such pleasure would trap her here, or seal her doom.

She found the chamber pot and used it while counting days. If she was right, her courses would start tomorrow or the next day. They were never very steady.

She didn’t know if that meant it was more or less likely that his lordship had given her the ultimate gift for Christmas, but she would have to think about it later. Even a moment devoted to the idea caused such a flood of high and contradicting emotions that she nearly burst out in tears upon the chamber pot.

If she stayed, he would offer her more gifts, or worse, money. There had been too many thank-you’s to trust otherwise. In the throes of passion, only a man who considered her a peddler would thank her for those wares.

He shifted and lay spread-armed upon the linens, and Isabel had to ruthlessly crush the urge to crawl back into the bed to lie against him.

She had never ruthlessly crushed anything before. Perhaps it would be a feature of her new life.

For life would be different now. She would never see him again, but her life would forever be divided by this bright shining line: before tonight and after.

Musing that she had never washed so much in her life, avoiding looking at his long, silent sleeping form, Isabel slid into her clothes as quietly as she could, trying not to think about the shock, the heat of his touch as she tied her short stays on over her chemise and rolled her stockings up to her thighs. Tried not to think about his touch there. His lips, for mercy’s sake.

Averting her eyes the way she did, she never saw his sleeping hand open and close as it lay on the bed, looking for her.