Chapter Fourteen

Alexandra hadn't expected to sleep much, given the evening's tumult.

But once she'd gotten into her night rail and crawled beneath her blankets, she didn't open her eyes again until morning.

Ecstasy, it seemed, could wear a girl out.

Last night had also been, she realized, akin to a fever finally breaking.

She was awake and dressed before the maids brought in their coffee and scones. She parted the curtains. If she stood on her

toes, she could just barely see the sun glinting off the sea and the tall spires of ships. And if she looked off to the left,

she could see a man urinating on the adjacent building. Such was life at the docks. She rather liked the contrast. As it turned

out, joy and earthy pleasure and chaos suited her. Like a donkey race.

Like sex on the floor with her estranged husband.

She had no time to consider the aftermath, however, because a motion snagged the corner of her eyes. She pivoted to find Magnus

dressed completely, snowy cravat and Hoby boots polished to mirror brilliance and all, emerging from his room.

He halted when he saw her.

She inspected him for signs of regret, or wariness, and his somber, somewhat uncertain expression suggested he was inspecting

her for the same.

She found neither.

Nor did he appear to be gloating.

Then his mouth tilted at the corner in a faint smile. He settled in at the little table near the window, and she sat down

across from him.

He poured a cup of coffee for her and pushed the sugar over.

Neither one of them had yet said a word. The magical bitter black elixir would no doubt make conversation more possible in

a moment or two.

She looked across at the Earl of Montcroix and vividly recalled his eyes burning down into hers, as he hurled aside his miles

of shirt and steered his cock into her body, and a fresh wash of lust bolted through her like a gulp of coffee. She fumbled

with her napkin.

"I'll be out all day today, I'm afraid," he told her. "More long meetings and affairs of state to attend to. I'm to meet with

officers of the king to discuss properties associated with the title."

"How wonderful, Magnus," she said pleasantly. "Or Montcroix, whatever you prefer to be called."

He smiled faintly. "Whatever trips most lightly off your tongue."

She was going to blush again, because tongues made her think of the taste of him.

"I thought I'd spend some time today at the town house to officially say goodbye to the servants and to help supervise the packing of my possessions," she said offhandedly.

After a somewhat lengthy hesitation, he nodded.

"I've also a meeting regarding the timing of the Grosvenor Square town house purchase," he volunteered.

The underpinning of their relationship now seemed to be quiet, civil little gauntlets thrown down.

"I'll make the carriage available to you," he added. "I'll take the hack downtown."

"That won't be necessary, Magnus, but thank you. I can take a hack to the town house. I can afford it. I have all my Shillelagh

winnings, after all."

He nodded once, acknowledging the little jest that wasn't entirely a jest.

"My carriage is safer. Please take the carriage."

My carriage, she thought. As if the two of them were not really an entity anywhere apart from public appearances, and never

would be. Soon, there would be no "our" of any kind.

But there was a slight emphasis on "please." She understood that this was a man who wanted to care, who'd long wanted an opportunity

to care, and he specifically wanted to take care of her. What harm would there be in allowing him to do that for now?

"Very well. I'll take the carriage, thank you."

Her breath hitched when he suddenly leaned toward her, his eyes flaring. His thumb traced her jaw lightly.

"Alexandra... your cheek... it's a little pink here. It looks a bit like a burn... did I do this to you? When we..."

She couldn't yet speak. His touch had sent a quicksilver tingle down her spine.

"Oh." She touched her cheek absently. "I think it was because your whiskers scraped... when we..."

"Ah."

When they kissed each other nearly senseless, was the rest of that sentence.

Judging from the heat, her entire face was pink now.

Why were they being coy?

Because it was daylight, and the coffee and tea and scones were so sweetly civilized and the people they were this morning

seemed to have no relation to the animals rolling around and moaning on the carpet last night.

"Anything can be a weapon," she teased, lightly. Just a little ironically.

But he looked nearly stricken. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to... I never meant to hurt you."

He didn't specify for what. For the raw, unguarded, desperate hunger that inadvertently burned her tender skin with kisses?

Or for... everything?

"I'm not fragile," she said shortly.

"I know," he said gently. He sounded a little surprised. "I knew that the moment I met you."

She was surprised.

"But you should have been allowed to be," he added softly. "You should be allowed to be."

Her eyes widened in astonishment.

She dropped her gaze, moved and unsettled. She supposed a man who had once been a boy who had never been allowed to be weak

would notice that fragility had never been an option for her, either.

Perhaps this was why his every instinct seemed to be to protect her.

And yet it seemed clear he was still prepared to send her away.

For that matter, she was prepared to go.

Clearly one night of cathartic passion had not magically repaired the deeper wounds between them.

She lifted her head swiftly when she realized he was probably genuinely worried that he'd hurt her. He'd been essentially

called a beast the whole of his life.

"You didn't hurt me, Magnus. It doesn't hurt. And if I had wanted you to stop at any point, I would have asked you to stop,

I promise. I wouldn't have furled my dress up to my waist."

Amusement flickered in his eyes, but his expression remained serious. "You are certain you wanted to..."

"Yes." It was barely a sound, and absent of intonation. But she let her eyes convey the vehemence of the truth of this.

Who was this wanton woman who made these sorts of confessions over coffee and scones?

They let all of those potent words they'd just said hover in the air for a while.

She stirred sugar into her coffee. "Perhaps it needed to happen just the way it happened."

The way it happened . In other words:

Fast. Hot. Deep. Rough. Urgent.

Angry.

Cathartic.

Extraordinary.

But not tender.

And not loving.

And not again.

Never again.

Transfixed, they regarded each other silently.

Neither of them allowed their expressions to reveal a thing.

He turned away from her, toward the window, as if he was concerned she would read his thoughts. Which were likely very explicit

at the moment.

She sipped her coffee. "I wasn't aware... that extraordinary pleasure... would make me scream."

He slowly turned back to her. His expression now suggested a man who had been clubbed in the head.

Finally he said both the best and the worst possible thing:

"It can be even better."

At the town house, a crew of cheery men were patching the ceiling where water had begun to drip into the foyer. They greeted her with deference as she made her way up the stairs.

She'd thought visiting the place she'd spent her sort of mild social purgatory might be a little painful, given that she was

leaving it behind, but then everything was painful lately, so what would it matter?

She realized as she scaled the stairs to what she already considered her soon-to-be-former bedroom that "painful" wasn't precisely

the right word. She was simply suddenly excruciatingly more sensitive to everything, as though an obscuring defensive layer

had been stripped from her and she was fully seeing and feeling certain things for the first time in a very long time. Grief and fury and regret and epiphany and bliss

and joy.

And sorrow.

The reward for the end of this sorrow would be peace, eventually.

She would not stay with a man who could want her, but not forgive her. Obviously, she could not stay with him, if he didn't want her to.

And it wasn't as though she'd forgiven him entirely, either. Although she was so much more accustomed to yielding than he

was, to finding that way to make everything better for everyone.

And speaking of pain—she hadn't told Magnus the complete truth. She was a little sore between her legs. She felt it now as she climbed the stairs.

Ironically, it seemed the kind of soreness that could only be cured by wrapping her legs around his broad back again and digging her nails into his shoulders until they were both out of their minds with pleasure.

This notion sent such a rush of blood to her head and regions south of her head she was forced to grip the banister. She would

know in the future not to entertain those kinds of thoughts on a staircase. Death by swooning from lust and tumbling down

a flight would be embarrassing.

Had she enjoyed living here? She could not quite say. It was a fine, comfortable house, in a fine location. The floors were

marble; crystal and gilt abounded in the furniture and fixtures. He had bought it furnished, many years ago, he'd told her;

he'd chosen nothing, as he hadn't had the time or the knowledge to choose the right things. It had never felt like hers ; it decidedly wasn't. She hadn't allowed herself to feel she had a right to it. It was the place where Colonel Brightwall

had stored his faithless wife, and where she'd slept alone night after night. A comfortable, luxurious purgatory.

To her, it would always be the physical reminder of the way in which she'd been punished for kissing another man on her wedding

day.

And today, it reminded her acutely of how lonely she'd been here, because the last few days she'd spent with Magnus and everyone

at The Grand Palace on the Thames she'd had a taste of the kind of life she might have had.

But like this town house, that life didn't belong to her, either. It was only temporary.

Hence the sorrow.

And yet she could not surrender fully to that sorrow. The stubbornest of all human conditions—hope—was aiming its rays down

upon it, threatening to shrink it like a puddle after the rain.

It scared her breathless.

Superstitiously, she refused to turn to examine too closely the reasons for her hope. She could still feel within her a steely

filament of resentment and hurt. She clung to that like a lifeline, because it seemed the only refuge from the terrible fear

that she had fallen in love with her husband five years too late.

She sat gingerly down on the bed and closed her eyes. She let her hand wander over the coverlet, reliving the smooth heat

of his hips beneath her hands as she arched them to take him more deeply into her body. She already knew she wanted to feel

the entirety of her skin against his.

That sound he'd made when he'd kissed her last night... that primal, anguished relief—the memory swept through her and

nearly made her sway. How terribly lonely he must have been all these years, too.

Lust and longing, hope and fear, tightened her chest.

What if he was spending the day regretting the previous evening?

Then again: It could be even better , he'd said.

No matter the cost to her, before she left for New York, she wanted to know how.

"Will everyone be in tomorrow night?" Delilah asked the general gathering in the sitting room that evening. "Helga is going to market tomorrow morning and we thought we'd get a definitive count for dinner."

The Dawsons were at their usual table, gazing into each other's eyes. The ladies and Lucien had clustered around Mrs. Pariseau,

who had plans to read aloud their next nightly chapter of The Arabian Nights' Entertainments . Delilah and Angelique were knitting; Alexandra and Dot were embroidering samplers. Alexandra had decided to attempt to stitch

a rather complicated fountain from her imagination.

Captain Hardy had settled in across from Delacorte for a game of chess.

Only Magnus was still out when the boardinghouse residents gathered in the sitting room that evening after dinner.

"I think me and the missus will be in and out all day tomorrow," Corporal Dawson replied to Delilah.

"And in and out. And in and out again, I imagine," Mr. Delacorte said pleasantly.

Captain Hardy gave him a little kick under the table.

"How did everyone enjoy the donkey races?" Lucien interjected hurriedly.

" Donkey races!" Mrs. Cuthbert exclaimed. "You went to a race between donkeys?"

Everyone in the room stifled a sigh.

"Mrs. Cuthbert, if I may ask... what are your favorite pleasures and pursuits?" Captain Hardy asked very, very mildly. Deceptively mildly. It had probably taken all of his discipline not to emphasize the word "are."

"Well, to tell you the truth, I visited London only to see my old friend Mrs. Pariseau." She said this as though she'd made

a heroic sacrifice. Mrs. Pariseau smiled neutrally. "But usually I find it very peaceful and pleasant when things are predictable.

If staying in one place is good enough for a tree or a pond, it's good enough for me."

This was so very nearly profound it gave everyone a moment's pause.

"But trees and ponds change with the seasons, often dramatically," Alexandra said gently. "Perhaps it's all right if you do,

too. Leaves fall. Blossoms bloom. Ponds evaporate. Tadpoles live in the pond and frogs appear. And I won twenty pence on Shillelagh,"

Alexandra added, to answer Lucien's question.

He whistled appreciatively, teasing her.

Mrs. Cuthbert reared back. "My dear, gambling and jail? I'm beginning to think that Colonel Brightwall must have taken you on in order to reform you."

This was funny, indeed. Alexandra currently had a bit of a burn on both sets of cheeks (the top set from whiskers, the bottom

set from carpet) due to vigorous lovemaking.

"I've learned a thing or two from him," she confessed. "And I rather hope to learn more."

"I suspected as much," Mrs. Cuthbert sniffed.

"And Dot won ten pence," she added cheerfully.

Mrs. Cuthbert swiveled her head toward Dot, eyes huge. "Et tu, Dot?"

"Not eighty-two," Dot told Mrs. Cuthbert patiently. "Ten. Ten pence."

Mrs. Cuthbert opened her mouth to correct her, then intercepted a somewhat quelling look from Angelique and apparently thought

better of it.

"How did you enjoy the donkey race, Dot?" Delilah wanted to know. "It sounds as though Shillelagh won. How exciting!"

Delilah had lolled in bed after a decadent evening with her husband. Which meant she was awake by six, instead of five. She

had not yet heard reviews of the donkey race.

Dot nodded, a little subdued. "I had a wonderful time." Her tone confusingly suggested otherwise. "Thank you for letting me

go."

Angelique and Delilah exchanged swift glances. Of the many things Dot was, subdued was seldom one of them.

"I suppose it was fate, then," Angelique prompted.

"Perhaps it was," Dot reflected driftily. "Perhaps it was. But I don't know anymore if fate is always a good thing."

Bemused glances ricocheted between Angelique and Delilah and Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt. A philosophical Dot was a bit worrisome,

too.

"Perhaps fate is a thing like—oh, the sky, or a pond or a tree—it isn't fundamentally good or bad. It just is," Alexandra suggested, delicately.

"Very wise, dear," Mrs. Pariseau approved.

"I learned it in prison," Alexandra lied, mischievously.

She had discovered that every time Mrs. Cuthbert disapproved of something, her bosom heaved a bit and her pearl necklace glinted

in the light.

Perversely, Alexandra was actually going to miss her, and this room, when she was gone. She loved the odd balance of people—the

give-and-take, the kindness and patience and exasperation and humor and clumsiness. It felt so warm, and so alive.

She thought Magnus would enjoy this evening, too. And a little cloud moved over her mood, because what that really meant was

that she thought she would enjoy this even more if he was here. She missed him, and she suspected this meant she was a fool.

The somewhat queasy suspicion that Magnus was staying out late deliberately so that he wouldn't need to face her when he returned

had begun to settle in.

So be it, if so. But even if she was already in bed when he returned, if, like her, he'd been engaged in his own somewhat

torturous inner dialogue today about making love to his wife... she intended to extend to him an invitation so subtle that

even if he refused it, or failed to notice, it would still leave her with her pride.

But thinking about it now sped her heart.

"What are you going to buy with your ten pence, Dot? New handkerchiefs? Save up to buy your own donkey?" Delilah wondered.

Mr. Delacorte's head shot up from the chessboard as if he'd just heard a brilliant idea.

"I bought a little journal today at the stationer's when I went out to get the newspapers. I'm going to write my most important

thoughts in it. I'm going to call it ‘Dot's Thoughts.'"

A polite silence ensued, during which everyone silently congratulated themselves on not saying aloud what they were thinking

about Dot's thoughts.

"I'd never considered ranking my thoughts from most important to least," Lucien said. "You'll be busy, Dot."

Dot nodded somberly in agreement.

"Speaking of written things, Dot, I can't seem to find our copy of The Arabian Nights' Entertainments . Do you know where it might be?" Mrs. Pariseau asked.

Dot's eyebrows assumed a distressed position. "Oh, dear! I'm so sorry. I left it upstairs. I wanted to write the word ‘Scheherazade'

in my journal and I didn't know how to spell it."

"Perhaps you can go and fetch it for Mrs. Pariseau," Delilah suggested.

"I'm sorry... I'm very sorry... but I don't think I can." Her voice was low and tormented.

They stared at her. Speechless. Not in their wildest dreams had Delilah or Angelique antici pated insubordination from Dot. Perhaps the ten pence she'd won was giving her notions.

"You don't think you can?" Delilah repeated gingerly.

"It's just... I'm sorry, but I'm sore afraid to go up alone right now," Dot whispered reluctantly, with a certain despair.

She clasped her hands. "Sore afraid" was something she'd heard in a story and had probably been dying to say aloud.

Then Delilah had it. "You're worried about something?"

Dot nodded wretchedly. "I'm afraid to tell you, because you won't believe me."

"We're always interested in what you have to say, Dot," Angelique said. Mostly truthfully.

Dot glanced around the room at the encouraging expressions, and pulled in a deep breath. "Last night... as I came in from

the donkey race..." She swallowed. "I think I heard a ghost."

Nearly everyone in the room was riveted now. This was better than The Arabian Nights' Entertainments .

But wary, meaning-saturated glances surreptitiously ricocheted between the people in the room who were fairly certain they

knew what Dot had actually heard.

Delilah cleared her throat. "Dot," she said gently. "We've had this conversation. About the wind and drafts. And the fact

that we have no ghosts."

"That you know of," Lucien muttered wickedly.

"That's why I didn't want to tell you!" She wrung her hands. "I knew you would say that, but I'm not a looby, I promise , and I swear to you on our chandelier that it wasn't the wind. The wind can't make a sound like Ohhhhh... Ohhhhh ... Ahhh Ahhhh AaaaAAAUUGG GGGHSimon !"

Her raspy cry of ecstatic anguish seemed to echo endlessly in the ensuing silence.

No one was prepared. In the aftermath, everyone looked around to discover they were all variously covering their heads with

their hands or gripping the arms of their chairs as if a hurricane had blown through the room.

Eyes were unanimously bulging.

Except for Mrs. Cuthbert's.

Alexandra noticed that Mrs. Cuthbert's eyes had rolled back in her head and her chair was teetering.

"Smelling salts! We need smelling salts!" Alexandra sprang up just as Captain Hardy and Mr. Delacorte leaped forward. They

caught Mrs. Cuthbert just as she toppled out.

Her swoon had a soft landing on the carpet, cradled by men.

"I think Dot may have solved our problem," Delilah whispered to Angelique just before she leaped from her chair.

"The Dawsons, or killing Mrs. Cuthbert?" Angelique replied on a whisper.

They hastened to her side with smelling salts.

Alexandra patted her wrists gently. "Mrs. Cuthbert? You're all right. You're safe."

Mrs. Cuthbert gazed up from the carpet at the worried faces ringing her. Two of them, belonging to the Dawsons, were scarlet.

"You are either the strangest kind people I've ever met, or the kindest strange people I've ever met," Mrs. Cuthbert finally

said to them all, woozily.

"I'll get the sherry," Delilah murmured.

"And glasses, too?" Angelique asked her. "For all of us, I think."

"I'm going to drink mine straight from the bottle," Delilah said, only half jesting, as she swept from the room.

After a few moments of tender fussing by the crowd, Mrs. Cuthbert sat up, and seemed to be genuinely enjoying the attention.

"Prudence, dear, I'm so sorry you had a fright." Mrs. Pariseau's knees cracked when she crouched next to her old friend.

"Do you see?" Dot felt vindicated. "I'm not the only one afraid of ghosts. Mrs. Cuthbert is, too!"

Alexandra recalled again what Magnus had said about Mrs. Cuthbert, and it struck her forcibly now as profoundly, matter-of-factly

insightful, compassionate, and frank: Frightened creatures use whatever defenses they have at their disposal . Her throat went thick as she freshly understood where and just exactly how he'd learned that, and how he'd understood her

little episode of throwing things.

"It's very brave to confront so many new things at once," Alexandra told Mrs. Cuthbert. "Anyone might feel a bit overwhelmed."

She shot a look at Mrs. Pariseau, who understood that this was her cue.

"Yes, you're very brave to do something new, Prudence, and a lot of new things at once can be hard on a person when it's been a little while since you've ventured out," Mrs. Pariseau added firmly.

"Do you really think I'm brave?" Mrs. Cuthbert lit up at this notion.

As everyone had noticed the magical reviving effect of the words on Mrs. Cuthbert, they nodded solemnly.

"Dot," ventured Mrs. Dawson, her volume and pitch scarcely above that of a field mouse.

As it was the first voluntary word Mrs. Dawson had ever uttered in the sitting room, everyone's head swiveled toward her.

"Please don't be afraid. It was us. It was Simon and me, you see. We was just being silly and making noise. We didn't mean

to frighten you." Her voice was shaking.

It was a brave, kind thing for Mrs. Dawson to do, as everyone in that room save Dot knew exactly what the Dawsons were doing.

She'd said it because she didn't want Dot to be afraid for a moment longer.

Dot's immense relief was clearly tinged with just the slightest bit of disappointment.

"Oh! I'm glad you're enjoying yourselves here at The Grand Palace on the Thames," she said more cheerily. "I'll go fetch the

book."

She whisked out of the room just as Delilah returned with the sherry and glasses.

Mr. Pike was bringing in the lamp from its hook when Magnus finally returned to The Grand Palace on the Thames for the day.

As his footsteps echoed across their black-and-white marble foyer, he cast a somewhat wistful glance at the sitting room,

which was quiet and dark now.

In every quiet moment, the aftermath of last night visited him in fleeting, blinding surges: Exultation. Lust. Wonder. Uncertainty.

Fear. Anger. Lust again. The kind that tensed his every muscle and seized his lungs and made his head feel as though it might

launch from his body. It had seemed almost sacrilegious to go about his day on the heels of an event that felt as life-altering

as buying his commission or getting shot in battle. But perhaps he was only mythologizing what had just been a very satisfying

tumble.

For a man accustomed to making clearheaded decisions and moving on from them, he felt hobbled by his uncertainty, as if it

was a dislocated limb. He was wise enough to know that no man could be trusted to be clearheaded about anything after a night

of extraordinary sex.

Two days ago he had not been an earl; today he was. He felt no different. How odd it was to know that he was now the owner

of estates in Kent and Surrey associated with his new title, and wealthier than even he had ever dared dream.

And yet rather than dwelling on this, more than anything he'd wanted to know whether Alexandra's day had been similarly haunted by the memory of last night.

He'd meant to return to the boardinghouse much earlier. Five years was a long time to be away from London, and it seemed everyone

wanted something from him: a meeting to discuss affairs of state or parliamentary affairs, or just to thank him, or to reminisce,

and he found it difficult to deny them the time. He'd been briefly to White's, and there he'd been compelled to hold court

for a time by young men who'd hung on his every word. How grateful he was that he'd become someone who was considered to possess

anything like wisdom, as well as skill.

He supposed that eventually all the disparate details of his life would assume some sort of routine. He could do some good

in parliament.

Ironically, he found himself instead wishing he could go to New York and stay awhile, in a place civilized enough to be comfortable,

but where few people would recognize him at first sight. A blank canvas of a place, where he could discover who he might be

if he wasn't leading men into battle. Who he might be if he wasn't mourning a marriage that had never bloomed.

He found it difficult to imagine any future right now, in this moment.

His most important—and fruitful—meetings today had been with an editor of The Times and the Duke of Brexford to sort out a bit of business. He had accomplished what he'd hoped to, and oh, it had cost him. But in the end, he had simply been unable to help himself.

He had also, for reasons he refused to examine too closely, stopped into his favorite London barber today for a close shave.

Save from the low glow of the remains of the fire, the suite was dark when he entered. So Alexandra had gone to sleep.

Perhaps this was for the best.

He set to stripping off his coat and cravat and waistcoat and shirt in preparation for toppling into bed, and put them away

in his room. He briefly closed his eyes and paused by the fire instinctively as a cat to savor the last of its warmth on his

bare skin. To this day it remained a reflex to snatch up every fleeting sensual pleasure he stumbled across as if it was a

coin shining in the street.

When he opened his eyes again, he looked toward Alexandra's door.

It was ajar.

His heart gave a single, hard jolt.

He stared at that hand's span width of darkness like it was the entrance to Aladdin's cave in The Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

He suddenly, absurdly resented that everything here at The Grand Palace on the Thames was so well maintained, so smoothly

oiled and meticulously dusted. He would never have heard the door creak.

But his instincts told him it wasn't an accident.

And now his heart accelerated.

If it wasn't an accident, was it an invitation?

A test?

Or... a trap?

The bear trap sort of trap, that would clamp over his heart?

Christ. It was just a door.

But he now couldn't breathe for yearning toward that dark space and the possibilities that lay behind it.

He didn't see how touching her again would lead to anything but more confusion and pain for both of them. He knew definitively

that she still possessed the power to hurt him. This had been an unwelcome revelation. Only fools courted pain. He'd had enough

for a lifetime.

And thus began a dialogue between want and reason. Sex was bliss and forgetting, wasn't it? A function of biology. It needn't

have meaning or import. It needn't be part of the arc of a story , with ramifications.

He thought of Corporal Dawson and his wife, who made love like they'd discovered it, like they were the very first humans,

and suddenly he had his answer: Life is short. Pleasures are for seizing.

The next breath he pulled in was hot.

It shuddered out slowly as he moved toward the door and pushed it open.

The fire in her room had burned down to embers, too; an orange glow traced the far edge of the bed. Everything else was lost

in velvety, inky shadow.

He hovered just inside the doorway indecisively, and listened for the sort of steady breathing that would tell him whether she was sleeping. Waiting for the shadows to evolve into shapes. Waiting for a definitive sign.

But he could hear nothing. Apart from—he could have sworn—his own heart beating.

He inched toward the darkest edge of the bed and stopped as his thigh met the edge of the mattress. And there he stood, held

in a vise of indecision and lust.

If he were any other sort of man there would be no hesitation: he would climb into bed and demand that the woman he'd married

satisfy him.

With the increasing chill on his bare torso came the dawning conviction that he'd deluded himself. The open door meant nothing.

And this tiptoeing into the room and agonized pondering was unworthy of him as a man.

He tensed his muscles to turn to leave.

His breath arrested in his lungs when something brushed the fall of his trousers.

He froze, breathing shallowly.

The bedding rustled as she stirred, raising herself up on her elbows.

And he stood absolutely motionless, scarcely breathing, as Alexandra worked open a button on his trouser fall.

And then another.

And then the next.

His cock stirred against the brush of her fingers as, one by one, she freed the buttons from their buttonholes. Neither one of them said a word. He didn't assist, move, or breathe. As though if he did, she might change her mind.

The last button freed, he pushed his trousers down to the floor and stepped out of them. She raised the blankets so he could

slide beneath.

They turned to each other immediately.

Which is when he realized that she, like he, was completely, gloriously nude.

He gathered her into his body, claiming her completely at once. They laced their limbs. She draped her leg over his thigh.

Groin to groin, face to face, they merely held each other like this for a moment, shocked by and drunk on the feel of skin

against skin. It almost seemed to him like enough, forever. If he died now, so be it.

He set his hands free over the warm, smooth heaven of her: the sharp wings of her shoulder blades, the satiny slope of her

arse, the soft, fuzzed curve outside her thigh and the petal of vulnerable skin inside, skimming the curls of her mound, then

dipping to play in the slick heat they covered.

Her breath fell swiftly, hotly on his neck, where she'd tucked her head; he felt every catch of her breath, every sigh, as

she received pleasure, reveling in it, rippling and arching beneath his hands. He laid his lips against the pulse at her throat,

softly, then drew them up to her ear, and with delicate, purposeful tracings of his tongue and breath, soon had her moaning

softly.

He wanted her to understand just how much pleasure he could give her. How she was made to be touched like this. How he, specifically, knew how to make her writhe from the surfeit of bliss. He brought his skills, his lips, his fingertips, his earthy, sensual hunger to her like offerings.

He filled his hands with the silky weight of her breasts and with his fingers traced hard shapes over her ruched nipples,

and exulted at the sound of her stunned oh as her breath left her. The arch of her body as pleasure pierced through her.

Apart from that, no words were uttered.

In the dark, they could be anyone: any man, any woman, any two creatures who'd stumbled across each other and had gotten it

into their heads to fornicate, rather than two people who had inadvertently ruined each other's lives. It needn't have significance.

It needn't mean surrender. It didn't change a thing.

But she might have noticed that his fingertips trembled as they slowly glided over her skin, mapping out the magical terrain

of her, showing her the secret places where pleasure hid: the crease of her elbows, the fan of her waist into her round hips,

the pearls of her spine, and the little dimple at the base of her spine as it dipped to her arse.

But the way she slowly dragged her hands across his chest, tangling her fingers in the curling dark hair; the way she found and traced with her fingertips the deep gullies between the muscles of his abdomen; and the way her toes dragged along the diamond-hard contours of his calves suggested she had imagined doing all of these things for some time.

Her wandering hand stopped over his heart.

And surely there she discovered for certain what touching her and being touched by her did to him.

So he laced his fingers through hers and guided her hand down to his cock and silently showed her how he wanted to be stroked.

As she dragged her fist again and again along his rigid length, they kissed each other with a tender, searching leisure that

undid him. Surely she felt his groan of helpless pleasure vibrate through her body.

He knew she was close, so he slipped his hand between her legs and stroked until she cried out, her body bowing beneath him,

and he let his hand linger there, savoring every pulse of her release.

He pulled gently from her arms and bridged her with his body.

Instinctively she shifted her body beneath him and opened her legs to welcome him.

With a thrust they were joined, and he moved, this time more deliberately.

In the dark, they could almost pretend all of this was a dream.

And in the morning, if they wished, they could pretend it had never happened, and meant nothing.

But he said her name in a sort of anguish of bliss when he came.

And she held him until he stopped quaking.

For a moment they held each other. This was all he would allow himself: this moment.

Finally, he pulled from her arms, slipped from the bed, and closed the door behind him when he left.