“Everything.”
She nodded, inhaling as if bracing herself, then reached for the fall of his breeches. He placed his hands on her shoulders as she worked, watching the top of her head rather than where her hands were. She knelt to pull down his breeches, and he stepped out of his shoes and stockings as well. When she reached for his smallclothes, her hands shook.
“Are you frightened?” he murmured.
She paused and looked at him. “No.”
And he had to clench his jaw. That frankness, those wide gray eyes above freckled cheeks, looking at him so innocently, without guile or disguise, nearly undid him.
She took off his smallclothes, and he kicked them aside, entirely nude now.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
He looked at her, kneeling at his feet, her face so close to his crude erection, and several thoughts came to his mind, but in the end, he held out his hand to her. “Come here.”
She rose, placing her hand in his, and he led her to the bed. He threw back the covers and laid himself down on his back, propped against several pillows. He pulled her down beside him so she was sitting on the bed, her gown bunched around her folded legs. “Make yourself comfortable.”
“I am.”
He wanted to smile but found that the rigidity of his muscles prevented him. “Then touch me.”
“Here?” She placed her palm on his chest, trailing her fingers through his chest hair.
“Yes.” He watched her face as she explored, circling a nipple. She looked intent, solemn like a little girl mastering a needlework stitch.
“Does it feel sensitive? Like mine?” she asked.
He half closed his eyes. “It’s sensitive.”
She nodded and stroked lower, following the trail of his body hair to below his navel. Here she hesitated again, looking uncertain.
He waited, not prompting her anymore. Slowly she ran her fingers through his pubic hair, drawing ever closer to his cock. When at last she touched him—too delicately, too softly—he let out a sigh.
Her eyes darted to his face, watching him as she traced up his shaft. He held her gaze, though he wanted to close his eyes at the sensation of her warm fingers on his flesh. When she reached the head of his cock, she looked down again, bending closer as if fascinated.
“It’s so hard,” she murmured, circling the helmet. “Does it hurt?”
“No.” His mouth twisted. “Not as long as it’s eventually assuaged.”
Her eyes rounded. “You mean it stays like this until—”
He laughed rustily—it was that or howl. “No. It, ah, goes away after a bit if there’s no stimulation.”
“Stimulation.” Her brows drew together as she watched her fingers wrap about his length.
“The sight of a pretty woman, the sound of her voice, the feel of her hand,” he said.
“Any pretty woman?” She frowned.
Ah, it wasn’t funny, not with his cock in her small, sweet hands, but his mouth quirked. “Some more than others.”
“Hmm.”
He cleared his throat. “You can stroke it.”
She tentatively rubbed him with her fingers.
“More firmly,” he murmured, and wrapped his hand about hers to show her. He brought both their hands up his cock, strongly enough to move his skin over the stony flesh beneath, and then down again. He let go of her hand.
She did it again.
“Ye-es,” he hissed.
“You like that?”
“God, yes.”
She worked him, and he lay like a pasha among the pillows, letting her pleasure him. He watched her through slitted eyes, her prim hair still in its bun, her serious expression, and the shockingly raw sight of his bare cock between her hands. And he might’ve let her complete him, but then she leaned closer and with one finger touched the tip of his prick, where the clear liquid had begun to leak. He was strong and had quite a bit of willpower, but he wasn’t made of stone.
He jackknifed up, grabbed her about her middle—ignoring her startled squeak—and twisted to put her facing the headboard of the bed.
“Hold on there,” he ordered in a guttural voice.
Thank God she obeyed without questioning what he was about, because he wasn’t going to last long in any case. She was up on her knees, and he simply flipped her skirts up over her hips. He ran his hands over her sweet arse, reveling in the feel of silky flesh.
“Part your legs for me,” he said, and she widened her stance with a gasp.
He touched her there, between her thighs where she was the softest, the most tender, and he parted the wet folds, revealing the gleaming center. He heard her whimper. That’s what he wanted, his woman, bent over, wet and waiting for him. He took his cock in hand and guided himself to her. Christ! She was so tight, so slick. He felt sudden moisture in his eyes, and he closed them so she wouldn’t see. This was mating, a good and proper fuck, nothing else.
But even as he worked his flesh into hers, he knew that he lied to himself. Everything about her—her scent, her feel, her warm body, and her small panting sounds—meant something more to him. Home. She was home and he’d returned to her.
He pushed the odd thought aside as he shoved the rest of his length into her. He grasped the headboard on either side of her arms and enclosed her within his embrace. She shivered, and somehow that little movement was the final straw. He began thrusting, hard and fast, the feel of her slippery flesh around him, holding him so tightly, sending him completely out of control. She arched her hips, pushing back at him, and he leaned forward, biting her nape to keep her steady. She gave a cry, high and helpless, and then her cunny was flexing about him, milking his cock as she came.
He growled deep in his throat and felt his balls draw up tight as he released himself within her. Even then he didn’t stop but kept humping her as he filled her with his seed. When finally he fell to the side, every bone in his body was liquid. He had only enough presence of mind to clutch her to his chest as she snuggled against him.
And then he fell asleep.
HER BEDROOM WAS nearly black when Beatrice woke. Her stays were poking into her side. She’d fallen asleep fully dressed. She turned her head and saw the glow of the fireplace embers and then felt the shift as Reynaud moved beneath her hand. Carefully, quietly, she rose from the bed. He lay, sprawled nude, on her sheets as if he had every right. She smiled a little sadly. He’d probably say this room and this bed belonged to him, too.
Beatrice shook down her skirts and left the room. No doubt she was quite rumpled, and she wouldn’t like to meet anyone in the hallways, but it must be past midnight by now, and she didn’t think she would. Farther down the hall was Uncle Reggie’s room, the crack beneath the door dark. She felt a pang of regret that they’d parted on such a sour note at dinner. Would he ever come to terms with Reynaud’s reappearance? Would he forgive her for the choices she’d made—and would make in the future?
She’d lived in this house for years, and she had no need of a candle, even in the near total darkness. She felt her way to the main staircase and crept down like a mouse. On the main level, a footman passed in the hall below, making his way toward the kitchen and the servant’s quarters. Beatrice stood still on the stairs, waiting patiently, and then descended silently once he’d disappeared into the depths of the house. She stopped in the dining room to light a candle from the embers in the fireplace, and then she took it to the blue sitting room. Here she set the single candlestick on a small table. She sank into a settee facing the door and curled her feet beneath her on the seat.
The portrait of Reynaud was directly in front of her. Beatrice rested her chin in her hand, looking at him. All those nights, sitting with him, dreaming of what the man behind the laughing eyes was really like. And now she knew. She knew him, had been his lover, and he was nothing like what she’d imagined in her girlish fantasies. He was hard, sometimes cruel, driven to obtain what he wanted; he was maddening and frustrating. He was also intelligent, caring of those he considered his own—like Henry—complex and baffling and an exquisite lover.
He was a passionate man.
Even if that passion wasn’t for her, she admired it.
Beatrice stared into those black eyes, so physically similar and so spiritually apart from the living, breathing man. Marriage to him would not be easy. There was a very good chance that it might turn into a disaster, in fact. But to save Uncle Reggie, she would take that chance.
The sitting room door opened and Reynaud stepped in, unconsciously standing next to his painted image. He wore his breeches and shirt. His gaze found her, and then he turned to see what she’d been looking at. He studied the portrait of himself for a long moment before looking back at her.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded.
He paced toward her, his eyes never leaving her form. When he was directly in front of her, he stopped and held out his hand. “Will you marry me, Beatrice?”
She placed her hand in his. “Yes.”
Chapter Thirteen
Before Longsword and the princess stood a huge black tower—the castle’s keep. Longsword advanced upon the tower warily, the princess behind him, but the tower remained ominously quiet. A single huge wooden door stood on the tower’s facade, its surface scarred and charred as if it had withstood some terrible battle. Longsword pulled open the door, and beside him Princess Serenity gasped.
For inside the tower, her father the king lay bound in chains. Around the king flew three dragons, each larger than the last. And the smallest dragon was twice as big as the one Longsword had killed just the day before….
—from Longsword
The freshly turned earth was already frosted over, hard, frozen, and final. Beatrice bent and placed her handful of Michaelmas daisies on the grave. There wasn’t a stone yet, merely a wooden marker. The words jeremy oates had been crudely scrawled on it.
“I’m going to marry him,” she whispered to the pitiful marker.
The words were carried away by the wind, whipping through the small graveyard. As if to emphasize her sorrow, the day was overcast and gray. Jeremy’s parents had chosen to bury him in a little churchyard outside of London proper. It wasn’t even a family plot. Perhaps they thought by hiding him so far out of the way, they could forget him altogether. Jeremy would’ve smiled and reminded her that a tiny graveyard was just as good as a cathedral when one was dead.
Beatrice shook her head and frowned fiercely to hold back the tears. Jeremy wouldn’t have cared, but she did. This was no way to memorialize a good man. She closed her eyes for a moment, simply remembering him, and the tears came anyway, whether she wanted them to or not.
When she finally opened her eyes again, her face was cold and wet, and her head was beginning to ache, but oddly she felt better.
She wiped her cheeks and glanced at the churchyard gate. Reynaud leaned against the stone wall there, waiting patiently for her. The drive here had taken over an hour, and he hadn’t made any complaints. Although he hadn’t visited her room in the week since she’d agreed to marry him, Reynaud had made sure to attend her when he could. Of course, he was a busy man. He was in daily consultation with solicitors about the estate and his title, and he met with his friend Lord Vale very often as well. Beatrice frowned. She wasn’t quite sure what they discussed, but she was glad that they seemed to have recovered from their initial animosity.
She knelt to touch the frozen earth over Jeremy’s grave one last time, and then she stood and dusted her hands. In the spring she’d bring some lily-of-the-valley pips to plant here. That would keep him company. Beatrice began picking her way back to the carriage and Reynaud. The little churchyard was sadly neglected, the stone path overgrown with weeds. The wind blew her skirts against her legs, and she shivered as she neared Reynaud.
“Finished?” He put a hand under her elbow to steady her.
