“I don’t give a damn what a good future duke does or doesn’t do if it’s not what I want to do. Or don’t want to do for that matter. Since I’m the future duke, shouldn’t I make the rules for what they do? Or don’t do. Am I making sense?”
“What about Lady Willow, then? You’ll ruin her! You can’t.”
“The lady does not want to marry me. In fact, she implied that life married to me would be a tedious chore.” He looked about the room. “In fact, I think she looks forward to the excitement of a scandal. But I don’t intend to visit one upon her. I’ll do all in my power to prevent it, color her the victim and me the villain.”
Henrietta scoffed. “A difficult task when men are always considered innocent in such things.”
His brows furrowed, an oddly adorable gesture. He meant it when he said he’d protect Lady Willow, and the knowledge of his kind heart spurred her hand to reach to him, to soothe his worried brow.
At her touch, his face relaxed into a smile. He intertwined their fingers and laid them in his lap. “Henrietta, I—”
“You still love me?” He’d said so, but she still could not believe it.
“Of course.”
The same words he’d said last year, but oh how different they sounded this time. While they’d shattered everything before, now they weaved it back together. How did time melt away? She felt a year younger, a year lighter. She embraced the moment. And him, running the fingers of her free hand through his hair until she cupped the back of his neck.
Surely, she dreamed. Surely, she’d wake up any second, alone and aching for him. She’d had enough similar dreams to know the frustration of waking up longing for the man who broke her heart. But he hadn’t broken her heart. Or, he hadn’t meant to do so. And he’d come after her. Last night, she’d been able to do nothing but reel from the revelations.
Today one truth shone clearly out of the fog—he loved her. And she still loved him.
But he would be a duke one day—that would never change.
And she was still a tradesman’s daughter. No, a businesswoman in her own right. That, too, would not change.
They were completely incompatible in social terms, no matter the synchronicity of their hearts.
That would never go away, and the pressure of the truth threatened to drag her into a black hole of eternally unfulfilled longing.
But his warm body pulled her out of the dark. His soft inquiry—“Hen?”—drove her away from these unpalatable truths.
She pulled herself up and kissed him.
He cupped her cheeks with both hands and leaned into the kiss, sliding his tongue along the contour of her bottom lip before sucking it gently between his teeth. Then he pulled away a breath. “I stopped pursuing you because of your fool of a brother,” he said, “but I never stopped loving you.”
She kissed him again.
The kiss tasted sweeter this time, as if a year’s worth of bitterness and hurt had been stripped away. He tightened his arms around her, nothing—not a misunderstanding or a lie or a duke’s heiress—between them.
She wanted what they had never had a year ago—a consummation. Her body had been waiting for this, and it refused to wait any longer.
Surely, he felt the same. His hands roamed everywhere, pushing her bodice down and pulling her hemline up. She ripped at his cravat. She needed to feel, to experience, every inch of him. He pushed against her more fervently, and she matched him. Then they fell backward and clothing fell to the floor. Soon, skin remained the only barrier between them, and the intimate contact seemed to still their bodies. They lay skin to skin, his weight resting heavily atop her, a delicious pressure. The air grew heavy with their pants, and she found herself unable to look away from the brown eyes peering intently down at her.
Then the heat from his body grew too intense, the yearning inside her too potent. She wriggled against him, and he gasped. “Henrietta, be still.” He laughed. “We must go slow.” With a giant breath, he rolled off her and onto his back.
She rolled, too, reaching for him, for the hard, wide planes of his chest, his corded arms, the line of golden hair trailing down, down, down.
He playfully swatted her hands and held them loosely in his own. “Are you sure? Entirely sure?” She’d never seen his eyes so serious. No, she had. The day he’d learned of his brother’s death.
She closed her eyes, thinking. Did she want this? Unequivocally, yes. She stroked a finger across his collarbone, traced the bunched muscle over his shoulder, and followed the contours down his arm and to the flat expanse of his palm. He did not have the fingers of a gentleman. They were short and rough. She liked them very much indeed. She kissed them one at a time. “I’m very sure,” she said between kisses.
He leaned forward, placing a warm, lingering kiss on her forehead. “But we must go slowly, love.”
His hands may not mark him a gentleman, but his mind didn’t know that. In every way that mattered, he was good and kind, gentle. “What do you want to do, Grayson?”
“It’s right we—”
“No, not what is right to do. What do you want to do? Right now? With me?”
