“Are you thinking, Freddy?”
“Quite assiduously.”
He surged up again, his body levering at the waist. His hands found a home at the back of her skull, as his lips met her ear. “Stop,” he growled. “Just do. Just ride me. Do you understand?”
Could she do that? Stop thinking and just do?
He kissed her and that threw every thought out of her head.
“Yes,” she sighed.
He brought her down to the mattress with him, their bodies still joined, and she braced her forearms on either side of him, palms on either side of him, helping her legs with the work faster and faster until they found a rhythm to ride together. It was a bit like riding a horse, but she threw that thought away, too, and focused on him, on the slight shadow of scruff scattered along his jaw, on the overly long hair pooled on the mattress and pillows.
His eyes opened, caught her gaze. He kissed her, and she broke apart. It was like a flash of gleaming silver scissors snipping at every thread that held her tight and yearning together, and once those threads had been snipped, she turned loose and in his arms.
Breathing fast, slicked with sweat, she collapsed atop him. Her every muscle had worked itself to a point of utmost exhaustion. They would work no more. No need to fret over it, though. She liked where she was, draped across this beautiful man in this warm room on this luxurious bed. The bed could be plain as brick, and she would not care because the man who was the most important bit of the mattress beneath her was warm, not soft, but perfect.
She’d done it. She’d made this man her lover, and it was beyond what she’d expected. She’d completed her list, become Freddy the Bold, and now basked in the light of the glowing, talented man feathering languid kisses across her shoulder. She’d finally become a wicked widow. She should feel victory, pure and jubilant. But she did not. Odd to feel so … fragile, as if she’d stepped outside expecting a summer day and found a winter one, bright and sunny to be sure, but … a shock. Wicked? No. She felt raw. Possibly because she’d not known, could never have guessed, that sharing her body like this with him would be a soul-deep thing, beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
Why had the Wicked Widows Guide said nothing of this? Or was it a complication common only to her? She had known passion in her youth, had known the desires of the body and had known them fulfilled, but tonight Grant had shown her perhaps she’d known nothing. John had liked her body in the pristine flush of youth. Grant adored it now, with its curves and loose bits. And that knowledge, that she was adored as she was, that is what raked her raw, what made her feel fragile, an inhabitant of a new world.
This man saw her and liked her. And he’d shown himself to her too. His parentage and interest in inventions, his dabbling in businesses outside the spectacle of the circus. When they’d first met, she’d seen the charming reprobate he showed everyone. In the last year, she’d seen a thoughtful man who paid attention to all who surrounded him, knew what they needed and gave it. Tonight, she saw yet another layer—charming and generous yes, but complicated, too; not a man whose only path in life was performance. He was capable of so much. Teacher, thinker, leader. A good man, one of the best, and he’d shared those hidden bits of himself with her.
Using the last of her remaining energy, she dragged an arm up the bed and swiped hair off his temple, pushing it back from his forehead so she could better study his profile, to see if all those hidden sides were etched on his face or hidden well in grins and winks.
“You’re thinking again, Freddy darling.”
“No. Just looking.”
His fine lips curved up, and she kissed the tip of his smile. What would she do with all this new knowledge? What did it mean to kiss the smile of a man you—
She swallowed hard and rested her cheek on his chest. She could think about that later. About the way his arms curved possessively abound her, putting action to the possessive glint in his eyes she’d glimpsed earlier. She could think how he could not possess her because no man ever again would.
No reason to think on those things now. She put them in a pocket and saved them for later. She would pull them out while knitting something or other that would not look like what it was supposed to. Only then would she knit dropped stitches around those questions, attempting to shape fine little answers before she put them back into her pocket for safe—if sorrowful—keeping. Later.
For now, she would do something she had rarely done in life. She would lay still and quiet, and she would simply be. She would let happiness be without questioning it or poking it or thinking about when it might fail.
“Freddy darling,” he mumbled near her ear, “rest while you can. I must be at Garrison’s in three hours’ time, and I expect to make good use of those hours, sparse as they are.”
“Oh?” She drew a line of need down the strong column of his throat.
“Oh, yes. How about we bathe you next?”
She nodded, her cheek rubbing against the hair of his chest. A bath sounded lovely, and his hands on her without pause for the next three hours sounded even better.
Eight
Grant let the little girl trot the horse out of his reach. She sat tall and confident in the saddle, and though he’d watched over her for barely three riding lessons so far, he trusted her. She rode with a natural talent he admired but also with a caution he respected even more. She thought before acting, and what a valuable skill that was. He’d keep an eye trained on her, call her back if she went too far. Her older sister ran beside her, bonnet flapping behind her like a cape.
The other eye he’d train on her mother, his lover. He’d rarely taken a woman to his bed more than once, and certainly not as often as possible in the span of a fortnight. Single-night love affairs were best for keeping a love-yearning heart unattached. But if Freddy was not in his bed, he was unsatisfied. With the bed, with the day, with sleep, with waking, with life.
He paused on the path, budding branches swaying softly above him, and waited for her to catch up. The sun shone golden, igniting her hair into a pure riot of light, and she looked sleek and happy, the corner of her lips tipped up in an uncomplicated smile, her eyes dancing with memories.
Hopefully of him.
She caught him watching her, and a sweet, pink blush rushed across her cheeks. Definitely of him. Good.
One short step brought him up beside her, and he shortened his strides to match her pace. “Will you come to me tonight?”
