“What doyouneed, Clara? Right now? If I deserve happiness, then tell me that, because giving you what you need will bring me the most joy. I’ll?—”
“Distraction. As you needed the other night.” She slipped off the bench and dropped to her knees before him. “The taste of you on my tongue.”
He tried to pull her back up beside him, but she wedged her shoulders between his legs, her fingers flying to his fall. Clever fingers. They flicked open his buttons before he could drag her back onto the bench, and once they’d done that, freeing his cock, no way in hell could he tell her no. He hissed in a breath and wrapped his hands hard around the edge of the bench, letting his legs fall as wide open as they could. Her fingertips on him tightened his skin, his every muscle. They dragged up and down before wrapping around, squeezing gently. Bloody hell. He was going to spend before she’d even… Would she, though? Or?—
She did, wrapping her lips around his cock and taking him into her mouth. Hell, what sweet heaven she’d flung him to. Heneeded to touch her, the desire visceral and painful until he sank his hands into the cool silk of her hair. His ardor not cooled. Far from it. He strained not to tighten his hands into fists and tug her hair as she dragged her teeth lightly up his length, swept her tongue over the tip.
She knelt before him, yet she possessed complete control. Surely this did not distract her, surely he should?—
No. He threw all such notions of self-sacrifice out the window behind him and fisted his hand in her hair, guided her, showed her the rhythm he wanted. Hot and wet, sparks like fireworks behind his closed eyes. Her hands stroked up and down his thighs, kneading his muscle, soothing the ache always just slightly present where his scar wound around his leg, marking him forever. No, maybe not forever. Her touch remade him there, reshaped that old wound, replacing the constant hum of pain with the sweet prick of pleasure.Shemarked him forever with her little sucks and licks and squeezes. And then, when the pressure built too high, the pleasure wound too tight, he thrust hard, finding his release.
After a moment, she rose and sat in his lap, folding her body into his, winding her arms around his neck, resting her head on his shoulder.
“You,” he panted, “you next, love.”
She shook her head.
He held her tight, squeezed, inhaled to fill his body with the scent of her. “I’ll protect you.”
“I know.”
His heart thumped loudly in his chest, and hers did, too, two drums beating madly next to each other, creating a new rhythm.
“I mean… Clara, I mean that I will not leave yet. I won’t leave at all?—”
She froze, her body turning to stone in his arms. Not even breath left or entered her body. “I cannot ask that of you. I can’t trap you.”
He pushed a wisp of hair off her forehead. “Trap me? There’s still much to be done at the dower house. I grossly underestimated the completion date. We’ll be working several months more. At least.” He kissed her temple, something like joy blooming in his heart, something like hope. Before meeting Clara, his only hope had been in the prospect of leaving one day. Only the thought ofsomewhere elsehad held salvation. “I will not leave until we are sure of your safety. And Alfie’s. Until we are sure Lord Tefler cannot separate you.” That more important than any sort of pilgrimage he’d previously planned.
How odd. But how right.
“Until.” There was her exhalation, whooshing her body back into life. “Until.” A sorrowful little word. “Thank you.” Somehow those words sounded sadder.
God, his throat felt tight. He dropped his head back, thinking to release a sigh. A song came out instead. “Until the morrow comes, until the sun shines bright, until the winds cease wailing, my love, I’ll hold you tight.”
She burrowed her face into his chest and cried.
Snow fell from a midnight-black sky when Atlas left the house. The flakes looked like stars falling from the heavens, and they gathered like little constellations on the shoulders of his greatcoat for just a moment before melting into the wool. He’d left Clara sleeping soundly in their bed, and he’d left without giving much thought to his actions.
One leg in front of the other while the cold world slept until he reached the dower house. He shivered when he stepped inside, shaking icy water droplets from the folds of his coat and tossing his hat onto a table. Darker here, colder, too, without the banked fires and sleeping bodies at Briarcliff. He made a circle round the room as his eyesight acclimated to the dark. The door had creaked when he opened it. Needed oil. And… did that last step creak, too, beneath his boot? He’d need to ensure the floor was sound. Tear it up if he had to. Replace it. The window stuck, and… perhaps Tobias had the right of it, the ornamentation in this room needed further attention. Renters would want the pomp of a dower house owned by a marquess.
He made his way upstairs to the room he’d finished earlier that week in a bout of moonlit madness. Wrong, all of it wrong. A space between the molding and the ceiling, tiny, but visible. He should have done it in the daylight, done it right.
He still had time.
Atlas dragged the ladder to the wall, grabbed a crowbar from the hallway, and stripped it all down.
Twenty
April 30, 1823
Sweat dripped down Clara’s brow as she bent over her most recent project. Sun sliced through the window like a yellow knife, sitting heavy across every bit of her exposed skin, heavier on that hidden by layers of muslin. Lovely, though, after such a frigid winter. She’d thrown the window open wide to let birdsong inside. The happy cries of Alfie romping in the yard the music that moved her while she worked.
She stood and wiped a droplet of sweat away with her forearm. Yes. Every line of her new creation seemed right.Wasright. Quite possibly, she’d outdone herself with this piece. Perfectly serviceable, and even more uniquely suitable for the recipient.
Atlas.
He had seemed happy over the last several months. But then Atlas always seemed happy. If one looked no further than his jolly, roguish grin. One never knew how deep his happiness stretched, whether it skimmed the surface like a skipping stone or dropped deep below, settling in the very bottom of his heart.
