‘You trust me with your blade?’
‘I do. Take it.’
He was still kneeling. His left hand held her thigh steady while his right pulled out the stiletto, bright and deadly in the moonlight. She was leaning back against the roof, which rose at an angle behind her, and she spread her thighs a little, settling herself more comfortably, offering herself to him. With his left hand he reached out and chose a curl, twirling it around his fingers, brushing her skin with his fingertips as he did so. A tiny moan escaped her. Then he took the blade and with infinite care sliced off the lock, and tucked it securely away in his pocket. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You did not lie when you said it was sharp. I could shave you with it, I should think.’
‘I’m not entirely opposed to the idea,’ she whispered. ‘But I think I might prefer you to do it when the light was a little better.’
‘You doubt my steadiness of hand?’ As he spoke, he sheathed the blade again, holding her once more for safety as he did so,lest the wickedly sharp thing should slip and wound her. But he did not remove his hand when he had done. It lay on her thigh, warm against her bare skin, just above the leather and the lace.
‘Anyone’s hand may tremble,’ she said. ‘I myself… might move.’ She could hardly prevent herself from squirming as she spoke. He would claim her soon, and she was more than ready.
‘It’s true, you easily might,’ he agreed, and he leant forward a little, and pressed an intense kiss on the place from which he had taken the curl. His lips were warm against her, and he was so tantalisingly close to where she needed him to be, his breath feathering across her sensitive skin, making her shiver with anticipation. Her nipples were hard pebbles, aching with desire, and she was wet for him. She could call a halt, even now, but God, she didn’t want to. Then he groaned and buried his face in her, edging forward on his knees and pressing the length of his chest against her legs.
‘Oh, yes,’ she gasped in welcome. ‘Yes.’ With hands that shook, she bunched up the fabric of her gown and petticoats, pulling it up further and pushing it behind her body where her weight would hold it, freeing herself so that she could touch him too, her fingers tight on his head, in his dark locks.
He had a big hand on each thigh now, caressing her tender flesh with his thumbs, spreading her more, and she moaned deep in her throat and moved, so that he could reach her better. He pulled his head back and teased her with his tongue, the very tip of it upon her pearl of Venus. ‘God, so good,’ he moaned, and then, before she had to urge him, he fell to devouring her in earnest, kissing each of her lower lips as he had kissed her mouth, nibbling on them, drawing them in, sucking on her, tonguing up and down between her engorged nub and her entrance. His hands still gripped her thighs but had slid out and round to hold her more tightly, and the sheath of her knife mustbe pressing into him again, but if he noticed it he didn’t seem to mind.
She’d thrown back her head and neck, and could feel the lead of the roof cool beneath her. She felt fierce and primitive and glorious. ‘I could pull out my knife…’ she gasped, very close to losing control, her fingers still tangled in his hair.
His tongue slipped from her, to be replaced by his finger, by two fingers. She arched her back and her legs almost buckled at the strength of the sensations he was evoking in her. ‘Do it,’ he whispered against her core, and then he drew her nub into his mouth and sucked on her hard. ‘Do it!’ he repeated close against her, his clever fingers still working her ruin. ‘In this moment I can’t think of a better way to die.’
She cried out as she came, and he held her and tongued her, prolonging the waves of ecstasy and then burying his face in her once more until the last tiny little spasm had faded. She still cradled his head between her thighs, and after a while she said, ‘If you let go of me, or if I let go of you, I will slide to the floor, and possibly off the roof. You have killed me.’
She could feel him smiling against her skin. ‘Despite your threats, though, I am still very much alive. I’m not the man I was – I may never be – but I live.’
‘Can you stand up?’
‘I doubt it. I should think I’m frozen in this position forever. It has its advantages, there’s no denying it.’ His wicked tongue crept out and licked her long and slow where her thigh met her body, and he whispered, ‘Who needs to stand up and walk about, after all? These things are overrated. I could…’
Sophie tugged sharply on his hair. ‘I’m not asking you to walk about. I had another form of exercise in mind. Just lean against the parapet.’
It was astonishing, how quickly he scrambled to his feet, holding her about the waist so that she did not fall when hereleased her thighs. She subsided to her knees, still a little dizzy, probably not very graceful but he didn’t seem to care, and sat back and looked up at him. He was enormously dishevelled and grinning down at her, his hair in wild disorder, his cravat a wreck, his shirt hanging loose and his knee-breeches a disgrace. Well – not entirely a disgrace. Not where it counted. ‘My lord…’ she said.
‘You won’t be needing the knife now, I hope.’
‘Nor the fork,’ she murmured wickedly, reaching up and working intently at the buttons that closed his breeches fall. ‘But it’s true, I am still hungry.’
‘In that case, how can I deny you?’ he said shakily, and then he said nothing more. He sprang free into her waiting hand, and she looked at him, caressed him, felt the silky skin and hard hotness of him, and liked it all, and bent her head to show him exactly how much.
It was a long while before either of them spoke again, though there were soft, urgent sounds, sighs and gasps, there on the roof, as the moon sailed across the sky and Sophie’s candle, forgotten, guttered and went out.
13
Rafe sat at his desk, a little smile playing across his lips, though he was quite unconscious of it. He was at home – he’d ridden back through the moonlight late last night and fallen into his cool, empty bed, though he hadn’t slept for a long while afterwards. He should be exhausted, but instead he was full of restless energy.
The fine weather hadn’t lasted – it was raining this morning, and the wind was gusting, throwing sudden fierce showers against his library window every now and then. But it was warm here, a small fire crackling in the grate, and blessedly quiet. He was alone except for the servants, about their business elsewhere in the house; his brother Charlie was in Oxford, nearing the end of his first year there, and his sister Amelia had gone on an extended visit to her cousins on her mother’s side. His guardianship was a relatively new thing; they’d only been with him permanently for a couple of years, since their aunt had died, but he was very fond of them both and missed them when they were absent as now. They brought life to the place, and laughter, and all the things his own childhood had to a large extent lacked. They were astonishingly happy and carefree, despite the sadlosses they had sustained, and perhaps this was because they were so far lucky: unlike him, they knew their father not at all. He intended to make sure matters stayed that way, and a great deal of his time and energy was devoted to their care. Today, though, he welcomed the solitude.
It was good to be away from Wyverne Hall for a time, to gain a little much-needed perspective. He couldn’t tell if the powerful emotions and sensations that had overwhelmed him over the last few days were genuine, or some sort of reaction to the torrid atmosphere the place always generated when his father and Rosanna were in residence. He wasn’t someone who normally gave in to his impulses – he’d seen all too clearly where that led – but he’d done so last night, and though he could not regret it in the least he did wonder why. Why this woman in particular affected him so deeply, when he had guarded his emotions and his desires so carefully for so long.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the curl he’d cut from Sophie last night. At the thought of it, let alone the sight, he was instantly hard again, could almost feel the wonder of her mouth on him once more, and his mouth on her delicious wetness. He pushed away the unwelcome thought of how unlike him it was to do such things, to take such a shockingly intimate token, and how like his father. He refused to accept that. He was no libertine. It wasn’t a trophy, proof of conquest, and he certainly wouldn’t be showing it to anyone or boasting of it, as his father undoubtedly would in his place. It was deeply private, he was a deeply private person, quite apart from the fact that his best friend, his only friend, really, was a minister of the Church of England. The thought of sharing such a secret with Simon, or anyone, made him let out a little snort of wry laughter.
But if it wasn’t a trophy, what was it? He looked at the bright curl as he held it, frowning, fighting his insistent arousal, trying to think. It wasn’t as if he needed a souvenir to remember lastnight by; while he lived, he thought he’d never forget it. It was… he wanted to say that it was a pledge. A recognition. She had said, at some point in that incredible evening, that she and he were the same. She’d been talking about an impulse to violence, a desire and a willingness to protect oneself and others in the most primitive of ways, but he realised now that she was right in more ways than that. There had been no missed step in their time together on the roof, no momentary awkwardness. He’d never thought of himself as reckless, he’d had every reason not to be, but he’d been reckless last night, and so had she. They’d been in harmony, wanting the same things, claiming each other, barely needing to put any of it into words. In that magical moment out of time and away from all the world he’d been the man who’d ask for such a token, and she’d been the woman who would give it freely, and – above all – trust him to take it. She had not hesitated or been surprised. She had not laughed or mocked him. It ought to be vulgar – anyone who heard of such a thing would surely think that it was – but in his mind it was very far from that. It had all been so right and so perfect, despite the fact that he barely knew her. And he wanted so much more.
Of course, it could not lead anywhere. It could be nothing more than a brief interlude that he might one day look back on with fondness and no little astonishment that he had ever been so daring. But he could see even now how precious the memory might become.
He looked down at what he was holding. Something about it nagged at him… Good God in heaven. It was the colour.
Sophie had dark hair, dark brown, almost as dark as his own. He’d never thought to question it; her eyes were dark too. But this curl wasn’t dark. It was a bright red-blonde. A most distinctive colour.
