Her hair was soft, and so was her skin, and he, given his dearth of opportunities to take himself in hand and briefly slake his lust, was nearly always half-hard. Physically, Henry was in hell, which was unfortunate, because spending every second of every day with Margo was fucking wonderful.
He’d discovered at some point that Margo’s reticule—she had not brought a travel bag—contained nothing but money, a novel, and a significant amount of cheese, which was the Margo-est thing he’d ever heard in his life. When he’d produced a stoppered bottle of water and a cloth to wash their faces, Margo had been so pleased that it hurt to look at her.
Left to his own devices, Henry probably would have complained—or, more likely, not gone on this half-cocked journey in the first place—but to Margo it was one more adventure in a lifetime of them. She radiated delight. She was equally well-pleased with a pounding rain—“Doesn’t it sound charming on the roof of the carriage? God, I hope the postilion’s all right!”—and a weak watery stretch of sunshine. She pointed at cows out the window, and invented names for them. Repeatedly.
Henry loved it, of course, because he was deranged.
In all the years he had known her, they had often spoken together, alone and in the company of others, but to sit across from her with nothing to do but converse was a new and extravagant pleasure. They were not always in accord—Margo had alarming ideas about Gothic novels and how much sugar was acceptable to consume in a single day—but he was struck anew by how generous she was, how openhearted, how ready to see the good in others.
The only time he was not assaulted by emotion was when he slept, which was not especially comfortable either, given the firm squabs of the post-chaise.
Margo also didn’t seem to be sleeping well at night, because despite the fact that it was four o’clock in the afternoon, she was currently semi-conscious. Every couple of seconds, her head bobbed forward and then jerked back upright. She tried to tilt her head back against the seat behind her, but her ripe-cherry lips went slack, her mouth falling open, and she made an inarticulate sound of discomfort.
It was the sound that overruled his better judgment. “Come on,” he said. His voice was rough, but thankfully Margo was half-asleep and wouldn’t notice. “Get over here.”
Her blue eyes blinked open. “Hmm?”
He reached across the carriage, grabbed her hand, and tugged her toward him. “Put your head on my shoulder. Rest.”
She made a happy sound of assent, then settled herself beside him. She’d kicked off her shoes after their last brief stop, and she curled her stockinged feet up beneath her, nestling into his side.
His heart squeezed. She was warm with sleep, and soft, and trusting as a kitten. Her hair, splayed across his shoulder, was so damned pretty—dark red, almost auburn in spots, mixed up with little hints of copper and pale gold.
She pressed harder against his side, her breasts and belly soft against his arm, and despite himself, heat flared up in his body. He could see the freckles that dotted her neck and the brief expanse of skin above her bodice.
He wanted to kiss each one. He wanted to taste her skin with a kind of single-minded desperation he’d never before known.
Her dark green carriage dress had five hooks at the side seam, mostly concealed to anyone who wasn’t obsessed with the idea of removing the damn thing. He’d had plenty of time to explore a whole range of fantasies about how he would undo those hooks if he could.
Slowly—that was one daydream he enjoyed. He’d slip each hook free and then slide his thumb down the thin white swath of her chemise that was revealed. Her dress would sag down in the front and he’d slip it off her shoulders, his eyes on her face. Then he would follow the fabric as it fell, kiss each fresh inch of her body through her chemise, suck until the muslin was wet and transparent.
When he was less in control of himself—increasingly often now—he imagined taking each half of the dress in one hand and yanking them apart, hooks popping free and Margo’s breasts spilling out like a banquet. He pictured himself shoving her skirts up to her waist and burying his head between her thighs, the globes of her arse in his hands, her quim on his face, her voice breaking in a scream.
Madness. This journey was madness. He was so hard it was an effort not to grip himself through his trousers, though the thought of doing so with Margo sleeping against his side was both horrifying and arousing, in a lust-crazed, forbidden sort of way.
Margo made a sound in her sleep and squirmed against his side.
Henry wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Was she uncomfortable? He turned his body toward her, moving her head from his shoulder to his chest. He eased one arm around her body, trying to make his person a slightly softer resting place for her.
Except now she was in his arms, and the idea of his body becomingsofterwas utterly laughable.
She gave a breathy sleep sigh that went straight to his cock—what didn’t, at this point—and rubbed her nose against his chest like a cat.
The carriage gave a sudden, abrupt series of jerks as they hit a particularly rough section of road. Margo jolted against his body, her sleep-languid form bouncing a few inches off his chest. He tightened his arms around her, trying to keep her from being jostled straight onto the floor.
The carriage rocked again, harder this time, thrusting them both to one side. Henry slid a bit toward the door, and Margo fell atop him, one leg coming across his thigh. She put a hand to his shoulder to stop herself from falling farther, and then seemed to come awake with a start.
She blinked up at him, face flushed and eyelids heavy. “Henry? What—”
She didn’t have time to finish her sentence, because the bloody postilion seemed suddenly bent on taking every rut in the road as hard as possible. She bounced against him, her breasts crushed against his chest, her legs on either side of his thigh. He tried to steady her, which ended with one of his hands wrapped in her hair and the other on the soft curve of her waist.
“Christ,” he said, “sorry, Margo, I’m not—”
“No,” she said, bracing her hand against the seat back behind him as the carriage continued to sway, “it’s my fault, I’m—I’mtryingto stop—”
And then she looked up and Henry looked down, and he stopped thinking coherent thoughts.
His face was a hairsbreadth from hers. Her lips were parted, and her breath was coming too fast, and her blue eyes were a little glassy, and probably he was addled, but she looked—she looked—
