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But it was Margo, so that only seemed right.

He’d shifted down when he’d removed his undergarment, and since he was level with her breasts now, he put his mouth back on her skin. She gave a husky little moan, and he swirled his tongue across the plump weight, tasting her, teasing her. He licked her nipple and then moved down to the soft curve of her abdomen, his teeth finding the line of her ribs.

“Oh,” she said, and her hand went to his hair again. Not to pull him back this time. No, Margo was shoving him down between her thighs.

Now he did laugh, a muffled vibration into the red curls at her sex, and she gasped and arched up against his mouth.

Fuck, this was—more than he had been prepared for. The smell of her arousal was all around him, and somehow his hands had found her arse, and it was perfect, heavy and lush. He pressed his nose against her, licked up into her, and stars exploded behind his eyes. This wasMargo.This wasreal.

She was pleading, begging—he couldn’t make out her words. Her voice sounded raw, and her hips made sharp frantic pulses against his face. He was going to come, probably, his cock grinding into the floor, and he didn’t much care, not when Margo’s cunny was hot and wet and desperate on his mouth.

But her fingers tugged into his hair, pulling him up before she broke.

“I need you,” she said, “please, Henry—”

Her hips rolled. His cock leaped. He had what she needed and he could give it to her—yes, as hard and deep and fast as she liked. He fisted himself—his body jerked—and he pressed the head of his cock to her entrance. Her arousal made her slippery, his body pressing into hers, the first sensation of her hot wet channel around him searing in its pleasure.

But for the first time since her mouth had touched his, he hesitated.

This was something new, something irrevocable. After this, he would no longer be a man who loved Margo, helplessly and from afar. He would be a man who had loved Margo, had loved her in this intimate and consuming way. Had been inside her body.

He could never love her from across the room after this. He would not be able to sit and watch her drink sherry and laugh after some dinner at Number Twelve, watch the candlelight flash sparks off crystal and burn in her hair.

Slowly, slowly, he pushed inside her. It felt impossibly good. Never had he felt such raw, blinding pleasure, such shattering bliss.

She was inside him, too, under his skin, in his heart, and he could not separate his want and his love and his need for her. He could not take a breath without her scent in his nose, and when he pulled back and drove hard into her body, her hips met his stroke for stroke, two halves made one.

The crisis was quick. Almost before he’d been fully seated inside her, he’d felt the coming pulse of his orgasm, and when her body rippled around him, Margo finding her pleasure with a hoarse cry, he blindly withdrew, trapping his cock between their bellies and jerking hard against her, spilling his seed on her skin.

When it was done, he felt a painful, mindless surge of the same instinct that had driven him to warm and dry her. He needed her to be safe, to be protected. He lifted her and the discarded blankets and carried her to the bed.

She laughed and put her hand to his jaw, and the sweet low sound and her touch were more than he could bear. He had wanted too much, for too long—gladness felt like fear. He stretched his body out alongside hers, tugged her head to his chest, and buried his face in her soft, woodsmoke-scented hair.

Chapter 8

Margo was warm when she woke. She stretched against the rough cotton bedsheets, flexing and pointing her toes.

She feltwonderful.She’d slept like the veriest corpse—after two dreadful nights in the post-chaise, this narrow mattress was a small paradise. Even with Henry mostly beneath her—her lips curled despite herself—she’d been deliciously comfortable.

AndHenry—good heavens. A new kind of warmth threaded its way down her body. She would never have expected allthatbeneath his proper exterior. She could feel a faint burn when she squeezed her legs together, from where his stubble had scraped her inner thighs.

In fact, the only thing that troubled her physical contentment was the increasing demand of hunger. Fortunately, she had cheese in her reticule. She hoped it hadn’t gotten too wet. Could cheese get too wet? Or did water sort of run off it as though it had been waxed?

She sat up, the bedsheet falling to her waist. She’d no idea what had happened to Henry’s shirt. She did see Henry, though, dressed only in trousers and kneeling in front of the grate, using an iron to poke at the fire he’d once again built.

GoodLord.In the faint watery light of the morning, Margo could see rather more of him than she’d glimpsed last night, and the sight was spectacular.

Whatdidsolicitors do all day? There was no way that physique emerged from sitting behind a desk. His shoulders were broader than she would have guessed—no padded jackets for him. The man even had visible musculature in hisback.

She chewed her lower lip and wondered again whether she ought to take more exercise.

He’d seemed pleased enough by her form, though. More than pleased. The warmth in her body increased, coalescing in certain places that Henry had seemed to find especially intriguing.

Next time, she thought, she would take the lead. She would use her mouth as he had. Perhaps she would make him tell her precisely what he liked.You,he’d said. She felt her cheeks flush. As endlessly gratifying to her vanity as that was, it was not very specific.

Really, she ought to be hurrying to dress and go after Matilda—but it wasveryearly, by the angle of the sun. They had time. They had time if they were quick—and by the warm heat that had unfurled in her center, the tightness in her belly, Margo felt she could be quick indeed.

Despite herself, a sigh escaped her lips, and Henry practically catapulted from the floor and spun toward her.