“Ah, well.” She let her shoulders roll in a shrug, and he blew out a breath of relief at the brief reprieve the sheepish words had afforded him. “I’ve had a few rather frank talks with Charity.”
Another pained hiss as she set back in once again, but the expression upon his face was blissful, and his fingers stroked through her hair in praise. “I’m beginning to understand,” he said thickly, “that there are certain unforeseen benefits to having a famous courtesan for a sister-in-law.”
She could feel the strain rising in him once again, in the way his thighs tensed and trembled beneath the clutch of her fingers. The way he braced his feet upon the floor, the fingers upon her neck that had grown significantly less gentle in these last few moments.
With each stroke, each delicate flick of her tongue he seemed to grow harder, thicker. Until at last he rasped, “Mercy. Sweetheart. I’m going to come.”
A last, lingering suck which wrested a groan from his lungs, and Mercy sank back again, once more admiring the flicker of the ruby ring as she wrapped her hand around him instead. Slow, steady strokes, as he’d once shown her himself.
“Do you know,” she said idly, “Charity says a proper apology is best delivered upon one’s knees.” And she had found it fair enough, given that he had got to his to propose properly, once he’d recovered himself enough to do so.
His hands framed her face, warm and admiring. “A wise woman, your sister.” He shivered as her fingers slid down the length of his cock, bit back an intemperate sound. “For what are you apologizing?”
“I shouldn’t have left,” she said. “I just—”
“Panicked,” he said. “I understand. I’m only glad you had somewhere to go where you would be safe. And that Charity was sensible enough to keep you there.”
Which was a rather generous admission from a man who hadonce been so determined to avoid even the tiniest hint of scandal, who had once valued his reputation so highly. “She’s sensible about quite a lot of things, really,” Mercy said, and she let her fingers fall away from him to grab up fistfuls of her nightgown to draw it over her head as she rose to her feet once more. “She has got a tea she brews that is known to prevent conception.”
“Does she?” His lips brushed her shoulder as she climbed over his lap, bracing her knees on either side of his hips. “As I said, a wise woman.”
“She offered it to me,” Mercy said lightly as she settled there, relishing the groan he buried against her throat as she sank down upon him. His fingers dug into the flesh of her bottom, anchoring her as he slid deep, and she came to rest with a sigh of satisfaction. “I didn’t take it,” she added as she wound her arms about his neck, felt the mist of sweat that had broken out upon his hot flesh.
“You didn’t.” The words emerged from his lips in a ragged tone as she rolled her hips, rose and fell in a sinuous glide.
Mercy gave a short shake of her head. “Nine months,” she said. “That’s enough time for it to be just us. Don’t you think?”
Somehow, Thomas managed a quiet, strained laugh. “You’re angling for a swift wedding,” he said, and he pressed a kiss to her cheek, to the point of her chin.
“Oh, scandalously swift,” she said. “As soon as possible. It’s quite fun to sneak about, I’ll admit. But I should like to do it only for the fun of it.”
“Christ. Mercy.” His hands squeezed her hips, held her just a little longer on each downward plunge. His lips found hers through the messy tumble of her hair and he braced his feet upon the floor, rocking up into the fall of her hips so that he stroked her inside and out. “You’re certain of this?”
“Yes. Yes.” She gasped the words as a liquid fire racedthrough her veins. It had been wisest to avoid such a thing when she had been certain that they could not marry. But now—now she had his ring upon her finger, and there were no secrets left between them. “I don’t want you to withdraw at the last.” By the pound of his pulse in his throat, she guessed he didn’t want that, either.
Those first delicious flutters of release began low in her belly, and she felt her back arch into the rapturous glow that suffused her. Thomas’ fingers tangled in her hair, pulling her head down to smother the revealing little cry that slid up her throat before it could emerge. And in those last seconds as every muscle relaxed into sated bliss, she murmured against his lips, “I want a baby.”
He didn’t withdraw. Instead his arms banded about her with the strength of steel, and at last she knew the intimate pulse of him inside her, the fierce tremble of his limbs, the thunder of his heart against her own in those final moments, the quiet groan he muffled against her lips. His breath shuddered from his chest in the aftermath of it, and as if she’d felled him like a particularly stubborn tree, he collapsed onto his back by inches, taking her down with him.
Absently, he rubbed strands of her hair between his fingertips as he draped one arm about her shoulders. “It’s going to have to be averyswift wedding,” he said at last, his voice low and only the tiniest bit disgruntled.
The warmth of her delighted laugh briefly fogged the lenses of his spectacles, and she snuggled against his chest. With the tip of one finger, she traced a pattern just over his heart. “Tell me where you’re staying,” she said. “I’ll come to you tomorrow night.”
“Absolutely not.” Stern Thomas had reemerged, but he softened the crisply-delivered refusal with a kiss to the top of her head. “But I will allow you to help me sneak out later this evening.”
“And sneak in again tomorrow evening?”
“So long as it keeps you safe and sound at home and me off of trellises, yes.” He flopped one hand about, caught up a handful of her counterpane, and yanked it over both of them.
“But we’ll still sneak about just occasionally, won’t we?” she asked, tucking her head against his shoulder with a sigh. “Even when we don’t have to?”
“God, yes. The Season can be interminably boring. We’ll create our own fun.” His hand slipped up and down her spine in soothing strokes. “Mercy,” he said, and she thought she heard a note of concern in his voice. “You were joking, weren’t you? About Florentia and Sherborne.”
She hid a smile against his shoulder. “Hmm.”
“Tell me you were joking.” Increasing tones of desperation now, and a definite twitch in that muscle in his jaw. She wondered idly how long it might take to get that muscle beneath his eye twitching, too.
Mercy rolled her shoulders in a blasé shrug and wedged her knee between his. Her fingertips, still caught in the lazy motion of sketching some curlicue pattern over his heart, moved in a slow path down his chest, and disappeared beneath the cover of the counterpane.
