Withhim.
He couldn’t hold his seed, felt his climax climbing his shaft with every rhythmic roll of her hips. And then it was upon him, and he groaned against the tender flesh of her breasts, shuddering with the force of it, his hands seizing her hips to prolong the exquisite friction, draw out the bliss.
His heart thundered. His breath misted her dewy skin. He’d come in his trousers, just as she’d promised he would. Butshehadn’t come.
With a little sound of self-satisfaction, she peeled his right hand from her hip and drew it to her bare thigh, guiding his fingers beneath her rumpled skirts until he touched the hot, wet heart of her. The evidence of her own arousal slicked his fingers, and he marveled at the softness of her private flesh. Her breath hitched as she taught him how to touch her, how to manipulate that tiny bead of flesh at the apex of her thighs with his fingertips until her face and throat and those lovely breasts glowed with a rosy passion flush. Until her thighs trembled, and her head fell back, and she released his hand entirely to grip his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin through the linen of his shirt.
“Yes,” she said, in adreamy tone. “Yes, just like that—yes,yes—” A gasp. A sigh. Unfeigned pleasure slid across her beautiful face. Beneath his fingers there was the delicate pulse of female flesh, the tiny contractions of her release. Brought about byhisclumsy hands.
Her trembling fingers framed his face as she wilted in spent repletion. Her lips touched his temple; gentle, fond. “Ah, you good boy,” she sighed. “I knew you had it in you.”
∞∞∞
“It isn’t my intention to be rude,” Captain Sharp said, his voice still somewhat ragged, no doubt owing to the staggered pitch of his breath which had not yet returned to its even rhythm. “But I really do have to change my clothes.”
Yes; he seemed as though he would be the fastidious sort. “Not just yet,” Charity said. “You cannot abandon your lover so soon afterward. You will give her the impression she is unwanted. It’s a messy business, I’ll admit. But you can endure it for just a few minutes, can you not, Captain Sharp?”
“Probably—after that, I mean to say—it would be acceptable for you to call me Anthony.”
She smiled, charmed. “Anthony, then, if you please. You dohave to let me go, however. I’ve a feeling you could very much benefit from the after bits.”
“The after bits?” He did release her, though the sluggishness with which he did suggested it had been a difficult thing to make himself do.
She eased off of his lap, let her gaze drift away from the dark stain upon his trousers lest it embarrass him. “Yes, the after bits. Wherein you lie curled together only to be close. Chat, perhaps, if the mood strikes you.” She shoved her skirts down, shuffled toward the other end of the sofa and stretched out her legs. “Come,” she said as she patted the sofa and turned onto her side. “There is room enough for two.” But barely. It would be a tight fit.
Somehow he wedged himself there behind her, pressing his back against the sofa as if trying to maintain a respectful distance between them. “And this is something your lovers would do with you?” he asked.
“The ones of whom I was fondest certainly did,” she said. “No one likes to feel used. Not even those who are paid for their services.” Charity fished behind her, found his arm, and pulled it over her waist. “There. Isn’t that nicer?”
“Nicer. Yes.” He began to relax somewhat, his chest touching her back as he inhaled. Catching the scent of her hair, she thought. “What are we meant to chat about?”
“Oh, anything. The demands of the day, perhaps, or plans for the coming days. I’ll be kind and let you select a subject.”
“You know my plans already, well into the future.”
“Then you might tell me what kept you so late this evening,” she suggested mildly.
“A meeting with my solicitor,” he said. “A formal accounting of my assets. Properties, estates—”
“What, you didn’t know that much already?”
“Some of it,” he said. “But I have long been out of the country. The only true constant of which I could be certain was my father’s estate in the countryside, our ancestral home. It alone is entailed. My father might have bought or sold any number of other properties in the years since last I knew what our family holdings consisted of.”
“Oh,” she said. “Is that why you offered Hattie—”
“Northall House,” he said. “Yes. Father bought it perhaps ten years ago, for my brother Frederick’s use as a countryside retreat. I didn’t know of it until this afternoon, when its significance was made clear to me.”
“That was kind of you.” She laced her fingers through his, pressed his palm to the flat of her belly. “To give your nieces a permanent home.”
“It should always have been theirs,” he said. “I never meant to take it from them. I never wanted it for myself.”
Of course. He’d wanted to be a duke probably about as much as she had wished to be a duchess. No eager inheritor he; only a bereaved brother and son, forced into the place he now occupied because too many loved ones had been stricken from it before their time.
A lull; a few brief moments of silence. Not unpleasant or uncomfortable. Just a companionable quiet. “Do you miss it?” he asked. “Your career?”
“Certain aspects,” she admitted with a shrug. “I do not miss the lack of privacy, the dependence upon a protector for my security. I do not miss the demands upon my time, of which I was obliged never to complain, since I had been well paid for it. But I do occasionally miss the companionship.” She heaved a sigh. “There is much that goes with being a mistress, and when one leaves that life—well, sometimes there are unexpected sacrifices.”
“Such as?”
