“Sophie, listen to me. You have to decide. If we take what we want this night, there is no turning back. You will have to accept me as your husband. If you want to remain alone and navigate your own destiny, then I will leave now. There is nothing that would pain me more, but I would do this for you.”
“But, if you leave now, everyone will assume we’ve, we’ve, you know—”
“If you decide you do not want a life with me, I promise no one will speak of this night. I will return to a guard position with my men and no one will ever know what has passed here. They will accept what I tell them.”
“What will you tell them?”
“That I have delivered your naughty little dog and made sure you are well before re-joining them.”
“And they will accept your word, just like that?” Sophie gave an impatient brush to the tears pooling in her eyes.
“Howick’s guards are discreet to a man. My men would die before spreading tales, but there would be a price.”
“What price?”
“They would beat me senseless for not making you my wife.”
“Then it is settled.” Sophie took his mouth again in a long kiss and wrapped one long, delicious leg across his hip.
Arnaud satisfied himself that her legs were indeed delicious in a few minutes when he crawled beneath the quilt and kissed his way along both insides of her tender thighs. He ignored her frantic squirms and the fluttering of her hands trying to raise his head to the level of her own lips. He took his time and stole one last kiss at the warm melting wetness at the apex of those thighs before joining her again above the quilt.
He rolled Sophie close and positioned her just where he wanted her at his cock. “If you are determined to be Mrs. Bellingham before tomorrow ends, then you will join me here.” In one swift move he rolled himself onto his back, placed her above him, and carefully positioned the tip of his cock at her heated entrance with her legs to either side of his hips.
Her startled eyes stared a question. “Since it appears you’ve never entertained an eager fellow like him, you are now his master, milady.” He eased her forward a bit so that she could slide against him.
Sophie was terrified to make any move at all, but a tentative rock against the head of his member caused him to slide into her wetness. She tried another, deeper slide, but met with resistance and a little pain. What she wanted, and had no idea how to sate, appeared just out of her grasp.
Arnaud gritted his teeth and clenched his hands at his sides. He’d wanted Sophie for so long while denying any claim on her happiness. He would, by damn, wait until she found her release.
She leaned down to Arnaud’s lips and whispered into his mouth, “Please, help me. I don’t know…”
He wrapped his arms around her then and pulled her to him while thrusting upward. He stopped suddenly at a little squeak from her, and then thrust again. She rocked against him and let a little whimper escape. She was his.
Now she raised up onto her knees, let her head fall back and rocked in unison with him. A few minutes later at her moan of release, he tried to temper his own wave of pent-up need but instead thrust hard several times and filled her with his seed.
Arnaud regretted losing control and possibly leaving her alone with a child when he returned to sea, but he imagined he could hear his grandfather, the pirate, utter a single word. “Yes.”
Morning light billowed through the lace curtains covering the full window in Sophie’s bedroom. Shadow and sun crashed through the lace, painting the quilt covering Arnaud and Sophie with wildly distorted patterns.
A short thought hovering at the back of Arnaud’s mind circled around and slapped him hard. He could not dally with this woman. He had to make Sophie his wife, and he had to do this right before he lost control.
He rolled out of her narrow bed and yanked on the pieces of his uniform, now discarded in heaps across her chamber.
Sophie raised off the bed at the noise he made and a tiny frown formed on her beautiful face framed by disheveled long dark curls.
“Don’t. Where are you going?” She leaned out of bed and reached for him.
“No. This has to be done, and properly, otherwise, I’ll never hear the last of it.”
“No matter what you said last night, this is just between the two of us. It is not the affair of anyone else.”
“Miss Sophie, I beg to differ.”
“Who then?”
Arnaud sank to one knee on the hard wood floor next to her bed and held up the fingers of one hand. “Let’s see. There are the Howicks. He could have me banished to a hulk prison. And then, Sir Thomas. Don’t forget, he is a very powerful barrister. He would never forgive me for ruining you. He could have me thrown in Old Bailey. And then there are my men. I’m fairly certain they would take me out and beat me to death if I walked away from you now. And the most dangerous to my own person? My mother. You donotwant to find yourself in her ill regard.”
“Yes, but all of those people do not signify. All that matters is what we are to each other.”
