She trembled into his chest as the cataclysm took her, and he treasured—treasured—each and every whimper she made, each and every caught breath that blew over his skin. Each and every seize of her quim around his member. “You are beautiful,” he said as she quaked in his arms. “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The most wonderful thing I’ve ever felt.”
My life will be empty without you.
It took longer than a minute, maybe it took two, but after several long, shivering clenches, her climax abated and left her limp and sated against his chest. He continued to be still, save for his arms around her and his hands playing in her hair, because if he moved even a little, if he shoved up just the tiniest bit . . .
“Your Grace,” Eleanor said, tilting her head to look up at him. “You have deceived me.”
“Is that so, little blossom?”
She liked when he called her that, he could tell, even when she ducked her head to hide her smile. “Yes, it’s very much so, Ajax. All that talk about the wickedness and carnality of the Second Kingdom…and yet I’d hardly call you wicked or carnal at all. You were very polite and gentle, maybe like a vicar would be?”
Her teasing was as obvious as it was effective. Patience spent, gentleness spent, they were up and out of the chair in an instant, him sweeping her off to the bed and her laughing the whole way—laughs that melted into moans as he threw her on the bed and climbed between her thighs. He wasted no time in piercing her once again, sliding his organ back into her intimate flesh with a rough shove of his hips. Ah, that felt exquisite, delectable, divine. To rut and fuck, to watch her breasts move with each thrust. To see those dilated eyes, those flushed cheeks, and feel her greedy fingers squeezing his arms, his hips, scratching along his back.
That it was Eleanor, this deviant little blossom who’d awakened him…obsessed him…
“Does it hurt still?” he breathed.
“Yes,” she said. “But I like it.”
Abruptly, he needed all of him and all of her to be one. With a growl, he withdrew and rolled her to her stomach.
“Ajax,” she murmured, sending a look over her shoulder. “What are you—oh. Oh. Fuuuck.”
The curse on the lips of his English rose was both crudely arousing and adorable as hell. He would have smiled at it if he weren’t already mounting her from behind, if he weren’t already watching his thick inches disappear into her rosy cunt. He went slowly, for himself, for all the long, lonely nights of the rest of his life when he’d have only his hand to oblige him. He wanted to remember this sight, with her spread out like this. The delicate camber of her back, the generous curves of her bottom, the tousle of her golden hair.
He never wanted to forget the subtle flex of her upper arms as she braced herself to look over her shoulder at him, nor the swoop of her pert little nose silhouetted against his counterpane. The perfect, sinful feel of her private place gripping his cock, welcoming him in. Tempting him to fill her full of himself.
“I didn’t realize,” she said faintly, moving underneath him. Seeking friction. “I didn’t realize it would feel like this. When I saw it in books—at the Foscourts’—I had no idea…”
She sounded both full of puzzled wonder and already kindled for her next orgasm, and oh, the things he could show her, the things he could teach her, the revelations he could give her.
The sins they could invent together.
The way her eyes had gleamed when he’d described the Kingdom to her, shining with fascination and desire . . .
He couldn’t let himself have more than this. But as he moved over her, laying his body over hers and sliding an arm under her chest as he lovingly held her throat with one hand, he decided he could pretend. Just for a few minutes, while they were joined, mating, skin to skin and heat to heat. Just while he felt her swallow and gasp against his palm as another climax took her, and while he released into her with something like a roar, pumping and spilling and filling…
Only then would he pretend he could love her and she could love him.
Only then would he allow it.
And then, no more.
Chapter Eleven
She slept.
Caged happily in his arms and trapped against his hair-dusted shield of a chest, she dozed off and on, waking to his kisses in her hair or his fingers running along her spine. Twice, they woke together, and twice more she reached those glorious peaks. And afterwards, each time, he’d tucked the blankets around her as tenderly as he had been rough moments earlier, pulled her against him, and caressed her until she’d fallen back into a deep, contented sleep.
It wasn’t until she opened her eyes and realized she was alone in the bed that the harsh enormity of last night came crashing in. The failed escape, the brush with a cold and lonely death. The revelation of the Second Kingdom, and her decision.
The wonderful brutality of Jarrell last night.
No, not Jarrell. Ajax.
Named for the warrior who fell on his own sword rather than live in dishonor, which possibly explained why she was curled up in bed alone, with her arms flung around a cool pillow instead of a grumpy, midnight-eyed duke.
When she sat up, she saw him sitting in a chair by the fire, the cloudy morning light catching the silver threads in his hair. “I’ve sent for a carriage and a change of clothes, and notified your parents of your improved health,” he said without looking away from the fitful, popping embers in his fireplace. “They anticipate your return to Far Hope. However, the carriage’s destination is in your hands, Lady Eleanor. I can take you to Far Hope, where I will arrange for the wedding to be called off, or I can escort you to some other destination, where you may do anything else you please.”
Her two options, according to him. Both leaving her husbandless.
Ajax-less.
What else did you expect?
Still, the disappointment dug into her heart like tiny, awful splinters. Thousands of them, delving into her ventricles and veins. She knew what he was going to say before he said it, and even though she’d expected it—even though she’d formed plans and decisions around it last night—it didn’t make it hurt any less.
She wanted to ask him again, plead with him, to reconsider these certainties he’d made for himself, to reconsider the life of abnegation and suffering he thought he deserved after the people he’d loved had died.
But she would not beg. Not because she was too proud—was anyone too proud to ask for what they wanted when it sat not ten feet away, brooding at a fire?—but because she knew it would be futile.
If last night, with its surging pleasure and bliss, had not been enough to convince him, then nothing would. Especially not her words spoken awkwardly into the weak morning light. No, her mother’s vague ailments and the Pennard Hall renovations had taught Eleanor all about futility and lost causes, and she was not the type of woman to ignore a lesson.
Now you know the future can be whatever you want it to be. She knew what she wanted—even if it couldn’t be with Ajax, she still wanted it—and she knew what price she’d pay to have it. Even if it meant some tense arguments with a certain Dartham heir.
But if she’d renovated an entire estate on her own, there wasn’t any reason she couldn’t persuade Gilbert to see things her way if she tried hard enough. Right?