She realized it was just her very being.
She basked in the sensation, drowsing while the maids came in and made her fire and brought the tea, then slipped out again.
The real world and its concerns would leach through.
She lay still, and thought:
Dear Mama,
He called me extraordinary.
But I don’t think I am. How can I be? I did not resist.
I thought about it. I truly did. You raised me to be a good and cautious girl, and as the years go by, the reasons for that seem all too clear. I only know that I wanted him—him—more than I wanted to be good. What does that make me? We tend to label things, don’t we?
But what we did was extraordinary.
And it didn’t feel wrong.
“Buonasera, Miss Wylde.”
“Buonasera, Your Grace.”
She settled herself into the chair gingerly. Parts of her were still a little tender. She hadn’t slept nearly enough, but she’d had a lot of coffee this morning at breakfast, and the net result was that everything seemed both hazy and more pronounced.
She looked at him, with his smooth, clean-shaven face that had scraped her only hours earlier as she’d kissed him, and thought last night and this moment were like the difference between backstage and onstage.
Suddenly, however, it was difficult to know which was more real: the feverish, firelit naked grappling, or this: the duke in his spotless black coat and cloud-like cravat, looking as coolly brisk and unapproachable as he had the day she’d met him.
Except for his eyes.
As far as his eyes were concerned, she was a feast.
But only briefly. He screened them carefully. A habit of being a general, no doubt, and forever in the public’s eye.
“How are you today?” he asked.
A little sore from locking my legs around your naked back so I could take you deeper, thank you for asking.
“Very well,” she said, politely. “And you?”
“Never better.”
If only he was a blusher. One of them was hot and pink at the moment, and it wasn’t him.
He smiled, though, slowly.
She had never fainted, but she was beginning to understand what it was like to swoon in place.
“I thought we would write your letter accepting the job that we can have a messenger take at once to Signor Roselli in Paris.”
“It is so very kind of you to offer.”
“It’s no trouble at all. Would you like to write the letter yourself? I’m certain you’re able to by now.”
“Yes, please, I would.”
“Why don’t you do that, and I’ll review it when you’re done?” he said gently.
They sat in silence.
His pen scratching.
Her pen scratching.
Cozy, if not for the lava-dense atmosphere.
In Italian, she wrote:
Dear Signor Roselli,
I would be pleased to take the position. I shall arrive in Paris a week before rehearsals begin, as you requested. I am pleased to accept your offer of accommodation. Thank you for offering me the position and for the chance to review your lovely libretto.
Yours sincerely,
Mariana Wylde
He sealed it with a blob of wax, but not with a press of that enormous signet.
And then, just as if it were an ordinary day, and not the day after a night she would remember for the rest of her life, he tested her on vocabulary words. Because she would be leaving for Paris and would be surrounded by Italians, and she would need them.
When the hour had nearly come to a close, he gestured to the message. “I’ll have it sent straightaway.”
“Thank you.”
There was a pause.
“One more thing, Miss Wylde.” He slowly reached into his pocket.
And then gently, with a little clink, he placed something on the table between them.
It was a hairpin.
She stared at it.
She slowly looked up at him.
He was indeed masterfully still. His expression inscrutable. His eyes slightly hooded, and watchful.
But then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the quill was ever so slightly trembling in his grip, and this was nearly as thrilling in the moment as his body covering hers.
“If you think you may be missing other hairpins, Miss Wylde . . . I’d be pleased if you’d come have a look for them. I’ll be in all night.” He paused. “I will abide by whatever you wish to do.”
She reached out a hand and dragged the hairpin toward her.
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
He’d left the decision up to her.
And she ought to stay right where she was, in her little room. She was capable of rational thought. She possessed intelligence and reason. She was not at heart a taker of risks, though some of her choices could certainly be construed as risks.
She was, at heart, an enjoyer of pleasure.
Once, and she could say she’d done it for the experience. She could perhaps rationalize it away. How many women could say they’d made love to the Duke of Valkirk?
Twice, and, well. Making love to him twice was about as reckless a thing as a woman could do.
Twice meant she would do it again . . . and again.
Twice moved her further away from a position of singularity and more emphatically toward that word that began with “h.”
She decided she would not go.
Ten minutes later . . .
He must have heard her heartbeat from the other side of the door, because it opened again before she’d knocked.
As he had the night before, he took the candle, set it lightly down, and closed the door.
“I brought the letter again. I thought perhaps we could translate the lyrics,” she whispered.
He didn’t say a word.
His eyes never leaving hers, he gently took the letter from her hands. Laid it aside atop a little table.
His hands rose to cup her face.
Oh God. Oh God.
His mouth touched hers.
She heard her own sigh as if from miles away. Soft as a breath at first, his lips then gently insistent, then her whole, spinning world. He was hot, and tasted of brandy. Her knees gave way, but he was there to softly crush her against him. She curled her fingers into his shirt and clung.
Her head fell back into his cradling hand, and while she was at the mercy of his kiss, his other hand managed to loosen and spread her laces at the back of her neck. Her bodice collapsed into something like a swoon. “Off,” he ordered, pushing at the sleeves of it.
He gently tugged, and she helped him, tugging and shimmying until it pooled at her ankles.
She stepped out of it, feeling like Venus disembarking from her half shell.
The sound he made when she stood nude before him.
He pulled his shirt off over his head, and while he did that, she reached for his trouser buttons with trembling, greedy fingers, and when they were all undone then he pulled the trousers off and gave them a kick for good measure.
She could not have in her wildest dreams imagined anything as glorious as his naked body.
His hands glided along her throat, the blades of her shoulders, following the nip of her waist to the flare of her hips. He was savoring her, and the pleasure he took in her body, the pleasure he gave, made her outrageously glad to have skin. This was the whole point of it, surely. She could feel his hard cock against her thigh, and shamelessly she ground against him. With a low growl he lifted her up, his arms banded hot across her back.