Or maybe because her memory was long, and she simply didn’t trust him not to shatter it.
She leaned against him, inviting more of his kisses.
For this much, she knew, was true: she trusted him innately with her body.
“My God, what is that scent you wear?” he murmured, inhaling her shamelessly, in case he never got another chance to breathe it in. “I’ve always wondered.”
“I don’t wear a scent.”
He groaned. “You lie, you wicked girl.”
She shook her head and he realized it must be true, because every time he breathed her in, he was met with some fresh, new intoxication.
“Then I am incomparably addicted to the smell of your skin,” he murmured.
Saying as much exposed him, but at the moment he could not bring himself to care. Soon he was going to lose her, and soon the world would know he was not the kind of man who had ever much adhered to decency, and the combination made him physically unable to let go of her quite yet.
He pulled her against him and sighed at the feeling of her nestled up against his body. He was hard, and didn’t want to overwhelm her, but he also didn’t ever want to move away.
“Do you mind that? The feel of me?” he asked, pressing his erection to the cleft of her buttocks.
She closed her eyes in the mirror. “I love the way it feels.”
“So do I,” he murmured. He turned her around to face him.
“Oh yes,” she whispered. She widened her thighs and pressed his buttocks closer so that she could feel his erection through her skirts. He clenched her against his length and groaned.
“Oh my,” she gasped.
“Constance,” he murmured, unable to resist his attraction to her. Wanting, somehow, to leave her with some proof of it. “I know I said I wouldn’t. But before we say farewell I want to touch you. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Neither can I,” she said, kissing him along his jaw. “Please don’t stop just yet. It feels so lovely.”
He scooped her more firmly against him and kissed her where her breasts rose from her bodice. “I would never compromise your virtue. But if you’d like I can make you feel lovelier still.”
She looked up into his eyes and shivered. “Yes,” she said breathily. “Lock the door. There’s a key in the credenza.”
He did, and when he turned back, she rushed toward him.
“Kiss me,” she said.
For once, he didn’t argue. He drew her back with him and pulled her down onto a sofa across from the mirror. He could not stop himself from noticing that she was shaking.
Trembling for him, and he’d barely even touched her yet. Christ, but she was precious.
He kissed her eyes, her nose, her neck. He knelt down on the floor in front of her feet and kissed the pulse points at her wrists.
“May I lift this up?” he asked, playing with the hem of her gown.
“Yes.”
He brought it up over her knees and kissed the laces of her stockings. Carefully, he swept up her petticoats and parted her legs, kissing the insides of her thighs.
“I want you to watch me in the mirror.”
He nibbled at her thighs, edging closer and closer to her quim until he could feel her heat, smell her desire. He teased her with his lips and breath until it seemed she was one, long, arching sigh. She was so wet and swollen and lush and she hissed so ardently at his touch that he wanted to weep.
He ran a thumb over the cleft between her legs. “May I kiss you here?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
His fingers made connection with her most tender flesh.
“My God,” he murmured, at the slickness there.
“It happens whenever I think of you,” she said.
“Then I hope you will think of me often.”
“I can’t stop,” she gasped, as his tongue made connection with her body.
He didn’t answer, because he had lost all sense of language.
All she could do was feel.
Julian held her by the waist as his mouth rewrote what it meant to feel alive. She glanced in the mirror at the image: her skirts flung up around her, his face pressed between her thighs, her head bent back in ecstasy. The erotic sight of it overmastered her. She leaned forward, gripped his hair, and died into his neck.
He held her while she came apart and tried to avoid summoning her family with her gasps.
When she finally stopped shaking, her pleasure was replaced by a sense of shyness at what he had just done. But he only looked up at her with the kindest eyes imaginable, smiled, and then placed a long, lingering kiss on her knee.
“Thank you for the lesson, Julian,” she said, because she could not think of what else to say. Other than Please ask me one more time.
He stood up and stroked her hair.
“I need to tell you something,” he whispered in her ear.
Say I love you. Tell me to stay.
“That’s what you deserve from a lover,” he said tenderly. “Wherever you go, whatever life you find, don’t ever accept any man who fails to see that you are every inch a goddess.”
She sighed. Any other man, he meant.
“I know you will find a man who treasures you and deserves you,” he went on. “And I, Lady Constance, will be extremely jealous of him.”
She had her answer.
She’d been so hoping for a clue that the risk of revealing how she felt might be worthwhile.
Instead, he’d kindly given her a clue it wouldn’t.
She wrapped her arms around him so he would not be able to see her face. “Enough of that, you alley tomcat. You’re as bad as they say in the papers. Come, fix my dress. The family is waiting.”
After he helped her repair her attire and they walked outside onto the terrace, their families cheered. Julian looked proud and slightly overwrought and bashful to be seen so full of feeling.
At least there was this: her sacrifice was worth it, to give him such relief.
She wanted to remember him like this forever.
He raised his glass in the air. “Forgive me for being sentimental, but may I burden you with a toast?”
“Toast!” her family cried. “Toast!”
“One month ago my life was a shambles. I was certain that I would never have the respect of any of you again. But one woman believed in me. When I had given up on myself, she came, scraped me up, and explained, step by step, how we were going to fix the mess. At the time, I doubted her plan would work. But she was very persistent, and I was very desperate, and lo and behold, Lady Constance Stonewell was, as usual, exactly right.”
She felt tears welling up. Why was he saying this? There was no reason to toast her now. They had already won. There was no point in pretending.
Nevertheless, her family cheered.
“To Lady Constance, to whom I owe my life,” he said. “Not just a woman. A goddess.”
He met her eye as he said it, making her blush straight down to her breasts, which still ached from her unmet desire for him to take them in his mouth. To her thighs, which were still slick from her want for him. To her heart, which was breaking.
“To Lady Constance!” her family shouted.
She raised her glass and cleared her throat. “You know I can never stand to let Lord Bore have the last word,” she said, to mordant chuckles. “So I shall have to have it for him. Julian, you never deserved the things the papers said about you. You never deserved to be saddled with a troublemaking specimen like myself. But I must say, the situation flattered you. Because before this month, I don’t think any of us quite knew how remarkable you are. I don’t think we—I—saw you for the strong, passionate, forceful, good, and clever man you are. You, Lord Bore, are unforgettable.”