Chapter Twenty-Two
Laurence was rather surprised to find his heart beginning to race at the feel of her delicate fingers against his rough, calloused palms.
They had spent night after night making love, losing themselves in the ecstasy they found in each other’s bodies. So why was such a simple touching of hands so intimate?
Their eyes met, and he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the side of her lips, where the juice from the orange had run moments earlier.
She sighed quietly, and then moved her lips so that they pressed directly against his, and her tongue sought entry to his mouth. He could taste the orange she had been eating, and surely she could taste the same.
His fingertips moved to the nape of her neck, toying with a loose red curl there, trying to remember they were outdoors, and that anyone could see them, and that he shouldn’t pull out every pin in her hair and lay her down in the grass and make her cry out his name.
Her fingertips anchored themselves in his hair, and she seemed to be having an equal amount of trouble remembering where they were. She pulled at his hair, drawing him tighter, lengthening the kiss until he could barely breathe.
And then she pulled away. Their eyes met, their chests both heaving, his lips presumably both as red and swollen as hers were.
Why had she stopped? For a moment, he wondered if she was still angry with him for being gone the previous night.
He supposed he couldn’t really blame her if she were.
He knew if she had been gone and he hadn’t known where she was, he would have been terrified, and angry, and not known what to do with himself.
But he didn’t think it was anger burning in her eyes, but lust—a lust surely reflected in his own.
So why did she stop? Because they were outside? Because it was the middle of the day? He was about to open his mouth and just ask her, when she spoke, her voice breathy, the words staccato.
“I already know you like that,” she said, her cheeks flushing a charming shade of pink. “We know…we know that part works.”
He couldn’t help but smirk. It certainly did work.
That “part”, as she called it—the sexual chemistry between them—was like nothing he had ever experienced, or even imagined possible.
And he wanted to tell her that, but then he thought it might be rather callous to compare her out loud to other women he had been with—even if the comparison was such a positive.
“So you’re saying…”
She bit her bottom lip. Did she know that only made him want to kiss her more? To take her into the stone pavilion, to make her forget that she had ever been angry with him, to make her forget even her own name…
“I’m saying that I want to get to know you. Properly.”
“So no kissing,” Laurence said with a sigh.
She tilted her head to one side. “Well, perhaps not no kissing…but we mustn’t let it detract from the task at hand.”
He nodded solemnly. “Your wish is my command. Just one more kiss then, and I promise I’ll focus…”
*
They returned home that evening, having stayed out picnicking until the sun began to set, and Anastasia was amazed at how light her heart felt compared with the night before.
Did it truly matter where he had been the previous night, if he came home to her, and if he was so wonderful, so loving, so attentive… ?
She told herself she couldn’t let it matter. What they had was more important.
After supper, Laurence retired to his study, after wishing her a good night.
She had said she wanted to go to bed early, after having so little sleep the night before, and so she left him and let the maid brush out her hair and help her into a nightgown.
Her blasted bleeding had not stopped, and so there was no reason for Laurence to come to her room.
She missed him being there. She missed their relations—but more than that, she missed his mere presence.
Waking up in his arms, kissing him in the middle of the night…
He had said that when her bleeding no longer came, it would mean she was with child. And then he would stay with her always—would he not? Or perhaps she would be indisposed then too, and there would be no reason for him to join her…
She sat up in bed, envisioning months of him staying away, of the other women he might take to his bed, of how difficult it was to feel like she had no say in where he went, where he slept, whether he stayed the night.
And so, even though she had been exhausted from the previous night, once again she did not sleep. She heard Laurence come to bed, heard the soft conversation between him and his valet, heard the door close and him be left alone.
And that was when she decided. She did not have to have no say. After all, he had always left in the middle of the night—until she asked him not to.
Why couldn’t this be the same?
Before she had a chance to change her mind, she strode across the bedroom and knocked on the door that joined the two rooms.
“Come in,” he said in his deep voice.
She pushed the door open, and her breath was taken away by the sight of him sitting up in bed, shirtless, the muscles in his chest catching the light from a candle which flickered beside him.
He was breathtaking.
He beamed at her, his delight at seeing her clearly genuine, and held out his hand. “Are you well? I thought you would be asleep by now. I hope I didn’t wake you…”
She shook her head. “You didn’t wake me. I couldn’t sleep. I…” She bit her bottom lip, trying to find the words, as he watched her expectantly, his hand still outstretched, lying on the bed, palm facing upwards.
She stepped toward him and reached out, taking his hand, thinking she might derive strength from being near him.
In fact, the mere touch of his skin against hers made it even harder for her to think, and she had to force herself to focus through the haze of desire that always overwhelmed her when he was near.
“I was thinking…” she heard herself say, as though hearing someone else speak. “I was thinking that it is rather lonely on my own all night. That if we are to be parted every time I bleed, and perhaps when I am with child, then we would be separated an awful lot.”
He squeezed her hand. “That is true.”
“And I thought, if you are not too horrified or disgusted by the prospect, that perhaps you could sleep as you normally do in my bedchamber, and then when I am able to resume our… our…activities, you will know, and—” She rushed the words out in order to make herself finish saying them before embarrassment took hold, but he interrupted her.
“I miss you too, Anastasia. And I’m certainly not disgusted or horrified. I simply did not wish for you to feel like I was invading your space when you did not want me there.”
“I want you there.”
He threw back the covers, revealing that he wore nothing to bed when he slept alone either, making her blush. He did not let go of her hand, and she followed him back into her bedchamber, and settled into his arms, drifting off into a deep and restful sleep almost immediately.