Chapter Fifteen
There was no sound but the dripping of melting snow onto the floor and the thudding of Irene’s heart.
Ravish me? Ruin me? Had… Had she truly said that? Out loud? With her mouth?
Wilfred was staring as though he were considering the same question. Perhaps she had intended to say such a bold and outrageous thing, but had the words actually exited her mouth? Was it truly possible to speak such shameful things?
Irene swallowed. She was standing so close to Wilfred, she could almost breathe his air, yet she wanted to be closer still. She wanted her skin on his, no clothes obscuring their touch.
And he wanted that too…did he not?
“Irene,” Wilfred managed to say through a strangled voice.
Heat blossomed in her cheeks as she waited for him to say more. It appeared, however, that no additional words would be forthcoming.
“Wilfred,” she said softly.
His groan sounded like one of pain.
“I am sorry,” she whispered, embarrassed now. “I should never have said that.”
“You do not know what you are saying. You cannot understand the temptation to—”
“I am not trying to—to tempt you,” Irene interrupted, a spark of irritation flaring. Did the man truly not wish to understand? “I am offering myself to you.”
“I am not going to accept you on a plate as though you were a thing.” There was an anger in Wilfred’s eyes she had never noticed before. “Irene, you are—you are precious, yes, but a man should not possess you. You are far too brilliant, too important to be owned.”
There was, it appeared, genuine anger in his tones, but Irene could not understand why.
Her head drooped. Well, it was never nice to receive rejection in any quarter, but this was particularly excruciating. She would just have to pretend she had never said anything.
“Irene.”
She examined the floor as she spoke. “I just… I don’t want to lose you again.”
“Irene—”
“It feels ridiculous, doesn’t it, the two of us loving each other and not knowing? Or at least, I did not even know my own mind.” Irene laughed bitterly. “All that lost time, I did not even know what I was missing, and now I know and I am about to lose you all over again—”
Soft fingers gently lifted her chin and she was looking up again, up into the brilliant, shining eyes of a man who clearly adored her.
It did not make any sense. She loved him. He loved her. So why would he not take her?
“This is not a no,” Wilfred said gently. “It is a not yet.”
“But why?” Irene could not help but ask, her hand reaching out to splay against his chest. His pulse beat fast there, belied by his calm manner. “We love each other. I still can’t quite believe—”
“You cannot believe that I would love you?” His incredulous tone made her smile. “You, Irene? God, you have no idea, do you?”
It was not a question, so Irene was not sure how she should answer.
It would sound big headed, after all, to declare that yes, she knew she was lovable.
Besides, precisely why someone like Wilfred—someone who knew all her faults, even, especially the ones she kept hidden from the world—would love her was quite beyond her.
Her breathing quickened as Wilfred continued to stare deep into her eyes.
“The issue,” he murmured quietly as the sounds of her family chattering in the drawing room increased slightly in volume, “is not that I do not want to kiss you. It is that I do not think, once I begin again, I will know how to stop.”
Irene swallowed, tasting the desire in her throat. If he feels half the need I do…
“Then don’t,” she said softly.
At once, she realized she had not explained herself well, for Wilfred dropped his hand as his expression hardened.
“Yes, you are right. We have both gotten carried away.”
“I meant, don’t stop,” Irene interjected, keeping her voice low as an aching need for his touch thrummed through her. “Why should we, now that we finally know how deeply we care for each other?”
Wilfred’s eyes had widened. “You… You truly mean it? You would…give yourself to me?”
A smile parted her lips as she entwined her hands around his neck. “Oh, Wilfred. You already have me.”
The kiss was swift and sharp and Irene lost herself in Wilfred’s touch. His strong arms encircled her and she leaned against him, secure in the knowledge that he would hold her tight.
This, this love between them… Irene still did not completely understand it. The idea that Wilfred could love her, knowing her as he did, was incredible.
But she did not have to understand it as Wilfred moaned in her mouth and twisted his jaw, allowing the kiss to deepen. She just had to accept it, grasp at the opportunity with both hands. Take advantage of this moment, this connection between them that surely no one could break.
“Irene,” Wilfred groaned against her neck, his hands somehow removing the final few hairpins so her hair feathered out across her back and his fingers sank into it.
Somehow, she did not know how, Irene had pulled at his cravat and undone the blasted thing, and their breathing was heavy and she needed more, though precisely what, she could not tell.
“Wilfred,” she whispered, pulling back.
When she caught his eye, it was to see reflected in his gaze the same desire she felt. Irene could not help but glorify in it. There was something intoxicating about wanting a man and being wanted in return.
She glanced at the staircase. “Upstairs?”
Wilfred did not reply—at least, not in words. Without a syllable being uttered, he took her hand and started to lead her up the stairs.
Started, being the operative word.
“Wilfred!” Irene hissed, delighted at his indecent act.
They could be found at any time; her family could come out of the drawing room, or a servant could step into the back hall, and what they would see would scandalize them all.
Irene, pressed up against the wall as Wilfred’s body covered hers, his hands on her waist.
Or at least, they had been on her waist. Now one of them had slowly meandered down, caressing her hip, now cupping her buttocks and lifting her up. Irene had never felt more alive.
Wilfred lowered his lips and pressed reverential kisses on her neck. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do this.”
Excitement thrilled through Irene’s body. “Y-You have?”
The idea was extraordinary. The very thought that Wilfred, her best friend, had considered her worthy of being pressed up against the wall like this—just a few weeks ago, she would have laughed at such a thing.
She wasn’t laughing now. Tendrils of sparking bliss were wending their way through her body, beginning at every point where Wilfred’s hands touched her, and Irene was grateful that he had pressed her against the wall, for she was not certain she would be able to stand without it.
“Come on,” she murmured, managing to extricate herself from his grasp and feeling immediately less joyful, less warm without his touch. “My bedchamber. No one will look for us there.”
It was fortunate indeed that the sleeping arrangements had been so easily organized.
Jessica’s bedchamber had been offered to Wilfred, who had gladly accepted it, so Irene was not sharing with either of her younger sisters.
That meant that when they finally managed to reach the upstairs landing, it was her bedchamber at the very end of the corridor, and Jessica’s beside it meant that no one was likely to hear—
What?
Irene swallowed hard as she reached her bedchamber door.
She was hardly ignorant; some of the Chance gentlemen, her cousins more than her brother, were rather boisterous when it came to discussing such things, if they thought the ladies were not around.
Several years ago, she had been bold enough to ask her flushing mother what they had meant.
Irene had been astonished to hear of more of it, and a tad incredulous, but she had accepted it as a part of a woman’s duty in a marriage.
Beyond that, she had not given the act of lying together much thought.
She was now. How, precisely, was he… That was, his…his member supposed to enter her?
It all seemed rather complicated.
“Reeny?”
Irene blinked. Evidently, she had grown lost in her thoughts and had halted for too long, for Wilfred was staring with a confusion so familiar, it jolted her stomach.
“Just… Just thinking,” she said firmly, her hand still on the door handle.
She did not move forward.
Wilfred lifted his hands and cradled her face with his palms. Palms she knew well.
There was the little moon-shaped scar, a remnant of his first penknife.
There was the finger that stuck out a little.
He had broken it when he had been about twelve.
How had he done that? Was that the time they had climbed the old oak tree at Stanphrey Lacey and the bough had cracked—or was it the riding accident he’d suffered, and she had been the one to run and get a grown up to help with—
“Reeny,” came a gentle voice from a long way away. “You don’t have to do this.”
Irene blinked again, and Wilfred’s concerned and adoring face swam into view.
Her secret place between her thighs ached, watering as though it hungered for him, and Irene knew she would always regret this day if she did not step forward in confidence and claim what she knew was hers.
Him.
“I want to do this,” she said aloud, and she tried not to smile as she opened the door. “And don’t call me ‘Reeny.’”
Wilfred’s gentle chuckle seemed to renew her afresh as they stepped into her bedchamber. “Goodness, the place hasn’t changed a bit.”
“I’d forgotten that you used to be permitted in here,” Irene said quietly, shutting the door behind them and watching as her best friend, and now lover, stepped into her bedchamber. “How old were you when my papa took you aside and said it was no longer appropriate?”
“Oh, twelve, I think,” said Wilfred with a shrug. He trailed his hand along her bookcase, smiling at the volumes, before turning to her bed. “But this… This is different.”
Irene’s throat went dry. “Oh, well… Papa said I was an adult now and needed an adult bed.”