Chapter 18 #2
Alone with Ezra again, Letitia found herself hesitating. She needed to go, needed to break this off—finally.
But somehow, she was still standing there.
“Can I walk you up?” he asked, hefting her bag, which he had once again snatched from the driver before she could intervene.
“No, but only because I don’t want to deprive you of your chance to put your clever plan into effect,” she said, the jest falling from her lips all too easily.
He grinned. He was so beautiful when he smiled like that.
“Much obliged.” He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice was pitched very low. “Miss Knightley. If you do not allow me to accompany you safely, I shall keep this valise full of...” He shook it, listening to the sound. “Sensible frocks and edifying literature forevermore.”
“You sound ridiculous,” she informed him, making a hasty grab for the valise. He dodged her, then dangled it tauntingly out of his reach.
“Fine,” she said. “You can accompany me.”
“Thank you, madam,” he said in that same voice, sweeping a bow.
She laughed again as she led the way up the stairs. She had never laughed so much in her life before she’d met him. She wondered what would make her laugh now that they would be apart.
These last few moments felt immeasurably precious. She could not keep him. She had not lost sight of that. But she felt strangely desperate to cling to the time that remained.
That desperation made her foolish, for, when they got to her rooms and unlocked the door, she turned to him and said, “You can come in, if you like.”
She stepped aside to let him in. The rooms were simple, but clean and sunny.
There was a bed off to one side, larger than Letty could have hoped to find, with extra quilts sitting in a large basket at the foot.
The landlady had told Letty that the rooms would be cleaned once a week and that Letitia was responsible for keeping the space tidy the rest of the time.
But she was given a good starting point.
Logs were already stacked neatly by the fireplace, and a tinderbox was upon the mantle. There was a small table and two chairs. Ezra put Letty’s bag down on the table, then crossed to the window, rattling the frame to confirm that the latch held secure.
“It seems safe enough,” he said, his tone slightly begrudging.
She laughed at this. “It’s far nicer than I might have hoped to find without your help,” she said. “So, thank you. And thank you for letting me leave.”
His expression flickered at letting me, and she could tell that he was burning to ask her about the past that she guarded so closely. But he had said that he would respect her wishes, and she did not think he was a man who went back on his word.
He closed his eyes briefly.
“You have more power than you think, Letitia Knightley,” he said. “I hope you realize it, because when you do…” He gave the quietest huff of a laugh. “You will achieve all you ever desire. I am certain of it.”
“Ezra,” she said. Why did it feel like her heart was cracking right in her chest? She fought for a quip, hoping it would break the spell. “That’s something coming from you. A duke would know power, wouldn’t he?”
It was the wrong thing to say. It fell flat between them.
He was still smiling at her, but it was as sad a smile as she had ever seen.
He walked to her, slowly, purposefully, until they were standing face to face.
“Goodbye, Letty,” he said. He grabbed her hand and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles—not a glancing, courtly kiss, but a lingering one.
He dropped her hand, and then—
“Oh, to hell with it,” he growled, and pulled her forward by the waist, claiming her mouth with his.
She didn’t hesitate before she threw her arms around his neck. Kissing him was wrong, all wrong, but it felt remarkably like coming home—and how long had it been since she had had a true home? Had she ever had one?
“Ezra?” she asked, barely taking her mouth away from his, making the word come out garbled. It didn’t matter. He understood her. He always did.
“Hm?” he asked, one hand sliding up the curve of her spine so that his whole forearm was pressed against her back, urging her against his chest, not that she needed much encouragement.
“Thank you for breaking your promise,” she said, kissing his lips, his cheeks, his chin.
If every kiss between them had been a different exploration, this one was a frantic rush. It was messy and unrefined. Her caution had been tossed aside. His care had been forsaken. They were all lips, hands, teeth, and tongues.
She bit down on his shoulder. He sucked lightly at her throat. She kissed his collarbones, her hands fumbling with the buttons of his shirt as she undid them, one by one.
“You should not be this lovely,” she accused, her slip half hanging off her shoulder, her stays abandoned on the floor. “It’s unfair, really. You’re young, rich, and powerful. Can’t you have a few missing teeth?”
“Me?” he asked, laughing as he kissed his way across the slopes of her breasts, half on bare skin, half over the fabric of her chemise. “You are unfairly lovely. And if I am the first to say it, it is only because other men are very, very foolish—and I am very, very lucky.”
“Ezra,” she sighed. “Do you think we will be sorry about this, later?”
She didn’t know if she meant the kissing or the parting or the tender words. Maybe all of it. Maybe she meant meeting one another in the first place. It had all gotten so terribly jumbled up in her mind.
“I don’t know,” he said, pulling back so that he could look at her. He looked rather lost, too. “But I think it is worth the risk, anyhow.”
“Agreed.”
They moved as one toward the bed, their inhibitions cast aside with their declaration. She knew that calling him worth the risk was as close as she could get to expressing her deep feelings, without risking herself opening to a wound that might never scab over, let alone heal.
She could not tell him. She could not think it, not even within the privacy of her own mind.
But she could show him, just for today.
She did not let Ezra lay her gently out on the bed like he had the previous time.
Instead, when he guided her back, she kept her hold on him, tugging until he toppled along with her.
The mattress was fortunately soft enough to absorb their dual impacts, but Letty let out a tiny oof of air as his weight came atop her.
It felt good, though, to have him pressed to her everywhere—his hands on her hands, his chest against her chest, his legs intertwined with hers.
It felt safe, and that was probably even rarer than the laughter they shared.
“You make me feel so…” She let the words dangle on a sigh. He made her feel. So very much.
“I know, my beauty,” he murmured, his forehead against her temple. He slid kisses down her cheek. “Me, too.”
Her breath came out like more of a sob, but she hid it inside her next kiss.
They were unhurried, allowing desire to grow slowly and letting it burn hotter between them over time, like a pot set to a very low simmer. Letitia did not feel rushed. In fact, she felt the opposite—the longer she let this continue, the very last encounter, for it surely had to be the final one…
The longer they lingered, the longer it would be before she had to let him go.
They kept murmuring each other’s names as they kissed and caressed, as if the intimacy of informality was just as wonderful as the touches they shared. And maybe it was.
When they encountered one another again, he would be His Grace, and she would be Miss Knightley.
But not for right now.
“Ezra,” she murmured as she kissed his chest, memorizing the taste of his name. “Ezra,” she said again as she kissed his hipbone, memorizing the taste of his skin.
When her hands grew cautious as they neared the place where he was ready and waiting, he helped guide her.
With her first grip around him, he let out a groan as if he were dying.
She might have pulled her hand back, alarmed, if it were not for the way his grip tightened around hers, showing her how to touch him.
When her movements became more certain, he let her go, let her take control. He hesitated through one more gasp of pleasure, then reached down to touch her at the apex of her thighs.
He needed no guidance, no time to accustom himself to how to best bring her pleasure.
Somehow, the effort it took to keep her hand steady on him only heightened her thrill.
She had to cling to the shreds of her mind that wanted to let themselves get lost in sensation.
She wanted him to feel what she felt. She needed him to feel it, too.
She needed to be the one who gave it to him.
“Look at you,” he murmured, his breath hitching in time with her movements. She had not known he was going to talk. That was unfair. “Gorgeous. So, so gorgeous. No painter on earth could do you justice.”
Her hand twitched against him, and let out a choked sound, his eyes fluttering briefly closed as he breathed heavily through his nose.
Letty felt a surge of satisfaction that she could do this to him—that she held such power over him—though this was lost in a moan of her own when he pulled his hand briefly away, licked his thumb, and then pressed it against that sensitive bundle of nerves.
“Oh, unfair,” she complained, and he laughed, though it was almost as breathless as her objection.
He proved the victor, in the end—or maybe she was the true winner, because she toppled into oblivion first, her mind going positively blank at the coursing waves of it.
She managed to keep her hand touching him, and he pressed into her hold, following her quickly into the abyss, warmth spilling against her leg as he wracked with pleasure.
She pried her eyes open so she could see him, could make sure to commit every detail of how beautiful he looked to memory. She knew she would never see anything so gorgeous again. How could she, when she would never have him like this again?
She pushed the thought away. She would have time for sadness, later.
Now, their breaths were evening out, their bodies going limp and languid.
With a grunt of effort, Ezra rolled so he could reach backward and grab his discarded trousers.
Letitia watched this with a mild, sleepy interest, then smiled as he dug out a pristine, embroidered handkerchief and used it to clean his seed from where it had struck her thigh.
“So considerate,” she teased, her voice a murmur. She nuzzled her face against his shoulder.
“I aim to please,” he said, ghosting a kiss over her hair.
Her laugh was barely audible. Things had been so mad these past few days, with the decision to leave, then the search for a new home, then the emotional turmoil of saying goodbye. And now this, the physical exertion, the intimacy of it. She was weary down to her bones.
In a great, long list of things that Letitia should not do, falling asleep with the Duke of Rutley at her side was one of them.
But she had abandoned good sense so long ago that she could not see it even if she looked back.
So she just smiled. She let his arms go heavier around her as he drifted, too.
This moment would be the last thing she stole. She swore it to herself.
And, at the time, she even meant it.