Chapter 6 #3
She was weeping. When had she begun weeping?
She wasn’t a watering pot. She never cried.
Not when she’d buried her mother, not when her father packed and left her without looking back.
Not when she’d realized what her husband was, and not when she realized she was free.
Yet she stood here, pouring tears before Joseph Illingworth, and he wiped her cheeks with his hands.
“You’re safe,” he whispered. “No one will hurt you. You will stay here and be safe.”
It was her doing, again. She wondered, fleetingly, if it would always be her doing, drawing him into an embrace. But she pulled his head down to hers and he kissed her, and she thought of nothing else.
“Stay here with you?”
He groaned and surrounded her, and she was swept away.
He kissed her as if their ride and the press of their bodies and the constant, hot contact had been as much a torment to him as to her.
He kissed her as if he had stopped breathing when their mouths parted and only took in air once they connected.
She kissed him back as if she belonged in his arms and knew it.
He wasn’t an experienced kisser, but she would teach him.
They had time. She cupped her hands around his cheeks, careful not to touch where Wigsby had struck him.
He was such a strange and delightful contrast, the soft textures of him and his firm, hot skin.
And his raw need fired her own want as nothing else could.
He dragged his hands into her hair, pushing against the pins that held the heavy coils, and she moaned at the press of his fingers against her scalp. His mouth followed hers as she tipped her head back, and she slanted her lips to fit more precisely against his.
Then he broke away, and she gave a little mewling cry.
But he didn’t pull away, still stood with her arms wrapped around him.
His hands cupped her head, thumbs stroking her throat.
His eyes were hazy but wide with astonishment, and she stared at the dark ring around his iris, purple-black against the deep shades of brown.
“Inez. You’re so beautiful.” He sounded astonished, as if he had never realized this before. It was about time he did.
“Touch me,” she whispered, pressing herself against him. She looped her fingers around his wrist—so soft, his skin—and pulled his hand over her collarbone, down to her breast. She whimpered as his palm immediately closed around her flesh, sensitive and aching.
“Inez. You’re—I’m—”
“I want you to kiss me there. Please.”
She’d never begged in her life, not for anything. Yet this man reduced her to groveling with no more than a hand on her breast—a hot, heavy hand delivering a pressure that made her mad and yet soothed at the same time.
He surged against her, as if her request had released something in him, and slid his other arm around her waist to pull her as close as skin.
His arousal bloomed against her belly, and she gave a little moan of satisfaction.
Oh, yes, he wanted her. He stared at her bosom as if he’d never seen a woman’s bare breasts before, and Inez felt warm between her legs at his look of amazement and desire.
She wanted to stand here forever in this breath of anticipation, tilted on the brink of a fall into the moment that Joseph Illingworth finally made love to her.
And then she couldn’t stand to wait an instant longer.
“Come here.” She slid her hands to his jaw and kissed him again, unable to resist the look of wonder and delight and boyish greed on his face. His weight against her made her stagger, and she let herself fall onto her narrow cot, pulling him down atop her.
Yes. This was what she wanted. Had wanted for so long. Joseph Illingworth in her arms, pressed against her body, his weight a shield against the world, promising that nothing could hurt her.
“Inez.” He kissed down her face and neck to her breastbone, then dragged his lips across the tops of her breasts. The groan from him was raw need. She lifted her hips, pressing shamelessly into him, greedy for the evidence of his desire. His need for her.
“Yes.” She tugged down the drawstring bodice of her shift and at last his mouth moved where she wanted it, that hot, delicious mouth on her breast. Kissing the curve of her cautiously, reverently, as if he couldn’t believe the delights he’d been offered. As if he worshipped at a holy shrine.
Then he cupped a hand around one globe and pulled her nipple into his mouth, and Inez nearly screamed with pleasure.
“Yes. Yes.”
She dragged her hands along every inch of him that she could reach.
Plunged her fingers into his soft hair, coating her fingers with the powder he’d applied for his interview that morning.
It seemed an eon away; the world had shifted in the meantime.
A new epoch of her life had begun, one where she was with Joseph Illingworth and he kissed and licked and nipped at her breasts, feasting like a man at a banquet, and she lay there panting and simmering with pleasure, need heating like an iron rod at her core.
She scraped her fingers over the hard curve of his back, the coat too thick to give her a proper sense of him.
She slid her hands down his sides to his waist, plucking his shirt free from the waistband of his breeches.
She needed her hands on him. She needed him to never stop what he was doing to her breasts, nibbling and sucking and swirling his tongue around her nipples, which pulled a thread at her center into a taut, burning ache.
But she needed to touch him. Her hand brushed his arousal as she fumbled with the buttons, and his entire body froze like a hound pointing. She cupped his cock within her hand, cradling him through the fabric, and he gave a small, strangled gasp.
His response emboldened her. She freed a button and slipped her hand inside his breeches.
He was wearing drawers of soft, worn linen, but warm bare flesh had pushed through the opening.
His cock lengthened in her hand as she slid her fingers around the silken skin, and she laughed, a rich, throaty chuckle, at the look of profound astonishment on his face.
“My God,” he rasped. “Inez…”
She wriggled. She would get to have him inside of her.
She would be joined to him, completely and entirely his.
She wasn’t afraid. She didn’t dread him as she had the times with her husband.
Her body felt warm and open and ready for him, drenched with longing.
A little mewl of pleasure escaped her as she stroked her hand along him, eager to have him inside of her.
“Inez.” His body trembled as he held himself frozen above her, every muscle taut and straining, as if the entire focus of his attention had moved to her hand.
Men. He was so strong and arrogant, and had been so fierce when he fought Wigsby—even now the memory of his swift, brutal blows made her lower parts quiver and ache for him.
But take his cock in her hand, and he was completely at her mercy, hers to command. She could lead him as on a string.
She kissed him, overcome with tenderness all of a sudden, touched by his complete surrender. But he panted, almost as if in distress, and dropped his forehead to her shoulder. His back arched, tensing.
“Inez…I…” His breath blew over one nipple, already sensitized from his kisses, and she squeezed in reflex, urging him toward her.
His body spasmed from head to toe, one great tremor, and then he was spilling over her hand, his seed warm and soft as the rest of him.
“Oh, God.” He gave an embarrassed moan.
Inez smiled and kissed his hair as she withdrew her hand from his breeches. He’d wanted her so much he couldn’t hold. She considered it a compliment, and a sign that it had been a while since he had sought relief with a woman. He didn’t go about swiving just any maid; she was special.
And while her husband had always withdrawn to his own bed when he was finished, she knew from overhearing her mother’s guests that some men could be ready again quite quickly. They had plenty of time.
Suddenly he pulled away, leaping off the bed like he’d been shot, then backing across the room. His eyes were wide with anguish.
“I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”
“It’s all right.” She wiped her hand on her shift, leaning up on one elbow. “Come back.”
“I can’t. I should never have touched you.”
“What?”
He fumbled with his breeches, rebuttoning them swiftly and shoving in his shirt, then tugging down his coat. Fully dressed in an instant, as if their embrace had never happened.
A wave of cold horror fell over her. Inez yanked up her shift to cover her breasts and climbed to her feet, her stockinged feet sliding against the rug.
“What do you mean?”
She’d begged him to touch her. She’d welcomed him. She was his, his completely. Didn’t he understand that?”
“I’m leaving,” he blurted.
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t leave now. Stay with me.”
“I meant—I am leaving this house. Leaving London.”
She felt Wigsby choking her all over again. “Because—because of me?”
“No. No. I…my cousin…there’s an estate…I have to go.” He drew in a steadying breath, and his eyes shifted away, as if he couldn’t look at her.
“There’s a family estate in Cornwall. Which is mine now. I am going to look after things. You can stay here. As long as you want. It will be safe for you.”
“When will you be back?” she whispered. He would kiss and her leave. He could do that. Their embrace had meant nothing to him.
His gaze met hers briefly and pulled away again, like he’d touched his hand to a fire. “I don’t know.”
“Take me with.” She stepped toward him, buoyed on a tide of something fierce and angry. He couldn’t leave her. He’d finally come for her. He’d finally seen her. “I want to go with you.”
“You cannot.”
“I can. You can bring me.”
“I cannot. Inez. You cannot travel with me alone, and I can’t afford to pay for a chaperone. Besides, what would you do there?”
Be his. Be with him. She couldn’t think through the whole of it; her mind felt like a wet blanket had been tossed over her head, suffocating.
“I wouldn’t be any trouble,” she whispered, and the humiliation of begging made her eyes burn. Why could she never keep her dignity around him?
“Inez.” His face softened, the austere lines smoothed with an expression of gentleness. Pity? She abhorred pity. She refused to be pitied.
“I cannot…”
“Cannot what?”
She was always the one being left. What was it about her that made people leave?
Her mother had wasted away, if not by her choice.
Her father had gone East without a glance behind.
The home Inez had found here with Amaranthe and Eyde and the others had vanished when they all picked up and merrily moved to Hunsdon House, leaving her behind.
She’d been turned out, or forced out, of every position of service.
Even her marriage had been an abandonment, as if she didn’t deserve tender cherishing like another woman would.
And now Joseph was simply going to leave her here, like she was a wardrobe or part of the furniture, as if he’d never kissed her like a desperate man, as if he hadn’t desired her so much he couldn’t contain himself. Why did she always mean nothing?
He spread his hands wide and raked them through his hair. Powder shook free, and the tousling made him more adorable, not less. She hated his beauty. Hated him.
“You are making this very difficult for me.”
“I’m difficult? I am?” The rage filled and lifted her like the cooler current that would well up around Sagres in the warmest months of summer, the cold water always a shock against the heat.
She was the easiest of women. She never asked anything.
She never demanded. She never forced her own way.
Perhaps that was why she was so easy to leave.
She curled her hands into fists and stalked towards him, her feet shuffling across the carpet. “I am not making this difficult. You are. You are the one who is difficult.”
She was appalled to realize she had raised her fists and was hitting him on the chest. The blows had almost no effect on him, her blows not strong enough to force their way through cloth and muscle, but she swung at him nevertheless, wild with hurt.
“You have been an idiot—a dull, unthinking—” What was the worst insult she could deal a man like him? “Clodpate,” she cried. “Rocks in your head. You—are—so—infuriating. And so dim, you never see—”
He captured her fists in his hands and she realized her blows were like grasshoppers landing, the merest brush, and so easily brushed away. “Inez. I am indeed sorry if I have hurt you. In any fashion.”
As if he had done something. It was what he hadn’t done that was making her mad. She wanted to shake him. She wanted to push him down. She wanted to slap him out of his self-absorption, his complete assurance that the world ran one way, his complete obliviousness to everything else around him.
She wanted to be impossible to leave.
“Just go.” She pushed him toward the door, and he went. He was fully dressed after all. Still wearing his boots.
That put her over the edge into a raw, keening fury. He’d fallen into bed with her, kissed her breasts as if he’d never seen breasts before, spent in her hand as if he were a green lad pushed past his limits of endurance, and the whole time, he’d been wearing his boots.
“I don’t need you.” She shouted in his face and was gratified to see his eyes flare with brief surprise, then hurt. Good. One of her blows had finally landed.
It brought no satisfaction. “I don’t want you,” she lied. “Go.” She pushed him over the threshold into the short, narrow hallway at the top of the stairs. “Go, and don’t come back.”
She gave into the impulse to slam the door in his face. It crashed shut with a smack, but there was no satisfaction.
He was going, and he wouldn’t come back. Not for her. Inez put her hands to her face and for the first time in years—for the first time in memory—she sank to the floor in her shift and stockings and cried till the tears ran dry.