Chapter 14
The sound of her voice saying his name seemed to startle them both. It trembled in the air between them.
Something flickered in Victor’s eyes.
Before Gwen could look away, his hands came up, firm and warm, and cupped her face. He pulled her back to his mouth with a purpose that stole what remained of her breath.
The kiss was no tentative brush this time, no cautious exploration. It deepened at once, as if some invisible thread had finally snapped.
Heat flooded her. She had not known she could want anything so keenly. Her hands, which had been gripping his shoulders to steady her, fisted in his coat, dragging him closer.
She did not know what she was doing. Her body simply acted of its own accord.
Her lips parted at the first coaxing stroke of his, answering him with a hunger that shocked her as much as it must have astonished him.
Her innocence, she discovered, did not mean she had no instinct for pleasure.
It meant that every new sensation arrived without warning, unsoftened by expectation.
Every slide of his mouth over hers and every stolen catch of his breath felt like the first step into a world she had not imagined could exist for her.
When he drew back a fraction, it felt almost like falling.
Her eyes fluttered open. His face was very near, the curve of his cheekbones stark in the firelight, his breath uneven. She saw the dark bloom of his pupils, the taut line of his jaw, and realized with a jolt that she was not the only one undone.
“This is not wise,” he warned, his voice hoarse.
“No,” she breathed. Her lips tingled. Her whole body seemed to hum. “It is not.”
“Should I stop?” he asked.
The question struck her like cold water. She knew what she should say. She ought to remember the convent and the rumors and the number of nights she had left before her banishment. She ought to think of sin and safety and every sermon she had ever heard.
Instead, she heard herself whisper, “No.”
The word cost her. She felt it leave her like a secret she could never take back.
Victor froze for a heartbeat, as if giving her one last chance to change her mind. When she did not, his eyes flashed, fierce satisfaction twining with the care already there.
He stepped closer, and she found herself yielding, moving backward under the steady pressure of his hands on her waist.
Each step seemed to ignite a nerve, until she felt fragile and feverish and wildly alive. When the back of her knees hit the edge of a chaise near the hearth, she sat down with a small, unsteady exhale.
He did not loom above her. He knelt.
The sight of a duke on his knees before her stole whatever breath remained in her lungs. It felt wrong and reverent and intimate in a way that had nothing to do with rank and everything to do with the way his gaze rose to meet her own.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he said.
Her cheeks burned, but she nodded her head.
“We will discover what pleases Lady Gwendoline Reeves tonight,” he murmured.
Her heart did a wild, frightened leap.
He took her hand, his large fingers curling around her gloved ones. For a moment, he simply held it, his thumb tracing a slow line across the back, as if familiarizing himself with every bone and tendon. Then he began to ease the glove away, inch by inch.
The cool air kissed her bare wrist. The warmth of his mouth followed.
He pressed a kiss to the center of her palm, his lips soft and deliberate.
The sensation shot through her like lightning. Her fingers curled, trying to hold the feeling in place. She heard herself suck in a sharp breath.
He did it again.
This time, she was prepared, but that did not help either. Heat coiled low in her belly, shamefully sweet.
Victor turned her hand and traced the slender bones along the side with his lips, then the soft skin at her wrist. Each contact felt shockingly important.
No man had ever touched her there. She had not known such places could give her such pleasure.
“You are very responsive,” he purred.
She swallowed. “I am not certain whether that is a compliment.”
“It is an education,” he said.
His mouth drifted higher, to the soft inside of her forearm. Her breath hitched at the first brush of heat there, at the contrast between his lips and the faint rasp of stubble when he turned his head slightly. The combination made her shiver.
He smiled against her skin. “Breathe, Gwendoline.”
“I am,” she managed.
He gently set her hand on his shoulder, as if urging her to steady herself, then let his hands travel with infuriating patience. They slid up her arms, over the rounded tops of her shoulders, then down to her stays, tracing the space between bone and tender flesh.
The layers of fabric should have dulled everything. But they did not. Gwen felt each new path like a secret marked directly on her skin. When his fingers curled around her waist, just above her hips, the sensation was so intense she almost flinched.
He paused at once. “Too much?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Only… new.”
He resumed, gentling his touch, mapping her gradually. Along the narrow span of her ribs, the small of her back, the outer curve of her thighs above the knees.
His palms were broad and warm. She could feel the strength there, held carefully in check for her sake. That knowledge sent another thrill through her.
Something in her unraveled.
She had been braced for cruelty for so long that this deliberate gentleness felt almost unbearable. Her body seemed torn between the urge to shrink away and the equally powerful urge to lean into every stroke of his hands.
Without realizing it, she tipped forward. The moment her weight shifted toward him, he deepened his caresses, as if answering a question she had not yet dared to voice.
“Oh,” he said fiendishly. “Your body tells me what you enjoy, even when your lips do not.”
She would have argued if her lips could form words, but they could not.
Small sounds escaped her instead, wanton and utterly foreign. Each one embarrassed her, yet she could not hold them in when his fingers found a new place that made heat flicker and gather. It felt foreign and sinful, and she wanted more.
They were not coarse touches; he did not grip or drag. He coaxed. He circled. He listened to her body.
He pressed just enough to send sensation spiraling through her until she felt as if she were coming undone stitch by stitch.
“Breathe,” he reminded her again. “Do not fight it. Let yourself feel it.”
“I am,” she whispered, her voice shaking.
He shifted closer.
She could feel the firmness of his shoulder beneath her hand, his solid figure between her knees.
It made everything worse and better at once.
The fire at her back, his warmth before her, the cocoon of the small room, all seemed to press in, narrowing her world to touch and breath and the steady murmur of his voice.
His focus sharpened, his hands attuned to every subtle arch of her spine, every fluttering gasp. He seemed to know when she needed gentleness and when she was ready for more.
The rhythm of his touch, soaked in her arousal, changed. It grew more purposeful, concentrating where her body strained helplessly toward it.
Her knuckles whitened around the edge of the chair. She did not recognize the woman making those sounds, tilting her hips for more of that pressure. She only knew she could not have stopped if the fate of the world depended on it.
Heat gathered, a tight, spiraling ache that stole sense and speech. It coiled and coiled until she thought she must break from it. And still he watched her, his eyes fixed on her face, guiding her higher with that relentless, devastating care.
Something snapped.
The pleasure crested, not sharp but immense, sweeping through her from the inside out. Her head fell back against the cushion, her lips parted on a soft cry.
The room blurred. Her whole body clenched, held for a heartbeat in a bright, shattering suspension, then released into a rush of trembling relief. Tears stung her eyes, then slipped free without her consent.
“Victor,” she gasped, the name barely more than a breath, but it felt like a vow cast into the firelit air.
His touch gentled at once, turning into soothing strokes, as if he understood instinctively that she had gone as far as she could bear. The pleasure ebbed gradually, leaving behind a strange, floating warmth that made it hard to remember how to move her limbs.
When he stilled, she sagged against the cushions. Her chest rose and fell too quickly. Her cheeks felt damp. She lifted a shaking hand to them and found them wet with tears she did not even remember shedding.
Mortification surged, faintly delayed.
“Do not hide from me,” Victor said quietly.
He rose from the floor and sat beside her, his arm coming around her in a gesture so natural that it startled her more than her climax had.
He gathered her against his side as if she belonged there.
One hand settled between her shoulder blades, broad and warm.
The other rested low on her waist, anchoring her.
For a little while, Gwen could only hear the crackle of the fire and her steadying breaths. She felt utterly different, as if a tight band inside her had finally loosened after years of strain.
Safe was not a feeling she trusted, but wrapped in Victor’s arms, she came unsettlingly close to it.
“No one has ever…” she trailed off, almost choking on the admission.
“I know,” he murmured against her hair. “You told me.”
“It was different when I said it then,” she said. “It was only words. Now, it is an event. A before and an after.”
He went very still. “Do you regret it?”
She thought of convent walls and Howard’s hand on her arm.
She thought of cold, loveless matches and the way her life had been narrowing, inch by inch, for years.
Then she thought of Victor’s hands on her, his careful attention, the way he had watched her as if she were the only thing that mattered.
She shook her head against his shoulder. “No.”