Chapter 14
James did not intend to go to Eleanor’s room with anything like hesitation.
He told himself that as he crossed the corridor, his steps measured, his expression already arranged into something neutral.
The house was quiet at that hour, the servants withdrawn, the lamps turned low.
Blackmere Park seemed to exhale around him, the hush after supper settling into the bones of the walls.
He raised his hand and knocked.
There was no call to enter.
No rustle of movement behind the door.
Only a soft, almost inaudible, “Come in.”
He opened the door.
Eleanor did not rise to greet him. She remained seated on the edge of her bed, half turned toward the window, the lamplight gilding the pale curve of her shoulder.
Her hair had been loosened for the night, dark waves spilling over the thin cotton of her nightgown.
The covers were drawn up around her waist, as though she had wrapped herself deliberately in a boundary he was not meant to cross.
She did not look at him at first.
James felt the moment stretch.
He closed the door behind him.
“You did not come to the door,” he said.
“I did not feel well enough to stand,” Eleanor replied.
He studied her more closely then, and the faint tension he had carried into the room sharpened into something more focused.
“You are ill,” he said.
“I am not ill,” she said quickly. “Only… tired.”
James moved closer.
“You have been tired often,” he replied.
Her gaze flicked up, then away again. “You asked to speak with me.”
“Yes.”
He stopped a few feet from the bed, deliberately leaving space between them.
“I came to discuss a ball,” he said. “The start of the season.”
Her shoulders tensed. “Yes?”
“I had intended to discuss it this evening. Our first outing, together.”
Eleanor shifted slightly beneath the covers, her fingers tightening in the cotton. “Yes.”
James’s gaze moved to her face, and for the first time since he had entered, he truly saw her.
Her cheeks were flushed, but not with the warmth of candlelight alone. Her lashes cast faint shadows beneath her eyes. There was something subdued in her expression that did not sit easily with him.
“Eleanor,” he said quietly.
She looked up at once.
He stepped closer, his attention narrowing. He lifted a hand and brushed the back of his fingers lightly against her forehead.
“Your skin is warm,” he said.
She inhaled sharply.
He hesitated, then moved his hand down to her neck, his touch careful, searching for signs of fever.
“You are overheated,” he murmured.
Her cheeks colored further. “I am well.”
James’s brows knit faintly. “You are not convincing.”
Eleanor’s lips parted, then closed again. She swallowed. “I… I am only flushed.”
“That does not explain–”
“I was thinking,” she interrupted, quickly. “About the ball.”
James paused, sensing the deliberate shift in subject. “Yes?”
Her gaze dropped to her hands, and she drew a slow breath. “You had intended to invite me?”
James inclined his head. “Well, I am inviting you, but it is more than that. It is an opportunity.”
She did not respond at once.
He waited.
“Opportunity?”
“As society has not fully returned to the ton, and you are its newest addition to the gentry, and we live so close… my aunt suggested that we host the start of season ball.”
Instead of the simple acceptance he had expected, Eleanor looked up at him with an expression that was uncertain, almost tentative.
“May I ask something?” she said.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“Will you invite Arabella?” she asked, quickly enough that it nearly tripped over itself. “She will not come if she thinks she is imposing.”
The question struck him oddly, not for its content but for the way she asked it – quietly, carefully, as though she feared the answer.
“You do not need to ask me that,” James said at once.
Her brows drew together. “I do not?”
“You are the Duchess of Langford,” he replied. “You may invite your sister whenever you wish. You do not need a ball as an excuse to do so.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “I may?”
“Yes.”
Eleanor seemed to absorb this slowly, as though it were a truth she had not yet been allowed to consider.
“I forget,” she said, then stopped. Her fingers twisted in the coverlet as though she had said too much. “I mean – no one ever told me what that includes.”
James’s jaw tightened.
He hesitated, then asked, “But will you consider hosting the ball with me, wife?”
The word felt heavier than he expected when he spoke it.
Eleanor’s breath caught.
He watched the color rise in her cheeks, spill down her neck like the slow bloom of a bruise beneath pale skin. Her lashes lowered, her posture folding inward just slightly.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I think it will be a lot, but I think I can handle it. We should do it.”
“Good,” he said, a smile breaking out across his face as the relief hit him harder than he anticipated. He rubbed his hands together for a moment, contemplating bidding her goodnight, when he caught a small flash of emotion pass across her features.
It was the way she looked at him. She seemed uncertain, and grateful, and as though he had just granted her something far more precious than an evening’s entertainment, and it made something in his chest shift sharply.
He studied her for a long moment and knew that he could not leave this room now – not even if he wanted to, which he realized… he did not.
“How did you grow up?” he asked quietly.
Her eyes lifted in surprise. “What?”
He did not look away. “You behave as though permission is a currency.”
Her lips parted. “I do not –”
“Why,” he continued, “do you ask for leave when you have the right to act?”
She hesitated, then looked down at her hands. “I was taught –”
He stepped closer.
“Look at me,” he said gently.
She did.
James lifted his hand and brushed a loose strand of hair back over her shoulder, his knuckles grazing the sensitive skin at the base of her neck.
Eleanor gasped softly.
The sound struck him like a blow.
His vision blurred, not with dizziness, but with a sudden, unwelcome surge of awareness. He became acutely conscious of the warmth of her skin beneath his hand, the faint tremor that passed through her at the lightest contact.
He withdrew his hand slowly, deliberately, as though pulling back from something too near a flame.
“You do not need permission,” he said quietly. “Not from me.”
Her gaze remained locked on his, her breath shallow, her color still high.
James straightened, the moment tightening around them like a held breath.
He should have left.
He knew it the moment his hand withdrew from her neck. Knew it in the hollow pull behind his ribs, in the faint, dangerous lightness in his head. He had no business standing in her room while she sat before him wrapped in nothing but thin cotton and heat.
Yet he did not move.
Eleanor remained very still, her breath shallow, her gaze fixed on his as though she were waiting for something she did not yet know how to name.
He shifted his weight.
“You should rest,” he said quietly.
She did not answer.
Instead, her fingers loosened in the covers. Slowly – tentatively – her hand lifted.
She touched his chest.
The contact was light. Almost questioning. Her palm pressed against the wool of his coat as if she were testing whether he was real.
James inhaled sharply.
His gaze dropped to her hand. To the small, pale fingers curved against his heart.
“Eleanor,” he said, warning threaded into his voice.
She looked up at him at once – startled, flushed – and as if suddenly realizing what she had done, she drew her hand back.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Something in him snapped – not violently, but decisively.
“Do that again,” he said.
The words left him before he could stop them.
Her eyes widened.
“What?”
He did not look away. “Touch me again.”
Her breath trembled. For a moment she did not move, then she slowly lifted her hand once more and pressed her palm to his chest.
James closed his eyes.
The world narrowed to that single point of contact – the heat of her hand, the steady thrum of his own heartbeat beneath it, the knowledge that she could feel it too.
He covered her hand with his.
“Do you know what that is,” he murmured.
Her gaze flicked between their joined hands and his face. “What?”
“Desire, Eleanor.”
Her lips parted slightly. “I do not know what to do with it.”
He opened his eyes and met her gaze. “Do you wish to know?”
His thumb brushed slowly across the back of her hand, and her breath hitched. “Yes,” she said, barely above a whisper.
Her fingers curled slightly against his chest.
He lifted his hand to her cheek, not with urgency but with care, his knuckles tracing the warm line of her jaw. She leaned into the touch before she realized she was doing it.
“Do you wish for me to teach you?” he asked quietly.
Eleanor breathlessly nodded her head. “Yes.”
Her lashes fluttered.
James lowered his forehead briefly to hers, their noses brushing. The intimacy of the gesture made his pulse spike sharply.
“Describe what you feel when I do this,” he said firmly, as his lips brushed the hollow beneath her ear.
Her breath stuttered.
He leaned close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath, but did not kiss her. He simply held her there, suspended between distance and closeness. And then –
She inhaled sharply as his teeth caught her earlobe.
“Tell me, Eleanor.”
“I feel like my body is on fire, but a chill just ran down my spine when you did –”
He let his teeth run up the edge of her ear softly.
“Do,” she quickly correctly, chest heaving and her breasts pressed against him.
“Good. Very good, Eleanor. Now, when it feels like it is becoming too much, tell me.”
“But I do not wish for you to stop.”
“Just tell me when. You will feel it,” he said, and he started trailing soft kisses down her neck and his hands rested on either side of her hips.
His lips traveled along the lace of her nightgown, then around her nipple and he let his teeth roll it lightly as she gasped and bucked her hips.
He sat up, eyes connecting with hers. “Tell me when, Eleanor,” he said and waited for her nod in agreement. Then he quickly untied the bow at the top of her nightgown and pulled it down just slightly so his mouth could wrap around her nipple once more.
The delicious cry she let out as he let his tongue encircle it made his core tighten. But while all he wanted to do was give into his own arousal, he knew he had to be the one in control.
His hands found the bottom hem of her nightgown, and he let the fabric glide over her bare skin until it pooled around her waist. James then slid his hands under her and pulled her down so that she laid fully underneath him.
Her hips were writhing under his weight until finally she breathed his name, and he lifted his head. “Yes?”
“No, please, do not stop.”
He let a grin play at the corners of his mouth, and then let his lips land on her other nipple, wrapping it up with his tongue before traveling down the length of her torso. The light caress of his mouth made her skin pebble, and he felt her body flex with anticipation under the heat of each kiss.
“Are you ready?” He said, hovering his mouth over the hottest part of her body, laying bare to him like a second supper. James’s mouth watered with need. The smell of her arousal made his own body react.
“Yes,” she shuddered, and he completely devoured her.
Every lick, her hips bucked. Every caress of his fingers, her body tensed and relaxed uncontrollably.
And then he reached up, rolling each of her nipples between the pads of his thumb and forefinger.
The sounds she made almost undid him. Almost made him rip his own clothes off and claim her right then and there. Almost.
Then she said, voice hoarse, body on fire, “James, it – I – I cannot –”
Yes. He thought, and a growl vibrated in his chest as he doubled his efforts. Pinching her nipples slightly, her back arched, and he rolled her core with his tongue at a relentless rhythm until finally her climax ripped through her shaking her entire body for what seemed like a lifetime.
Her arousal dripped sinfully down his mouth as she heaved in her breathing. James crawled up her body, planting light kisses up her heated torso and then pressing himself up to sit beside her.
Eleanor’s eyes were closed, one arm flung over her face and her mouth slightly open. Her chest was still rising and falling quickly, and her breaths were rasped and hoarse.
He drew back slowly, then, and deliberately, forcing his hands to pull down her nightgown and then rest on his thighs, away from her soft, warn, porcelain skin.
The loss of contact felt like stepping out of sunlight.
James straightened, his breath still uneven. Her arousal and climax had done a number on him, and he could barely even string together a coherent thought, but he knew he had to get out of her room. Now.
“You must rest,” he said, softly.
Eleanor’s arm lifted, and gaze lingered on him, wide and uncertain. Her cheeks were flushed, and she licked her lips, but she did not say a word – only watched.
James leaned down and kissed her cheek before he stood and turned toward the door.
He paused once his hand was on the latch. “ Eleanor, you have no idea the power you have.”
Then chuffed a laugh to himself and then left.
The door closed softly behind him, and James walked down the corridor with his heart pounding and his discipline shaken, knowing with absolute certainty that he had already crossed a line he had sworn never to approach.