Chapter 17 #2
“Is this what you wanted?”
She nodded. Only once.
He made a sound low in his throat—something between a groan and a curse. Then his mouth was on hers.
The kiss was nothing like she had imagined in her inexperienced daydreams. There was no hesitation in it, no gentleness.
His lips moved over hers with fierce precision, coaxing her mouth open, and when she gasped, he swept inside.
The taste of him flooded her senses—wine from the evening and something darker, more intoxicating than spirits.
One hand slid into her wet hair, fisting there, holding her exactly where he wanted her. She grabbed the edge of the tub to keep from drowning, though she could not tell if it was the water or him that threatened to pull her under.
When he broke the kiss, she barely had time to draw breath before his mouth was on her jaw. He kissed down the column of her throat with open-mouthed kisses that made her gasp his name.
“Again,” he commanded against her skin.
“Nicholas—”
He bit down gently on the curve where her neck met her shoulder, soothing it immediately with his tongue. Amelia’s head fell back, a moan escaping her that would have mortified her if she had been capable of coherent thought.
His hand slid down her arm beneath the water, a slow drag that trailed fire in its wake. Then his bicep wrapped around her waist, skin to skin beneath the surface, and she cried out at the contact.
He pulled her up.
Water streamed down her body as she broke the surface, rivulets trickling over her breasts, her stomach. The cool air tightened her nipples into hard peaks, and she watched his eyes drop, watched his jaw clench.
“God,” he breathed. “You are divine.”
His mouth found her breast.
The first touch of his tongue ripped a sound from her throat she had never made before. He circled her nipple. Slow. Maddening. Then sucked. Heat shot between her legs so sharply she gasped.
Her hands found his shoulders, and her nails dug into bare muscle. His arm tightened around her waist, holding her steady as she trembled. His free hand came up to cup her other breast, thumb circling the peak in rhythm with his mouth.
“Nicholas, I need—” She did not know how to finish. Need what? More? Him? Everything?
He switched to her other breast and lavished it with the same devastating attention. Teeth grazing, tongue soothing. His hand on her back splayed wide, fingers pressing into her skin like he was trying to memorize the shape of her.
Water sloshed over the rim of the tub as he pulled her higher. She was half-sitting on the edge now, almost entirely exposed to him, and some distant part of her knew she should feel ashamed.
She did not.
The way he looked at her—like she was something precious and profane all at once—made her feel powerful. The tremor in his hands, the ragged sound of his breathing, the way his body shook with restraint. She had done this to him.
His mouth released her nipple. He looked up at her, and his eyes were almost black in the low light. His hand left her breast, sliding down her stomach with agonizing slowness.
Down, down still.
Her breath hitched. Her body tensed in anticipation.
He would touch her where she ached, where she was already wet from more than just bathwater—
He jolted back.
His hands left the water so fast, droplets sprayed across the floor. He stood, staggering away from her like she’d scalded him.
“No.”
Amelia blinked up at him, dizzy and confused. “What—”
“I cannot.” His chest heaved. He looked wild, undone. Furious—though whether at her or himself, she could not tell. “We cannot do this.”
The words lashed her like a slap. She drew her knees up instinctively, wrapping her arms around them. Suddenly the air felt too cold, the water too exposed. The vulnerability that had thrilled her moments ago now felt like nakedness in the worst sense.
“I do not understand.”
“No.” He grabbed his shirt from the floor, yanking it over his head. It caught on his shoulders, and he wrenched it down violently. “You don’t.”
“Then explain it to me—”
“Finish up.” He would not look at her. His eyes were fixed somewhere over her shoulder, jaw tight enough she could see the muscle jumping. “I will wait outside.”
“Nicholas—”
“Now, Amelia.”
The cold finality in his voice froze whatever protest she had been forming. She watched, stunned, as he strode from the room.
The door closed softly.
Somehow, that was worse than if he had slammed it.
Amelia sat in the cooling water, trying to understand what had just happened. One moment he had been kissing her like the world was ending. The next, he was fleeing like she carried plague.
Her throat burned. Was it that? That she carried some mysterious curse, like her mother? She pressed her eyes shut, refusing to let the tears fall.
This is temporary. You knew this. You have always known this.
Knowing did not make it hurt less.
Nicholas pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the window and counted his breaths.
One. Two. Three.
Behind the closed door, he could hear her moving. The rustle of fabric. A small, frustrated sound as she struggled with a lace or a hook. It required every scrap of his decimated willpower not to go back in.
He had come so close.
Another second of her looking at him like that, wet and bare and wanting, and he would have taken her against the copper rim of that tub without a single thought for the consequences.
And the consequences would have been absolute.
Their marriage had an expiration date. A contract with clauses and stipulations and a neat provision for annulment.
The moment he bedded her, that contract became kindling.
There would be no clean separation. No quiet dissolution that left their reputations intact and her future unshackled from his ruinous name.
She deserved the freedom to choose her own life. Not to be bound permanently to a man the courts had exiled from London for bedding another man’s wife.
Four. Five. Six.
The worst of it was that she had wanted him. And for one delirious moment, the future had ceased to exist, and there was only Amelia, gasping his name in the dark.
But the future did exist. And in it, she would wake beside a man who had trapped her in a marriage she never wanted. And whatever she felt for him now, whatever fragile warmth had grown between them in these strange weeks, would curdle into resentment.
He had watched that happen before. To his father. Twice.
The door opened behind him. He straightened, fastening his waistcoat, pulling on his coat. Rebuilding himself button by button.
She stood in the doorway wearing his dressing gown. The fabric swallowed her, the collar loose enough to expose the flushed skin of her throat where his mouth had been. The sight of it nearly broke him open again
“I will help with the dress,” he croaked.
“I can manage.”
“Turn around, Amelia.”
She did, too tired to argue. His fingers found the hooks with practiced efficiency. He did not allow himself to linger. When the last hook was fastened, he stepped back immediately.
She turned to face him. Two people unable to meet each other’s eyes.
“Good night, Your Grace,” she said quietly.
The formal address landed like a blade between his ribs.
“Good night, Amelia.”