Chapter 7
When Margo woke, it was full dark. She could hear the rain, battering the roof of the crofter’s cottage, and she hoped the postilion hadn’t sent someone in this weather to look for them. They weren’t going back to the post-chaise any time soon.
The fire in the grate had burned down to embers, but she was warm and dry.
Henry. Henry had made it so.
They were still on the ground. At some point—Margo did not recall it—Henry must have lowered them both to the wooden floorboards, because he was stretched out on his back.
Margo lay half-atop him, wearing nothing but his shirt.
One of her bare legs was entangled with his, her face on his chest. Both of his arms were around her, the rough-spun cotton bedsheets drawn up to her chin.
He was asleep. She raised her head and looked at his face.
How familiar he was to her. The straight line of his nose, the firm lips softened in sleep. His eyelashes were thick, lighter at the tips, almost gold in the firelight. His hair was dry, and this close she could see that it wasn’t black at all but dark brown.
Familiar, and yet new.
She wanted to touch his hair. She started to slide one hand up from where it had been tucked almost beneath his back, and was promptly arrested by the feel of his body beneath her fingers.
Her mouth went dry. He was hard and hot, the knob of his hipbone pressing sharply into her palm. She drew her hand slowly up his torso and felt the crisp curling hairs that trailed his stomach and chest.
She stopped. Her hand rested in the center of his chest, flat between the rise of his pectoral muscles, his dusky nipples.
She wanted—
Oh God. She wanted to circle his nipple with her finger, to see if that made him shiver or moan. She wanted to lick him there, bite him, find out what drove him mad and do it, again and again, until he cried out and spilled his seed on her thigh.
She felt her breath start to come faster at the thought. She felt no longer pleasantly warm, but hot. Burning. Melting.
She wanted to touch every inch of him. She wanted to lick into his mouth, to suck on his tongue as she wrapped her fingers around his shaft. She wanted him blind with pleasure, the only word in his mouth her name. She wanted to know what he tasted of.
It seemed somehow not at all strange to feel this way about Henry.
She could not say at what point she had tipped over the edge from vague attraction to this potent, painful desire.
It had not been altogether sudden. She had always admired him—the way one might admire a peach at the top of a tree, luscious and beautiful and far out of one’s reach.
But oh mercy, he was within her reach now.
An ache had built low in her belly, a hard thrum of desire between her legs. She wanted to press harder against him, grind her sex against the jut of his hip. The relief—ah God, the hard edge of his body would be relief from this edgy need.
She could not do it. He was sleeping. She would not wake him with her demands, not when he had carried her and held her and warmed her with his own clothing.
But still the need went on. She could smell him, his familiar clean scent. His skin was warm and if she turned her head, she could taste him. Lick him.
How would he react if she did? Wrapped up in him, in the dark hot fantasy made by their bodies, she thought he would welcome it. His fingers would tangle in her hair, pulling her head back. He would touch her where she was empty and aching.
Her body was a tight spiral of want. She could not disturb him.
She dared not wake him, did not want to further impugn him.
But she could not help herself—her body screamed for release.
Her hand trailed down his chest and across his abdomen, toward the neediest part of herself.
She could press against her palm, rock into it, and oh God, it would not be him, but it would be pressure and pleasure.
She would not touch him, she would only think of his mouth, his blunt fingers, his tongue.
She could be quiet as she satisfied her need, it would not take long, she could—
She realized that he’d tensed. His heartbeat thundered in her ears. Her hand froze, and she looked down, not wanting to turn her flushed face toward his.
Through his smallclothes, she could see the outline of his cock, hard and heavy, curving up toward her hand. The muscles of his belly tightened, trembling beneath her palm.
He was awake. Desire for him was hot in her veins, lust edged with familiarity and comfort and something more, something she could not examine too closely. She felt reckless and brave, her leg draped over him, her hand inches from his erection.
She did not decide to kiss him so much as fall into it, his mouth a lure, an irresistible draw. She lifted her head and tightened her leg, her body coming harder against him. And then she pressed her mouth to his.
Henry could not tell if he was dreaming.
He had dreamed of her so many times it had become almost absurd. Her body, flushed pink all over, his hands gathering her breasts before him, thrusting his prick between those two pale mounds, licking her nipples, crying out as he came.
He always woke alone, feeling emptied out and ridiculous.
If he was dreaming now, he didn’t want to wake.
Margo—ah, Christ, he could feel every line of her soft body, the thin fabric of his shirt scarcely a barrier.
He could feel the curve of her breast against his side, the tight point of her nipple a shock, a signal of her arousal, a flare to his own.
Her leg was thrown across his, skin on skin.
If he lifted his hand, he could touch her, slide his hand from her ankle to the back of her knee.
Close his fingers over her thigh. Knead the broad curve of her arse.
He wanted to drag his fingers down the cleft of her buttocks and find her sex, wanted to press his fingers into her body and feel the tight clench of her around him.
But he could not move. If he moved, the spell would break. He would wake up, or a tree would fall through the roof of the cottage, or Margo would realize who he was and—
Well. She would be kind when she broke his heart, he was sure of that.
So he held himself still as a stone, except for the way his cock strained up as she slid her hand from his chest down his stomach.
Christ—Christ, her touch was more than he could have imagined, light and warm and charged with temptation.
His pulse pounded in his ears and he prayed that his body would not betray him, that she would keep touching him, that she would never stop, that he could die here and turn to dust and never give up the feeling of Margo’s hand a hairsbreadth from his cock, his bones scored from the pleasure of it.
But she stopped, of course. He balanced on a knife-edge of relief and despair.
An instant of pause, then she pressed up. Her body flattened against his, her face swimming into his view, her cheeks flushed and her pupils blown wide. Then her mouth was on his.
For the first time, they kissed. Her lips were soft and greedy, and Henry came apart.
He rolled her over, cradling her head with his hand, his body coming down on hers, pressing her into the floor. She whimpered into his mouth, her body bucking up against his, her fingers fisting in his hair and urging him on.
Ah God, ah fuck—her tongue was in his mouth, and she tasted like rainwater, like lust and cherries, and he sucked on her tongue, her lips, grinding down into her soft, soft body. Her legs spilled apart, and she arched up.
He was lost. His restraint was gone. Margo moaned and writhed, and he had never felt like this—he thought he might come from the sound of her, from the clutch of her fingers on his back and the shudder of her body into his.
But no—he couldn’t come yet. He had to see her.
He dragged himself away from her mouth, and the needy groan that came from her lips was a drug, a spur to his madness.
He came back onto his knees, freeing his hands to shove his shirt up above her breasts.
Her arms were still caught in the sleeves, and she twisted, trying to free herself and push the shirt over her head.
He couldn’t help her. He was too far gone to do anything but stare.
She was glorious, flushed all over with arousal, freckled across the curve of her breasts and her ribs and even the top of her mound, above curls redder than he could have dreamed up in his wildest fantasies.
Her curves were riper than he’d expected, her nipples darker, tight knots at the tips of her generous breasts.
Her tits bounced as she hauled off the shirt, and he didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he wrapped them around her thighs and lowered his mouth to one nipple.
She gasped as he sucked the tight peak into his mouth, gasped and jerked and strained.
He pressed his forehead against her skin, drowning in her scent, in the sensation of her stiff nipple on his tongue.
He listened for the sounds she made as he softened his assault, laving her, flicking his tongue against the taut bud.
He experimented with circles, with the edges of his teeth, his awareness spiraling down to sensation of her body and the sound of her moans in his ear.
Faster—she seemed to like faster, and harder, so he gave it to her, switching to her other breast.
Dimly, he realized that he was kneading her thighs with his hands, that his thumbs were tracing hard circles on her flesh near her sex. His position kept her legs drawn wide, and she bucked into nothing, into air. Her hips twisted.
“Henry,” she gasped. “Please, please—”
He brought one hand to her sex and then stopped, dazed, disbelieving. She was wet—ah God, she was so wet. Her arousal slicked her folds, the tops of her thighs, liquid heat on his fingers as he touched her. He gritted his teeth and pressed his face against the curve of her neck.