Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Eliza retired early after a quiet evening. Curled up atop the bed coverings in her nightdress, her hair unbound, she thumbed through a book. Every few pages she set her book aside to admire her violets.
Plink.
The odd sound startled her. But after glancing around the room and finding nothing amiss, she returned to her Edgeworth novel. Dickens had proven too depressing to be borne on such a relaxing evening.
Plink.
The first could have been a trick of the mind, but a second… Eliza abandoned her cozy bed to search. Her bare feet padded toward the fireplace—unlit on the warm night. Nothing in that corner was out of turn.
Plink.
Eliza spun to the window between her bed and hearth. Beneath it sat an end table with a fragrant bouquet.
Plink.
The disturbance came from the window. She was certain of it. Gingerly, she slid the vase to one side of the table so she could peer out without disturbing it. At first, all she could see was darkness; the candles illuminating the space were too numerous to allow her sight.
She pressed against the glass, cupping her eyes with her hands to block out the ambient light. After a few seconds, her vision adjusted to the moonlight, and her heart stopped. Benedict.
His wave was cheeky, boyish. The sight had her lips curving into a breathless smile. She backed away and reached for her robe on the bed.
Years of sneaking down to the kitchens for a snack left her confident of which steps creaked. Avoiding them was automatic, even as she raced down the stairs, tugging on the robe.
The darkened route to the music room was less familiar than her usual midnight sojourn to the kitchens, but she navigated it without incident.
She snapped the lock and slid the door open. She froze at the sight before her.
Far from the buttoned-up Lord Sinclair she’d met before, this man was undone. His coat and necktie were long gone, his dark waistcoat hung from broad shoulders, and the buttons of his shirt had abandoned their role, leaving her with a massive expanse of new, distracting skin to admire.
Her whimper was shameful, but no more so than his groan.
“Eliza… God.” His voice broke as his hand cradled her waist, guiding her closer. One after the other, he shut the French doors with his free hand.
In a blink, he had her caged between his frame and the side of the house. His ragged breath mingled with hers, and she could taste the honeyed, caramel malt of scotch.
Sinclair—Benedict, she couldn’t call him Sinclair while pressed against him in this way, not even in her mind—radiated warmth where his chest glanced along her breasts.
The way his arm braced against the brick wall of the house, the other soon joining it, left her dizzy, overwhelmed.
He was everything. Everything she could see.
Everything she could hear. Everything she could smell.
Everything she could feel. She was greedy for even more.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here. I shouldn’t be here, Eliza. Tell me to go. Please.” His voice broke on the plea. Eliza had never seen such an expression on his beautiful face. He was… overwhelmed. There was an aching desperation in the breathless set of his lips and the need in his gaze…
“I don’t want you to go.” The words escaped without thought, but thoughtlessness made them no less true.
“What do you want?” he begged in a rumble.
Gooseflesh danced down her spine. “I...”
“I’ll give you anything, everything I have.”
“Benedict—”
“God, the way you say it…” His forehead fell to her shoulder, his nose dragging along the sensitive flesh at the side of her throat. “Say it again?”
Eliza was incapable of denying him anything. “Benedict.”
“Someday… someday you’ll cry my name when you climax. That sound is going to haunt me.” The words frayed at the edges, ragged with sentiment.
The gravel of his voice against her flesh was a sensual drug, leaving her weak.
She reached out to touch the wavy locks that tempted her fingers—thick and unbearably soft.
She raked her nails along the base of his scalp before pulling his face from her neck.
His groan was too loud in the moonlit garden.
He leaned into her touch like a cat seeking scritches.
“Shh.” Eliza brushed a finger over his full lips—a pretense to satisfy her own curiosity. Benedict caught her hand again and dropped a kiss on her palm, more sensual than anything she’d experienced, before moving to her wrist.
“Benedict!” she cried on a whispered inhale.
“Yes, Eliza,” he breathed against her fluttering pulse, her name a caress. “What else do you want?”
“I—”
Long fingers abandoned her wrist and found her cheek. Hers were left to brush along the biting stubble of his jaw. His hand was so large, so immense, that his fingers curved around the back of her neck even as his palm engulfed her jaw, thumb brushing along her cheekbone.
“I’m going to hell, Eliza. But I’m going to make it so good for you. I promise.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“I know, little violet. I know. Can I— I want to try something.”
“Anything.” Her heart flipped at his endearment, her thumb brushing along his temple.
Benedict’s head hinged back with a groan. When he straightened, his hand slid farther back, fingers curling around her neck. “Don’t say that. Please don’t give me that power. But this—yes, to this.”
“Yes?”
“I’ll stop. I’ll always stop,” he vowed.
“Alright.” She nodded. Her hands found his jaw. She trapped him in place, claiming his gaze. “Alright.”
His forehead dropped to hers as he inched the gap between them closed.
Eliza’s breath hitched when his knee slotted between hers. Her fingers slid back to clutch at his shoulder. Between them, Benedict’s swallow was pointed, loud. He released a shuddering exhale, mingling with her own.
Comprehension dawned when his other hand abandoned her waist to trail down to her hip. There, he tenderly, so unbearably gently, guided her hip to rock against his thigh.
His eyes caught hers, a question clear in them. “Yes?” he whispered.
Eliza nodded with her own breathless yes.
Wet heat pooled where his thigh met her apex, and desire curled into her belly. Her nipples tightened in the balmy night air, sending tiny sparks through her body with every rustling brush of his chest.
Her body’s reaction to these simple movements would have left her embarrassed if his expression wasn’t just as shattered. Benedict’s lips parted, his breath falling in sharp pants across her chest.
The burning hand on her hip urged her to rock against his leg again. Once, twice, and then the stars aligned, and so did their bodies. The thick thigh beneath his trousers brushed against her nub through gossamer cotton.
“Benedict!” she sobbed in a harsh whisper, clutching at the fabric of his shirt wantonly.
“There? That’s it?”
She nodded, and he urged her to rock again with the hand still on her waist.
“Good, good. More?”
“Yes.”
“Take what you need. God, you’re so beautiful, all undone for me.”
At his urging, her body found a rhythm. Tension coiled in her center as every inch of her ached for him.
“Touch me?”
“Anything. Where?” There was a pleading note in his baritone voice.
“Everywhere.”
His hand smoothed down her jaw before it swept across her shoulder blade in a reverent caress, as innocent as it was gentle.
Benedict gathered her curls in that hand, drawing them to one shoulder with a muttered, “So damned soft.”
With one last step, the air between them vanished. Benedict’s lips fell to her neck, brushing along the tendons there before settling in the cradle of her shoulder blade. The change in position brought his thigh even tighter against her core. A cry escaped her chest.
“Shh, I’m here.”
“Benedict, I—”
“I know, little violet. I know. Do you know how beautiful you are like this? What you do to me? I didn’t— I never expected—never dreamed…
I don’t deserve— Eliza, I can’t—” Benedict mouthed nonsensical words into the divot of her clavicle, his damp breath pooling there, cooling her overheated skin, even as Eliza chased her release under his guiding hand.
Benedict discovered the heartbeat of her cadence. His hips met hers in a sensual dance. He’d long abandoned sense in his words, but his body knew what his mouth did not.
“I can’t. I want to give you everything until there’s nothing else left.”
“Kiss me?” she asked, her lips as needy for his touch as the cleft between her legs.
His groan was too loud, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
“I’m dying to. I want to kiss you everywhere until there’s no part of you I don’t know. But not this way. I shouldn’t have come—not drunk. You deserve better than this—me.”
“Benedict, no—”
“You’re a goddess—soft, warm, violet-scented goddess. Didn’t even know what violets smelled like until you. Now I’m tormented by it day and night. And now, knowing you like this—with your quim soaking my breeches—I want to drown in you.”
Somehow, Benedict halved the nonexistent space between them, and Eliza felt the hardness of his length beneath his trousers. He thrust against her hip. Their groans formed a breathy harmony in the night air.
“Are you close? I need to see it. Please, let me see.”
And she was. Eliza had never been this close to a peak for so long before—not that this was comparable to her awkward fumblings under the bedsheets. She nodded, incapable of more.
“How can I help?”
“I— Can I— I want to touch you.”
His breath escaped in a rush. “Anywhere. I’m all yours.”
Eliza’s hands unclenched from his shoulders and dragged down the rigid, tensing muscles of his chest. Her finger brushed past a flat male nipple, earning a gasp.
Intrigued, she teased it a second time, more intentionally as the other hand made for the bulge brushing her hip, bumping along the ridges of his abdomen—so hard where hers was soft.
As she cupped his impressive hardness, Benedict groaned, “Fuck it.”
His hand abandoned her waist, trusting her to maintain their dance on her own as he traced down her thigh with a questioning gaze.
Eliza, who could deny him nothing, nodded. When his hand met the bare flesh of her calf, her gasp echoed along the petals of her garden. Benedict was on a mission as he traversed the private skin of her knee then thighs.
“Bound for hell anyway. May as well earn my way dripping in your honey.” Then his fingers reached the pleasurable button she’d been grinding against his thick thigh and she gasped.
“Christ,” he muttered.
She tightened her grip on his member as he worked two fingers inside her without hesitation, leaving his palm for her to grind against.
“Is that better, beautiful? Something for you to clench onto?”
She nodded, too close to the edge for anything more. Her own hand fumbled inexpertly as his worked her with confidence.
“That’s it. You’re right there. Focus on it.” Benedict did something with his fingers, twisted, pressed. And her body broke.
The essence of her, everything that tethered her to the earth, burst into sparks. Vision abandoned her in a shower of blinding stars.
When she returned to the world, his hand was still brushing against her center, drawing out the pleasure as her muscles fluttered around his fingers. His other hand covered her mouth, a fact she was both grateful for and embarrassed about. His hips were still rutting against her weak palm.
Senseless, she pressed a kiss to the palm that covered her lips. A mirror of his earlier touch. His hand grazed along her cheek, offering her his wrist. The temptation there proved too much, and her tongue darted out to taste his pulse.
Benedict’s swallow was harsh, giving way to heavy, panting breaths. Slowly, gently, he pulled his other hand away from her core, a longing furrow forming between his brows at the pitiful sound she made.
“I know, I know…”
He untangled himself from her dress before he pulled her fingers away from his still hard member.
“But…” she protested.
“Shh, that’s my punishment to bear.”
“I don’t—..”
“You’ve given me everything, Eliza. It’s time for you to return inside.”
“But—”
He shook his head in response before meeting her forehead with his own.
“Benedict, I… Thank you. For tonight, I mean. It was perfect.”
His lips pressed together in a ghost of a smile before he dropped them to her temple in a gentle kiss.
“To bed with you. I’ll see you soon.”
“Tomorrow?” she asked, hopeful that his plans had changed.
Benedict shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’ll meet you in my dreams, at least until morning. And then I will think only of you.”
A vulnerability settled over Eliza like an oppressive blanket. The thought of not seeing him—after what they’d shared—left her lost.
“You said tomorrow—it is not for ladies?”
Benedict’s chuckle was soft, indulgent. “There’s been no one but you. And there won’t be tomorrow either. Even tonight, I only wanted to be here. Pathetic, in truth.”
“It’s not pathetic.”
“Oh, it is. They’ll take away my wretched title, hand it to some other deserving rake, and then where will I be?”
“Mine,” she said, cheeks heating when her thoughts caught up with her hopeful mouth. “I don’t— I didn’t—”
“I quite like that,” he assured her, his smile small, intimate. “But, to bed with you,” he repeated. “Before it all goes to hell.”
“Goodnight, Benedict.”
“Goodnight, Eliza.” Benedict broke away to open the door, then guided her inside with a little shooing motion. He shut the door behind her before pointing at the lock with a raised brow.
Once she’d flipped the latch, he gave her a crooked smile before making for the back gate, taking all the air with him.
Eliza waited for long minutes before trailing back up the stairs.