Chapter 19
Vix did not want to loosen her hold, but after a time, her arms began to ache. Slowly and with great regret, she let the muscles in her back and down the length of her biceps loosen; she let her hands go slack and trace along the glistening, damp expanse of his skin.
She listened to him breathe.
But she didn’t let him go. She didn’t release him completely.
She didn’t look up at him either.
She wasn’t sure she could bear it just yet. She wasn’t sure she was brave enough. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut and breathed him in, marveling at how her cheek fit into the hollow of his shoulder, at how easily his arm curled around the naked expanse of her back.
Instead, she worried that her hair would dry like this, frizzy and tangled, and everyone would know what she had done. She focused on that, pulling air in through her nose, and when she opened her eyes again, they fell on the tray she had prepared before all of this.
The one she’d brought up before he got home.
“There is water, Ambrose,” she said, her voice soft and a little jagged as she peeled herself up and off his body to go retrieve it. “And grapes. The purple ones.”
She took the tray and put it on the bed with them, lifting a grape and biting it in half so she could pull the seeds out before offering him the rest. “You prefer the purple ones,” she said, absurdly, because of course he knew that.
She held it out to him, finally forcing herself to behold his face, easy and half-lidded, watching her with a drowsy little curve to his lips as she held out the halved fruit to him.
He opened his mouth and let her drop it inside, and then caught her wrist so she could not pull away again as he chewed and swallowed, those inky blue eyes locked on her, darting back and forth across her face.
“There is water,” she said again, not wanting to wrench free, despite the oddest impulse telling her she ought to. “I can pour a glass.”
“Vix,” he said, licking his lips with the tint of grape juice. “I am in love with you.”
She opened her mouth, impulse again screaming within her.
“Do not argue with me,” he said, chuckling before she could utter a sound. “I am.”
She stared at him, pinpricks racing up and down her spine, heat and cold clashing in her chest. She watched him lie there, so at ease, pulling an arm up and behind his head as he leaned back on the pillows, so certain, somehow.
She took another grape, twisting it between her fingers. “How do you know?”
His eyes seemed to soften, focusing on her face with a wry curve of his lips.
He was still holding her hand, twisting his fingers through hers while he looked at her.
“The same way I know I prefer the purple grapes, I suppose,” he answered, reaching out for her, calling her back to him.
“The same way I know to wake in the morning and sleep at night and breathe through it all. I do not know. I just do.”
She frowned. Something in her chest cracked, sorrowful and heavy. “I have to tell myself to sleep and to wake,” she said. “I have to remind myself to breathe.”
“I know,” he told her, and pulled on her hand. “Come here. I did not tell you because I require payment in kind.”
“The water,” she said absently, already collapsing forward again, already curling back around him. She held him with her arms and with her legs, her ankles twining around one of his, her cheek falling back into that dip of his shoulder. “I didn’t give you the water.”
He pressed his lips into the top of her head, lingering there, inhaling the scent of her hair. “You gave me an entire tub full. I bet it’s still warm.”
She breathed out, shaking her head. “It probably is.”
“I don’t want to wash you from my skin,” he told her. “In fact, you ought to cancel anything you meant to do tomorrow. You won’t be leaving this room.”
She felt amusement crack through the weight in her chest, indignant and sharp. “You cannot imprison me here,” she said without feeling.
“I can and I intend to,” he replied easily, his fingers tripping down the curve of her back, cupping around the round swell of her backside. “You’re not going anywhere and neither am I. Consider yourself lucky I’m claiming only a day rather than a week.”
“Hm,” she said, letting herself smile, letting it happen against the warmth of his skin. “Perhaps if you finished the whole of your tasks today …”
He chuckled, giving her a squeeze. “I think I just completed the most important one.”
“Presumptuous,” she observed, feigning a yawn. Then, after a moment, she looked up at him sidelong and asked, “Did you complete the list, though?”
“I did,” he told her with a brisk nod. “And do not think I didn’t notice your careful avoidance of using your name on the invitations.”
She gave him a smile, uncertain if it was sheepish or cunning, for it felt a little of both, then turned her face back down to watch her own fingers, rolling the grape she’d been holding against the lines of his abdomen.
“You know,” she said, guiding it toward his navel, then back up again, “for the longest time, I was not allowed to answer to Vix. Not at school. Certainly not at the Tolliver house. Even my mail would be edited to say Victoria if Matthew or Teddy put Vix on the envelope.”
She sighed, remembering it. “When I first returned to London, I kept correcting Teddy and everyone else for using my old name. Every time someone said it, a little jolt of panic would flash through my stomach, like it would be overheard. I constantly felt like I was in trouble and awaiting rebuke. I still feel like that sometimes. Like I’m in trouble. ”
“For your name?” he asked, and she could hear the frown on his voice. “You will never be in trouble again, Vix. You don’t answer to anyone anymore. You never will again.”
“Says the man who just forced me to recite my prayers,” she quipped, stopping the grape just below his heart with a press of her finger and smirking up at him. “My own husband, who made me ask before he gave me the simple charity of relief.”
“Ah, well,” he said, leaning down and flicking the grape out from under her finger, sending it flying across the room and then laughing at how she gasped in outrage. “I might break a rule now and then. But, but, it will never be to fill you with dread, Vix. I promise you that.”
“Every time we make promises to each other, they end up turning perverse,” she told him, her leg creeping up and over his waist. “‘Be unpredictable.’ ‘Be patient.’ Look where it’s gotten us.”
His hand came down, clamping her thigh into place against his hip as he ducked his head to capture a kiss. “Yes,” he said softly. “Look at where it’s gotten us.”
She blinked up at him, savoring that little kiss, memorizing the way he held her leg in place. “So you saw my invitations,” she said, bracing her forearms against his chest and lifting up a little to loom over him. “Did you post them?”
“I did,” he told her, looking like the most accomplished lad in school. “Oversaw the stamping and bagging myself.”
She squinted. “They let you do that?”
“They didn’t want to,” he replied smugly, which made her grin.
“Sir Ambrose defeats the Royal Mail,” she sighed, enjoying the immediate way he tensed under her. “A gallant tale for the ages.”
“You didn’t put that name on the invitations either,” he noted. “And for that I thank you.”
“You shouldn’t,” she said, pressing a little closer. “The next time we frolic, I intend to call you that during the act.”
“Ah, here in a few moments, then?” he said, raising his brows, his fingers tightening on the flesh of her thigh. “Or did you think you had finished your own duties for the night already?”
She faltered, her lips forming a little o of surprise. “I didn’t request it,” she reminded him, but did not attempt to wriggle away.
“Oh, that was a one-time necessity, my love,” he told her, dragging her leg higher, making it clear that he was not in jest about his intentions.
“The maiden voyage has departed now. Explicit requests are no longer required. But I shall not discourage you from making them, should the spirit move you.”
“It might,” she said, her voice thinning as her skin began to warm. “It wasn’t so bad, in the end.”
“Oh, wasn’t it?” he taunted, urging her further onto him, pulling her leg fully over his hip so that she would lie astride him. “You certainly acted like it was causing you immense pain.”
“It was,” she said, as flippantly as she could manage as she settled into place atop his body, shifting so she could look up at his face, her hands braced against his chest. “Until it wasn’t.”
“Fascinating,” he murmured, running his fingers down both sides of her back, tracing the dips of her waist. “That must be why you screamed the way you did. The suffering of it all.”
She shivered. “I did not scream.”
“You did,” he insisted, his voice a low purr. “And you will again.”
She narrowed her eyes, running her gaze over all that messy hair, glinting silver in the candlelight; over the smooth, unbothered brow; the relaxed gaze of his eyes; the soft lines of his mouth.
“I should get up,” she said without moving, “and put that tray on the floor so that we do not spill water and grapes all over the bed.”
“You should,” he agreed, holding her firmly in place. “You’re not going to just yet.”
“But we will—” she protested, cutting herself off with a whimper at the shift of his hips.
“You could try to stay very still,” he suggested, twining her hair around his fingers, “just like you could try not to scream.”
She pressed her lips together, flashing her eyes at him in defiance and making him grin.
“There’s my girl,” he said approvingly. “We are going to have a lovely night.”
“Do your worst,” she breathed. “Sir Ambrose.”