Chapter 8
UNWANTED REVELATIONS
Victor woke up with Persephone’s mouth on his cock. And really, if he’d ever asked for anything more than that—how greedy of him. This and this alone could get him through the rest of his life.
“Fuck, Sephy.” He tangled his hand in her hair and pumped into her mouth.
“Get away from there.” Never get away from there.
He tugged her up, his body primed and ready to spend.
He needed inside her. He’d fallen asleep last night without taking things further.
He’d shot her to the moon and been content to recite didactic children’s poetry in his head until his cockstand went away enough for him to fall asleep as he held her in his arms. Nothing better than a warm, sated bundle of a woman snoring on your chest. He’d forgotten.
He’d also forgotten there was one thing better—waking to a warm, curious woman conquering your body.
No need to conquer, love.
He surrendered. Gleefully.
He should take his time with her, but she seemed to want something different. Her glittering eyes and strong hands, her hair a wild dark halo around her heart-shaped face, her lips slightly parted with a lusty breath—she wanted now.
Who was he to deny her?
She straddled his hips, and he thrust into her.
She met him with a moan, arching and throwing her head back to taunt him with the smooth curves of her body from chin to cunny.
He’d never seen a woman like her undressed.
She was sleek with muscle, lithe and firm and strong.
He’d loved so many different female bodies, gloried in them—those thick with curves that overflowed his hands, those with graceful, birdlike frames, those whose breasts and waists were a study of contradictions. Large and small, short and towering.
But none of them honed as hers had been—by backbreaking labor beneath a moon.
As they rocked together, he admired her strength and her beauty.
The paleness of her skin and the blue-black of her hair like coals at the heart of a fire.
He stroked that muscle with his fingertips, worshiped it with his palms, all while a growing need consumed him.
What if she didn’t have to work hard enough to turn her body to marble?
What if she could be kept on velvet pillows and showered with jewels the same green as her cat eyes? God, she deserved it if anyone did.
He grasped her hips, thrust deeper, and imagined it, what keeping her would be like. Caresses in the morning and insults in the evening and a smile on his lips at all hours.
She deserved it—the velvet and the jewels and the pillows.
And he could not give it to her. He didn’t have the money for velvet, and when he did, he’d have lost her to gain it. She’d never forgive him. They had no future. Only now.
And he was selfish.
He surged up and wrapped her in his arms, kissed the hollow of her neck, bruised her, made her his.
She gasped.
And that little sound toppled him. Like an entire damn city toppled by an autumn breeze.
“Fuck.” As her climax unraveled her, he was unraveling, too. He flipped her onto the mattress and pulled out of her at the same time, spilled his seed on the bed as he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.
Breathing hard and body buzzing, he rolled to the side of the bed he hadn’t just marked and rested an arm over his eyes. “Damn.”
“Yes, that.” A little chuckle, deep, amused, satisfied. “We should rise.” Said with a reluctant sigh.
He slung his feet over the edge of the bed, rubbing his chest. Her reluctance skated across his skin.
It wanted in, wanted to become his. But he’d never been reluctant to leave a woman’s bed.
“Up, lazy bones, or”—he grasped the edge of the sheet beneath her and tugged it up and off the mattress—“I’ll roll you off the bed. ”
She squawked and jumped to her feet, clutching the blankets to her naked form beneath a glare that would have singed the hair from a lesser man’s head. Then something shifted. She lifted her chin like a queen and let the blankets fall.
His face must have shown his appreciation. His cock certainly perked up—so soon, too—and he put a knee on the bed to crawl toward her, but she turned on her toe and strutted off.
“If you touch me before I’ve had a cup of tea—at least one—you’ll never see this”—she wiggled her perfectly round arse—“again.”
He dropped to his belly on the bed. He’d never obeyed a woman so quickly in his life, and likely never would again.
* * *
He’d never had such easy conversation with a lady, and why was that?
The lack of expectations between them? The fact that she already knew his faults?
He suspected so. Also that she was funny and bright, and talking with her felt like all the things that had gone wrong in his life had never happened.
He suspected, mostly, that it was because she saw every sordid inch of his soul and didn’t flinch.
Oh, the bad waited beyond the little bubble of their brougham. It could never truly dissolve. He was still a failure, and she broke her back to feed herself. He needed to steal from the dead, and she was determined to stop him.
But for now, and for the last five hours, he could look at the end of the road and say incredibly imbecilic things like, “When I was a child, I always suspected my parents loved my half sister better than me.”
She jerked her elbow into his arm. “You did not.”
“I did! They doted on Jane. I think now it was only because she was my father’s bastard. They worked hard to make her feel loved, to make up for any censure she’d experience outside our home.”
“Even your mother?”
“Even her.”
“She sounds lovely. Your mother. I’d have liked to meet her.”
“She’d have adored you. And I suppose most men say that, but I mean it. She’d have found you endlessly amusing because you taunt me so well and so often.”
“She liked to see you put in your place. No wonder you thought she loved your sister more.”
“It was a boy’s doubt. I was silly.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I am pitiful now.”
“Yes, you are.” But she wrapped her arm around his and leaned her head on his shoulder. “My parents adored me.”
“Excellent for you.”
“Until I decided to marry Percy. Then they were infuriated with me. And when I remained determined, they gave me up entirely.”
“Disowned you?”
“Mm. Now who is pitiful?”
“Certainly not you.” He wanted to kiss the top of her head. He didn’t. That would be an affectionate, comfortable thing to do. They were simply… friends. Who were fucking. No more than that. No affection. No top-of-head kisses.
He tried not to feel disappointed about it.
“Have you ever thought about remarrying?” he asked.
“Of course. But such delusions do not last for long. Not many men want a woman like me. Widowed, poor, and covered in dirt.”
He scraped his gaze across her creamy skin. “I see not a speck of dirt.”
“Well, you insisted on a bath this morning, didn’t you.”
“You enjoy baths. And I enjoy watching you take them.”
She melted against him then stiffened and sat up straighter. Like a glamour abruptly dissipating. Or one slamming into place. “Have you ever considered marrying?”
“I’ve dedicated this entire year to it. My brother-in-law—I’ve mentioned him before, Sir Nicholas Bowen—has introduced me to innumerable alchemist daughters. His connections are the only reason I allowed my sister to marry him.” He sniffed.
She laughed. “That is a story I would like to hear. I am quite sure, for some reason, that your opinion wasn’t particularly respected on the subject.”
“Not as much as it should have been.”
She gave another laugh. “I thought so. I suspect any sister of yours has a backbone. And I also suspect any man to gain her hand is a fighter.”
“Among other things.” He was grumbling. And grumbling showed weakness.
But he didn’t mind. Showing weakness around Persephone didn’t feel weak.
He hadn’t shared this much about his life with anyone, most certainly not the alchemist daughters he’d been courting this year.
“Tell me, was your husband truly named Percy?”
“Ye-es… Why?” The little groove between her brows was too adorable.
He swiped a thumb through it. “Did he call you Persy, Persephone?”
Her mouth dropped open. The corners of it twitched.
“I can see it now. ‘How are you today darling, Percy?’ ‘Wonderful now you’re here, my perfect Persy.’”
She laughed, loud and long, and the sound ricocheted off the sky and struck him like an arrow to the chest. He rubbed the invisible wound.
“Oh,” she said between howls and tears, “thank Juno he never did.”
“Don’t worry, dearest, darling-est Persy. I’ll make up for lost time.”
She slugged him in the arm. “Don’t you dare.” With a final little laugh, she stared down the road where orange-bright foliage like cloudy paint strokes crowded the sky. “Tell me their names. The women you’ve been courting. I might know them. Before my marriage, I had quite the social standing.”
It explained the educated tenor of her voice. It explained how she held herself, her confidence. “I might be able to remember a name or two.”
She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Of course you can’t remember their names. You’re an—”
“Arse.”
“Precisely.” She grinned.
“If I had not known that about myself before I met you, I would know it well by now. You remind me so often.”
“After only three days of acquaintance, you can be so thoroughly educated?”
“You can know a lot in three days.” He wasn’t teasing anymore. He spoke truth, and as uncomfortable as it was, he couldn’t deny it. He cleared his throat. “One of the women Bowen introduced me to was Miss Smith.
She frowned. “Which one?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Of course not. And who else?”
“Miss Smith.”
“And I suppose you cannot remember this Miss Smith’s given name either?”
“Perhaps you can tell me how many Miss Smiths there might be in alchemist society. Because I met five of them. Six? I can’t be sure. They all sort of blurred together.”