Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Edwina spent the next day in bed, luxuriating in being waited upon by Sterling.
It was strange to see him so out of sorts. The second she twitched, he was on his feet, asking if she needed anything. If her stomach growled, then he was barking orders at the servants, demanding tea and scones, and her favorite strawberry jam….
She’d spent such a long time alone that she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have someone watching over her.
“I’m fine, Sterling,” she promised as she sipped at the soup he’d brought her for lunch. He’d barely allowed her out of bed to bathe and get dressed. “I’m feeling quite recovered.”
“Your skin was like ice, Edwina. And you were barely bloody breathing.” He bit down on his words, his lips pressed thinly together, but she knew he was still furious that she’d put the ring on.
“You nearly collapsed coming up the stairs last night. I knew I should have insisted we come straight home.”
The last thing she recalled was Sterling swinging her into his arms and carrying her up to bed.
“What is it you always say?” she mused. “That I ought to trust my gut instinct more often? Well, I trusted it, Sterling. And I managed to convince Clare to move on—she was just as much a victim of this entire situation as anyone else.”
“Ice,” he said, in a tone she didn’t think she’d ever heard before.
Edwina rolled her eyes. “I knew you were there, Sterling. I could hear you calling my name and guarding my mortal body. Nothing was going to happen to me with you by my side.”
The words didn’t seem to assuage his concern.
He crossed to the window, flipped open the curtains, and then paced away from them.
Edwina stared down into her half-eaten soup.
So much had happened in the past two days that she felt like she’d barely had a chance to catch her breath.
But for the first time this entire trip, he was the one keeping silent.
He hadn’t mentioned that moment in the church when she’d slammed back into her mortal body and found herself lying in his arms.
There’d been no mention of the ring.
His proposal.
Or of getting her into bed.
Only frustrated glances at his watch, and mutterings about getting back to London so they could report to the Prime.
Edwina made a decision. Setting the soup aside, she hauled herself up against the pillows. “Sterling, are we going to talk about it?”
A startled glance was cast over his shoulder. And then his blue eyes clouded over. Sterling turned around, crossing both arms over his chest. “Talk about what?”
“Are you going to say it again?” she whispered.
I love you. I’m madly in love with you, Edwina Sheffield, and I’ve never dared bloody say it….
He looked at her somewhat bleakly.
And she finally knew that it was time to be brave.
“I remember everything you said to me when we were in that church. Even if I was suffering an out-of-body experience, some part of me could hear you speaking.”
He actually looked nervous. “Everything?”
“Everything.”
For the first time since she’d met him, he appeared to be struggling to say the words threatening to burst from him.
Throwing her blankets aside, she pushed to her knees. “You said that you loved me. Did you mean it?”
“Of course, I meant it.” Scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck, he looked everywhere but at her. “I couldn’t think of anything worse than not having you at my side.”
“Then come here… and kiss me.”
“Edwina.” He tried to help her sit back down, but she was having none of it.
“I am not made of porcelain,” she scowled, “nor am I injured or feeble. And if you’re going to be my lover, then you had best bloody realize that right now.”
Sterling froze.
Edwina slid her arms around his neck. “I love you. I’m madly in love with you too, Sterling Reed, and I am finally daring to say it, because I don’t think I could imagine a world without you in it.
I love you. And whilst I thought I’d had my fair share of engagement rings, if you were to go and fetch that little box, it might be the perfect time to put it on my finger before I come to my senses. ”
And then she kissed him.
“Edwina Marie Sheffield,” he groaned, sliding his hands up her sides.
“I think I prefer the sound of ‘Edwina Marie Reed,’” she whispered against his lips.
Sterling broke away with a scowl. “I swear, you try to ruin every proposal I plan.”
Edwina blinked. And then she realized why he was so bloody nervous—why he’d been pacing and looking at his watch.
“You’re proposing? Again?”
He plucked the ring from his pocket, his eyes serious. “I was planning to. I was just waiting for the right moment.”
A breathless feeling swept through her. “This is most definitely the right moment.”
His startled eyes locked on hers. And then he smiled. “Is it?”
She held her hand out.
“Edwina Marie Sheffield, will you marry me?”
“Yes.” She trembled a little as he slid the ring over her finger. “A thousand times yes.”
“Good.” The word was rough silk in his throat.
Edwina grabbed his shirt collar and hauled him closer.
She kissed him again, lips soft and gentle as she learned him. It was a kiss to mark the tentative shifting of their nature.
How many times had she dreamed of this?
How many times had she closed her eyes and conjured this moment in her mind’s eye?
And none of them had ever come close to reality.
There was a physicality to the moment that she’d not understood.
The sound of his breath catching as he cupped her face and deepened the caress.
The slick of his tongue against hers, teasing her to open her mouth for him.
The snick of their teeth against each other as they kissed and licked and ate of each other’s mouths.
And the liquid spooling of heat in her abdomen, because this wasn’t just a kiss.
It was a promise.
Sterling’s hand brushed against her cheek as he set both knees on the bed. And then he was pushing her down, following her onto the mattress.
It was as if the second her spine melded into the soft cloud of feathers that Sterling’s restraint finally died.
“Damn it, Edie.” Another bitten off moan echoed in his throat.
His mouth turned urgent, his tongue stroking against her own as he hauled her against him. The shock of his body made her gasp. He was ridiculously hard as compared to her soft curves, and there was…. She could feel….
He was incredibly aroused.
Edwina broke the kiss, looking down in surprise as he reared up onto his knees.
He always wore tight buckskin breeches and the tented jut of his erection beckoned. Monstrously engorged. A shiver ran down her spine. How on earth was she to manage such a thing?
“Edwina, if you keep looking at my cock like that,” he growled, “then I’m going to pin you to this bed and make love to you until you’re gasping my name.”
A shiver of nerves and excitement lit through her veins. She brushed her knuckles against his abdomen, stroking lower in curiosity. It had to fit. Women had been doing this since the dawn of man. Surely there was some trick to it.
Sterling sucked in a gasp as Edwina’s fingertips skated over the throbbing head of him. She glanced up from beneath her lashes, encouraged to explore further by the look of raw desire on his face.
“Close your fist around it,” he whispered.
She was rewarded by the faint flex of his shaft in her hand. A gasp escaped her. Not so much a brutish weapon, after all, but malleable in some ways.
“Is that a yes?” he demanded.
She ran her thumb down the ridge of his erection. “Yes.”
Another shudder went through him. It was as though he held onto the reins of restraint by the barest minimum. “Good,” he growled. “Because I’d have to go sit in the horse trough outside for an hour or two if you said no.”
Edwina giggled, and then he was tossing her back on the bed and hovering over her, holding his weight off her with his knuckles.
“Kiss me,” she whispered, sliding her hands up his shirt collar. “Kiss me as if you’re never going to let me go.” A wicked thought occurred. “Show me what you meant when you said you wanted to trace my name on my skin with your tongue.”
“Miss Sheffield,” he whispered, nipping at her throat. “How wicked you’ve become.”
“I had an excellent master.”
“Did you?” His voice roughened. “Your employer, was he?”
A shiver ran through her. Every inch of her ached, from the slick wetness between her thighs to the swollen thrust of her breasts. “My very handsome employer.”
“You naughty girl. You couldn’t keep your eyes off him, could you?
He knew it too. Every day you sat at that desk, he thought about brushing his lips across the back of your neck.
He wanted to pluck the buttons on your gown, and slowly, slowly unlace it.
” Fingertips traced their way down her breast, teasing at her nipple.
Sterling’s breath wet her throat as he trailed his teeth along her jaw toward her ear.
His whisper etched itself directly into her soul.
“He wanted to fuck you on your desk, Miss Sheffield. Bend you over it, and drive himself into you from behind until you were begging for mercy.”
Edwina drew back in shock, staring into his eyes. “Maybe I would have let him.”
“You would have begged him, wouldn’t you?
” That hand traversed its way lower, sliding down over her abdomen with enough pressure to force her to undulate against him helplessly, and then fisting in her skirts.
“You would have parted your pretty thighs—these pretty thighs” —Thumbs dug into the soft flesh of her inner thighs, making her gasp— “And begged him to eat of you.”
A shock of warmth flooded through her, leaving her slick and wet. “Sterling!”
“Right… about… here.” His hand found her, cupping the center of all that wetness.
Edwina gasped in shock.
“But you’re a wicked girl.” That voice continued.
“He made you ache, didn’t he? And you touched yourself at night.
In secret. Sometimes you fingered yourself at your desk, didn’t you?
Knowing he was in the next room. Knowing that your fingers were bare sustenance when what you ached for was his cock. ”