Chapter Fourteen
“You have been distant.”
William looked up from the glass of wine he had been contemplating, his third attempt to dull the ache in his chest, his third failure, and found Eliza watching him from across the drawing room of his country house. She had arrived an hour ago, and he had been avoiding her ever since.
Three days had passed since the morning he had asked for time. Three days of sleepless nights and brandy-soaked afternoons and the growing certainty that he was about to commit the cruellest act of his life. Three days of rehearsing speeches he could not bring himself to deliver.
And now she was here, looking at him with those brandy-brown eyes, and he was a coward who could not find the words to end it.
“I have had much on my mind,” he said.
“I imagine you have.” She crossed the room, her movements graceful despite the tension visible in her shoulders. “I have too. I have thought of little else since I left here.”
“And what conclusions have you reached?”
“That I love you.” She stopped before him, close enough to touch but not touching. “That I have given you everything I have to give. And that I’m terrified you’re about to tell me it wasn’t enough.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. She knew. On some level, she already knew what was coming, could read it in his avoidance, his distance, the way he had not sought her out since their last meeting.
“Eliza…”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t say it yet. Whatever you’ve decided, whatever you’re about to tell me, I’m asking you to wait. Just until tomorrow. Give me one more night.”
“One more night won’t change anything.”
“It might change everything.” Her voice cracked. “Or it might change nothing. But either way, I want it. I want one more night with you, William. One more night to pretend that this is real, that we have a future, that love is enough to overcome whatever fears are keeping you from me.”
He should refuse. Should tell her now, cleanly, before another night of intimacy made the inevitable ending even more devastating. Should spare them both the agony of a goodbye disguised as a beginning.
But he was weak.
He was weak, and she was standing before him with tears in her eyes, and he wanted her so badly it felt like dying.
“One more night,” he heard himself say.
She kissed him.
It was not like their other kisses, not the fierce claiming of the musicale corridor, not the desperate hunger of the carriage, not even the tender exploration of their first time together.
This kiss was something else entirely. It tasted of tears and farewell and the desperate hope that somehow, impossibly, everything might still be all right.
William kissed her back with everything he had. Poured into it every word he could not say, every feeling he could not name, every ounce of love he was about to sacrifice on the altar of his own fear.
I love you, he thought with every press of his lips. I love you, and I’m sorry, and this is the last time.
He undressed her slowly.
In their previous encounters, there had always been urgency, a frantic need to touch, to taste, to consume before time or propriety intervened. Tonight was different. Tonight, he had all the time in the world and nothing but this moment to fill it.
He removed her gown button by button, pressing a kiss to each inch of skin as it was revealed. Her shoulder. Her collarbone. The soft curve of her upper arm. The delicate tracery of veins at her wrist.
“William.” His name was a whisper. A plea. “What are you doing?”
“Memorising you.”
She went still beneath his hands. “Memorising me?”
“Every freckle. Every curve. Every place that makes you shiver.” He bent to kiss the hollow of her throat, felt her pulse racing beneath his lips. “I want to remember exactly how you look in this moment. I want to carry you with me always.”
Even after I let you go.
He did not say the last part. But something in his voice must have betrayed him, because she caught his face in her hands and forced him to meet her eyes.
“You are saying goodbye,” she said. “You are making love to me like it is the last time.”
He could not lie to her. Had promised, at the beginning, that he would never lie.
“I am making love to you like you deserve,” he said instead. “Like every man should make love to the woman he…” He stopped. Swallowed. Could not quite say the word.
“The woman he what?”
Loves. The woman he loves. The woman he is about to destroy because he cannot find the courage to be something other than broken.
“The woman who changed everything,” he said.
Her eyes were bright with tears, but she did not cry. Instead, she pulled him down to her, kissed him with a ferocity that stole his breath, and whispered against his lips: “Then show me. Show me everything.”
He worshipped her.
There was no other word for it. He took his time with every inch of her body, learning her anew, cataloguing responses he already knew by heart but could not bear to forget.
He kissed the arch of her foot and the curve of her calf and the sensitive skin behind her knee.
He traced the line of her thigh with his tongue, feeling her tremble beneath him, hearing the soft gasps that punctuated her breathing.
When he reached the apex of her thighs, he paused. Looked up at her. Found her watching him with an expression that shattered what remained of his heart.
“I want to taste you,” he said. “I want to make you fall apart with my mouth and watch your face when the pleasure takes you. Will you let me?”
“Yes.” The word was barely audible. “Yes, William.”
He lowered his mouth to her.
She was already wet, slick and swollen with wanting, and the taste of her flooded his senses like a drug. He groaned against her flesh, the vibration making her hips jerk, and began to explore with devastating patience.
He had done this before. Knew exactly how to bring her to the edge and hold her there, trembling on the precipice. But tonight was not about skill or technique. Tonight was about worship. About showing her, with his mouth and his hands and his desperate devotion, exactly what she meant to him.
He worked her slowly, inexorably, toward climax. Circled that sensitive bundle of nerves with his tongue, alternating pressure and pace until she was writhing beneath him, her fingers fisted in his hair, his name falling from her lips again and again.
“Please,” she was begging, though he wasn’t sure she knew for what. “William, please, I need…”
“I know what you need.” He added two fingers, sliding them inside her with careful pressure, curling them to find that spot that made her back arch off the bed. “I know everything you need, Eliza. Let me give it to you.”
He increased the pace of his tongue, his fingers, working her with the focused intensity of a man who knew this might be his last chance.
And when she finally broke, when the tension crested and shattered and she came apart with a cry that seemed to rip from somewhere deep inside her, he gentled his movements and carried her through it, wringing every last tremor of pleasure from her body.
Only when she lay gasping and boneless beneath him did he finally crawl up to lie beside her, pulling her into his arms, pressing kisses to her damp temple.
“That was…” She seemed unable to complete the sentence.
“That was me showing you what you deserve,” he said quietly. “What you should expect from any man lucky enough to have you.”
She turned in his arms, her brown eyes searching his face. “I don’t want any other man. I only want you.”
The words were a knife in his chest. He kissed her to avoid responding, feeling the desperation build again in his body.
“I need you,” he breathed against her mouth. “I need to be inside you. Please, Eliza. Let me—”
“Yes.”
She was already reaching for him, her hands finding his length, stroking with an expertise she had learned in their weeks together. He groaned into her throat, hips jerking into her grip, fighting for the control that had always come so easily and now seemed entirely beyond his reach.
“Wait.” He caught her wrist, stilling her movements. “If you keep doing that, this will be over far too quickly.”
“I don’t care about quickly.” Her voice was raw. “I just need you close. I need to feel you inside me. Please, William.”
He positioned himself between her thighs, his length pressing against her entrance, and forced himself to pause. To look at her. To memorise this moment, the way her hair spread across the pillow, the flush on her cheeks, the love in her eyes that he did not deserve.
“I have never,” he said slowly, “felt anything like what I feel when I’m with you.”
“I know.” She reached up to touch his face, her fingers tracing his jaw. “I feel it too.”
He pushed inside her.
The sensation was overwhelming, the tight, wet heat of her body closing around him, the soft moan that escaped her lips, the way her eyes fluttered closed as she adjusted to the invasion. He held still, trembling with the effort of restraint, giving her time to accommodate.
“Move,” she whispered. “Please, William. I need you to move.”
He began to thrust.
Slowly at first. Long, deep strokes that seemed to reach somewhere profound within her, drawing sounds from her throat that he wanted to capture and keep forever.
She rose to meet him, her hips matching his rhythm, her hands clutching at his shoulders as though he were the only solid thing in a dissolving world.
“Look at me.” The command emerged rough, desperate. “Eliza, look at me.”
Her eyes opened, meeting his, and what he saw there nearly undid him. Love. Trust. Complete surrender to whatever he wanted to take.
I don’t deserve this, he thought. I don’t deserve you.
But he took it anyway. Took everything she offered, pouring himself into her with increasing urgency, his hips snapping against hers, his breathing ragged, his heart hammering in his chest.
The climax built like a wave, inexorable, overwhelming. He felt her body begin to tighten around him, heard her breathing change, and knew she was close.
“Come for me,” he gasped. “One more time. Let me feel you…”
She shattered with a cry, her body convulsing around him, and the sensation pulled him over the edge with her. He came with a groan that felt torn from his very soul, spilling himself inside her, his body jerking with the force of his release.
For a long moment, they simply lay there, tangled together, breathing hard, too overwhelmed to move.
Then Eliza turned her face into his neck and began to cry.
Not the soft, romantic tears of novels. Real tears, harsh, broken sobs that shook her entire body. William held her through it, stroking her hair, pressing kisses to her temple, feeling each sob like a blade between his ribs.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped between sobs. “I don’t know why, I can’t stop.”
“Don’t apologise.” His voice was hoarse. “Never apologise. Not for this. Not for anything.”
“I just…” She pulled back to look at him, her face wet, her eyes red. “I feel like I’m losing you. Even with you inside me, even after everything we just shared, I feel like you’re already gone.”
He had no response. No denial. No comfort to offer.
Because she was right.
He was already gone. Had made the decision days ago, alone with his thoughts after she left. Had already chosen fear over love, self-preservation over the terrifying vulnerability of truly giving himself to someone.
“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you so much, William. Whatever you’re afraid of, whatever you think will happen, I don’t care. I would rather have you, damaged and uncertain and afraid, than have anyone else whole.”
He closed his eyes against the wave of pain that crashed over him.
“Eliza—”
“Please.” Her hands framed his face, forcing him to look at her. “Please don’t leave me. I know you are thinking about it. I can feel you pulling away even now. But please, give us a chance. Give me a chance to prove that love does not have to destroy. That it can build something instead.”
He wanted to say yes. Wanted to promise her everything, throw away his fears, leap into the unknown with her hand in his.
But, once again, the fear was stronger.
“I need to think more,” he said instead. “I need… tomorrow. Let us talk tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” The word was hollow. “You keep saying tomorrow.”
“I know.” He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. “I know, and I am sorry. But I promise, tomorrow, you will have your answer. Whatever I decide, you’ll know.”
She studied his face for a long moment, searching for something. He did not know if she found it.
“All right,” she said finally. “Tomorrow.”
She dressed quietly, and he helped her with the fastenings neither of them seemed able to manage steadily.
At the door, she looked back once.
He almost went to her.
He did not.
A little later, from the window, he watched the carriage take her down the drive.
I love you, he thought. But it is time I let you go.
Then he went to the study to compose the speech that would end everything.