Chapter Eleven #4
There was still no note. But there didn't need to be.
Eliza read the essay three times, a smile playing at her lips. He was comparing himself to a displaying bird. The Duke of Northmere, with all his dignity and reserve, was telling her that the waltz had been his mating dance. She was staying at Northmere. She was staying for Henry and for herself.
And she was staying for him.
The rest: the declarations, the decisions, the terrifying leap from courtship to commitment—could wait. She wasn't ready for that yet. But she was ready to stop pretending that this was just a job, just a position, just a convenient arrangement that could be ended with two months' notice.
This was her life now. These were her people, and this was her home.
She fell asleep that night with two books under her pillow, and her heart full of something that felt terrifyingly like hope.
She didn't expect to dream that night.
But dream she did.
They were in the music room again, but it was different now. The candles burned lower, casting everything in amber shadow. There was no Mrs. Crawford at the pianoforte. No, Henry watching from the doorway.
They were alone.
"Dance with me," Alistair said, and his voice was rougher than she had ever heard it, raw with something that made her stomach flip.
"There's no music."
"We don't need music."
He pulled her into his arms, and they began to move—but this wasn't the careful, proper waltz they had practised earlier.
This was something else entirely. His hand on her waist burned through the fabric of her dress.
His body pressed against hers with an intimacy that would have been scandalous in any ballroom.
"I've wanted this," he murmured against her ear. "Since the moment I saw you. I've wanted to hold you like this and touch you like this."
His hand slid lower, curving over her hip, pulling her closer until she could feel every hard line of his body. Including the unmistakable evidence of his desire, pressing against her stomach.
She should have been shocked. Should have pulled away, maintained the propriety that her position demanded.
Instead, she pressed closer.
"Show me," she heard herself say. "Show me what you want."
He groaned, a sound of pure masculine need, and then his mouth was on hers, hot and demanding. He kissed her like a man starving, his tongue sliding against hers, his hands roaming her body with an urgency that left her breathless.
Somehow, she couldn't have said how, her dress was gone. She stood before him in nothing but her chemise, the thin fabric doing nothing to hide her body from his hungry gaze.
"Beautiful," he breathed. "So incredibly beautiful."
He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, setting her on the edge of the pianoforte. The keys jangled discordantly, but neither of them cared. He stepped between her thighs, pushing her chemise up, his hands sliding along her bare legs.
"Tell me you want this," he demanded. "Tell me you need this as much as I do."
"I want it." Her voice was a whisper, a confession. "I need it. I need you."
His fingers found her center, that secret place she had barely dared to touch herself, and began to stroke. The pleasure was immediate and overwhelming, sparking through her body like lightning.
"You're so wet," he murmured, wonder in his voice. "So ready for me."
She couldn't respond. She could only gasp and writhe as his fingers worked their magic, building something inside her that threatened to consume her entirely.
One finger slid inside her, then two, and she cried out at the sensation—the fullness, the stretch, the impossible rightness of having him inside her.
"That's it," he encouraged, his thumb circling that sensitive bundle of nerves. "Let go. Let me see you fall apart."
The pressure built and built, coiling tighter with every stroke, until…
Eliza woke with a gasp, her body arched off the mattress, waves of pleasure still rolling through her.
She lay frozen, her heart pounding, her thighs pressed together against the lingering throb of her release. The dream was already fading at the edges, but the sensations remained vivid and undeniable.
She had just... in her sleep... thinking about...
Oh, my goodness.
She pressed her hands to her burning cheeks, mortified and aroused in equal measure. She was a governess, a respectable woman. She did not have dreams like that. She did not wake in the middle of the night, trembling with the aftershocks of pleasure, her employer's name still echoing in her mind.
Except, apparently, she did.
She turned onto her side, pulling the pillow over her head as if she could smother the memory of what she had just experienced, but it didn't work.
This is madness, she told herself. He's a duke. You're a governess. Nothing can ever happen between you.
But her body disagreed. Her body was still humming with the aftermath of the dream, still aching for a touch that had never been real. And somewhere deep inside, in a place she had never acknowledged before, a voice whispered:
But what if it could?