She slid her hands back up to his shoulders and pulled herself onto the sofa, straddling his legs. He held her close with his arm, a firm embrace, and breathed in her warm scent. Sweet oranges and the tartness of desire. He would remember it forever.
Her breasts were right before his face, nipples pressing out, wanting to be tasted.
And so he tasted, sucked, tugged, nipped at the hard little tips. Frances gasped and quivered and writhed as if he was drawing all control out of her body, as if the sensations were unbearable, but she could not bear for him to stop. He cupped her bottom, pulling her closer. She nestled her hips against his, tipping his erection vertical, and she rocked and rubbed his hardness between their bodies while he kneaded her skin, feasting on her.
Yet he felt tight with unsatisfied hunger. Tasting her, touching her, was not enough. She filled his senses; he wanted to fill her too. He squeezed her rear, then allowed one finger to slip forward to pluck at her.
She was ready, to her very core. Damp, hot, enticing. It was all real, her desire. He rubbed her until she moaned; he wanted her to ask for more.
“Now,” she said. “Please.”
Thank God. He could not have borne the wait much longer; he would have burst or broken or been destroyed.
Instead, he was remade anew, thrusting up and into her waiting body with a groan. The sensation was instantly familiar—a slick tightness as smooth as putting on a glove, as welcome as taking her hand. They fit; they belonged. Together, even if nowhere else in the world, and that was all that mattered in this cleansing wash of pleasure.
He was as deep within her as the ocean, and they moved like the tide, back and forth in waves, lapping, pounding. They were one vessel, one craft, borne ever higher on the surge. Together they crested, breaking and exploding like water dashed against rocks, and he cried out as if he was drowning—or maybe being saved.
She clung to him afterward, shivering as if she was chilled through, and he shuddered with the slow ebb of a wave going back to sea.
She had taken him, all of him. She had let him empty himself into her.
For the first time since Quatre Bras, the hollow inside him began to fill.
Eighteen
The sun was far too bright.
Frances pressed her hands to her eyes as she lay in bed the following morning. The thin fabric of her chemise grazed her nipples, still sensitive from unaccustomed play. Henry had devoured her body as if he had hungered for her, just as she had for him.
She sat up and wrapped her arms around her chest, willing the flare of remembered lust to vanish. She had no patience for it right now.
Nighttime breezes had left her room chilly, but before long, the summer heat would force its way into the house and turn her bedchamber into a wood-floored oven. It would be best to get dressed now, to act as if this were a normal day, with nothing to do but help Caroline divide and conquer the men of the ton. The day before already seemed a vivid dream, and it might be better if it had been. Real-life passion had never ended well for Frances.
She hadn’t expected to tumble into Henry’s arms after his confession. She hadn’t known whether she was reassuring him or distracting herself. So much truth, he gave her. All she had given him in return was her body.
She had tricked him with the letters, confused him and caught him under false pretenses. She had done so to Charles too, and in the end he had slipped away from her. What, then, could she expect from Henry?
She rose from her bed and tied a dressing gown tightly around herself with impatient gestures. She had already won more from Henry than she had expected: his professed devotion, his trust. He’d stripped himself bare for her, in more than one way. She hoped he would not notice that she did not give him so much in return. One day, when it was too late for him to pull away from her, she would trust him with the full truth.
Or maybe she would not. Charles had proved this much to her: it was never too late for a man to pull away.
* * *
Henry’s newfound buoyancy lasted all night and through the endless early day, until the reluctant clocks in Tallant House struck through the morning hours and told him he could call on Frances again.
Not that he needed to stand on ceremony. But he wanted to do everything right. He would court her honorably.
Such was the power of happiness, to make the commonplace seem delightful. No wonder Jem had fallen for Emily and her sense of joy. Henry felt a positive slave to Frances, who had heard him, accepted him, taken him in.
Just as he was.
This time, when he knocked at the door of the Albemarle Street house, the flowers he fumbled with were for Frances. He had chosen damask roses, taking his time to find blossoms the same lush pink as her nipples. Pink for perfect happiness. With a flourish, he would hand them to her. Maybe drop to one knee to make her laugh. He loved her throaty laugh. Or he would whisper in her ear the significance of the color and watch her blush. He loved her blush too.
As soon as the butler admitted him, he saw Frances lurking at the top of the stairs from the ground floor. She paced back and forth before the drawing room door, which was flanked by life-sized statues of Mars and Venus.
The troubled lovers. How apt, considering how much of love and how much of war took place in Caro’s drawing room. For Henry’s part, he was done with the latter and ready for the former. So, so ready.
Frances’s warm eyes widened at the sight of him; her lips parted. Her hair was not confined primly, but had been allowed to spring into curls the color of coffee. Altogether, she looked as though she had been kissed thoroughly and wanted to be kissed again.
In that, he could oblige her. “These are for you,” he said as he bounded up the stairs and thrust the bouquet toward Frances, utterly failing to make a grand gesture or even say something romantic. He wanted the flowers out of his hand, out of his way. They were petals and sticks, nothing compared to the feel of a human body in his grasp.
She scooted back out of his reach. Her soft slippers shushed on the polished marble floor.
“You shouldn’t have,” she said quietly. She smiled, but her eyes darted to the drawing room door, which was resting slightly ajar. She looked… well, a little guilty, if he was reading her expression correctly.
“I should have, indeed. I don’t even mind that you don’t have any flowers for me,” he teased. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he said, “Shall I tell you why I chose the color? It reminded me of the shade of your—”
“Thank you, I think I can guess.” Her cheeks grew as bright as those of a girl meeting her lover behind a stable for a grope. She shuffled her feet and looked toward the drawing room door again, as though she didn’t know what to do next. The blooms lay awkwardly in her arms.
“Why are you standing out here? Is something happening?”
“I was waiting for you,” she said, and he felt light again, flying foolishly high. Surely he had the right to be a little foolish today.
How love makes young men thrall and old men dote;
How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty…
Something like that. Shakespeare. Henry had not read literature for years, but he knew England’s greatest poets and scholars had long ago agreed that foolishness and love were irrevocably and inevitably intertwined. This was a good time to be a fool, to tell Frances of his wish to court her honorably, while he was in her thrall and the memory of their folly was sweet on his skin.
“There’s something I must tell you,” he said. His voice sounded raspy, abraded.