William rested his forehead on Nora’s graceful, bare shoulder and turned every ounce of his will to the effort of self-control. Still in the throes of her climax, she writhed gently on his lap, sighing with each spasm that rolled through her. The scent of her pleasure filled his head. His hand, damp with her, still held her hand between her legs.
He’d told her that sex didn’t drive him, but good God, he had never needed release like he needed it now. More than release—he needed to be inside her, to feel her body, that silky, snug sheath wrapped around his cock as it had encompassed his finger so tightly, so smoothly.
“William,” she whispered, and her head sagged against his. “My unicorn.”
She purred the words, her voice so sated and smug that he couldn’t help but chuckle. “You liked that.”
“Oh yes.”
“So did I.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her nectar from her fingers. Her eyes opened wide and took in that sight completely.
“Did you?” She ground her bottom on his lap, bold as a clergyman’s daughter. “But you’re still hard.”
“I didn’t come in my drawers, no.” He groaned, grabbing her hip to still her before he did just that. “But I’ve enjoyed few things in my life as much as I enjoyed helping you give yourself that pleasure.” He slid his fingers into her loose, marvelous hair and brought her mouth to his. He pressed his lips over hers, softly, and then tipped his head back to see her eyes again. “You’re not intact, Nora.”
Her brows drew in. “What?”
He’d noticed it right away. “Do you know what a hymen is?”
The crease between her brows deepened, but she didn’t answer. He hadn’t expected that she would know—that kind of biology lesson apparently wasn’t consistent with a noble lady’s place, here in England.
“It’s a membrane inside a girl’s body, a barrier. Normally, it breaks when she loses her virginity. Yours is broken.”
She sat upright like a shot, but William held on before she could get far. “What? But I—did we—did you break it? Now?”
“No. I intended to be careful of it, but I didn’t feel it. It was already broken.” She paled, but before she could protest innocence, William cupped her face. “I know you’re a virgin. There are other ways it might have broken—from riding astride like you do, or if you fell hard as a girl.”
With a deep breath released, she relaxed, but her frown still carved her forehead. “I hate that you know so much more about my own body than I do.”
“My aunt is a physician. I know more than I’d like. She’s railed against the idea that a broken hymen is proof of sexual experience.”
“The women in your family seem remarkable, all of them.”
“They are.”
“They’ll be disappointed, should they ever meet me. Nothing about me is remarkable.”
“My darling, everything about you is remarkable, and they will love you.” He kissed her nose. “I bring it up because … well, I don’t know if it’s something a doctor here would check for, or what he’d say. If your father were told, he might be told that you’re not a virgin. Not all doctors are as progressive as my aunt. Especially here, where progress terrifies the lot of you.”
“Not the lot of us. Just the main of us. I don’t know if a doctor would check. I don’t know why ours would. I’m not royalty, or planning to marry a royal, and I don’t think they still check the bed sheets, at any rate—and now I suppose I understand where the blood is supposed to come from. I’ve given no one cause to think a man would want me, much less that I’ve been intimate with one.” She blushed and ducked her head to nestle under his chin. “Until now, I never have been.”
He held her close. “I love you.”
“And I you. William, I want more. I want you to make love to me.”
Sweet lord. William closed his eyes again and marshaled up his overtaxed will. “No, Nora. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I told you why not—because I mean to respect you. Because I want you to feel nothing but happiness when we do. No regret or shame.”
“I’ve already addressed that silly concern. You make assumptions, William. Why do you think you know better than I how I’ll feel?”
Only moments ago, she’d admitted that he knew more of her body than she did. But this wasn’t about her body, it was about her heart. For that, it was all the more delicate a subject. “Because this is new to you.”
“And it’s not to you. Because you’ve bedded dozens of women, and I’m just a stupid, ignorant child.”
“Don’t twist my words, Nora.” Clutching her in his arms, William stood up and set her on her feet. He pulled her drawers back to her waist, trying not to focus on delicate gold curls between alabaster thighs. “We’re not going to quarrel. I’m going back to my room.” If he didn’t get some space between them, she was going to get her way, and that would put the most important thing, the future they both wanted, in jeopardy.
He took three steps away from her before a guttural shriek like a feral animal came out of her.
Her bare foot thudded on the carpet as she stomped. “Why do you get to decide?!”
He turned on his heel. She stood there, her chest puffing, her cheeks flaming, her eyes storming. In the windows behind her, lightning flashed, as if her rage had summoned an answering flare in the tempest outside.
“Why do you get to decide? If we’ll make love, when we’ll make love, if I’m ready to make love, if we’ll argue, what I’ll enjoy, what I’ll regret, how I’ll feel, what I do, what I see, what I know, where I go, who I know, what I wear, how I act, what I think, who I am—why don’t I get to decide any of it?”
Her anger was about far more than this moment. He reached a conciliatory, comforting hand to her. “Darling …”
She swatted it away, hitting the back of his hand hard enough to sting. “Don’t you dare condescend to me, William Frazier. Don’t you dare.”
“There are things you don’t know, Nora, experiences you haven’t had. Whatever the reason, in that way, you are ignorant.”
She slapped him, knocking his head to the side. If not for his beard, he might have found himself bruised later. He closed his eyes and reached deep, not only for calm, but for wisdom. He understood her frustration, and even her fury. But he didn’t know the solution. The simple truth was that they didn’t live in the world she wished to live in. The medieval hall in which the Earl of Tarrin, and his daughter, resided was a much older, less forgiving place.
He stretched his jaw and faced her again. “I assume that now you want me to go?”
“No. I want you to stay.”
“To what end? What do you want from me, Nora?”
“I am telling you. I’ve said it plainly. You need only hear me.” She stepped to him, putting her body against his, and boldly grasped his trousers, over the swell that encased his erection. The starved beast of his need leapt through him. “You’re still hard.”
Of course he was. If anything, her fiery self-assertion had made him harder. He groaned and covered her hand with his, but he didn’t pull her away. “Nora …”
“You say you want to be respectful of me. Give me the respect to believe I know my own mind.”
“If your brother finds out, or God forbid, your father?”
“So what if they do? You say I’m not a virgin already, so why not make it really true? Besides, perhaps it’s best that they know—if I’m spoiled for anyone else, how can my father stand in our way?”
That her hymen was broken, were it known, would be further cause to condemn him, not welcome him into the family. William doubted very much that her father could be made to accept him on the grounds that he’d taken his only daughter’s virtue. This was how her naïveté showed most clearly—in thinking the world made sense. Far more likely, the earl would chase him out of England with hounds at his heels, and marry her off to the first remotely respectable man who would take her.
Moreover, Christopher was a good friend, and he’d trusted him with his only sister’s care. William might well lose that bond he valued over this.
But Nora’s hand moved on him, squeezing, exploring, and his mind clouded with desire. He’d already been in desperate need of relief before this strangely arousing quarrel. Her scent still suffused the air, he could still feel her on his hand, and the image of her breathtaking, ebullient climax was burned in his mind. To have her beneath him, her bare flesh on his—was there enough strength yet in him to leave this room without it?
“Nora …” he tried one last time.
“William,” she whispered, looking up at him with keen turquoise eyes while her inexperienced hand learned all she could of his desire. “Respect me.”
“God damn it,” he muttered and grabbed her.
She gasped and formed her body to his at once, throwing her arms around his neck. He claimed her smiling mouth and demanded everything he could get. Her tongue was right there to greet his, tangling with him unreservedly. Now that he’d given in, he needed all of her. He lifted her off her feet and walked her to the bed, looming over her as he laid her down on the dark red damask duvet.
She broke away from his mouth and pushed herself further onto the mattress; then, with her eyes boldly locked on his, pulled her vest up and over her head.
Propped on his hands over her, William gazed down at the gift she offered him. Smooth, lovely skin, so pale he could see the faint blue map of her veins. Small round breasts, with tiny nipples as pink as the center of a seashell. A flat belly sloping down into her drawers. She was thinner than he’d realized, almost too thin. The marks of her corset still showed under her breasts, along her sides. What, he wondered, was that contraption meant to restrain on a body like this?
“William …” she murmured.
He brought his eyes up to hers and saw doubt there. “Are you sure, Nora?”
Her hands came up and cupped his face. “Yes. Perfectly sure. But … Do I … Am I … attractive to you?”
That was the cause of her doubt? “My God. You’re so lovely it’s hard to remember you’re real.”
She smiled at that and squirmed like a cat. “I know that feeling.” Her hands dropped from his face to take hold of her breasts. He watched as she tweaked each one between her fingers; her hedonistic sigh went through him like the lightning flashing outside. Dropping to his elbows, he nudged her hand away from a breast and took that lovely pink button into his mouth. She cried out, and her back arched up, and he suckled her, feeding his need and hers until she writhed beneath him and tore at his shirt.
“William!”
He was at the frayed end of his tether; the frantic battering of her hips against his would be his undoing, and he would come in his drawers like a boy if he lingered too long. But he’d long imagined giving Nora her first time, and in his mind, it had been slow and gentle. He’d teased her and settled her virgin’s nerves, and drawn her innocent responses to sensual pleasure up with patience and care.
Instead, it turned out that his lady was a hoyden, free and wild, demanding satisfaction from him. Her insistence, her assuredness, had him back on his heels.
She made a frustrated growl and yanked at his shirt as if to tear it from him. It was the only one he had here in Dover, so he released her breast and pushed himself off the bed. Standing at the side, between her legs, he held her gaze and opened his shirt himself, smiling at the greedy rapture that slackened her features. He tossed his shirt and undershirt, and then his trousers and drawers, away, and stood there for a moment to let her look.
She did, taking him all in, then pushed her drawers down, lifting her hips and kicking the cotton away.
She lay bare before him, an angel in alabaster and gold, turquoise eyes staring steadily, unabashedly up at him. Such a slight frame to hold so much fire. “You are lovely.”
“William. Please show me.” She held up her arms, and he fell into them, covering her, trying not to crush her with his own need. Settling between her thighs, he pushed her leg up, hooking it around his waist, and positioned himself, brushing his hand over her to be sure she was wet enough to ease his way. She was, still hot and slick from her earlier pleasure—how long ago had that been? Minutes? Hours?
He took hold of himself and pushed against her entrance, moving as slowly as he could. She’d been tight around his single finger, and he meant to be gentle with her now. When her heat enveloped his tip, he groaned, and the elbow holding him up nearly gave way. She gasped at his pressure and arched her neck.
“Tell me”—his voice broke under his strain—“Tell me to stop, and I will.”
Her head thrashed wildly to and fro. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”
With each inch that he pushed into her, she sucked in a noisy breath and squirmed beneath him, driving his need to nearly unmanageable heights. His arms shook with the tension of his will. Then she rocked her hips hard and took the rest of him in all at once, seating him fully inside her, and he barked out the shock of it. She was clenched like a fist around him, encompassing him in molten sensation.
He studied her face, trying to know how she felt, but he couldn’t decipher her expression—was it pain, or shock, or intense pleasure? “How are you?” he managed to ask.
Her answer came in another flex of her hips and a soft, sensual moan through lips that had turned up sweetly at the corners. She was fine.
“I need to move, Nora. I’m at the end of my tether. But I will stop if you say.”
She nodded and twisted her fingers in his hair, pulling him down to rest more fully on her. “Oh, you feel … oh, William.”
“Ah, my darling,” he muttered, and claimed that sweet mouth and all its utterances. He pulled back, groaning as her sheath gripped him, and pushed in again. She whimpered against his lips and rocked her hips, and pulled his hair, and he picked up a rhythm that was slow and careful but firm and steady, pacing himself to give her time and drive her need up to its highest pitch.
Focused on her, William found a few more inches of play in his patience. He turned from her lips and curved his back, keeping his tempo as he bent to suck a nipple into his mouth again. As soon as he did, Nora went wild in his arms, arching her back sharply, yanking his hair, clasping his waist with both her legs, moaning and grunting and muttering sounds that might have been words.
He’d had a few virgins before, in his younger years, when he wasn’t so long past that state himself. In his early twenties, he’d decided that he wasn’t in the business of deflowering girls and would from that point on limit his attentions to experienced women. And he had, until Nora. As far as he could remember—and his memory was sound—Nora was unlike any virgin he’d had before. They’d been tentative and passive, lying still beneath him while he worked himself into a sweat to find their pleasure, and surprised and even shamed when he found it.
Nora, however, was fully engaged in their act. He could feel her seeking, shifting under him, rocking, clutching, learning. She drove his need into a fever as she chased her own heat. He’d felt that before, when he’d shown her how to pleasure herself. She’d been surprised at first, shy and a little afraid of the intensity, but then she’d pursued it with abandon.
Feeling his own climax rolling toward him, William let go of her nipple. He tried to still Nora’s hips and gain another inch of restraint, but she wouldn’t be denied. Her fingers left his hair and dug into his shoulders. Her head had come up from the mattress. With her eyes shut tight in concentration, she held on and rocked her hips, discovering instinctively how to move to find her release—and his.
If he couldn’t slow her down, he had to speed her up. Shifting to one arm, he pushed his other hand between them and down, between her legs. While she rocked and he thrust, he pushed his fingers over her, making the same rhythmic pattern he’d taught her to make.
She threw her head back at once. “Oh God! This! Oh! Oh! William! Oh yes! Please!”
Sweet lord, what a treasure she was. To be so free in her own body already, so unreserved in her ecstasy?
She came, going taut and silent in his arms as she had before. The clutching spasms of her body around him finished him off as well. Slamming hard into her one last time, he jerked his hips back, pulling clear. He threw his head back with a bestial howl and came, his seed surging from him in an arc and landing on her bare belly. As the climax burst through him, his sight dimmed. He was locked in that rigid explosion until his lungs clamored for air, and the need for breath finally overtook the pleasure. His muscles softened, and, no longer able to hold himself up, he dropped to her side.
“My God,” he muttered when his heartbeat had returned to something like normal.
“I understand now,” Nora whispered—and then the room filled with the music of her trilling laughter. “I really do.”
William laughed and rolled to his side. She was pushing a finger through the mess he’d made on her. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fascinating. This is what makes babies?”
“My part of it, yes. I thought your father let you read in his library when you were younger. Did you never study any science?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think there are science books at Tarrindale at all. I learned maths, and some things about plants and gardening, from my governess. She also tried to teach me how to manage a house and comport myself in Society, but I wasn’t a very good student in those subjects. Father reads history and philosophy and literature. In French, German, and Italian, as well as English. I know a great deal about Rousseau, but what I know about the human body is … not enough. Clearly.”
“What do you know?”
“I know that my monthly time comes when I’m not pregnant and will stop when I am. I know that sex makes babies, and that a baby grows from a man’s seed planted in a woman’s womb. I honestly thought that seeds came out of the man. Like columbine seeds. Or daisies.” She lifted her finger and studied the whitish substance, then sighed. “You’re right. I am ignorant and stupid.”
“Ignorant of some things, but not stupid at all. Far from it. You only need the chance to learn. And this”—he pushed his own finger through his leaving and held it up beside hers—“is full of a kind of seed. You weren’t so far off.”
She turned to him, one eyebrow up skeptically. “Are you condescending again?”
“Do I sound like I am?”
After a few seconds’ thought, she shook her head. “No. Thank you.” She paused again. “May I ask something else?”
“Of course.”
“What is that thing—that … button?”
Understanding, William set his hand on the puff of gold at the juncture of her thighs. His slid his finger into the top of her folds and lightly grazed the point of her query. Her core was still slick with sex. Her eyes fluttered shut, and her belly quivered. “You mean this?”
“Yes,” she gasped.
“It’s called the clitoris.”
“Well, it’s wonderful.”
“Yes, it is.” William watched her face as he teased that small node, and saw her climb again toward bliss. She spread her legs and went soft, opening herself to him again. He bent his head and latched onto a breast, and gave her more of what she wanted.
When she was sated again and lay dazed in his arms, William kissed her lightly and pushed himself from the bed. He went to her water closet and washed himself, then wet a washcloth with warm water. Back in the bedroom, he found Nora propped on her elbows, watching him curiously, her hair tousled, her sweet, pert breasts pushed up high, her skin still flushed with pleasure, and William hated to say what he had to say.
“I have to go now, darling. I’ve stayed too long.”
She sighed and dropped back to the mattress. “I really do think we should simply tell them.”
He sat beside her and cleaned her belly. “I think that would be a terrible idea, Nora.”
“What choice will they have but to accept us? And Christopher is on our side! He’ll help with Father.”
If Chris knew about this, William didn’t think he’d be their champion. He knew his friend well enough to understand how deep his training in tradition went. Chris liked to be a rebel, and he enjoyed his sister’s moxie, but he shared his father’s ideas about honor. He thought William was the most honorable match—but would he still think so if he knew that he’d fucked Nora in a Dover inn? Unlikely.
“It’s not a good idea, Nora. The risk is too great. We’ve taken enough risk to have done this.”
“I suppose you’re going to go back to being gentlemanly and proper and distant around me, once we get back to Tarrindale.”
He set the washcloth aside and stretched out beside her, leaning over her. She played her fingers through the hair on his chest, and he closed his eyes and savored the touch. “I can barely trust myself around you. When you get too close, I have to clench my hands together so I don’t reach out for you. Yes, until your father accepts me as yours, I need to keep my distance.” He smiled and chucked her chin gently. “Unless you want to run away with me.”
“I’ll not sneak like a thief, stealing my own future.” Another heavy sigh left her slight breast. “I wish we could just stay here forever.”
William hated Dover. It was dirty and bleak at its heart, and his brilliant project had died a humiliating death in an overheated office overlooking the harbor. He’d grown to hate England itself. A more maddeningly stubborn people he’d never known.
What he wanted was to go home, with Nora at his side. For that, if Nora wouldn’t simply come, they needed the Tate men to agree to the match. They’d just put that in grave jeopardy. But he couldn’t be sorry to have shared this time with her.
“Regrets?” he asked, drawing his finger over a tiny pink nipple.
She shivered under his touch. “Not a one. Except that you’re leaving now.”
“When we’re married, we’ll do this every single day.”
She quirked a grin at him. “Only once a day?”
He laughed and kissed her. “Minx. We’ll do it as often as you can handle. I love you.”
“Oh, how I love you.”
Dressed again, William left Nora tucked into bed, buried under the heavy duvet and settling into sated sleep. The flash and crash of the storm had settled, leaving only a steady rain.
The corridor was dark and quiet—even the inn below had gone to sleep. He’d left his pocket watch in his room, with his vest, and could only guess at the time, but he didn’t imagine the restaurant below closed before midnight, or eleven o’clock at the earliest.
He’d spent hours with Nora. Far too long. Had Chris come back? Had he heard them? His room shared a wall with William’s, across the hall from Nora’s. If he’d gone straight to his room, he probably wouldn’t have heard anything. And if he had, wouldn’t he have knocked on her door?
William opened his own door. In his surprise at Nora’s demand, he’d left it unlocked, with all the lights on. Thus, he saw Chris as soon as he stepped into the room. His friend sat in a chair by the windows, one leg crossed over the other, one arm propped on an armrest, his head seated on that palm. When William came in, he didn’t move, but his blue eyes blazed.
William didn’t attempt to deflect or to affect confusion. Chris knew, and he wouldn’t insult him by pretending he thought otherwise. He wouldn’t lie. “Chris.”
His friend lifted his head and took a long, slow, deep breath, letting it out just as slowly. He uncrossed his legs and stood. William stood where he was, aware of the rumpled state of his clothes, and the wildness of his hair, through which Nora had delighted in raking her hands.
“Chris,” he said again, but his friend said nothing.
He walked up to William, stood right before him, and took another long, deep breath, wrinkling his nose—he was picking up the scent of sex, and making a show of it.
“Nothing has changed, Chris. I love her, and I mean to marry her. I did nothing she didn’t want.”
He’d thought he was prepared for it, but he’d expected Chris to say something first, to shout or rail, or at least make a nasty sarcastic remark. He did none of that. Instead, his fist shot out like it had been loaded into a cannon, connected with William’s jaw, and nearly knocked him off his feet.
His first impulse was to hit back, but he got hold of it just in the nick of time. “Chris, just lis—“ he ducked the next blow. Obviously, his friend was in no mood for conversation.
After carefully wiping his bleeding fist with a linen handkerchief, Chris said, in an eerily calm voice, “Transatlantic passenger ships don’t sail from Dover. The train here will take you to Liverpool, and the Mauretania will take you back where you belong. I’ll have Gaines see that your things are packed and sent to the port.”
“I can’t leave without her. I won’t.”
“You will. You will leave this inn right now and vanish into the night. If you come near her again, or me, or Tarrindale, or the house in London, or anything else connected to my family, I will rescind my good word for you, and you’ll be deported on the basis of your arrest. If you are still on British soil a week from now, I will do the same.”
“I am not leaving without her, Chris.” Chris had to know how it would hurt her for him to disappear immediately after what they’d shared. He couldn’t want that for the sister he loved so much. He wanted her happiness. William knew how much he cared—they’d had many friendly conversations over whisky and cheroots about their families.
But the man standing before him was his friend no longer. Chris folded the bloody handkerchief and tucked it neatly into his suit pocket. “You can go quietly, or I will tell my father, and he will deal with you, and her, in his way.”
William’s stomach rolled. He couldn’t let that happen. It was the only threat that could work, and Chris knew it—he knew William would do what he must to save Nora pain. The bastard knew his feelings for her were true, and still he stood there and made these threats.
Nora wanted to tell them both, but William knew her father would take it out on her—Chris’s reaction now was crystal-clear evidence that his instinct about the Tate men had been right. Things had to be their way. God, what would the earl do if he knew? “Chris! Just listen!”
Chris walked to the door. “I trusted you. With the most precious thing I have.”
Nora wasn’t a thing to be had, but William didn’t press that point. “I’ve honored that trust. I’ve honored her. What about what she wants?”
“She doesn’t know what she wants. Her head is full of fancies about a world that doesn’t exist. You were supposed to be the hero of her story.”
“She’s the hero of her story.”
He laughed. “If you think that, you’re all the fool she is and more.”