with that, he plunged home, making her gasp, before he made her moan.
Just before they finally fell asleep, she slipped out of bed and found the nightshirt.
Chapter Twenty-three
In the quiet confines of the guest room, Poppy stared at the door, knowing that he would soon walk through it. He would lie with her and share their bed for the night. And she wanted him so badly that her teeth ached as she clenched them.
The sounds she had heard coming from Mrs. Noble’s bedroom haunted her. At the time, it was all she could do not to barge in on the woman and pull her out of the bed by the roots of her hair. Now, she could only think of being in bed with Win and losing herself in his arms. She wanted to forget this night, forget what they faced. And she wanted to forget with him. Only him.
It did not matter that their last union had been a disaster. Her body remembered not his ultimate rejection but the feel of him sliding home and the look in his eyes when he took her. Her fingers still shook with need for him. Were other women like this? Did they quiver with want? Did they grow tetchy and achy from imagining stripping their husbands down and servicing them with their mouths before begging to be mounted?
Poppy blushed hotly as though someone might hear her thoughts. No one but Win knew how illicit her desires ran or that she—who was dominant in her work—liked to be dominated in bed because it made her feel feminine, wanted, needed. Oh, but Win knew. He could wind her up so tight that she all but snapped before he gave her release. Even when they were so very young and had no idea what they were doing, he’d made her want with a ferocity that blurred the lines between pleasure and pain. Just from touching him, from being touched by him. And he was going to enter the room at any moment.
Well then, he was to share a room with Poppy. That was easy enough. They had shared one for the past fourteen years. It was rote. Like old friends, they had a pattern, a way of moving in tandem when getting ready for bed. Poppy at the washbasin, brushing her teeth with quintessential vigor. Him following suit as she drifted to the dressing table to apply her face cream and then give her hair its hundred strokes. He’d put away his clothes and tell her an anecdote about the day. Simple. Easy.
He would not think on the times he took the brush from her and stroked the glorious silk of her hair until her neck bent just so in relaxation. Or how he’d quietly set the brush aside and let his hands slide along her cool skin, under her chemise, to cup those firm breasts, knead them until she bit her bottom lip and whimpered.
Hell.
Win stopped dithering in the corridor and slammed into their shared room with undue force. And found Poppy staring at him in question. He stared back. She’d already gotten ready for bed. A thick, lumpy dressing gown hugged her lithe frame, from just under her chin down to her white and narrow feet. Hardly tempting. He scowled all the same.
“I thought you’d be brushing your teeth or some such preparation.”
She flipped her long, demure braid over her shoulder. “No. You gave me more than ample time. The bathing room is all yours.”
Fine. He was glad of it. Half the time, she left tooth powder all over the sink, and he had to clean up after her.
His ablutions were quick and thankfully peaceful. Just as they’d been these past three months without her. He stopped and stared in the hanging mirror. Butherwell had been correct; the reflection was not pretty. Half a face belonged to a man with a stern countenance, the other half was a monster’s. Two-faced. In every sense.
“You, sir,” he muttered to his reflection, “are a lying nodcock who wants to shag his wife senseless.” He threw down his toothbrush, and it clattered around in the basin. “Only you are not going to ask for that. Are you?” The reflection’s scowl of discontent grew. “No, you are not. You haven’t yet sunk that low.” They’d already gone down that path, and look how well that turned out.
He raked his fingers through his hair, and keeping on his repressive yet extremely necessary smalls, went out to face Poppy. She