It took her a moment to sort out what he meant. She moved forward on her hands and knees. He slid down enough to take her breast in his mouth. His kisses alone had her halfway to insanity, but the way he licked and sucked her breast made her tremble with need. The first tensions of her release started tightening, and he had not even really touched her. She started moving back, so she could take him into herself.
“Don’t lose your courage now. Move forward. Keep coming up here.”
She did come close to losing her courage. She wasn’t sure she wanted to wait, for one thing. She sensed this was something he wanted, however. The pleasure would not really be hers alone.
She inched up, moving her knees forward. Eventually she had no choice but to kneel upright. She grabbed onto the headboard and looked down at how his head was positioned right below her body. He gently pushed her knees apart, then lifted his head.
His first kiss caused a sharp, deep pleasure to shriek through her. What he did after that left her grasping the headboard for support. The intensity of the sensations caused her mind to spin. She was sure it could not get more astonishing but it did, again and again, until she lost all sense. She heard herself begging for him to stop but also for more, in the same breath. Finally a release split through her violently.
Somehow she moved again. No, he moved her. She found herself bound to him, connected and deeply joined. He filled her like never before, stretching her so she felt his power inside her. She hovered over him while he thrust hard and long and even so she would have wanted more if he could give it. His finish came so forcefully that it took her breath away.
She collapsed on him, utterly spent. She lacked the strength to move. He wrapped her in an embrace and held her tightly while their deep breaths met in the night. “You are perfect, Minerva. Magnificent and beautiful.”
She believed him. She felt magnificent and beautiful. With him. Because of him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I expect there was a good reason you told me to meet you here.” Beth spoke before he even greeted her. She did not look at him, but at some tiny shoots of growth under a tree, heralding the coming spring. “Was a long ways for me to come just to chat.”
Meet me at the same place, when you go out to shop. That was the note he had slipped her after breakfast. Her empty basket rested on the grass at her feet. Her face, round and wrinkled, appeared very sober.
“I didn’t tell her you wanted to speak with me,” she said. “No reason to.”
“Just as well.”
“She told me you’ve a man who has told you she killed that husband of hers. I suppose that means there is still some danger for her about that.”
“Some. Not too much, I think.”
He could barely see her face with the way she looked down and with her cap’s long ruffle obscuring her profile.
“There was a decision about all of that. One that excused her of any blame,” he added.
“I never trusted that. More a matter of maybe putting the pot to the back of the hearth, away from the flames, but close enough to grab if one had a need for it. Could that happen? If they decide this duke was killed, could they look back to that and not only think she might have done it, but even start digging into that worthless brute’s death again?”
“They could. It wasn’t like being found innocent in a trial. The matter can be reopened.”
“I’ll be counting on you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“I can make no promises, I’m afraid. She knew the risks, but decided to brave it out.”
Beth did not move or look at him. She just stared at the ground, her thick body bent a little from her heavy thoughts.
He picked up the basket. “Walk with me.”
They ambled along the perimeter of trees that surrounded Portman Square, both of them silent.
“I saw the marks on Jeremy’s shoulders,” he said. “He must have been very young when someone laid those down.”
She walked a little taller at that, and gazed straight ahead. “Thirteen years. The first time.”
“Finley?”
She nodded. “I should have known it would happen. Such a stupid, little man. He took pleasure in cruelty. His horse, his wife—I should have known