The Governess Affair (12 page)

“Stop,” she panted.

He pulled away. The muscles of his arm strained, holding himself in place.

“I want your trousers,” she told him.

“I want your chemise.”

They’d stopped exchanging pins, Serena realized—just slipped into one request given for another. She took a deep breath and pulled her chemise over her head. She freed her arms just in time to see him kicking his trousers and undergarments away. Now she could follow that dark line etched on his belly all the way down to a curly nest of hair, from which jutted his erection. He was hard and long, and so thick her fingers would scarcely meet if she were to place her hand around his member.

She reached out experimentally—yes—her thumb just overlapped her forefinger. He hissed as she touched him, but did not otherwise move. She stroked down his length, wondering at the contrast—warm and soft at first touch, yet hard as steel when she squeezed him. He made a noise in the back of his throat, something akin to a growl, and his hands gripped the bed sheets, but he didn’t move. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t take her in his arms. He simply shut his eyes and let her explore.

She let go of his erection and ran her hands up his body: up the rippling muscles of his abdomen, up the expanse of his chest. She rested her hands on his shoulders and then pushed onto her knees and kissed him.

As she did, she stretched out against him full-length. All that warm skin, all that hard muscle pressed flush against her body.

His mouth took hers with bruising force. Her tongue darted out to his, and he met her, stroke for stroke, kiss for kiss. She felt herself turning to liquid, each heated kiss stoking a building fire. But still he didn’t wrap his arms around her.

She closed her hand around his member once more and he jerked almost spasmodically. “Ah, sweet—” he said, low and hoarse. She burned all over, from head to foot. But pressing herself against his hardness wasn’t enough. She needed more—needed his arms around her, his body demanding more of her. She wasn’t sure when her bravado had turned into brazenness.

“Touch my breasts again,” she said.

The command was less shy; his response was more certain. He set his hands on her waist and slid them up her ribs to cup her naked breasts. No teasing caress, now; he leaned to kiss one, then the other—first just lips touching, and then the entirety of his mouth, hot, his tongue stroking her nipple. So good—he felt so good.

Her thighs began to tremble; he sank to sit on the bed, and pulled her to straddle him. That put her breasts right in front of him, and he took them again, tasting them. His hard erection fitted against the juncture of her thighs. Her want had gone beyond the tingle of her skin. It swelled to fill her all over. She was wet between her legs. She shifted against him, sliding against his hardness, and her desire intensified.

Again. Again. She rose up on him to press once more, and the head of his member pushed into place. She opened her eyes to regard him. His hand found hers; their fingers tangled.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Her limbs seemed to melt. She could not hold herself in place, poised as she was.

And so she let go, relaxing the muscles that held her over him. She simply let herself sink onto his length. He was so big inside her. But the sensation wasn’t unpleasant. It was…lovely.

She was
safe.
Safe to simply experience the hardness of him, the stretch of her body, the growing pulse of her desire. It was safe to want—to rise up on her knees and then engulf him once more.

Their eyes met as she did; he let out a breath, long and deep, and his hands clenched around hers.

Her body knew what to do without any need for instruction. Deep instinct led her to grind against his pelvis, to search out the right rhythm, the right friction. She lost herself in the feel of
them
—in the subtle satisfaction that swept over her at the look on his face as she moved faster.

“You lovely thing,” he growled.

Passion built until it became an immense pressure, demanding release. She tried and tried, but no matter how she reached for it, it eluded her. Just when her want hit the edge of splintering frustration, he slid his hand between her legs and stroked her right where she needed it.

His touch was sure and unerring. The heat that had built released all at once, an inferno engulfing her from head to toe. She lost sight of everything but the pleasure that raged through her.

And then, when the whirlwind had passed, his hands fell on her hips and he drove into her from beneath, hammering home the echoes of her pleasure with his own. He let out a hoarse cry while she was still shuddering in the aftermath of her orgasm.

They sank to the mattress afterward. His arms came around her, warm and comforting. This was
right
—precisely what she’d needed.

He cupped her cheek.

It was a moment of precious, perfect togetherness. No wonder they referred to the act as
intimacy
. She had never felt so closely entangled with anyone before. His breaths were hers. His body…

She opened her eyes and looked into his dark gaze.

He wasn’t smiling at her. If anything, his intensity had grown. “There now,” he said softly. “
Now
you understand why I didn’t want to consummate the marriage.”

Chapter Nine

S
HE HAD BEEN ALMOST LIQUID
, molded against Hugo’s chest. But he had no sooner spoken then all the tension crept back into her limbs. She stiffened atop him, then pulled away.

“Hugo. It doesn’t have to be—”

He set his fingers across her lips before she could give voice to his deepest wants. “It does.”

“That meant something to you. Something real.”

“Of course it did.” He sat up and took her hand. “I won’t tell falsehoods about this. What we have is a species of love.”

She let out a breath in surprise.

“A transitory, short-lived one,” he explained. “A perfect sunrise—seen once, remembered always. Never duplicated.”

“Never duplicated?” Her fingers bit into his. “Why ever not?”

“Because tomorrow you’ll go to your farm. And I—”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” Her hair was in wild, chestnut disarray around her shoulders and her eyes were wide and gray.

Hugo moved a lock of her hair aside. “You can’t stay with me, Serena.” His words sounded harsh. “Recall who I work for.”

She blanched, but hesitated only a moment before raising her chin. “You could—”

“I could what? Come with you? I suppose I could, at that. But I won’t. I have five hundred pounds waiting on the outcome of this affair with the duke. That’s the only chance a pugilist like me has to come into that much money. With that, I can truly become someone. If I go with you—”

“You
are
someone.” She frowned.

You’ll never amount to anything.
Hugo let out a breath. “Not enough.”

“You are. Hugo, if you’d only—”

“It’s not enough,” he repeated grimly. He pushed away from her and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. “Do you hear? It’s not enough for me.”

“Not enough
what?
”

Such a reasonable question.

“Because you’re intelligent and successful,” Serena was saying, “and you’re a good man. That thing with the pins—it was lovely. You have a way of putting me at ease.”

“That’s nothing,” he said. “My mother was always doing things like that for me. She gave me a magic rock when I was young, and told me if I slept with it under my pillow, nothing would happen on the next day that I couldn’t bear.”

Beside him, Serena sucked in a breath. But he wasn’t ashamed of telling her the truth. He had suffered through days that had made him doubt his mother’s stone.

He brushed those memories away. “When I was older, she took an old pickle jar to the park. She told me to fill it with all the most important things. Then she buried it deep, deep, where my father couldn’t find it no matter what he did.”

It had been drizzling, but he’d scarcely felt the wet.

Do you have a jar, Mama?

She’d smiled and shook her head.

We should make one for you.

Her smile had fixed in place. Then she’d let out a sigh.
I’ve buried too many children,
she’d finally said.
I’m not burying anything else that matters. Never again.

“Your mother sounds like a lovely woman,” Serena said beside him.

“My mother told me I would be somebody.” It had been reflexive soothing on her part—sheer contradiction after his father’s tirades.

“Maybe you should listen to her.”

You can be anyone,
she’d told him, over and over.

A rich man?
he’d asked.

The richest coal miner’s son in all of England,
she promised.

“When I left home,” he finally said, “I was fourteen. I’d gone into the mines for the first time three days before, and there had been an accident. A little cave-in, nothing serious, but I was caught in the dark for five hours with nothing to do but imagine my air slowly being used up. After I got out, I said I wasn’t going back.” He inhaled. “My father disagreed. He broke my nose and three ribs with a broomstick. He told me I wasn’t good enough, that I’d never amount to anything.”

“Oh, Hugo.” Her hand rose to trace along his jaw. “You can’t still believe him—not after all these years.”

He shook his head. “I got away because my mother stepped in—drawing my father’s anger down on her. The last thing I remember, scrambling out the door, is the sound of her screams.”

Her arm crept around him. “Oh, Hugo,” she repeated.

“She passed away a few weeks later.” He could scarcely draw breath. “So it’s not enough yet, what I’ve managed.” He balled his hands. “It’s not enough to make up for leaving her. She could not have lost so much for a mere nobody.”

He’d gone back to the park when he’d heard the news, and dug for that jar.

I’m going to be the richest coal miner’s son in all England,
he’d promised the grubby glass. And then he’d buried it again where she’d once left it—and hidden his other desires so deep that even Serena could not unearth them.

“And so that’s where we are.” He put his arm around her and inhaled the sweet, lingering scent of her perfume. “You can’t stay. I won’t leave. And now we both know precisely what it is we’re giving up. It wasn’t a good idea.”

She let out a breath.

“But you’ll be safe and you’ll be well.” He kissed her forehead lightly. “And that will be enough.”

T
HE STORY,
S
ERENA BELIEVED
, would go like this: Hugo would change his mind.

She first believed he would change it when he woke up next to her, blinking away his morning bleariness. And yet he didn’t.

Next she told herself he’d wash his insistence on their separation away with soap and water, or scrape it off alongside the bristles he’d acquired overnight.

He didn’t; he washed and shaved and changed his clothing without once altering his decision.

He would change his mind, Serena decided, in the hack he’d hire to deliver her to the stagecoach yard.

But he said only a few words on the journey—just enough to deliver a quiet greeting when they stopped along the way for Freddy. The three of them traveled in unspeaking silence—Freddy clutching the strap, her gloves wrinkling under the ferocity of her grip, even though their conveyance scarcely swayed.

When they arrived, he made no attempt to purchase passage for himself. Instead, Hugo stood back, pretending to busy himself with Serena’s trunk so that the sisters might speak.

“Well.” Freddy peered around the crowded yard of the inn with a deeply suspicious look, frowning at the ostlers. “I suppose you have to thrust yourself out there, do you not?” She punctuated the end of this sentence with a deep, speaking sigh.

“Yes. I must.”

“You always were an unnatural thing.” Freddy raised a handkerchief to her nose as if she could blot the horses from her senses. “Still, I’ll miss you. Things can be rather dull when you’re not present.”

Serena hugged her sister. “Take care,” she said.