pain.
“You strike me as a woman who appreciates the truth, Eleanor. Are you not?”
“Surely it can’t be that bad or people wouldn’t do it all the time.”
“If you already know,” Hugo drawled, “then why did you ask?”
Eleanor scowled at him. She opened up her mouth to snap something at him, and that was when he slid himself inside of her.
All the way inside of her.
Eleanor choked back whatever she might have been about to say. Pain lanced through her—
But it wasn’t pain. In the next instant, she realized that it was sensation, certainly, and almost too much of it. Still, it wasn’t pain.
It was somehow sharp and full at once. She felt exposed, even though Hugo covered the whole of her body with his. She felt shaky and taken, and still, somehow, fragile and precious at once.
“Did it hurt?” Hugo asked, his voice little more than a growl.
Eleanor tested it. She shifted her hips a little bit this way, then that. Then again.
And each time she moved, the sensation changed. The fullness remained, but the sharpness eased. Until she started to suspect that the fullness was warmth. She tried it again, and again, and sure enough the more she moved, the warmer it got.
And it spiraled out from that place inside her, and set the rest of her on fire.
“Hideously,” she whispered up at him.
Hugo grinned. And then he began to move.
And Eleanor understood that she’d only known sparks.
This was the fire.
Hugo was thorough. He set a slow, easy pace, and Eleanor met it as she wrapped herself around him. And then she mirrored him. She did what he did.
He put his mouth on her skin and she returned the favor. When he thrust deep into her, she lifted her hips to meet each stroke. And the more she did it, the less smooth and studied he became.
Until he seemed as out of breath and outside himself as she was.
Something cracked wide open inside of her. She felt it happen as he slammed into her, sending that impossible joy dancing all through her veins.
“What the hell you doing to me?” Hugo whispered fiercely, his face in the crook of her neck.
And that crack only widened further, and filled with light.
He’d chosen her. And here, beneath him, with him deep inside of her and everything fire and need and all that beautiful hunger, she couldn’t help but believe that maybe he needed her, too.
Not because she was a woman to scratch some itch. He was Hugo Grovesmoor. He could have any woman he liked for that kind of thing, she knew that. But because she was her, specifically.
Because together, they were them.
And that was more precious than anything, even all the priceless things cluttering up this rambling old house.
With every deep stroke, every life-altering thrust, she believed it more.
And when she found herself falling this time, cracked wide open and full of him, it felt like love.
Especially when Hugo followed her over, shouting out her name.
IT WAS VERY early the next morning when Eleanor finally slipped from Hugo’s bed, placing her unsteady feet on the floor beside the massive bed where she’d slept in snatches and learned a whole lot of things about pleasure.
Dark, delirious, wondrous things that still moved in her, making her flush hot and red all over again, just remembering.
She ached everywhere, she realized as she stood. Places she’d had no idea could ache were half on fire, making her feel as if she’d woken up in someone else’s body. There were tugs here and vague abrasions there, and she could remember something wild and carnal and inexpressibly beautiful to explain each one.
Eleanor thought she ought to be ashamed. Maybe she would be, later. When the reality of last night had time to settle. But right here, right now, she didn’t regret a thing.
She found the nightclothes she’d worn last night and pulled them back on, trying hard not to remember exactly how Hugo had pulled each of them off her. Trying hard not to slip off into that same red haze again, all flushed and needy.
She peeked over her shoulder at the bed again, some part of her still unable to believe that any of this had happened. One red-hot image after the next chased itself through her head, in case her body couldn’t tell her what had happened, inside and out. But if she’d had any lingering doubt, the sight of Hugo sprawled out there across the better part of his bed got rid of it.
She had tasted every inch of him. She’d taken that enormous length of his deep into her mouth, and had learned how to taste him and tease him the way he’d done to her. He’d taught her how to kneel up over him, and had taken her that way. He’d taught her all the wicked things he could do with his hands, and she’d tried to do the same to him. Over and over again.
She had no idea there were so many different ways—an infinite number of ways, apparently—to do the same thing. Crack apart like that and fall together, sleep entangled, then wake to do it again.
And the greedy part of her wanted to experience all of them. Every last possible way to explode like that. Here and now, though she was a little bit stiff and still achey. Eleanor didn’t care, as long she got to experience it all with Hugo.
Hugo, who lay on his back with his arms splayed wide, as commanding in his bed as he was out of it. Hugo, who looked more approachable when she slept. No smirking. No mocking tone of voice. No reminders that he considered himself the biggest monster in England, because everyone else did.
Everyone except Eleanor, that was.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and forced herself to turn around. To walk toward the bedroom door, and then, harder still, to walk out and leave Hugo there behind her when that was the last thing she wanted to do.
Because whatever else happened, she had a job to do. A little girl who had enough of people in her life abandoning her in one way or another, and didn’t need more of that from Eleanor.
And if there was a part of her that didn’t want to be there when Hugo woke, well. She told herself that was nothing but her inbred practicality. The man might not have had the relationship everyone thought he’d had with Isobel Vanderhaven, but that didn’t mean he been a saint.
Eleanor refused to be that silly virgin she’d certainly read enough about and seen too many times on-screen. The one who fell head over heels at the first hint of a man’s interest and made a complete fool of herself.
There wasn’t much she could do about the first part of that,
