“I’m a respectable woman. When the time comes I will marry. I’m not a dalliance for you to spend several hours a week with and then go on with your life.”
He thought several hours a day would be more like it, but instead said, “You’re speaking of a mistress.”
“Yes. That’s not me,” Sophie said. “Paris is many things, but it seems constancy isn’t one of them.”
“Sophie—”
“If that wasn’t enough, I don’t like the way you think about women. That we are only chattel and nothing more.”
“I never said—”
“You did last time we met. I understand men like the chase. I’m not to be chased. I will make certain that we are never alone again. I’m telling you. Find someone else. You’re wasting your time with me.”
Sebastian watched her leave and realized something inside him was changing. He knew she felt something in his arms and he would have her. He wanted nothing more than to press her against the cloaks inside the room and feel her legs wrap around him.
He could already hear her moan and sigh in his ear as he pressed himself inside her. He grabbed his great overcoat and pulled it on as he made his way outside. He had a visit to make.
Chapter 8
Sebastian moved over Juliette and slid in and out of her, setting a fast rhythm. She sighed and moaned but he was in another place. Her moans filled the air as she cried out again and again, even as he pumped deep inside her. She was tight and wet and he longed to fill her up, but not yet.
When he took her on all fours he wrapped her long brown hair around his hand and pounded into her. He closed his eyes and saw the hair was auburn and the smooth bottom and thighs were Sophie’s.
He climaxed so quickly he almost apologized. Later in the evening Juliette had wrapped her lips around him, and as she moved her mouth down the length of his shaft he thought again of Sophie. It was maddening. If he wasn’t such an educated man he might have believed he was bewitched.
***
Alphonse walked alongside Sophie as Eugenie trailed behind them at a respectable distance. It was a lovely afternoon in the Jardin des Plantes. He was dressed in a pale brown jacket and breeches while Sophie wore a simple lemon-colored dress.
Sophie was deep in thought as that evening she would dine with the Duke of Dorset. She knew that he would behave appropriately, but her thoughts returned again and again to Sebastian. She didn’t like that he could so easily sway her as he had in the cloakroom, and she didn’t like his thoughts on women. She knew she should not be attracted to such a man; she wanted an intelligent equal.
She knew the Duke would be cordial at dinner and it would be an enjoyable evening. She thought wryly of her grandmother walking quietly behind them and wondered where the older woman had been last evening when she’d so sorely needed her. She wondered what her grandmother would do if she told her about the previous night. Would she faint or demand that Sebastian meet her at dawn with sabers? Knowing her grandmother, Sophie decided it would probably be the sabers.
Alphonse had been talking about his desire to join the university and study law, but Sophie was barely paying attention to him.
“And so I think I want to study the law,” he finished. “In Oxford.”
“Oxford?” Sophie suddenly broke out of her reverie. “Surely Paris would do just as well.”
“I want to see other places. I think some time in England would do me well,” Alphonse said quietly.
“I will miss you, Alphonse.” She said it more out of duty than anything else. She liked Alphonse as a childhood friend but felt nothing more for him.
“Will you, Sophie?”
“Of course. You’re a dear friend.”
His face fell and he understood completely. “And I you.”
They continued walking side by side for a time and then parted ways. As Eugenie and Sophie walked back to their carriage, passing the greenery, the older woman shook her head.
“He is to study in England,” she replied.
“Yes, Grand-mère. The law.”
“And he could have easily studied here and you would have been the wife of a—”
“No.” Sophie shook her head. “Alphonse is a kind man, but he is not for me.”