But how quickly love is disappointed, made a mockery.
With renewed determination, Hope pleasured him with all the considerable skill she’d learned over the two years of her dreadful calling. If he had loved her, she would not let that love fizzle out for lack of being well met. No, she’d see it go up in flames, incinerating them both.
Withdrawing her lips from his, she pushed him onto his back and wriggled down so she could take him in her mouth.
He gasped, moaned—though it sounded more like defeat or surrender than ecstasy. Still, he did not push her away. He did not choose to end the encounter. He was entranced. His hand cupped the top of her head as his body notched up his growing desire in each slight jerk of taut sensory pleasure.
To pleasure a man to climax in these circumstances was Hope’s preferred method of ending the encounter.
Tonight, she was desperate to have him inside her. She’d carried the feeling of their last encounter like a slow-burning flame within her heart, and the anticipation of knowing that tonight he was a willing participant—yes, willing, albeit reluctant—might go some way to dispelling the grief that was a foregone conclusion of tonight’s encounter.
When he was near the edge, she wriggled up the bed and cupped his face. “I want to feel you,” she whispered, arching her back and making her invitation implicit. “I’ve only ever wanted you.”
She closed her eyes and gripped his buttocks as she opened her legs to him, awaiting the sensation with heart-pounding anticipation, whimpering as she felt the tip of his manhood breach her entrance.
He’d not hesitated. She understood he was now pledged to end this. Finish this and end this. With her.
It was a relief. His reluctance had frightened her from the moment she’d seen the dismay in his face. She’d not wanted to believe she might not be able to repeat their first time together.
With a cry, he plunged into her, his hands pinioning her wrists as he thrust into her, and she whimpered in pleasure. Let him take that away. The fact he’d brought a jade to the pinnacle.
He would exorcise her through this act of lust and passion; he would remind himself that the sexual act was base, and that tenderness played no role for he had been badly hurt.
Just as she had.
With a cry of rapture and despair, he came, his face buried in the pillow beside her as he continued to breathe heavily, not moving.
Nor did Hope move. She wanted to feel the weight of him, bearing down on her, depending on her, loving her, hating her. She wanted him close.
Too soon, he rolled off her. Wearily, he sat on the edge of the mattress and put his head in his hands.
Hope hadn’t expected this. The silence was terrible.
She’d wanted this so much, but now she wondered if this act of what was for her pure love would come at the cost of her soul.
When he didn’t move, didn’t speak, she crawled over the mattress on the other side and slipped to the floor. She dressed quietly. Only the soft rustle of her blue velvet skirts across the floorboards indicated what she was doing.
It was an ensemble that she could get in and out of without help, but if the circumstances were right, she could claim helplessness for the man who enjoyed participating in disrobing; or she could cater to the chivalry or pretended tenderness of the man who wished to assist the woman he’d just ravished.
When she’d smoothed her ringlets and arranged her pert confectionery of exquisite millinery upon her head, she regarded Mr Durham uncertainly.
It seemed he really had managed to exorcise her from his heart through their base actions for he neither moved nor looked at her.
Her throat was dry. She blinked away her tears. On the far side of the room was his escritoire where he wrote his letters and where she could see he kept his pocketbook.
What could she do? Wilfred wanted her to steal from
him. Prove that she was a worthless jade.
Well, she didn’t need to steal from him to prove that. His immobility and patent disgust proved she was no longer a threat to Annabelle.
Chapter 6
“Stay.” Her hand was already on the doorknob when the reluctant directive issued from him. Reluctant it clearly was. Hope was practiced at distinguishing between the tones that indicated desperate want and weary resignation.
She didn’t want to stay. To stay threatened the strength she’d built up in that agonising transition from her naked vulnerability on the mattress to being mistress of her own destiny. To stay put her back in his power. He was the man she wanted, desired. She’d not wanted or desired any other man, and to be in thrall courted her own death. Death of her tenuous inner being.
Hope stopped, but she did not turn. She didn’t remove her hand from the doorknob. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Perhaps he didn’t know either. A great wall of disappointment welled between them. He wanted her as he remembered her: pure and unsullied. But now that she was the opposite of that to all men, and for the taking, available to anyone prepared to pay for her, he’d still wanted her. No doubt he already despised himself for his weakness, hating her all the more for what she’d had no choice in becoming.