"Of course he has." Harriet laughed. "You've found the one man in England who can match your mind. How irritatingly perfect."
"It is, rather. Irritating and perfect both." Eveline accepted the tea gratefully. "Six months until the wedding. Time to establish everything properly."
"Time to go slowly mad with unconsummated passion, you mean."
"Harriet!"
Epilogue
Rain whispered against the glass panes of Everleigh’s bedchamber, steady and soft. Within, candlelight shimmered over velvet curtains and carved mahogany, painting everything in a glow that was both reverent and indecent.
Eveline stood just inside the door, her ivory gown gleaming in the golden light. Pearls trembled loose from her hair with every breath. Six months of negotiations, distance, carefully drawn boundaries and now she stood here, his wife, her heart hammering like a scholar about to defend the wildest thesis of her life.
She reached for the pins in her hair, but Adrian’s voice cut the silence.
“Don’t.”
The single word stopped her.
He stood by the fire, his cravat discarded, his shirt open at the throat. He looked nothing like the duke who signed contracts with calm precision; he looked like a man half-ruined by desire.
“Let me,” he said.
Her chin rose... stubborn instinct. “You speak as though I am a manuscript you mean to unbind.”
His mouth curved, slow and wolfish. “That is exactly what you are. My most dangerous text. And tonight, Eveline, I intend to read every line.”
Her wit sparked, though her pulse was wild. “You’ll find some passages quite dense, Your Grace. Others… indecent.”
“I have patience for neither dense nor indecent texts tonight,” he murmured, stepping closer, “only for what I have been denied.”
When his hand cupped her cheek, when his thumb pressed against her trembling lip, every clever retort abandoned her.
“You’re mine,” he said, low and rough.
Her pride fought to surface. “And you are mine. I hope you have considered the implications of mutual ownership.”
“Oh, my wife….” He broke off, his mouth crashing onto hers. The kiss was nothing like their stolen ones in stairwells and corridors. It was savage, bruising, full of months of pent-up hunger. Eveline whimpered, clutching his shirt as if drowning.
When he tore his mouth free, both were panting and his eyes burned into hers.
“I want you to taste me.”
Her head jerked back. “Adrian...this is...”
“Tonight we experience everything, Eveline.” His voice was softer this time, which only made it more dangerous. His hand pressed at her shoulder making her kneel, not cruel, but insistent. “I have waited half a year for this. Do not make me wait another moment.”
Her body shivered, betraying her. She followed his instructions kneeling with her wedding gown pooled around her like spilled cream. She looked up at him through her lashes, her blush fierce.
Adrian groaned, fingers burying in her loosened hair. “Oh, my brilliant, impossible wife. Do you know how many nights I dreamt of this? Do you know how close I came to losing my sanity in that damned library, watching you mouth the edge of your quill like...” He broke off, his voice shattering into a curse.
She found her tongue, weak but stubborn. “I imagine you were far less poetic about it in your mind.”
His laugh was hoarse. “True. There was nothing poetic in my mind. Only this.”
He guided her hand to him, hard beneath his trousers. “This is what you did to me every time you looked at me over a book. Every inch of me belongs to you now, and you will learn how to take it.”
Her heart raced. She had read Ovid without blushing, translated lines about such intimate moments, but this... this heat in her hand, this shudder running through her husband’s body... no text had prepared her for it.
