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In the bed, she stared at the canopy and waited for sleep to come. She waited some more. Then she waited some more. Her feverish body tossed and turned until the bedsheets became a rumpled mess.
The clock struck the early hours when slumber overtook her exhausted self.
A
Up at dawn, Otilia decided to forget the frustrated night and immerse herself in the day’s chores. To her surprise, Richards told her the Earl had already met the steward, Hobs, as they left for the tenants’ area. Good, because she would not have to waste energy hiding how much she had wanted him to come to her in the night.
The day promised to be full of duties. Starting by weeding the herb garden, she planted new seeds and rearranged new sprouts. The vegetable garden needed cleaning, too. In the kitchens, she checked on the preserves of last autumn and cleared the larder for the ones they would add this year. Many minor tasks required attention throughout the house. She helped the housekeeper go through them.
The hollow night stayed in the back of her head though as she kept pushing it away to focus on the moment.
Regardless, extreme satisfaction filled her to be involved in this work anew, easing the yearning a little. In London, the Earl had slotted her in the role of the idle miss, and she lost her sense of purpose. Here, on the other hand, being busy and active returned her to her usual busy-bee self.
Dinner proved to be a stifled event. Even tired from the long day, Otilia had no chance of avoiding her response to the sight of Edmund in a dark suit, tall and imposing at the head of the table. They ate mostly in silence, with few words about their activities. The awkwardness almost suffocated her, and she retired as soon as was polite to do so.
A
She was in for another lonely night.
Her chamber enclosed her restless self while she paced the carpet for the hundredth time.
Honey eyes fled blindly through the window. Her insides overflowed with so much need, so much desire that breathing became difficult.
Why impose this on her? Why preserve her pride when time was so short?
Her head turned to the unmoving entrance of her chamber, and she followed the impulse of exiting these confines without giving it any thought.
In her nightgown, she walked the dim hallway, her heart thrashing with a thousand war drums. Her bare feet halted in front of the Earl’s closed, sturdy door, posing a wall of doubts and a million reasons she should not do this. She shut her eyes tight and then closed her mind to her inner insecurities. Rejection had always been a constant in her life. One more, or one less would not kill her, even if it came from him as it once did. But the want of him would. Kill her, that is.
Her hand lifted to the knob, and her fist tightened to stop the trembling. Her lungs gulped in air before she stretched her hand, wrapping it around the knob and turning it.
A lit fireplace and the scent of clove essence hit her senses before she had even stepped inside his masculine realm. Her heart multiplied its drumming as her core reacted to his masculine muskiness.
Inside, she sealed herself as her searching eyes spotted Edmund leaning on the escritoire, a letter in one hand, a glass of brandy in the other. Scalding heat arrowed down to her centre at the view of him in breeches and a gaping white shirt, tall, and imposing. Overpowering.
His eyes elevated to her, increasing her temperature a thousand-fold. The dark scrutiny absorbed her loose, glossy hair, her prim nightgown and her bare feet, to come back to her eyes. She would not be capable of moving if humanity’s survival depended on it.
“You took your sweet time,” he drawled in that nutmeg and syrup tone of his while he placed the letter on the desk.
Her mind struggled to process his words as she moistened her desert lips to speak. Jet orbs lowered to them and made them drier. “I did not know what to do,” she confessed in a breath.
He downed the rest of his brandy in one gulp and left the glass on the sideboard. “You call me arrogant and overbearing.” Without even realising it, her feet started pacing towards him. “I tho
ught to give you a chance to have a say in the matter.” Mussed hair fell on his brow, his jaw covered in stubble, and his taut chest showed through the vee on his shirt.
At such blatant masculinity, resisting him for two nights seemed a herculean feat. It certainly felt so. “You are those things.” Her eyes flashed defiantly on his.
A side smirk stretched his sculpted lips, the ones she wanted on her skin post-haste. “It turns you on like wildfire.”
Said wildfire overrode her at that minute. If she denied his supreme self-confidence ignited her in the bedchamber, she would be lying.
She neared the escritoire, and he came behind her, banding her waist with his bunched biceps. Her spine met muscled chest, solid thighs, the rock-hard erection digging in her. The touch melted everything inside. Her head fell on his shoulder with a sigh from her open lips and the shuttering of her eyelids. She let him take her in any manner he wanted.
And he did. He bent her over the escritoire and bunched her nightgown up as his fingers found her wet core. He teased it to unbearable yearning before he undid his own buttons and took her. Took her to mindless pleasure.
This sheer carnality would always carry her away with it. Tonight, it felt like barely the surface of something that lay beneath it. Body, mind and everything else engaged in the moment, consuming her, taking all, giving all. If she was not so enthralled by what he did to her, she would be afraid of its intensity, its depth. Its inevitability. She wished she learned what it was. She wished she knew how to deal with it. Even how to end it because it imprisoned her, tethered her to him, stole her will, her rationality. There were no forces in her for any of that. Only to take him and let him do to her as he pleased. It pleased and pleasured her, anyway.
Both sated at last, he picked her up and carried her to sit on an armchair in front of the fire.
