His breath came in deep billows and he gave her something he had never given another—his name. “Henry Edward William Charles.”
Hart gave it to her so the name she was keening wasn’t a tangle of his that, when uttered, formed someone else’s. After all, what red-blooded man wanted to hear a fiery hoyden coming undone while breathing the wrong name?
He waited for her to use it. Lusted for the sound of it rolling off in her lilting voice, now heavy with passion.
“Henry!”
Nothing could have prepared him. Hearing her sultry voice curl around his name in plaintive yearning pressed Hart to the edge of madness. And it also yanked him back to the point of reason.
He’d have rather surrendered food and drink for the remainder of his days than stop. Somehow he managed to drag forth enough restraint.
Bathed in a red blush from the gentle swell of her bosom to the tips of her curls, eyes closed, Fleur was left with her mouth searching for his in the air when he broke the kiss and righted her garments.
Hart knew what came next. The tears. The charged accusations. The indignant fury. All of which the lady would be entitled to—Hart had conducted himself abominably, in noway an honorable gentleman would. Granted, he had no regrets, aside from the desire to have found completion in her arms and bring her to her first climax.
He was unprepared for the dreamy little smile that teased her lips. “I knew it.”
His brow dipped before he remembered that with her eyes closed, she was still halfway from the clouds.
She forced her long lashes up. “Henry Edward William Charles.”
A weird sensation settled around his ribcage, an entirely too-serious feeling.
“You had the order wrong,” Hart said with all the bloodywrynesshe wanted to feel.
“I never professed to having them in the right order.”
No, she hadn’t.
“Henry?”
Hart stiffened. Having never been addressed so, not even by his brother, it took a moment to realize Fleur spoke to him, but then when he did register her usage, his head got heavy again from the foreignness of it spoken in her lyrical voice.
“Yes?”
Fleur sighed. “I don’t hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He was glad she couldn’t see the smile twitching at his lips. He had shown enough weakness this day.
She stepped out of his arms, and he didn’t miss the feel of her. He found it better, his head clearer without the feel of her against him mixing everything up.
“I-I want to hate you.”
Hart made the mistake of looking down. Her mouth, swollen, bruised, and wet from the force of his kiss, trembled—not with fury, but sadness. Her sadness was far worse. It made his chest uncomfortably tight and his thoughts scattered.
“I know.” Hart rubbed the back of a suddenly very cramped neck. “Because I want to hate you in the same way.”
And for reasons unknown, he somehow bloody couldn’t.
Fleur lay her cheek against his chest. It was the act of a trusting child who sought comfort—and yet, in the course of his entire life, he had never himself done, and a comfort he only ever conferred for Tremaine. Which surely accounted for Hart why he simultaneously wanted to shove her off like a flea and close his arms around Fleur and drag her closer. Except what he felt was as far away from brotherly as he was from the moon.
“Hart?”
He stiffened. He knew the ways of women. They were always up to some trick or another. Perhaps this had been another of Fleurs.
“You know, wecan.”
There were so many “we cans” thatcouldbe filled in.
