He stepped aside at once.
She entered. The door closed behind her with a click that sounded, to both of them, like the turning of a key in a lock—not trapping them, but sealing them in. Together.
His chambers were warm—fire lit, lamps low, the great four-poster bed commanding the room with quiet inevitability. Lorraine had never been there before. The space bore his presence unmistakably—sandalwood, cedar, leather, and the faint trace of whisky.
She turned to face him.
He was watching her with an expression stripped bare of all defence. His eyes were dark in the low light, his jaw set, his hands clenched as though holding himself in check by force alone.
“I need you to know something,” he said. His voice was rough, uneven—nothing of the composed instrument he wore in public. “Before we—before anything happens. I need you to understand.”
“Tell me.”
“I have not—” He broke off, dragged a hand through his hair, tried again. “There have been women. Before Spain. Brief, contained encounters. The sort that leave nothing behind.”
He met her eyes, unflinching.
“Since Spain—no one. Four years. I have not wanted to—have not been able to—” He swallowed. “You are the first person I have wanted to touch in four years. The first person I have wanted to let touch me. And I am…” His voice faltered. “I am afraid I will do this badly. That I will hurt you. That I will—”
“Dominic.”
She crossed to him and laid her hands flat against his chest. His heart thundered beneath her palms.
“I must tell you something as well.”
He went very still.
“The scandal,” she said carefully. “The one that ended my life in society. You must have heard some version of it. The truth is—” She drew a breath. “I took the blame for my sister. Nothing happened to me. Lydia was the one who was compromised, and I claimed it as my own to save her engagement. But I was never… I have never…”
Understanding dawned slowly across his face. His hands rose, covering hers.
“You are telling me you have never been with a man.”
“I am telling you that whatever happens tonight will be my first time.” She held his gaze. “And I am not afraid. I am not here out of obligation, or gratitude, or ignorance. I am here because I want you. Because I have wanted you for weeks. Because I am tired—so very tired—of being the woman who gives everything and takes nothing in return.”
Her chin lifted, her eyes blazing.
“Tonight, I take something. I take you. And I need you to let me.”
Something shifted in him—deep, fundamental. The fear remained, but it was joined now by something else: awe. Gratitude. Something almost reverent.
“Then we go slowly,” he said, his voice dropping, roughened. “As slowly as you require. And you tell me if anything—anything at all—”
“I will.” She rose on her toes, brushing her lips just beneath his ear. “But, Dominic—I do not want slow.”
The kiss began gently.
His mouth found hers with a tenderness that was nothing like the garden—no desperation, no urgency, just the careful, reverent press of lips against lips. He kissed her as though memorising her, cataloguing each sensation: the softness of her mouth, the way her breath caught when he deepened the angle, the small sound she made when his tongue traced the seam of her lips.
Then she opened for him, and gentle became something else entirely.
Her fingers curled into his shirt and pulled him closer, and the last thread of his restraint snapped. His hands found her waist, her hips, the small of her back, pulling her flush against him—and she felt him, the hard length of him pressing against her belly through the thin barrier of cotton and linen, and the knowledge of what that meant, what was coming, sent a bolt of liquid heat straight through her core.
“The shawl,” she gasped against his mouth. “Help me with the shawl.”
He drew it from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. The nightgown beneath was thin, nearly transparent in the firelight, and his gaze travelled down her body with an expression that made her feel simultaneously exposed and powerful. He could see the shape of her through the fabric: the curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the shadowed suggestion of her form between her thighs.
“Lorraine—” His voice broke on her name.
