“Yes?”
“Are you cold?”
“No.”
“Are you well?”
“Yes.”
“Are you?—”
“I am not cold, Cassian.”
He set the brush down and stepped around the easel to her chair. He came to her slowly, each step measured and unhurried.
Clearly, at some point in the last quarter of an hour, he had decided what he was going to do.
He stopped in front of her, leaned down, gently lifted her hand from her lap, and put it against the soft swell of her breast. “There.”
“Cassian…”
“And here.” He took her other hand and put it just as gently between her thighs.
“Cassian.”
“Like that, Alice. For a moment. While I paint.”
He went back behind the easel.
Alice did not breathe. She sat with one hand on her breast and the other between her thighs. She could feel a flush crawl up her throat and cheeks. She could feel the warmth of her palm against the swell of her breast and the light pressure of her fingers against her core which she had never touched while another person was looking at her.
Her nipple had pebbled under her palm. Her folds were very warm against her fingers, and damp in a way she had not expected. She could feel the heat of Cassian’s attention from across the room. She could see the tremors in the brush which had not been there earlier.
He painted for perhaps another two minutes. Then he set down the brush and came back to her chair.
He went down on one knee in front of her. This time, he did not keep a careful distance. He put his hands very lightly on her knees and looked up at her face.
“Alice.”
“Yes.”
“May I?”
“Yes.”
He gently spread her knees and lowered himself between them. He took the hand between her thighs and lifted it onto the armrest. He held her gaze for a long second then he bent his head.
At first, Alice did not know what he was doing. She did not know because what he was doing was something she had not been told to expect by any book or any governess or any mother in the careful library of her education.
She had not been told this was something a man did. She had not been told this was something a woman could receive. She had been told a great many things about what would happen between her and her husband on her wedding night, but none of them had prepared her for the first soft, warm press of his mouth against the very place his fingers had touched in the orangery a week ago.
She made a sound that was not becoming of an earl’s daughter. It was the moan of a wanton. She bit her lower lip hard to suppress the next one.
Cassian looked up at her. “Alice, no one can hear us. Joanna sleeps in the south wing. The kitchens are three floors below us.”
“Cassian—”
“Make any sound you like.”
