Julianna must have grown impatient during his reverie, for suddenly she was pressing on his chest, walking him back toward the bed. When they arrived, she pushed him unceremoniously onto his back and climbed on top of him. She worked his shirt loose from his breeches, but she, too, was defeated by his cravat.
“I was attempting a waterfall knot,” he said, “and now it’s tightened beyond removing. I fear I shall have to cut—”
She stopped his mouth with a kiss, laying herself over him.
All right, then; that worked, too.
They kissed for ages. Effie told himself to savor it. For although subterfuge was fine if needs must, it was less than ideal. A comfortable, warmly lit bedchamber in a house full of people who understood: this was their last taste of that life.
She pulled away before he was ready. He wanted to kiss her forever. He didn’t want to spend; he didn’t want her to find her release. That would mean the night was over.
His prick had other ideas as she straddled his thighs and stroked it. “Uhn,” he groaned.
When she did that, he became temporarily paralyzed. He became the mindless starfish.
He had been rendered slow-witted enough that he didn’t catch on to what she was doing next until it was almost too late. “Wait!” he cried, finding his voice just as she was about to sink down onto him.
She stopped, and he felt a fool.
He hadn’t thought they were doing that, was the thing. He had taken to heart Archie’s advice about the dangers of an unintended pregnancy, and there had been no discussion of their coming together in this way, nor any sense that it was even on offer.
He had thought she would be more comfortable with mouths and fingers and such.
Hell,hemight be more comfortable with mouths and fingers and such.
“What is it?” she asked as she sat back onto the tops of his thighs.
“It is too dangerous. You cannot have a child.Icannot have a child.”
“Why canyounot have a child?” she asked, a question he thought was rather beside the point at the moment.
He answered anyway. “Because if I had a child, presumably I would love it. And if I loved a child, how could I put him in line for the earldom?”
“You do realize it’s rather unusual to hear a person such as yourself declaim that he does not want to inherit land, power, and riches. That he does not want to consign a child to such.”
“I suppose I am an original,” Effie teased, fluttering his eyelashes for comic effect.
“You do not really have a choice, though, do you? I appreciate the many ways in which you are unconventional. Youarean original. But you shall have to produce an heir, shan’t you?”
“I suppose so.” Honestly, he preferred not to think about it, and so far that strategy had proven sufficient. Someday, his parents would probably begin haranguing him over the succession, but that day had not yet arrived. “But I would like to think you of all people would understand why the prospect feels rather like a yoke to me. A cage.”
“I do, but I feel I ought to point out that you can be whatever sort of earl you like. You can be a poetry-writing, court-pump–wearing earl. Regardless, there is very little risk of getting me with child.”
His first impulse was to ask how she knew that, but he swallowed the question. He had to assume she did—it was her body, her future, on the line here. He settled for saying, “Very little risk is not no risk.”
“Can you pull out? When you’re close, I mean?”
Yes. He hadn’t realized that was an option, but of course it was. And now that it was, he wanted it. He yearned for it with every word of every poem he’d ever written.
“But of course if you don’t want to, we won’t,” she said, leveling him with a look so tender it brought tears to his eyes. She started to pull away.
He clamped a palm down on her forearm. “I can do that.”
The smile she graced him with was equal parts wicked and guileless, which should have been impossible, but many things about Julianna, about Julianna and him together, should have been impossible.
“We should switch places,” she said, glancing down at his hand keeping her anchored to him.
“I beg your pardon?” He didn’t understand, but he removed his hand all the same. It wasn’t polite to hold a lady against her will.
