Page 20 of What Happens in Hedone

“You should be cherished,” he said softly.

She wanted, suddenly, to cry. “I will be provided for. A home, several of them, actually. Pin money. My own carriage and footman, I don’t doubt. He will never quarrel with how I order the household or raise the children or spend my time, as long as his needs are met and I do nothing to shame him.”

“What would he think,” Jay asked softly, “of this?” He traced a finger along the collar she wore, designed to look like opulent jewels.

“He must never know of my play here, of course. But who will tell him?”

In fact, her cousin had come to the club once, had been in the audience of one of Effie’s first tableaux. Her heart had stopped beating at the time, but apparently her mask was effective. She thought about removing it now. She wanted Jay to see her, all of her.

“Do you mean to keep many secrets from your husband?” he asked.

“One,” she said. She still clasped his other hand, and she drew it towards her to hold both his hands to her breast. She hoped he could feel the wild beat of her heart and know what it meant. She loved how his mind seemed to work in train with hers. She’d experienced that with her women friends, but never a man.

Never had there been anyone like him.

“What makes me sad,” she said softly, “is to know I will never feel this for him.”

“You might.” His voice was rough, the scrape of a cast iron pan in the oven, brimming with heat. “Given time.”

“I already know I will not. And I can accept that. Only I do not wish to go my whole life having never known—” Her throat closed like a sea anemone seizing its prey. She swallowed the sudden despair.

“And I will not be unfaithful to my husband, of course. So it must be now. Before.”

“My lady. What are you asking of me?” His thumb moved, stroking the skin of her breastbone beneath her folded hands. Her breasts grew full and heavy.

“One night,” she whispered. “To know what it is like.”

“To know what?” His voice was a thick purr, like the grate of a feline.

He was going to make her say it. To be perfectly clear. Effie swallowed hard.

“Pleasure.”

His thumb moved in slow circles, and waves of sensation cascaded over her skin. Her legs tingled. Her breath came shallow. “Why choose me?”

Because it was him. Because she had come to the sea to find solace and she found him instead, standing with his feet in the water and his eyes on the mud, the wind tossing his hair, and his face in its line of focus the most entrancing thing she had ever seen. Because he was like her, curious, thoughtful, and he didn’t have a careless or unkind bone in his body. She knew that as surely as she knew her own face in the glass.

And because, when she was with him, the world came alive in a way it never had before. She came alive, her whole body a teeming rivulet, and she wanted to pour herself around and over him.

“Because of this,” she said simply. “Because of how I feel when you touch me.”

“Darling.” His voice made the ache grow inside of her. “You are so beautiful. You are— I do not have the words. Perhaps poets do.” His palm was warm against her, like an anchor in the storm of emotion, making her wild and yet calm at the same time. “But if you are to belong to another man⁠—”

“I belong to myself,” she said, her own voice ragged. “I am mine to bestow on whom I wish. And I⁠—”

She could not say the rest. This was humiliating. She should not have done it. She should just go home now and press her face into her pillow and never emerge. Heddy would understand.

“Have there—” He hesitated. “Have there been others, and they⁠—?”

“No!” She caught her voice as it rose wildly. She would be heard over the music if she could not restrain herself. “There have been no others. There never will be.” She pushed down a sob. “I am sorry. It is overreaching of me. I should not presume that you would—that you might— Of course you would prefer not to. I am⁠—”

Her words disappeared in the hot swoop of his mouth as it came down on hers.

He moved as if a leash had snapped and all the power he held at bay was now released. He slung his arms around her and pulled her against his body, one hand on her bottom to hold her to him, one hand sliding into the coils of her hair to hold her head in place for his ravishing kiss. He kissed as if he were hungry for her, starved. He kissed her as if he felt everything she did, this uprush of air and fire, and he, too, wanted more of this now, tonight, before the world intruded and their enchanted moment disappeared.

She tried to catch her breath, murmured the question against his mouth. “Is this— Are you⁠—?”

“Most gorgeous Erato. My Muse.” He pressed kisses along her jaw, beneath her ear, along the delicate skin of her neck, moving swiftly, as if he wanted to kiss her everywhere at once. “May I bring you pleasure? In whatever ways you could wish?”