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“I’ll have to remember not to wear my full complement of undergarments when we return home,” she said. “It’ll scandalize Ruth, of course.”

“And make me a very happy man.”

He slipped one finger inside her and her muscles clenched around him.

God, he needed her. He positioned himself right against her entrance and planted his other hand midway along her back, pushing her over the edge of the desk.

“You’ll tell me if this hurts you,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, palms still flat on the desk.

His breath stirred the hairs on the back of her neck as he leaned close to whisper in her ear, “Good.”

He plunged into her in one long stroke, ripping a surprised cry from her lips. He thought to stop, but then Ina reared up and hooked her hand behind his neck to draw him closer, deeper.

Bent over her, his hand pressing her back down against the desk, he drew his hips back until he’d nearly pulled out of her and thrust again. The flesh of his hips hit the softness of her tilted ass, and she whimpered.

“Gavin, please.”

“Tell me what you want,” he said.

She twisted and her burning eyes locked on his. “All of you. Harder. Deeper.”

Groaning in relief because that was exactly what he wanted too, he thrust again and again. Each time he felt her muscles spasm around him as she fully sheathed him. This was hard and fast. Pure need and desire.

For his wife. His.

The fierceness of his climax began to gather in him, and he felt his balls tighten. He was close, but he wanted Ina there with him. He reached around her hip and rolled her clit between his thumb and forefinger over and over with the rhythm of his thrusts, silently willing her to break for him.

All at once, Ina cried out, grasping for a hold on the unforgiving desk. He slammed into her, wringing moans from her as she went wild beneath him.

And then he was there. All of the pleasure building in him concentrated into a point and exploded. He sagged forward, scooping an arm beneath her to pull her up against him as he pumped into her. He buried his face in her neck, his teeth gently biting a tendon in her neck as he tried to stifle the shout that threatened to let loose. Then he pulled out and spilled himself on her exposed back.

When his hips slowed and he was spent, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped Ina clean. Then he wrapped both arms around her and rested his head against her back. They stayed there for a moment because he couldn’t stand the thought of letting her go. Despite the steps they’d taken in this marriage, he still half expected her to rear back from him one day, deciding all of a sudden that this wasn’t what she wanted. If she did that, he’d crumble.

Chapter Seventeen

INA SAT WITH her hands folded in her lap, trying to be perfect. After their first encounter, Lady Sophia had been cool but mercifully distant with her except for little snipes about Ina’s manners, accent, or interests. Most of these glanced off Ina, and she was determined not to rise to the others.

What everyone knew and yet no one said directly was that Ina wasn’t up to the role of being the baronet’s wife Lady Sophia thought she should be. In her place should’ve been Grace, who moved with an elegance befitting her name, receiving callers with a soft word and quietly submitting to the hours of needlework Lady Sophia toiled over every day. Lady Sophia had even relinquished some of the responsibilities for running Oak Park’s massive household to her favored daughter-in-law.

Though it might be her right, Ina didn’t bring her complaints to Gavin. She didn’t relish the thought of taking over the management of a manor house she didn’t want, and every day saw Gavin sequestered in his study with Chase. The last thing he needed now was his wife tearing in to complain about his mother.

What she needed was to get out of Oak Park. She told herself over and over that Gavin had work here, but it took every ounce of her resolve not to beg him to return home. She missed her Edinburgh, but it was more than that. This grand house looking out over the sea to the west and sweeping green hills to the east should’ve been beautiful but it couldn’t shake the deep, bone-chilling cold that hung about it, as though the happiness had been sucked out of it long ago. It made her want to rebel, filling the hall with laughter and throwing open the doors to someone other than the solemn-faced, black-clad members of this miserable household.

Just a little while longer—that’s what he’d promised her—a few days and he’d conclude his business. Then they could return to their life in Edinburgh. They’d visit Oak Park, a home neither of them wanted, only when absolutely necessary.

For now, she just had to survive another interminable afternoon in the drawing room with Lady Sophia and Grace.

From her seat on a sofa near the window, Ina offered her sister-in-law a little smile, but Grace hardly met her eyes. The poor woman looked miserable, and although she never protested at Lady Sophia’s ridiculous criticism, Ina would’ve pulled her into a hug to comfort her if she wasn’t half convinced Grace would break into pieces at such an outrageous display of affection. She’d asked Gavin for guidance about how she might approach her sister-in-law, but he’d clammed up immediately. She supposed he worried that his brother’s widow resented that it was Gavin assuming the title rather than Richard.

Stifling a sigh, she picked up the sketch pad she’d armed herself with in anticipation of the long stretches of silence that personified the gaps in the afternoons that were not filled with callers. She flipped the bound pages open to a blank spot and picked up a pencil she’d sharpened in her room that morning.

With quick strokes, she outlined the shape of a jaw up to a set of cheekbones. Her pencil whispered over the page, lending a soothing meditative quality to the work. She hadn’t set out to draw anything in particular, but a face was appearing, so she added shading to bring out a man’s chin and defined a divot in the center of it. A pair of lips were followed by the slope of a nose.

Her thoughts wandered to Hero and Leander as she added two long lines for a neck. The days she needed to finish her sculpture were ticking by. She had just six weeks before the deadline for entries passed, and she still had detail work and polishing to complete. At the moment, her tragic lovers still looked vague, more like suggestions rather than fully fleshed-out people.

“You’re drawing Gavin,” said Grace from over Ina’s shoulder.