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Sofia scanned the room for evidence that Christopher had been nearby. She spotted a waistcoat slung carelessly over the back of a chair. Before she could consider the wisdom of doing so, Sofia pushed back the covers, stepped to the floor, and reached for the silky cloth. Violet stretched a steadying arm about her waist … and they both tumbled to the carpet below.
Two sets of footsteps pounded down the hallway, and the door was thrust open. Gabriel, keen eyes trained on his wife, and Christopher, shirtless and dripping wet with his trousers half buttoned, charged into the room. At the sight of Sofia, Christopher gripped the doorway, his grey eyes wide and unmistakably filled with joy. And then he was there, words and kisses intermingled as if he couldn’t decide which was more important. His fingertips drifted across her cheekbones, her neck, her arms. Vaguely, she was aware of Gabriel performing a similar assessment of his wife amidst a gentle chastisement about taking care.
“We’ll give you two a few moments to catch up,” Gabriel said, tucking his wife beneath one arm.
“He means to kiss,” Violet clarified unnecessarily.
Sofia felt Christopher’s smile against her neck. “I hope he counts slowly.”
Mindful of her shoulder, Christopher lifted Sofia from the floor and laid her on the bed, following her body with his own. When she opened her mouth to speak, he stopped her with the hard press of his lips.
“Not yet,” he said between ravenous sweeps of her mouth. “I need to feel you here in my arms.” He kissed her again. “Against my lips.” And again. “Warm and alive beneath my fingers.”
“I need tooth powder!”
He sank his fingers into her hair and lifted her face to his. “My love, if you persist in interrupting, this will take twice as long.”
His mouth trailed to her cheek and jaw, nuzzling his face into her throat before returning to her lips. Only once they were both gasping for breath did his primal need to reassure himself that she was alive and well begin to abate.
He laid on his side, propped on one elbow and looking down at her, his fingers still busily mapping the contours of her face.
She pressed her palm to his bare chest, where his heart still beat wildly in relief. “I’m so sorry,” Sofia said.
He shook his head and a droplet of water from his hair fell onto her nose. “Apologise if you feel you must, but it’s me who was entirely in the wrong. Your situation was impossible to navigate. I behaved like a heartless barbarian.”
“You were hurt and upset. Understandably so,” she argued.
“No. I asked you to trust me. I promised you my devotion and then assumed the very worst of you at the first little bump in the road.”
“It’s not exactly a little bump, Christopher.”
He shrugged. “Regardless of which Anson is meant to be sitting in Parliament, I love you and I’ll never give you cause to wonder about it again.”
The devastation in Sofia’s eyes when he’d forced himself to walk away haunted him. Even if she hadn’t been transparent about her motives upon arrival, she had told him enough. He had seen enough to know with absolute certainty that she was at the mercy of her circumstances. But in the moment he’d learned of her betrayal, he had been eight years old and helpless all over again, his heart pulverised by another woman whose secret would lay waste to his home and family. Only this time it was worse because he had tried so hard to be enough for her.
“Stop it,” Sofia chided with a poke to his ribs.
“Stop what?”
“Self-flagellating. I can hear it in your silence. Stop blaming yourself for the moment it took to sort things out in your head.” She sighed, frustration evident in the sound, then combed her hands into his hair and kissed his nose. “How are Gabriel and Violet? Do the servants know about—”
“No one knows. I’ll tell you everything … everything I know, anyway. But outside of one brief conversation with Gabriel, I’ve spent every moment in this room, consumed by my worry for you. I tried to talk with him yesterday when he came for an update on your condition, but he avoided my questions so skilfully that I didn’t realise what he’d done until he’d quit the room. But before we broach that conversation, you should rest and eat. Would you like more water? Or to see your brother now? He’s probably with Gabriel, they’ve been spending quite a lot of time together over the past few days—”
“Days! I was asleep for days?”
“Less asleep than delirious with fever. You are never to put me through anything like that again. My God, Sofia …” Christopher wrapped himself around her then, and just like that, all the anxiety of the days before bore down upon him again. His body demanded further reassurance that she was awake and would recover, that she didn’t hate him for his unforgivable mistakes, that she was his. Christopher closed his eyes, willing the racket in his chest and head to subside. He commanded his body to slow down, to harness its enthusiasm to an intensity safe for her. There was nothing of moderation in the way he longed to cover her mouth with his, her body with his.
He pressed his forehead to hers, his mouth achingly close to her lips. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. You kissed me before and you didn’t hurt me.”
“I could have. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.”
She tipped her face up to his, cutting through the scant distance between them and brushing sweet, reassuring kisses across his lower lip. Each kiss asked for more and clawed at his crumbling resistance.
“Sofia,” he groaned at the flutter of her warm, wet tongue. “I feel—”
She caught his lower lip between her teeth with a teasing scrape and he felt it like a brush of her fingertips from his navel to his cock.
