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He spread his thighs and placed her between them, her arse leaning against the edge of the desktop. His hands ran up her thighs and towards her waist. She was already changed for bed, her hair falling freely over her shoulders. As he undid the belt of her dressing gown, its sides fell open, revealing her chemise. She shuddered and arched her back as he began kissing her stomach, waking up her body, her flesh responding to him with an aching desire.
“Did you come to ask me to bed?” he murmured, his lips brushing against her skin through her chemise. “Or to seduce me in my study?”
As he pulled her chemise up, revealing her naked thighs, her head fell back. Before she could respond to him, her gaze grazed over one particular portrait, and she froze.
Good Lord…the man strongly resembled Dorian… Except he wore a white wig and had harsher, more angular features. He was also larger, with more flesh around his stomach.
She sat straight up. “Is that your papa?”
His head shot to the portrait. “Yes.”
She looked at him, his gaze haunted as he stared at the image. Then he met her eyes.
“Do not allow him to interrupt us,” he murmured as he reached for her lips, resolve in his face. “You chase away the darkness that he’s cast over me my entire life.”
Her heart squeezed tightly. “And you’re the strength I thought I’d never have,” she replied.
She glanced down at his glove. Her body wanted him. Her spirit did, too.
And yet, the glimpses into the happiness they could share for the rest of their lives were just that…glimpses. Dreams. That’s what their true happiness would always be as long as there were secrets between them.
She cupped his face. “What would it be like, to trust you as I trust Anne? To know everything I feel and think…you can understand? And for you, to be able to tell me every little thing that crosses your mind…?”
She took his gloved hand and looked straight into his face. His gaze was haunted. “For you to tell me what’s hiding here? And whatever it is that you can never tell me about Oxford?”
He was frozen in place, completely terrified.
She ached to tell him she loved him. That she would understand, whatever his secret was. She’d accept him.
He rose to his feet and left her proximity, walking behind his desk. “Leave it be.”
She jumped to her feet. “Wait… Dorian.” She reached out to him.
In her hurry, her hand knocked the stack of books and papers that was at the edge of his desk, and they fell, scattering around the floor, papers flying.
She dropped to her heels next to him to help him pick them up. Book by book, she gathered them and put them onto the desk.
When she went to pick up the aged sheet of paper with ruffled edges and old ink, blurry with time, she didn’t at first register anything. She’d almost put it on top of the desk when her eyes grazed over the date.
October 8, 1802.
And then the place.
Oxford.
She froze, the paper trembling in her hands. Dorian was still picking up the books and the letters, and her gaze flicked over the writing, at times unclear. Unfamiliar.
Severe burns… she managed to read.
Metallic fragments in the sinew…
…likely from a great burst, like a gun or a bomb…
…likely will never have full control of the fingers…
…might lose the hand…
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