Ethan: Lord of Scandals

She subsided more snugly against him. “Impatient, also a bit anxious.”

As was he, truth be told. Heathgate had picked a miserable day to come to call.

“I do not like to see you anxious,” Ethan said, kissing her forehead. “Shall we get under the covers?” Before she noticed that despite his anxieties, Ethan’s body was anticipating lovemaking.

“I won’t have a breathing spell,” she said. “Not with you.”

“I’m glad.” Neither would he, not with her. Ethan stepped back enough to undo the sash of her night robe. She surprised him by whipping her nightgown off over her head and scrambling under the covers.

“You’d like to watch me.” And how pleased he was that she did. Alice perched up against the headboard, fingers laced around her knees. Ethan did not consider himself a vain man, but the heat in Alice’s gaze would make any fellow willing to strut before her.

He made no attempt to turn his disrobing into flirtation—he was too interested in joining her in the bed. When he was naked and his clothing folded on the clothespress, he climbed into bed and stretched out beside her. “What shall we talk about?”

“Talk? We’re naked in bed and again, you want to talk?”

“I do.” Ethan drew his finger down her nose. “As a younger man, I failed to appreciate the pleasures of visiting with a lover in bed. I was all business, so to speak. I don’t want to be all business with you, Alexandra.”

“Not business then.” Alice made as if to nip his finger. “I’ll tell you Joshua has made some real strides in his reading.”

“I was slow to read.” Ethan leaned in and kissed her eyes, one then the other. “Nick was much faster and had to help me.”

As soon as he said his brother’s name, Ethan expected a bolt of regret… that never came.

“You read all the time. Do you ever read to the boys?”

“I read to Joshua, once. He was quite small and ill, and his mother had just died. He was barely speaking himself, but the sound of my voice soothed him.”

“Children know when someone cares.” Alice laced her arm under his neck. “And they know when someone doesn’t.”

“Jeremiah had some interesting questions along that line on our ride today.” Ethan shifted to his back, so Alice lay tucked along his side. He was astonished to realize that talking this way, about the boys, about anything, was not just a ploy to relax Alice’s anxieties.

This talking, cuddled up on her big bed, was a comfort to him as well.

“Jeremiah wanted to know if I missed his mother and claimed he himself did not, because she yelled a great deal and threatened to send him off to boarding school as soon as may be. I add it to the list of things I must try to forgive her for.”

“Was boarding school on Jeremiah’s mind today as well?” Alice scooted, bringing her near leg up over Ethan’s hips.

“It was.” Ethan drew his finger down her nose again, and right on down her midline under the covers to her mons. “He was concerned I would send him and Joshua away when Joshua turned six.”

“You didn’t mock him, did you?”

“I hugged him,” Ethan said, curling down to bury his face against Alice’s neck. “I told him I would be miserable if he wanted to tear off into the world so soon, and Alexandra, I meant every word.”

“Oh, well done, Ethan.” Alice hugged him to her. “Well done, indeed.”

They were quiet for a long moment, Ethan letting himself bask in her approval and affection and in the rare knowledge she loved his children the same way he did.

“I think your sons are happier now than they were at the beginning of the summer.” She stroked the back of his head as she spoke, and Ethan wanted to hold so still that she never stopped, so much did he like the way she touched him.

“They are,” Ethan said, picking up the reins of the conversation. “As am I.”

“Oh, let’s make it unanimous.” She sounded so pleased with herself. “Though I wasn’t exactly unhappy previously.”

“I’m pleased.” Ethan brushed his mouth across hers. “Pleased you’re happy with us. Joshua asked me if I thought you’d ever canter.”

“Ah, do that again. Please.”

He willingly obliged, in part because his efforts to ease her closer to lovemaking with words and simple bodily proximity were having their effect on him. He kissed her with the slow, relaxed savoring of a man who knows he has all night, hours and hours, just to move to the next step.

When he began to explore her mouth with his tongue, Ethan felt Alice shift on the mattress, her limbs relaxing, her spine lengthening.

“Kiss me back, love,” Ethan coaxed, his tongue teasing past her lips. “Come out and play with me.”

He paused, his mouth a hairsbreadth away from hers, waiting for Alice to arch up and brushed her lips against his. She repeated the caress twice more, until Ethan pressed her mouth open beneath his. She twined her arms around his neck with a slow, languorous sigh, and Ethan felt his heartbeat kick up a notch.

The barest hint of a misgiving skittered through his vitals, but not for the usual reasons. He wasn’t experiencing the old uncertainties or ambiguities; he had no doubt he and Alice belonged in that bed together. He was neither unsure of himself sexually nor fearful of inexplicably losing his desire for her. He experienced an instant’s hesitation only because he wanted this night to be better than right for her. He wanted it to be perfect.

And then Alice pulled her body closer to his and found his lips with her own. She welcomed him into the kiss and then welcomed him further, her legs spreading as Ethan shifted his body over hers.

The doubts Ethan battled—not just that night, but many nights in the past twenty years—vanished. He knew what to do, knew how to express his caring for this woman with his mouth and his hands, and body. This was Alice, whom he cared for greatly, and with her, for this one night at least, all would be well.

He closed his eyes, let himself feel the wonder of her naked body beneath his, and gave himself up to the loving.

* * *

When Ethan began to kiss her in earnest, a bolt of anxiety went through Alice’s body and her mind. She lost track of the kiss and began to fret, even as Ethan’s tongue glided sinuously over hers: What if she couldn’t breathe? What if this night left Ethan with a disgust of her? What if she couldn’t enjoy what he was trying to share with her? She hadn’t cared with Mr. Durbeyfield, being only a little bit curious and a lot bored. With Ethan, God help her, she cared a great deal. Cared too much, and hence, the worrying gathered momentum.

But then he shifted, bringing his body carefully over hers in an embrace that caged Alice between Ethan and the bed. For all of her adult life, she’d hated being confined, hated any sort of entrapment. To be anchored under him this way should have made her frantic to escape.

A different panic gripped her, though. She wasn’t frantic to escape. She was frantic to get closer to him. She did not like being confined—maybe nobody did. But she saw it was also true, true in a blindingly new and stark way, that for all her adult life, she’d been profoundly lonely. And what Ethan offered her was not confinement, but rather, intimacy. He offered her the closeness that had nothing to do with confinement and binding, but instead sought to free her.

With Ethan’s body sheltering hers, his naked strength surrounding her, she felt that paradoxical sense of being utterly in accord with another and yet utterly unfettered, and she wanted intensely—desperately—to bring that feeling closer. She spread her legs, letting him settle against her, and wrapped her arms around him.

“Easy,” Ethan murmured, grazing her jaw with his nose. “There’s no rush, love. None at all.”

Alice felt the impressive length of his erection against her belly. “I want you closer.”

“Soon,” he assured her, pained humor in that one word. “Wrap your legs around me.”

He whispered his request again before she opened her eyes, brushed the hair back from his forehead, and shifted the angle of her hips to accommodate him.

“Like this?” She kissed his shoulder then scraped him with her teeth. He tasted clean and warm and faintly of the lavender sachets Mrs. Buxton hung in all the wardrobes.