“They are good men.” She laced her fingers with his. “But they are men. They’ve married and gone their own ways. Two have started their families. One up in Yorkshire, another in Oxfordshire, and the other mostly in Surrey.”
“Surrey isn’t so far.” He brought her hand to his mouth and gently bit her knuckle. “My brother Benjamin hares all over the kingdom. He’s some sort of investigator for the high and mighty, which he tells me is not half so glamorous as it sounds, though it’s lucrative.”
“Benjamin Hazlit?”
“You know him?” He rolled to his side to peer at her in the gloom, wondering when the innocuous topic of her brothers had shifted to the more difficult subject of his own. “He says discretion is the first requirement of his profession.”
“I know of him. I believe Their Graces have employed him in some administrative capacity. He doesn’t look at all like you.”
God in heaven, she knew his brother. She’d seen his brother. This knowledge pinned back the ears of Vim’s lust and had him wishing he had simply initiated the lovemaking.
“Benjamin and I have different fathers. Polite society is such a small world. I can put into almost any port on the globe and find some tavern or watering hole where the Englishmen congregate. Within moments of meeting each other, they’re engaged in an earnest attempt to find common social ground, and we’ve managed it without even trying.”
“Are they trying to find common ground or trying to find out which of them occupies the higher social ground?”
Interesting question, for some other day.
“Which of your brothers is your favorite, Sophie?” He stayed on his side and gave her back her hand so he might trace her hairline with his fingers.
“They’re all my favorites. My sisters are my favorites too.”
“Which one tries your patience the most?”
“My papa. He means well, truly he does, but he is quite determined he knows best for everybody. My mama reasons with him behind closed doors, but other than that, he’s quite unmanageable.”
Mention of Sophie’s papa was not at all conducive to satisfying the lust simmering Vim’s gut. He cast around for yet another gambit.
“Is it hard, being here without your family at the holidays?”
“No.” She answered quickly, the most decisive thing she’d said since getting into the bed. She also took his hand in her own and nuzzled his palm with her nose. “Even your hands smell good.”
“When one washes his hands frequently…”
Her tongue, hot, wet, and delicate, traced the crease between his third and fourth fingers. Vim rolled up and over her, crouching on his forearms and knees. “For the love God, kiss me, Sophie.”
He waited for a long moment while she cradled his jaw then framed his face with both hands. She kissed him on the mouth, a sweet, almost chaste kiss, then ran one hand back through his hair to anchor at his nape.
“You kiss me too,” she whispered. “Madly, passionately.”
Lust sprang from the starting blocks and raged through Vim’s system. He opened his mouth over hers, desire a voracious force singing in his blood.
“Vim.” Sophie’s fingers on his chin were light, her grip in his hair secure without being painful. She spoke his name softly, as if pleading for something.
He hauled back hard on the reins of his lust and rested his forehead against hers. Passionate was not at all the same thing as heedless. Not with Sophie, not on their one shared night.
He tasted her slowly, one corner of her mouth then the other. She sighed, her breath fanning against his neck, and he thanked God for all the ladies who’d taught him restraint, timing, patience, and consideration.
All the ladies whose faces and names he could not recall and probably would never be able to recall again.
He slid his tongue into the soft heat of Sophie’s mouth only to feel her grip on his hair tighten. She drew on him then came out to play in hesitant, teasing forays into his mouth.
“I could kiss you all night, Sophie. I shall kiss you all night.”
She shifted to lock her ankles at the small of his back. “Not just kiss.” She spoke against his mouth.
Vim smiled against hers. “Not just.” Sophie arched up against him at the hips, reminding Vim that while he was naked, she was not. “Nightgown, Sophie.”
She kissed him harder, one arm wrapping tightly around his back, the other lower, so her hand gripped his buttocks.
He drew his mouth back half an inch. “Sweetheart, I want you naked.” Her hand on his backside eased a trifle. “I want to feel your skin next to mine. I want to touch you all over. I want the scent of you on me everywhere.”
Her hands fell away, and she unlocked her ankles. “Nightgown. Quickly please.”
He sat back between her legs, and when she levered up, he got the thing off her, but he didn’t immediately settle into the cradle of her body.
“What do you like, Sophie? How do you want me to love you?”
She blinked in the candlelight. “You were doing quite nicely a moment ago.”
“I was about to go up in flames a moment ago.” He crouched over her and brushed her hair back from her forehead. “I think you were getting a bit enthusiastic too.”
“Is that bad?”
“God in heaven.” He tucked himself closer but kept his cock from grazing her belly. “You do not dally often, do you, Sophie Windham?”
Her hand stroked over his hair slowly. “Not often at all. Then everybody assumes you are not interested in dallying, and the opportunities stop presenting themselves. Pretty soon it doesn’t matter that you might be interested, because no one’s going to ask.”
And she was not designed to ask for what she wanted, for what she needed. He became determined to give it to her, to see that for once Sophie Windham’s every wish came true.
“You have me for this night, Sophie, and I have you.” He started over with the kissing, taking his time as if they’d never kissed before. He kissed her brow, finding that despite her bath, her hair still bore the faint scents of vanilla and cinnamon underscored with gingerbread. He kissed the tender spot below her ear; he kissed the juncture of her neck and shoulder, hearing her draw a slow inhale as he did.
“My love, you like that.”
“I like it.”
So he treasured her with his mouth for long, long moments, until he could detect the pulse in her throat beating more rapidly and feel some tension in the hand she had fisted in his hair.
He trailed his mouth lower, settling his lips over one puckered nipple then the other. She wrapped her legs around his back and used her fingers to trace his ears.
“I like that, what you’re doing with my ears.”
“You have lovely ears.”
He smiled against her breast until she tugged on his earlobe, which created a resonating tug in his groin.
“Sophie?”
“Hmm?”
He went still above her. “I want you.”
The words weren’t said with any mad passion. He’d stated a simple, stark, undeniable reality, one more pressing by the instant.
“I want you too, Vim.”
She brushed a hand down his chest and wrapped her fingers around the length of his cock. “I want this part of you to join us together. I want to feel you inside me.” She squeezed him a little, and Vim felt it in all manner of wonderful places.
“Guide me, Sophie.”
