Anon, Edward removed her quandary.
“I begin to see what the duchess was talking about,” he drawled, circling a thumb over her knuckle.
“Er?”
“This night has shown me why you have been sporting that piquant, roqueish smile, Sophie. No wonder the duchess suspects you’ve been tupped, and thoroughly.”
Her fingers still rested on the sharp bone at his hip, and she swept them side to side within the cage of his, teasing his sex-warmed skin.
“Rogue? Me? You are the rogue. And Sebastian. My two rogues.” She sighed and closed her eyes. Below her cheek, Sebastian’s breathing slowed. From experience, she knew he would sleep briefly and when he roused he’d be ready for another go. The night was hardly over, despite the delicious ache all over Sophie’s body.
Her sigh sputtered, though, when the tick shifted; the hip beneath her fingers moved and she felt oddly bereft. She opened her eyes.
“Edward?”
He was up already and pulling on his pantaloons. A shock of sleek mahogany hair had fallen over his brow as he worked the flap closed. Sophie watched him retrieve his shirt from the back of the chaise where it had fallen. He shrugged it over his head and brushed his hair back with long fingers. He did not fetch his stockings but shoved his feet into his shoes bare. “You’re leaving?”
He straightened, tying the neck of his shirt without looking down. Instead his dark eyes pinned Sophie. He did not need to reply: his yes was written on his handsome face.
Sophie swallowed. She felt the cool air on her bare back, on her rear. How could he look at her like that, so calmly, as if nothing unusual had occurred here in this very room just moments before, as if he had not been inside her body?
She recalled his precondition, before he had agreed to this romp, and she swallowed again, harder this time.
Afterward, nothing changes between us.
“I bid you good evening, Willoughby.” He did not break the intense gaze locked on Sophie, but he nodded shortly to Sebastian. Sophie noticed his reversion to Sebastian’s title, a signal that their intimate connection had ended. “And sleep sweet, my Sophie.”
Edward shoved his hair back one more time and hooked a finger in the collar of his coat on his way out of the room. The door closed soft as a kiss behind him.
Sophie stared at that door for several heartbeats. Nothing changed? How could their relationship ever be the same after this night? For better or worse, she knew that she would never be the same. Nothing would. But she would not shrug off his friendship out of pique, either. If friendship was the only thing he could offer her, she would take it, and hoard this memory for a long while.
She felt a gentle pressure on her head. Sebastian stroked her hair lightly. Ah, so he was awake already. In truth, perhaps he had never slept. She blinked and looked along the length of Sebastian’s body. The hastily donned linen nightclothes did little to disguise the jut at his groin. He was ready for her again. Sophie indulged a thrill at the knowledge, deliberately shoving aside her qualms about Edward and the little bulb of sorrow deep in her chest. She still had a man in her bed, after all, and he was something lovely to behold.
“Hmm,” murmured Sebastian, moving those long fingers in behind her ear, near her nape, precisely in a spot that undid her utterly. His other hand found her wrist upon the coverlet and clasped it. “Atherly left his cravat. How fortunate for me.”
* * * * *
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Giving In by Alison Tyler
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* * *
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ISBN: 978-14592-3895-4
Sophie’s Rogues
Copyright © 2012 by Dolly Jackson & Christine Hoffman
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