Page 83 of The Grand Mistletoe Assembly
A moment of silence passed between them, and he noticed her gaze fell to his mouth.
“Are you not curious?”
“About kissing?”
He nodded. His gaze on her mouth and the lovely neck swept with dark amber hair. He reached for a strand and wrapped it around his fingers. “If I were truly your husband, Sophia, I’d show you how a man kisses a woman.”
She swallowed and knelt beside him. “Can you show me now?” She leaned in, her lashes batting expectantly. She was as innocent as a newly-hatched viper, but she was growing on him.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded, her gaze still fixed on his lips.
* * *
Sophia’s heartpounded with something she first mistook as fear, but she felt safe expecting his touch. He drove his hand deeper into her hair until he held the back of her head. His other hand took hers. He was close to her, his eyes locked with hers. She felt his breath, sharp and clean. Some of his hair had fallen onto his forehead.
“Sophia, I’m not the prince you might hope I am.”
“I have long stopped hoping for one, Baron.”
“I mean … Don’t fall in love with me, all right?”
She nodded.
He touched her lips ever so slightly. She trembled with the sheer surprise of the contact, his lips fleshy and hot. Then she felt the slight stubble of his beard. A light scratch.
She took a moment to reconcile how intimate the contact was. Her mother had been right to warn her. But she wanted him now. Not just his mouth, but all of him. So, she opened her mouth a little.
He pulled her closer. And parted his lips wider. His movements were gentle but deliberate. Controlled and clean, just like everything else about him.
But Sophia wanted no more of that. She’d crossed a line, now she might as well enjoy it. She pushed her mouth onto his, tilted her head to give him access.
And he took it.
CHAPTER 6
The afternoon before the Grand Mistletoe Assembly charity ball, Sophia couldn’t muster the energy to open her eyes anymore. She’d collapsed after being tumbled in an avalanche of passion. Her private parts were sore, but she wanted to spread her legs and ask for more. It was a good sort of pain, like after a breakthrough training where she gained new strength. Oh, but the memory of last night was nothing like training. It had felt like that famously raw emotion she’d been specifically warned about, the one that would make her more vulnerable than even poverty.
Sophia touched her neck, where the sweat from lovemaking had dried. She called for a bath and dressed for dinner. Everything would be different now. They had crossed a threshold that spies should never … but she hadn’t felt like a spy then. For the first time in her life, she’d felt safe in the arms of a man. Cherished. Admired. With him, she could be more than a pretty doll. No longer would they pawn her off or blackmail her for her favors.
Sophia found a large box with a big purple bow on the table next to the bed. A little note was wedged into the side of the bow.
Merry Christmas
- W.
It was the first gift she’d received since her mother had died. Sophia eagerly opened it and found the white dress with purple lace that she’d ordered at Mme Giselle’s. She held the flowing fabric against herself to look in the mirror. But when she twirled, her eyes fell on the books that Wolfgang had been studying at night.
“Chort vozmi,” the devil may take him, Sophia muttered in Russian.
He’d stolen them from the Pearlers’ house. She shouldn’t have trusted him on this mission, for he was bound to get caught. But she’d been swept away by his tender kisses for the last day and had pushed her worries aside. She was alone in the bedroom for the first time since they’d … She had no words for what they’d done again and again. But what she hadn’t done was check these books.
She opened the top one and turned to a page he’d marked with a strip of paper.
“Sukin sin,” son of a bitch, she cursed.
The book detailed funds received and allocated for costs for the foundling home, and this page showed a log of medical expenses for a physician from Harley Street, no less, where only the most prestigious and expensive doctors offered their services. The next marked page listed materials and labor for roof repairs and the addition of a second bath-room.
