Page 87 of The Beast of Beswick
“Why?”
She stared into her glass, a faint blush on her cheeks. “I felt the distance between us widening, and it frightened me. You were pulling away, and there was nothing I could do about it. I don’t presume to know what you were doing or why you were behaving the way you were, but it wounded me terribly. I didn’t want you to shut me out.”
“I—”
“Let me finish, please,” she said. “I also can’t presume to understand what you’ve been through and what you have to deal with on a daily basis, and I want to apologize for asking you to go to Lady Hammerton’s. It was truly awful and thoughtless of me.”
“It is forgotten.”
As if a weight had been removed from her shoulders, Astrid inhaled and nodded. “We are married, Thane,” she said softly. “Regardless of how our marriage came to be, we are not strangers, and…I don’t wish us to be. I miss our time in the conservatory and in the library. I missyou. I know there can be fondness and mutual respect between us, and I’m not looking for anything more, if that is what you’re afraid of.”
What if I want more?
The thought came out of nowhere, making Thane suck wind as if he’d been struck in the gut. He’d been the one who’d been adamant thatmorecouldn’t happen. Thatmorewas a basket of poisonous snakes that could not be re-closed once opened. Thatmorewould destroy him. And yet, here he was entertaining the bloody idea.
He scraped a hand over his stubbled chin, his thoughts chaotic. It had taken courage to do what she did…to face him when he’d been nothing but unpleasant and to fight for whatshewanted. A lesser woman would have given up, thrown in the sponge, and cut her losses. But Astrid was not like other females. She was different.Unique. He’d known that from the start when she’d burst into his home and demanded he marry her or give her a job.
“I’m sorry,” she said, mistaking the tense expression on his face.
He drew a breath. “It is I who should apologize for the things I said, Astrid, for what I called you. I didn’t mean them. You’re not a…doxy. Forgive me.”
“Forgiven.” She bit her lip, a beautiful flush suffusing her skin. “Though I admit, after my recent success, it’s shockingly liberating.”
Her elegant hands trembled slightly in her lap, and for once, Thane knew the shiver to be passion. Her responses were too innate to be false. If he still had any doubt, however, the look she shot him from beneath her lashes was pure hunger, and he felt his lower body jerk like a puppet in response.
“Is that so?” he murmured.
Astrid’s face flamed as she waved a hand toward the study door where he’d plastered and pleasured her body to distraction. “Apparently,” she replied. “But you can’t shut me out and withdraw the moment you feel afraid or threatened. This is all new to me, too.”
“What is?”
“Trust.”
“Then, this is a first for both of us.” Thane finished his brandy and stood, holding out his hand. He smiled when his wife took it, drawing her up against his hard body so swiftly that she gasped. At the feel of her, unsurprisingly, he felt his cock stir to life.
“Already?” she asked, glancing down to the rise in his trousers.
“A constant state where you are concerned, Lady Beswick.”
Her arms looped around his neck. “That must be uncomfortable. Let’s go upstairs and do something about it, shall we?”
In his bedchamber, Thane wrapped his body around hers and made love to her slowly, taking the time to savor every inch of her. He busied his hands with her luscious breasts. He skimmed his palm down her flat stomach and up again. He loved the feel of her…the silken smoothness of her skin, the taut buds of her nipples, the soft tuft of maidenhair at her groin.
Most of all, he savored being inside her, deep within the sleek clasp of her body. He marveled at the delicious friction between them—the tight, hot embrace of her body, as if she were made exactly for him. Retreating and filling her slowly, he kneaded her breast and sucked gently at the tendon between her neck and shoulder. She let out a needy sigh and arched her back, wriggling into him.
“You’re so warm and wet.” Thane increased his pace, drilling in and out, clamping a hand on the outer flare of her hip. Her spine bowed, allowing him deeper access, and they both groaned as his cock sank home into her.
“Thane,” she whispered. “I’m close.”
He slid his hand down to where they were joined, his fingers grazing the swollen knot at the top of her sex. His wife moaned her approval. Circling it and rubbing it, he quickened his thrusts at the same time, the erotic combination hurtling them both over the edge. This time when she came, she muffled her screams in the pillow. As he had earlier, he withdrew with a grunt just before his seed spilled in the bedsheets between them. Thane kissed her nape, inhaling the wildflower scent of her.
For the first time in a long time, he felt almosthappy.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Dratted needle!”
Astrid sucked on the finger that she had pricked for the fourth time, while Mabel shot her a laughing look. It was aMabellook, full of innuendo and mischief. Astrid laid her embroidery hoop aside. With the amount of times that she’d drawn blood, she would have been better off threading the needle through a piece of scarlet cloth.
