Page 7 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

His voice rumbled through her as he nudged his pelvis forward, one hand holding her hip, the other stroking soothingly up her spine. Still pliant from his earlier efforts, her body was ready to welcome him, and a momentary pinch of discomfort soon gave way to the pleasure of being stretched by him, filled by him.

As he began to thrust, she instinctively pushed back to meet him, arching her back, the better to feel the fur of his chest against her skin. “Yes, a beast,” she gasped when at last he drove into her with a grunt and held himself deep. A rush of heat flooded her core.

His weight bore her down to the mattress, and his body covered hers. Though in this position it was still impossible for her to touch him, she no longer cared. He was touching her, inside and out, everywhere at once.

She wasn’t sure if she dozed, but the next thing she remembered, the weight and warmth of his body had lifted, leaving her chilled. The darkness of her bedchamber was not as absolute as the darkness of Lord Earnshaw’s library. She watched the shadowy outline of his figure as he slipped into his dressing gown, a few feet from the bed.

“Must you go?” she murmured drowsily.

Startled by the sound of her voice—or by the question she posed—he paused. “You wish me to stay?”

“Yes.”

He returned to the bedside and dropped a soft kiss on her shoulder. “Et c’est pour ça que je dois partir.”

And that is why I must leave.

In her present state, she could just manage the translation. What he meant by those words was beyond her.

“Bonne nuit, Lady Chesleigh.”

Good night, my lord.

The words never left her lips. She was asleep before the door closed behind him.

* * * *

Maxim made it his business not to be taken by surprise. He had known the character of his father-in-law, well before his wife’s description of the man. Knew his brother-in-law to be an imbecile and his sister-in-law a flirt; knew too that his mother-in-law muted her sorrows with laudanum.

Poor form, perhaps, to use his vaunted investigative skills to gather such paltry information, but since the peace, what else was he to do with them?

What he had not known, what he could never have expected, was that his innocent English bride would show no sign of fear or repulsion when he’d come to her bed. That his rough touch would make her sigh and plead and mewl with pleasure. That when she had rightly called him a beast as he’d ridden her with animal abandon, there would be both hunger and satisfaction in her voice.

The discovery had alarmed him enough that he had been unable to sleep, despite his own satiation. He’d prowled the house until dawn, then taken to the streets, walking until Mayfair was far behind him, eventually picking a fight with his fists—and not at one of those posh clubs where so-called gentlemen liked to box.

He returned to Curzon Street not quite an hour before dinner and rang for bathwater. Only after the footmen left did he strip off his clothes. As he stepped toward the tub, he prodded a tender spot on his side, where his opponent had landed a single blow before Maxim had pummeled him into mincemeat. The large cheval glass caught the reflection of his movement, drawing his eye. Steam rising from the bath softened the image, but evidence of his myriad injuries was still plainly visible: the innumerable scars, the knobby protrusions of once-broken ribs, the twisted sinews stretched taut over the withered muscles of his thigh.

He’d lied to her.

The old wounds no longer pained him, much—leastways, not the visible ones.

She was waiting for him in the dining room, dressed in a gown she had probably worn at least once at Earnshaw’s. And perhaps last season as well.

Much like her thin, worn nightdress.

“Go to the best modiste on Bond Street,” he said. “Buy whatever your heart desires. Have the bills sent to me.”

She blinked up at him, her eyes more gold than green in the candlelight. “Thank you, my lord.”

He could tell she had been more pleased with the gift of books.

As the footman laid plates of soup before them, she reached for her spoon. “My lord, who was the gentleman at the church yesterday? The one seated in the very back?”

Maxim dismissed the servants with an imperious look. “General Zebadiah Scott.”

“Oh. A military man.” The spoon hovered over the dish for a long moment before breaking the surface of the creamy soup. “A friend of yours, I take it?”

He pondered how Scott would have answered the question. Friendship required trust, after all. A willingness to trust others. The ability to trust oneself.