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“He laughed at me,” she said. “He called me a whore. He pinched me right here.” She indicated a place above her collarbone. “It felt like that pinch branded me. A whore.”

“Despicable bastard,” gritted out Nathaniel. “I really should murder him.”

“Spencer had heard him, although I don’t think he saw me touch myself, thank God. But Spencer pummeled him for calling me that and for pinching me. After that, our families fell apart, when William complained that Spencer had hit him. Spencer never told anyone why. It was enough humiliation without that.”

She was quiet for a while, fingering the glass.

“And then William appeared the same day I went to the Admiralty. He wanted to marry me.”

“I remember you mentioning his name.”

“Yes.” She looked up at him, and the sadness in her eyes killed him. “But I’m so glad I’m married to you.”

What was she doing to him…? It was as though her words hit him right in his core, mending the torn edges of his spirit.

“You don’t hate me?” she whispered. “Don’t want to laugh at me? Don’t think I’m pathetic?”

“He’s a piece of swine shit, Calliope, and you couldn’t be further from what he called you.” He cupped her face and planted a gentle kiss on her lips.

“Even though I was reading and enjoying an erotic book at twelve?”

He looked deep into her eyes. “Darling, you could be reciting bawdy songs at the top of your lungs in front of the queen, and I would still think you’re the most desirable woman alive.”

He kissed her. He wanted to give her just a sweet, reassuring kiss, but one was not enough. One would never be enough with Calliope. He kissed her again. And again. It must be her scent that always did it for him, stirred his blood with hunger. He came to her lips again and again. Deeper. Deeper. She responded with the same hunger. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and she pulled herself closer to him.

And then he was devouring her mouth, his loins growing tight and hot. She pulled him down as she lay on the quilt, and he was on top of her. And when a beautiful moan escaped her throat, it shot a bolt of desire right into his groin. He pulled away from her slightly, barely able to catch his breath.

“Calliope,” he murmured. “If I don’t stop now, I won’t be able to at all. I want you too much.”

She looked at him with her hooded eyes, then gave a sly smile that drove him mad. “I don’t want you to stop. I want you to finally show me what it’s truly like to be in that erotic book.”

21

Calliope’s breath caught as a hungry growl escaped his mouth, and something delicious clenched within her.

He came back to her mouth as though he could barely tear himself away. His kiss became so deep, every lash of his tongue reverberated inside her, where she’d wanted him so much.

She was shaking, so hot and needy, her sex aching and swollen. He was a wonderful, heavy, masculine presence, and what he had said about William… She wondered how she could have ever doubted he’d accept her, that, rather than mocking her, he’d be furious with the man who’d hurt her.

Telling him that, all that, was like cracking herself open and releasing the secret she’d held for so long like a foreign presence in her body. Spencer had known about William’s words, of course, but it wasn’t like she could tell her brother what she’d felt. What she’d read. Or that the whole incident was actually her fault, because good girls didn’t read erotic stories or like them so much that they had to touch themselves to find out if all those things were true.

But Nathaniel understood.

And she felt safe. Accepted. She felt like herself. She felt like, perhaps, those things she had thought before William’s cruel words and actions could be true.

That her body was good as it allowed her to feel all those beautiful things.

Perhaps…

Nathaniel’s kisses made her forget.

She trusted him.

He left her mouth and planted gentle kisses down her chin and her neck. She froze when he approached the spot where William had pinched her. He stilled, too, meeting her gaze with eyes as dark as the night above her.

There couldn’t be a person more beautiful than he, all sweeping golden angles, his lips slightly swollen.

“May I kiss you there?”