A Lady And Her Magic (20 page)

She couldn’t keep from laughing at his stricken look. “You must.”

“All right,” he acquiesced and he squeezed his eyes tightly together.

Sophia shoved her gown from her shoulders and untied her chemise at the neck, letting it fall to the floor. She wore nothing else, aside from stockings and garters. She turned her back to him and called forth her magic, letting her wings appear. It wasn’t often she summoned her wings when she was of average size. She fluttered them lightly, satisfied when she stirred the air just a little bit around her. She peered over her shoulder and saw that she made the lock of hair on his forehead lift.

“What was that?” he asked.

“You may open your eyes and see,” she said.

“Bloody hell,” he gasped.

Ashley had to remind himself to breathe. It was as though she’d stolen all the air from the room when she removed her clothes. There she stood, naked in front of him. But from her back arched pretty wings that matched the flushed color of her skin. They stood up taller than her shoulders. And dropped down low enough to cover her bottom. All he could see were her wings, the back of her head, and her pink garters and white stockings. Dear God, she was beautiful.

He forced himself to exhale and took a step toward her. “By the saints, you’re a faerie,” he breathed. Her hands were in front of her, one cupping each of her breasts, shielding them from his gaze. “Don’t come any closer,” she said, when he moved to walk around her. Her wing bent, wrapping around her enough to block his view. He stopped. “I’m not decent,” she went on.

“I’ll say,” he gritted out.

She fluttered her wings lightly, and the breeze she created washed over his skin, making his manhood spring to immediate attention. Or perhaps it was the sight of her naked that did that. He couldn’t be certain.

“What do you think?” she asked.

He reached out one tentative hand to touch her. But she jerked forward. “They’re very sensitive,” she warned. A slow flush crept up her body, and her wings blushed as well. Good God, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, flushing scarlet there the way she was. He pulled his hand back.

“I want to touch you,” he said, recognizing the hoarseness of his own voice.

“Could you get me your dressing gown?” she asked, turning her body so that her front faced away from him as he stepped toward the wardrobe to retrieve it. But as she turned, she faced his full-length mirror that stood on the floor by his dressing table. Her eyes met his in the looking glass, and she blushed scarlet. Her wings took an even brighter hue, turning a soft but startling pink. He turned his head, though doing so was the most difficult thing he’d ever done, and held his dressing gown out to her on a crooked finger. He felt it fall away from his hand and heard it rustle as she put it on.

“You can open your eyes now,” she said.

He slowly opened his eyes to her and wanted to cry with despair when he saw her wrapped in his gown, her pretty pink wings gone. “Where did they go?”

“I can make them come and go at will,” she informed him with a shrug. “They’re a little unwieldy beneath clothing.”

“They’re beautiful,” he said. He couldn’t come up with anything better than that. Just “they’re beautiful.” He probably sounded like a complete dolt.

“Thank you.” Another pretty blush crept up her cheeks. A clock down the corridor chimed the midnight hour, and she said, “My time here is drawing to a close.”

“You can’t go yet,” he complained. There had to be something he could do to make her stay. There had to be something.

“I have a few more hours,” she said quietly as she crossed to his bed and climbed atop it. “Let me sleep with you for one night.”

He dragged a hand down his face. He nodded.

She turned down the linens and the counterpane and settled herself against his pillows. He went to join her. “What shall we do to occupy the night?” she asked, a grin tugging at her lips.

He could think of plenty of things to keep them occupied. But he started with her stockings. Ashley picked her tiny foot up in his hand and tickled the bottom of it. She giggled and tried to jerk back from him, but he held fast. God, she made him feel like was an adolescent again. But then she suddenly stilled, her eyes hot and limpid.

***

Ashley trailed his hand up the back of her calf, sending tingles to every single part of her body, from her head to her toes. Her breaths were already shallow, and she could barely concentrate on anything but him. He tugged at her garter and rolled her stocking down her leg. Then proceeded to do the same with the other.

“Will you douse the lights?” she asked, hating to hear the quiver of her own voice. But she was frightened. He doused every light in the room but a single candle, his chambers growing darker and darker until there was a single dancing shadow playing upon the wall—his. She watched his graceful form as he began to shrug out of his jacket and waistcoat, and then tugged his shirt from his trousers and over his head. He sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged off his boots, laughing as he tossed them one by one to the floor with gentle thuds. He sounded more carefree than she’d ever heard him.

“Are you happy?” she asked. She could sense that he was. But her senses had been wrong in the past.

“Happy to have you in my bed?” he said as he shucked his trousers and crawled across the bed toward her wearing nothing but his smallclothes. “I’m bloody ecstatic.”

He reached for her in one quick move and she shrieked as he drew her beneath him. “Ashley,” she cried.

“Sophie,” he crooned in retort, as he reached between them and tugged open his dressing gown, which she still wore. He devoured her with his gaze as her skin was revealed, and he lowered his head to tease her belly with his stubbly chin.

“God, you’re exquisite,” he growled. His mouth traced a fiery path across her stomach and up to the swells of her breasts. He uncovered them with reticence, his breath leaving his mouth in a hot rush of air when he’d uncovered her. Sophia shrugged her shoulders from the dressing gown and reached for his hair. She threaded her fingers through his dark locks, pulling him tightly to her as he explored her stomach and the line beneath her breasts with his tongue.

He didn’t go any higher, seeming content to caress her, but her nipples were aching for his touch. She very gently tugged his head toward an aching peak, and he raised his gaze to meet hers for a moment as he drew the tip of her breast into his mouth.

“Oh,” she cried out, arching her back to get closer to him.

He very gently licked across her nipple, watching her face as he did so, and then closed his eyes tightly as he burrowed more closely to her, seating himself between her thighs. She spread her legs for him, and he settled there.

“I’m afraid,” she whispered to him, her breath hitching in her throat as he moved from one breast to the other.

“I won’t harm you, Sophie. I promise.” He stopped his ministrations and looked up at her, as though he needed her permission to continue. She nodded, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth to worry it. He dipped his head again, taking her nipple back into his mouth as his hands played up and down her sides. He began to rock against the center of her, and she could feel the raspy coarseness of his smallclothes against her tender skin.

“Take those off?” she asked.

He lifted himself briefly to slide them down and over his feet. Then he came back to her and she could feel the length of him pressed against her. “Please tell me that you’ll be mine,” he whispered fiercely, looking into her eyes as he rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She could do nothing more than nod as sensation swamped her. The pulse between her thighs grew more and more strong, and she had to remind herself to breathe.

Between them, his hand drifted lower as his lips met hers, and he slid his tongue very tenderly and softly into her mouth as his fingers found that little nub at the top of her sex that was pounding so strongly. She cried out at his tender ministrations, his mouth taking in her mewling little sounds as he breathed her in with every stroke of his fingers against her. Her hips began to arch to meet him. But then he replaced his fingers with his thumb and slid one finger inside her. Sophia nearly exploded. He stilled above her. “Tell me to stop and I will.”

She jerked his hair. “If you stop now, I will use all of my fae magic to do something terrible to you.”

He pretended to think it over. “Could it be that bad?”

“Oh, it most certainly can,” she ground out.

He shifted his hips so that the tip of him pressed against her center. “You’re an innocent, are you not?”

She nodded quickly against his shoulder, squeezing her eyes tightly shut as he pressed a little harder, sliding through her wetness and lodging just barely inside her. She felt the pain of his entrance for no more than a moment. He stilled when she cried out. “Are you all right?” he asked, his breath hot and heavy against her ear.

Her answer was a tug to his backside, and he slid farther inside her. The burning pain of it was over almost as quickly as it arrived. And with one thrust, Ashley seated himself fully inside her.

His breath-filled grunt as he stopped startled her. “I need but a moment,” he said quickly. “Or this will be over before it has begun.”

He stayed still inside her as he let his fingers creep back down her belly and slide into the molten heat between them, and he began to rub that aching nub again. Sophia pressed her lips against his, drinking him in as he began to move his hips in time with his fingers. He pressed her legs a little wider apart and slid ever so much deeper inside her with every thrust. She began to arch to meet him, and he tilted her hips so he could take even more of her, so he could go even deeper. He touched a magical place inside her she hadn’t even known existed. And something she didn’t understand at all began to build within her.

“Ashley!” she cried against his lips.

“Sophie,” he grunted in response. He said her name in small whispers again and again as she felt a wave beginning within her. It threatened to crest and smash her to pieces, and finally it did. Sophia broke, crying out as her climax ripped through her. He grew even harder inside her, thrusting slowly in and out of her as she fluttered around him. And when she was done and returning to earth, he stilled inside her, his arms shaking on each side of her, then thrust once more and groaned her name. He spilled himself within her, soaking her walls, making her even wetter than she was. His last thrusts were so pleasurable they neared pain. But then he stopped. He stopped and brushed her sweaty hair from her face. He looked down at her, her blue eyes almost black in the darkness of the room.

A tear fell from the corner of her eye. “Oh, God, Sophie,” he said, still hard within her. “Did I harm you?”

She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, and a hot tear slid a warm trail down toward the linens, nearly scalding as it traced its path down toward her ear. “You didn’t harm me,” she admitted.

“You’re certain?” he asked. He looked so worried. She brought his face down to hers and kissed him softly.

“I just didn’t know it would be like that.”

“Neither did I,” he said as he slid himself from her still-aching sheath and lay down beside her. He rolled to the edge of the bed and crossed to the nightstand, where he wet a cloth with water and cleaned her. She would have flushed scarlet, if he the room weren’t so dark. He took a moment to clean himself, and then he joined her in the bed. He pulled the counterpane over them both and tugged her into the crook of his arm.

“Promise you’ll never leave me,” he said as he yawned widely and placed a kiss into the hair at her temple.

She couldn’t promise that, so she said nothing. She nuzzled her face in closer to his heart and closed her eyes. She would enjoy these final moments, for they would be her last.

Sophia woke to a soft scratch at the door. She rolled over and halted for a moment because a heavy weight was wrapped around her. She forced her eyes open and smiled as she realized the weight that had her so effectively pinned to the bed was Ashley. His arm draped over her even in sleep. He tugged her to him, and she went willingly, laying her head upon his chest. “You all right?” he asked, his voice groggy from sleep.

“Shh…” she whispered to him. “Go back to sleep.”

He nodded sleepily and pressed a kiss into her hair. A soft snore erupted from him, making her smile. But the scratch sounded at the door again. Sophia slid gingerly from beneath his arm and retrieved her chemise. She tugged it over her head quickly and went to the door. She opened it only a crack and looked into Wilkins’s very disapproving face. “Miss,” he said, his voice as cold as a midmorning wind in winter.

“What is it, Wilkins?” she whispered. She didn’t particularly care if he disapproved of her. But it did sting just a bit to know he didn’t regard her very well.

“His Grace is needed,” the butler said haughtily.

“Needed for what?” she hissed back.

“That would be a discussion for His Grace, miss,” he clipped out.

“His Grace is sleeping.” She could sound just as haughty as the butler, couldn’t she, if she were of a mind to? “If I feel like it’s worth his waking, I’ll tell him.” She made a come-hither motion with her hands. “Out with it, now.”

“It’s Lady Anne. She’s having a night terror,” he finally admitted.

Anne? A night terror. She looked back at Ashley, who slept peacefully. “A moment,” she said and she turned to get Ashley’s dressing gown. She shrugged into it and followed the butler into the corridor, closing the door to Ashley’s chambers quietly behind her. “You’ll have to show me the way,” she warned.

He looked down his nose at her for a moment, and then gave her a brisk nod. He began to walk, and she followed. She couldn’t help but wonder why Anne’s rooms were so far from His Grace’s, when she seemed to need him so often. But it was not her riddle to solve.

When they reached Anne’s chambers, Wilkins stepped to the side and bade her to precede him. She did so with no hesitation at all.

But what surprised her was the voice of her sister Claire as she entered the room. Claire sat in a rocking chair in the corner of the room. “It was rather difficult to convince Wilkins that Lady Anne had need of her father,” Claire bit out. She held a sobbing Anne in her arms. “Now I can see why he didn’t want to disturb him.” Her gaze was full of censure. “Did you enjoy yourself?” she asked, her tone harsh enough to cut glass.

“Oh, do shut it,” Sophia barked as she held her arms open to Anne. The girl flew across the room and directly into her grasp. She hugged the girl to her and sat back on the bed, drawing her across her lap.

“There now,” Sophia crooned. “It can’t be that bad, can it?” She very gently brushed the girl’s wet hair from her face. “Has your naughty governess been telling you stories of trolls and snails?”

“I did,” Claire said, raising her nose high in the air. “But I doubt that’s what brought on this bout of tears,” she clarified.

“I was falling,” Anne said, her face pressed into Sophia’s shoulder.

“Well, now you’re not,” Sophia crooned to her. “You’re tight within my arms. All safe and sound.”

Lady Anne hiccupped against her shoulder and began to quiet.

“She has night terrors often,” Claire said.

“Yes, I know. I’m fairly certain she was there when her mother’s accident happened.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” Anne sniffled. “She was thrown.”

“I know,” Sophia said quietly, rocking the child back and forth.

“How do you know?” Claire asked quietly.

“Her father told me the details,” Sophia explained. “Could you pass me the music box, please?” Sophia held out her hand for the small box and waited patiently for Claire to put it in her hand.

“That’s the oldest trick in the book,” Claire snorted.

“And it works,” Sophia sniped back.

Sophia jostled Anne within her arms very softly. “Anne, I need for you to do something for me,” she said.

Anne nodded against her chest but didn’t loosen her frantic grip on Sophia.

“I need for you to remember what happened to your mother, only for a moment.”

Anne closed her eyes tightly.

“Then I want you to take that memory and put it in this box. We’ll lock it up, and you never have to open it again if you don’t want to.”

“Fool’s magic,” Claire barked.

“Shut it,” Sophia warned.

Sophia nudged Anne. “Go ahead. Put it away.”

“I can’t,” Anne cried.

Claire opened her palm and blew across it, and magical dust stirred within the air. It swirled until it formed a picture in the air, a shimmery portrait of a woman with long golden hair falling from the tower. Anne closed her eyes tightly and refused to look at it.

Sophia reached out and caught the picture in the air, crumpling it between her fists like a piece of parchment. She placed the bit of memory in the music box and closed the lid with a resounding thwack.

“Take it away,” Sophia ordered.

With a loud harrumph, Claire got up, sprinkled some dust over the music box to seal it, and placed it upon a high shelf. “You must leave the memories for her for later,” Claire warned. “She may have need of them.”

“I highly doubt it,” Sophia snorted.

“You’ve become too attached to this family,” Claire said, her gaze direct and cutting.

“I know,” Sophia whispered, tears pricking at the backs of her lashes as she hugged Anne to her and held her close. The girl began to drift off to sleep in her arms.

Sophia looked up at Claire. “I leave on the rising-dawn wind.”

Claire nodded.

“Will you stay long enough to be certain the memories are gone?”

“For the girl or for the duke?” Claire asked.

“For them both,” Sophia whispered.

“Do you want me to take his memory of you as well?”

Sophia bit her bottom lip hard enough to draw pain. “Yes,” she whispered.

***

Ashley woke with a jerk, reached across the bed, and felt for Sophia. Her side of the bed was cold. He bolted upright. Only moments before, she’s been nestled softly within his arms. And moments before that, he’d been inside her. He’d taken her innocence, and she’d taken his. He’d never known a feeling like the way he felt for Sophia, and parts of it scared him to death. But the rest of it felt so right.

Ashley jumped from the bed and searched for his dressing gown. When he couldn’t find it, he pulled his shirt over his head and donned his trousers, then stepped out into the corridor in his bare feet. He stormed down the hallway, and didn’t stop until he saw Wilkins coming in his direction. “Your Grace,” the butler began.

“Where is she?” Ashley snapped.

The butler blanched. “To whom are you referring, Your Grace?”

To whom did Wilkins think he was referring? “Miss Thorne, man. Where is she?”

“Which one, Your Grace?”

Ashley stumbled for a moment over his own thoughts. “How many are there?”

“Two, Your Grace. The governess. And… yours.”

His. Yes, indeed. She was his. “Mine,” he bit out.

“She’s in with Lady Anne.” He nodded down the corridor. Ashley started in that direction.

As he continued down the corridor, he spotted a lady leaving Anne’s chambers. “Sophie,” he called. Thank God. He thought she’d left him. His heart beat a staccato rhythm within his chest. But the chit looked up and it wasn’t Sophia. She looked a lot like Sophia, however. He tilted her head and regarded her closely.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” he asked.

She dipped into a quick curtsy. “You’d have to define one of them, Your Grace.” She raised a brow at him.

“Later,” he murmured. “Where is Sophie?”

She nodded toward his daughter’s closed door.

“She hasn’t gone then?” His heart was hammering, as though it desperately wanted to jump from his body.

“Not yet,” she said cryptically. She turned to walk away. He reached for her arm, loosening his grip when she winced at his hold.

“How can I make her stay?” he asked.

“You can’t. She has to want it.” She looked almost sorry for him. He didn’t like it. Not one bit.

“I believe she does.”

“Not enough.” She looked down at where he still gripped her arm and he set her free.

“Apologies,” he murmured.

“No offense taken,” she said. Then she started down the corridor. Ashley pressed his forehead against the door of his daughter’s chambers, inhaling and exhaling there in the cold corridor, as though those breaths could be his last. Finally, he eased the door open.

The scene that greeted him made his heart twist within his chest. Sophia lay beside his daughter in her tiny bed, her body close to Anne’s but not touching her, except where her fingertips played lightly down Anne’s hair. His daughter slept, and Sophia looked at him with a tear in her eye.

“So lovely,” he breathed, a lump forming in his throat. This was what he wanted. He wanted her in his life forever. In their lives forever.

“Yes, she is,” Sophia agreed.

“I was referring to the both of you,” he said, not taking his eyes off her. “Did she have a night terror?”

“She did,” Sophia said. “But she won’t have them any longer.” She nodded toward a music box perched high upon a shelf. “The memories are in there. When she’s ready, she can open it and it will be like they never left.”

“She’s not ready for memories such as those.”

Sophia smiled softly. “Which is why I took them from her. They’ll no longer plague her.”

“I’m not ready for memories such as those, either,” he admitted.

“No one is,” she agreed, her hand still stroking down Anne’s hair. “She sleeps well.”

“Better than I have seen her sleep in a very long time.”

Sophia gave him a quirky grin. “My mission is complete,” she said with a shrug. Very carefully, she got to her feet, careful not to disturb Anne. “Helping your daughter was my mission,” she reminded him.

“But what about me?” he asked, his voice cracking on the last as he drew her into his arms.