Modern Romance Collection: October 2017 5 - 8. Heidi Rice

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       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      IT WAS VERY early the next morning when Eleanor finally slipped from Hugo’s bed, placing her unsteady feet on the floor beside the massive bed where she’d slept in snatches and learned a whole lot of things about pleasure.

      Dark, delirious, wondrous things that still moved in her, making her flush hot and red all over again, just remembering.

      She ached everywhere, she realized as she stood. Places she’d had no idea could ache were half on fire, making her feel as if she’d woken up in someone else’s body. There were tugs here and vague abrasions there, and she could remember something wild and carnal and inexpressibly beautiful to explain each one.

      Eleanor thought she ought to be ashamed. Maybe she would be, later. When the reality of last night had time to settle. But right here, right now, she didn’t regret a thing.

      She found the nightclothes she’d worn last night and pulled them back on, trying hard not to remember exactly how Hugo had pulled each of them off her. Trying hard not to slip off into that same red haze again, all flushed and needy.

      She peeked over her shoulder at the bed again, some part of her still unable to believe that any of this had happened. One red-hot image after the next chased itself through her head, in case her body couldn’t tell her what had happened, inside and out. But if she’d had any lingering doubt, the sight of Hugo sprawled out there across the better part of his bed got rid of it.

      She had tasted every inch of him. She’d taken that enormous length of his deep into her mouth, and had learned how to taste him and tease him the way he’d done to her. He’d taught her how to kneel up over him, and had taken her that way. He’d taught her all the wicked things he could do with his hands, and she’d tried to do the same to him. Over and over again.

      She had no idea there were so many different ways—an infinite number of ways, apparently—to do the same thing. Crack apart like that and fall together, sleep entangled, then wake to do it again.

      And the greedy part of her wanted to experience all of them. Every last possible way to explode like that. Here and now, though she was a little bit stiff and still achey. Eleanor didn’t care, as long she got to experience it all with Hugo.

      Hugo, who lay on his back with his arms splayed wide, as commanding in his bed as he was out of it. Hugo, who looked more approachable when she slept. No smirking. No mocking tone of voice. No reminders that he considered himself the biggest monster in England, because everyone else did.

      Everyone except Eleanor, that was.

      She tucked her hair behind her ears and forced herself to turn around. To walk toward the bedroom door, and then, harder still, to walk out and leave Hugo there behind her when that was the last thing she wanted to do.

      Because whatever else happened, she had a job to do. A little girl who had enough of people in her life abandoning her in one way or another, and didn’t need more of that from Eleanor.

      And if there was a part of her that didn’t want to be there when Hugo woke, well. She told herself that was nothing but her inbred practicality. The man might not have had the relationship everyone thought he’d had with Isobel Vanderhaven, but that didn’t mean he been a saint.

      Eleanor refused to be that silly virgin she’d certainly read enough about and seen too many times on-screen. The one who fell head over heels at the first hint of a man’s interest and made a complete fool of herself.

      There wasn’t much she could do about the first part of that, СКАЧАТЬ