How to Marry a Marble Marquis(25)

Silas surged forward with a moan, his knot breaching her, popping into place as the first contractions of his own orgasm rippled through him. She had still been clenching him tightly when he had filled her, and now she clenched around his knot, a bliss unlike anything he had ever known. He ought to have been more concerned with her welfare. He ought to have been checking in and making sure she was all right, he told himself, that the sound that ripped from her throat was one of pleasure and not one of pain, but he was lost. His great black wings beat the air above the bed as his balls pulsed, knot throbbing, his cock pumping spurt after spurt of his hot seed into her.

When it was finished, Silas was dizzy. He had never knotted a woman before, and the realization that he had now done so would likely be a mad panic in a few hours, but right now, he only felt drunk and heavy, surrounded by her warmth and her soft smell, and he sank into her, a small part of him hoping that he never resurfaced.

“Why didn’t you sing at the opera? Did the crown’s facilities not please the diva?”

Her smile against him was soft, and her eyes remained closed. They were still locked together, the swelling in his knot keeping them tied, and that, too, was a brand-new sensation. Her nose pressed to his chest, rubbing side to side, nuzzling against him before she answered.

“I don’t care for opera, actually.”

“Miss Eastwick, I demand you be sensible.”

Eleanor laughed against his chest, her breath hot, her small nails scraping against his skin. “I’m sorry! I don’t, though. I never have. I always preferred lieder and chanson.”

“Dare I ask why?”

Her nails skated down his chest to his stomach, scratching softly. His lungs were in danger of turning themselves inside out. He was one of London’s most notorious rakes, and this sort of soft intimacy was far outside his wheelhouse.

“It’s someone else’s words. Opera, I mean. You’re playing a character. I have to feel what the character is feeling. With art songs, I get to feel. I get to interpret what the composer may have meant. You don’t have that sort of latitude in opera. Your director is going to have very specific ideas, and the actress needs to follow her directions. I know it seems silly, but —“

“It doesn’t seem silly to me,” he interrupted, quickly voicing his agreement. “I remember that night I heard you perform, Miss Eastwick. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

She turned her face to his chest, and he felt the dampness of her tears. And you’re right back to where you started, you blithering idiot. Unlike earlier, she lays her small fingers with his longer ones, locking their hands together as she rubbed her cheek to his chest, stretching like a cat against him.

“I should be getting home soon. It’s probably very late. Sometimes my sister wakes up at night, and she’ll be upset if I’m not home yet.”

He couldn’t remember the last time he left the house in only his shirt and tailcoat, leaving waistcoat and cravat behind, but she was right. It was very late, and it was his fault that she was still in the house at this hour. He would see her home himself rather than waking Kestin’s sleeping sister.

“Thank you for the instruction on the delicate relationship between flowers and butterflies, Lord Stride.” Her voice was soft, but in it, there was a smile mirroring the small upturn of her mouth as his carriage pulled to a stop before the Eastwick’s home.

“I do hope you found it to be an enjoyable lesson, my dear. I take full responsibility for any ill effects you are feeling.”

The smile remained on her face as she shook her head no as he raised her hand to his lips. “Not at all, my lord. No pain and no regrets.”

By the time he was home, Silas felt a bit ill with himself. He hadn’t wanted to let her out of his carriage, and that in and of itself was a ghastly mistake, a portent of ill luck on the air, a tightening at his throat. That shift in his chest again as he looked over the bed where she had rested against him, where she had nearly fallen asleep, where he would have been content to let her stay for the rest of her days, wrapped in his arms, tucked against him.

Silas began to pace. Eleanor Eastwick was going to be going off to marry another man. That was the plan, and it was the right thing for her to do. Why then, he thought to himself in aggravation, did the thought leave him so unsettled? He was not meant for love. He would no sooner bring children into this world, children who would only know him for a few hours a day than he would name his horse Marquis in his place. He would not take a wife and leave her vulnerable to a cruel and conniving society. Fortune seekers abounded, and every other person he knew was a vagabond in their soul. He knew too well the faithlessness of noble wives, and the thought of another man — a man like him! – fucking the woman he loved every day as he sat there, a worthless slab of stone, was too horrifying to even consider.

His plan was a good one. He had long considered his options, marshalled his resources, and thought through the ramifications of his actions. Maris would make a formidable Marchioness. Her children would carry on the Stride bloodline, inheriting Basingstone, the title, the lands, all of it. He’d already found a gargoyle in the far north, on some tiny frozen island, who was ready to end his time on this plane of existence. He bore enough passing resemblance to Silas that they could make it look believable. A tumble from the rooftop, shatter of marble. His sister would mourn, but then she would do her duty to the family, as she always had. Cadmus would be expecting him, and the Marquis of Basingstone would be no more. He had thought through his plan a hundred different times a week, in a hundred different ways, and it had always seemed like the best and only option. He hated that there was doubt niggling at the back of his mind now.