" Nicholas will throw me to the wolves."
Henry's jaw tightened slightly. "Not for the month I paid for," he replied.
"I have lived at that brothel for the past year," she continued, the words rushing out now. She could not stop them. "Nicholas uses his girls every night. Sometimes even during the day. The occasional drunk at midday who wants a good time, as long as he has enough coin."
Her hands trembled. "Please," she said again. "Don't send me back out there to be… to be savagely torn apart by another, Henry."
"And what makes you think I am not as savage as the ones you run from?" he asked.
"The point is…" she said, taking a small step closer, "I am choosing you." Her hands moved then, reaching to the laces of the corset. Her fingers fumbled slightly before finding their rhythm, loosening the tight knots. She gathered the loosened strings in her hands, holding them together, unsure what to do next. Then she let the corset drop to the ground.
Henry watched. What the hell was wrong with him? She was right. This should be simple. He had done this countless times before—taken what was offered, what was expected, what was easily given. He should just fuck her.
Get it out of his system. Prove to himself that this—whatever it was—was nothing more than a passing fixation.
A moment. A distraction. And then move on. Forget her. Forget that a girl named Livia Valenti had ever existed at all.
She had made the decision before she'd fully finished making it — which was, usually the only way decisions of this magnitude got made at all. You didn't think your way into them. You simply moved, and let the thinking catch up later. Livia reached behind herself.
She didn't exactly know what she was doing. She had watched the other girls at Beaumont's — the arch of the back, the angle of the chin, the parting of the lips. It didn't come naturally to her. Her fingers found the laces at the back of the dress. She pulled the strings carefully and let it fall.
She stepped out of it and moved closer. She had decided not to be shy and she was holding herself to it. She stood over him.
Henry swallowed. He shifted in the seat, a small adjustment. His eyes stopped listening to him. His gaze, which had spent the entire evening making such a principled point of staying on her face, simply left and had followed the fall of the dress.
The smooth line of her collarbone. The curve of her shoulders. Her breasts, full and round, the pink nipples tightened slightly, her skin warm gold in the candlelight. His jaw shifted. Lower still — the flat plane of her stomach, the dip of her waist where it curved outward again into her hips.
He was practically drooling. Henry got to his feet. He did it abruptly. He rose to his full height and now they had reversed again, she was looking up and he was looking down and they were close enough that she could feel the warmth coming off him.
Her lips parted. She wasn't entirely sure why. Nerves, perhaps. Or the simple biological response to suddenly finding six feet of broad-shouldered man, standing over her.
"You're beautiful," he said.
You're beautiful.
She didn't know what to do with it. Her eyes dropped. She wasn't sure, afterward, if she could have explained it precisely. Suddenly she was aware of herself. The nakedness that was supposed to be seduction became simply — nakedness. Skin and imperfection and the question of whether beautiful was true or whether it was just what men said.
She felt her shoulders begin to curve inward. Then his hand was at her jaw — fingers catching it gently, tipping her face back up toward his. She waited for what came next, bracing for impact. He leaned in, the impact, when it arrived, was nothing like she had been bracing for.
His lips found hers with a gentleness that seemed almost like a question — is this alright, are you here, are you still with me. He didn't know her. He knew she was witty and had strong opinions but he did not know what she had or hadn't done before tonight, what she had or hadn't experienced, and rather than asking, he was simply going slowly enough that she could keep up, or stop, or redirect entirely.
He was giving her a way out. Her hands lifted and found his chest, and she felt the warmth of him through the linen of his shirt, the solid reality of him, her fingers curled into the fabric of his cloak.
She kissed him back. Like he had said. Under normal circumstances, she would have wanted this. Totally. Voluntarily. She tightened her fingers in his cloak.
He made a small sound and his free hand found her waist. The warmth of his palm against her bare skin was startling in the best possible way, and she felt the slight involuntary catch of her own breath against his lips. His thumb moved, a small slow arc against her hip.
His leg shifted, guiding her feet apart, widening her stance. His hand left her waist. Moved lower. Traced the outside of her thigh.
His fingers found the inside of her thigh, and rational thought evacuated the premises with some haste. He moved upward by degrees — slowly, still slowly, and she realised she had stopped breathing in any organised fashion, her fingers twisted into his cloak hard enough that she would owe him an apology about the fabric later, his hand travelled higher, and higher, until —
His fingers reached the soft heat between her legs and he touched her there — gently, carefully. He caressed her, and the sound that left her lips was entirely unplanned and very quiet and she would have been embarrassed about it if she'd had any remaining capacity for embarrassment.
The moment his fingers found the moisture, a small breath left him. She wanted him.