Wild Star (Star Quartet 3)

She closed her eyes at his words. Then his mouth covered her and she thought she would explode with the pleasure of it.

He knows my body so well, she thought when he raised his mouth, and lifting her hips, came into her. Her own hands frantic on his back. His flesh was so warm, slick with sweat. She took his cries into her mouth.

We are like two children, Byrony thought sometime later, when she and Brent, holding hands, laughing at nonsense, walked down the stairs.

“Good grief,” Brent said, drawing to a halt in the doorway of the dining room. “You shouldn’t have waited for us.”

“We didn’t know how long you would be,” Laurel said, searching their faces. “After all, there was so much for Byrony to do.”

“Yes,” Brent said, “there was, wasn’t there?”

Byrony gave him a dazzling smile that made him feel like a randy goat. “Are you hungry, wife?”

“Amazingly so,” she said.

Even though she was hungry, she scarcely tasted the delicious oyster-stuffed chicken. She was filled with Brent, attuned to his every movement, every nuance in his voice. He was discussing the future of Wakehurst with Drew, and for once Byrony couldn’t bring herself to attend to his words.

Brent looked at her plate, then smiled at her. “Why don’t you and Laurel go into the drawing room. Drew and I will join you in just a few minutes.”

“Just what was all that about?” Laurel said the moment they were alone.

Byrony didn’t answer immediately, but walked slowly to the open window and breathed in the soft evening air.

“Well?”

“I’m not leaving Brent,” she said. “You’ll have to forget what Mammy Bath told you about me packing.”

Laurel shook her head. “God, you’re a simpleton. He seduces you and you’re ready to forget everything. Oh yes, I well recognize the look. You’ll regret this, Byrony.”

Brent had seduced her, she thought fairly, but she’d wanted him just as much. “He loves me,” she said simply. “Ever since he knocked me down and spilled my flour bag.”

“Do you have any idea how many women he’s loved during the past nine years? I should probably make that fifteen years.”

“Probably a battalion. But now he’s retired.”

/> “I suppose he wants the child?”

“Of course.”

There was a moment of silence. Byrony turned back to the open window, aware of the swishing sound of Laurel’s silk skirts as she paced the drawing room.

“Don’t you realize there’s no reason for him to love you? Listen to me, Byrony, you’re a sweet girl. You are even reasonably pretty.”

“Thank you.”

“But consider all the women he’s known, women who are truly beautiful, women who very probably loved him as much as you do. Why you? It makes no sense. He’s got a reason. Perhaps it’s your child he wants. All men want a son—a question of their mortality and all that, I suppose.”

“Brent told me he wanted a little girl.”

“I tell you he’s lying to you! Or perhaps he’s lying to himself.”

Laurel paused a moment, unable to find more words, more arguments. She wasn’t really certain what she believed. But she knew she didn’t want Brent leaving with his wife. If he did, he would probably sell Wakehurst and leave her to face all her neighbors with nothing but her charming smile. She remembered asking him some two weeks before just what she was supposed to do if he left. He’d merely grinned at her and told her to remarry. “So many besotted fools chomping at the bit,” he’d told her, and she’d wanted to hit him. She deserved to keep Wakehurst. It should be hers. After all, she’d given years to that damned old man. She felt a moment of dizziness and closed her hand over the back of a chair for support. She’d been so young, so very young when he’d discovered her with Brent. But even then he’d been too old to forgive her, to remember what it was to be young.

She opened her eyes when she heard Brent and Drew come into the drawing room. She watched Brent’s eyes meet Byrony’s and wanted to scream. She turned to see Drew regarding the two of them with a smile.

She jumped when Drew said, “I will be leaving next week to return to Paris.”

“Oh no,” Byrony cried. “Drew, I’d hoped you would come back with us to San Francisco.”