“Do it all.”
He set his hands on her hips and came up off his knees until he was over her. “Don’t you worry, my lady Camilla. I will.” His fingers whispered up her sides. He leaned down, and his mouth caught her nipple.
She made a choking sound.
“Ah, you like that.” He licked around her areola, then gave her a determined suck. Her eyes fluttered shut again. She’d been on the brink of desperation when he’d stopped before; he drove her back to that brink now, desperate and needing. Wanting him. Wanting all of him.
And then she had it. A pressure—welcome, at this point needed—between her thighs. Pushing. Her body opened to him. He entered her slowly, masterfully. She felt herself stretching around him. She needed him so much.
He wasn’t holding back any longer. It was too late for an annulment now. It was too late to say no, and she never wanted to do it.
Now they were one.
He let out a sigh. She opened her eyes again to see him watching her tenderly. Perfectly.
He had chosen her. She would never stop grinning. He had chosen this, between them and nobody else, for ever and ever, for the rest of their days. She gave everything up to him.
He moved inside her. There was a delicious feel where they joined. She could drown in the sensation of his hands moving on her, of her body accepting his, over and over. The sound of their bodies made delightful music.
His mouth found hers once more. The sweetness she’d tasted before mixed with her own musk. His kiss lingered and possessed. His thrusts turned harder. Faster. He claimed her all over, and she gave herself up to him.
All of her.
She let go all at once, in a spill of perfection. She felt her body squeezing, catching fire…
And he did, too. She could feel the heat of him. His hands clenched into her hips. He let out a noise, a perfect little growl, as he came.
“Adrian.” She ran her fingers along his brow. It was damp with exertion. She looked up at him. “Adrian, sweetheart.”
“Camilla.” His eyes met hers. “God, I have wanted to do that for an age.”
“And now we can.”
They lay in each other’s arms. His hand stroked down her hair. It felt almost like perfection.
It took a moment to remember. “Your brother came by.”
He shut his eyes. “Oh, God. Grayson. He is going to be an absolute wretch. I have no idea what to tell him.”
“He had—of all things—a letter from my sister and brother. They…” She smiled shyly. “They asked us to visit? And—” It occurred to her suddenly, and another jolt of happiness raced through her. “They’ve met Grayson, and they want us to visit?”
“That’s lovely.” He stroked his hand down the side of her face. A flicker of a smile touched his lips again. “Family is lovely. Even if Grayson is a wretch.”
She smiled back. “So. Do I get to meet this uncle of yours while we’re here?”
He tensed beside her. “Camilla.”
Just that one word and the doubts she had thought banished rose to the surface of her consciousness, like goldfish rising in a pond to be fed.
She was imagining things. She was so used to unhappiness that she could not let herself believe…
But no. She wasn’t imagining it. Adrian had pulled away. Just an inch, but it was there between them.
“Do you not want me to meet your family?”
He sat. Put his hands over his eyes. “Family.” The word sounded so bitter. How could he be so bitter about a word like that at a time like this? “I won’t call him that anymore. I asked him for one thing. One thing. And I was fed…that astonishing pack of self-serving lies.”
Camilla felt her whole body go cold. “What happened?”
He scowled up at the ceiling. “It’s too late, he said. We waited too long. If his colleagues find out that his own nephew posed as a valet, it will make him seem underhanded. He can’t stick his neck out for me, no. Not even after all that I’ve done. And I should be happy that you are not a complete wretch.”
Oh.
It was all she could think at first. Her happiness felt cold and out of place.
Oh. Oh. Of course he hadn’t chosen her.
He turned to her. “Oh—no, Camilla. I didn’t mean it like that. The one thing he was right about was that I am unstintingly lucky that it was you I was tied to. I went for a long walk afterwards. I didn’t know what to think; I felt numb all over. The only thing that made it bearable was knowing that it was you. I promise you, the thought of you was like a ray of light amidst all the darkness.”
He hadn’t chosen her.
“I’m not upset about you at all. It’s about him. About my own expectations.” His voice shifted—higher, more quavering—as if he were imitating his uncle. “‘My dear boy, it’s better than someone like you could have expected.’ I’m such a damned idiot.”
It wasn’t about her at all. This last hour, when he’d brought her to bed? It hadn’t been about her.
She ought to have burst into tears at that. It hurt enough. But she’d cried too much today already.
Camilla shrank back. She didn’t want her mind to work, but it did. It was working all too well. “He…was not willing to assist you in obtaining an annulment?” She should have asked outright, but she had been so happy that she hadn’t questioned.
“No. Grayson was right.” Adrian turned around. “And I’ll have to tell him so. I’ve come to realize that I doubt my uncle actually thinks of me as a blood relationship. I’m a convenient tool, and his only surprise is that I expected him to care about me in return for the care I gave him. Tools shouldn’t ask for a response.”
She shouldn’t focus on what this meant for herself. He’d just had his heart ripped out. He’d lost something—something enormous—and she knew she should comfort him. She had promised to make him happy, after all.
Nonetheless, the next quavering words out of her mouth were these: “You didn’t choose me?” She had thought…
After how he’d held her. After what he’d said on the train. After everything that had just happened…
Camilla was all too good at inventing encouragement; she’d done it often enough.
She was sure that if she went through it all, she could find all the ways she had misstepped, the ways that she had imagined appreciation where there was none.
She had invented it all, a tale of love and forever out of lustful looks and a weeks-long friendship. She’d put her heart on her sleeve once again. She’d imagined that he would choose her, that he’d want her.
She’d prepared to have her heart shredded. She hadn’t prepared for this—to have it taken from her, treated with gentleness, and then burnt to a crisp in a blast furnace.
Adrian turned to her. The harsh, unforgiving lines of his face melted. “Oh, Cam.” He came to sit next to her. His arm went around her. “I won’t lie to you. No, I didn’t choose you. But you have been everything to me these last weeks. I didn’t choose you, but I do choose this: I choose to make the most of what we have.”
Before she’d come to know Adrian, she would have accepted that. Second best was still a form of best, after all.
But she hadn’t just wanted him to want her. She wanted everything he had painted in that idyllic picture weeks ago, when he’d told her why he wanted an annulment. She wanted a slow falling in love. She wanted a merging of friendship and adoration. She wanted a promise of mutual joy. She thought she had found it.
He hadn’t found any of that with her. She would always be his forced bride. She would always know that they were joined with a pistol and a deception first, and his uncle’s betrayal second. She would never know what it was like to be chosen.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Adrian. I’m so sorry.”
She was. For both of them, she was sorry.
He brushed his lips against her forehead. “Don’t be sorry,” he said lightly. “We’ll make do. We’re remarkably good at that.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Camilla made herself retain her composure through the dinner and the bath that followed. She made herself laugh when he said something funny; she reminded him to contact his brother, and she nodded when he sighed and promised to do it in the morning. She made herself act as if her heart was still intact.
He joined her in bed that night. She would have given him anything, but he just held her tightly, the clench of his muscles saying all the things he did not speak aloud.
He hadn’t chosen her.
She felt the moment when he drifted off to sleep, his arm around her loosening.
The lamps were out. She was in his arms. All she had to do was forget what she knew, forget what she wanted, and this could be her everything.
He held her for comfort, and it was comforting. He was the farthest thing from a monster; Adrian had suffered a horrific blow delivered by a man who ought to have cared about his welfare.
He’d brushed it off as best as he could, but…
She knew what he had done for his uncle. He didn’t deserve this.
And yet, that also meant…
It meant, quite simply, that he didn’t deserve to be saddled with her. That he deserved the choice he wanted.
Once, she might have thought that in sorrow. But with his arm around her, in the dark of the night, it felt like simple, rational truth.
He’d wanted a choice. He’d wanted a slow falling in love. He’d wanted a family and joy. Instead, he’d found betrayal and tears. No matter how Camilla valued herself, she could not take that away. She would always be inextricably tied with his uncle’s treachery.