“I thought—” She stopped, embarrassed of the memory.

He kissed the soft skin of her neck in a long, lingering caress. “Did you wish it was you?”

“No . . .” she said, and it was true. “I wished . . .”

She wished his hand would move.

“I wished I could feel it, though. I wished someone would worship me like that. I wished I could command that kind of attention.”

He kissed her again, long and slow and deep. “This kind?”

She sighed. “Yes. And then he—”

In her silence, those fingers stroked and stroked, slow and deliberate, as though he had nothing more to do ever. She couldn’t tell him. Could she?

But it was dark, and they were cloaked in secrets anyway, and when they got to Mossband, they would part ways. Why not tell him?

“Then he lifted her skirts.”

The fingers stilled for barely any time. A tiny hiccup that she might not have noticed if she weren’t so busy noticing him. And suddenly, she felt very, very powerful. And the words broke free. The words she’d never imagined saying out loud. The memory she barely allowed herself to remember. “And then he got to his knees.”

His whispered curse came out part blasphemy, part benediction. “And what did he do?”

“I imagine you know,” she said, drunk on the way the moment consumed her.

“I know what I would like to do.”

And then he was dropping her feet to the floor of the carriage, and lowering himself to his knees, and Sophie was grateful for the darkness of the carriage, because she wasn’t certain she would ever be able to look at this man again. Cool air kissed her legs as he raised her skirts, folding them back onto her lap before pulling her to the edge of her seat and spreading her legs wide.

Her cheeks flamed; she wore no undergarments, as they had not fit beneath the livery she’d worn earlier. Belatedly, she tried to close her thighs, but he held her open. “Sophie?” he asked, and the world was wrapped up in her name.

“Yes?”

He pressed a kiss to the inside of her knee, and she jumped at the unexpected touch. He laughed, low and liquid in the space, then spoke to the sensitive skin there. “Do you want me to show you this bit?”

All the bits and pieces.

“I can smell you, and I want quite desperately to taste you. To show you just what that stable hand did to that maid.” His fingers moved, and she stiffened as they touched her, barely, a whisper of him over the hair at the apex of her thighs. “You’re so warm. And I’m betting wet, as well. But I won’t do it until you tell me yes. Until you give me permission.”

Yes. Yes.

“Do you . . .” She trailed off. Regrouped. “Do you wish to? Show me?”

He exhaled, hot and lovely against her. “I am not certain I have ever wanted to do anything in my life so much as I want to do this.” Her stomach clenched, along with somewhere lower, deeper, more secret.

“He made her scream,” Sophie whispered, the story helping to keep her wits about her.

That lovely laugh again. “I hope he did. And I would very much like to do the same to you. But you must stay quiet, love, lest we give the coachman a show.” He inhaled, long and deep, and exhaled before he said, “You are slowly torturing me. Tell me you want it, and I’ll give it to you. Everything you desire. More.”

Yes. Yes.

She stood on a precipice, feeling as though this decision, more than all the others of the past week, would change everything. But there was no question. She wanted this bit. This piece.

And she wanted it from him.

“Yes,” she said. And before the word gave way to silence, he was there, his fingers pressing, parting the folds where she wanted him most, exploring in delicious strokes and slides.

He groaned. “So wet,” he said in between kisses to the soft skin of her inner thighs. “Were you wet then?” he asked, wickedly. “In the hayloft?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“No?” he said, stilling, torturing her with the lack of his touch. Punishing her for her lie.

“Yes,” she said. “I was wet.”

He spread her wide and she closed her eyes at the touch—lewd and lascivious and lovely—at once thankful for the darkness and quite desperate for the light. “Did you touch yourself?”

She shook her head, her hands searching for him. Finding his soft hair. “No.” He stopped again and her fingers curled against him. “It’s true. I didn’t. But—”

He blew softly on the exposed center of her. “But?”

She inhaled, the breath ragged and not enough, and though it was he who knelt, it was she who confessed. “But I wanted to.”

He rewarded the honesty with his mouth, consuming her like fire, his tongue stroking in long, slow licks, curling in a slick promise at the hard center of her pleasure, and she lifted her hips to meet his remarkable mouth, not caring that the action could be called nothing but wanton. She did want.

She needed.

And he gave without purchase. The fingers of one hand holding her wide as those of the other explored, pressing deep, curling, finding a spot that made her writhe without care for anything but him and his wonderful touch. “King,” she whispered, and he lifted his mouth from her.

“Tell me what you like.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

He licked, long and slow and devastating. “You do, though.” He set his tongue to the hard bud at the top of her, working until she gasped his name again. “You like that.”