And then he curved his fingers around to cup her where no one else had ever touched her.
Eleanor realized as her legs went to jelly that she lacked the ability to stand.
But Hugo was holding her up with that big body of his and one hard hand at her hip. Even when he let out the sort of laugh that should have been outlawed as a public safety hazard, he kept her upright.
“I must tell you, Miss Andrews, you are remarkably wet for one who claims she is asexual.”
“Wet?” she asked. On a choppy little breath.
“Very, very wet,” Hugo amended, his voice little more than a dark growl.
And then he began to stroke her.
Sensation buffeted her from all sides. He was all around her. He loomed above her, and his shoulders blocked out the rest of the house, and more, the world she could hardly recall outside it. She could smell him, an intriguing male scent that put her in mind of the fire behind them and soft, buttery leather, only much warmer. She could taste him in her mouth, like the kind of spirits she only dared sip at Christmastime, and then only in minuscule quantities.
And she could feel him. Good god, could she feel him.
He moved the hand at her hip back to her jaw, smoothing his palm around to hold her where he wanted her. And there was a smile on his face when he lowered his head to take her mouth once more.
Eleanor could taste that, too. And god help her, he was like a bottle of the good stuff, with every demanding slide of his tongue against hers.
And all the while, he stroked her. He slipped in and around her folds, slippery and hot when she’d never felt anything like it before. When surely it should mean something was wrong, but nothing felt wrong.
Eleanor couldn’t think. She couldn’t control herself. She was lost between his mouth and his hand, and she simply followed the rhythm he set as he built that storm in her.
Higher and higher. Darker and wilder.
And she didn’t know when it dawned on her that it was going to break. That the tightness in her belly and the need and the hunger could only go one way, and it was going to happen whether she wanted it or not. That the wall that seemed to bear down on her was entirely unavoidable, and coming much too fast—
“Don’t fight it, little one,” Hugo murmured. He lifted his mouth from hers the slightest little bit, so Eleanor could taste his words on her lips.
“I’m not fighting anything,” Eleanor gasped out. Crossly.
But then it was happening.
It was like a golden sort of crash, fast and slow at once. A shower of fire and sparks, magic and longing, as debilitating as it was delicious. It roared through her, from the top of her head straight down to the tips of her toes that she dug into the floor beneath her feet as if that could keep her holding on.
She bumped against his marvelous, wicked hand and she threw her head back, and still his mouth was there against her neck, urging her on. Taking her wherever he wanted to take her, and all she could do was let him.
He was even laughing slightly, she noticed with something like panic, as she fell and fell and fell.
And hoped like hell that Hugo would catch her on the other side.
* * *
Making his starchy little governess come apart beneath his hands was the hottest thing Hugo could remember doing.
Ever.
The little sounds she made. The dazed wonder in her wide eyes. Even that frown at the end, and her sharp little voice before she broke to pieces.
He didn’t understand how it was possible when he should have no further to sink, but Eleanor Andrews was ruining him.
But Hugo shoved that aside. For any number of reasons, not least of which was the fact that he had already been ruined. A long, long time ago. There was no lower place for Hugo Grovesmoor to go. He should know. He’d tried to find it over and over again.
And no innocent woman deserved a man that self-destructive. Especially not a woman like this one, who had confused her own inexperience for disinterest. That was how little she knew of men.
He would eat her alive.
And it said something about him, didn’t it, that he rather liked that idea.
She was limp and dazed and breathing heavily, so he shifted her off the bookcase and swept her up into his arms, entirely too aware of the way she melted against him. He carried her over to the wide sofa and settled her on it, more than a little concerned about how uncharacteristically gentle he was with this woman. Automatically. When he was not exactly known for his sweet bedside manner. He did not lounge around, shyly reading verses of poetry from slim volumes and softly asking permission to touch a lover’s ankle.
Please.
Hugo had always assumed that what poetry was in him was rough and raw and best expressed with his hands. And his body.
And the dark things he could do with both. And did, again and again.
He’d never had any complaints. In person, that was. The tabloids were a different story, but even those fabricated fantasies never claimed he was a bad lover. Simply that he was a very, very bad man.
But still. Untried innocence was not his thing. No matter how sweet the taste, still there on his tongue. Driving him that much closer to madness.
He made himself stand, something furious in his chest and all that leftover heat and hardness making his trousers feel too tight, and waited for her to come back to him.
It took her a long time. And it occurred to him that a woman who fancied herself asexual and was so obviously a stranger to her own body was perhaps significantly less experienced than he’d been thinking. Almost as if she was something more than “inexperienced.” Almost as if...
But that was impossible, of course. This wasn’t the dark ages.
“Are you a virgin?” he asked, perhaps a bit too abruptly.
On the deep leather couch, Eleanor stirred. She looked around as if she didn’t know where she was, and didn’t recognize the library either way. Or him. She sat a little bit straighter as she took him in. Her hands went first to her head and she smoothed back the one or two strands that had dared to come loose from that ruthless bun she always wore. Only then, when she’d secured her dark hair in its cage, did she shift against the seat, look down, and note that her trousers were still wide open.
And Hugo found he was captivated by the red flush that took her over, staining her cheeks and making her brown eyes gleam from beneath her fringe with that hint of honey that he thought might be his undoing.
Eleanor swallowed, hard, and he saw a frown etch itself between her eyes again. But she didn’t say anything. She only fastened her trousers and sat a bit straighter. Only then did she look up at him, and something about the steady way she did it made him feel like the monster he knew he was. More so than usual, that was.
She looked breakable.
It should have made him hate himself all the more, that he should so effortlessly stain whatever he touched. But that was not his primary reaction to the mounting evidence that no one had touched Eleanor but him.
Indeed, what he was feeling—in every part of him, like a thread of wild heat—was significantly more primitive.
“Whether I am or am not a virgin, I can’t imagine how that’s any of your business at all,” she said coolly. Her brows rose slightly. Arrogantly, he would have said, had anyone ever managed to outdo him in that arena. “Your Grace.”
And Hugo stopped feeling badly about the whole thing.
“That is not a very nice tone to take with a man who just made