“What are we doing?”
She could hear the smile in his voice: “Bending you over.”
It was the cabinet. His hands covered hers, guided them forward over the smooth surface of well-worn wood until they reached the edge. He curled her fingers around it and kept his on top.
His warm, fractured breath brushed over her nape. “Will you hold on to that?”
His thighs were against the back of hers, his chest pressing hers down against the countertop. She nodded, yes, she would hold on. He rose. Behind her, he moved his hips and smoothly slid back into her with a satisfied, drawn-out groan. She arched with a cry of relief. He thrust, once, twice, and then he paused, buried inside her.
His hand was on the small of her back, just holding her there. “The way you feel,” he said hoarsely. “I could feel you like this forever.”
Forever.
She moaned, more in her chest than out loud. Behind her, his hips drummed as if to drive it home—forever. It broke something open inside her, and a bright, glorious sensation shot through the cracks. Forever. It did not scare her. She was light and air. His hands were gripping her hips, taking more. He was claiming any inch that had been ceded by older preoccupations, until there was only him, him, him. It felt so good, so sublime, that it made her think, why not submit to it, why not ride along it, why not forever, as long as it was with him. When she pulsed around him and cried out, all went black inside her, like an ending.
When she came to, the silk had slipped from her face and fiery red light met her eyes. The sunset glinted off a copper pan.
Elias was resting on top of her, damp and hot, his forearms supporting his weight. They didn’t speak, perhaps a little embarrassed at having mated so fiercely next to a pile of tomatoes. In front of them, the stove was perfectly quiet, as if stunned into silence.
He nuzzled her nape, his movements languid with satisfaction.
“What was it,” he asked, “what you had baking on the grate?”
“Aubergines,” she croaked. “You grill them, then mash them, for . . . baba ghanoush.”
“Looks delicious. Congratulations.”
“Please.”
“Now I know why you train as a firefighter in Oxford.”
She tried to struggle up, but he didn’t budge and kept her flattened underneath him, his chest shaking with suppressed, evil laughter.
She turned her head sideways and rested her cheek against the careworn wood of the counter.
“The word you said earlier, what did it mean?” she asked.
The way he went quiet said he knew at once what she meant. “Ta’abrinee,” he said.
“Yes.”
“It means, bury me.”
“Isn’t that a bit morbid?”
He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “We say it to someone we don’t want to live without. Hence, we must go first.”
I don’t want you to go first.
She wanted forever.
She was smiling mindlessly. Perhaps he saw. He very gently kissed her cheek. Her heart kept beating steadily, happily, as though it truly believed that anything was possible for her. For them. Together.
Chapter 28
She still drifted high and weightless as a cloud to the Blackstone residence in Belgravia two days later. By the time she arrived in Hattie’s drawing room, however, she had schooled her expression to neutral. Her newly found hopes still felt tender, like a budding seedling that might be too soft and pale to withstand the full, harsh force of daylight just yet. Secondly, for this meeting, she had a special point on her agenda that would require her friends’ help and joint efforts, and if they suspected that she had hatched this mad scheme just because a man had fried her brain with his excellent lovemaking, she’d inspire neither trust nor confidence.
The Blackstone drawing room was grander than the one at the Randolph Hotel, but the arrangement of furniture was quite the same; divans, armchairs, and side tables formed a rectangle with the fireplace, and there were tea cakes. Hattie rested on the divan in a flowing red morning wrapper, a knitting basket at her feet. Annabelle looked a wee bit tired round the eyes, which didn’t detract from her beauty. She was comfortable in an armchair next to Catriona.
Lucie, dressed deceptively docile in a soft pastel gown, paced rage-fueled circles on the rug.
“Two weeks,” she ground out. “Less than two weeks until the session, and Sir George Campbell and Mr. Warton are on the rise.”
“They won back two MPs,” Annabelle was saying for the second time. “Only two.”
“I mustn’t propose violence,” Lucie said, having proposed violence minutes earlier.