Bronwyn Scott's Sexy Regency Bundle (208 page)

68

Libertine Lord, Pickpocket Miss

This time, he didn't nudge. This time, he slid into her and she took all of him, wrapping her legs about him, pushing him on to the very core of her being. Something inside her split and there was a momentary pain. Julian stilled and for an instant she feared he would leave her. She clung to him with her legs, urging him to continue. He picked up the tantalizing rhythm again and she was lost to the pleasure of their united bodies.

The tempo of their dance increased until the friction of his member against some secret part of her was too great for her to bear. Sophie screamed and shattered into a thousand pieces of satisfaction. Julian was with her in the kaleidoscope of sensation, voicing his own pleasure, her name on his lips.

She lay in Julian's

letting her body

slow

its

pace. Neither of them spoke.

It was enough to feel his body against hers, to know from the racing of his heart that he was as shaken by the experience as she.

After a while, Julian rose and went into the dressing room,

with a basin of water and

a washcloth. Sophie sat up, reaching for it. "Let me, Sophie," Julian said softly, pushing her hands away. "Just lie down."

Scott

He washed her in gentle strokes, far more comfortable with the act than she was. Even such intense lovemaking, Sophie was swamped with acute embarrassment over the intimate attentions of his bath.

Julian set the basin and cloth aside and fixed her with a gray stare. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It didn't seem important." Sophie pulled a sheet up to cover herself. "I wanted you. That was all that mattered." She hoped that would be reassuring to him. She had no expectations. In light of their situation, expectations seemed a bit ludicrous.

"I am honored it was me you chose. It is no mean thing to be the recipient of a woman's I am sorry I didn't guess."

"Don't be sorry. How could you have known? I gave you no reason to believe She knew virgins didn't

flirt

outrageously or cup gentlemen through their trousers. But she did. Ironically, such shenanigans were probably the reason she'd been able to maintain her virginity for so long, given her line of work and the people she encountered. There had been other ways to

them when the

need arose.

Libertine Lord, Pickpocket Miss

stretched out beside her. He pushed down the sheet. "You're too lovely to hide, Sophie." With a lazy finger he began drawing lazy circles around the areola of her breast. "So tell me, Sophie, how a girl becomes interested in stealing diamonds .

Chapter 8

Sophie shifted out of Julian's embrace, levering herself up on one

"The story is fairly

ordinary in its

My father passed away,

and his heir, a distant cousin, inherited our little estate.

cousin had a wife who didn't fancy sharing her home with me, so out I went."

"Your

father

was

English?"

Julian

"Yes. My mother was French.

is

her name," Sophie explained. "It was easier to fit in over here with a French name. I worked as a companion to an English family in Brussels after the war. It was a good family with a lot of connections." Sophie paused here. This was where her story became more sordid. "You don't really want to hear all this, Julian."

"Yes, I do," he encouraged quietly.

"Well, one night at a ball a of the

family asked me to help him retrieve something