In Which Matilda Halifax Learns the Value of Restraint (Halifax Hellions) by Alexandra Vasti

Author:Alexandra Vasti [Vasti, Alexandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2024-02-05T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 12

When Matilda woke, she woke quickly. It was the habit of her lifetime—to go from sleep to consciousness in an instant, her eyes blinking open, her brain alert.

So when she woke the next morning, it was to the full awareness that she was in a very, very bad way when it came to Christian de Bord, the Marquess of Ashford.

He was holding her. His long, hard body was a trifle softer in sleep. One arm was wrapped around her breasts, and she could see the dark hairs on his forearm, limned with gold in the soft dawn light that filtered through the window’s hazed glass.

His knee was pushed between hers. He still wore his trousers. If he had moved in the night—turned in his sleep or shifted the bedclothes—he had ended up back here, exactly where he’d been when she’d fallen asleep.

And merciful heavens, she was doomed.

She wanted to turn over and kiss him awake. She wanted to spend an hour staring at the elegant planes of his face, his mobile mouth. She wanted to outline every hollow and rise of his body with her tongue. She wanted every morning for the rest of her life to begin just like this one, tangled up in Christian’s arms.

It was not only that he’d given her the most ecstatic sexual experience of her life. Her prior experiences in that area numbered exactly two: both safe, discreet, and utterly meaningless. She had been curious, yes, but restrained as well, making only the most cautious explorations into the desires that were knitted into her bones. The previous night had been a wonder beyond anything she had imagined.

But it was not just that. She admired him: his caution and his care, his quick intelligence and dry humor. She adored the way he cared for his sister—enough even to let Matilda bring along a cat that made him sneeze.

She loved the way he’d pushed her to speak her mind, to state her desires. She loved the way he’d held her, and kissed her, and made her feel precious. She loved—

No. No, no, absolutely not.

She did not love him. It was too soon. She had known him less than two months. She was only—confused, that was all. She had gotten mixed up, somehow, from arguing with Margo by the waterfall. She had had to tell Margo that they were eloping, had needed to provide an explanation that Margo could believe.

I love him, she’d said. I know him. I’m certain.

She hadn’t meant it. Or perhaps—she hadn’t known she had meant it.

That train of thought seemed both dangerous and inauspicious, and Matilda stopped it in its tracks. The man had not even slept with her, for heaven’s sake. He had barely been willing to let her travel to Northumberland with him. He did not want to install her in his country estate and keep her there forever, no matter what her ridiculous heart wanted to hope for.

He had been married. It had been, as far as she could tell, a disaster.

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