Morgan and Archer: A Novella by Grace Burrowes Read Free Book Online Page B

stretch through his veins as she indulged in a voluptuous rhythm. His wanting shifted from the wanting of a man in despair for a possibly deceased friend lost in pursuit of a hopeless goal—a wanting for oblivion—to the wanting of a man for the particular woman in his arms.
    “I need to leave.”
    “You need to stay. I was in service, Archer. A deaf girl can’t remain in service without learning much no decent female ought to know.”
    He nuzzled her temple when he should have been vaulting off the bed. Her rose-and-spice fragrance was soothing, even as it muddled his tired, unhappy brain further. “What are you saying?”
    She kissed his jaw. “Who is a better victim for the randy footmen than a girl who can’t say a word against them, a girl who barely knows the terms for the liberties they’re taking? Anna was as vigilant as a mother hen, but she couldn’t go everywhere with me.”
    “God.” He started to climb off of her, but she wrapped both her arms and her legs around him.
    “I want you to stay, Archer.” She sounded very, very certain.
    “But if you were forced…” The notion was horrific enough to dampen his lust. He lifted up onto his elbows. “I’m leaving.”
    He didn’t move, didn’t shift away from the scent and softness of her, though he could have broken her hold easily.
    She buried her nose against his neck. “I was not forced.”
    “You could not give your consent in the King’s English. You were not of age to consent to marry. You were hardly—”
    She kissed him again, lingeringly, as if to remind him without words that even a woman incapable of speech or hearing could communicate some things quite well.
    When Archer stopped bracing himself against her hold, Morgan let out a sigh.
    “He was a running footman, more a boy than a man,” she said, her tone indicating any disclosure was a grudging concession. “I was fascinated with him because he spoke very little English, only French, and while I could read French, thanks to Anna’s diligence, I’d never seen French spoken consistently before. He noticed me.”
    “How could any man with eyes in his head not notice you?”
    “Not like that. He was deaf and mute in English, just as I was, you see? The difference was he could overcome the lack while I could not, but for a time…”
    She opened her mouth on his shoulder and set her teeth against the muscle. She wasn’t biting him; it felt more like an exploration of his person with the part of her that had spent years unable to express her thoughts.
    “For a time you did not feel so alone,” Archer concluded.
    She nodded, the top of her head grazing his chin.
    The wanting inside him shifted again, to a desire he’d felt frequently before—the desire to pleasure the woman in his arms—and something more, too: the desire to ease her aloneness, and even more surprisingly, to allow her to ease his.
    He yearned to tell her this. Instead, he touched his mouth to hers, a slow, tender echo of her previous kiss. He would give to her, and in allowing it, she would give to him.
    When he shifted slightly to the side, she tightened her arms around him. “Don’t go, Archer. Please.”
    “Hush. I’m not going.” He could not go, though he should not stay.
    Her grip slackened as he arranged himself along her side. “You are such a beautiful man.”
    Her touch on his face was beautiful. Her skin where he untied the bows of her dressing gown and chemise was luminous. Her scent was rosy and female at the same time, and her taste when he took her nipple in his mouth was luscious.
    This intimacy did not cause her to tense beneath him, as it might if she’d never felt such a thing before. She relaxed into it, tangling her fingers in his hair and sighing against his temple.
    “I have longed…”
    She had longed in silence, possibly for years. “Tell me.” He whispered the words against her breast then lifted his face so she might see his mouth when he spoke. “Tell me what you longed