Page 105 of Cold November Rake

She could not answer. Her lips had parted on a moan. Her strokes quickened. Her hips rolled against his in a frantic rhythm.

The tension peaked. It gathered at the base of her spine, and then it broke with a force that wrung a cry from her throat.

Her body clenched around him, gripping his cock with a rhythm that matched the pulses of her climax. The sensation was so overwhelming that for a moment the world went white at the edges.

He held her through it. Then he gripped her hips, thrust up into her once, twice, and followed her over with a groan that shuddered through both of them.

She collapsed onto his chest. He wrapped both arms around her and did not let go.

For a long time there was only the fire, their breathing slowing together, and his hand moving lazily up and down her spine.

"Edward," she said eventually, into his collarbone.

"Mm."

"When are we going to that little cottage by the sea?"

He hummed, a low rumble she felt more than heard. "Well," he said, "Leslie will want us for the holidays, since that is when the babe is due. We might ask the Tyrones to come, and have a little celebration there."

"That sounds wonderful."

"And then Crail." His hand stilled on her back. "The window faces east, over the water. There is a table beneath it, where someone might sit and paint. You shall teach me to make chocolate for you. By then you will have made your thousand cups."

She lifted her head and grinned at him. "And sauerkraut."

His laugh rumbled under her.

"And then," he went on, "back to London for the Parliamentary session."

Her grin became a pout. She ran her fingers through his beard. "Only if you promise not to shave this off."

His dimple appeared. "You would have me walk into the House of Lords looking like a highwayman?"

"I prefer to think of you as a pirate."

"Then I promise," he said, and pulled her down to kiss her again.

Epilogue

Summer, 1823

My lord, I really must insist⁠—"

"Insist all you like," Sutton said, without taking his eyes from his wife. "I am not leaving."

Dr. Grisham pushed his spectacles up his nose and gave up. He had been arguing with Sutton since four in the morning, when Roger had pulled him from his bed and driven him across London at a pace the doctor had since described, more than once, as attempted murder. Roger's arm had mended over the winter, and he had sworn that no carriage of his would ever be sabotaged again.

Sutton had refused to wait in the library like a sensible man, then refused to wait in the corridor, and finally planted himself at the head of the bed. He had not moved since. His mother had tried to take his place, and had at last been escorted to the parlor by his father, under loud protest.

It was nearly noon when their son arrived, red-faced and furious and, as his father observed, already in possession of a very fine set of lungs.

Sutton held him as if he were made of spun sugar. He looked at the small, creased face, the small fist, and the damp fuzz of hair on the small head, which was unmistakably and unfortunately red. Then he looked at Temperance, flushed and exhausted and smiling against the pillows, and his eyes filled.

"Tempe," he said, and could not say anything more.

He bent and kissed her, with the babe tucked between them.

The door burst open before their son had finished his first complaint. The Duchess of Hardwicke swept in, with the duke a step behind her.