Page 79 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
But he had already been something to her no other man had ever been. Something like a friend.
And now she might find something else with him. Something she’d been sure had been taken from her for ever.
The ability to find pleasure at the hands of a man.
A piece of joy in the world, and she had always thought that the girls who talked about such things were silly. The ones that spoke breathlessly of a wedding night, and what it might mean to know a man. She’d felt nothing but cynicism. Bitterness. Ash in her mouth. And she wanted to feel young again, and to enjoy being beautiful, rather than to see it only as a hindrance when it came to doing her job. She was never going to be able to do that, not in the real world, but perhaps with him. Just with him.
It was clear what he was offering. And it was not anything more or less than what she had told him she did not want when she had first arrived. Perhaps she should be disappointed in herself. For being no better than the wet nurse. For not heeding the cautionary tale she had been taught as a girl.
Except she didn’t want to learn from that.
Suddenly, she was filled with an indescribable rage.
It had shaped her. It had made her safe, it was true. It was why she had learned how to use a knife, and it was why she had so successfully dealt with Pelham.
But she resented that. She resented that she’d had to change in response to a crime committed against her body.
She had done nothing wrong. She had done nothing wrong, and she did not deserve to carry that with her for the rest of her life.
In many ways, she didn’t.
She was happy. She did love her life.
But this was a sizable thing that she had simply painted over and wiped from her mind. Made it into nothing. A canvas. Something she was never tempted to look at, nor paint on. But now she wanted to. In bold bright colours. Desire, sex, pleasure needed to be more than simplythere, something that she could feel nothing about.
She wanted it to behers.
And that was what had been lost. Above all else, and everything, her desire had not been hers for all these years.
She had submitted it to that travesty. Had sacrificed it upon the altar of safety. Of wishing to simply not think about what had happened.
And now she wanted to take it and make it something new. Something that was hers and hers alone.
And he was the man. He was the man to do that.
For she had not been looking for this, she had not asked for it.
And for the first time that felt like a glorious thing.
When he used his strength, it was only for good. When he gave commands, they were to care for everyone around him. She remembered his anger when she’d taken the children into the woods, it had not been a dangerous anger. It had been based on the need to keep what was his safe.
His orders were safe. His strength was safe.
Anyone under his hand was safe, and that was such a compelling and glorious thing to her.
Not since Penny and Lachlan had helped her had she been able to trust another person. She’d carried all her burdens on her own shoulders. Her well-being was hers and hers alone to manage.
He had given her tea. He cared for her comfort.
He would give her pleasure.
Her knowledge of what happened between men and women had been so badly distorted and she knew that only his strength was sufficient to rebuild it.
In this she would give him everything.
All the control.
She knew it was the only way, and more than that, something in her craved it.
