♥ℳelody > Books: author-elizabeth-hoyt‎ (14)

His Achilles' heel, the one person who had reached deep down inside him and grasped his heart, squeezing until it started beating again. She'd brought him back to life.

"Godric," she whispered, and held out her hand to him. He took her hand, spreading her fingers and kissing each one.

Megs looked up at his entrance, her face shining. For a moment he caught his breath--it was almost like a light radiated from within her, and he was very glad that she'd apparently decided not to hold their argument against him.
"Oh, Godric, come see! Her Grace has had her puppies." And she held the ratlike thing--which, apparently, was a pug puppy--like a peace offering.
Godric raised his brows, sinking into a chair. “It’s quite….lovely.”
“Oh, pooh!” She retracted her arms, cuddling the tiny creature against her cheek. “Don’t listen to Mr. St. John,” she whispered to the puppy as if in confidence. “You’re the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen!”

PS: Did you try the ginger, barely, and aniseed tisane recipe I sent you? I know it sounds quite revolting, but it will help your sore throat, truly!

Her postscript blurred before his eyes and he blinked hard, inhaling. This was who he'd done it for. Megs, who thought old crotchety butlers had any sense of humor, who ate bitter persimmon tarts to please the local vicar's wife, and who cried at the sight of a baby and couldn't admit even to herself why.
She deserved a baby of her own. She'd make a magnificent mother: kind, gentle, understanding.

Phoebe turned her face, leaning close to discreetly inhale. "Artemis?"
"Yes." Artemis felt quite proud. She'd taken to wearing the same scent--lemons and bay leaf--when she realized that Lady Phoebe sometimes used smell to identify people. She suspected that the other woman could see very little at all when the light was dim--such as tonight at the theater.

“You’re an impossibly rude man, without morals or even manners, as far as I can see.”
“Oh, stop, I beg you, Mrs. Dews.” Lord Caire grunted. “You’ll turn my head with this flattery.”

“Why?” she asked urgently. “Why did you make me watch? Why me?”
“Because,” he murmured, “you draw me. Because you are kind but not soft. Because when you touch me, the pain is bittersweet. Because you cradle a desperate secret to your bosom, like a viper in your arms, and don’t let go of it even as it gnaws upon your very flesh. I want to pry that viper from your arms. To suckle upon your torn and bloody flesh. To take your pain within myself and make it mine.”
She trembled beside him; he could feel the quivers through the arm she kept on him. “I have no secret.”
He bent and whispered against her hair, “Sweet, darling liar.”

It was a strange thing, this feeling of empathy. He’d never experienced it before. He realized that what hurt this woman hurt him as well, that what made her bleed caused a hemorrhage of pain within his soul.

He moved like a wave pounding against a beach, like the wind flying across the cobblestones, like a man on a woman. It was the oldest, most common movement in history, and at the same time it was new and pure.

He stepped around a near-skeletal man, passed out or perhaps dead in the street. He was nearing St. Giles. The street was becoming narrower, more filthy and wretched. The channel in the middle of the street was clogged with noxious debris, the stench a miasma that seemed to cling to the skin.

The rain was gentle at first. It drifted down, as soft as a mother’s kiss on a sleeping child.

This was who she was, whether she liked it or not, a woman who wanted and needed sex. Who loved sex.

"But you must be awash in a sea of compliments, my lady," Winter said. "Every gentleman you meet must voice his admiration, his wish to make love to you. And those are only the ones who may voice such thoughts. All about you are men who cannot speak their admiration, who must remain mute from lack of social standing or fear of offending you. Only their thoughts light the air about you, following you like a trail of perfume, heady but invisible."

She bit her lip. “Could you….stroke?”
“Like this?”
She inhaled. “Softer.”
“This?”
She laughed, but the sound was frustrated. He was too high, hadn’t quite found the right place. Perhaps she should--
“Isabel,” he suddenly breathed in her ear. “I have all night. Surely by dawn I can learn this. Please show me.”
Well, that was quite frank. And oddly, he didn’t sound as if his male pride was hurt. He merely sounded...curious.