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Penelope could smell the contents of the gift box well before she ran her fingers along the edges of the paper or untied the ribbon adorning the top. It was her birthday, she was freshly four and ten years old, pleased as punch her mother had remembered and brought her a gift at all, smelly as it was. She found it curious—the odor wasn’t unpleasant, but it was…pungent.
She had questions—questions her parents roundly refused to answer directly, assuring her they were her parents and knew precisely what they were doing. But Penelope opened the box and out spilled a handkerchief doused in the clean, damp smell of snow clinging past the warmth of spring in the shadows. Dirt and a hint of wet fur or feathers. Sunshine and wide open skies, but loneliness, too.
Again, it wasn’t unpleasant, but it still made Penelope gag a little. Her mother insisted it was because she would present soon. The entire family waited with bated breath, desperate for one of Archibald Featherington’s daughters to present as an Omega and bring pride to their name once more.
Prudence had been the first disappointment. It was unheard of for an Omega lady to present after her seventeenth birthday, and Prudence’s came and went with little fanfare. Philippa’s, too. Meanwhile, every three months or so, another stinky parcel showed up in the post addressed to Miss Penelope Featherington and Penelope’s mother insisted she sleep with the damn thing tucked into her pillowcase.
For two years, Penelope tried not to wrinkle her nose when the parcels arrived. Did her best not to gag when her mother cut the old cloths up into strips and used them for hair ribbons or had them stitched into hidden places in her dresses so that horrible but inoffensive smell lingered on her skin and hair.
It was at Bridgerton House, holed up in the library with Eloise, that Penelope stumbled across a book that explained what she had suspected for months but not had the strength to say aloud.
Arranged Bonding.
Penelope’s heart lurched painfully in her chest.
In cases where families seek to make alliances, whether political or ceremonial, scent-dousing might allow for bonding to take place through sheer strength of will rather than the typical discovery during presentation, or an already-presented subject’s rut or heat. Such endeavors, known as Arranged Bonding, are known to be successful in otherwise unmatched Alphas and Omegas.
Then, in plain black and white, Penelope read a how-to guide on setting up an unmatched Omega to tolerate the scent of an Alpha who would make an advantageous match.
…present the Omega with gifts from her Alpha, properly doused in his or her scent…
…have the Omega sleep with the items that have been marked, make favors and hair ribbons or cravats with the items so the Omega might wear them and grow accustomed to the scent long before ever meeting the Alpha…
…locks of hair or other items that have spent time touching the area where the Omega’s scent glands will appear can be gifted to the Alpha to encourage suitability…
She had briefly considered sharing her unhappy news with Eloise, but Eloise was in one of her moods where she would be fixing to do something about such an injustice, and Penelope wasn’t fond of rocking the boat at home. Things had been tense, uncomfortable, and embarrassing at home. Shouted words, hissed accusations behind doors that really ought to have been closed, the sound of Archibald weeping occasionally heard well after midnight.
She would likely be prohibited from ever returning to Bridgerton House if Eloise set her mind to meddling. Even if the book outlining the practice of Arranged Bonding was nearing a hundred years old and seemed barbaric at its core.
After all, not one word of the book Penelope had pored over had mentioned what would happen if the Omega were to find, say, her True Mate.
From her understanding, such a thing was a remote possibility at best—dousing an Omega with an eligible Alpha’s scent would confuse and intoxicate the inner beast, but it wouldn’t make the allure of his or her True Mate any less potent. She read between the lines—Omegas who were subjected to this practice were considered lost causes.
She hadn’t yet presented and was already a lost cause. Plump, meek, dressed head to toe in frills and flowers. Third daughter of a baron determined to disgrace the family name and weep about it when he thought everyone was asleep.
For a few days, she was angry. Enough so her mother noticed and made a cursory effort to get to the bottom of it, barely needing to ask Penelope why she’d been so surly and stony and mean lately when Penelope unloaded a devastating list of grievances.
And each complaint Penelope lobbed, her mother batted it away without so much as flinching.
I already have so little choice, and you have taken the last shred I may have!
Portia snorted. Then go ahead, choose someone else.
You have toyed with my mind and my senses enough I may spurn my True Mate!
At that little chestnut, Portia had outright guffawed. True Mate? If you think he is here, then be my guest. Have him make his claim. This is insurance—and for your benefit, I might add.
There were other complaints, of course, but those had been the deepest cuts, by Penelope’s estimation. She couldn’t quite work up the nerve to accuse them of not believing she could be anything but a lost cause. Because it was one thing to know that’s what they thought of her, but it was another to know and hear her mother explain exactly why they all thought of her that way.
Later, when the wounds were still fresh and she could do nothing but sit alone in her room licking them, her mother appeared and threw a box onto her bed that reeked of snow and wet fur and the kind of sunshine that did nothing to warm your bones.
“You’ll be presented to the queen with your sisters. The earl and his son will be making a trip to London before heading to the Continent for an extended stay. It’s imperative you are out in society and can finally be introduced.”
Penelope sneaked from her chambers that night, not for the first time, to steal her way across the square and into the Bridgerton back garden. Earlier, during one of her stony silences where her anger radiated from her and poisoned the entire drawing room, she’d fired off a rather spirited missive to Eloise asking her to join her by the swings when the hour was decidedly scandalous.
After five minutes standing and huddling under her evening shawl, wondering if somehow her message had been intercepted, she sat on one of the swings and let out a sigh. Her lips trembling, she gave in and dropped her face into her hands and let herself cry.
She might not even be an Omega. All of this sneaking and lying and trying to manipulate—and for what? So she could turn out to be a Beta and have the earl’s son drop her like a hot potato anyway? Or hope he agreed to marry her before she presented? Such a thing was practically unheard of among nobility.
And if she was an Omega, what if she found her True Mate after marrying the Alpha who stunk like a wet winter great coat and reminded her of performative warmth? They would be drawn to one another through biology and the kind of desire that seemed to justify an awful lot of violence and stupidity.
She would have to retire to her husband’s country estate and pretend she didn’t know her True Mate was somewhere else. He would be turning to others for comfort while she was locked away because of poor timing.
The idea was unbearable. Deep in her chest, something stirred and whined. It was a docile thing, but it didn’t like when she was upset like this—hopeless. Penelope was so rarely hopeless.
The stirring thing settled a bit. Penelope was sure she felt a small ribbon of smugness decorating the settled feeling.
“Oh, Pen. Whatever is the matter?”
Penelope gasped, sitting up so abruptly she lost her footing and promptly pitched over the side of the swing and flat onto her back, knocking the air from her lungs.
“Hell and the Devil,” Colin cursed, then rushed forward to pull her to a sitting position, hesitating before reaching for the hem of her nightdress and tugging it as low as it would go. Penelope would have shrieked an apology and torn off running, but her lungs were still entirely empty and for a second Colin’s ungloved finger had touched her bare leg and lawks that was overwhelming.
He clapped her once on the back with an apologetic wince and Penelope sucked in a great lungful of air at last.
And immediately burst into tears again because Colin smelled so very good. She knew it meant she belonged to him, had spent an embarrassing amount of time praying it wasn’t just wishful thinking. He was cedar and summer air that had sat in a still clearing for a while before being blown across the garden, a slight note of paper or books just before the cedar rushed front and center again.
Penelope remembered the first time she’d caught the scent, kneeling on the floor with Gregory and Eloise to line up her next shot in a game of marbles. It was a month before those damnable handkerchieves had started showing up in the post, and Colin had recently celebrated his birthday. He was starting to really grow into the man he would someday be, the hints of it just beneath the softness of his face, the crooked way he grinned before saying something silly and unhelpful and just on the edge of cheeky.
She already sighed over him whenever she was given the opportunity, but when the rain started coming down and Anthony and Benedict had come racing in through the first door they passed, they came in hauling a rather wild-eyed and panting Colin.
The smell of cedar and sun-warmed summer air and parchment had rolled off him almost visibly, like a noxious cloud except Penelope stood up and shut her eyes and took it in. Drank it deep. Let it thrill that little thing that flipflopped in her chest now and then and whispered that it knew exactly what love was.
Violet had apologetically sent Penelope home, and a week later when the ban on visitors was lifted Eloise whispered that Colin had gone into his very first rut while fencing with his brothers. They didn’t go into specifics, but she said they’d been teasing him and he’d let his temper get away from him.
This was news to Penelope, who couldn’t rightly picture Colin as anything but amused. Hungry was the closest she got to imagining him frowning or scowling. What could his brothers have been teasing him about that he went careening headfirst into his first rut?
That was another thing—Penelope knew slivers of what the words meant, but most ladies were not eager to answer questions relating to anything specific. Servants could be sweet-talked, but one had to know exactly the right question to ask or they got away with vague answers.
What Penelope knew was Colin’s inner beast had been awakened. Which meant he would be searching, whether he was actually ready to be wed or not, for his True Mate. His soul would be calling to hers and her soul would wake up and answer.
Penelope was sure it was her. Could not fathom a world where she felt the way she did when she saw him across a crowded room or smelled his presence before she even heard his voice and was not meant to be his.
“Can you breathe, Pen?” Colin asked anxiously, and Penelope realized she had drawn in a great lungful of him and then refused to let it back out.
The breath rushed out of her in a huff. “My deepest apologies. I’m a bit flustered already, and I did not expect you—“
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Colin shook his head, wrinkling his nose as he turned to look out over the grass. “I thought I heard someone and…” His eyes fell back on her, his forehead knitting together with the kind of genuine concern that made her want to scream.
She blinked at him, determined not to shriek aloud though it was building in her throat.
“You looked so sad,” he concluded, sounding properly heartbroken about it. “What has happened?”
Penelope hesitated. Colin was actually a wonderful listener, and he sometimes thought of things she didn’t, although he also often forgot that she wasn’t able to breeze through obstacles the way he could as a man, an Alpha, and a Bridgerton. She could tell him some of what troubled her without admitting the ugly truth that her mother was trying to force an advantageous match by drowning her in some stranger’s stink.
“Oh, it’s nothing, really,” she tried to dismiss, sniffling and using her shawl to dab at her cheeks. “My mama told me this evening she wants me to present to the queen with my sisters.”
Colin’s eyebrows popped up as he leaned back. After a moment, he settled on his bottom, stretching his legs out beside her while they sat on the ground next to the swings. “And you aren’t keen to join the marriage mart? I should have suspected, given how close you are with Eloise.”
She sulked. “I just imagined it differently. I told you, it is silly.”
“No, I think not,” Colin disagreed with a genial smile. “You haven’t told me all of it.”
Shocked, she frowned at him. She hadn’t known him to be quite so adept at reading her.
He popped his eyebrows again, still smiling. “I have enough sisters to know that when it doesn’t make sense, there is more to it. Go on.”
“I cannot,” she replied after a brief hesitation.
The humor faded, though Colin’s smile remained fixed on his face. “No?”
The thing was, Penelope could picture her father being quite cross with her if she were to share their little scheme, and her father didn’t get cross about many things. She froze, pinned by Colin’s earnest, searching eyes, calming herself by taking a few surreptitious pulls at the air through her nose.
Again, as if he could read her mind, Colin’s own nostrils flared briefly. “Does it have anything to do with that awful stench you’ve been carrying around?”
Of course another Alpha would smell the blasted hair ribbons. He could probably tell she marinated in the odor every night, though she hoped he could tell it wasn’t her scent. She didn’t have a scent, not really. Not yet.
Her ruse seemed impossible to continue. She was only six-and-ten and thought it perfectly reasonable she should shed just a few more tears over the embarrassment of it all.
When her eyes were hidden behind her palms, she said the deep, dark thing she hadn’t been able to say to her mother, blurting it out in the garden to Colin Bridgerton because she trusted him not to laugh.
“They think I am such a lost cause they have arranged a husband for me and are trying to force a bond before I meet him. That’s her great hurry—he will be in London this season before a long trip to the Continent. They don’t believe I’ll find my True Mate, or any mate at all.” Then she tipped her head back and let out a small blubber before adding, “And it has been two years and it still stinks like a wet woolen coat and I hate it, Colin!”
She expected his amusement, though she trusted him not to laugh.
What she got instead was his fury.
Oh, he very deliberately pointed it away from her, but it was written all over his face. The way his brow lowered into a straight line, his lips full but tight like a bark was just behind them. How his eyes seemed bigger and darker, and they refused to light on her because somehow he knew if she were the subject of that glower she would start whining and fretting and probably crying again, too.
“Barbaric,” he finally spit. “They could make it so your True Mate cannot find you at all, hidden underneath that scent.”
“I may not have a scent at all—“ she tried to defer, hoping to calm him some.
“Nonsense,” he spit. “It will develop. I can still scent you beneath that mildew.”
That shot a little thrill up her spine. “You can?”
For a moment his anger vanished entirely, an amused smirk tipping up one corner of his mouth. “Yes. Because I knew your scent before they started playing their silly game.”
“And what do I smell like?” she asked eagerly, realizing only a moment later that this was a conversation young ladies and gentlemen were not supposed to have. And especially not late at night in the garden, unchaperoned.
Thankfully, Colin seemed as concerned with propriety as he ever had. “Oranges,” he replied immediately, his eyes getting big and dark again, though his smile was still friendly and crooked. “A little vanilla.”
“You’re just naming foods,” she accused, but her insides felt molten. Because she sounded like a delightful treat of some kind, a dessert that would be sweet and refreshing.
“You haven’t presented yet,” he reminded her, sitting up a little straighter, clearing his throat. “Simply throw the trinkets away. Refuse.”
Her smile tightened, the molten feeling cooling only slightly. “You live a charmed life, Colin. I do not.”
He grunted, looking away again, then pulled his knees up, resting his arms on them. “Then rebel quietly. But you must rebel, if you mean to. It will help to wake up the part of you that calls to your True Mate. Give him a chance to find you before you’re betrothed to some soggy blanket of a man.”
Oddly, the advice made her feel a little better. He might not be able to help her plan exactly how she intended to rebel, but he was encouraging the rebellion. He saw the injustice, too. He wanted her to be happy.
That gave her pause.
Colin wanted her to be happy.
He knew her scent.
Penelope let out a lovesick sigh, unable to hide it, and took in the sight of Colin glaring off into the bushes and pretending he wasn’t still fuming slightly over the state of things.
If she were a bit younger, she might be forgiven for crawling toward him and giving him a hug like when they were young children still permitted to race around barefoot playing tag together.
He turned back to her, lips opening to say something, but stopped short, his eyes blinking twice before they fell to her lips and stayed.
“My God I thought Anthony was never going to close the study door—Colin?” Eloise stopped beside the trunk of the tree where the swings were tied.
He looked over at her with a sudden swallow, blinking again. “Pen was distraught. I was merely checking to make sure she was well.”
“Yes, well, thank you for that, but she is here to see me—“
Colin rolled his eyes. “Indeed, and you may have her. I already have the full story anyway.” He stuck his tongue out before rolling to his feet. Smirking down at Penelope as he stuck his hands in his pockets, he murmured, “If I can be of any help, just let me know.”
Then, he was gone.
Eloise spun, murder in her eyes. “Did you really tell him? Before you even told me?”
Penelope tore up some of the grass, still on her bottom beneath the swing she’d topped out of. “I thought perhaps you did not get my message, and he came upon me while I was crying. I felt as if I had to explain.”
“And what is there to explain?” Eloise asked, her patience worn dangerously thin.
Penelope stood and reclaimed her seat on the swing. Then, she began at the start of things and told Eloise everything.
As expected, Eloise was incensed. Worse, it was the middle of the night so she had to keep her anger quiet lest she bring Anthony thundering out into the yard with admonishments and punishments. The last thing Penelope wanted was to be in trouble for sneaking out when she had already gotten mouthy with her mother and started whining about her True Mate.
When they parted for the night, Eloise had promised her daily invitations for tea at Bridgerton House. Penelope knew she would be spending some time at the modiste getting new gowns for the upcoming season, but she promised to be there as often as she could.
Just as she was preparing for the mad dash across the street so she could sneak along the row of hedges to the servants’ entrance in the back, a hand stilled her.
“Allow me,” Colin murmured, then put her arm through his and pulled her along the shadows to a break in the greenery. They ducked inside, Penelope gasping with the effort of keeping up with him, her slippers not suited for the terrain, then stilled at the edge of the path leading to the door.
“Consider this your first act of rebellion,” Colin encouraged, reaching up to pull the strips of cotton from her braids, careful not to ruin the braids themselves, careful not to pull her hair too hard. He balled up the rancid cloth and stuffed it into his pocket.
“Chin up, Pen,” he urged, then looked her over with a fond smile that made Penelope’s chest flipflop and her stomach go molten once more.
“You are too kind,” she murmured, blinking in surprise at the breathy, simpering tone that spilled out of her. It was as if she was speaking with two voices at once—her own girlish one still intoxicated by Colin’s proximity and kindness, and this other one that felt somehow brazen and tantalizing.
Colin blinked back at her, but his eyes closed clumsily, like he had been awake too many days and slept too little and his eyelids couldn’t coordinate properly anymore. When he opened them fully, his eyes were as dark as ink pots and his chest slightly heaving.
“Better already,” he murmured, staring at her neck. “Orange and vanilla and ink.”
Like some invisible tether was being pulled, Penelope tilted her head, showing him her neck.
Offering it to him.
“Goodnight, Pen,” Colin said in a strangely muddied voice, then bowed. Like he was dropping her off at home after a lovely promenade in the park.
Penelope watched him dart off through the bushes and straightened, feeling like she could think a little clearer. And now that she could think a little clearer, she put her face in her hands and groaned.
She had showed him her neck like some kind of lunatic. Thank goodness Colin generally didn’t laugh at her, or make her feel silly for trying to understand the world they lived in. He simply sat with her while she puzzled it out, or promised his help should she ask it of him.
He really was the very best man she knew, even if he was only eight and ten himself.
For the next two weeks, Penelope made a circuit around Mayfair. To the modiste for fittings and embarrassments of all kinds, then while her blush was still fading off her cheeks she would turn up at the Bridgerton drawing room for tea. Afterward, she would trudge home and painstakingly undo all the stitching holding those horrible little handkerchieves in place and burn them in her fireplace.
The one from her pillowcase was the first to go because it was the freshest one, the one that made her entire room smell like some great big hairy ape from the mountains had hibernated there. Rae helped her disguise the fact she had gotten rid of the items in whatever way she could, but eventually Portia’s nose sussed her out.
Then, she was forbidden from leaving the house without either Portia or one of her sisters with her, which meant she was either at the modiste or at home, a cotton handkerchief tied to her bedpost. Her mother had flatly threatened to paddle her behind if anything happened to it, so Penelope had settled as far from it in her room as she could. Glared with all her might.
She presented before Queen Charlotte the following week. Bowed low enough she feared she might spill out of her gown with the newly lowered neckline, but was saved from humiliation when Prudence fainted, the spectacle too much to ignore. Her seventeenth birthday loomed ahead of her like a deadline she had no hope of meeting, but she kept her chin up like Colin said. Thought about smelling like oranges and confections and ink.
The way Colin smelled like outdoors and freedom and paper.
“Do you think you’ll present soon? Or do you think you’re a Beta like your sisters?” Eloise asked her the following evening after Penelope had gotten ready for her first ball and found her mother had decided to make a fashionably late entrance. They sat on the swings, Penelope in a shade of yellow that burned the eyes to look at, her hair curled tighter than she liked and piled higher than she thought was strictly necessary.
She had swapped out the little hair bauble and was wearing a dress that had no scent markersfrom that mysterious earl’s son. She could smell like herself, as delicate as the scent may be.
And perhaps she would present and her scent would call out to her True Mate—who had to be Colin, it simply had to be him—and they would run headlong into their happily ever after laughing all the way because no one got so lucky as to discover their True Mate the instant they presented.
But they would, if only she would be revealed as an Omega. If only she could clear the last of the damnable wet fur smell from her nose and let the smell of her Alpha awaken the other half of her soul.
“I don’t know, but I hope if I am an Omega that I have at least one chance to discover my True Mate before their efforts to arrange a bond—“
“You mean force a bond,” Eloise interrupted darkly. “They mean to twist your instincts and override your senses. Do not forget it.”
Penelope stood, feeling anxious. “Then hope I am either a Beta who will be free to join you in spinsterhood, or that I present and find my True Mate at Lady Danbury’s ball. Otherwise, I feel I’ll always smell like a wet blanket.”
They giggled, although it wasn’t quite funny. Penelope hugged Eloise before rushing to her own home, pretending she had been waiting by the steps the whole time, devastated when her mother switched her hair bauble for one wrapped with a single stinking ribbon of handkerchief.
She was still sulking about it, considering refusing to get out of the carriage at all when it arrived and her curiosity overrode her stubbornness. It was extravagance and unashamed glamor—Penelope couldn’t help but walk around staring up at the decorations and the chandeliers in awe, nearly trodding on Philippa’s dress and earning herself a squawk of reprimand.
“Ah, at last,” Portia chirped happily, linking her arm around Penelope’s as they descended the steps. Her mother spoke as they’d been kept waiting, but it was they who were walking in when the first several dances had already come and gone.
“Lord Debling,” she greeted, bowing deeply to a severe older man with a downturned mouth and eyes that seemed permanently hooded, as if he couldn’t physically open them any further than halfway.
“My son, Alfred,” he indicated, then bodily pulled the young man in question in front of Penelope.
Their eyes widened at each other. Penelope could smell him instantly, realizing it wasn’t just the stench from her hair bauble. The source of the stench was standing before her, and it made her cheeks turn red because she was out in society at her very first ball and she reeked of the gentleman who was standing in front of her, though he was a perfect stranger.
To the others, it was as good as an engagement.
To her further horror, he looked equally as put off by her. Suddenly, their one shred of shared misery was an island they could seek refuge in. Hesitating, Alfred offered his arm and suggested a turn about the room to get to know one another. Penelope eagerly agreed, and their parents stood feeling smug and dastardly while Penelope pointed out the doorway to the terrace and let him lead them to a stone bench to sit and trade war stories.
“Forgive me, because it’s not that your scent isn’t pleasing,” Alfred began, trying to be kind and not insult her too grievously.
Penelope held no such concern for his tender heart. “You smell like a wet dog on a cold spring morning and while it doesn’t make me sick, it is awful.”
“I have never cared much for desserts or confections and you smell like an ice cream shop with an attached bookshop. And it’s so faint, it’s maddening!” Alfred sagged beside her in relief. “Miss Featherington, I should like to be friends. Is that possible?”
“I think it is,” she agreed readily. “Although I imagine our parents would like to be informed of this change in plans?”
“Let them think they’ve had a victory for tonight. We can dance and do everything they expect us to do. Then we can appeal to their reason.” He grinned at her suddenly. “If they don’t see to reason, I can be quite beastly when I need to be.”
“Feel free,” she encouraged, relaxing alongside him. “Drag me into it, if it helps. I should make a terrible lady of the house.”
“Should you?” he asked, surprised.
“I should for you,” she shot back, pleased when he laughed.
Something rumbled at the edge of the terrace. Penelope turned her head, holding out a hand as if expecting rain, thinking perhaps she’d heard the first signs of thunder.
As she did, Alfred seized her dance card and shot her a smile as he reached for the accompanying pencil.
Oh, he meant to sign her dance card. Her very first ball, her very first dance—
“No.”
She and Alfred turned in tandem in time to spot Colin standing at the edge of the terrace steps like he’d just emerged from the garden, his chest heaving and his chin tucked low as if he were preparing to make a headlong dash across the stone patio.
His eyes fell on her and that thing that liked to occasionally stir in her chest flung off its bedclothes and leapt to its feet. Ran to the windows and threw them open, flung itself at the sill and cried out to him.
The heat that pooled in her belly turned to red hot lava. Her skin prickled and crawled, an instant sweat breaking across her forehead as she doubled over her belly, panting and grasping for something to hold onto, finding Alfred’s arm solid enough.
He is here! He is here!
“Miss Featherington has already promised her first dance to me.”
Penelope had done no such thing outside her imagination, but Colin strode across the terrace, collecting his arms behind his back as he leveled Alfred with his most holier-than-thou stare, then held out his hand, shaking it slightly when Penelope panted up at him in confusion.
Now?
The thing in her chest wailed in agreement, hoisting itself into the sill as if to throw itself out, splatter itself all over the dance floor in an effort to join itself to him.
“I cannot,” she murmured, her voice breathy and strained at the same time, the sky barreling down from the heavens only to leap back into darkness, making the whole world pulse with each beat of her heart.
“Are you well?” asked Alfred curiously, bending to get a closer look at her flushed face.
In response, Colin growled, the threat of it unmistakable.
It made Penelope want to put her fingers in something and dig. To get her teeth into something and bite. To wrap her legs around something and ease the ache building between them.
And though the stink of Alfred was borderline intolerable, she had been conditioned to smile and accept it. For years now. Had known it almost as long as she’d known Colin’s unique scent, though she much preferred his.
Colin’s scent, by contrast, stung her nostrils with the stiff undercurrent of his anger, but it also wrapped itself around her and made her feel both invincible and woefully vulnerable. She had been in love before, now she was toppling into whatever there was beyond mere admiration.
Desire, for one thing. It was, as she had read hints about, all-consuming. As her lower belly continued to convulse and spasm, she pieced together that she was presenting and being thrust into her first heat.
At a ball teeming with eligible Alphas. Not all of whom would be enticed by her scent, but all of whom would feel compelled to investigate its source.
She could tell the moment her scent glands must have erupted because the crawling, tingling feeling on her thighs and the sides of her neck abated with a slight stretching sensation before she let out a sigh of minor relief.
The wave of it hit Colin and Alfred at the same time, Alfred blinking in surprise as he apparently detected something there he hadn’t before.
“As my betrothed, she owes her first dance to me,” Alfred said suddenly, his voice growing lower with each syllable, turning to face Colin so they were nearly nose to nose. “Mine.”
Confusion swelled, but Penelope found she couldn’t quite hold onto it when everything was starting to throb and thrum with blood that seemed too hot and limbs that felt too pliant.
She stumbled to her feet, intent on stepping between them and demanding they all gather their wits before they caused a real scene.
Alfred turned first. “Sit.”
Her knees bent, her thoughtless hindbrain hearing the command in the low rumble of his voice. But the thing in her chest clawing at the window and singing a sweet sonnet across the stone patio to Colin only had ears for him.
Smirking, his eyes dark as the sky above, Colin turned to her. “Sit, my love.”
She sat where she stood, foregoing the bench entirely to sit upon her hip on the stone floor, eyes shining up at him in hopeful obedience.
My love! He is here and we are his love!
His eyes snapped back to Alfred’s. “If she is your betrothed, then why does she heel to my voice?”
There was a hardly a beat before Alfred shoved. Colin caught himself, then shoved back. She thought to reach for his leg, to wrap herself around it, try to support him some which way, but the heat in her belly had turned into liquid fire again. Moaning, she bent over her legs and jolted at the powerful scent coming from the space between them that ached. She pulled her legs apart, eyes widening at the cool sensation of the evening air whipping across the damp there.
Colin’s head snapped toward her again, his eyes wide and dark, chest heaving.
He will say it! He will call to us! Claim us!
Penelope fought to breathe, sure she must be a vision of distress, sweaty and flushed and panting as if she’d just raced up the hill behind Aubrey Hall in a game of tag. Lawks, she had done so earlier this very year—
“Omega.”
A keening moan built up in her chest before spilling out, her head tipping back to let it all out before it tore at her throat in its haste to escape.
There was some kind of scuffle. Penelope held onto the terrace with both hands, pressing her face to the cool stones and hoping her skirts were staying in place as she wrestled her knees beneath herself, reaching into her curls for that accursed hair bauble wrapped with the wet-dog smell that was both familiar and sickening.
Sitting up, Penelope tore it from her hair and flung it as far as she could into the garden beyond the terrace wall.
She was still staring into the inky night where she’d last seen it glint when hands pawed at her waist and spun her so she was balanced on her knees, skirts a mess and chest heaving, hair tumbling from her careful pile of curls, looking straight at Colin Bridgerton, his cravat gone and mouth smeared with blood.
“My goodness, what—Colin, no!”
Penelope couldn’t rightfully place the voice, but for a moment it sounded like Lady Bridgerton. Then nothing else mattered because Colin swept her hair aside and put his nose to her neck like she was the first water he’d tasted since beginning a long trek through the desert.
It had no right to feel as sinfully delicious as it did, but Penelope could no more resist it than she could stop her heart from beating. She simply tilted her head and grinned up at the sky, letting him nudge at the tingling thing that had emerged while her belly teemed with heat and want.
He inhaled, trembling slightly, then tightened his arms around her and relaxed some, swiping one hand over the hair tumbling down her back. Slowly, the very last dregs of Alfred’s nose-wrinkling scent faded away, replaced by vibrant, earthy cedar and that sun-warmed, slightly dusty smell of an August afternoon in the country. Then, at the very end, the crisp, wide-open promise of a blank piece of parchment.
Penelope turned her face and let her cheek press against his neck, gasping at the low, pleased rumble that came from his chest.
“Have you no manners, young man? Go fetch her mother, would you, Daphne?”
She will separate us! Will make us go back to the stinky one!
Penelope flung her arms around Colin’s neck and let herself whine plaintively, nosed into his neck unashamedly until his hands were dimpled in her hips, lips now brushing over that spot on her neck that made her legs quiver and grow slick with what she was quickly deducing to be arousal.
“Let her go!” Violet commanded in a soft hiss, likely trying to keep anyone else from coming out to investigate whatever had happened to Lord Debling and Miss Featherington, who had gone out for a sip of fresh air and not yet returned.
After a pause, Colin shook his head, tightening his arms. “I cannot.”
“Colin Bridgerton,” Violet tried again, sounding sterner and less intimidating at the same time. “Unhand the young lady. If you have intentions, then we shall see to them. But you may not paw at her like a dog at Lady Danbury’s ball!”
Daphne returned with Lady Featherington, Lord Debling, and Anthony. Penelope couldn’t care less, her chest pressed against Colin’s so their hearts were beating against one another, the thing inside still crying for more.
“What kind of game are you playing?” Lord Debling demanded of Portia, causing Penelope’s mother to gasp in offense.
“I beg your pardon—my daughter is assaulted and you think it a game?”
Penelope could not suffer the misunderstanding, tearing herself away only long enough to cry, “He has done nothing wrong!” As soon as she saw her words had landed, she returned to drinking her fill of his scent. The way it steadied and calmed as she pressed into him, finally able to indulge, to let him sink into her pores and cling to her skin.
Her belly gave another painful flutter and the sound that came out of her made Violet and Anthony both lurch into motion.
“You must take her home, now,” Anthony urged, reaching gingerly for Colin’s arm.
“No,” Colin refused, huddling tighter when a rustling in the bushes alerted them to what had happened to the earl’s son.
“The young lady is my son’s intended,” Lord Debling explained to Anthony, who pinched the bridge of his nose with a long-suffering sigh.
“From the smell of it, Colin is entering a rut. He won’t be easily convinced to part with her while we sort all of this out.” There was a hint of regret in his voice that Penelope didn’t like.
She looked up at Colin and poured everything she had into her plea. “Don’t let them take me away from you, Alpha.”
Colin’s eyes fluttered. Her heart raced a moment, thinking him utterly beautiful as he sought some sort of solution, his expression hazy and lips parted just so.
Penelope cooed, rewarding him for trying to think of anything at all, brushing her nose across his as his breaths puffed across her cheeks.
“Brother, try to remember where you are. We are not taking her from you, we are simply asking you to wait.” Anthony tried again to touch Colin’s arm, to begin pulling him away.
“She does not wish to be parted from me, nor I from her,” Colin replied tearing his arm away, eyes never leaving Penelope’s.
“She is entering her first heat, Colin. You cannot remain with her—you must be wed, and first we must deal with this…arrangement.” Anthony cast a quick, annoyed scowl at Portia, who simply folded her arms and huffed. “She is overwhelmed by everyone’s scent. Give her time to clear her head so you might make this decision with certainty.”
“I am certain.” He frowned for a beat, then ducked his face into her neck once more, inhaling her like she was the very air he needed to breathe at all. “I cannot be parted from her, Anthony, I am sorry.”
Alpha has declared himself! He does not wish to be parted from us!
Her lower belly clenched again, making her back arch slightly as it tightened all her muscles, the heat of it unbearable. She knew not what exactly must be done, but she knew she needed Colin near. Nearer than he was already.
Penelope pressed closer, delighted when he sat on his heels and she had someplace to perch. Rucking her skirts up just a bit higher, she made to place herself on his lap, his arms already gathering her closer. Before she could settle, two pairs of arms looped under her armpits and began hoisting.
“No, mine!”
“Colin, you knob, let go!” Benedict pleaded. “You cannot make her yours here, all right? Don’t make us go sneaking you out the back like a frothing lunatic. If you don’t let go, she’s going to get hurt!”
“Then let her go!” Colin roared, settling when Benedict and Anthony released her arms in shock. He pulled her to his lap, letting out another shuddery breath when she eased against him, her arms returning to their roost around his neck immediately.
“This just got significantly more difficult,” Benedict noted aloud. “The state of them—there is no walking through the party without drawing attention.”
“And there is also the matter of the alleged engagement to Lord Debling’s son.” Anthony tapped his chin, deep in thought.
Penelope took the moment of brainstorming to press her stomach against his and watch his eyes go all hazy and dark yet again. He hadn’t fully given over yet, still clinging to some form of restraint. For what, Penelope didn’t know or care.
She put her fingers in his hair, delighted when his mouth popped open and his hips strained slightly beneath her.
“It is her first heat!” Lord Debling suddenly shouted over the others’ mumbled suggestions. “She is simply confused. She has worn my son’s scent for many months now—perhaps if this uncouth little snake hadn’t inserted himself we wouldn’t have a problem at all!”
Violet gasped slightly. “Why would she be wearing a gentleman’s scent at all? Miss Penelope has only just presented this season! She is young, too—not yet seventeen!”
A strange understanding sweeping over Anthony’s face, he strode forward to the bushes and seized the still-dazed Alfred’s arm and waved Benedict over to help him hoist the man to his feet and dust him off. To Penelope’s shock, as she huddled on Colin’s lap with his hands dug into her hips, Anthony tore off Alfred’s cravat and shoved him toward them. Benedict mumbled something that made Colin still a moment as Anthony stubbornly guided the idiot’s neck over to Penelope.
She wrinkled her nose, finding the smell the same as she had for over a year now—inoffensive but undeniably unpleasant. Not for her.
“You are trying to force something that will not bear fruit—at least not in the way you intended,” Anthony concluded, pulling Alfred back to his feet and tossing his cravat against his chest so the man had to catch it, blinking blearily at the sudden audience.
“Well, given you have ruined her arrangement,” Portia paused to look at Lord Debling and the still-woozy Alfred for confirmation, finding their blank faces confirmation enough, “are you offering a proposal? To protect my Penelope’s reputation?”
Anthony laughed humorlessly. “Lady Featherington, I do not think either of us could stop him from proposing to her.” He shot a hard look at the back of his brother’s head. “And if he doesn’t do it of his own volition, then I will help him remember his manners.”
“He has always held a soft spot for Penelope,” Violet assuaged.
Something flashed in Colin’s eyes briefly, his expression breaking into a worried pinch for a moment, his bluster and bravado hiccuping.
Abruptly, he whipped his head over to Alfred. “Go. Your stench is unwelcome here.”
“Colin, good Lord,” Benedict admonished, but his heart wasn’t in it, a giggle erupting a moment later. “If sweet, nice Colin is like this upon finding his True Mate, how do you think you and I will fare, brother?”
“We must separate them,” Anthony replied, ignoring Benedict’s question rather pointedly. “Just for the night—well, until her heat is over and—“
“No.”
“I didn’t bloody ask you!” Anthony snapped, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose again when Violet gasped at his crude language. Lady Featherington, for her part, seemed nonplussed.
Colin’s teeth played with the side of her neck so she let out another soft, pleased sound that quickly devolved into an uncomfortable restlessness.
She wanted to move. To press herself against his lap and—
Alpha wants to claim us! Go with Alpha!
But they could not go anywhere. Their mothers were here, Anthony was here, the man whose proposal she hadn’t yet gotten around to spurning was still standing there, stinking up her beautiful moment. What did that voice mean, go with him?
“Colin,” Benedict tried, his voice smooth and low like he was talking to a spooked horse. “I’ll ride with you and Miss Penelope back to Bridgerton House. We can talk a bit more, then you can see to it she arrives home safely. We’ll apply for a license and wait for the banns and you’ll be married before her next heat.”
Colin scoffed. “You’re soft in the head if you think I’m agreeing to any of that.”
It had sounded rather ridiculous to Penelope, too, but she didn’t have the brainpower to voice such an opinion. All she could do was shift her hips ever so slightly and drink in the way Colin’s scent seemed to spike whenever she brushed over him just right.
“You’re soft in the head if you don’t agree to it,” Benedict hissed. “She is a respectable young lady and you are allowed to court her. But you cannot ruin her on Lady Danbury’s terrace and make your claim before you are married!”
“And why not?” Colin demanded, his chest heaving again. “It is what feels right to me. She has been buried under the smell of wet winter rot and made so she did not even know her own scent. Now that she is here again, now you expect me to part with her? So the dominoes may fall in the order you wish?”
“It is for her reputation, as well as hers—“
“Hang society,” Colin interrupted, baring his teeth slightly. “It has served its purpose and introduced me to my wife, albeit many years after she introduced herself via a flying bonnet—“
Penelope lurched forward and kissed him.
He remembered how they met. Called her his wife. Was prepared to cast off the expectations and comforts of society content to have only her.
She needed him now, whatever that meant. Penelope only knew it was true true true. She needed to have and be had and find out how to get him closer so she stopped yearning for it with every clench of her inner muscles.
He gripped her tighter to his lap and she felt the way they began to slot together. She couldn’t quite imagine it, couldn’t quite picture what he might look like under all the pomp and circumstance of his formalwear, but she knew when she had her wretched corset off and he was divested of all his finery that she would figure it out.
“Dear sweet Lord,” Benedict murmured, turning toward the terrace doors, looking truly nervous now. “We really don’t have much more time.”
“Colin, please.” Anthony let his eyes go soft and pleading. “For Mother. For Penelope.”
Colin stood, hauling Penelope with him. He kept her in front of him, her arms still around his neck, his nose still stuck to hers. Benedict didn’t wait for a cue, springing into action and leading them down the steps and beyond the garden hedges to where one of the family carriages had parked, awaiting a summons to return home.
Colin peered around as he helped Penelope into the carriage, hushing her as she whined at the space between them. He turned, blocking the carriage door. “It is just you and I?”
“We are to head straight home—“ Benedict said, abruptly falling silent when Colin swung a fist and caught him just beneath the jaw.
Colin turned toward the driver. “Go now. I’ll tell you where once we’re in Bloomsbury.” He threw himself into the carriage and snapped the door shut.
As they pulled away, Penelope stared at him, eyes wide and unblinking, the sound of Benedict foggily shouting after them just audible before the horse nickered and all else fell quiet.
“You wish to be mine, Omega?”
Her head fell back, her legs practically springing apart, a wanton moan warbling out of her like she was a practiced opera singer.
His hands were beneath her skirts at once. Eyes never leaving hers, he teased up one side of her thigh, then down the other, making her squirm and pant and look wildly around the interior of the carriage for help.
His fingers slowed as they trailed through the alarming amount of slick that had coated the insides of her thighs while she had sat rocking and wanting on his lap.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
She panted, throwing her head back yet again. “I am already yours, Alpha. But I wish it, too.”
It was apparently the correct thing to say, because the next thing Penelope knew the ache in her belly was replaced with giddy, urgent, and desperate pleasure. He flung her skirts back, one hand between her legs and the other racing up to tug at the bodice of her gown, his pupils blown wide open as he swiped over her folds and dipped treacherously close to that spot that screamed his name.
“It aches,” she confessed, unprepared for Colin’s small growl and responding kiss.
He was inside her. Penelope mewled, arching her back and twisting her hips. It wasn’t enough. He was touching her, but the ache was deep and begged for more than mere fingers could provide, as talented as they were.
“Soon, my sweet,” he soothed, but he had a bit of an edge to his voice, like he was also soothing himself.
Heat flashed up her insides at the crook of his finger, her body quaking as she groped for his hair, tangled her fingers in it, and peeled him from her lips. He tried to mouth at her breasts as she wrestled him down her body, but she pushed stubbornly, hardly believing her own wicked will.
But it was all worth it when he made his tongue wide and flat and licked up the seam of her, nuzzling bossily between her folds to lap at that little button that sent lightning bolts of pleasure snaking through her entire body with every swipe of his tongue.
A heated moan rang out of him. “My God, Pen,” he muttered darkly, then pulled her legs wider. His fingers returned, his tongue working witchcraft on a part of her she didn’t rightfully know what to call, stirring her into something of a frenzy before she curled and exploded into pins and needles, calling out for him despite the fact he had never been closer to her. Still, as she clamped onto his fingers and tried to eke every last drop of pleasure from them, she ached.
His teeth grazed someplace on her inner thigh that sent an immediate secondary shockwave through her, ripping a small groan from the middle of her chest, the pain exquisite as he trembled and spoke to himself.
Throwing her skirts back over her womanhood, he threw open the carriage door and leaned out. “Bruton Street, please.”
He snapped the door shut. At her curious look, Colin offered her a thin smile. “Mum has her dower house all lined up—wishful thinking Anthony will settle down and make a match sooner rather than later.”
She blinked, digesting his words. “Then we will be alone?”
“Utterly.” His eyes dropped to her chest. “Begging your pardon.” He wrenched the fabric away, her corset becoming dislodged enough her nipples popped free of their enclosure. Colin fell on them like a man starved.
It made her insides contort to have him mouthing at her, to have known the pleasure of his fingers inside her, to know there was more yet but not to have it. She groped for him, desperate to touch him, to plead with him the only way she could lacking the vocabulary.
Her fingers brushed over the conspicuous bulge in his trousers and Colin launched from her breasts to put his teeth to her neck, panting hotly against that tingly part of that felt like heaven on earth when he so much as nudged it with his nose.
“If you wish for a proper courtship,” he panted against her neck, hands flying up to continue what his lips had started, thumbing at her nipples and testing the weight of her in his palms, “tell me now before I am entirely lost.”
“Would a proper courtship help me to ease the ache?” she asked, feeling rather stubbornly single-minded.
Colin’s dark eyes drank her in, his gaze falling to her lips. “No, it would not.”
“Then I suppose, if you’re serious about making me your wife, we can simply spend the first year traveling.” She rubbed a thumb over his chin fondly. “Let them talk about the order of things.”
“You would like to join me?” he asked, a giddy, boyish note creeping in where there had only been bossiness and mine before.
Penelope smiled fondly. There he was, always there, even when he was bossing her around and yanking at her bodice and pushing men who smelled like wet, cold animals off of terraces. Colin. Dear, sweet, excitable Colin who only ever wanted to share the things he loved with the people he loved.
“I would like to go wherever you will be,” she said, nodding resolutely. “The way you smell—Colin, I was born for you.”
“I know.” His chest heaved, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth just barely. “I cannot wait to get the stink of that mongrel off of you at last.”
“If there are no staff—will you be able to draw me a bath?” She tilted her head, a little annoyed when he simply shook his head and kissed her.
The carriage stopped just as the heat was beginning to pool between her legs once more, making her rub them together and fuss with her dress, which she had tried to set to rights after Colin’s yanking on it in his haste to get at her breasts. Colin was out passing coins to the driver ensuring he would tell his family they had gone anywhere else when she stumbled down the steps.
Some of the older furniture, the more sentimental pieces that Violet didn’t want banged up, had already been placed inside, covered with dust cloths. Colin led her urgently up the stairs in search of any furnished bedroom, pulling her inside the first one they discovered with a mattress.
“Next time we will be better prepared, and we will not have to hide.” Colin began pulling at the fastenings on the back of her dress. Trying to follow his lead, she worked the buttons on his waistcoat, gulping when he stepped back to let her dress pool at her feet and shrugged out of his jacket and waistcoat, reaching up immediately for his shirt buttons.
Her fingers went to his belt, seemingly of their own volition, and Colin abandoned his shirt to reach around her to the lacing on her stays. He loosened it only enough she could shimmy it down, pulling her shift over her head last, her arms pulled over her head just as she got the last fastening on his belt and trousers undone.
“If we are sure—“
“I am sure,” Penelope interrupted.
Colin eased her back onto the bed, his eyes all black and hungry. “Then we will mark one another?”
He wants our bite! He wants us for his mate! Alpha!
She turned her head and let her teeth scrape over the forearm nearest her, his weight resting on his palms as he hovered above.
“Not yet,” he cooed, nosing at her neck anyway. “I will go first. Then you will go after.”
She relaxed, happy to take instruction and stop trying to figure it all out on her own. He would take care of her—she knew it in her bones.
His fingers were back between her legs, but they only teased a moment before he pulled her legs wider apart, settled his hips between them, and pulled his trousers to his knees. Penelope’s eyes shot wide.
It was big. Needy-looking, somehow angry and wanting even though all it did was throb and leak, bobbing slightly as Colin adjusted his legs once more and took himself in hand. She was shocked when her back arched, pushing herself toward that impossible thing he was supposedly going to put inside her—
“Oh!” she yelped, clapping a hand down on his shoulder with a slight frown.
“I will take care of you,” he reminded her, voice deep and hazy again. “Forever.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding, rewarded with the long smooth slide of him nudging into her begging heat at last. There was a brief hiccup as he breached the proof of her innocence, but then he was seated within her, gasping slightly at the squeeze of it—Penelope was marveling at the stretch of it, so she presumed he felt the opposite—and murmuring her name.
Alpha will claim us! Knot us! Fill us with pups!
Her body exploded into tingles, the thing in her chest ricocheting wildly on her ribs, howling and cheering so she could do nothing but let out a soft hoot of triumph and close her legs around his hips.
Colin responded by beginning to move and again Penelope had to tingle and laugh and moan her appreciation.
The ache built, but it was a good ache now. The kind that he was erasing with each kiss, each deep stroke, each panted promise in her ear.
Struck by a tender affection for him, Penelope pushed through the fog and cupped his face in her hands. “I love you, Colin.”
He kissed the inside of her wrist, his eyes dropping shut as in inhaled sharply through his nose. He nipped the spot on her wrist and her muscles contracted. Another on her collarbone and she cried out for him.
His teeth teased along her neck, just finding the edge of the spot that had been driving her to madness, right above where her shoulder turned into her neck. He nipped and Penelope howled, spasming wildly all throughout her abdomen and lower belly, the fullness of him pulling panting moans from her with each squeeze.
“Alpha,” she pleaded, cupping his face once more and pulling him up to rub her nose against his.
“Yes, mine.” Hips hips jerked, his eyes briefly fluttering before he looked down between them and groaned. He began pushing up against her, his hips rolling as he worked himself deeper.
“Omega,” he rumbled. “Give yourself to me.”
She turned her head automatically, fingers flying to his chest to pet along the muscles and scratch of hair there, her toes curling in anticipation .
He pushed more, his full weight now resting upon her, and to her shock, her greedy body took him in, the feeling of warmth deep in her lower belly suddenly unmistakable.
His teeth sunk into her, at the juncture of her shoulder and neck, and at the moment he pierced the skin, Penelope ascended.
Gasping, she held onto him, convinced she would cease to exist entirely if she were parted from him, then cried out when he drew away, his mouth bloodied and expression frantic.
He turned his head, offering her his neck. The gesture was unbearably sweet.
Penelope sunk her nose into his neck where he seemed to smell the most like himself, laved her tongue over the muscles and explored until she found it. The spot where she could sink in and become one with him.
The snap of his skin giving way beneath her teeth startled her, but then another wave of tingling and flying swept her away, her body contracting once more while Colin groaned and rocked his hips, the slight pull of him making her cry out.
At last the ache was gone, though the tip of her tailbone burned as if still aflame. The ache would be back.
Colin stilled, then dropped his head to her shoulder, his weight still resting fully upon her. A breathy chuckle sounded from somewhere in her tangle of hair, muffled by a dusty pillow.
“Where shall we visit first?” he asked, his head popping up beside hers, cheeks flushed and eyes now their usual dusky blue.
She swallowed, still catching her breath, and looked at the gruesome mark on his neck. “You’ve always talked about Greece.”
His eyes shone just a little brighter. He bent and licked her, humming softly as he bumped up against that spot on her neck. “A lovely honeymoon, indeed. And then?”
“Paris?” she guessed, rewarded with another pair of licks that both made her hiss with pain and hum with pleasure.
“Perfect. And perhaps one more stop before we must return home.” He tilted his head so she could do the same for him, her pink tongue darting out to lap at the mess she’d made of him. He sighed at her attention. “You will certainly be with pups by then, if you aren’t already.”
“I may already be carrying?” she asked incredulously.
Colin looked pointedly down at where they were still joined. “Only just, but it is possible.”
She lifted legs that quivered with the effort and wrapped them around him despite the fact neither of them could move so much as an inch for the time being. “Where would our last stop be, before we come to have our pups?”
“Italy,” he answered, tilting slightly to the side and groaning as he rolled onto his back, pulling her atop him. Penelope gasped, bracing herself on his stomach as she pushed up to sitting position.
“Can we do it again?” she asked him breathlessly, eyes wide, the ache starting to build already.
Colin’s lips turned up, his eyes darkening again. “Soon. When…this resolves itself.”
She gave her hips an experimental tilt, pleased when Colin let out a soft whimper and fell back onto the pillow.
“That won’t help speed things along,” he warned, but she could feel that warm sensation returning, Colin’s throat bobbing as his hands flew to her breasts, his eyes following every brush of his fingertips.
She continued rocking to one side, sliding her weight from one leg to the other, leaning forward until that lovely spot just above her opening was flush to the swollen base of him. Cooed and petted his cheeks and kissed that brand new mark on his neck until he groaned and flooded her with another round of his spend.
“We will never be parted if you keep this up,” he begged, but his hands were still tight around her hips.
“And why should I want to be parted from you?” she asked, pleased when he had no clever retort ready, his eyes traveling over her as if memorizing the moment entirely.
She let him, feeling lovely and cherished and his. The thing in her chest was overjoyed, no longer sleepily biding its time, no longer rattling the bars of its cage and demanding she prostrate herself in front of himself and beg.
“However shall I marry you and take you on a honeymoon to Greece if we never leave these chambers?” Colin smiled warmly, then blinked and looked around the room in alarm. “This must be the master bedchamber suite.” He winced slightly. “My mother’s room.”
Penelope’s eyebrows raised, sensing he was beginning to soften at last. “Something tells me she will forgive you.”
Colin shot her another wolfish smile, sticking his chin up at her while a commotion barged into the front door downstairs. “Let us find out. We have been discovered!”
Three days later she found herself racing up the aisle to an equally impatient Colin, staring into his eyes during the entirety of the ceremony, promising herself to him while he swore his protection, loyalty, and love.
They returned home after spending only two weeks in Greece, but they didn’t complain. Colin claimed he would keep busy enough readying their home and the nursery they’d soon be needing. Penelope continued to be happy simply existing wherever he was near.
Tongues wagged, of course, but they remained unbothered. If their arrangement seemed scandalous or unconventional to others, that was fine. Their bond was undeniable, and so far as anyone knew, it had all happened in the precise order it was supposed to.