Chapter 4: Carriage Cunnilingus
The journey began in a silence so thick it felt like a third passenger in the carriage. Evangeline watched the dirty outskirts of London give way to greening hedgerows and fields dotted with sheep, her hands folded tightly in her lap. Henry sat opposite, his legs stretched out, ankles crossed, affecting an air of nonchalance she didn’t believe for a second. His presence was a physical pressure, a heat she could feel even from across the plush, shadowed interior.
Katherine had seen them off that morning with a placid smile, utterly convinced by Henry’s casual lie about wanting to review the estate’s stables before the hunting season. “It will be good for you both to have some country air,” she’d said, a benediction that felt like a verdict.
For hours, they spoke only of trivialities—the weather, the condition of the road, a comment on a passing village. Each word was careful, weighed, and dropped into the quiet with a soft thud of false politeness. The tension was a live wire strung between them, humming with everything unsaid: the garden, the kiss, his outright refusal of her future.
The carriage was well-sprung, but the road to Richmond was old, and deep ruts lay in wait. As dusk began to stain the sky with soft purple and gold, the driver took a corner too sharply. The carriage lurched, wheels finding a deep groove in the packed earth.
Evangeline was thrown forward from her seat. She flung out a hand to brace herself, but the momentum was too great. She landed not on the floor, but squarely in Henry’s lap, a jumble of silk skirts, petticoats, and shocked limbs.
For a frozen second, neither moved. She was sprawled across him, her hip cradled against the hard plane of his abdomen, her face inches from his. She could see the faint gold stubble along his jaw, the startling blue of his eyes in the dim carriage light. And she could feel, unmistakably, the rigid bulge of his erection pressed against her thigh through the layers of fabric.
A gasp caught in her throat. She tried to push herself up, her palms flat against his chest. “I’m sorry—the rut—”
His hands came up, not to help her, but to clamp around her waist, holding her there. His grip was fierce, undeniable. The casual pretense of the last few hours shattered.
“Since you’re already here,” he growled, his voice rough and low, stripped of all polish.
Before she could protest, before she could even form another thought, he flipped her skirts up with a brutal, efficient movement. The cool air of the carriage hit her bare thighs, a shocking contrast to the heat of his hands. He shoved her back against the velvet squabs, yanking her towards him by the hips so her legs fell open over his knees.
“Henry, don’t—” The words were a weak whisper, lost as he ducked his head.
He didn’t kiss her mouth. He buried his face between her thighs, his tongue finding her with no finesse, only a raw, claiming hunger. The sensation was so acute, so violently intimate that she cried out, a sharp, choked sound swallowed by the rumble of the wheels. Her head fell back against the seat, her fingers twisting in his golden hair, not to pull him away, but to anchor herself as the world dissolved into sensation.
He licked her with rough, purposeful strokes, his tongue delving into her folds, tasting her, exploring her with a crude, exhilarating directness that made her hips jerk. He held her down, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips, sure to leave bruises. She was already wet, her body betraying her the moment she’d felt him hard beneath her. He groaned against her, the sound vibrating through her core, and the vibration tipped her over a sudden, sharp precipice. A climax ripped through her, shocking in its intensity, wringing a guttural moan from her lips she barely recognized as her own.
He didn’t stop. He drank her in, his tongue circling the sensitive bud of her clit now, pushing her towards another peak even as she shuddered from the first. “You taste like sin,” he muttered, his voice muffled against her skin, hot and damp. “My sin.”
The carriage rocked, the rhythm mimicking the filthy, relentless motion of his tongue. She was panting, her chest heaving, completely at his mercy. With a final, lingering lick that made her twitch, he pulled back. His face was flushed, his lips glistening. His eyes were dark, wild.
He fumbled with the buttons of his falls, his normally graceful hands shaking. The fabric fell open. His cock sprang free, thick and ruddy, fully erect, the head glistening. The sight of it, so stark and demanding, sent a fresh pulse of heat through her.
He didn’t ask. He shoved her from his lap, down onto the carriage floor between his booted feet. The Persian rug was rough against her knees.
“Open wide, sister,” he commanded, his voice ragged.
He gripped a fistful of her golden hair, not gently, tilting her face up. The endearment was a blasphemy, a thrilling poison. She looked up at him, at his face, which was a mask of desperate need, and she obeyed. She opened her mouth.
He guided himself to her lips, the swollen head pressing against them. He pushed in slowly, watching her, the strain evident in every cord of his neck. The stretch was immediate, filling her mouth, her jaw aching with the unfamiliar girth. She tasted salt and musk, the essence of him. Her tongue moved instinctively, swirling around the head, and he swore, a filthy, beautiful curse that was half groan.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Just like that. Take it.”
He began to move, his grip in her hair controlling the pace. He thrust shallowly at first, then deeper, his hips pumping in time with the jolting carriage. She relaxed her throat, letting him slide deeper, the sensation of fullness overwhelming. She could hear herself making wet, choking sounds around him, could feel saliva trickling from the corner of her mouth. His other hand came to cradle her jaw, his thumb stroking her cheek almost tenderly even as he fucked her mouth with a relentless, building rhythm.
“God, your mouth,” he panted, his eyes glazed, fixed on where they were joined. “So perfect. So fucking tight.”
The vulgarity, the sheer crass physicality of it, shattered the last of her pretense. This wasn't the careful dance of society. This was hunger, stripped bare. She met his thrusts, her own need coiling tight again, a deep, throbbing pulse between her legs. She reached between her own thighs, her fingers finding the slick, aching heat there, and began to rub frantic circles as he used her mouth.
He saw her. His movements became more erratic, his breath coming in sharp gasps. “Are you touching yourself?” he gritted out, his voice thick with awe and lust. “Do it. Come for me while I come down your throat.”
The command, the image, was too much. Her climax crashed over her, violent and silent, her body convulsing as she muffled a scream against his cock. The rhythmic clenching of her orgasm triggered his. With a final, deep thrust that made her gag, he held himself there, pulsing, his release hot and bitter flooding the back of her throat. She swallowed, once, twice, as he shuddered through his finish, his grip in her hair finally going slack.
For long moments, the only sounds were their ragged breathing and the steady clop of hooves outside. He slowly slipped from her mouth, spent. She slumped back onto her heels, her body trembling, her face wet, her lips swollen and tender.
Henry looked down at her, his expression unreadable in the failing light. He gently tucked himself back into his breeches, his movements slow, almost dazed. Then he reached down, his hands, now surprisingly gentle, pulling her up from the floor and onto the seat beside him. He didn’t let go of her hand. He just held it, his thumb stroking over her knuckles, as they both stared straight ahead at the darkening countryside.
The carriage rolled on, carrying them deeper into the gathering night, into a territory for which there was no map.
The carriage rolled on, carrying them deeper into the gathering night, into a territory for which there was no map. His thumb continued its absent stroke across her knuckles, a fragile bridge over the chasm of what they had just done. The silence wasn’t empty; it was thick with the smell of sex, of damp wool, and of her own scent still on his face.
“We can’t go back,” he said finally, his voice scraped raw. It wasn’t a question.
Evangeline watched a lone farmhouse light blur past the window. “I never could,” she replied, the truth of it colder than the evening air. Her body still hummed, a live wire of aftershocks and shame. “You knew that from the first moment in the garden.”
He released her hand only to push a stray strand of hair behind her ear, his touch surprisingly gentle. “This changes everything, Vanja.” He used her real name, the one she’d whispered to him in a moment of desperate trust weeks ago. It felt like a key turning in a lock.
“It changes nothing,” she countered, but the weakness in her voice betrayed her. “It was just… friction. Release.”
“Don’t lie to me,” he snapped, the gentleness vanishing. “Not now. I felt you. You fucking came on my tongue and then swallowed my spend. That’s not nothing.” The crude words hung in the dark space between them, stripping the act bare.
The carriage slowed, the horses’ gait shifting as they turned onto the long gravel drive of the Richmond country estate. Evangeline straightened her skirts with trembling hands, the fabric crumpled and damp. She could feel his seed, a secret slickness inside her. The looming shadow of the great house, with its myriad windows like watching eyes, felt like a judgement.
They alighted from the carriage without speaking, the crunch of gravel underfoot absurdly loud. A sleepy footman took their modest luggage. The housekeeper, Mrs. Byrd, awaited them in the vast, silent hall, her expression one of polite fatigue. “His Lordship is abed,” she said. “I’ve had the blue room made up for you, Miss Evangeline. And your usual, Master Henry.”
Their rooms, she knew, were on opposite wings of the house. A deliberate geography of separation. Henry merely nodded, his social mask sliding back into place with an ease that chilled her. “Thank you, Mrs. Byrd. We’ll manage.”
They climbed the grand staircase side by side, a parody of propriety. The only sound was the swish of her skirts and the steady tick of a longcase clock counting the seconds they weren’t touching. At the landing where their corridors diverged, he stopped.
He didn’t look at her. He stared straight ahead at the darkened portrait of some stern-faced ancestor. “My room. One hour. The servants are all asleep in the attic.”
Then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the oak-paneled hallway. The command was absolute. She stood frozen, the memory of his taste still on her tongue, the ache between her legs a persistent throb. An hour was a lifetime. An hour was a heartbeat.
She let the maid help her change, feigning exhaustion. The girl’s hands were quick, impersonal, removing the evidence of the journey but not of the sin. Once alone, Evangeline sat before the vanity, staring at her own reflection. The woman there was flushed, her golden-green eyes too bright, her lips still faintly swollen. A stranger wearing a silk robe in a gilded cage.
The clock in the hall chimed the quarter-hour. Her body moved before her mind consented.
The house was a tomb. She moved through the shadows like a ghost, her bare feet silent on the runners. His door was slightly ajar, a sliver of warm firelight cutting across the darkened corridor. She pushed it open and slipped inside.
He was by the fireplace, shirt undone, staring into the flames. A crystal glass of amber liquid dangled from his fingers. He didn’t turn. “Lock it,” he said, his voice low.
She turned the key with a soft click. The sound sealed their fate as surely as any vow.
Finally, he looked at her. The firelight played over the planes of his chest, the same desperate hunger from the carriage burning in his eyes, now tempered by a darker, more deliberate resolve. “You said it was nothing,” he stated.
“I lied.”
He set the glass down. “Show me.”
Her fingers went to the tie of her robe. It loosened, the silk sliding from her shoulders with a whisper to pool at her feet. She stood naked before him, the fire warming her skin, her nipples hardening in the cool air. She saw his jaw clench, saw the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
“On the bed,” he instructed, his tone leaving no room for hesitation.
She moved to the four-poster, the coverlet thick and cold. She lay back, the down mattress swallowing her slightly. He followed, kneeling over her, but he did not touch her. He just looked, his gaze a physical caress that made her skin prickle.
“You are so unbelievably beautiful,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “It’s a fucking agony.”
Then his hands were on her, not rough but infinitely sure. He cupped her breasts, his thumbs brushing over her nipples until she arched off the bed. He bent his head and took one into his mouth, sucking deeply, his tongue circling the peak. A low moan escaped her. She tangled her hands in his hair, holding him to her.
He kissed his way down her body—a trail of fire over her quivering stomach, the dip of her navel. He hooked his hands under her knees and pushed her legs wide, opening her completely to his gaze. “Look at you,” he breathed, his voice thick. “So wet for me. Still wet from the carriage.”
He didn’t use his mouth this time. Instead, he pressed two fingers inside her, stretching her, curling them until she gasped. He worked them in and out, his eyes locked on where they disappeared into her body. “You grip like a vise,” he said, a ragged edge of wonder in his voice. “Think you can take all of me?”
Before she could answer, he withdrew his fingers and shifted his weight. He fisted his own cock, stroking it once, twice, the head swollen and leaking. He positioned himself at her entrance, the pressure immense, promising. “Look at me,” he commanded.
She forced her eyes open, meeting his stormy gaze.
He pushed in.
It was a slow, inexorable invasion, a breathtaking fullness that stole the air from her lungs. He was bigger than his fingers, stretching her perfectly, unbearably. She cried out, a short, sharp sound he swallowed with a kiss as he seated himself to the hilt. They were joined, utterly. He held there, trembling with the effort, letting her adjust to the sensation of being so completely filled.
“Tell me this is nothing,” he challenged against her lips, his breath hot.
“It’s everything,” she gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders.
That broke his control.
He began to move, pulling out almost completely before driving back in with a force that shook the bed. The pace was brutal, punishing, each thrust jolting her up the mattress. The wet, slick sound of their joining filled the room, a filthy counterpoint to their ragged breathing. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, his hips slapping against her thighs.
“You feel that?” he grunted, his rhythm relentless. “That’s me. Inside you. Where I belong.”
She could only nod, her world narrowed to this point of fierce, glorious friction. A coil was tightening deep within her, a pressure building with every plunge of his cock. “Henry, I’m—”
“I know,” he interrupted, his voice strained. “Come on. Come around my cock.”
His words tipped her over. The climax crashed through her, a searing wave that clenched around him, milking him, pulling a guttural shout from his throat. He drove into her once, twice more, then stilled, burying himself deep as his own release pulsed hot inside her.
He collapsed atop her, his weight a welcome anchor. For long minutes, there was only the sound of the fire and their slowing hearts. He rolled off, taking her with him, spooning her against his chest. His arm was a heavy band across her waist, his softening cock still nestled against her.
The silence returned, but it was different now. Softer.
He nuzzled the back of her neck, his lips brushing her skin. “Stay,” he whispered, a plea devoid of command.
Before she could answer, he shifted her again, turning her onto her stomach. His hand smoothed over the curve of her hip. “Again,” he murmured, his voice already thick with renewed desire. He guided her up onto her hands and knees before him.
He entered her from behind in one smooth, deep stroke, making her cry out into the coverlet. This angle was deeper, more primal. He set a ruthless pace, his hands gripping her hips hard. “Ride me back,” he growled. “Take it. Take all of it.”
She pushed back against him, meeting his thrusts, driving him deeper into her. The bedframe knocked against the wall in a steady, urgent rhythm.
SHE RIDES HIM HARD.
She rode him hard, driving her hips back against his with a force that made the tendons in his neck stand out. Each thrust punched the air from his lungs in a grunt, a raw counterpoint to the wet slap of skin meeting skin. The firelight painted their joined shadows, a monstrous, single creature writhing on the wall.
“Fuck,” he hissed, his hands leaving her hips to fist in the tangled gold of her hair. He pulled her head back, arching her spine, and the new angle made her see stars. “Just like that. Use me.”
She did. She used the leverage, slamming herself down onto him, taking him so deep a choked cry ripped from her throat. Her cunt was a slick, aching clamp around his shaft, each movement a brutal friction that tore another piece of her old self away. There was no past, no future, only this piston-drive rhythm and the glorious, degrading fullness.
Her climax came not as a wave but as a seizure, a violent clamping that made his rhythm stutter. She screamed into the coverlet, her body bowing tight. He followed, his own release a hot flood inside her, his hips jerking erratically as he cursed through his teeth, emptying himself with a final, shuddering groan.
They collapsed, a heap of sweat-slick limbs and heaving chests. The room smelled of sex and woodsmoke. He stayed inside her, softening, as their breathing slowly eased from ragged gasps to something human. He turned her onto her side, pulling her back against his chest, his arm a heavy possession around her waist.
“Mother didn’t tell anyone who you are,” he said into the silence, his voice rough but calm. “They assumed you are my sister. You can be a cousin.”
Evangeline went very still. The sweat on her skin turned cold. “Henry,” she said, a warning.
“We marry. On Christmas. I’m writing to Mother tomorrow.”
She twisted in his arms to face him. In the fire’s dying glow, his expression was unreadable, carved from marble and shadow. “Why would she accept?”
A faint, cynical smile touched his lips. “She never thought I would marry. And remain faithful.”
The implication hung between them: he was bargaining with her supposed salvation as his currency. Her modern mind rebelled at the transaction, the cage. Her traitorous body, still humming from his, leaned into his heat. “Will you?” she asked, the words barely a breath.
He kissed her, slow and deep, a vow without words. “Of course I will.”
She broke the kiss, turning her face into the pillow. The reality of the house, the world outside this room, began its insistent press. “I have to go back to my room.”
He sighed, his hand sliding down to rest on the curve of her hip, holding her in place for a moment longer. “Yes,” he conceded, his thumb stroking her skin. “For now.” He kissed her once more, a soft, final brand on her shoulder, before letting her go.
Three days later, the letter arrived.
Evangeline was picking at a plate of kedgeree in the sunlit breakfast room when Henry entered. He carried no newspaper, just a single sheet of cream-laid paper. Without a word, he placed it beside her porcelain cup. The Duchess’s precise, looping script danced before her eyes.
Very well, it read. Make sure she agrees first, and you have my approval. I’ll start organising the wedding as soon as she writes back.
She looked up at him. He was watching her, his face carefully neutral, but a fierce, bright tension crackled in the air between them. The footman by the sideboard was a statue. The clock ticked.
“You are crazy,” she said, her voice flat.
He leaned down, right there in the middle of the room with the footman present, and kissed her. It was not a gentle kiss. It was a claiming, a searing punctuation mark. Her fork clattered onto her plate.
He straightened. “Write to my mother. Agree.”
A hot, defiant anger flushed through her. “You didn’t ask me anything,” she hissed, keeping her voice low. “You brute. You just informed me.”
Henry’s eyes held hers, the blue in them suddenly soft, resolving into something that looked terrifyingly like sincerity. “Tonight,” he said, the word a private promise. “I’m going to ask you tonight.”
And he did.
He didn’t summon her to his room. He came to hers, after the house had settled into its midnight silence. He was dressed as if for dinner, his linen crisp, his hair perfect. In his hands, he held not a ring, but a single, winter-white rose, its petals edged with the faintest pink, stolen from the estate’s frost-laced glasshouse.
“Vanja,” he said, her name a foreign, treasured artifact on his lips in this proper English bedroom. He didn’t kneel. He stood before her, his presence filling the space. “This world is a prison of manners. You are the only real thing in it.”
He stepped closer. “The idea of you with someone else, some titled fool who’ll never understand the fire in you, it makes me want to burn London to the ground.” He offered her the rose. Its scent was faint, a memory of summer. “Marry me. Be my chaos. Be my wife.”
It was romantic.
And it was hot.
The careful speech, the vulnerability in his eyes—it disarmed her completely. When she took the rose, her fingers brushed his, and the simple contact felt more intimate than all their frantic coupling. She brought the blossom to her nose, her gaze locked on his.
“Yes,” she whispered.
The word seemed to break a dam in him. He crossed the space in a stride, his mouth crashing down on hers. This kiss was different. It was not just hunger; it was desperation, relief, a terrifying joy. He walked her backwards until her legs hit the bed, and they fell onto it in a tangle of silk and superfine wool.
He made love to her then, with a devastating slowness that felt like a ceremony. He undressed her as if unwrapping a relic, his mouth following the path of his hands. He worshipped every scar, every curve, with a patience that made her weep. When he finally entered her, it was with a deep, solemn stroke that felt less like fucking and more like a binding. She clung to him, her face wet, her cunt gripping him in rhythmic pulses as he moved, each thrust a silent, perfect answer to a question she’d been afraid to ask.
Afterward, curled against him, she traced the line of his jaw. “Your mother will want a church. A society spectacle.”
He captured her fingers, kissed them. “Let her. They’ll see a cousin from the colonies. They’ll see a reformed rake. They’ll see whatever they need to see.” He turned his head, his eyes finding hers in the dark. “Only we will know I’m marrying a time-lost witch who ruins me for all other women.”
She smiled, a real one, for the first time in days. “On Christmas?”
“On Christmas,” he confirmed, pulling her tighter. “We’ll have a tree. And I’ll give you a gift that isn’t a ring.”
“What?”
“My name. My protection. A key to every lock in this gilded cage.” He paused. “And my fidelity. However you wish to test it.”
Outside, a cold wind rattled the windowpane. Inside, for the first time since she’d woken in this century, Evangeline felt something she thought she’d lost: a future, dangerous and bright, unfurling before her like a forbidden map. She pressed her lips to his shoulder, tasting salt and promise.
“I’ll hold you to that,” she murmured, and meant it.