I recently came across a post in the tag implying that Benedict and Sophie’s first love scene lacked a certain amount of trust and intimacy because of the elaborate camera angles and overhead shots that were used to capture the passion between them. It was an offhand comment that was made in service of another ship, but it still irked me enough to write a long-winded essay about it because of how vulnerable and narratively significant the scene was for both Benedict and Sophie.
That surface-level kind of reading of the sequence is genuinely baffling to me because, of all the sex scenes the show has included, Benophie’s first love scene stood out to me precisely because of how intimate it felt on the first watch and every subsequent rewatch. For all intents and purposes, it was a scene that served as a “first time” for both Sophie AND Benedict, regardless of the latter’s past sexual dalliances. Though Benedict had been deemed a notorious rake by high society, on a fundamental level he is just as inexperienced and unfamiliar with this foreign situation as Sophie—an emotional virgin when it comes to serious, romantic love. This distinction is important because, from the outset, it establishes Benophie as equals in their first sexual encounter, something I find particularly profound within a season that so frequently emphasized the class dynamics and power differential between them.
After baring his soul to Sophie by stripping himself of all his defenses and wholeheartedly committing to a person instead of fleeing from any serious form of attachment, Benedict puts himself in an insecure position of humility/vulnerability as he confesses his abiding love for someone who has remained guarded and reticent about her feelings as a means of self-preservation. He is completely uncertain of whether or not Sophie will reciprocate his feelings, but still he abandons his inhibitions and submits to the risk of giving all of himself to another person. Because of this, he has reached a tipping point and can no longer return to the carefree days of treading “shallow water,” instead plunging himself straight into the deep end by dedicating his entire life and future to loving Sophie. This confession is such a distinct departure from Benedict of the past, who hid behind a mask of casual nonchalance to conceal his fear of loving anyone outside of his family due to the potential losses/sacrifices/responsibilities that such devotion entailed.
During their first love scene, Benedict's earnest vulnerability is manifested in the way he constantly seeks to maintain eye contact with Sophie, so incredibly attuned to her and responsive to her pleasure, so emotionally present even with every change in their positions. Likewise, that same vulnerability is reflected in the way Sophie chooses to relinquish control over her own feelings/impulses and finally lets down her walls, unleashing her desire for Benedict and trusting that he will accommodate her needs and refrain from hurting her. It's the perfect melding of passion AND intimacy because, through all the physical acrobatics and cinematic shots of their *ahem* enthusiastic love-making [hello stamina], Benedict and Sophie’s unspoken, spiritual connection remains unsevered. These are two self-proclaimed outsiders so estranged to the kind of love that comes from being truly seen and understood as people despite their vastly different backgrounds/stations in life...and they cling to each other through it all because of that trust, that bone-deep connection and recognition of their true, unguarded selves as mirror reflections of each other.
The episode ends on that final close up of Benedict and Sophie with their faces pressed tightly together, an incredibly intimate shot that leaves the viewer feeling as if they are intruding on such an intense, private moment between two people; what's on full display is the depth of their love and devotion to each other that unifies them in spite of the many obstacles that seek to divide them—the perfect emotional climax to the episode as both characters fittingly reach their physical climaxes together. Benedict's expression in that particular shot conveys how being with Sophie for the first time has forever changed him, a man reborn. His love for her is transformative, revitalizing, and self-actualizing, "[shooting him] back to life" as it pushes him to live in the moment and reevaluate the lens through which he views the world. It challenges him to embrace the fullest, most authentic version of himself by shedding off that familiar, untouchable facade he once wore so proudly.
If you ask me, it doesn't get any more vulnerable and intimate than that. 🤷🏻♀️
“This work recalls the tragic love of Paolo and Francesca in Dante's Divine Comedy…‘The Kiss’ as an independent sculpture from ‘The Gates,’ however, represents the universal love, apart from the story of Paolo and Francesca. This couple did not burn in the hell fires of carnal love. Instead Rodin used them to symbolize the triumph of pure passionate love.”
"You spent our entire lives claiming the one thing that matters is marrying a love match. For years I did not understand it, nor want it. In fact, I ran from it. And now...now I have found someone I love, more than I could even have thought possible. Someone captivating and maddening and real."
‘ What matters is to be seized by emotion, to love, to hope, to be stirred, to live. ’ [Auguste Rodin]
One last prompt, apologies, but Sophie tending to Benedict. Nothing much aside from foodplay (and since Erikista mentioned this a while back, licking or kissing his scar. Whatever you wish, just make sure the wound gets some affection)
Aside from that. Do whatever you want
Strawberries & Cream
{ The one where Mrs. Crabtree's strawberry jam is not used for its intended purproses. }
TAGS: Newlyweds, Scar Worship, My Cottage, Foodplay, Strawberries and Cream, Breakfast in Bed, Canon Compliant, Post-Season 4, Remembering How They Met (The Second Time), Emotional Intimacy, Kissing the Wound, Soft Smut, Body Worship, Banter, Playful, Explicit
The cream was sweating in its dish.
Mrs. Crabtree had brought the breakfast tray an hour ago, knocking twice and retreating with the studied discretion of a woman who had opinions about newlyweds and the discipline to keep them private. Two trays now sat across the rumpled bed: toast, butter, a pot of strong tea, a jar of Mrs. Crabtree's strawberry preserves, a bowl of strawberries from the garden still cool from the morning dew, and a small porcelain dish of chilled cream that had long since surrendered to the warmth of the bedroom.
Benedict had his tray balanced across his thighs, his back against the headboard, his shirt absent entirely. He was reading a letter from Eloise aloud with the particular relish of a man who enjoyed being insulted by his sister.
"She says," he announced, holding the paper at arm's length, "'I find it deeply suspect that you married a woman of vastly superior intellect and then immediately retreated to the countryside where no one can witness her gradually realising her error.'"
"Eloise is perceptive," Sophie said, dipping a strawberry into the cream.
"Eloise is insufferable. There is a meaningful distinction." He folded the letter, tucked it beneath his pillow, and reached across the gap between their trays to steal the strawberry from Sophie's hand. Bit into it. Cream caught at the corner of his mouth, and he made no effort to address it.
Two weeks married. The fact still landed strangely in Sophie's chest, like a step that turned out to be level ground.
"Give me another," he said.
"You have your own dish."
"Yours are better."
"They are from the same garden, Benedict."
"They taste better from your hand. It is documented." He smiled at her with cream still on his chin, and Sophie leaned across and wiped it with her thumb. He caught her wrist before she could pull back, brought her thumb to his mouth, and licked it clean.
Sophie's breath shifted half a register.
"You have jam as well," he observed, still holding her wrist. His eyes dropped to her index finger, where a smear of preserves had dried. "Allow me."
His mouth closed around her finger with the focused attention of a man who had found something worth being thorough about. Sophie's pulse kicked up beneath his grip on her wrist. He moved to the next finger, slower, his tongue working the jam from the pad with deliberate care.
"That is my hand, not breakfast," Sophie said. Her voice came out less steady than she had planned.
"The two are not mutually exclusive this morning." He kissed the inside of her wrist, directly over the pulse point, and Sophie pulled her hand back before her composure deteriorated further.
"Move the trays," she said.
Benedict's eyebrows rose. He moved the trays.
Sophie shifted across the bed towards him, and Benedict tipped his head back against the headboard with the easy willingness of a man who understood an instruction when delivered with sufficient clarity. She settled against his side, her hand coming to rest flat on his chest, and let her fingers travel down.
The scar sat just above his right hip. A ridge of raised tissue, paler than the surrounding skin, roughly six inches long, the edges slightly irregular where the glass had torn rather than cut cleanly. A year healed and still visible. Still legible, if you knew the language.
Benedict's stomach muscles contracted beneath her fingertip.
He had told her he was fine. That night after she was dismissed by Phillp Cavender, when she had caught the wince as he drove the carriage, the careful way he held his right side, the sharp intake of breath he had tried to swallow. I am fine, Miss Baek. A minor scrape. It is nothing. The rain had come down in sheets, and they had detoured to this cottage, and Sophie had believed him because she had wanted to believe him, because the alternative was frightening in ways she could not afford.
She had found out at two in the morning. The sounds through the wall: thrashing, moaning, the particular wet rasp of a man whose fever had climbed past the point where silence was possible. She had pushed open his door and found him delirious and burning, his naked torso soaked through with sweat, the wound on his flank raw and inflamed and streaked with the red lines of spreading infection. One night of neglect. One night of I am fine whilst poison crept through his blood.
She had stood beside his bed and cleaned it. Pressed compresses to his burning side whilst he thrashed and swore and, once, gripped her hand so hard she lost feeling in her fingers.
That was the night they had met. Not the masquerade. Not the Lady in Silver and the restless second son on a moonlit terrace. That had been a fantasy, a single evening suspended outside the mechanics of real life. The true beginning was here, in this cottage, with Benedict delirious and Sophie terrified and neither of them possessing anything to hide behind.
"Does it still hurt?" she asked.
"No. Not since you saved my life."
Sophie bent and pressed her mouth to the raised edge, just above his hip. The skin was warm, slightly rougher than the surrounding flesh. She felt him inhale, the expansion of his ribs beneath her cheek.
She kissed along the length of it. Slowly. Six inches of healed damage. Benedict's hand came to the back of her head, fingers threading into her loose hair.
"Sophie."
She reached for the dish of cream on the breakfast tray. Dipped her finger and drew a cool white line along the scar. Benedict sucked in a breath through his teeth, the chill a sharp contrast against warm skin.
"That is—"
She bent and licked the cream from the ridge of healed tissue with a single flat stroke, and whatever Benedict had been about to say dissolved into a low, unguarded sound.
"Hold still." She applied more cream, filling the shallow hollow beside his hip bone, and followed it with her tongue. Slow, deliberate strokes. The cream was sweet against the salt of his skin. Benedict's hips shifted beneath her.
"You are going to ruin me with dairy," he said, his voice rough. "That is a profoundly undignified way to go."
"You should have thought of that before you told me you were fine whilst bleeding internally."
"I was not bleeding internally. I was bleeding externally. All over my favourite shirt."
"You were dying."
"I was not dying. I was fevered. There is a spectrum."
Sophie took a strawberry from the bowl, dragged it through the jam, and placed it against his scar. Bit into it. The juice ran in thin red rivulets down his skin, mixing with the residue of cream, and she chased each one with her mouth. Tongue tracing through sweetness and salt and the particular warmth of Benedict's body. He groaned, and the sound was stripped of all clever deflection.
"You are—" His hand tightened in her hair. "Christ, Sophie. You are using breakfast as a weapon."
"I am tending to your wound."
"My wound is healed."
"Then consider this ongoing care." She pressed another strawberry to the scar, bit into it, licked the juice clean. Benedict's cock was hard against her thigh now, pressing through the thin fabric of his drawers, and his breathing had gone shallow and uneven.
"Come up here." His hands found her arms and pulled her upward, and then his mouth was on hers, tasting cream and strawberries and himself, and Sophie settled onto his lap with her thighs bracketing his hips against the headboard. His hands went to her chemise. Over her head. His mouth found her breast, and Sophie's fingers curled against the wood behind him.
She rocked against him through the fabric still separating them, and Benedict made a sound against her skin that she filed away for permanent reference.
"That night," she said, breathless. "When I cleaned your wound. You grabbed my hand."
"I was delirious."
"You said 'stay.'"
"Did I?" His thumb found her nipple. Circled.
"You said 'stay' and you would not release my hand and I stayed until morning." She rocked harder, and the friction was good but not sufficient, and Benedict's teeth grazed her collarbone.
"I remember your hands," he said against her throat. "I remembered the way your hands felt on my skin when you cleaned the wound. Cool and steady and very competent. And I thought: I want those hands on me when I am not dying."
"I thought you said you were not dying."
He laughed, and the vibration of it ran through her body, and she reached between them and freed him from his drawers. Benedict hissed when her fingers wrapped around him, his hips pressing upward into her grip.
"Sophie. If you—"
"Hush." She stroked him slowly, learning the rhythm he wanted, watching his face lose its composure by careful degrees. His head dropped back against the headboard. His jaw went slack. She moved her thumb across the head of his cock and his whole body jerked.
"Inside," he managed. "Please. I need—"
She guided him. Sank down slowly, her hands on his shoulders, the angle steep and deep with the headboard bracing his back. Both of them went still when the geometry resolved.
"Move," he said. "God, please move."
She moved. Benedict's hands gripped her hips, his mouth at her throat. Sophie braced against his shoulders and rode him with the urgency of a woman who had spent a year learning this man's body in increments: first as a wound to tend, then as a landscape to memorise, now as a territory she possessed entirely and intended to inhabit.
His hand slid between them. Found her. Worked her with the attention he gave everything worth understanding, and Sophie's rhythm stuttered, then broke.
"I love you," he said against her neck. The words came out flat and unperformed. Three syllables stripped of all the usual architecture. "In this cottage with a fever and your hands on me. I loved you then. Before I had the sense to call it anything."
Sophie's throat constricted. She pressed her forehead to his and moved faster, and Benedict met her from below, and the headboard knocked once against the wall.
She came with his name between her teeth. Benedict followed, his hands pulling her down hard, his face buried against her shoulder, the sound vibrating through her collarbone.
They sat in the aftermath, breathing unevenly. Sophie's cheek rested against his damp temple. The cream dish had overturned at some point, a slow white pool spreading across the breakfast tray. Strawberries had scattered across the sheets. Morning light still fell warm and gold across the floorboards.
Sophie pressed her mouth to the scar one final time. A light, closed-lip kiss against healed skin.
Benedict's hand covered hers where it rested over the mark.
"Mrs. Crabtree," Sophie said, surveying the devastation, "is going to have questions about the strawberries and cream consumption."
"We shall tell her it was medicinal." Benedict lifted her hand and kissed the strawberry stain on her palm. "We shall tell her my wife has devised a revolutionary diet and we require double the usual supply."
"You are ridiculous."
"You married me."
"I did." Sophie settled against his chest, his heartbeat slowing beneath her ear, the ridge of his scar warm against her hip. "I did marry you."
Benedict's arms tightened around her. The cream continued its slow migration across the tray. And Sophie, sticky with jam and cream and the particular contentment of a woman whose hands had learned a man first through his wounds, pressed closer and let the morning stretch on.
“They picked their way in silence up a steep and gloomy path of darkness. There remained but little more to climb till they would touch earth's surface, when in fear he might again lose her, and anxious for another look at her, he turned his eyes so he could gaze upon her.” [Bk X:1-85 Orpheus and Eurydice, Metamorphoses]
BENOPHIE + Orpheus & Eurydice pt. 2
Benedict’s uncontrollable urge to pick Sophie up and carry her around like his own personal teddy bear needs to be studied…
When your future wife is three apples tall to your 5’11” and you can’t resist the impulse to pick her up and place her on the nearest flat surface at any given moment because how can you not…
That’s his pocket-sized emotional support Sophie 💕
“Another important feature of the motif is the couple’s abstract conjoined form and the faces that shade into each other. This is Munch’s way of underlining that the couple are as one, and the picture is a beautiful expression of belongingness and togetherness between man and woman.”
“It is quite something to spend your entire life feeling like you are somehow out of place, and then to meet someone who understands you before you even say a word. Someone whose singular qualities match your own. Whose kindness makes you feel warm. Who can read your mind from across a whole room.”
"If you let me stay the night, well, I think I might just have to stay forever."
"It is midnight. Must you flee?" "I can stay as long as you like." "I was hoping you might stay forever."
{ After the kiss by the lake, Benedict and Sophie walk the long way back to My Cottage. }
TAGS: My Cottage Era, Post-lake Kiss, Mutual Pining, Walking Home, Banter, The Great Outdoors, Benophie Fluff
She could hear him not looking at her.
It was a particular sound; the scuff of his boots on the gravel path a measured six feet behind her, the rustle of his still-damp shirt against his skin, and beneath both, a silence so carefully maintained it practically hummed. Sophie kept her eyes fixed on the path ahead. The afternoon sun was warm on the back of her neck. Her lips were swollen. She could still taste lake water and elderflower.
She turned around.
Benedict's gaze snapped to a hedgerow with the speed and precision of a man who had absolutely, categorically not been staring at the back of her neck. He studied the hedge with the intense botanical fascination of someone who had just discovered an entirely new species of shrub. The corner of his mouth was doing something he could not seem to control.
"You are following me," Sophie said.
"I am walking to My Cottage."
"You are walking to My Cottage six paces behind me."
"It is My Cottage. I am permitted to approach it from any distance I choose." He gestured magnanimously at the path. "You, however, appear to be leading a procession to which I was not invited."
"I am returning from my walk."
"Your walk to the lake where you were certainly not spying."
"I was not spying."
"Of course not. You were conducting a hydrological survey."
She turned back to the path and walked faster. His footsteps quickened to match, maintaining the precise six-foot gap. She slowed. He slowed. She sped up. He sped up. The rhythm of it was absurd, a walking minuet performed by two people pretending they were not dancing.
The tree root caught her square across the toe of her boot.
Sophie pitched forward with a graceless lurch. The ground tilted. She had time to think, very clearly, this is how I die, not from Araminta's cruelty but from a tree root in Wiltshire, and then his hand closed around her elbow and pulled.
She spun into his chest. His other arm came around her waist, steadying her, and for a lurching, breathless second she was pressed against the full length of him; the damp linen, the warmth beneath it, the steady thud of his heartbeat under her palm. His face was inches from hers. A drop of lake water slid from his hair and landed on her collarbone.
"Careful," he said, and his voice was low and slightly rough, and his arm was still around her waist, and his eyes had dropped to her mouth.
"Thank you," she managed.
Neither of them moved.
A wood pigeon erupted from a nearby oak with a clatter of wings, and they sprang apart as though the bird had fired a pistol.
Sophie smoothed her skirt. Benedict cleared his throat and examined the offending tree root with murderous intent. They resumed walking. The six-foot gap had shrunk to three.
The path narrowed where the willows thickened, and a low branch hung directly across it, heavy with late-summer leaves. Benedict reached up and caught it, holding it above his head. The gesture created an archway she would have to pass beneath, directly under the span of his arm.
She ducked under. The branch forced her close. Her shoulder brushed his chest. The scent of him filled her senses; lake water and sandalwood and linseed oil and warm, clean skin. She paused, half-bent beneath his arm, and looked up.
He was looking down at her mouth.
The world contracted to the space between them; the warmth of his body, the slow rise and fall of his breathing, the faint tremor in the arm holding the branch. His lips parted. She felt herself tilt toward him, a fraction of an inch, drawn by something that operated entirely below the level of conscious thought.
She ducked away with a breathless laugh that sounded nothing like composure.
Benedict released the branch. It snapped back into place behind them. He exhaled through his nose with the careful deliberation of a man counting to ten.
They walked on. The cottage chimney appeared above the tree line. Sophie quickened her pace, feeling the ridiculous, giddy pull of a game she could not name; three quick steps, then a deliberately languid slowing. Behind her, his rhythm matched and mirrored. Quick, quick, slow. Quick, quick, slow. A pattern emerging without either of them acknowledging it.
She bit the inside of her cheek. A giggle escaped anyway; small, traitorous, completely undignified.
Behind her, Benedict laughed. Not his usual laugh, the practised, charming one deployed for drawing rooms and dinner parties. This was startled, helpless, bright as the sun on the lake. The sound of it landed somewhere behind her sternum and stayed.
Sophie reached the garden gate first. She lifted the latch, slipped through, and crossed the garden path in quick, light steps, her boots crunching on the gravel. She made it through the cottage door, pressed her back against the entry wall, and clamped both hands over her mouth.
The smile beneath her fingers was so wide it ached. Her cheeks burned. Her pulse was doing something entirely unreasonable. She stood there in the dim hall with her eyes squeezed shut and her shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter, and she felt, for the first time in longer than she could remember, like a girl. Not a maid. Not a servant. Not a former earl's illegitimate daughter navigating the ruins of a life she had been denied. Just a girl who had been kissed by a boy near a lake and could not stop smiling about it.
"Miss Baek."
Sophie's eyes flew open.
Mrs. Crabtree stood in the main sitting room, a cleaning rag folded over one arm, her expression arranged into the configuration of a woman who had already deduced everything she needed to know from the flush on Sophie's cheeks and the grass stains on her hem. Her gaze moved from Sophie's swollen lips to her disordered hair to her hands still pressed against her mouth.
Sophie lowered her hands. "Mrs. Crabtree. I was just–"
The front door swung open behind her.
Benedict strode in with the buoyant, loose-limbed energy of a man who had recently done something magnificent and was failing spectacularly to conceal it. His damp shirt was still unbuttoned at the collar. His hair was drying in unruly waves. He was grinning.
"Sublime day in the country, is it not, Mrs. Crabtree?" he announced, breezing past Sophie with a jauntiness that would have been convincing had his ears not been bright pink. "Truly. Exceptional. The air. The light. The– the lake. Remarkable lake."
He disappeared up the stairs two at a time, whistling something tuneless and slightly manic.
Mrs. Crabtree looked at Sophie. Sophie looked at Mrs. Crabtree. The rag was folded with slow, ominous precision.
"The lake," Mrs. Crabtree repeated flatly.
"I should go and— change," Sophie said, and fled up the stairs before the housekeeper could respond, pressing her knuckles against her mouth to trap the laughter that threatened to spill out of her like water from a cracked jug.
Behind her, Mrs. Crabtree's sigh carried the full, exhausted weight of a woman who had not been paid nearly enough for any of this.
Bridgerton The Office 4x05 // "So it becomes suddenly like a...like a workplace romance." — Luke Thompson
Benedict "I'll date her so hard she becomes my wife" Bridgerton
“Do you want me to stop dating your maid? Is that how we’re gonna get past this? Because I will.” “YES.” “Well…that is not gonna happen!” “Then why’d you even offer?” “Because I assumed that you want me to be happy!”
“Sophie and I are like Romeo and Juliet, and this society is like the dragon that kept them apart.”
“The composition features a couple standing beneath an archway, symbolizing the threshold of their new life together. The figures are depicted in a tender embrace, with the man’s protective gesture and the woman’s serene expression conveying mutual affection and commitment.”
“But when do you stop to think about me?” “Every moment of every day. There is not a single moment you do not fill my mind…The thought of spending a single day without you torments my soul.”
“It is time now to look toward the future, whatever it may bring.” [3.08 “Into the Light”]
"I could not look twice at anyone else…You’re the person I’ve been searching for all my life. I love you. I love you. I love you." [4.05 “Yes or No”]
Omg the last one was EXCELLENT. If you wouldn’t mind another request, mayhaps a blow job? (Turnabout is fair play)
Thank you! Here I am, back with the smut. 😈
The Lake at Dawn
{ A territorial dispute over the property of My Cottage escalates into a feral morning chase, ending with Sophie on her knees }
TAGS: Owner x Thief, Property Sabotage, Trespassing, Causing Mischief, Regency Era, Chasing in the Woods, Class Difference, Forbidden, On Your Knees, Praise Kink, Good Girl, Blowjob, Throat Fucking, Eye Contact, Touching Herself, Swallowing, Explicit Sexual Content
The fence post splintered under Sophie's axe with satisfying finality. Three clean strikes and it toppled into the wildflowers bordering the north pasture, the fourth section of Mr. Bridgerton's property line she had systematically destroyed over the past fortnight. The wood smelled of sap and morning dew, and Sophie allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction before shouldering her axe and moving towards the tree line.
She had perhaps five minutes before he noticed.
The forest smelled of loam and crushed bracken underfoot. Sophie moved quickly through the familiar paths, her boots making soft sounds against the carpet of last autumn's leaves. Behind her, distantly, she heard a door slam open.
"Thief!"
His voice carried through the trees, furious and something else beneath it. Something that made her pulse kick up despite herself. She quickened her pace, pushing deeper into the woods, heading for the lake where the morning mist still hung thick over the water.
Footsteps crashed through the undergrowth behind her. Close. Too close. Sophie broke into a run, her skirts catching on brambles, the axe heavy against her shoulder. The lake appeared through the trees, silver and still in the early light.
She had just reached the shore when Mr. Bridgerton caught her.
His hand closed around her wrist, spinning her to face him. He was breathing hard, shirt unlaced and hastily tucked into his breeches, dark hair wild from sleep. His seaglass eyes blazed with fury and something sharper, something that made Sophie's stomach clench with want.
"Four fence posts," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "In two weeks. Do you have any idea how much time I have spent repairing the damage you caused?"
"Then perhaps you should consider selling the property to someone who will not let it fall to ruin," Sophie said coolly, though her heart was hammering against her ribs. "The fences were barely standing when you moved into My Cottage. I am simply expediting the inevitable."
"You are sabotaging my repairs out of sheer bloody-mindedness." Benedict's grip on her wrist tightened. "Because you cannot stand that I own something you believe should belong to you."
"It should belong to me." Sophie lifted her chin. "My mother worked this land for twenty years. I was born in that cottage. You are a gentleman playing at country living whilst I am stealing what I can to keep myself fed."
"You are destroying my property to force my attention." His free hand came up to grip her jaw, tilting her face towards his. "You want me to notice you. To chase you through the woods like some damnable game."
Sophie's breath caught. "I want nothing from you."
"Liar." Benedict's thumb brushed across her lower lip. "You have been making yourself a nuisance for weeks. Tearing down fences, frightening my horses, leaving cryptic notes pinned to my door. You are not subtle, Sophie."
"Perhaps I simply enjoy vexing you."
"Perhaps you enjoy what happens when you vex me." His mouth was inches from hers now, his breath warm against her skin. "When I catch you and remind you exactly who owns this property. Who owns you, when you permit it."
Heat flooded Sophie's body. She should pull away. Should maintain her pride and her anger and the careful distance they were meant to observe. Instead she found herself swaying closer, her free hand coming up to fist in his linen shirt.
"I permit nothing," she whispered.
"Then walk away." Benedict released her wrist, his hand dropping to his side. "Go. I shall not follow."
Sophie did not move.
Benedict's smile was slow and wicked. "On your knees."
"I am not your servant."
"No. You are a thief who tears into my property and steals my attention and then pretends she does not want exactly what I am offering." His hand slid into her hair, fingers tangling in the loose plait. "On your knees, Sophie. Unless you wish to walk away."
Sophie's knees hit the damp earth before conscious thought caught up. The position should have felt humiliating. Instead it felt like power, kneeling before him whilst he looked down at her with hunger barely leashed.
"Good girl," Benedict murmured. His free hand went to the fall of his breeches, working the buttons with practiced efficiency. "You wanted my attention? You have it. Entirely."
Sophie's mouth went dry as he freed himself, his cock already hard and flushed. He gripped it loosely, stroking once whilst watching her face.
"Open," he said softly.
Sophie obeyed, parting her lips, and Benedict groaned as he fed himself past them. The taste, the warmth, the heaviness of him flooding her senses as he pushed deeper. Sophie relaxed her throat, taking him as far as she could, and his hand tightened in her hair.
"God. Sophie. Your mouth." He began to move, shallow thrusts that let her breathe between each stroke. "Look at me. I want to see you."
Sophie lifted her gaze, met his eyes. The intensity there made something clench low in her belly. She could feel herself growing wet, her body responding to the weight of him on her tongue, the rough sounds he made as she worked him deeper.
"Touch yourself," Benedict commanded. "I want you to come whilst you take me. Can you do that for me?"
Sophie's hand moved beneath her skirts without hesitation, finding herself slick and ready. She circled that small bundle of nerves whilst Benedict watched, his breathing gone ragged, his hips moving faster.
"That is it. Good girl. My good girl." His voice had gone rough, breaking on the words. "You take me so well. So bloody perfect on your knees for me."
Sophie moaned around him, the vibration making Benedict curse. Her fingers moved faster, chasing the building pressure whilst he thrust deeper, the head of his cock hitting the back of her throat. Tears pricked her eyes but she did not pull away, did not break eye contact, and Benedict's control shattered.
"Sophie. I am going to..." He tried to pull back but Sophie gripped his hip, holding him in place, and Benedict groaned her name as he spilled down her throat. Sophie swallowed, taking everything he gave whilst her own release crashed over her, her body shaking with it.
Benedict pulled free gently, dropping to his knees beside her. His hands framed her face, tilting it up, and he kissed her with desperate intensity. Tasting himself on her tongue, licking into her mouth like he could consume her entirely.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, Sophie felt something shift in her chest. This game they were playing had rules she no longer understood. Boundaries that kept dissolving.
"I am forever your property," she said quietly. Not a confession. A statement of fact.
Benedict's expression went soft. "You are not my property. You are..." He seemed to search for words. "You are mine. By choice. As I am yours."
Sophie's throat tightened. She wanted to argue. To maintain the fiction that this was merely physical, merely a way to pass time in the isolation of the countryside. But looking at Benedict's face, seeing her own want reflected there, she could not manage the lie.
"Let us meet at the lake tomorrow," she said instead. "At dawn."
"Another fence post to destroy?" Benedict asked, but he was smiling.
"Perhaps. Or perhaps I simply wish to see you."
"Then I shall be here." He stood, offering his hand to pull her up. "Every dawn. For as long as you will come to me."
Sophie took his hand, let him help her stand, and did not release his fingers when she was upright. They stood together at the lake's edge whilst the sun climbed higher, burning away the mist, revealing the clear water beneath.
She would return tomorrow. And the day after. And every day until this chase between them burned itself out or transformed into something neither could run away from.
Sophie suspected it might already be too late for running away.
HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC — “In Bed: The Kiss” (1892)
“The painting is admired for its ability to render a deep connection between the couple, who appear oblivious to their painter, and impervious to the judgments that might be cast upon them by their society if their relationship were exposed. They seem utterly absorbed in one another, and the viewer has the sense that in the instant captured by Toulouse-Lautrec, they have no concerns besides the moment they are sharing together.”
"I cannot love a maid. I cannot be with a maid. I cannot think of a maid every waking hour, longing for a life with her, and yet...you have taken possession of me. Shot me back to life. Turned me from someone who could not sit still for a moment to one who wishes to be in one single place: beside you, for as long as I might live...You're the person I've been searching for all my life. I love you. I love you. I love you."
‘ Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly that you feel you could die of it. ’ [Toulouse-Lautrec]
Mrs. Wilson specifically appointing Footman John as the designated cockblocker for Benophie is so fucking funny to me…
Because his one and only job was to “keep watch and ensure the both of [them] kept to [their] separate rooms” after Benedict was publicly accused of being “seduced” by Sophie (i.e. keep them out of horny jail)…
…and meanwhile the night ended with Benophie in a bathtub.
