by Lenora Bell
Teaching her carnal lessons was all he’d been thinking and dreaming about since he first glimpsed her staring at him from the library window.
The hesitation in her voice and the wavering uncertainty in her eyes wrung emotion from some part of him he hadn’t even known existed.
All he longed to do was prove to her that she was the most tempting, most alluring woman he’d ever met.
He closed his eyes for a beat. When he opened them, he’d shoved any qualms as far down in his chest as they would go. She’d said she was in full possession of her faculties. Her words weren’t slurred or her movements erratic.
The lady knew precisely what she was asking.
“You truly don’t know how lovely you are. How desirable.”
He knew how to repair broken things, how to build things to last, shore up support. He couldn’t take away her scarring childhood years. It was all a long time ago.
But he could show her how attractive she was.
“You don’t have to pretend to be someone else. You don’t have to change or hide yourself away.” He dropped to his knees. “You’re you, Beatrice. And you’re perfect.”
He pushed her skirts up her limbs, revealing the sweetest most sensual pink garters he’d ever seen and slim, elegant legs he wanted to wrap around his waist. “You’re not like anyone else and you’re extraordinary.”
He lifted her ankles in turn and untied her boots. “I want you. I’ve wanted you since I first saw you.” He kissed the hard little knot of her anklebone and trailed his lips up her silk stockings.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Ford.”
That was a good start, but he wanted to hear her moan his name, cry out with pleasure.
Her drawers were easily untied and loosened enough to slide to her ankles. He threw them aside.
He placed his hands on her knees and parted her legs, sliding them open. “Do you ever touch yourself, Beatrice?” He slid his fingers along her inner thighs. “Here?”
Her body quivered as she shook her head vehemently. “No. Never.”
“You don’t live in your body. You live here.” He reached up to touch her forehead.
“My body hasn’t always been the safest of places.”
“Do you want me to touch you?”
“Yes,” she whispered, “I want you to show me what that word meant.”
He stroked his hands over her thighs. “If you want me to stop, all you have to do is say so.” He wanted her to know that. He caught her gaze and held it.
She nodded. “I understand. I’m in control.”
“That’s right. You control what I can do to you. I want to kiss you so badly.” He brushed a finger softly over her core. “I want to give you pleasure.”
He kissed his way up her thighs, stopping to revel in the satin and ribbons of her garters.
His prick pulsed against the bed, stiff and swollen, but he wasn’t in any hurry. This wasn’t about him.
He licked the edges of her sex softly, teasing her. She squirmed but she didn’t stop him.
He slid his hands under her bum and squeezed a delicious handful in each palm.
She gave a soft gasp as he spread the lips of her sex with his tongue, licking around the edges only. He waited a few seconds, building the anticipation, before covering her with his lips and flicking his tongue softly, so softly, over her.
Honeysuckle on his tongue. Desire coursing through his veins.
Her hands drifted to rest on his head. He pulled her forward on the bed and hooked her legs over his shoulders until most of her weight rested on him. It would be better for her that way if she didn’t have to support herself, if she could relax and let him do all of the work.
He stilled, listening, ready to stop if she wanted him to stop.
Her fingers dug into his hair, over his scalp, and she opened her thighs wider, guiding his head back into place.
He smiled before resuming his work.
She sighed and quivered beneath his tongue.
This was something he knew how to do. Something he was skilled at. It didn’t matter if they were from different worlds. Here in the firelight, with his head between her thighs, they were perfectly matched.
He was the one who would make her come, give her a climax that would ripple through her body in waves of intense pleasure.
He was the man for the job.
Her thighs trembled and she angled up into his mouth, her hands in his hair, guiding his movements. His Beatrice wasn’t shy. She said what she meant, and she took her pleasure in the way that was best for her.
This yearning was still new to Beatrice, for to feel desire one had to feel desirable. It was human nature to want reciprocity.
She’d wanted Ford since she saw him from her library window. She hadn’t known precisely what she wanted; she hadn’t possessed the vocabulary to express the specifics of her appetites.
This. She’d wanted this.
Sinful and wild, his tongue stroking her, teasing her softly and steadily. Stoking the heat in her belly.
His lips doing things that she couldn’t see, could only feel. His talented hands shaping her, molding her, urging her deeper into abandon.
Her spectacles had fogged over a long time ago. She removed them and placed them on the bedside table.
She ran her hands over his head, his broad shoulders, holding on to those steely muscles.
Holding on as he kept going, as he lapped at her gently.
It didn’t feel invasive, or wrong. It was shocking, of course, but it was also exquisitely right.
Blood rushed to unfamiliar places, time slowed, and pleasure came sharply into focus.
Body asserting control now, responding to the skill of his lips.
She had no doubt that this was an act that humankind had discovered early on and perfected over centuries. Just because her mind had never invented it, because she’d lived a chaste and sheltered life, didn’t make it depraved. She’d thought of kissing mouths, and she’d thought about his tongue inside her mouth, but now his tongue was . . . down there. Beneath her skirts.
Producing the most heavenly sensations.
Would he suffocate under there?
He knew precisely what he was doing. She was in experienced hands.
Her body instinctively knew that pleasure was coming, and soon. A few more soft, languorous swipes of his tongue and . . .
He held her tightly. She held her breath.
The beginning of pleasure, soft notes at first and then louder, more insistent ones, pleasure spilling around and inside her and her inner muscles fluttering.
The sensation was already waiting for her. All she had to do was allow it to take her.
She imagined that she was floating in a warm ocean, the one he’d told her about, the sun lighting a sparkling path down her body from the crown of her head over her throat and belly, between her legs and down to the tips of her toes.
She didn’t want to break the spell, the mellow, sun-dappled feeling in her belly, still warming her.
She listened and what she heard was stillness, the absence of thought, of worry.
No need to define what she was feeling. All she had to do was float, weightless, and allow the pleasure to flood her body until it subsided, and her heartbeat slowed.
He emerged from her skirts.
She was suddenly shy.
“Well?” He wiped his lips with his sleeve. “Did that satisfy your curiosity? It’s done. And done well, I might add.”
“Arrogant rogue.” She laughed shakily. “I’m satisfied.”
“Then my work here is finished.” He smiled teasingly. “I think you’ll sleep well tonight.” He held out his hand.
She didn’t want to leave yet. “There was another word.” She slid closer to him and whispered the word she’d read in his ear.
His face went still.
“Will you teach me that one, as well?” she asked.
She slipped her hand across his chest, over his heart and down the
center of his abdomen.
Feeling brave, she moved lower. She dipped her hands underneath his undergarments and her fingers closed around something long, hard, and cylindrical.
“Got a big tallywhacker, ’ave you?” she asked in a guttural male voice.
He choked on a laugh. “It’s above average.”
“I have nothing to judge you against, that’s all.”
“You’ll have to trust me on this one.”
She did trust him.
She trusted him enough to allow him to see the woman she was becoming. Wilder. More free. A woman who lived inside her body, as well as her mind.
His staff rose to meet her touch, growing harder and thicker with each stroke of her fingers.
“Does he like to be touched?”
He made a strangled noise that Beatrice took for a yes. She circled the head with her fingertips.
His hand closed over hers, guiding her around his stiff length and showing her how to move up and back down.
Soon she had learned the correct method, judging by the quickness of his breathing and the soft moans he made.
They lay side by side on the bed. He reached between her thighs and she parted her legs.
As she stroked him, he touched her in slow, luscious circles.
His lips sought hers in a long, slow kiss. His hand covered hers, gripping more forcefully, showing her that he wanted more pressure. He began to move in her grip, thrusting with urgent movements.
“That feels so good, Beatrice,” he gasped.
She strengthened her grip, matching his movements. He made low noises deep in the back of his throat as he reached his pleasure, bucking into her hand and collapsing against her, the weight of his body pinning her to the bed.
She smiled into his hair.
He lifted his shirt off and wiped his phallus and her hands clean, before covering himself with his undergarments.
“That was amazing. Beatrice, you are . . .”
“Highly distracting to the virile rogue?” she supplied.
“Highly addictive.” He kissed her neck, nipping her with his teeth. She squeaked and he nipped harder, nibbling his way from her throat to her sensitive nipples.
“Ready to learn more new words?” he asked, with a devilish glint in his eyes.
His fingertips brushed over her again. There. And sensation rippled through her belly.
“Again?” she gasped.
“Again,” he commanded, shifting his hand so that his palm covered her mound, rocking gently over her in slow, deliberate circles.
She tensed. “No, I’m . . . not . . . I couldn’t.”
This one was quieter than the other, more of a mellow ripple than a flood of pleasure.
She laughed, delighted by her body. “I had no idea I could do that again. Ford?”
“Yes, Beatrice?”
“If we were stranded together on a desert island, I’d want to do this every day.”
His laugher brushed her ear, soft and low. He kissed her earlobe, then her lips, his tongue slipping inside her mouth.
Tendrils of longing curled inside her again, threatening to burst into blossom, rose petals on her tongue, perfumed by desire.
“You’d spend so much of your time scratching dictionaries onto cave walls that we wouldn’t have time for this,” he finally replied.
“I would make time. Dictionaries aren’t everything. Sometimes life needs to be experienced, instead of written about.”
“You could read aloud to me from your dictionary while I pleasured you,” he suggested wickedly.
“But then you wouldn’t be listening.”
“And you wouldn’t be able to keep reading.”
“Is that a challenge, rogue?”
“It’s a certainty. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d take you up on it.”
“Another time,” she said lightly.
He stopped smiling and flopped to his back beside her.
She’d said the wrong thing. Brought reality into the room with them. There couldn’t be another time.
They weren’t on a desert island. They were in a bed in a house not far from the house where she lived with her mother.
And somewhere, a ship was moving closer, coming to take him away.
Beatrice laid her head against his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat. A few more moments within the circle of his arms.
A few more moments within the walls of this impossible dream.
“I read your diary entry, Beatrice.”
She lifted her head. “My diary?”
“You left a torn-out diary entry in the book you lent me.”
What was he talking about? “I didn’t mean to give you any of my writing.”
“I know. I started reading the page and I knew immediately that you hadn’t meant to give it to me so I stopped. You were describing overhearing your mother’s conversation with the doctor about your inability to form a proper smile because of your palsy.”
“I can’t believe I left that in the book I gave you.” She hid her face from him.
“Beatrice.” He lifted her chin. “Don’t be ashamed. Your words were painful to read but they made me know you better.”
She saw no pity in his eyes, only understanding. If there had been even a hint of pity she would have left his bed immediately.
Instead, she answered a strange inner call to divulge more secrets.
“I remember that night so well. The doctor had been there with his metal instruments, stretching my mouth apart, probing and invasive. He’d prescribed a type of sling to wear around my head, to pull the side of my face into position. It was supposed to train my face to behave more normally. It was humiliating.”
“There wasn’t anything less invasive they could do?”
“It was all useless. My mother lived in a world patched together from false hope and quackery. That night I had a stomachache and I couldn’t find my nurse, and I walked downstairs and my mother and father were arguing. I pressed my ear to the door of the study. My father said that I was a damned cripple. That no one would ever love me.”
He cradled her in his arms, stroking her back lightly with his fingers. She nestled closer to his warmth.
“My mother was sobbing. ‘My poor girl,’ she said, ‘she can’t even smile. How will she ever attract a mate?’ I ran back to my bed. That was the moment that I knew I’d never be the daughter my parents had wanted. I was hurt and angry. I didn’t understand.”
He didn’t say anything. He just stroked her shoulders comfortingly.
“There was one physician that I liked. A kindly older man, very distracted and mumbling, but he suggested a healing exercise that I actually enjoyed. He said that reading aloud from dictionaries might help me with the ability to realize and feel facial movements. I progressed from memorizing dictionaries to wanting to create them. I learned all of these new words and I delighted in using them.”
He kissed the top of her head.
She pressed her cheek against his chest. He was so warm and strong. “I retreated into my mind. It was safer there. My mother couldn’t follow me into my scholarship. I decided that if I couldn’t be whole of body, I’d become mighty of mind. But my intellectual prowess and odd turns of phrase didn’t make me any friends at boarding school. There was one girl, Lady Millicent Granger, who decided I was secretly laughing at all of them and thought myself to be superior. She gave me the nickname Beastly Beatrice.”
“She sounds like the beastly one.”
“After my debut, I swiftly learned to shut my mouth, keep my head bent over a book, and hide behind the potted ferns. I became an expert at disappearing. That’s what I was doing when you met me in Cornwall. Hiding from my mother. Trying to find a moment of peace to be myself.”
He rose onto his elbow. “Look into my eyes, Beatrice. Do you see a reason to hide?”
His eyes were a shadowy blue in the firelight, his gaze steady and focused on her.
She could talk to him about this vulnera
bility. The young girl she’d been, angry and confused. “I’ve developed a tough skin. Nothing bothers me anymore.”
“Your skin doesn’t feel tough to me.” He swept his fingers over her cheek. “It’s soft as the underside of willow bark.”
“I’m on the margins of society and I prefer to stay there. A spinster in my library in Cornwall.”
“I think it would be a shame if you retreated to Cornwall forever, buried by towering stacks of books. Your bright light hidden away.”
“If I’m hiding behind my books, you’re hiding behind your charm. The jokes you make, the way you tease, and flirt and throw bonnets under carriage wheels. All of that posturing and bravado, it can’t possibly be natural all the time. Everyone is sad sometimes, everyone hurts. You’re no exception. And I’m not going to be hiding. I’m going to be free to be as scholarly as I please without fear of ridicule. Being a spinster doesn’t have to mean a miserable existence. I might even take a lover, like Aunt Matilda did.”
He coughed. “Take a lover?”
“A likely candidate might come along. Or I could place an advert in the Village Crier. ‘Bookish spinster seeks fun-loving rogue for amorous adventures. Only highly skilled applicants need apply.’”
“You’re not serious.”
“Why, am I shocking you? Someone like you might climb through my library window one day.”
“Someone like . . . me.”
“Handsome. Roguish. The strong silent type. Someone like you would make a perfect lover. You’d never kiss and tell.”
“Are we talking about your future . . . ? Because it sounds like you might be talking about this bed.”
“And why not? By now you’ve learned that I’m not a conventional thinker. I don’t follow the commonly held belief that a female must protect her virtue at all costs, that her virginity is her most precious possession. It’s a double standard, one that comes at a cost to women. Men are encouraged to be promiscuous while women are taught to be virtuous. How can those two coexist peacefully? It seems to me, and to the other ladies of my society, that this is a dangerous standard to uphold.”
“Lord, protect us from freethinking knitters.”
“What would I be saving my virtue for? I don’t plan to marry. And my friend the Duchess of Ravenwood has an excellent pamphlet detailing how to avoid unwanted conception.”