by Ingrid Hahn
How beautifully they would burn.
…
Giles sketched all the next day, and Miss Emery bore it beautifully. He made studies of her face. Her body. Her open legs. Her full and luxurious quim.
She wasn’t simply a model. She was also a muse, firing him to aim for new heights. He never wanted to stop painting.
Later, she examined his handiwork, silent for a long time as she paged through the sheets. “You start with a few strokes that appear random and end up with something so lifelike.”
“Drawing is little more than the art of seeing. A line here. A mark there. A correction. Another mark. Another correction. A few more lines. A few more corrections.” He waved a hand carelessly through the air. “Et cetera.”
Late in the afternoon, he set down his pencils and made her spread her thighs for him. He ate her sweet quim until she came in his face, then painted some more.
His hands skimmed her upper arms, touching her like she were more precious than gold. “And then tonight, well…tonight I have something for you. Something special. If you’ll allow me.”
“You only have to tell me.”
“Bring the gift I left for you in the carriage.”
Tonight, she would be his canvas.
Around suppertime, he’d sent Miss Emery away to rest. She’d been gone no more than five minutes when two notes arrived. The first was a short message from his mother telling him that she would be accompanying Lady Headly to Bath for a few weeks. His mother went on to inform him—as if it was important he know—that Lady Headly’s knee was paining her again, and only taking the waters ever helped.
The second…the sight of the imperfect hand, with its slightly shaky letters, made Giles tense. He broke the Silverlund seal.
You’ll wish you had heeded me.
Giles crumpled the unwanted message in his fist and tossed the paper into the fire. “Go to hell, Duke.”
It was nearing midnight when Miss Emery returned. The world outside had been cast in pitch, all but swallowed in a starless night, the sky covered in clouds, the waxing crescent moon obscured.
In Giles’s makeshift studio, a few candles glowed. But he’d ordered many more. Dozens. They waited, unlit, until he was ready.
Miss Emery stood silent in the doorway of the solar, eyes enormous. The gown she wore was plain, but the shining silk was ornamentation enough. Perhaps all the more so because no lace or ruffles competed with the simplicity. Their gazes met. Her lips parted.
“You called for me?”
“You brought the gift?” The jewel he’d had the driver leave for her in the carriage, his cock flooding with heat at the mere thought of what he was going to do with it.
She held out her hand, upon which the box rested.
“Good. Come here.” Giles held up a black silk ribbon. “May I?”
“You’re going to blindfold me?” She came as he bade and stood before the fireplace where he’d set up a new workplace. A large, light-brown leather chair with overstuffed arms stood nearby, along with a mirror hidden under a thick swath of dark woolen fabric.
“If you wish it.” He meant it. There was no pleasure in cohesion. Only in giving—and giving freely.
“You’re not going to tell me what you plan to do?”
“No.”
When she looked at him with perfect trust and nodded, he swallowed. When he lifted his hands to obscure her vision with the silk, his fingers actually trembled.
How this beauty inflamed his overwrought lusts. Giles could never get enough of her…and never wanted to.
After tying the silk at the back of her head, he leaned close. “Let me help you out of these clothes.” He took her gently by the wrists. “Lift your arms up. There you are. Perfect.”
Moving languidly so as to experience every exquisite moment, he stripped her bare. He allowed the backs of his fingers to trail over every dip and curve of her skin.
Artful curls had been arranged atop her head, a single ribbon that matched the fabric of her dress banding the crown. He buried his nose in the nape of her neck and inhaled the sweet scent of woman.
Restraining his desire to abandon his plan and take her immediately, he pulled back.
“You’re ready?”
“For whatever comes.”
Eggshells littered the floor by the cluttered table where he’d concocted a special paint. It consisted of egg white, a bit of water, and mica ground as finely as it would go while retaining a gleam. He’d wanted gold dust, but the amount required was too difficult to obtain on short notice, even for him. It was a rare instance of not being able to have whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. But he had Miss Emery now, and that was most important. So he’d improvised.
Normal tempera paint used the yolk of the egg, but not the white. What he’d made for tonight was something entirely new.
Giles stroked the fox hair of his brush. The thick strands were silky under his touch. He lightly ran the dry ends in a twisting and curling pattern down her back to get the feeling of the movement in his hand and wrist before he began in earnest. Miss Emery shivered.
He wanted to learn her. Know her. Pleasure her. Then go beyond everything and into her soul. First, he had to show her his. And this was how he would do it.
Dipping the bristles in the waiting paint, Giles gently wiped the excess on the side of the cup and began. He worked in small strokes, the brush not holding enough of the medium for aught else.
She bore it beautifully, raising her arm when bidden to do so and holding perfectly still while he worked. He started at her shoulder. One ornamental swirl grew from another. Vines curled around one another, and delicate leaves grew spontaneously. All his concentration narrowed to his task. Time dissolved. His eyes assumed a preternatural ability to see detail, with each minute fragment of mica seeming to have a life of its own. Each square inch of Miss Emery’s skin a wonder of nature.
He painted the expanse of her back. Her breasts. Her belly. Each thigh. Strokes wrapping around her as his vision began to appear before him. He slowed at the feet. He was almost done. He painted the last tiny swirls on her littlest toes.
Then he stepped back, letting the brush dangle from his fingertips and fall where it would when he reached a hand over the nearby table to drop it, not caring…not being able to move his eyes from Miss Emery. The wood clanked when the tool fell.
“One last thing, I think.” His voice emerged low. Rough.
He was uncomfortably hard as he moved around the room with a slim taper he used to light the remaining candles. When the room was ablaze, he gently tugged the blindfold from her eyes.
Miss Emery looked down at herself. Her mouth fell open. “It’s…I—I could never have imagined such a thing.”
Giles pulled the drape off the full-length mirror standing by the fire and stood back, silent as she admired herself in the oval surface. The mica shimmered.
She sent him a wary glance. “Am I now your creation?”
There was no hesitation in his answer. “Never.”
Stepping forward, he took her hand, raised it above her head, and twirled her. The curling lines sparkled in the candlelight, as if he’d adorned her in thousands and thousands of tiny specks of diamond dust. “This is all you. I dare claim no credit.”
She softened, staring at herself.
“Turn again.” Miss Emery obeyed his command, her gaze never leaving her reflection. He cocked a half smile and spoke, voice infused with heat. “Now bring me your gift.”
She brought him the box, and he lifted the lid, exposing the enormous gem. “What is it?”
He raised his brows at her. “You haven’t a guess?”
“No.”
“Bend over the chair with your bottom facing me.”
A bit of sunrise pink touched her cheeks, and she glanced again at the item resting in the box he held.
Giles smiled. “Have a guess now, my lovely?”
She looked back over her shoulder. “I’m really not certain.�
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“I think you have a guess.”
She bit her lip and then raised her gaze to his, eyes uncertain. “It’s not big enough for you to fuck me with.”
Such a lovely word from such a pretty mouth. He raised his brows at her. “Oh, but I do intend to fuck you while you wear it.”
Miss Emery made no reply.
Giles ran his free hand over the expanse of her backside, carefully so as not to upset the paint. He slid a finger down the cleavage, closer and closer to her other entrance. Finding the delicate skin of what he sought, he traced a little circle around the tight opening. “You see now?”
She nodded and responded—voice breathy. “I see now.”
He made no more. “I await your command.”
Their gazes locked. “I want everything you could possibly give.”
With the tip against her anus, he pressed gently. The jewel’s anchor slid into her body. Giles’s hands roamed her bare ass, moving over her skin and caressing her with equal parts reverence and possession.
Aroused beyond what even he believed possible, he undid his falls and slipped a finger between the lips of her slick quim. He put a foot between hers and spread her legs wide. Placing his own tip against her, he watched himself slide into her body. When he looked up, the reflection of their joined bodies met his gaze in the mirror.
He took her from behind. One long stroke and then another. Her eyes closed, and her back stretched long as she raised her hips higher in the air, urging him more deeply into her body. Whenever he looked down, the jewel looked back at him, lodged inside her. Nothing but a thin layer of woman separated it from his cock.
Miss Emery was so soft against him. Her flesh waved gently with each slap of his thrusts, and her body fit his with unimaginable perfection, though he was no less huge and no less demanding. She had to stretch to accommodate him, but stretch she did. So tight. And nary a complaint on her lips about his girth. No, indeed—she liked it, didn’t she, wicked young miss that she was.
His paradise, it was her. It was what he’d never known he needed but had been unwittingly searching for his entire life.
And he was going to fuck until the world meant nothing to either of them and their consciousness knew only this. Them. Their nearness, their joining. Pleasure, the most potent and powerful this side of paradise.
Chapter Sixteen
Late that night, Patience turned in her bed, blinking and mentally sorting dream from reality. Some pieces came together while others fell away.
Except for one thing…a noise. Had she dreamed it, or had a loud thump woken her? She squinted at the window. Black. She couldn’t have been asleep more than a few hours, else a hint of color would be infusing the sky.
She lit a candle and gave Ashcroft a gentle touch on the shoulder. “Did you hear something?”
Without stirring, the marquess lifted his eyelids. His head sunk in the large downy pillow, he stared upward, going perfectly still. His pupils narrowed.
When the sound came again—a sound from outside—he pushed from bed in an instant, grabbed his banyan, and hastened from the room.
Throwing on her shift and wrapping a large shawl around her shoulders, Patience dashed out to follow.
…
Giles ran. The faint scent of smoke permeated in the air, but there was an odd note to it. It was neither pure wood smoke nor the product of coal fire. Falling icicles of fear shattered in his heart.
The stones of the bare castle passageways were frigid as the soles of his feet battered the hard surface. So frigid, in fact, it was as if any moment the floor would turn to ice that would twist up his limbs and trap him. But this wasn’t a dream; no such thing could happen.
He burst into the solar. And stopped dead. The entire room had been ransacked. Pots lay broken on the floor, spilling their contents like slain soldiers gutted on a battlefield. Easels lay overturned. Freshly stretched canvases had been slashed.
And all his work…gone.
Hot panic thumbed through his veins, scalding him from the inside out. “Where are my paintings?”
“What happened here? Who would do this?”
Startled, he whirled to face Miss Emery. The candle she held illuminated her face, gone a ghostly white as she perused the room, eyes huge.
Who indeed?
The back of Giles’s neck prickled.
From the windows overlooking the courtyard came a hellish orange glow. He stepped slowly forward, more corpse than man, hollow inside as he went to face whatever fate held. Below, a fire burned.
This was no dream. It was a nightmare burst into life. It could not have been worse had a gleaming steel blade pierced his heart. His paintings were disappearing in an angry blaze.
Before the crackling flames stood a black figure, his back to the windows where behind him Giles and Miss Emery watched. The man in the courtyard was tall and lean, his shoulders hunched just so, like he had one hand atop another on the handle of a walking stick before him. The tails of his coat picked up, curling and snapping in a sudden rush of wind.
The figure turned and caught Giles watching.
The duke. Eyes narrowing on his son, Silverlund smiled.
Chapter Seventeen
A blast of smoke hit Giles in the face when he burst through the doors into the courtyard. He held up his arms to shield himself, eyes watering in the caustic assault. The whim of the wind shifted, changing direction. Free, he stalked toward the pyre.
The canvases curled. The wood frames cracked. The paper had long since turned to ash. The drawings had probably vanished first, erased from existence.
The two hulking manservants who’d been throwing things onto the fire brushed off their hands and came to flank their master. They were large men, all brawn and muscle.
Giles curled his hands by his sides, his muscles tense with an inability to act. Unaccustomed to impotence, his heart beat in his throat, and his stomach turned. He was too late to stop it. It was ruined. All of it. If there had been even the slightest chance of saving his work, he might well have charged into the flames, heedless of the danger, so mad he was to reclaim the earthly vestiges of his soul.
The fire beckoned. He stared, unable to blink. Unable to look away. If he threw himself into the flames, he could be done with it. His shoulders relaxed. He could do it. All he needed to do was fall in and let it take him. He could withstand pain.
In truth, he was there in the fire already. The part of him that mattered. If he went on without his paintings, what would he be? Nothing. A dried husk living in eternal night.
A hand wrapped around his elbow. Startled by the touch, he jerked away, but the hand held firm. He looked down. Painted mica swirls glistened on the fingers, their pretty plumpness so strange and foreign in the ragged and broken moment of his life.
“Miss E—Mrs. Warrington?” The sounds he made were dry as they crackled from the scorched desert of his throat.
“Don’t, my lord.” She shook her head, her eyes stark and her mouth set in a grim line. “You can always paint more.”
He couldn’t answer. Paint more? But they wouldn’t be these paintings. His record of his time, his thoughts, the beauty he painstakingly brought to life from nothing more than powdery pigments mixed with oil. So many times, he’d tossed aside a drawing or painting that wasn’t working. But he relied on having all the traces—even the worst of his work, the remnants he might one day order to be burned after his death. All the failed attempts meant something to the finished whole. They stood as witness to his passion. His thirst for life. A testament to him.
He didn’t always like painting. More often than not, he hated it—whether his slavish need to capture the ineffable or his frustrating inability to do so to the standards he thought he should reach. For every one success, there were at least a thousand failures, very probably many times more, all of them available to be viewed on paper or canvas.
But never—never—not in his darkest moments, no matter how his fallibility and imperfec
tions disgusted him, had he wanted to destroy what he’d created.
Giles caught the duke staring. Weakness evaporated. Maybe it was his vow to live how he wanted to live, his father’s wishes be dammed. Then again, it could well have been the woman by his side. Whatever it was, the tidal force of Giles’s resolve gathered, strong and callous. His jaw set. No, he would not surrender to the flames. He would be damned before he gave the duke that satisfaction.
And there was his mother to consider. The one person in the world whose love for him was as unselfish as it was unwavering. He wouldn’t do that to her. He would endure anything before causing his mother pain. The duke did that well enough on his own. If her son betrayed her…
The thought didn’t bear entertaining.
Giles faced the man who’d fathered him. The duke’s face, pale and calm, stood out from the blackness around him. He slowly lifted his head until his chin was level with the ground. The fire reflected in his eyes, and it seemed as if the force of his anger alone had been enough to spark the first flame.
“Seems I’ve captured your attention, at last.”
“You have no right to be here…” Giles clenched his teeth and spat out the next words. Never let it be said he forgot who or what his father was. “Your Grace.”
“You, Ashcroft, are my heir.”
Stinging drops of rain began falling. The fire sizzled and popped where the water hit the burning materials. Giles wiped a lock of hair from his eyes and stood firm. “That gives you no claim to me.”
“I warned you.”
“So you did. And now it’s done. Be gone.”
“This is but my opening gambit. Don’t think I don’t have more to strip away from you.” As he spoke, he closed the distance between them, his voice low as he spoke with deliberate care. “And whatever you do, don’t think I will stop.”
When Giles was seven, the duke had whipped his bare bottom with a leather strap for spilling pencil shavings on the rug where he’d been lying on his stomach, drawing by the fire on a late-winter evening. When he was two and twenty, Giles—a man full grown—had long been taller than any other man in the county, save old mister what’s-his-name, the blacksmith with a twisted leg. The duke, no longer able to whip his son, had shot Giles’s horse, Icarus, instead.