His hand closed gently around her breast, though his breathing did not change. Anna closed her eyes and let the pleasure of that single, soft caress drift through her body. He did it again, and she sighed audibly. A few moments later, his thumb brushed over her nipple, then again.
Take your time, he’d said.
As the earl’s hands began to wander—up and down her back, over her buttocks, back to her breasts—she thought over their last encounter in this very bed. She’d lain still, feigning sleep then, too.
What a waste of a night, she thought on a sigh.
“You are awake,” the earl murmured, his lips closing over her earlobe.
“I am,” Anna said as Westhaven’s mouth sent slow ripples of awareness through her body. “But without motivation to get up and seize the remainder of the day.”
“There will be no getting up,” he remonstrated, his hand sliding between her legs. “And the only thing you’ll be seizing is me or the pleasure I owe you.”
Anna tried to peer over her shoulder at him.
“You owe me nothing.”
“Ah, but I do,” he said, nudging her onto her stomach. “And a gentleman always pays his debts.”
Anna didn’t typically sleep on her stomach and found the position mildly disconcerting. She couldn’t see him, could feel only his hand stroking down her back, over her buttocks, back up again.
“Relax, Anna.” He kissed her nape. “This will take a while. Let your legs fall open, and just enjoy.”
She closed her eyes and felt the caress of his hand dancing over her like the breeze, but better. He knew where to touch, how much pressure to use, when to tease, and when to gratify. His fingers explored her sex from behind then drifted away to trace the long muscles on either side of her spine. He caressed her buttocks with slow, almost pensive attention to the tension in the muscles there then pressed another series of kisses to her nape and shoulders.
She shouldn’t let him, she thought… Whole afternoons, but not for them. This was their afternoon, their only afternoon, and then she’d be gone, betraying all the trust he showed her, taking his respect for her and tossing it back in his face.
“On to your back, sweetheart,” Westhaven whispered in her ear. When she lazily complied, he started all over again, the same stroking and studying and teasing, but this time his attention wandered from her breasts to her face, to her sex, to her neck and shoulders, and back her breasts.
“Spread your legs for me,” he coaxed, but when Anna did, he remained content to tease at her breasts with his fingers. Only gradually did he let his hand drift down in slow, smooth sweeps, then to rest over her sex. He turned his body, and though she didn’t open her eyes, Anna felt him crouching over her, his mouth settling contentedly over a nipple.
He was tormenting her, she thought sluggishly, creating such a blend of languor and arousal she couldn’t fight either. Why would she want to? His mouth drew on her, and she sifted her fingers through his hair, emotion tangling with the erotic lassitude he created. Precious, she thought. These moments, this man, these sensations… all precious.
He paused and moved lower, resting his face against her abdomen before levering up and reaching for a spare pillow.
“Hips up,” he directed, tucking the pillow under her. “You’ll see why soon enough.” And then he was nuzzling at her belly, nipping at the underside of her breast, and stroking the insides of her thighs.
“Your job,” he said, moving yet lower still, “is simply to enjoy. You can tell me to stop, but I might have trouble hearing you, as I intend to be enjoying myself, as well.” His words floated into Anna’s awareness and floated right back out again. She was nearly asleep, so relaxed had she become.
But not quite asleep, as the earl’s caresses had also created a low, buzzing arousal throughout her body. Her breasts wanted his mouth and his fingers, her buttocks wanted that same hand, and her sex wanted all of him. If he’d asked, she’d have consented to join with him, so finely drawn was she between arousal, regret, and lassitude.
He moved to kiss her spread thighs, and Anna knew a fleeting self-consciousness. He was going to look at her, to see in the broad light of day the parts of her she hadn’t seen herself.
“You are beautiful,” he said, as if reading her mind, “and luscious.”
The next sensation, as his mouth settled over her, was indescribable. It took the sweet, tender, languorous arousal of all his previous caresses and let it congeal where he drew on her. He was gentle at first, just hinting at what pleasures he could bring her. He’d suckle at her for a moment then use his tongue to lap at her folds, to paint her sex with pleasure.
But then he was back, applying just a little more pressure, and a soft groan escaped Anna’s throat.
“Move if you want to,” he urged, wrapping an arm around her thigh to anchor her. “Move against me, and you’ll feel better.”
Tentatively, she rocked her hips, a long, slow roll of her body that eased her ache and made it worse. She moved again, setting up a rhythm, working with him to craft her pleasure. It went on like that, minute after minute of bliss edged with longing, then longing coalescing into need.
“Westhaven?” If a man didn’t come in a woman’s mouth, was a woman permitted to find her pleasure with a man’s mouth? She wanted to ask him, but her mind was too far gone with pleasure.
“Touch your breasts, sweetheart,” he murmured. “You’ll feel better. Like this.” He reached up one long arm and gently pinched at her nipple. He fished for her hand, closed it around her own nipple, and used his fingers to close her grasp on herself.
It wasn’t the same as his caresses, but he kept his hand resting over hers, and so there was part of him in the sensations she evoked. When her own hand went still, the better for her to focus on his busy mouth, he closed his fingers again in gentle reminder.
“Westhaven,” Anna rasped, stop, she wanted to say, but the word would not come to her lips. The feelings he aroused, the physical sensations… they were building, an inexorable welling of pleasure was advancing toward her, but—God help her—not fast enough.
“This will help,” he said, and Anna felt him ease a finger shallowly into her body. He was careful, tentative, unwilling to advance beyond a certain point, but it helped focus her frustration. She clamped her muscles around that finger and felt him pause.
“You lovely, naughty girl,” he whispered, adding a second finger—but not deep enough. He shifted the angle of his shoulders and took her in his mouth again.
“Please, Westhaven, please…”
She rocked up against his mouth, wanting, wanting, wanting until she would have begged had speech not been beyond her. She begged with her body, with her hands in his hair, with the soft whimpers that escaped her.
Her body began to hum with impending pleasure, to rise and vibrate and sing with it, until it burst through her, finally—fast enough, hard enough, deep enough, and with his mouth and hands and will, he made it last long enough, pushing her onward ruthlessly when she would have accepted just a taste of pleasure, until she was moaning and undulating helplessly against his mouth.
“Westhaven.” She ruffled his hair and said it again, her voice soft with the surfeit of pleasure he’d brought her.
“I’m here,” he murmured, his face against her belly.
“Cover me,” she said, and he reached for the sheets.
“No.” She tugged at his scalp. “You, cover me. Please.”
It was an odd request, but he rose up on all fours, crouched over her, and lowered his chest to hers.
“All of you,” she said, eyes closed, hands drifting over his shoulders and back.
So he settled between her legs, giving her his weight, his erection resting snugly on her belly. When she sighed in contentment, he tucked her crown under his chin and matched his breathing to hers.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For all of it, but this, too. Thank you.”
Twelve
“I can hear y
ou thinking,” Westhaven rumbled above her moments later.
“What you did,” Anna said, too closely wrapped for him to see her face. “Is that…?”
“Is it what?” he smiled, in charity with all of creation. “Legal? Yes, unlike some other intimate pleasures. Is it biblical, absolutely not. Is it what?”
“Is it something you did with your mistress?”
“Ye gods, Anna.” He levered up on his arms and frowned down at her. “What is this fascination you have with a woman you’ve never met?”
“Not with her.” Anna met his gaze, her face crimson. “With you. Is that something men like to do—or you like to do?” A slightly different and more acceptable question, he decided, snuggling back down.
“As a young man,” he said, brushing her hair off her forehead, “it’s something you want to experience, as it’s wicked and forbidden and said to delight those women willing to allow it. But no, I’ve not offered this to another. There is a whole invisible community of women whose job it is to educate university boys and I put them through their paces and they put me through mine, but not in this regard.”
“So you enjoyed it?”
“What I enjoyed,” he said, smiling at her, “was bringing you pleasure and learning your responses and feeling close to you when you let yourself go. Some women, Anna, go their whole lives without experiencing passion the way you do. You are lovely, and so, yes, I most assuredly enjoyed doing that with you.”
She was blessedly silent while Westhaven anticipated her next outrageous, blushing question.
“I enjoy it, too,” she said, “having you find your pleasure in my mouth. It is… intimate.”
“There is trust involved,” he replied, thinking about it for the first time in years. “On both sides.” She nodded under him and closed her eyes.
You do trust me, he wanted to point out. Maybe not completely, but you do. He wanted her to admit it, to him, if not to herself, but wasn’t willing to breach that intimacy she’d alluded to. Rather than start a lecture, Westhaven began kissing her, his mood still slow and relaxed.
“Would you like me to…?” she began. He stopped the question by covering her mouth with his then drew back.
“I’ll do the work, such as it is,” he said. “You relax. We don’t want to make you sore.”
He rocked against her, their bodies snugged tightly together. She was learning the way his body moved when it sought pleasure and subtly undulated with him. When she tilted her hips just a little, sealing them even more closely together, he buried his face against her neck.
In a very few moments, he felt his pleasure welling up, a thick, hot current radiating up his spine and out through his extremities. He didn’t fight it, didn’t hold back, but pulsed against her hard for a half-dozen thrusts, and then went still on a long, fraught sigh against her neck.
“God, Anna.” He lifted himself off of her. “You utterly undo me.” He walked naked across the room to his jacket, extracted a handkerchief, and used the water in the pitcher on the nightstand to wet it. He swabbed at himself thoroughly, rinsed the handkerchief in the basin, and wrung it out. He then sat at her hip, washed his seed off her body, and raised his gaze to hers.
“I am fond of you,” he said, “and maybe more than that. If you are in trouble, Anna, I wish you’d let me help you.”
“You can’t help,” she said, her expression unreadable.
He said nothing but climbed into bed beside her and lay back, his hands laced under his head. He should not have made that admission—fond of her, for God’s sake—what woman wants to hear that? He was fond of Elise, fond of Rose’s pony, George. It was as good as saying he did not love her, which he feared might not be true.
That is to say… He shied off that fence and turned his mind to Anna’s virtual admission she was in trouble. That was progress, he decided. From bearing confidences, to being in trouble. Dev had been right, and it meant Westhaven had to take a little more seriously Anna’s threats to leave him. What kind of trouble would a young, pretty, gently reared housekeeper have?
She had a brother, he recalled. It was a brother’s job to protect a sister, so where was that worthy soul now that Anna needed him? But even a brother had no rights where a husband was concerned.
“Please assure me,” he said, glancing over at her, “you have no living husband.”
“I have no living husband,” Anna recited. But this time, the earl was paying attention, and he raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“That is the truth,” Anna remonstrated. “We are merely fornicating, not committing adultery.”
He cracked a dry smile. “My dear, we are not even fornicating.”
“Not yet.” She offered him the same smile back.
“Are you a convicted felon?” he asked, puzzling over it.
“I am not charged with anything that I know of,” Anna said, “but you can cease the interrogation, Westhaven. I am fond of you, too.”
She sat up, hugging her knees, and Westhaven had the sense she was fighting back tears. Surely there was no more damning testament to a man’s seductions than that they left a woman in tears? He reached out and stroked his hand over her elegant spine.
“You are fond of me, but you are leaving me anyway.” She nodded once, her back to him, and he felt her heart breaking. With gentle force, he dragged her back into his arms and held her while she cried.
When the hamper had been repacked, Anna stood beside the earl in the stables, waiting for Pericles to be harnessed to the gig.
“Penny for them,” the earl said softly. He was standing just a hair too close to her, but there was nobody save the young stable hand to see, and much to Westhaven’s pleasure, Anna let herself drift back against him.
“It is lovely here,” Anna said. “You are to be commended for taking such care with a sister’s welfare.”
He heard the wistful, almost despairing note in her voice, and knew with absolute conviction Anna Seaton’s brother had somehow disappointed her or played her false. His mind turned back to those ideas, the ones he’d been formulating earlier about how to uncover Anna’s troubles and assist her with them.
“I love my sisters. As any brother should love a sister.”
“They don’t all—brothers, that is,” Anna said, stepping away from him. “Some of them love their gold more or their drink or their flashy Town habits. Being a sister is sometimes not much more of a bargain than being a wife.”
“You simply have to choose the right brother”—Westhaven smiled at her gently—“or the right husband. I have enjoyed our time here, Anna. I hope you did, as well.”
“Even when I cried,” she said, a world of resignation in her tone, “I was glad to be here with you, Westhaven. Believe that, if you believe nothing else of me.”
He handed her into the gig, puzzling over that comment. They were halfway back to Town, Anna tucked shamelessly close to him even in the heat, before his brain woke from its stupor.
What she had meant was: Even when I cried because I must leave you, I was glad to be here with you… Believe that if you believe nothing else of me when I find the courage to finally go.
The hot, lovely day suddenly became ominous, and where Anna wasn’t touching him, he was chilled.
Morgan stood beside Val when they’d left Viscount Fairly’s townhouse and listened. Fairly had worked a miracle, gently and thoroughly cleaning her ears, explaining that she had scar tissue complicating the natural process and her hearing would always be impaired. She thought he was daft, as she heard everything.
“It’s loud,” she said wonderingly. “But sweet, too. Like your music. The sounds all go together to say something.”
“Let’s walk home through the park,” Val suggested, offering his arm. “You can hear birds singing, hear the water in the Serpentine, hear the children playing… I never realized how happy the park sounds.”
“There’s so much…” Morgan took a deep breath and fell in step beside him. “I would never go anywhere I
didn’t know well, because I could not stop to ask directions. I was confined to those places Anna would take me or that someone else would escort me to. I could not get lost; I could not need assistance.”
“That has changed. You may get lost several times a day, just to hear people give you directions. Are your ears hurting?”
“They are…” Morgan frowned. “Not hurting from the viscount’s treatment but throbbing, it feels like, with sounds. I’m pleased beyond telling to hear your voice, Lord Valentine.”
“Val,” he said easily. “I’d like to hear you say my name.”
“Valentine Windham.” Morgan smiled at him. “Musician and friend to hard-of-hearing chambermaids.”
“Did you ask Fairly if the cure is temporary?”
“It is. If I don’t look after my ears, they can get into the same state, particularly if I let quacks poke at me and bring me more infections and bleeding and scarring. He gave me an ear syringe and his card, should I have questions. However did you meet such a man?”
“Mutual friends,” Val said. “The circumstances were not particularly sanguine.”
“This involves your papa’s meddling?”
“Nanny Fran’s been talking again.” Val rolled his eyes. “She talks all the time. I got much faster at figuring out what is spoken by watching the speaker’s lips around her, and when people don’t think you can hear, they often say things you ought not to overhear.”
“What sorts of things?” Val asked, noticing Morgan’s voice was already increasing in range of pitch, taking on the intonations and inflections of a woman who could hear.
“Footmen are a bawdy lot,” Morgan said. “Nanny Fran and Cook are just as bad.”
“Has anyone been talking out of turn to His Grace?”
“Not that I know of.” Morgan frowned. “Mostly, the staff are very loyal to the earl, as he provided employment when His Grace was letting junior staff go, to hear them tell it. And I can.” Morgan sighed and hung a little on his arm. “I can hear them tell it. I will be on my knees for a long time tonight and every night. I wonder if I will sing again someday?”
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