Any other person, man or woman, would have splintered long ago, and yet she stood before him resolute in her strength and convictions. “Thank you, Gertrude.”
Gertrude drew his hands close to her chest. “Do not thank me. I should thank you for allowing me to come here and be with Stephen when you had no reason to do so.”
“I didn’t want you to remain,” he agreed. He’d wanted to send her on to the Devil, with Diggory. Shame gnawed at his conscience. “I want you here now, though,” he said, needing her to realize that everything had changed and she remained not out of an arrangement made upon her arrival, but because of the bond they’d formed. His gaze fell to their joined hands, pressed against the soft swell of her breasts, that most intimate joining that sent another wave of desire through him.
Her breath caught . . . or was that his own?
“And I want you, Gertrude,” he whispered, stroking the pad of his thumb along the inseam of her wrist. Her pulse raced under that lightest caress . . . but she made no move to draw away.
That admission ushered in a heavy silence, one charged with desire and passion and a hungering to continue what they’d begun in this very room a week ago.
I want her . . .
But he wasn’t as much the black-hearted bastard as he’d believed himself to be. Edwin disentangled his fingers from hers and stepped away. “You should leave, Gertrude, because if you don’t, I cannot promise I’ll be a gentlem—”
Stepping into his arms, Gertrude went up on tiptoe and kissed him.
Chapter 21
For the whole of her life, Gertrude had shuddered at the mere thought of any physical act between a man and woman. Having endured two violent embraces that had been stolen from her by men with liquor on their breaths and stinking of unwashed bodies, she’d come to view any act of intimacy as a vile, depraved exchange.
Everything, however, had changed. Because of this man.
Because of Edwin. Who, with one embrace, had shown her that kisses could be beautiful, and that even she was capable of passion.
Gertrude tangled her fingers in his hair, luxuriating in the silken texture of those tresses, and pressed herself against him, deepening their kiss.
Before she left him, before she left this place, she wanted to know everything there was to know about desire from him.
“Gertrude,” he groaned, her name an entreaty.
To stop? She wouldn’t. Nor couldn’t. “I want you, Edwin,” she breathed between every slant of her lips, and it was as though that wanton admission freed him.
Edwin filled his hands with her buttocks, cupping her through the fabric of her gown, and dragged her between the V of his legs. He deepened their kiss; parting her lips, he slipped his tongue inside and laid mastery over her mouth. Every stroke of that flesh against her was like a fiery brand, marking her as his, burning her with the heat of his passion. And she met every bold lash. Angling her head to better receive his kiss, Gertrude matched him desire for desire.
His manhood throbbed the evidence of his hunger for her, and emboldened, she lifted her hips in a bid to be closer to that tumescence.
He moaned into her mouth, that slight vibration thrilling.
Edwin kneaded her buttocks, sculpting that flesh with his hands, and then he was tugging up the hem of her skirts.
The night air kissed her skin, that cool a balm against her heated flesh. Drawing one leg up, Edwin wrapped it about his waist so that his shaft nestled against her womanhood, the only barrier between them and that most intimate of acts the soft wool of his trousers, and there was something so very forbidden in that, something so very erotic in all that separated them being a scrap of fabric, that her lust spiked.
Whimpering, she gyrated her hips, undulating them in a primitive rhythm as old as time. That action only teasing, it fueled the ache building deep within her core.
Not breaking their kiss, Edwin lifted her nightshift up over her hips, and sliding it above her waist, higher, over her breasts, he drew it off so that she stood nude before him.
He drew back, and she made an inarticulate sound of protest, but he stood frozen, motionless, his hooded gaze radiating a fiery heat as it touched upon every expanse of her exposed skin.
Drawing in a ragged breath, Edwin stretched a hand out and palmed her right breast.
Gertrude’s eyes slid shut, and her head fell back as she allowed herself to simply . . . feel, surrendering to Edwin’s touch and this moment, and all that it entailed.
He lightly rubbed the swollen nipple between his thumb and forefinger, mercilessly teasing the bud.
Perhaps there should be a modicum of reticence. Or shyness. Even a smidgeon of restraint. And there would have been had she been born to the same station as this man who now made love to her, but she hadn’t. And so there was no shame or coyness. There was only an all-consuming yearning to continue what they’d begun.
Edwin covered that swollen peak with his mouth, and a hiss exploded from her teeth as he suckled at that flesh.
“Ed . . . mm . . . oh . . . please . . .” Her speech and ability to formulate thoughts dissolved with every pull. He shifted over to the previously neglected tip, laving it with the same glorious attention. “Mmm . . . ,” she moaned, urging him on, gripping his hair and anchoring him close. A wanton moisture built between her legs, and she bucked in time to his lips’ efforts.
He slipped a hand between her thighs.
Gertrude cried out; her legs went out from under her, but Edwin caught her. Sweeping her up from under the knees, he carried her back to that leather sofa he’d occupied when she’d arrived a short while ago. A lifetime ago? Time had ceased to matter, and she existed within a vortex of nothing but primitive feeling.
Like she was a delicate treasure to be cherished, he set her gently down and then came up over her.
“Wait,” she breathed, putting her palms on his chest, staying him.
He stared on, a question in his passion-laden eyes.
“I want to feel you, Edwin. All of you.” She wanted to explore him the same way he now did her. Gertrude tugged his white lawn shirt from his trousers, freeing the article.
“There is no one like you, Gertrude Killoran.”
And where he’d once hurled her name as the ugliest of epithets, now he wrapped it in a caress that only heightened her need for him.
Edwin effortlessly pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it at the back of the sofa. Sitting on its edge, he tugged off one boot. It landed with a thump. Followed by the other. He came to his feet, and her breath caught as Edwin’s fingers went to the waistband of his breeches. Holding her gaze, he shoved them down until he stood before her, glorious in all his naked splendor.
His hips narrow, his belly flat, and his body lean, he resembled a specimen of masculine beauty she’d once observed on display in a sculpture at the British Museum. That nude of the ancient God of War, Ares, paled as a vapid display of manhood when presented with Edwin’s vitality. And then, she lowered her gaze to the flesh between his legs.
Long and thick, it sprang from a thatch of blond curls; his shaft stood proud and flat against his belly. “Oh, my,” she whispered. She was no innocent. In the streets, a person saw . . . everything. As such, the human body, male and female, had never been some great mystery or surprise. Or so she’d believed.
She’d never set eyes upon any person who’d rivaled this man before her in strength or beauty. She trailed her fingertips over the swath of muscles of his abdomen; they constricted under her touch. “You are so beautiful,” she breathed, her touch urging him to rejoin her.
Edwin caught her hand, staying her caress. His eyes glazed with passion, he drew her palm to his mouth and dropped a hot kiss upon the place where her hand met her arm. “You are beautiful, Gertrude. You are magnificent in every way.” And she, who’d accepted and even relished her plainness for the protection it offered a girl on the streets, with this man, and with his husky avowal, felt the beauty he spoke of.
“Gertrude,” Edwin groaned, pleadingly, but ignoring him, she caught his hand and drew him back into her arms so that she could resume her exploration. She ran her hands down his biceps, and the sinew bunched and corded under her touch. The faint sheen of perspiration glistening upon his skin slicked the way, and she luxuriated in the feel of him.
Gertrude tentatively touched his throbbing shaft.
It leapt wildly.
Edwin hissed and grabbed her hand.
And for the first time since she’d initiated this moment, she faltered, as a wave of bashfulness and embarrassment overtook the previous glow of desire. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thin to her own ears. “I—”
Edwin swallowed her apology with his kiss, and she melted against him. “You need never apologize to me, Gertrude. There is nothing wrong in any of this between us. It’s my own weakness. I want to be able to give you the pleasure you deserve, and I’m dangerously weak from your touch.”
A burst of warmth stirred in her breast at that guttural admission; he was weak with hunger . . . because of her.
Their bodies moving in a like harmony, she and Edwin came together; their lips found and devoured the other’s. Their hands were everywhere, searching one another, learning and memorizing the texture of each plane and contour.
Edwin guided her down, and she went, wrapping her arms about his waist and taking him with her. Of their own will, her legs fell open, and Edwin slipped a hand between them.
She cried out, that sound of her desire reaching to the rafters and echoing around the room as he stroked her. He toyed with that sensitive nub, driving her mad, reducing her to a bundle of simple feeling that tunneled in that throbbing place of her womanhood. He slipped a finger into her sodden channel. “Edwin,” she wailed. Tears pricked the corners of her lashes and mingled with a bead of sweat that dripped from her brow. She blinked it back, focusing on the pressure building at her core.
“That’s it, love,” he urged in hoarsened tones, his voice strained. “I want you to come.”
And she wanted to go where he would take her. And then that endearment whispered in his husky baritone registered.
Love.
It was certainly a throwaway word, uttered in the throes of lovemaking, but Gertrude clung to it anyway. Wanting to believe it. Wanting to matter to him in ways that moved beyond sex and convenience. But if this was all he could offer, it was a gift she’d still gladly take from him.
Edwin slipped another finger inside her, and she keened his name as the ache within her grew, and she arched her hips, seeking something only he could give.
It beckoned. Promised. Enticed.
Gertrude lifted her hips frantically into Edwin’s touch. She was close. So close to some seemingly unattainable end to the blissful sorcery he plied.
The chiseled planes of his face were a taut mask of restraint. “I’ve never felt like this before, Gertrude,” he whispered, the weight of that admission piercing the blanket of desire he’d cloaked her in.
Then he drew his hand back, and she cried out in agonized protest.
But he merely shifted, laying himself between her splayed thighs. His manhood prodded the entrance of her womanhood, and he slid slowly into her, stretching her. Filling her. She moaned his name. “Edwin.”
His length throbbed within her tight channel, a glorious pulsing that set her hips into a desperate, rocking movement.
“Don’t.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m trying to go slow.”
A single bead of sweat trickled down his cheek, and she wiped a trembling hand up and caught it. At that consideration, a wave of tenderness washed over her.
Edwin slid farther within her, and she bit her lower lip. He stretched her, and yet there was a gloriousness to the unfamiliar sensation, too. He found that sensitive nub with his fingers, wringing a cry from her lips; he continued to stroke her. Stirring her to a fever pitch where all logical thought fled and she was capable of nothing but feeling.
“Edwin,” she pleaded, moaning his name, over and over, and then giving an agonized shout as he plunged deep.
Edwin swallowed her short cry with a kiss.
Her entire body tensed at the unexpectedness of that sharp stab of pain, and closing her eyes, Gertrude focused on the feel of him, his enormous length throbbing against her tight channel.
Edwin’s breath came hard and fast. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed against her temple. “I’m so sorr—”
Gertrude kissed the apology from his lips. Any regrets had no place on this day. He stilled and then devoured her mouth once more. Their lips mimicked the intimate joining they practiced even now.
And then, Edwin began to move within her. Slowly, at first. And with every slide and retreat, the discomfort receded, and the longing for some unknown gift he dangled swelled. It grew. The ache. The longing. Until her hips were moving in concert with his lunges, and she met every blissful stroke.
“Come for me,” he pleaded, their bodies lightly dampened with a sheen from their desire that made it hard to grip him as she wished.
Gertrude wrapped her arms tightly about Edwin, hanging on, giving of herself, and taking what he offered. The pressure built, and she began to reach a crest that beckoned.
Panting, incapable of even the simplest utterance, Gertrude lifted her hips. She was so close.
She bit her lip. So close to some unattainable goal that, if she didn’t catch it, would end her.
Edwin lowered his head, and catching the tip of one breast in his mouth, he suckled and milked.
Gertrude screamed out her release to the ceiling as Edwin pushed her over the precipice of desire that was a mix of agony and bliss all as one. She came in great big, shuddering waves. A heartbeat later he joined her.
Tossing his head back, he shouted, the primal cry ripped from his chest, and he withdrew. His seed arced over her belly, a white stream of hot, liquid essence.
And as he collapsed over her, catching himself on his elbows, Gertrude smiled.
Sometime later, no doubt sometime soon, proper guilt would set in at his caddishness. Now, with Gertrude pressed close to Edwin’s side, there was only an absolute rightness.
He’d had no right to the gift she’d given, but Devil that he was, he relished in it anyway.
“That was lovely,” she murmured in dreamy tones.
He caught the delicate shell of her earlobe in his mouth and lightly kissed her. “Minx,” he breathed against her temple.
Gertrude laughed lightly, that timbre still husky from her recent release.
Stretching a hand over the side of the sofa, Edwin fished around, searching for and finding his kerchief.
Gus butted his head against Edwin’s hand. “On your way, you shameful ogler,” he scolded, and Gertrude’s laughter redoubled, that unrestrained, lighthearted mirth a balm to his once broken soul and spirit.
“He is shameful. Like his mistress,” she tacked on.
Edwin gently cleaned the remnants of his seed from her person. He paused briefly and, glancing up, held Gertrude’s gaze, faintly uncertain when she was usually unapologetic. “There is nothing shameful about his mistress,” Edwin said quietly. “Nothing.”
She smiled and lay back down as he cleaned her and then tended to himself.
When he’d finished, Edwin discarded the scrap. He caught Gertrude, wringing a gasp from her, and flipped onto his back so that she lay sprawled atop his chest. Her plaited hair slapped against his shoulder, those silken tendrils tickling him and stirring a grin.
“I must confess.” She propped her dainty chin up and rubbed it back and forth along the faint whorl of curls that matted his chest. “I’ve heard much about lovemaking, and even . . . come across people doing that very thing.” Her eyes went soft. “But I’ve never imagined it could be like this.”
Despite the perils of East London, she’d retained her virtue and her innocence still.
Edwin stroked a palm in small circles over her back. “It’s not always like this. More o
ften than not, it’s a purely physical exchange that somehow manages to leave a person feeling hollow after.” Such had been the way even with his wife, who’d despised his touch from the night they’d consummated their impetuous marriage. No, the act had always been physical in nature, with raw emotion stripped from the exchanges.
Not with Gertrude.
His mind balked and shied away from that whispering.
“This didn’t feel hollow,” she said simply, laying her ear against the place his heart beat.
“No.” His throat moved with the sea of emotions swirling within him. “This did not.”
Gertrude picked her head up. Astute as she was, she would hear the unspoken admissions hanging there.
“Everything was hollow . . . until you. There was no purpose. There was no reason to smile or laugh. I was alone in every way a person can be.”
She shimmied up his body until their lips brushed. “It’s not because of me, Edwin.” Gertrude touched a hand to his heart. “It’s because of you. All of this is because of you. You could have very easily held on to your hatred at every turn, and you’ve not. I’ve done nothing. You’ve done all this yourself. You’re in hiding no more, and you deserve to be out in the light.”
Out in the light. It was precisely what he’d been since she’d stormed his household and taken up a place inside it. But to believe he could ever move amongst society as he once had . . . ? “You are an optimist, Gertrude Killoran.” Edwin claimed another kiss. “But you’re wrong,” he said when he broke contact.
Mischief glimmered in her eyes. “I’m never wrong.”
He chuckled. “No, I wager you’re not.”
The levity left her gaze. “Your life and Stephen’s, together, will never be bleak. And you both have the ability to make it even fuller.”
The Bluestocking Page 23