by Goodman, Jo
"No." Jenny's eyes dropped to Christian's mouth. It was a beautiful mouth, she thought. She sighed softly, wishing he would kiss her again. "Someone came to the door and she left her office. I decided to look for you. I didn't want to be alone with her again. Did I tell you I didn't like her?"
"You mentioned that." Christian breathed in sharply as Jenny twisted and rubbed her hip against his thigh. "Don't, Jenny. Don't do that."
Jenny was not certain what she had done, but she was instantly contrite. "I'm sorry." She puckered her lips and blew away a strand of hair that had fallen across her mouth. "It's hot in here, don't you think? We could do without the fire. I will be sure to tell Mrs. B. that you do not require such a large fire."
"Jenny, we're not in my room," he reminded her.
"Oh." She giggled. "That's right. Mrs. B. asked me to come and fetch you home. And I said I would. Oh, dear. You are glowering again. It is no good to be out of sorts with Mrs. Brandywine."
"I'll take it up with her later." Christian believed that he could cheerfully strangle his housekeeper for her interference. Just because she did not approve of his plans for New Year's Eve, it was no reason for her to send Jenny after him. He made an effort to stop looking at Jenny as if she were his intended victim. "If Amalie didn't send you to my room, who did?"
"I told you. Mrs. Brandywine. She—"
"That's not what I meant," he said, interrupting. "How did you get up here? How did you find me?"
"Why didn't you say so?" she asked, her tone accusing. "You have to be clear, Mr. Marshall. It's not easy for me to understand things right now."
Christian marveled at her ability to understate the situation. "Jenny, please answer my question. How did you find me?"
"Maggie showed me your room," she said, making it sound as if it were the most natural explanation in the world. "She told me to take the tray and make sure you know my name is Jenny. But you already know that, don't you? I can't think why it was important her. She said I should tell you that she sent me specially to you. Isn't that something?" Jenny drew in a deep breath and spoke in a rush when she exhaled. "Will you kiss me, Mr. Marshall? Unless you'd rather not. I wouldn't ask except that... well, I don't know why I'm asking. I'm sure I will be embarrassed once I think about it. If you are afraid I'll get sick again, I will understand. Only, I don't think I will. I'm not sure how I know that. It just occurred to me, and I think it's true. But if you don't want to... why are you looking at me like—"
"Jenny."
"Yes, sir?"
"You talk too much."
"Oh."
"Close your mouth."
She did. Her eyes never wavered from his darkening ones.
Christian waited, watching her carefully, judging her readiness. "Now open it," he said at last. "Quietly."
Jenny's lips parted on a soft sigh as Christian's mouth settled over hers. The pressure was light, tasting, and made Jenny hunger for something more substantial. Her fingers made a lazy climb up the length of his arms and came to rest on his naked shoulders. His flesh was warm, his muscles taut. As Christian slowly deepened the kiss, exploring the soft underside of her lips with the edge of his tongue, Jenny's palms circled the back of his neck and held him against her. She returned his kiss, matching the darting movements of his tongue because of a need she could not understand or deny. Her own submission frightened her. She wanted and she didn't want. Jenny held onto Christian because he was so solid, so real, and she was very much afraid that letting go would mean the end of her fragile hold on what was true.
As Christian stretched out beside her, the sheet around his waist loosened. It dipped low over his hips, working its way downward as Jenny arched and twisted in her efforts, not to get away, but to get even closer. He didn't realize the sheet had finally been kicked aside until he felt Jenny stop responding to his kisses. Breathing unevenly, he raised his head a fraction and looked at her. Her eyes were open, but she wasn't focused on him directly. She was staring at his reflection in the mirror above them.
"Well," he said, watching the rise of color in her cheeks, "now you know why Maggie doesn't have a canopy."
Jenny's reply stuck in her throat. One of her hands fell away from his neck and trailed down the length of his spine. She watched her inquisitive fingers make the journey and saw the shudder that rippled along the length of Christian's naked body. Though her experience was limited to museum pieces like Renaissance paintings and ancient Greek sculptures, she thought Christian was as perfectly formed as a man could be.
His shoulders were wide, his hips slim. His legs were smooth and bronzed with the light covering of copper-tipped hair. Where they entangled with her legs the contrast between the strength and vulnerability of their positions was startling.
Jenny's skirt hiked higher as she rubbed her leg against him. She meant to touch the hard curves of his taut buttocks, but her hand froze at the base of his spine. Her fingers trembled as the boldness of her thoughts paralyzed the rest of her.
Christian sensed rather than saw her hesitation, and his groin jerked against her hip, making her feel the hot, hard need she had aroused in him. His mouth silenced the husky gasp that rose in her throat. He took advantage of the invitation of her parted lips and used his tongue to explore and taste her and renew his assault on her senses. One of his hands slipped away from where it had threaded in her hair and slid beneath the hem of her skirt and chemise. His palm moved back and forth along her thigh from knee to hip, learning the shape of her against the curve of his hand.
Feeling light-headed, Jenny pushed weakly at Christian's shoulders. His body was too close to her, enveloping her so that she felt suffocated by his nearness. The kisses he slanted across her mouth took the air from her lungs. The reflection above confused her. The sleepy-eyed wanton who returned her stare was a stranger. The man who partially covered her, the man whose hands were working the buttons at the front of her gown, was equally unfamiliar.
Christian unfastened the first four buttons of Jenny's bodice and drew the dress over her shoulders and partway down her arms. The chemise followed the same path, trailed by the damp path of Christian's mouth. He tasted the delicate line of her collarbone, the hollow of her throat. The warm, steady beat of her pulse in the cord of her neck excited him. His mouth went lower as he tugged at the dress. His tongue darted across the firm, high curves of her breasts, dipping, teasing, making an ever-widening spiral that finally included the coral-colored aureoles. Hard and puckered, he laved the sensitive skin until the cry building in Jenny's throat was released. Groaning himself, Christian's mouth covered her nipple and sucked, feeling the heat that was in her become part of him.
* * *
"Mm, you really like watching, don't you?" Dora's slender hands closed around the proof that her partner liked the role of the voyeur very much indeed. She began to stroke him, urging a surrendering moan from deep in his chest. His fingers bit into her shoulders as she knelt in front of him. "Close the shutter now, Stephen," she said. "Think about what I'm going to do for you instead."
Stephen Bennington took one long, last look at the shadow-shaded bodies of the man and woman in the adjoining room before he reluctantly slid the panel closed. Their love play had been exciting. The husky murmurs of their voices had teased him. Just imagining the words they might have exchanged made him grow harder. In his mind's eye, he could still see the hot kisses that had been exchanged, the relentless suck of the man's mouth on the whore's breast, the way her hands flittered along the length of her lover's back. Stephen regretted closing the shutter. He wanted to see the whore spread her thighs and accept her randy companion.
"The woman," he said tightly, trying to control his response to Dora's practiced manipulation. "That wasn't Maggie. Who is she?"
"One of the new maids. That's what Maggie told me anyway." Dora drew back and gazed at Stephen. She thrust out her lower lip in a siren's sultry pout. "Do you want her?"
"Perhaps." He gave a little groan as Dora renewed her effo
rts. "Keep doing that, m'dear, and I'll never look at anyone else."
Since Stephen Bennington was notorious at Amalie's for never choosing the same girl twice in a row—even on the same night—Dora did not fool herself into believing his statement carried any commitment.
"And the man?" he asked. The only man he was sure it wasn't was his own father. Stephen had passed William on his way out, a meeting that made both of them uncomfortable and philosophical at the same time. Stephen remembered thanking his father for holding the door open for him. At least John Todd and Amalie had not been witness to the embarrassing situation. Stephen didn't think he could have tolerated Mr. Todd eyeing him through the grille in that scornful manner that was so much like Wilton Reilly's. Once Stephen was inside, he had quickly chosen Dora and taken her upstairs. He regretted that his earlier discomfort had made him so hasty. If he had spoken to Amalie when he arrived, she might have seen fit to give him the maid.
"You know I can't tell you who he is," Dora said. Maggie would make certain Amalie showed her the door if she revealed who was rocking the maid in the next room. There were strict rules of confidentiality that had to be upheld, especially with the men who enjoyed watching others. The clientele at Amalie's might meet below stairs, share a joke or a bottle of champagne, even exchange pleasantries, but on the second floor everyone was anonymous. That meant that Christian Marshall would never know he had an audience, and Stephen Bennington would never know the male lead in the erotic play.
It was a measure of Maggie's anger, Dora thought, that she permitted anyone to look in on one of her favorite clients. She had always been somewhat guarded where Christian Marshall was concerned. Dora supposed that was over now. Maggie had given him a girl who, as near as Dora could tell, didn't know the first thing about what to do with her man. Christian, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what he wanted to do with her. Apparently Maggie had not been able to elicit the same response. Poor Maggie. What a blow to her pride that would have been. Bested by one of Amalie's unskilled linen-keepers and sheet-changers.
"Who is he?" Stephen repeated.
Dora smiled slyly. "Why? Do you want him as well?" She never saw the hand that Stephen raised. The force of the blow left her sprawled across the floor.
"Bitch!" Stephen's pale chest heaved. He bent and grabbed Dora's honey-colored hair in his fist, pulling her roughly to her knees, then her feet. She whimpered and leaned against him for support. Stephen discovered that the pathetic sound of her pain and the helplessness of her position were as powerful as one of Amalie's mysteriously potent powders. In the wake of this incredible surge of desire, he forgot all about wanting to reopen the panel and see the culmination of the coupling in the adjoining room.
* * *
Biting back a sob, Jenny squeezed her eyes shut. Though her body still ached with an emptiness that wanted filling, her mind was clearing by tiny increments. She could no longer watch the things that Christian was doing to her. She could only feel and the feelings were somehow wrong, horribly wrong. Knowing that was not enough to lessen the pleasure.
Her skin was shimmering with heat, tingling with white-hot sparks. They skittered along her arms, her belly, her thighs. When his mouth lifted from her breast there was a brief respite, and then his lips pressed their outline to the spot where her heart hammered out an uneven rhythm. Moments later he was raising the tip of her right breast to a stiff point of pleasure with his flicking tongue.
She pushed at his shoulders again, but the protest was too feeble to make an impact. When she tried to twist away he thought she was arching to fit herself against him. Jenny had to give her objections sound.
"No," she whispered. "Stop. Please stop."
Christian chose to believe he had mistaken what he heard. His fingers urged the bodice of her dress lower.
Jenny found her arms trapped in her gown because of the way Christian was undressing her. She pressed her heels into the mattress and tried to push away, bucking to move him to one side. "No! Please, Mr. Marshall. You must stop!"
It was the absurdity of being called Mr. Marshall in a situation of such carnal intimacy that finally commanded Christian's attention. He levered himself away from her, his desire-darkened eyes glittering. "No?" he asked, his voice at once husky and dangerously soft. "What are you saying no to?"
Jenny tried to right her gown, but Christian stopped her with an arm across her ribs and under her breasts. She didn't know where to look. Her wanton image in the mirror appalled her, and the mixture of frustration and wanting in his eyes was frightening. "I don't want you to touch me anymore." She felt like crying. "I'm sorry, but this is wrong."
"And what makes you think you have a choice?" When she didn't answer, he laced his fingers in her hair and tugged lightly until her eyes connected with his narrow stare. "I asked you: What makes you think you still have a choice?"
Jenny blinked. "Don't I?"
"No," he said, shaking his head. "We are in a whorehouse, Jenny Holland, and right now you are the whore I choose."
"Oh."
"Indeed." He nudged her head to one side so she could see the clock on the mantel. "See that? It is almost midnight, Princess. And for once, I mean this year to go out as I intend it should go on."
Chapter 8
Whatever Jenny might have said came to nothing as Christian laid two fingers against her lips. His face was only inches above her. He waited, watched her swallow, watched her nod, and then slowly let his fingers slide away from her mouth. He cupped the soft underside of her chin while his other hand slipped under her drawers and began pushing them over her hips.
Knowing what was happening to her and being able to do something about it were unrelated events to Jenny. Wherever Christian touched her he was able to urge a response. If she had objections, she did not recognize them any longer; her body was more than eager to experience every one of his intimate caresses.
The air in the room felt cool on her heated skin as Christian removed her undergarments. She watched him in the mirror, and she watched herself, too. He was familiar; the woman she saw was not. She wished she could pull up the bodice of her gown to cover her breasts, or yank down the skirt to cover her naked thighs, but this woman, the one wearing little more than a flush, seemed quite at her ease keeping her hands at her sides.
"Oh, no," Christian said, shaking his head, his mouth against her ear. "I want more than your passive compliance." He removed the dress and chemise and smiled, satisfied, when Jenny's arms went around him of their own accord.
"I don't want..." she began softly as Christian's lips pressed kisses to her eyelids. Could he taste the salty tears that welled behind her lashes? "But she... needs... she needs to be..."
"Who, Jenny?" His voice was gentle. "Who is she?"
She opened her eyes. Her gaze shifted from him to the mirror. "I am."
"Ah." Christian understood the nature of Jenny's confusion better than she did. While she was still very much a prisoner of Amalie's drug, he could make no similar claim to explain the wanting that ruled him now. His only defense was that touching Jenny Holland was a powerful addiction in its own right. "Let me help you. Please, Jenny. I can take away the burning."
Jenny stared at him. How had it come to pass that he was asking for permission? You are the whore I choose. Had he not already ignored her objections and been on the point of serving his own needs? Yet here he was, wanting her, but wanting her consent more. When Jenny's answer came to her, she understood that he had succeeded in doing what he'd promised a week earlier. He had made her want him.
Her hands circled his neck, and her fingers threaded in his hair. She pressed lightly drawing him closer, and whispered a single word. "Yes."
Jenny's lips were so sensitive to the touch that when Christian's tongue traced a damp line across her upper lip she felt as if she would come out of her skin. The gentler he was, the worse it was. The burning he promised to ease became more intense. It was only when the pressure of his mouth and hands hardened th
at she could bear his touch.
His mouth slanted across hers, and she welcomed the bruising force of the kiss. Her reply was equally hungry, equally needy. His lips touched her face in hard, hurried forays. She felt his touch on her temples, her eyes, the bridge of her nose. Her lashes fluttered against his mouth. Her tapered nails scored impermanent crescents in his upper arms. His mouth pressed its outline to her cheeks, her jaw, the tender vulnerable spot below her ear. Her mouth was open, her tongue seeking, when his lips returned to hers. Their exploration was no mere tasting now; it was a carnal feast for the senses.
Lips and tongues were not sufficient to convey the wanting that had grown between them. Christian used his entire body to make Jenny aware of the depth of his need. His hands stroked her, caressing the sensitive underside of her arm from elbow to shoulder. His palms became familiar with the full shape of her breasts, her narrowly tapered waist, the flat plane of her belly. His legs learned the outline of hers; the sole of his foot rubbed her calf.
Jenny's hands flitted along Christian's arms, touched his thighs, the back of his legs. Her knee was bolder, insinuating itself between his legs so she could press herself against him. Her breath caught as he took her wrist and brought her hand to the point where her thighs cradled his. He asked her to touch him. She did.
The hard plane of Christian's abdomen retracted as Jenny's fingers explored the length of his cock. Her movements were unskilled, cautious, and still infinitely exciting. He knew he would lose control if he let her continue long. He drew her hand away, raised her wrist to his mouth, and kissed the delicate webbing of blue veins at the back. The soft mewling sound at the back of her throat fired Christian's blood. He said her name huskily, kissed her hard, and let his fingers caress her as intimately as she had done to him moments before. They dipped and stroked, preparing her for his entry. She had been hot. Now she was wet.
"Open your eyes, Jenny," he said.