by Hope Tarr
That time she paused. “Overwrought perhaps, but mad, I shouldn’t think so. And I meant what I said, every word. I want you to tutor me in—”
He held up a hand, cutting her off. If he heard “sex” even one time more from those luscious lips, he couldn’t account for the consequences.
“Should you not wait to explore any further intimacies with your bridegroom?”
Biting at her bottom lip, she shook her head. “Sadly, Mr. Billingsby is not as skilled in managing these matters as one might wish.”
Ralph felt his spirits lift. Weighing his words with suitable gravity, he said, “I am sorry to hear it.”
The devil he was. Her admission of her fiancé’s failings was balm to his bruised soul. Beatrice Lindsey might have had her first time with another man, a man with a ridiculous name best befitting a goat, but at least Ralph had the satisfaction of knowing the sex had stunk.
“In fairness, he did make every attempt to be gentle. Barring that most unpleasant moment—” she paused, shivered, and pulled a face “—the encounter wasn’t painful so much as mortifyingly awkward, quite…dispiriting.”
“Dispiriting?” he repeated, wondering if he might have misheard. Harkening back to their last leave taking when she’d boldly laid his hand upon her breast, he wouldn’t have pegged her for frigid.
She paused, and then nodded profusely. “Yes, dispiriting captures the sentiment exactly.”
“Most men of your social station keep mistresses.” He hated to be the one to explain this to her, but really, someone should. “Rourke is by way of a happy exception,” he added both because it was true and because he feared her sister’s fairy-tale union might have given her a false view of the majority of marriages. “Once you give your husband an heir and a spare, he’ll likely let you alone.” Indeed, most of his mother’s clients had worn wedding rings.
“But I do not wish to be left alone, abandoned in my marriage bed,” she exclaimed, the desperate look returning. “My wish, since you force me to put it plainly, is to experience sexual pleasure with my husband,” she added almost, he fancied, as though her fiancé was an afterthought. She bit at her bottom lip, pulling the tender-looking flesh beneath her pretty top teeth in such an unconscious yet totally tantalizing way as to make Ralph grateful, profoundly grateful, that he wore a robe rather than trousers. “Mr. Billingsby afterward admitted to having been a virgin, as well. So you see, ours was a case of the blind leading the blind.”
The blind leading the blind, indeed! Ralph smothered a less than gallant laugh. Virginity couldn’t be helped, he supposed, and yet the picture emerging of Beatrice’s fiancé was that of a milksop who couldn’t begin to manage a woman.
The devil perched upon his shoulder prompted him to press, “Can you be more specific?”
A pink splotch broke out on either high-boned cheek but to her credit, she didn’t look away. “Once he…spent himself, he collapsed atop me and lay immobile for a good many minutes. I fear his constitution may be less than vigorous.”
“I see,” Ralph said, his humor fading.
His poor, beautiful Beatrice. How dreadfully disappointing her first sexual experience had been. He only hoped the oaf hadn’t hurt her. She looked so sad and lost he could scarcely restrain himself from reaching out to hold her.
Brightening, she sent him a grateful smile, the same blindingly brilliant smile she wore following climax in his fantasies. “Yes, you do, don’t you? I’d hoped you would. One of us must take the reins of conjugal relations in hand, and that responsibility, it seems, will fall to me.” Her smile dimmed. “But I cannot very well teach Mr. Billingsby what I do not know myself. You comprehend my dilemma, do you not?”
“The blind leading the blind, yes, I believe I do.”
“Thank you.” She fretted her bottom lip, and Ralph felt himself swelling thinking of all the ways that very pretty mouth might be put to use. “I wish for you to tutor me in sex, Ralph. And no worries, I am more than willing to meet your price.”
Ralph felt his mouth fly open. “My price!”
She answered with a brisk nod. “Owing to a series of tidy bets I placed at The Downs last season, I have money, gobs of it. Well, not gobs precisely, but two hundred pounds, more than sufficient for one night’s work.”
One night’s work! For the span of a few hammering heart beats, he stared into the pale oval of her perfect face and willed himself to hate her. His mother had been a whore. Former thief though he was, he’d yet to sell himself that way.
He supposed he should be accustomed to indecent proposals by now. Men such as him, who’d lived rough but cleaned up shiny attracted a certain sort of woman—bored, rich and neglected. At least Beatrice seemed to consider him a step up from the gamekeeper or gardener. He did, these days, work indoors.
The irony was he would have done her for free. Hell, he would have paid for the privilege. The money she offered was a pittance, not that she’d know. She was too unschooled in the world beyond her salons and soirees to realize what commodities such as sex cost. Even if she’d offered him a king’s ransom, he’d cut off his hand before taking it.
If he possessed so much as a grain of sound sense, he would show Lady Beatrice the opposite side of his door immediately and find some way to banish her not only from his rooms, but also from his brain.
But Ralph had always been more lucky than wise. And he’d never wanted any woman as he wanted Beatrice. Beneath his desire lay fear. If he didn’t agree, she might well decide to seek tutelage elsewhere. The next man she propositioned might not be careful with her or discreet. Hell, he might not be clean. Blackmail, syphilis, rape—the host of dire possible consequences had his heart thundering and his palms sweating. It also steeled his resolve.
Beatrice Lindsey was looking to get herself seduced and she was even willing to pay for the privilege. Most men in his position would consider the bargain well met. A beautiful, eager almost virgin was his for the having, and all he need do was stay hard and breathe. Staying hard was the easy—inevitable—part. It was the breathing he must make a point to remember.
“I accept but on one condition.”
She met his gaze head on. “Name it.”
“Proper tutelage cannot be accomplished in a single night. It will require the full week at the very least.” If he was to sell his soul, he meant to exact its worth.
She hesitated, sliding her tongue over that very full, very pink bottom lip. God, that mouth alone might drive him mad. “But I only have the two hundred pounds.”
“More than ample,” he answered swiftly, swallowing his distaste.
“In that case, we have a bargain.” Smiling, she extended her trembling hand.
Ralph held back from taking it. “To be clear, once you step foot within this chamber, you will place yourself completely in my hands, subjugate yourself entirely to my will. Missish modesty has no place within these four walls. I will treat you as a woman, not a girl and most certainly not a child. You already know your own mind. I will teach you to know your own body just as fully. No pleasure will be off-limits, no act of lovemaking too shocking, too outrageous or too forbidden to forgo.” He steeled his voice to a schoolmaster’s sternness or rather how he imagined a schoolmaster might behave. “You must forget the so-called rules entirely. Within the boundaries of this room there are no rules. There is, however, a guiding principle and that, my dear, is pleasure. Can you do that, Beatrice? Can you surrender yourself to pleasure, to me, for the next seven nights?”
“I will try.” She firmed her chin and her voice. “I will do better than try. I will!”
Her fervor was almost religious in its zeal. One would have thought she’d just volunteered to roll bandages for wounded soldiers or to spoon up soup at one of the East End’s Salvation Army kitchens.
Fighting a smile, he composed his features into a somber face that would have served a barrister or better yet a judge. Unlike schoolmasters, barristers and judges were two occupations with which he could claim
considerable firsthand account. “Excellent. Then we are agreed.”
“You’ll take me on, as your pupil?” The tentative hope in her voice would have caught at his heart had he not already closed off that most inconvenient organ.
Resolved to play the part of the perfect scoundrel she seemed to suppose he was, Ralph grinned. “Yes, Beatrice, I believe I will.”
Brightening, she didn’t miss a beat. “Marvelous. I brought these.” She reached into her cloak, brought out a tiny tin box, and held it out for him to take.
Ralph didn’t have to open it to know what lay inside. “You brought your own prophylactics?” he blurted out, horrified she didn’t trust him to take care of her.
She bobbed a brisk nod. “Will you not sheath yourself so that we may…get on with the business?”
“When the occasion presents itself, I shall. I possess a full tin of my own.”
Her face fell. “So you do diddle the housemaids after all?”
Ralph hadn’t “diddled” so much as a single housemaid since he’d entered Rourke’s employ. When his friend first acquired the castle several years ago there had been a widowed pub mistress in Linlithgow who’d been generous with her pints and her favors. But his visits had fallen off for no particular reason beyond not caring to bother. He hadn’t had a woman in more than nine months. But his past paramours were scarcely any of Beatrice’s business. She was, after all, the one of them about to wed.
He shrugged. “Given your chosen subject, a monk would make a very poor tutor, do you not think?”
She nodded. “Yes, of course.” Her high forehead furrowed, making her look momentarily older than her not quite one-and-twenty years. “Shall I take off my cloak and lie down?” She glanced toward the sofa. Stuffed with horsehair and narrow of seat, it was a thoroughly uncomfortable piece.
Her question caught him off guard. Good God, did she expect him to pounce like an animal? Foreplay, he more than suspected, was one of the subtleties her fiancé had seen fit to circumvent.
Ralph was determined to be tender with Beatrice whether she wanted it or not. “Mind that you are the pupil here and leave the lesson in my hands.” He stepped closer and slid his right foot between her two slipper-shod ones. Reaching up, he brushed the curve of her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “You have a beautiful mouth.”
Her gaze slid away. “Th-thank you.”
He pinned her chin between his thumb and forefinger and willed her to look at him. “There is no need to thank me for a simple statement of truth.”
Indeed, hers was a mouth made for kissing, many kinds of kissing. A mouth Ralph resolved to tease and titillate, to sample and savor. A mouth that one day soon he meant to see rimming his cock.
But it was only their first lesson.
He leaned in, angling his face to hers, letting her become accustomed to their closeness. “I mean to teach you well, Beatrice.” He brushed his lips over hers.
She shivered. “Ralph, I—”
“Hush, no more talking, no more thinking at all for the time being,” he ordered, feeling his cock thickening at the prospect of leaving all such cumbersome logic behind.
Sliding his tongue along the seam of her lips, he savored her petal-soft texture and champagne-laced breath, teasing her back and forth, again and again. His waiting was rewarded with her sudden sharp breath, the low little moan sending her sagging against him. Wrapping his arms about her waist, he slowly worked his tongue inside, touching the tip to the ridged roof of her mouth, the bottom row of her perfect white teeth and finally her tongue. He stopped there, gauging her response, constructing a mental catalogue of what she seemed to like best.
Clearly she liked this. She reached up and wound her slender arms about his neck, the cloak opening partway. Her breasts pushed against his chest, making him mindful that beneath the cloak she was as naked as he was beneath his robe.
Ralph took advantage of her raised arms to unfasten the cloak. He came to the last of the hooks and slid the garment from her shoulders without her seeming to register its loss. He glided his gaze over her, savoring the pretty picture she made—breasts, small, high and rose-tipped; a lovely long waist and slender legs that seemed to go on forever. Women as a rule liked being looked at, and in Beatrice’s case his admiration was in no way feigned. She was quite perfectly beautiful as well as gloriously willing. Based on what she’d shared of her first time with the milksop, he would have expected clenched thighs and a board-stiff body. Nothing could be further from the case. So far he’d scarcely done more than kiss her and already her nipples stood out, taut twin pink peaks.
He slid a hand from her breast down the length of her, stroking her belly and lower. Kneading her crisp curls, he felt his swollen cock leaking. “Did you ever climb trees when you were little?”
Lazy-lidded eyes met his. Had they been on the streets, that distracted look would have been his cue to snatch her purse and run. But he had dearer spoils at stake. And he had no intention of running anywhere.
“Once, I think. Not really. Kate was always the one of us playing out-of-doors. I preferred staying inside with my dolls.”
He slid his other hand down her spine and cupped her ass. Shaping the firm lobe, he brought her flush against his erection, letting her feel him, letting her know. “Bend your leg and brace it upon my waist,” he breathed into her hair. “Yes, that’s the way.” He slid his hand to the crease of her knee, locking it in place.
“Is it really possible to have relations in this position?” she asked, shifting against him so that he was obliged to reach down with his free hand and check to make sure his unsheathed cock remained covered.
Stroking her, he said, “Were I to lay my hands just below your buttocks and lift you and were you to oblige me by cinching your legs tightly about my waist, we could have vigorous congress with but a wall as anchor. Does that intrigue you?” Her widened pupils and moist, parted mouth told him it did, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“Yes,” she admitted in a breathy voice. “Yes, it does.”
Sticky moisture slid down the side of him. Of the two of them, he was likely the least in control.
To cover his discomposure, he summoned his sternest, most professorial tone. “In that case, ask me for it. Ask me for it, Beatrice, and when you do, mind you say ‘please.’”
“You want me to…beg you?” Whetting her dry lips, Beatrice was torn between offense and a strangely dark thrill.
“Sex is a dance of sorts,” Ralph explained, his one hand petting her most intimately, his other fixed firmly upon her bottom, and what might only be his…member pulsing against the inside of her one open thigh. “And in this dance, I am master.”
Meeting that steely-eyed gaze in the semidarkness, Bea sensed he meant to take their arrangement, their lessons, most seriously indeed. And that was precisely what she wanted—wasn’t it?
She opened her mouth to reply she knew not what. Before she could say anything, he bent his head to her breast, his mouth closing over the tip, his tongue laving the nipple, a sweet, sweet antidote to the swollen ache. At the same time, his stroking hand slid lower still, raising a trembling shiver.
“That feels nice,” she whispered, tightening her grip about his neck and cinching her leg more firmly about his waist, the craving coiling at her core. “Better than nice—it feels so very good.”
He lifted his head to look at her. “I’m glad. I want you to feel good.” Gaze locking on hers, he found her with his fingers, sliding the digit in and out. Warm liquid drizzled the inside of one sensitized thigh, sending his taut muscles thrumming. “Oh, Ralph.”
He withdrew his digit. To her shame, she whimpered, even begged, this time without having to be prompted. “Please, oh, please,” she whispered, uncertain for what she asked, trusting him to know, to take care, to satisfy.
His eyes told her he knew what she needed even if she did not. He found some heretofore undiscovered part of her, a tight little nubbin she’d once viewed with her hand mirr
or, and began circling it with what must be the pad of his thumb.
“You like this, do you not?” His breath was a balmy breeze that stirred the damp hair at her temples, his strumming hand the instrument of her physical salvation and moral doom.
“Oh, yes.” She swallowed hard, wondering at how her throat might feel so parched when the space between her thighs felt so very wet.
Hot chills skittered over her. Perspiration gathered at the back of her bent knee. Her sex throbbed with a building, budding ache.
Stroking her nether lips, he whispered into her ear, “Tell me what else you want.”
Desperate to reach the release she’d never before known, she reached down between them, encircled Ralph’s wrist, and steered him back to her center.
“Where you touched me before…in small circles, it felt—” She stopped there, the glorious sensations too grand for words.
She didn’t have to explain. Clearly Ralph knew what she needed better than she did. He found the nexus of her need and recommenced the slow, rhythmic rounding. Aching need crested toward crescendo. Random tingles transformed to a steady staccato throbbing. She was close to experiencing her first sexual climax, closer than she’d ever before been, so very close she could catch the scent of it in the musky air and taste it on her tongue.
She covered the top of his strumming hand with her own. “Please, please don’t stop.”
“I won’t stop.” As if to prove it, his plucking finger picked up pace, sending her sex humming.
The climax broke over here like a storm, the contractions striking fast and furious. Like a tree struck by lightning and split in half, she felt the shuddering run through the whole of her—belly, back and buttocks, fingers and feet.
Burying her face in the salt-flavored flesh of Ralph’s neck, she drank in the scent of sweat and lemon seed soap and screamed and screamed and screamed.
BEA LOWERED HER CRAMPED LEG. Her foot touching the floor triggered a painful pins-and-needles pinging. She lurched against him.
“Careful.” He caught her easily, his arm a steadying anchor about her naked waist.