by Hope Tarr
Spent, he fell back against the wall, his body boneless as the jellied eels he’d once coveted from the costermongers stalls at Billingsgate Market, the inside of his mouth tasting of blood. Beatrice glided down him like a snowflake—impossible to hold and yet impossible to stop wanting. Looking down at her puddled about his feet, he considered sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her off to bed.
But before he did, he reached down to unsheathe himself. It was then, only then that a heretofore unanticipated reality slammed into him with the force of a brass-knuckled fist. Unfurling the prophylactic, he saw that like the inside of his mouth, it too was coated in blood.
“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME you were a virgin?” Ralph demanded, pacing the room’s four corners.
He had deflowered her mere weeks before her wedding. Beatrice might not seem to be upset about that, but he felt frantic enough for the both of them.
Wrapped up in his robe, Beatrice sat cross-legged in his chair. “If I had, would you have agreed to our lessons?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, there you have it, my reason.” She crossed her arms in front of her like a shield.
“You lied to me.” He drew up before her, quaking with outrage—and fear. The world was a hard place for a fallen woman. His mother’s misspent life had taught him that much at least.
“I didn’t, not exactly.” Given the grim circumstance, he found her dismissive shrug beyond maddening. “I did indeed seduce Mr. Billingsby only at the last moment he went all…squishy. Truth be told, until a short while ago, I wasn’t certain whether I was still a virgin or not.”
Ralph groaned. “You are most certainly not one now.”
She uncrossed her arms. “Indeed, I am not. What a relief.”
“That’s one way of seeing it, I suppose.” He fitted a hand over his pounding brow and contemplated the decanter of Scotch nearby.
She shrugged again. “I don’t imagine I shall miss a maidenhead overmuch.”
Ralph let his arm drop. “You may not, but I imagine your bridegroom will.”
She waived away that notion with a flick of her wrist and went back to fiddling with whatever she held in her lap. “Should he remark upon it, I shall simply say I lost it riding.”
He slapped a hand to his forehead. “But you don’t ride all that often as I recall.” On her last visit, he had very much looked forward to teaching her.
She sent him a smug smile. “Ah, well, you know that, but he does not.”
It struck him that her fiancé knew precious little about her. In point, Ralph was coming to suspect he knew her not at all. “Remind me again why you are wedding this princely paragon.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Are you asking as my tutor or as a curious person?”
“The latter, I suppose.”
“In that case, I shall decline answering.” Clutching something against her, she got up to go. “Good night, Ralph.”
His gaze following her, he hadn’t the heart to answer.
Halfway to the door, she turned back. “By the by, this is a most illuminating book you’re reading. I don’t suppose I might borrow it?”
Coming closer, Ralph saw what until now he had been sufficiently distracted to miss: for the better part of the past half hour, Beatrice had kept Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra lying open in her lap. He felt oddly embarrassed though he couldn’t put his finger on why. They’d already performed several of the sexual acts described in the book. Still, there was something about seeing it in Beatrice’s slender hands that made him feel seamy, as though he must not be all that much better than Lord Haversham. That man had accosted her in a coatroom, but at least he’d left her intact.
He pinched the top of his nose where, just between his eyes, a headache had begun to hammer. “You might ask your sister.”
Appalled eyes met his. “My sister? I hardly think so.”
It was Ralph’s turn to shrug. “Why not? It belongs to your brother-in-law’s collection.”
She handed the volume over without another word.
Taking it, Ralph allowed that night was a Scotch occasion if ever there was one.
4
Lesson Four
“A man should gather from the actions of the woman of what disposition she is, and in what way she likes to be enjoyed.”
—The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana
“YOU NEED TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON, Beatrice,” Ralph told her the next night, standing beside the bed on which she lay. Untying the belt from his robe, he pulled it free from the loops. “You need to learn to submit to pleasure and for this week at least, that means submitting to me.” Slowly, very slowly, he dragged the belt free of its loops.
Bea’s breath hitched, not with fear, but with a strange, edgy excitement.
“Give me your hands.”
She hesitated, and then held them out for him to bind. He looped the belt about her right wrist, and then her left, and then tied the whole to the brass bedpost. Lifting her head from the pillow to watch, she felt both removed from her body and completely one with it. She wondered if she was supposed to struggle, to fight him. Struggling, fighting was part and parcel of her nature. And yet she found she didn’t want to fight with Ralph Sylvester. She wanted to submit to him, obey him and give herself up to him—completely.
He secured her and stood back. “So long as you don’t struggle, there should be no bruising.”
Bruising! A frisson shot through her, sexual excitement flavored with the barest hint of fear.
She wore her corset, garters and stockings, but no bloomers, no other under things at all. Lying near naked, displayed like a whore, was strangely exciting. She could hardly wait for him to climb atop and enter her. Instead he stood looking down at her for what seemed like an ungodly long time.
He grabbed a rose from the vase on the bedside table and, easing a hip onto the side of the mattress, settled in beside her. “You’re beautiful.” He dragged the rose’s pink petals along her cheek and jaw. “Utterly exquisite.” Using the flower, he traced the curve of her lower lip.
She felt sweat break out upon her brow. “Please.”
“Please, what?” He stroked the petals along the swell of her breasts.
Her corseted nipples stiff and aching, she hesitated, wetting her lips. “I want…” Her voice trailed off. What did she want?
“Do you want the device again?” he asked gently.
The dildo they’d earlier used had been strangely stimulating. Made of leather, it was long and thick and fashioned to simulate the member of a well-endowed man. Straddling Ralph’s lap while facing their joined reflections in the full-length dressing mirror, his hardness pressed against her buttocks and his hand moving the dildo in and out and around had been undoubtedly titillating. But mainly, it was Ralph’s watching her, not the novelty that had caused her to climax. A prop was no substitute for a flesh-and-blood lover. Still, once she wed Mr. Billingsby, the device might well be elevated to the level of marriage savior, not because she doubted her fiancé’s aptitude to learn so much as she did her will to teach him. More and more of late, she couldn’t imagine sharing such intimacies with anyone other than Ralph.
She shook her head. “I don’t need a toy. I need you. Please, Ralph, please…” She fought against the restraints not because she wanted to escape, but so she could grab his hands and force them down upon her body.
He swung a leg over her and straddled her. She expected him to reach for the French Letters on the bedside table, but instead he slid down the length of her. Parting her thighs, he bent and kissed her between them.
Stroking gentle fingers through her mons, he smiled up at her. “How many times must I tell you, you’ve only to ask?”
He dipped his head and this time he covered her with his mouth. Unprepared, Bea would have leaped from the bed were she not bound there. The sensation of his lips and tongue on her sex was exquisite, beyond anything she had heretofore imagined.
Her sensitized skin suddenly felt
too hot, too moist and altogether too tight to contain such a world of wanting. Hot chills skittered down her spine. Gooseflesh furled her upper arms and forearms and thighs. Like a demon’s heart buried between her legs, her sex was consumed with a great throbbing ache.
Relentless, Ralph licked and laved her, suckled and spread her wide, then wider still. The pressure built, the pleasure peaking toward a pinnacle. Almost there, almost there and not quite…
“Please don’t stop, please don’t, please…” Now that she’d begun begging, she couldn’t seem to stop.
Ralph slid not one but two fingers inside. Rubbing a heretofore undiscovered sensitive spot within her, he circled her clit with his tongue. Once, twice, thrice…
Bea exploded, the fireworks and shooting stars melding into one long blissful scream.
RALPH DREW THE CHAIR NEARER to the bed, the better to watch Beatrice sleep. He shouldn’t have let her fall asleep in his bed. It was careless of him, stupid really. Now that he had, he couldn’t risk falling asleep himself. He would need to wake her in another few hours so she could slip back into her room before the servants stirred.
It was just as well. He was weary without being sleepy, physically sated without being truly satisfied. Not since he was fourteen and caught working Johnnie Black’s flash house had his emotions felt so bloody raw. He forced himself to remember that what she wanted wasn’t him, but a specific part of him, his cock. She didn’t want the complete package that was Ralph Sylvester and he couldn’t find it in him to blame her. Not even his mother had wanted him and the women with whom he’d lain over the years had only needed him for the short-term. He was too upper-crust for a woman of his own class and too sketchy for a woman who was a lady to consider as anything more than a secret lover. Why should this woman, this girl really, be any different?
And yet Bea was different, he’d always known it. Their interludes at the paddock feeding carrots to Princess had been some of the loveliest of his otherwise unlovely life.
This girl is getting to you. As always, the heckling inside his head sounded a lot like Johnnie Black.
She was. She had. He’d never wanted a woman beyond her body, beyond the pleasure, beyond the moment. Wanting more than sex with someone was unchartered waters for him. He was not only out of his depth, but sinking fast. The only plane upon which he understood how to approach her was the physical. He only hoped his body would suffice to bridge the gap, the emptiness left by all the words he dared not say. He wanted her to not just want him, but to need him. He wanted to be her food, her opium, her air. He wanted to snare her so that the breadth of her desire made it impossible to fathom ever leaving him. Not now. Not ever.
And even if he failed and she married the milksop, Ralph meant for her to wear the memory of him—his scent, his touch, his taste—like a brand.
BEA CRACKED OPEN AN EYE. The curtained bedchamber was dark and yet morning it must be. Any notion that the previous night’s happenings might have been a dream vanished the moment she lifted her arms to the headrest and stretched. Her body was deliciously tender in any number of wicked places. In particular, the lovely soreness between her legs didn’t lie. Likewise the bruises on her knees and wrists, the strained muscles of her arms and thighs, and the muskiness of the mussed sheets testified that the previous night of vigorous carnal pleasure was no wishful imagining but a physical event between two flesh-and-blood beings. An event she couldn’t wait to repeat. Last night’s lesson had surfaced a heretofore unknown and unsuspected aspect of her personality.
She fancied a bit of burlap with her lace.
Unfortunately Ralph Sylvester was only interested in her body. No doubt he viewed her as little more than a stimulating novelty not unlike the sexual toy he’d produced for her to try. Beyond the next few days, he didn’t want her in his life.
But that depressing thought was best saved for later. She might have begun the night with her wrists lashed to the bedposts, but in the end it was her tutor who had capitulated. He’d let her spend the night. Smiling to herself, she rolled onto her side and reached for Ralph. Instead of her arm met with empty space. Testing it with her palm, she found that space to be quite cold.
A funny, frenzied panic seized her. She pushed herself upright. “Ralph!”
“Good morning.”
Relief flooded her, ridiculous and yet true. She followed his voice over to the window. He reclined in the wing chair by the window, the smoke from the cheroot he held sketching clouds in the air. His hair was mussed, one side sticking up higher than the other, and the light coming in from the parted curtains showed the glint of stubble on his face. Wearing the now familiar dressing gown with brocaded lapels, he epitomized a gentleman at his leisure. The robe was laid open at the waist, unbelted, but then she knew why. The sash still hung from the bedpost behind her, the final proof that last night had been very real, not a dream at all.
“What time is it?”
“Coming on four o’ clock. I was just about to wake you.” His lazy lidded gaze slid over her body, reminding her that by now he knew it as well or better than she did herself. “I trust you slept well?”
“Yes.”
Indeed, she’d slept more soundly than she could ever before remember. Who would have known sin made for such a soft pillow?
She lifted the covers and glanced down at herself. She still wore the corset, but her garters were gone, no doubt lost somewhere in the blankets. “I suppose I should go.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“Yes, you should. But first I want to see you.”
She let the sheet drop. Just a few days ago, displaying herself in the bright light of morning would have seemed an unthinkable boldness, but now she didn’t seem to mind at all.
His eyes lit and he stubbed out the smoke. “I want you again.” He said it matter-of-factly. Only those hot eyes raking over her weren’t matter-of-fact at all.
“I want you, too.” She’d awakened mere minutes ago and already the tightly coiled ache throbbed between her thighs.
She came toward him, forcing herself not to rush, but to take slow, steady steps. What she really wanted was to race toward him and launch herself into his lap, but such inelegant exuberance was for true lovers and their relationship wasn’t about lovemaking, but sex. He was her tutor, not her fiancé, her lover and yet not really. Despite the intimate nature of their subject matter, she couldn’t afford to forget that ultimately she was paying for his time.
She halted before him. Past being unnerved by his steady stare, she drew her gaze slowly over him and down. She’d never before thought of a man’s member as being beautiful, but Ralph’s was, very much so. He was long and thick, the rosy cock head already dewy with desire. Fascinated, she reached out and traced the silken slit with the tip of her forefinger.
He shuddered, not just his member, but the whole of him. Looking up, she saw that a fine misting of sweat had broken out on his forehead, chest and belly. His skin felt damp and flushed, almost fevered.
Bea knelt, one of her favorite things or so she was learning. His legs were already open. It was a simple matter to move his robe aside, lay her hands upon his knees, and settle between. She did. Musky maleness greeted her, mingling with the scents of sweat and lemon seed soap and another scent she vaguely recognized as her own. The olfactory onslaught made her mouth water and her sex slicken.
She slid one hand upward to the inside of his thigh, and he started. “Am I doing something wrong?”
A stark shake of his head accompanied the choked sound he emitted. “No.”
“Shall I keep touching you?”
He nodded. “Yes, yes…”
He snapped his mouth closed so quickly that she couldn’t be sure, but she could have sworn he’d started to say, “please.”
RALPH REQUIRED ROURKE’S signature on a railway document, only the Scotsman had gone missing from the study and had been absent from his desk for some time. Not that Ralph was worried. As usual these days, his employer could be
found in the nursery playing with his baby daughter and spoiling her to the brink of death. Given how roughly they’d both grown up, Ralph could only marvel at such worship of a child.
Rourke stood beside the crib, holding Lucy in his arms, patiently enduring her twisting his broken nose, her tiny fisted grip one that would do a fledgling pugilist proud. Ralph crossed his arms on his chest and leaned against the door frame, his impatience fading in the midst of such a charmingly comical scene.
“Get ’em where it hurts.” Rourke pulled back and planted a smacking kiss on his daughter’s apple cheek. “That’s Papa’s girl.”
Ralph reasoned it was likely time to interrupt. “If the rest of Black’s Boys could but see you now.”
“Fatherhood makes fools of the best of us.” Rourke dragged his gaze away from the baby and lifted it to Ralph. “Mock me if you will, but mind you, Sylvester, your day will come.”
Ralph snorted. “My day will never come.”
Rourke cocked a roan-colored brow. “Never makes for a bold statement—and a bloody long, lonely time of it.”
Ralph shoved off from the door and crossed the room to the crib. He felt cross suddenly though he could hardly say why. “I stand by my ‘never’ and support it with two very sound, very rational reasons. I will never marry nor will I sire a bastard to endure an existence such as we did.”
No need to add that the woman with whom he was rapidly falling in love—very well, with whom he strongly suspected he’d already fallen in love—was set to wed another.
“A confirmed bachelor, are you?” Rourke cocked a brow and snorted. “Well, I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Women, Sylvester, have a way of sneaking beneath a man’s skin.”
Ralph let the subject die, declining to point out that their life circumstances lay worlds apart. He’d never before begrudged his friend his fine fortune nor did he now. Still, he felt an inkling of regret he hadn’t followed suit even in some smaller way, set aside a “nest egg” of his own. Beyond a wardrobe of custom-cut suits, he had little enough to show for all his tricks and cleverness.