by Eva Leigh
“I understand,” Tamsyn answered solemnly.
“Once you cross the threshold,” Amina continued, “you must agree to abide by our policy that you will force no one to do anything they don’t desire. Consent is mandatory. Further,” she added, “nothing about this society leaves the building. Do you agree to obey these strictures?”
Tamsyn felt a particular kinship with Amina. Both of them were women managing illicit operations, and both made sure that anyone they worked with adhered to strict rules.
“I agree,” Tamsyn said.
Kit handed Amina a pouch jingling with coins. The manager curled her fingers around it and curtsied.
“Please enter,” Amina said warmly. “The night is yours.” She swept an arm toward a corridor.
“Ready?” Kit whispered to her.
Excitement rising, she inhaled, then nodded. At her signal, he guided her down the hallway. Voices and music grew louder as they neared a set of open double doors. She and Kit stopped on the threshold.
For a moment, Tamsyn forgot the mechanics of breathing.
Masked people were entangled in groups of two or three on low couches scattered throughout the chamber. Glimpses of naked flesh gleamed in the low candlelight. In the corners of the room, men and women touched and caressed each other, heedless of anyone who might be watching. A man pressed his lips to a woman’s bared breasts. Two men embraced, kissing as their hips rubbed together.
Sex happened everywhere. Her gaze alighted from one scene of unbridled eroticism to another.
Moans and sighs floated on the music, and a warm, heavy musk scented the air with a human, sensual smell. Meanwhile, masked servants circulated with trays offering wine and cakes, as calm and disinterested as though they attended to the guests of an afternoon luncheon.
Two women reclined on pillows heaped on the floor. They kissed deeply, and one fondled the breasts of the other. Seeing them, Tamsyn thought of Samantha Markham and Lucy Temple. The two women lived together in Newcombe and had done so since before Tamsyn had been born. No one ever questioned why the women hadn’t married. Now Tamsyn knew why.
She fought to suppress a gasp when she saw a woman eagerly sucking on a man’s upright penis. The man sat in a chair, his breeches open just enough for the lady to take his member in her mouth and hand as she knelt between his legs. Even though they wore masks, their blissful expressions were evident.
“A place for discovery, yes?” Kit murmured.
“Women talk,” she answered quietly. “They say things to each other about what goes on in the bedroom. I’d heard about . . . that. But I didn’t know people actually did it.”
She tore her gaze from the couple, only to land on a woman in coarse, worn garments reclining on a sofa with her skirts up around her waist. A man in fine evening clothing eagerly licked and kissed the woman’s bared quim.
“What of that?” Kit asked Tamsyn, his gaze following hers. “Does that intrigue or disgust you?”
The woman’s head was tipped back and her mouth was open as she moaned her pleasure. Tamsyn had never seen anyone experience such ecstasy before. The man who lapped at her had his eyes shut as he bent to his task.
Tamsyn stroked her fingers along the neckline of her gown. Her flesh felt feverish and tight, and her own quim heated as she observed the lovers.
She licked her dry lips. “I’d attempt that.” She glanced at Kit, who watched her with heavy-lidded eyes.
“Good,” he answered, his voice deep. “Because it’s something I enjoy doing.”
She had no answer for him, but her mind spun to images of his head between her legs, lapping eagerly at her most private place. She felt a liquid warmth gathering between her thighs while the tips of her breasts became acutely sensitive as they rubbed against her chemise.
Glancing away, she caught sight of Amina on the other side of the room. The manager surveyed her club, but as she did so, a strapping dark-haired man approached her. Though he wore a mask, Amina seemed to know him. Her smile widened as he neared. The man stood very close to her, their bodies almost touching. Even at a distance, Tamsyn sensed the attraction between the two. Yet neither moved to touch the other.
Did Amina permit herself to take a lover from amongst her guests? The man was dressed expensively. Was he a gentleman?
“There is more to explore,” Kit noted.
Tamsyn’s curiosity about the mysterious Amina evaporated when Kit led her into another chamber. This one resembled a ballroom, with an empty stage set up at one end and couples dancing languorously in the middle of the room. The fact that the dancers were essentially embracing barely registered in Tamsyn’s mind—not when she beheld a partially dressed woman pressed up against a wall, with a man holding her up, vigorously having sex with her. The woman held tightly to her lover’s shoulders, and her legs were wrapped around his waist. Their sounds of pleasure mingled with the melody supplied by nearby musicians.
“Oh,” Tamsyn said on an exhale. “I didn’t know that was possible. To make love standing up.”
“One can couple many places,” Kit answered. His voice continued to get deeper, and his arm beneath Tamsyn’s hand was iron hard. “Especially if you are motivated. Lying down is just the beginning. You can stand, or kneel, or one person lies down while the other stands. Any number of combinations.”
He moved in front of her. His pupils were large and dark as he stared at her with undisguised desire.
“You see, love,” he murmured, “people have sex because it’s what all creatures do. Because there are few pleasures as extraordinary. I want us to share that. Will you take this journey with me?”
His gaze was hot and intent, but his question didn’t make her feel pressured into doing something she wasn’t ready to do. The next step was hers to take.
Kit’s heart beat thickly as he awaited Tamsyn’s answer. She glanced around the ballroom, and he watched where her gaze landed—the couple fucking against the wall, a man sinking to his knees in front of another man, two men and one woman swaying together as their hands roamed each other’s bodies.
He used to appear at the Orchid Club regularly with Langdon. Tonight, in fact, Kit had spotted his friend flirting with Amina. After several visits, though, Kit’s fascination with the club had waned. The idea of fucking in public and watching others fuck lost its forbidden allure. As a precaution, after it had become known that Kit was on the hunt for a wife, he stopped attending evenings here altogether.
He hadn’t expected to become so aroused tonight. Yet being here with Tamsyn, watching her genuine response, inflamed him. He pictured himself licking her pussy, or her taking his cock in her mouth, or them standing up and urgently fucking. Everywhere his body was primed and ready, his aching cock most of all.
Kit couldn’t remember wanting a woman more. But he would wait and wait, until she was ready.
He’d taken a gamble, bringing her here. He hoped he hadn’t scared her further.
Tamsyn’s lips parted and her chest rose and fell rapidly. She turned her wide eyes to him.
“I want to leave,” she said breathlessly.
Guilt lanced him. He’d wanted this so much for them, and his instincts had been wrong. He’d brought her here to help alleviate her trepidation and show that sex was something to be celebrated. Yet he’d been terribly mistaken.
“The fault is mine,” he said grimly. “I’d thought, I’d hoped—but I was wrong.” He started toward the door.
She stepped in front of him and placed a surprisingly strong hand on his chest. “You misunderstand me,” she said, her voice husky. “It’s time for us to become husband and wife in fact as well as in name.”
For a moment, he could only stare at her. Perhaps he’d misheard. Yet the raw arousal in her gaze told him otherwise. She meant what she’d said.
“You’ve always been a bold woman,” he said. “I understood that the first time I saw you.”
“This bold woman wants her husband.” Her hand slid up to cup his jaw, and
her touch aroused him beyond measure.
He threaded his fingers with hers and kissed her wrist, where her pulse throbbed. “That husband is hers to command.”
Chapter 19
There was a stretch of coastline back home that consisted of a twenty-foot-high cliff that plunged into the sea, with a small beach and cove beside it. Since time immemorial, village children had been daring each other to jump from the bluff into the water, then swim to the beach in triumph. Only a handful attempted it.
Though Tamsyn was the daughter of a baron, she’d always played with the local children, all of them disinterested in any class system that would keep them separate. Just a few days past her twelfth birthday, she’d been racing along the craggy coast with Julia Rowe and Louise Turner, when Louise had challenged Tamsyn to leap from the cliff into the sea.
Tamsyn had taken a deep breath, and then ran right over the edge of the bluff.
Riding in the carriage with Kit, she felt exactly the same as she had in those seconds running toward the cliff’s brink. Giddy, elated, uncertain. Afraid of the unknown but welcoming it. Her whole body was electric with anticipation.
She was a grown woman now and made choices because she wanted to, not because someone goaded her into it. Doubt fell away.
Kit sat opposite Tamsyn, his gaze never leaving her face, except to dip down along the length of her neck to linger at the skin exposed by the low neckline of her gown. Wherever he looked, she felt heat and a surge of awareness, as though he touched her with his fingers—or his mouth. From time to time, he brushed his lips with his knuckles, as if he already anticipated the taste of her. They had both removed their masks, so it was impossible to miss the raw desire that gleamed in his eyes.
He said nothing, and the silence only built her tension higher.
But she wanted this, wanted him, badly. She’d been ready to yield to the demands of her body, and seeing all that she had at the club only ignited her further.
At last, the carriage reached their home. Kit got out on his own and helped her down. His hand was hot as it held hers, and he didn’t relinquish his hold on her once she stood beside him on the curb.
They climbed the front steps together and entered the foyer. Most of the servants were already abed, so a lone drowsy footman shut the door behind them and handed Kit a lit taper to navigate the darkened house. Side by side, she and Kit ascended the stairs. Her heartbeat thudded with each step. In the flickering light, he was sinfully handsome and she marveled that this dazzling, sensuous man would soon be her lover as well as her husband.
At the top of the stairs, he turned to her. “Whose room would you prefer?”
“Mine.”
Within moments, they were in her chamber. As Kit shut the door, Tamsyn released his hand and went to the fire burning low in the grate. She bent and stirred the embers with a poker, urging the flames to life.
Tamsyn stood as Kit approached, moving toward her with intent. Keeping his gaze on hers, he uncurled her fingers from the poker and set the tool aside.
He narrowed the space between them, until their chests brushed against each other. Slowly, he reached up and removed pins from her hair. The pins fell to the carpet but she paid them no mind as he went about his task with a serious, studious thoroughness. Locks of her hair tumbled free over her shoulders. When all of her hair had been unpinned, he combed his fingers through the strands. His careful attention made her heart contract with pleasure.
“Woman of fire,” he murmured, holding one coppery curl between his fingers. “A phoenix.”
She’d been called many names on account of her bright red hair and used to wish she’d been born a brunette, but seeing the desire sharpening Kit’s features, she wanted only to be herself.
“Will your lips burn me?” he mused softly, his mouth hovering over hers. “Shall you turn me to ash?”
“Perhaps we’ll both go up in flames,” she answered breathlessly.
“We’ll burn together.” With one hand, he cupped the back of her head, and sensation bloomed at this simple touch.
Their lips met hotly. The time for tentative exploration was over. His tongue delved into her mouth and she stroked it with her own. She clung to his shoulders as he wrapped his arm around her waist and pressed their bodies close. They devoured each other. The kiss was wild, unchained from propriety or artifice. He felt hard and taut against her—the length of his thighs, his broad torso, the solidity of his arms—and she willingly fell into him as she spun into greater and greater pleasure.
Heat spread across her back, soaking into her skin. Only when silk fabric bunched and sagged did she realize he’d undone the fastenings at the back of her dress, and the warmth she felt came from the fire behind her.
She pulled back enough to send him a wry look.
He lifted a brow but there was no apology in his expression.
All his worldly experience didn’t matter to her anymore. A rake and a virgin—they were who they were. Yet they were also so much more than their conscribed roles.
“Help me out of the rest of it,” she whispered urgently.
Together, they stripped her out of her gown, her stays, and her petticoat. In a few moments, she wore only her chemise, stockings, and garters. When she bent down to untie them, he stopped her hands.
“Leave them on,” he said huskily, causing arousal to flood her body.
He eyed her greedily as she stood in a nearly transparent chemise. His gaze stroked along her breasts before skimming lower. She looked down and saw the red of her woman’s curls barely concealed by the fabric. Earlier, she’d been in a very similar situation when she’d stood before the fireplace in Kit’s room. She hadn’t covered herself then, and she wouldn’t now.
She tilted up her chin. “It’s time for me to see you, as well.” She toyed with the buttons of his waistcoat, dipping her fingertips between them to feel the fine lawn of his shirt and his body beneath.
A smile curved one corner of his mouth. “At your pleasure.” He quickly shucked his coat and let it fall to the floor, then went to work undoing his waistcoat. That, too, was tossed to the ground, which was also the fate of his neckcloth. Before she could admire him in his shirtsleeves, he pulled the garment off over his head, completely baring his torso.
“Oh,” she exhaled.
She’d seen shirtless men before. One didn’t live in the country without witnessing bare-chested men in the fields or working on their ships. And while some of those men’s bodies had been pleasing to her eye, none of them made her lose her breath the way Kit’s did.
He was lean and hewn, with each muscle sharply defined, from the breadth of his shoulders to his pectorals and lower to his flat abdomen. Blond hair curled over his chest and wound down to a thin line that vanished beneath the waistband of his breeches.
His was a body that had been forged by combat, and though he had left his service behind, he hadn’t lost his warrior’s physique or potency. The war had touched him in other ways. Puckered flesh denoted old injuries—a slash across his right bicep, a round mark on the back of his left shoulder from a bullet—proof that he wasn’t merely a reckless libertine but rather a man who had fought and survived.
Unable to stop herself, she stepped close and ran her hands over him. His skin was iron hot, and he seared her as she touched him. He went tight beneath her palms. When she stroked along his stomach, the muscles there contracted and quivered. He sucked in a breath.
“You’re putting me under a spell,” he said hoarsely as she fingered the dip above his hip bones.
“I’m exploring,” she answered. Her hand stopped just before she reached the column of his erection pressing against the front of his breeches.
“Let me be your guide.” He covered her hand with his. But he waited for her nod before he moved them both down lower, until she cupped his length. He rasped, “That’s my cock, love. And it wants inside you.”
Fire coursed from her hand up her arm and all throughout her body and between
her legs. Urged on by a primal need, she stroked him, learning his size and shape. As she caressed him, he muttered curses and prayers. The look on his face was one of tormented bliss.
“I need to feel you,” she breathed, “with nothing between us.”
“Not yet,” he said with a rueful chuckle, “or this production will be over before the curtain rises.” His smile turned wry. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt anyone’s touch besides my own.”
The image of him stroking himself made her dizzy. Her breasts felt acutely sensitive and her nipples tightened.
“I saw so much at the club.” She licked her dry lips. “But I don’t know what to do next.”
His eyelids lowered. “Do you know what I’d like to do right now?”
She shook her head.
“I’d like to make you come,” he rumbled.
Her breath left her in a rush, but she managed to say expectantly, “Yes.”
With a knowing, carnal smile, he led her toward the bed. He released her to pull off his boots, then he climbed onto the bed and leaned against the headboard with his legs stretched out. “Recline against me.”
There was something so potent in his direct, forthright words. No prevarication, only a man and a woman together seeking pleasure. She got onto the bed and positioned herself between his legs, with his chest snug against her back. His arms encircled her, and she was acutely aware of his cock rising between them.
“Kiss me,” he urged.
She turned her head to meet his lips. It was a long, deep, drugging kiss that robbed her of thought. When his hands cupped her breasts, she gasped into his mouth, and when he took her nipple between his fingers and gently pinched, her gasp turned into a moan. Her legs fell open.
He stroked and caressed her breasts, toying with her nipples, all the while intoxicating her with his kiss. She arched up into his touch. When his hand slipped down from her breast to curve over her mound, she realized that he had gathered up the hem of her chemise.