by Mia Marlowe
“A simple yes will suffice. In fact, ‘yes’ is all I want to hear from you for a while.” Rhys smoothed his palms down her ribs, the calluses at the bases of his fingers nicking her skin with prickles of pleasure. He settled them on her hip bones where the nightrail neckline was still perched. “May I show you how beautiful you are all over?”
Yes, please. I know I’m not plump and pretty like Miss Amanda Pinkerton. I know my hips are too narrow and my legs too thin. I know my—
“Olivia?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes,” she whispered. “Show me.”
***
Rhys drew a deep breath. Wanting had left him hard put to keep his voice from going ragged. As well as hard in another way. Now it would take all his self-control not to go too far with this first lesson. He’d meet Mr. Alcock’s expectations eventually. There was no need to rush matters.
Olivia trusted him. He wasn’t about to betray her tonight. Not when he needed her trust in order to keep her safe.
Gently, he eased her nightrail down, over her hips, past her lovely heart-shaped bum, and let it drop to the floor. He purposely didn’t look in the mirror. He wanted her to watch him as he took in the exquisite lines of her back, her buttocks, and legs. He wanted her to see the glow of masculine approval in his face, because he was sure he was fairly lighting the room with it.
Rhys ran his fingertips across her shoulders and down her spine. He dallied at the small of her back and then traced the crease under each bum cheek.
“Oh!” she squeaked out.
“Like that, did you?”
“It was…enlightening.”
“In what way?” He met her eyes in the mirror now.
She dropped her gaze. “I’m learning that certain parts of my body seem to be linked to other parts in ways I’d hitherto not suspected.”
He reached around and slipped a finger under her chin. “Look at me.”
When she looked up at his reflection, the whites showed beneath her dark irises, making her eyes seem even larger than usual. Her mouth parted softly. She looked so vulnerable, as if she hung upon his next words.
“You are beautiful, Olivia,” he said softly. “In every part.” He let his gaze sweep down the mirror past her breasts, her slender waist, her tight little belly button, to the sleek triangle of light brown curls at the apex of her thighs. “Especially there.”
He looked back up at her face and smiled.
She caught her bottom lip with her teeth for a moment, and then a smile stole over her, luminous enough to brighten the whole room. Rhys knew he should feel guilty over what he was doing with this innocent, but if he helped her believe in how lovely she really was, surely that wasn’t a bad thing, was it?
Of course, he’d be the first to admit he was a bit fuzzy on the whole concept of good versus bad of late.
Once, his sense of “ought-ness” had been as well-honed as a preacher. One ought to do this. One ought not to do that. Even if his actions often placed him on the outside of the fence of propriety, at least he knew where the fence was.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
He shook off his niggling conscience and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Do you feel beautiful?”
“When you look at me like that, I do.”
“Then you should let me be your mirror all the time.” He rested his hands on her shoulders and was pleased to find she was only trembling a little. She wasn’t afraid of him.
Perhaps she should have been.
“You said parts of your body seem to be connected in unexpected ways. When I touch you here—” he circled her breasts with his hands, teasing her skin and reveling in the way her nipples responded to his touch, “where else do you feel it?”
Her eyelids fluttered closed for a moment, and a look of pure ecstasy made her brows pull toward each other. When he rolled one of her nipples between his thumb and forefinger, her eyes popped open again.
“There, of course,” she said. “But also in…well, it’s rather like the zing of a bowstring inside me.”
“And let me guess, the zing ends right here.” He slid his hand over her flat belly and covered her sex.
Her ribs shuddered and her jaw dropped.
Don’t scream, he thought furiously. Please don’t scream.
Chapter 11
A soft “oh” escaped her lips. Olivia pulsed under his hand, and it seemed for a moment as if all the heat in her body centered itself in that small triangle between her legs. To be held so tenderly. Especially to be held so tenderly there was a gift she’d never expected to receive.
He accepted her. He found her fair. Everywhere.
Her chest was full to bursting.
“Every touch is potent with meaning,” she whispered, repeating what he’d said earlier. Now the words sang in her heart. More than her body stood naked before him. Her soul shivered in ecstasy over the way his hand cupped her. The tip of one of his fingers slipped into her intimate crevice and she nearly unraveled. “What meaning?”
“Hmm?” He didn’t stop the string of kisses he was lavishing on her neck.
She covered his hand with hers, stilling his questing fingers. “What does this touch mean?” she said with more emphasis.
“It means I find you desirable. It means I want to give you pleasure.”
“That’s all?”
“Isn’t that enough?” He brushed a sensitive spot between her legs and her breath hitched in gasps over the delight of his touch. “I don’t want to take from you, Olivia. I want only to give.”
It ought to have been enough, but it wasn’t. Not for this level of soul nakedness. He ought to at least care for her a little as well.
Stop.
His fingers moved with tantalizing slowness, teasing that swollen spot. She sagged against him, unsure her legs would support her.
Hadn’t she asked him to stop? She thought she had. Or maybe she only thought it. It was hard to tell. The way her body bloomed under Rhys’s gentle caress crowded out impulses from her brain.
“Please, Rhys,” she managed.
“Hush now. No need to plead. Just be patient. I promise every knot will be untied.”
Knots. That was it exactly. How did he know how tangled up her insides felt?
Oh, that’s right, she reminded herself. The man’s a rake, a libertine, a…his fingers found that spot again and bliss washed over her…a god in human form.
He sucked the tender skin at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. One hand smoothed over her breasts, teasing and massaging her nipples.
And his other hand undid her completely.
Tightness gathered, her insides folding back on themselves like a Gordian knot. Then like Alexander in one clever stroke, Rhys loosed her and she came untied.
Her limbs shuddered and she would have collapsed, but he scooped her up in his arms, holding her close while an ever-expanding circle of bliss radiated outward in concentric rings. She pressed her cheek against his chest, gratified to hear his heart galloping beneath her ear. If his rapid heartbeat was any indication, she wasn’t the only one who felt as if she’d just run a marathon. And won.
Still carrying her, Rhys strode across the room and gently laid her down on her bed. Then he stretched out beside her as she tugged up the sheet and tucked it under her armpits. She might be naked under the linens, but as long as they were both in the bed, it felt marginally safer to have that thin shield of fabric between them.
Rhys propped himself up on an elbow, leaned down, and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “How was that for a first lesson?”
“Illuminating,” she said as her heart rate began to return to normal. And with it came the burning desire to know how the act they’d just performed changed matters between them. She willed her voice to sound even and measured. “Everything has a purpose, and we were discussing meaning before we were pulled off-topic. What we just did, I know what it meant to me. What did it mean to you, Rhys?”
***
He frowned.
“I don’t understand the question. Why does it have to mean anything?”
“Because we are not beasts. Because what we do with our bodies also involves our higher selves.”
“What if I don’t have a higher self?” Surely one who plotted to deflower a virgin in order to foil a royal succession must have very little soul left.
“Nonsense. Every human being, no matter how mean their station, is more than mere flesh.” She looked at him so intently, he was forced to look away lest she see the duplicity in him. “So I ask again, what did that mean to you?”
Rhys shifted uncomfortably. Meaning, emotions, these were all things he’d avoided since returning from Maubeuge. He couldn’t afford the luxury of feelings. If he gave in to one, he suspected a flood of them would burst over the carefully crafted dam in his soul and he’d be swamped beyond reckoning.
“It meant satisfaction for us both.”
She arched a brow at him and chuckled. “I rather think I was the only one of us who was satisfied.”
“On the contrary, it pleases me to give you pleasure,” he said. Not as much as if the delectable pleasure was reciprocated, but that was another lesson altogether. “I hope by now I’ve convinced you that your body is beautiful.”
She smiled shyly. “It seems you found me so.”
“Any man would,” he assured her.
“Perhaps it’s enough that you do,” she said, cupping his cheek in her palm. “It’s not as if this is a theory I care to test with all and sundry.”
“I should hope not.” He covered her hand with his. A tightness formed in his chest. Surprisingly, he found the notion that some other man might see her in the glorious altogether unsettling. But if he kept in mind that once he’d ruined her she’d never have to submit to that old rogue, the Duke of Clarence, it might help him ease his conscience.
“And now what?” Olivia asked, her eyes enormous in the dim light. She moved her hand down and splayed her fingers over his chest, sliding a fingertip between two buttons to tease his skin through only his small clothes. “I suspect there is a good deal more you could teach me.”
Hell’s bells, yes. There was an ocean of sensual experiences he’d love to give this neophyte. In fact, if he decided he wanted to finish Mr. Alcock’s commission and mount her this very night, he knew he could do it. All he’d have to do was kiss and tease and drive her to aching fury without release and she’d be begging him to take her.
But something checked within him.
It was the same subtle warning that told him to tread lightly on the hunt to keep from frightening away his quarry. It was the prickles on the back of his neck that advised him to take a different route through the backstreets of London to avoid cutthroats and thieves. It was the inner sense that he ought to hold back his company of cavalry until the opportune moment when their concentrated charge would win the day.
He’d always wondered why his sixth sense hadn’t warned him at Maubeuge that the entire company was walking into a trap. He hoped that meant the real traitor wasn’t someone close enough to him he ought to have sensed duplicity. But Alcock had said he had evidence to damn him and both his friends, so Rhys couldn’t be sure Nathaniel or Jonah were guiltless.
Looking down at Olivia’s freshly satisfied form, he knew he certainly wasn’t. There was probably a special chamber in hell reserved for men like him who took without even letting their victims know they’d been robbed. A bit of Olivia’s innocence was gone forever, but, for the moment at least, she didn’t seem to miss it.
In fact, she was all but inviting him to continue educating her, but he’d never regretted listening to the small inner voice that urged him to reconsider a course of action. And now he had a bothersome sense that he’d done all he ought and more with Olivia Symon for one night.
His body fought against the restraint like a blooded hound tugging at the leash, but he forced himself not to bound forward. If he took her tonight, his commission would be done and he could report back to Alcock. There’d be no more chances to instruct her in wickedness. She seemed to have an aptitude for it. The longer he kept her virginal, the longer he could dally with her. It was a selfish reason not to despoil her completely, but it worked.
“There are many more lessons in the art of lovemaking,” he said, rising from her side and tugging down the front of his waistcoat. Unfortunately, it was the cutaway sort and did nothing to disguise his aroused state. “That is enough for you to absorb now.”
“You still see this as a lesson?” She sat up, bunching the sheet over her breasts. “But I thought…” The languid, satisfied expression she’d been wearing vanished. “Never mind. Turn around so I can put my nightrail back on.”
He obeyed. “Not much point, you know. I’ve already seen you without a stitch.”
“Yes, well, in that case, you’ve had enough to absorb, haven’t you?” Her voice sounded tight and testy. She had forgotten her own injunction against raising her voice. “If you’re still determined to stay the night, you’ll have to sleep in a chair.”
Before he could warn her against speaking too loudly, he heard the rustle of linen and knew she’d climbed back into bed. As he settled back into one of the wing chairs, he also knew he’d been thoroughly dismissed.
He listened to her soft breathing and realized there was something he didn’t know—what their encounter had meant to her. He’d been so intent on avoiding her question, he’d neglected to ask any of his own.
Now the moment when he might have asked and learned was gone.
He tried to get comfortable in the chair, but it was built for someone much smaller than he. He scooted its mate close enough for him to prop up his feet, but even that didn’t bring him any closer to slipping into sleep.
Once he succumbed to slumber, nightmares of Maubeuge often invaded his dreams. He usually relied upon consuming sufficient quantities of liquor to keep them at bay, but he couldn’t be an efficient watchdog if he were foxed beyond thinking.
So now since he wasn’t going to sleep and hadn’t consumed enough alcohol to obscure his brain, his long dormant conscience reared its pointed little head. He didn’t regret goading Olivia into removing her clothing and discovering her own loveliness. She was beautiful and it was high time someone convinced her of it.
And he didn’t regret giving her the first sexual peak of her life. The way her brows had drawn together in need, the way her lips parted in a rictus of pleasurable agony, the way she glowed like a thousand candles when she came…no, he couldn’t regret revealing that part of her to herself. And he rather liked the fact that he’d be indelibly linked in her mind with her first climax.
But he did regret that he’d touched her with an ulterior motive, with the threats and promises of Fortesque Alcock urging him on like a dark angel on his shoulder.
She wanted it to mean something. What it meant was Rhys Warrington was worse than a dog.
Chapter 12
“Mademoiselle,” Babette’s cheery voice roused Olivia from a sound sleep. “Are you well, chérie? If you do not make to rise soon, you will be missing the breakfast.”
Babette drew back the heavy damask curtains to allow long shafts of sunlight to stream into the room.
Olivia pulled up the sheets over her head to shield her eyes. She didn’t want to move. The linens were that perfect drowsy temperature they always assumed just before she had to leave them. She had sunken into the feather tick so deeply it curved around her in a warm embrace. And to make her bed even more enticing, her whole body still basked in an afterglow of the pleasure Rhys Warrington had introduced her to last—
Heart suddenly pounding, Olivia sat bolt upright in bed. There was no sign of Lord Rhys. Relief washed over her. He’d even reset the wing chairs over the indented spots on the carpet so no one would ever guess he’d passed the night in one of them. She suspected that awkward arrangement meant he didn’t get much sleep. She, on the other hand, had slept so soundly, she’d not been aware of when he slipped out of
her chamber and back to his own.
She supposed she ought to thank him for that. Clearly there was something about sensual release that allowed a body to sink into slumber so deep, it was near oblivion. And he’d guarded her reputation by taking care not be caught there. He’d been more careful than she.
Of the two of them, she’d been the wanton one. He’d remained fully clothed while she stripped bare as a peeled twig. She’d allowed him to look at her, touch her, all of her, for pity’s sake! She’d let him take her to some dark, unfathomable place, a place that she never suspected existed inside her, and made her burst into glorious light.
How on earth had she outdone an admitted rake for scandalous behavior?
“And what shall mademoiselle wear this fine day?” Babette singsonged.
“I have my choice between black, black, or black,” Olivia said. “I’m sad about Princess Charlotte and her son, of course, and the proprieties must be observed, but I’m mortally sick of nothing but black to wear. Some women look pale and interesting in mourning. Miss Pinkerton, for example, positively blooms in it.”
“Oui, it is often the case with such dark hair and eyes,” Babette said. “An exotic air, that one, and only more mysterious when she is draped in black.”
Olivia would never be classed as mysterious. Her mourning clothes washed her complexion of all color and made her look as if she’d taken too many of her mother’s liver pills.
She shook her head to clear away these unaccustomed thoughts. Since when did she care so much how she looked?
“But mademoiselle does not have to choose black this day,” Babette said. “Only this morning, word has come from London that the mourning for your poor princess, it is lifted. Alors, you may choose whatever your heart desires.”
“Whatever my heart desires…” Rhys Warrington’s handsome face rose unbidden in her mind. He’d certainly introduced her to some new and bewildering desires. She glanced guiltily at the looking glass. Had she truly stood there, bare as an egg before it, while Rhys Warrington played his wicked games with her body?
The whole episode was tinged with a fuzzy echo of unreality. It smacked of the same ephemeral mistiness that dreams take on in the cold light of day. Surely it didn’t actually happen.