No Mistress of Mine

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  “I want to be inside you,” he muttered.

  “Yes.” As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she watched him slide his trousers and linen down his hips, and when he did, she sat up, reaching out to take him in her hand.

  He groaned, tilting his head back, and she stroked him just as he’d shown her how to do so long ago. He was thick and hard and scorching hot, and she relished the velvety feel of him in her palm. But when she caressed the cleft at the tip with her thumb, he groaned again, and her enjoyment of this particular activity was abruptly stopped as he grasped her wrist and pulled her hand away. “Now, who’s teasing?”

  His grip tightened around her wrist, and he leaned back, pulling her with him.

  He didn’t say anything, but she knew what he wanted. Bunching up her skirts around her waist, she eased herself onto his seat, straddling his hips, her knees sinking into the cushion as he settled back against the roll and tuck leather behind him.

  “Take me,” he ground out, grasping her hips. “Take me inside you.”

  She smiled, savoring the order, for she knew it was also a plea. Holding her skirts up out of the way with one hand, she took his erect penis in the other and guided the tip through the slit of her drawers and between the folds of her opening. As the tip of his penis entered her, she slid her hand out from between their bodies, and the moment she did, he thrust his hips upward, his hands tightening as he entered her.

  She cried out, her fingers grasping for the seat back on either side of his shoulders to steady herself as he pushed into her.

  “Do you remember this, Lola?” he asked, going deeper, pushing harder.

  Yes, she remembered this, the hot sweet fullness of him inside her. How could she ever have forgotten it? With him inside her this way, it was as if no time had passed, as if their last afternoon in the house on Circus Road had been only yesterday. She gave a frantic nod, rolling her hips, rocking to accommodate his shaft, working to take him fully.

  But he seemed to want her to say it aloud, for his hips flexed, pulling back. “Do you?” he asked, and thrust again, harder, the head of his penis touching that exquisite place deep inside her, a place that she knew could bring even more intense pleasure than the one he’d caressed with his fingers moments ago.

  “Yes,” she panted, her hips working as she felt the pleasure rising, thickening, and she knew she was close to climax. She widened her knees, pressing down, trying to work her hips and bring that completion.

  But he didn’t let her have it. His hands tightened on her hips, pushing her back a little, making her groan in protest.

  “Denys!”

  “What about this?” he asked, his voice ragged. He flexed his hips, touching her deep, then he pulled back and flexed again in a teasing, tormenting caress. “Do you remember this?”

  She began to sob, for she was hovering just on the edge, and this sweet, drawn-out pleasure was agonizing. “Yes, yes, I remember, Denys,” she sobbed. “Finish it. Oh, please, finish it.”

  He kissed her mouth, hard, then he obeyed her frantic plea. His grip tightened, his fingers pressing hard against her buttocks as he brought her down to him, and he thrust upward.

  She came in a rush so intense it made her dizzy, and her fingers clenched convulsively over the seat back as her body pulsed with wave after wave of pleasure.

  Even awash in the sensations of her own climax, she knew he was close to his. “Come, Denys, come,” she begged, tightening her inner muscles around his shaft, working her hips to bring him to the peak. “Take your pleasure.”

  With a hoarse cry, he let go of her hips, and his arms wrapped tight around her, as if even now, she wasn’t close enough. He buried his face against her neck, and his breathing was hot and quick against her exposed skin. A violent shudder rocked his body, he thrust into her twice more, and his body went rigid as the warmth of his climax pushed into her.

  He relaxed against the seat, and she collapsed against his chest, her body still impaled, as she slid her arms around his neck.

  His hand slid up her back, his fingertips caressed her neck. “I remember, too, Lola,” he murmured, and pressed a kiss to her hair. “I remember every moment.”

  She closed her eyes, her cheek against the wet wool of his jacket, and she wished they could stay like this forever. The rain had stopped, and the only sound was the grating clatter of the growler’s wheels and the other carriages on the street. A moment later, the carriage turned, and Denys pulled back the curtain a bit to look out. “We’re on Charing Cross Road,” he told her. “Just past Soho Square. We’ll be at Trafalgar in a few minutes.”

  Disappointment pierced her, for she knew they were almost out of time. She willed herself to pull back, easing away from him into the seat opposite, pulling down her skirts as he fastened his trousers, and she grimaced a little at the wetness between her legs, even as she longed to have him inside her again.

  That, she told herself as she began refastening her garments, was a foolish thing to wish for. Everything that was true six years ago was still true and would always be true. This story, no matter how many times they relived it, would always have the same ending. And the same heartbreak.

  Her hands began to shake, and when she tried to form the knot of her tie, she couldn’t seem to manage it. Her fingers fumbled, and she stopped, fighting back the sudden, stupid urge to cry.

  “Allow me,” he said, and turned to kneel in front of her. Grasping the ends of her blue silk necktie, he began to form a four-in-hand knot.

  He was so close that as he worked, she could feel his breath warm on her face. She lifted her gaze to his eyes, and though the light was dim, she could see their steady, dark brown depths. She wanted, so badly, to kiss him, but she couldn’t. That blissful moment had passed, and she knew it couldn’t come again.

  “There,” he said. His fingers shifted the knot, settling it against her throat, but though his hands stilled, he did not pull away. He leaned forward, his forehead pressed to hers. “I want to stay with you tonight. Let me come to your room.”

  “At the Savoy? Are you mad? It’s impossible to get you up to my room without being seen.”

  He lifted his head, exhaling a sharp sigh, acknowledging the hazards of such a plan. “I suppose you’re right. Still . . .” He paused, toying with the lapels of her jacket, smiling a little. “There are other hotels. More discreet hotels.”

  “And then what?” she choked, forcing out the words. “A discreet house? In a discreet neighborhood.”

  His smile vanished. “No, actually. I’m thinking of a different sort of house.” His gaze was unwavering as it met hers. “A pretty little place in Kent called Arcady.”

  She felt as if there were a fist around her heart, squeezing tight. “We’ve been through this before.”

  “You mean, you have. I was never given the chance to air my views on the matter.”

  “Talking about this won’t change it. I’m not the woman for you, and we both know it. Didn’t what happened this afternoon prove that?”

  His palm tenderly cupped her cheek. “I think what happened this evening proved the opposite.”

  Inside, she began to shake. She could feel hope rising, cracking her resolve, but she thought of what had happened earlier that day, of how it had felt to be in the glare of society’s hostile scrutiny, and she reminded herself that hopes about a future with Denys were futile. In the eyes of his people and the society he moved in, she was, and would always be, a slut. If she married him, the only revision of their opinion would be that she was a jumped-up slut. But she wasn’t the only one who would pay the price. “We lost our heads tonight and had a tumble. It’s hardly reason enough to join for life.”

  “Is that all this was to you? A tumble?”

  Another crack fissured her resolve, and she knew she had to get away from him before she broke completely apart, and her heart and her resolve were in pieces. Desperate, she reached up, tapping her knuckles hard against the roof of the carriage. “I won’t do this,”
she said as the vehicle began to slow. “I won’t ruin your life again.”

  “Lola,” he began, but she cut him off.

  “You’ve repaired your relations with your family, earned their trust, and made good. I won’t destroy all that a second time.” She took a deep breath. “I’m no good for you, Denys. You need to stay away from me, and I need to stay away from you.”

  “That’s going to be difficult, I’m afraid.”

  It would be impossible, and she knew it. Looking at him, she knew that he knew it, too.

  “You managed everything on your own before, and you can do so again. Make whatever decisions about the Imperial you like. I won’t fight you.”

  “So that’s your answer? Running away again?”

  That hurt, like the flick of a whip, but she couldn’t deny the pattern of her life. “I don’t want to run out on the play. If you and I can stay away from each other, I’ll be able to see it through to the end of its run.”

  “And then?”

  “And then . . .” Her voice wobbled, and she paused, swallowing hard, willing herself to remember the goal she’d set for herself long before she’d ever met him. “If I do well, I’ll be able to gain another dramatic role. Perhaps I’ll join a repertory company in the North—Manchester or Leeds. Or I may go to Dublin, or back to New York.”

  “Still sounds like running away to me,” he murmured. “I see why you’ve had so many fresh starts. And what about what happened here tonight?” he added before she could respond. “You’re thinking we’ll just forget about it, I suppose?”

  “Yes.” She managed to hold his gaze across the carriage. “We will.”

  “I won’t forget, Lola,” he said. “I’ll never forget.”

  The tenderness in his voice was almost her undoing, but she knew she could not destroy his life again. For the second time, she was in love with him, and for the second time, it was going to break her heart. She could already feel it happening. Not in a Paris dressing room this time but in a dingy growler on a London street.

  The driver opened the door, but when he pulled down the step, Denys didn’t move to exit the vehicle.

  “Go, Denys,” she said, striving to keep any hint of the pain out of her voice. “Please, just go.”

  “I’ll go if that’s what you wish, but this conversation isn’t over.” He reached for his hat. “Not by a long chalk.”

  He stepped out of the carriage, donned his hat, and pulled his notecase out of the breast pocket of his jacket. “Take her to the Savoy,” he ordered the driver as he pulled a note from the case in payment of the fare and put it in the man’s hand. Then he bowed to her, turned away, and began walking across Trafalgar Square.

  The driver folded up the step and closed the door. But Lola leaned forward, her nose pressed to the rain-streaked window glass, her eyes on Denys as he started across the square. Then the carriage jerked into motion and pulled forward, and he was gone from her view.

  Desperate, she shoved down the window and stuck her head out, craning her neck, wanting to watch him as long as possible. “I love you,” she whispered, but he had already vanished behind Nelson’s Column, and her soft confession was lost in the mist.

  Chapter 19

  Denys had no intention of being deterred by one refusal. Not now, not when he had her in his sights again, not when they had another chance. The moment he’d seen her face through the window of that taxi, it had reaffirmed what he’d felt from the first moment he’d ever seen her. She was his woman. He belonged to her, and she to him. The question was how to make her see it that way.

  Denys walked to the taxi stand on the west side of Nelson’s statue, and as he waited for a hansom, he considered what to do next.

  He’d told her their conversation on the topic wasn’t over, but he knew more conversation about this wasn’t going to change anything. He could understand her reluctance to face down society—the ton could be a vicious, unrelenting gauntlet. But the fact that her reluctance was on his behalf, not her own, was frustrating as hell, for he’d face them all down until the end of his days and die with no regrets. He could tell her that until he was blue in the face, however, and he doubted it would make a particle of difference. No, in circumstances such as these, words were useless. Action was what was needed here.

  And since he’d rather cut off his right arm than see her looking as she had earlier today in Regent’s Park, whatever action he took would involve much more than persuading her to the altar. It would have to be monumental, something along the line of melting a glacier or moving a mountain, which meant he couldn’t do it alone. He’d need help.

  And he’d need time. Time to plan, to make arrangements, to give Lola room to breathe, and hopefully, the opportunity to miss him. Fortunately, time was something he had a bit of, for she had said she wouldn’t leave until the play was finished, and since she was an equal partner, the earl couldn’t close down the theater or shut the play down without her consent.

  In the interim, however, his family would need to be dealt with. If they hadn’t already guessed, the flower show and his break with Georgiana would surely show them which way the wind was blowing, and he did not want to reveal his intentions and ignite a family quarrel prematurely. He remembered quite vividly the rows he’d had with his father on Lola’s account the first time around, his mother’s tearful pleas, the endless rounds of calls on him by aunts, uncles, and cousins, the reminders to think of his position and his duty and his family name. He had no illusions that it would play out any other way the second time around.

  When it all proved futile, the reckoning would come, and when it did, he wanted it to be on his terms, in a time and place of his choosing. In the meantime, his best course was to go to Arcady. Going to Kent enabled him to avoid, for now, the parade of concerned relatives, and it might also pacify his family and quiet the gossip. It would also ensure that he wasn’t tempted to see Lola, and it would eliminate the possibility he would encounter her accidentally. Leaving town was clearly his best course.

  A hansom pulled up to the curb in front of him and stopped. “Where to, guv’nor?” the driver asked, hopping down from the back to pull open the hansom’s wooden doors.

  Denys considered a moment, then pulled out his watch and turned toward the streetlight to read its face. It was just past six, which meant he had plenty of time to put the wheels of his plan in motion and still catch the last train for Kent.

  “White’s,” he said, and tucked the watch back in his waistcoat pocket. “And there’s half a crown above the fare if we arrive there within fifteen minutes.”

  The driver earned that half a crown, depositing him in front of his club with three minutes to spare. By the time those three minutes were up, he had ordered dinner for five in a private dining room and dispatched a footman to South Audley Street with instructions for his valet. Althorp was to pack his things, inform his family he was off to Arcady, and meet him at Victoria Station in time to catch the nine o’clock train for Kent.

  He then made liberal use of the club’s telephone. His account was charged an exorbitant amount for the privilege, but he didn’t mind that in the least. After all, when a man called out his heaviest guns, he ought to do it with flair.

  Lola tried to be strong. She tried to focus all her attention on her work because that was the only thing she could control. She couldn’t change the world, not Denys’s world, anyway. She tried to tell herself that once she was gone, he’d be able to forget her, and she’d forget him, though she feared that sort of self-deceit wasn’t going to work a second time. Most of all, she tried not to miss him.

  In all aspects, she failed miserably. Every morning on her way to rehearsal, she studied his office as she passed, hoping to catch a glimpse of him—alighting from his carriage, walking along the street, or perhaps standing by his office window up above. She could have spared herself that particular torture by turning onto Southampton Street and entering the rehearsal hall by the side entrance, but though it was painfu
l, she couldn’t spare herself that pain.

  Nor could she resist reading the society pages. That was an equally painful exercise, but she craved any information about him she could find. She wanted to know everything—the activities he was engaged in, the places he went, the people he might be with. By the time three days had passed, the papers had made it clear no announcement of engagement between Lord Somerton and Lady Georgiana Prescott would be forthcoming and that it was Lola Valentine’s appearance at the flower show and her wanton disregard for propriety that had caused the breach. Somerton, it was said, was so pained by Miss Valentine’s breathtaking lack of discretion that he’d gone to his estates in Kent to recuperate.

  Lola stopped reading the papers after that, but during the three weeks that followed, avoiding the scandal sheets did little to help her to forget him. This was London, and reminders of him seemed to be everywhere—in the lifts of the Savoy, in the growlers that rolled past her on the street, in the flowers of the parks and those sold by the flower sellers around Covent Garden.

  She tried to lose herself in work, but that, too, did little to relieve her heartache. She was grateful that her part in Othello was the minor one of Bianca and not the leading role of Desdemona, for she could summon little interest in the play, and this sudden bout of apathy both surprised and frustrated her. After years of training, dreaming, working toward a goal, to have it seem so colorless and unimportant was something she had never anticipated, and she didn’t know quite how to cope. And though she’d been through all this emotional turmoil with Denys once before, it seemed so much harder this time. Unlike last time, she could not run away until the play had run, which meant she was stuck, like a fly in amber, until Othello came to an end. And then, she would have to go as far away as she could get. He’d said their discussion of marriage wasn’t over, and she couldn’t bear to keep having that conversation, for she knew at some point her resistance would disintegrate and she would give in. Where Denys was concerned, she’d always been weak as water.