Mrs. Clay laughed, then sobered with a flush. “I’m sorry, Miss Beckett. I misspoke and forgot myself. It’s good you’re sitting for him, but I didn’t mean to sully your ears with a widow’s rambling.”
“No, please don’t apologize!” Eleanor protested in a guilty rush. “It’s all—I love to hear you jest. And there isn’t a malicious bone in your body, Mrs. Clay, for all your care and kindness! I’m simply tired, I think.”
“Would you like me to send up a hot bath after dinner, Miss Beckett?” Mrs. Clay said.
Her first instinct was to refuse the offer, but she knew better. It was not in Mrs. Clay’s nature to “not be troubled” when it came to her tenants’ creature comforts. And tonight, Eleanor didn’t have the strength to fight off her own longing for the luxury of a warm soak and a bit of solitude.
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Clay, that would be a delight.”
Eleanor headed up the stairs, and at the sight of her door ajar, felt no alarm. Tally’s workbox was propped against the wall, and the smell of brass polish and lemon wax hinted at his efforts to make her room perfect. Peering inside, she spotted her diminutive friend finishing up and stirring coals in the grate to invigorate their glow.
She walked across to kneel next to him, and was greeted with one of his sweetest smiles. “Good evening, sir.”
He nodded, then moved to sweep the last bit of dust from the hearth.
“I’m in love with him, Tally.” She spoke aloud, amazed at how good it felt to speak her innermost secrets. “It’s all a sordid mess and I should be more ashamed, really, but I’ve never been happier than the moments I have with him. It’s just—not going to last. He doesn’t trust me, Tally. He desires me, but not enough.”
Tally sat back and put a small decorative screen back in place against the wall, and then looked up into her eyes as if offering his sympathies. He gestured with his hands, but Eleanor was at a loss to understand him.
“Mrs. Escher seems to think I have the helm, Tally. But I feel like I’m at the mercy of winds I can’t even fathom. Have you ever felt like that?” she continued sadly.
He tipped his head to the side as if contemplating her question and then reached out to pat her hand, his manner a perfect imitation of his adopted mother’s.
“I shall take what I can, Tally, all that I can, and then pray to Providence that I’ll have hoarded away enough of his kisses to sustain me for a lifetime.”
Tally nodded, and sat quietly with her while she cried.
Chapter
19
“It’s finished.”
The words slipped out before he realized it, and Josiah closed his eyes at the bittersweet taste of them in his mouth. He couldn’t imagine lying to her about his progress, but a part of him protested that he’d so stupidly forfeited his happiness in a single breath.
The painting was finished. There was no denying it, but hearing it made it a real and implacable fact. He’d spent the last thirty minutes tracing and retracing his own signature in the lowest right-hand corner to delay saying it—to no avail.
“I beg your pardon?” Eleanor asked from her seated pose. “Did you say it was finished?”
“I did.” He set his brushes down and forced himself to appear to be cheerful. “You are officially immortal, Miss Beckett, for better or worse.”
She stood slowly, her face pale. “I’m sure it is for better. Can I … see it?”
“Yes.” He stepped back as she approached to make room for the bulk of the velvet gown between the easel and the worktable, then held out a hand to guide her into place. “It is … as you see.”
Eleanor’s legs felt numb as she approached, anxious anticipation making her mouth dry. She’d been contentedly perched, watching him work and daydreaming about how they would make love later in the afternoon, when he’d made his announcement and startled her back into the waking realm.
It was midmorning and her world had just come to a jarring premature halt.
She kept her eyes on the hem of her gown as she walked, trying not to trail it in any wet paint on the floor or move too close to the brazier. But at last, she was in front of the easel and there was no more avoiding the inevitable. Eleanor raised her eyes to confront her own image.
Oh, God. Please don’t let me cry.
Vanity had no place in her thoughts, but it was hard to recognize herself in the serene beauty that gazed down at her. The woman in the painting was everything she’d longed to be, but transcended even those dreams. That woman didn’t aspire to blend in or attain respectability. That woman didn’t care what anyone thought or how anyone perceived her beauty. That woman was … invincible.
“I can hardly believe that this is me—that this is how you see me.” She put a hand up to her lips. “I am not that beautiful, Josiah.”
“You’re far more beautiful, but I’m not that good of a painter. Do you not recognize yourself?”
“That woman is …” Eleanor sighed. “I wish I had her courage.”
“You do.” He stepped up to put an arm around her waist, and the chill that had seized her began to fade. “It is one of your finest qualities.”
“Josiah, what happens now?” she asked softly.
“I will pay you as I promised, Eleanor. You are free to leave me.” He took a slow steadying breath. “But then, by now, you must have guessed you’ve always been free. I could never …”
“You speak to me of money?” Eleanor became very still and quiet.
“No. That was a foolish thing to say.” He turned her to face him. “Anything I say now would be foolish.”
“Then don’t. Don’t say anything.”
She reached up to pull his face down to hers, kissing him as she had never dared. She suckled his tongue and tasted the firm corners of his mouth, her teeth capturing his lower lip and tormenting him with the flicker of her own tongue against it. Whenever he kissed her, she always felt the echo of it in every forbidden hollow of her body and she prayed it was the same for him. She abandoned his mouth, only to trail hot kisses down his throat where his pulse jumped at her touch. He moaned and she closed her eyes at the masculine music of it that made her knees weaken. “Josiah, take me. Here. Now.”
He was already caught in her spell, and Josiah groaned at the weight of his cock as if filling with hot sand and hardening in answer to her invitation. “I don’t … have any French letters here. Downstairs—”
She shook her head. “No. Here. Now.”
If he’d meant to argue, he forfeited the debate as her hands slid down over the planes of his stomach where his erection was straining against the confines of his pants. She’d unbuttoned just the top two or three buttons, but it was enough to allow his flesh to leap into her hands, her touch searing his spirit as she stroked and squeezed him, the urgency of her own desire fanning his.
“Oh, God, Eleanor …”
It would be their last time together.
He moved his hands up her back, over silk velvet, to press her to him, even as his heart finally admitted its surrender. He loved her. He truly loved her. But his excuse for keeping her was gone. It was stupid to proceed without the condoms, but an irrational part of him embraced the risk. She would be his, and the thought of a child made him selfishly and fiercely glad. But he didn’t want to dwell on his reasoning.
He didn’t want to think at all.
Not now. Now there was only Eleanor, and the need that burned between them.
“As you wish.” He kissed her, matching the fierce passion of her touch with his own. Josiah lifted her up as if she weighed nothing at all and carried her toward the dais to set her on the couch. “Damn it. Get out of this dress, woman.”
She moaned, untangling herself from his embrace to comply. “Yes.”
He reached behind her and untied the ribbon that had been tucked into the back, and then firmly wrapped one end of it around his hand to pull it free and unlaced the evening gown in one firm fluid motion.
Eleanor gasped in shock and ple
asure, instinctively holding the bodice of the gown to her chest to keep it from falling. “You are … quite talented, Mr. Hastings. That—shouldn’t have been possible!”
He smiled. “Rita’s no ladies’ maid and I’ve been fantasizing for endless days and nights about how easily a man could creatively dispatch with this gown.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, but I want you to undress for me. I want to watch you.” He deliberately took three steps back, leaving her alone on the dais.
Eleanor stood proudly to face him, looking into his eyes as she allowed the gown to fall to the floor. Without a tremble of shyness or reserve, she moved with an easy grace to loosen her petticoats, kicking aside each layer and watching the stark effects of each discarded item on the man before her. At last, there was only a thin chemise left and she slid it off her shoulders to let it slide from her fingertips to the floor below.
She held her place, as naked as the day she was created but for her stockings, shameless and lovely enough to make his throat close with a thousand unnamed emotions. The red velvet and under things made a sumptuous puddle around her bare feet, and for a moment, he realized she presented an erotic version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus arising from a pool of scarlet cloth instead of a shell, with nothing to cover her but her own fiery headdress of untamed curls as it tumbled down her back and the dark auburn triangle of fleece that crowned her sex. Her figure was perfection in his eyes, and all he could do was stare at the lines of her body, the curves of her, so balanced and firm. Instead of a look of serene detachment, his Venus met his gaze with all the knowledge of her seductive appeal.
Eleanor made no effort to hide herself from his gaze, aware of the flush that swept up from her breasts and the taut feel of her stomach and hips as the craving for him whipped through her. She pushed back her long hair to reveal even more of herself to him, basking in his undivided attention as never before. She was rewarded when she heard him gasp with pleasure, and Eleanor seized on a surge of the glorious power she wielded. Lifting her own breasts, her nipples hardening with the turn of her mind, emboldened by the look in his eyes of awe and searing raw lust.
She tipped her head to one side, studying him and savoring it. Impulsively, she pointed a toe and then lifted her foot to balance it on the sofa, deliberately teasing him as she held his gaze and bent over to slowly roll down her stockings.
“God, I love your body.”
She gasped, her eyes filling with tears. “Then have it, Josiah. Take me and leave nothing. Don’t be kind or gentle. I don’t think I could bear it.”
Desperation edged their every move, and Eleanor stepped down to rush into his arms. She felt as if she would shatter into a million pieces if he treated her like fragile glass; the ache in her chest was a storm on the horizon, but now there was the temporary shelter of his arms. Tenderness would feel like deception, a promise of a love that he hadn’t professed and might not exist. Eleanor wanted to lose herself in the passion that was tangible between them until she couldn’t think at all.
He kissed her roughly and Eleanor moaned as she met the intensity of his touch with her own, biting the corner of his mouth as she tore the linen of his shirt pulling it off his shoulders. He was far too overdressed for the occasion, and the sound of the fabric being rent spurred them both on. She dragged her nails across his skin and then up his back, making him shudder at the fire in her touch. She’d marked him and his soul welcomed it, wishing for a scar to carry like some strange souvenir; proof that she’d once been his.
He lifted her in his arms slightly, her bare feet losing purchase with the floor, and Josiah tried to move back but bumped into the table with its miniature forest of blazing tapers. Eleanor cried out as a few drops of hot wax touched her shoulder.
“Oh, God. Are you burned?” he asked, releasing her instantly.
“No,” she answered quickly, then bit his shoulder hard enough to make him shudder. “Do … do it again.”
He leaned back to look down into the emerald cauldron of her eyes, and within a single heartbeat, he instinctively knew what she wanted. “Yes.”
He took one candle and led her naked back to the dais by one hand, his eyes locked onto hers. She followed him willingly, the trust in her eyes so pure it burned. He guided her, pushing her back down onto the sofa, and laid her out, arranging her hair and toying with her position as if he meant to paint her this way. He stared at the sensual feast spread out before him and had the good sense to thank God his vision was as clear as he could ever remember it being. There was nothing marred or clouded, nothing of her he couldn’t take in.
Her eyes shimmered with the heat of her desire, and her lips were parted as her breath came quickly in anticipation of what was to come. Her red hair fanned out around her beautiful face, transformed by the candlelight into molten copper, and the cream of her skin was already coated in opalescent dew as if she herself were carved out of pearl. The darker triangle of auburn curls above her sex was already gleaming with her arousal, and as he watched, a single trail of clear ambrosia leaked from her body to crest down her lush thigh.
She held her arms up over her head in a pose of submission, her breasts lifted up and her thighs open so that he could see the ripe color of her sex, her lips swollen and slick with wanting.
He held up the candle and carefully allowed a single drop to fall onto her breast, coating the most sensitive strawberry-tinted peak, then leaned over to blow on the wax to cool it and Eleanor screamed out her pleasure, bucking and writhing beneath him. Her hands gripped the cushions over her head and her eyes fluttered open, searing him with the look of raw satisfaction and hunger he read there.
“Yes.” It was one word, but Josiah absorbed a universe of meaning in that instant. Yes.
Again and again, he trailed hot wax over her skin, pooling it in her belly button only to finally risk a few drops against her thighs. Eleanor was transformed, a woman unbound, and spread her legs wide for him. The invitation was not to be ignored. He knelt over her, freeing his cock and fisting his rampant erection with one hand, and then dripped one hot line of beeswax up her opening and onto her swollen and ready clit.
She began to come, and Josiah blew out the candle and threw it across the room, refusing to be left by the wayside. He pulled her roughly up from the sofa, only to press her onto her knees so that he could take her from behind, and wasted no time to line himself up with her waiting channel. She was still so tight it took his breath away as he pressed forward to notch his head inside of her. He caressed the underside of her breasts, then squeezed each one, tweaking the hardened peaks in a pinch that made her moan and press back against him, her hips undulating to rub the rich honey of her arousal into his skin.
“Josiah!” She tipped her hips upward, and the sight of her, straining to take him, the strawberry pink gleaming flesh slick for his pleasure, stretching to take him in, was too much.
“As you wish.”
He drove forward in one relentless thrust, gripping her hips to hold her in place while he entered with a searing force that made them both cry out. Her delectable ass so perfect in his hands, her skin so warm and firm against his fingers, he had to grit his teeth to maintain control. Muscles gripped him in a molten vise that almost made him spill his seed. But no power on earth was going to force him to forfeit a minute he didn’t have to.
There was no gentility in the primal drive to possess her. He took no quarter and showed no mercy. It was a punishing force, thrusting forward up inside of her so completely that she cried out at the culmination of each push, surrendering to him completely. On and on, Josiah relentlessly took all that she offered, his desire fueled by the smell of her sex and the sounds of their flesh slapping together. Eleanor’s mews and moans of pleasure were oddly melodious, a sensual siren’s call so strong he didn’t care if he was being led to his doom anymore.
Pain and pleasure intertwined and Eleanor gave in to all of it, her skin marbling at the intensity of his touch. Her heart was po
unding as the ache inside of her turned into a molten coil of tension. It was a glorious fall she’d never imagined. Her nerve endings blazed with a new sensitivity that made it difficult for her to breathe. Even so, she wanted more—so much more. “H-harder! Yes!”
He complied, one hand buried in her hair, riding her, civilization falling away, his cock growing even thicker as his arousal reached its peak. He could feel every inch of her, velvet inside velvet, and the raw pull and grip of her channel against him had him in thrall.
“Josiah, please …”
Fingering the small little pucker of flesh forbidden to him, he pressed into her and she screamed as she came at last, in great bucking spasms that forced him to let go of her hair so that he could grip her hips to keep his balance. It was a white-hot ecstasy that erased his sense of self, and he jetted inside of her, thrusting with each wave of his release until he wasn’t sure where her climax had ended or his begun. It was a spiral of release that made him both conqueror and conquered.
He collapsed next to her, without withdrawing from her body, unwilling to break the connection or relinquish his hold, vaguely aware that he’d never fully taken off his pants. They were both covered in sweat despite the chill in the room, and Josiah leaned over to rescue the remnants of his shirt to keep her warm as best he could. But it took long minutes before his powers of speech returned.
“Eleanor,” he began, “that was …”
“No words, Josiah. Just hold me. Please”—she sighed, arching back against him—“just hold me.”
He held her, breathing in the scent of her hair and skin, tasting her arousal on his lips, and then one last thought echoed in his mind before an exhausted sleep claimed him.
It’s finished.
Afterward, Josiah awoke alone on the dais, surprised that he’d drifted off at all, and unsure of the hour, only to realize that Eleanor was gone. A quick search confirmed that the worst had happened. It was still early in the afternoon, but she had left without a farewell. There wasn’t even a note or a single sign that she’d graced his life beyond the painting that remained.
Passion Wears Pearls Page 21