Three Lessons in Seduction

by Sofie Darling

Memory, sharp and sweet, raced between them. The Isle of Skye. Their honeymoon.

  “What a lark we thought it would be,” she said on a wry laugh, “to arrive at the lodge three days before the servants and have the entire place to ourselves.”

  “But we forgot one essential detail,” he said, drawn into the memory with her.

  “Food,” she supplied. “In my defense, I thought I’d spent enough hours in my family’s kitchens as a child that I’d picked up the bare essentials of cooking.” She speared a new potato. “The first day wasn’t so bad.”

  “That was because the innkeeper in Kyleakin saw fit to send us on our way with a loaf of bread and a Scotch pie.”

  She swallowed her bite and laughed. “We took care of that in short order.”

  “The next day was cured meats and the remainder of the stale bread loaf.”

  “But the third day,” she began, slicing off a bite of rabbit and bringing it to her mouth.

  “Starving.”

  “Ravenous,” she added around the bite. “How did we come by the groundskeeper’s cottage?”

  “We thought to alleviate our hunger by taking a walk.” He left unsaid what else they’d done to keep the hunger at bay.

  “That’s right. We happened upon his house. Mr. Budge, a grumpy, old Scot, if there ever was one.”

  “He was just pointing us back in the direction of the lodge—”

  “When, like a miracle,” Mariana cut in, “the front door opened and emitted both the man’s wife and the most heavenly aroma of roast—”

  “Rabbit.”

  Their gazes met and held on a smile.

  “How did we finagle our way into their dining room?” she asked.

  “Our wolfish leers must’ve done the trick.”

  “I’m fairly certain Mrs. Budge fed us her entire pantry.”

  “Without a doubt.”

  Mariana’s smile went dreamy and thoughtful in a way he hadn’t seen in years. It reminded him of the best moments of their marriage when she would open herself to him and reveal the softness at her core. Only he knew this part of her, and it warmed him. Her smile was a gift.

  “I send Mrs. Budge a Christmas goose and a box of oranges every year,” she said.

  “You do?” he asked, the rasp in his throat hopefully obscuring the emotion behind it.

  “Of course. She was part of one of the happiest memories from our—” Mariana bit off the rest of the sentence, and the present brushed away the past.

  “Marriage,” Nick finished for her, vowing at once not to finish anymore of her sentences.

  Her smile skittered away, and she nodded.

  Once again, the parade of servers returned to clear their plates and set the course of fromage. Nick dismissed the attendants for the night.

  Mariana ran her fingers up the stem of her glass, and Nick had to look away. While he related to the impulse for more champagne, there was a different appetite that had been awakened and required but one meal to reach satiety.

  One meal? No. Once with his wife had never been enough. Their Scottish honeymoon attested to that fact.

  “About the Comte de Villefranche?” she began, pulling him away from thoughts that could reach no satisfying end.

  “Yes?” he asked, clipped, curt. He shouldn’t feel annoyed that she’d brought up the mission. After all, she was his agent.

  “I’ve given my encounters with him a bit of thought. He may be young and idealistic, and perhaps a bit brash, but he doesn’t strike me as a revolutionary bent on anarchy.”

  “What sort of revolutionary is he?”

  “The well-meaning sort, I think.”

  “The well-meaning sort?” Nick asked, unable to hide his skepticism.

  “Perhaps the misguided sort.”

  “Are you willing to wager the lives of England’s sons on conjecture?”

  Mariana held her tongue and averted her gaze.

  “Don’t allow a handsome, young idealist to turn your head.”

  “Handsome? Young?”

  Nick detected the insinuation in her tone. “Impetuous,” he continued, hoping that settled it.

  “Ah,” she drew out. The subtle lift of her eyebrows spoke of disbelief.

  The Mariana who said, “Ah,” and kept the remainder of her thoughts to herself was new, the opposite of the gallivanting girl who stomped across the Skye countryside proclaiming her impending starvation to the world. He wasn’t sure which version he preferred.

  She pushed away from the table and stood. Champagne glass in hand, she stepped toward a patch of peppermint dahlias in bloom. “While on his famed expedition to Mexico,” she began, changing the subject, “Alexander von Humboldt sent dahlia seeds to Paris, London, and Berlin.” She glanced over her shoulder, a glimmer of mischief in her eye. “Perhaps you encountered Humboldt on one of your Mississippi riverboats?”

  “Humboldt and I don’t travel in the same circles.”

  She returned her attention to the effulgent blossoms. “Kew Gardens has maintained a lively dahlia patch from Humboldt’s seeds.”

  As Mariana continued with a botany lesson about the edible tubers—apparently ancient South American civilizations used them for food—it struck Nick that her education, and her need to educate, was a device intended to place distance between them.

  “The effect of the candlelight on the flower petals is lovely,” she continued. “The way they absorb the light, yet reflect it with a soft, deep glow. Like little scraps of velvet beneath a night sky.”

  “Have you become a poet, Mariana?” Given her response to turn away from him, would he have detected a blush in the light of day?

  “If I didn’t know better,” she began, a hitch in her voice that only he knew, “I would think this the scene of a seduction.”

  Unable to remain seated quietly when such words issued from her lips, he rose. “If you didn’t know better?”

  She caught his eye over her shoulder. “Yes.”

  “Are you so certain it isn’t?” He wasn’t so certain himself.

  “Yes.”

  It was the jagged fray in her voice when she spoke that simple, “Yes,” that sent him over the edge and set him on a course both foolish and inevitable, possible outcomes suddenly fated.

  Chapter 16

  Titter-tatter: One reeling, and ready to fall at the least touch . . .

  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

  Francis Grose

  Would Nick let the provocation pass?

  She could see by the determined set of his mouth and the narrow slit of his eyes that he was analyzing her words, deciding whether or not to respond. She may have even detected a slight flaring of his nostrils.

  A tiny frisson of panic raced through her, alongside no small amount of excitement.

  Gently, perhaps too gently, he placed his champagne flute on the table and stalked toward her in slow, but inevitable, increments. The South American jaguar she’d stroked earlier flashed across her mind. The jaguar was a solitary and opportunistic apex predator, the sort who was the king of his jungle. Inside the eyes of the man before her, she saw the kinship between man and jungle cat.

  “You know the scene of a seduction so well?” he asked, his voice as smooth as a purr.

  “Of course.”

  His mouth crept wider, as if he sensed her false bravado. “A seduction,” he repeated, continuing his advance on her.

  She stood her ground, unwilling to retreat backward beneath the intensity of his gaze and the steadiness of his step.

  “The phrasing suggests a lack of agency on your part. I never found you wanting in that department.” A forefinger tapped his lips once, twice. “Let us analyze the elements of a seduction, shall we? We are engaged in
a spy lesson, after all.”

  Her mouth went dry, but she couldn’t look away. Apex predators understood averted eyes as submission. She would not submit.

  “Champagne? Check.”

  Even as a healthy dose of wariness braced her against his steady advance, she didn’t feel as cautious as she should. After all, this was Paris, where a sense of unreality underlay and influenced every moment. In London, this night . . . this scenario wasn’t possible.

  But in Paris? Here, possibility abounded.

  And in this garden? Everything was possible.

  “Oysters? Check. I wonder”—A wicked gleam entered his eye—“has your autodidacticism extended into the realm of the sensual? Mayhap an empirical inquiry into the efficacy of aphrodisiacs?”

  A curt shake of her head was all the answer she trusted herself to give as her senses awakened to anticipation. No aphrodisiac on earth was more powerful than Nick, his words . . . his voice . . . his dominant presence casting a spell of sensuality around them. It could be true that everything was possible in this garden.

  Perhaps she could be granted a special dispensation: one night free of her shipwreck of a marriage where she could pursue a seduction with her husband. Oh, the irony . . .

  “What do you think?” he murmured.

  A meager stretch of grass now separated her from him. “What do I think?” she asked, managing a raspy whisper. “This is madness.”

  His gaze all but dared her to look away. “And which words shall I use for this seduction?”

  “For this seduction?” she whispered.

  He nodded once in confirmation. It was no longer a seduction in theory. It mattered not if she’d goaded him into it or if it had been his intention all long. This seduction was happening at this very moment. He stood not a foot away from her, the air between them thick with the undeniable reality of it. She tilted her head to hold his gaze.

  “Words of love?” he asked. “Words of lust?”

  Her legs threatened to give way. His hand reached out and, before she understood his intent, he flicked the cap off her head. Loose tendrils of hair tumbled about her shoulders, his eyes went as dark as the indigo sky above, and she knew: the wanting between them was mutual. He wasn’t toying with her in the way a jaguar toyed with his prey only to release it once he grew bored. Instead, his eyes suggested a different narrative: he wouldn’t release her.

  To have Nick in her thrall was a feeling she was incapable of resisting. A cresting surge of audacity emboldened her to reach across the insignificant stretch of space separating their bodies. She considered caressing the back of his neck before pulling his mouth to hers. But such an action was expected . . . ordinary.

  Rather, her hand reached forward and stroked the fabric of his trousers. His jaw clenched, and a sharp inhalation of air sounded through his teeth. The tip of her finger began tracing the outline of his manhood through coarse wool, her fingernail grazing its rough surface. She stepped forward, their bodies a hairsbreadth away from touching, and rose to her tiptoes. Her lips found his ear. “Oh, I think actions, rather than words, will do.”

  His body tensed, and she sensed the last remnant of his rational mind asserting itself. He was attempting to regain control. That wouldn’t do.

  She’d made this man lose control before. Those three starved, glorious days in Skye, for example. It was nothing new. Yet . . . it felt new.

  Her stomach fluttery and light, the world became clear, crisp, fresh. She hadn’t yet experienced Nick as the person she was today. And she wasn’t leaving this garden tonight until she had experienced every last inch of him.

  Her fingers found the waistband of his trousers and hesitated at the closure. “Don’t you want this?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It is that simple.” She unlooped the buttons, one . . . two . . . three, freeing his swollen manhood, her point punctuated.

  Unable to resist, her fingers wrapped around the naked length of him, her thighs instinctively squeezing together in response. It had been so long, too long, since this had been inside her. She could push him down onto one of the reclining sofas and have him straddled between her legs, poised to take him inside her within a matter of seconds. But that wasn’t the way she wanted him.

  She unwrapped her fingers from his shaft and registered a note of protest in his eyes. Good. It was a start. “I have a confession.”

  “You’re a long way from a chapel,” he all but growled.

  “I secretly admire scandalous women.”

  “Some might call you a scandalous woman.”

  “Those people have no imaginations.” She paused a heartbeat, just long enough to stoke his curiosity about what she might say next. “I’ve been quite genteel and abstemious all these years. Tonight, I long to be a hedonistic Parisienne.” She reached for the bottom of her sweater and pulled it over her head. His eyes lowered to feast on her naked torso. The raw lust charging his gaze increased her desire tenfold. “I’ve always wondered”—She kicked the slippers off her feet—“what would it be like”—She unlaced the closure of her trousers—“to shed all inhibitions and be completely, utterly free?” She wiggled her hips and shimmied free of the trousers—her last stitch of clothing.

  “Mariana,” his voice rasped, “what do you want from me?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” She was absolutely intoxicated. And it wasn’t from champagne. “I want you to lose control.”

  A canny light sparked within his eyes. “That isn’t what you want.”

  His words sounded an alarm bell in her head, but she had no care for it. “It isn’t?”

  “It isn’t.” He pulled her into him and dared her to look away. His manhood pressed against her naked pelvis, dissolving her body into a pool of molten lava. “You want me to fuck you.”

  A tremor of shock rocked her. Fuck. A vulgar word, but a word ripe with carnality, too. Alongside the shock coursed a thrill of pure lust.

  “Isn’t that the same thing?” she asked breathlessly.

  “No. Say it.”

  “Say what?” she whispered. The power of the moment seemed to be sliding away from her, and she cared not.

  “Say, I want you to fuck me.”

  Without consideration for possible consequences, or perhaps because of them, she whispered fiercely, “I want you to fuck me,” before immodestly and wickedly adding, “right now.”

  One hand curled around her upper arm, the other released and stole down the tight space between their bodies until it reached the intimate slit of her sex, his eyes refusing to release hers, their breath mingling in the small space between their lips.

  His hand hesitated, and she thought she would burst into flame if his fingers didn’t reach their inevitable destination. His irises flared as his fingertips feathered across the sensitive nub of her clitoris, a word she’d learned not too long ago from an anatomy book deemed too indecent for females of all ages.

  Her eyes closed on an involuntary gasp. All she was capable of doing in this moment was feel. A soft mewl of longing escaped her as his fingertips stroked back and forth, eliciting one crest of pleasure followed by another, the next higher than the last. While one long finger continued stroking her, another slipped inside her, inch by exquisite inch.

  His lips moving against her ear, he whispered, “You’re so wet for me.”

  Pleasure at his words and the feel of him rippled through her body, yet it wasn’t enough. She wanted . . . needed . . . more. She reached around and cupped his tight buttocks with both hands as she pulled him toward her, his ready manhood grinding into her pelvis. Her hips gave an impatient thrust.

  It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough until—

  He stepped forward, forcing her to step backward. They repeated the cooperative little dance until her legs bumped a
gainst the edge of a sofa. A tiny cry of protest escaped her when their bodies separated, and he lowered her onto lush, down cushions.

  From her prone position, she watched the clothes fly off him in a quick succession of efficient movements, his delicious body a feast for her eyes. The hardened muscles flexing across every lean inch of him were nothing short of splendid. Wild with pleasure, desire, and greed, she opened her legs and bared herself to him, a feeling of delicious sinfulness overtaking her. Never in her life had she felt so much assurance within her femininity as when he froze at the sight of her.

  “Mariana . . .” he trailed off, apparently unable to complete a sentence. Craving, dark and sinuous, stole through her, causing her sex to quiver in anticipation of him. The corners of his lips tipped up ever so slightly.

  Again, he was a jungle cat, and she wanted nothing more than to be his capture.

  When he dropped to his knees between her legs, she rose onto her elbows. She would watch as he entered her.

  He wrapped long fingers around his shaft and pressed his hips forward, slowly, deliberately, until his manhood pushed against her sex. Her body tensed with anticipation, and the breath suspended in her lungs. She sensed a hesitation within him. He wanted her. That she knew. But he didn’t want to want her. That she also knew.

  “Aren’t you going to fuck me?” she whispered, the question a demand and a plea.

  His manhood poised at her opening, he pressed forward, inch by excruciating inch, his eyes drifting shut. He looked utterly lost in the moment. At the sight and feel of him, she teetered on the edge of orgasm, another recently acquired word.

  Deeper and deeper he sank into her, rills of sensation streaming through nerves focused on a single purpose: pleasure. Encased to the hilt, his eyes opened, and she, too, was lost. Unable to restrain herself, she wrapped her arms around his neck as her legs encircled his waist. She would feel all of him.

  A muffled groan escaped her when he drew away; a sharp gasp filled her when he pushed forward. With each deliberate thrust of his hips, his fingers biting into her skin, steadying her, spurring her on, she no longer knew or cared where he ended and she began.