“Touch yourself,” he ordered when he saw her hips begin to move, tugging harder and harder on her rings. She could work an orgasm out of herself with her fingers far quicker than he could and he wanted to learn how she did it, so he watched her closely.
Her slender fingers flicked and pulled and scratched and prodded faster than he could see. Her skin mottled, not yet over her last orgasm, and she grunted, tensing. God, but she was a lean, muscular woman. Who would have thought he’d find such a spare body so very inviting? Her belly, when it clenched with her climax, was tautly ridged with muscles—reminding him, oddly, of Smith.
She shuddered and Edward stilled his hand and watched her as she tossed her head side to side, her body straining to hang on to her pleasure as long as possible, the cords in her neck like cables.
“That was the fastest one yet,” he said.
She shook with tired laughter. “Is everything a contest with you, Edward?”
He considered her question while absently stroking his chest, flexing, and studying his own body in the mirror. Was he becoming flabby? He met her eyes and flushed to find her watching him. What had she asked him? Oh, yes.
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing. I was just asking.”
He had to ask; he couldn’t stop himself. “When are you going to open that box?”
“Oh, Edward. Please don’t.”
“What? Aren’t you curious?” He’d learned about the bequest the way he learned about everything: through his spies. The only places he didn’t employ spies was here and in her chambers. A man had to draw the line somewhere. Still, he wanted to know what was in that box.
“I think it’s a priceless jewel,” he said musingly.
She laughed and he knew she enjoyed this stupid guessing game they played.
“You are so unimaginative,” she chided, her playful tone as arousing to him as binding her body in black leather—more, actually.
“Oh?” he said, mockingly offended. “I suppose you’ve got a more creative idea?”
“I think it’s the world’s smallest donkey.”
Edward almost choked on his laughter. Who would have imagined he would enjoy laughing in bed with a woman?
“It’s your turn,” she said.
“No, I give in.” He could never beat her at this game, she always had a more creative, outlandish answer. Which reminded him of something—her paintings. “It occurs to me—rather late, I’ll admit, that I’ve never seen one of your paintings.”
She stiffened and turned slowly to him, the closed expression he’d not seen for some time taking over her face.
What was this?
“Nora? Don’t you want me to see them?”
For the first time ever, she blushed. “I—well, they’re rather private.”
“Private,” he repeated flatly, his temperature spiking. “You mean from me.”
“No, of course not. It’s just that some are—well, not ready for public display. I have a few I wouldn’t mind showing you—I will bring them out tomorrow.”
“You don’t need to go to that effort—you paint in the sunroom, don’t you? I can come and look at them there.”
“I’d, well, I’d rather bring them out. If you don’t mind.”
He did mind. What the hell was all this? He’d never given any thought to her harmless daubing, but if he wanted to enter any room in his house, he would do it—Nora’s permission was not necessary.
“Edward?”
His heart was racing as it did when he’d spotted some new angle in one of his businesses. “Hmm?”
“I can see you are going to turn this into an obsession.”
He frowned, not caring to hear that word applied to him. “I am not obsessive.”
She immediately retreated. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be offensive.”
“Do you think I’m obsessive?” He waited. To his knowledge, she had never lied to him.
She hesitated, but then said, very softly, “Yes, Edward, I do.”
Rage and some other emotion boiled up inside him—what? Embarrassment?
“About what?” he snapped.
“Well, about many things.”
“Name one.”
She hesitated again.
“Go on, name one.”
“This conversation is a good example. Why do you care if I think you exhibit obsessive behavior? Just because you now know what I think makes no difference. I’ve thought it all along without you knowing and it never bothered you.”
Edward’s head spun, as if he’d drunk an entire bottle of spirits. “I can’t even begin to understand what that means.”
“Edward.” She leaned up on her elbow and looked down at him.
He frowned, unwilling to look at her. “What?”
“Don’t be angry. I like the way you are—there is nothing to be angry about.”
“Except my obsessiveness.”
“Well, sometimes that is a very good thing.”
He turned to her. “When?”
She wiggled in a way he found adorable—all the more so because she’d never done it before. “Well, your obsession with my bottom, for instance.”
Edward felt a stirring of interest in his cock. Oh, he was not stupid, he knew what she was doing—distracting him with her body—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy it.
“It’s only once tonight—unless you count the other,” he pointed out.
She shook her head, her expression serious but her unearthly eyes glinting with humor and arousal. “I don’t count my cunt, Edward.” He shivered with excitement. He loved it when she used vulgar words. “I only count my back hole.”
“It’s still early,” he said in a deliberately musing way.
She smiled—which he’d still not become used to—and turned onto her stomach before getting on her hands and knees, canting her plugged arse at the very angle most comfortable for him to enter her. His prick—which had already spent twice this evening—was as hard as iron again.
“I want you to suck me, first,” he ordered, just to make sure she knew which of them was in control and who made their decisions.
She lifted her chin, her expression demure. “Of course, Edward.”
❈❈❈
Nora was exhausted. The last few weeks had been more rigorous than her time in various whorehouses. She lay in her bed even though the sun was already up several hours. She wanted to crawl back under the covers.
Last night was the closest she’d come to lying to Edward—about her paintings. But if he came into her small studio, he’d look and pry and peek and prod. He would find things—no matter how hard she tried to hide them. She would start tucking things away today so perhaps she could sooth his wounded feelings and invite him in tomorrow. And he was hurt, she’d seen it. Even when he’d left their bed at dawn this morning—having broken his record and leaving her full of his spend and wearing a very large, heavy plug—she’d known he hadn’t forgotten.
There was a light knock on the door.
Oh God. Please don’t let it be Cat. My jaw is almost dislocated from sucking Edward to hardness those last two times.
Before she could say to enter the door opened: it was Edward. He hesitated on the threshold until she smiled and sat up—she’d put on a nightgown already—and said, “Please, come in.”
She could sense his relief from across the room. His hands were flexing at his sides and he glanced around as if he’d never seen the room before.
“I haven’t been here since that first day,” he explained, as if she didn’t know that.
Nora stood and took her dressing gown from the foot of the bed; it wouldn’t do to be seen talking with her uncle partially dressed. She secured the tie and gestured to the sitting room. “Do you wish to talk to me? Perhaps sit a while?”
He flushed and she realized, for the first time since she’d known him, that he was embarrassed. “Maybe for a moment.”
He to
ok the biggest chair and she sat across from him. “What is it, Edward?” she prodded when his lips remained tightly pressed together.
“I’ve come to apologize.”
Nora goggled.
He laughed—but it too, like his smile—was tinged with embarrassment. “Judging by your expression that is a rare beast, indeed.”
“No, no—it’s not that. It’s just that I wasn’t aware you’d insulted me.”
“I’ve been rather selfish.”
Edward saying he was “rather” selfish was like saying the ocean was “rather” wet.
“I never asked you about your painting and when I finally did I went bulling in.” He frowned down at his hands. “It was wrong of me—in several ways.” He glanced up, his dark eyes hopeful. “But I would like to get better about things like that. A man should treat his wi—”
It was like witnessing a rare celestial event—an eclipse or meteor shower, and a hundred—perhaps a thousand—emotions flitted across his face as Edward realized what he’d almost said. And then, it struck him with the force of a mallet to the forehead: what he’d done to her, to him, maybe even what he’d done to Cat.
His blankness only lasted a second before he looked utterly stricken—there was no other word for it. He blinked as if something had—and was still—blinding him, and then lurched to his feet. “I have to go,” he muttered, his eyes stark.
Nora watched him walk from the room like a man sleepwalking.
❈❈❈
Edward didn’t go to their room that night or the next. Instead, he went to the Bellaire, the only place that had no associations of Nora.
There were new girls since his last visit and he engaged two of them, and then a different pair the next day, never leaving his room to go to work or home.
The whores were skilled—very skilled—and they managed to get him off over and over again in spite of the fact he felt like a corpse.
He engaged in every perversion he could think of with the women, hoping he could feel something; there was nothing.
But if there was one thing Edward was not, it was a quitter.
So, he stayed for another day and he just kept going forward, like a soldier.
But instead of marching like a soldier, he was listlessly fucking, and had been for what felt like his entire life.
He was currently embedded in one of the whores, from behind, while she tongued and pleasured another woman—an arrangement he had once favored greatly. He blinked his eyes to clear them as he studied the woman being pleasured by her friend. She was tied to the bed—he must have done it—and had done a good job of it, too. He’d securing her ankles and wrists with straps that bit into her skin and pulled her so wide it had to hurt—but he could see she was suffering with a smile on because she knew it meant a great deal of money. It was a sight that would normally interest him—enflame him. But not anymore.
He simply could not go on.
He pulled his already wilting cock out of the woman whose ass bore several of his handprints and a goodly number of whip marks.
“Get out,” he said, stumbling as he climbed off the bed. He went to his coat and yanked out his wallet, taking out the fat wad of notes without even looking at them and thrusting them into one of the women’s hands. “Get out, now.”
He waited till they’d gathered their clothes and slipped out the door before dropping into a chair and taking his head in his hands. Edward still could not believe it. How could he have been so stupid? He, who always studied every angle of a transaction as carefully as a game of billiards—looking ahead five, ten moves? How had he not seen where this was going?
How had he not seen it was Nora, all along: Nora.
The last months became dreadfully clear and ugly, just like this gaudy whorehouse looked when exposed to the harsh light of day.
Oh, he knew that Nora had enjoyed the courtship phase as much as he did. He’d felt her body quivering and clenching at the exquisite degradation every time Edward fucked her and told her how he would marry and breed another, keeping her as his private whore.
And he’d done exactly that—married Catherine—the spoiled daughter of a marquess who’d hated him from the beginning and—Edward realized like a slow-witted fool—had perfect justification for doing so.
He tried to take some comfort out of the fact that although Edward had made one bad decision after another, at least Nora had received some pleasure out of it. But that was phenomenally unconvincing. He could have given her the same sensations without locking himself into a marriage with another woman—forever cut off from the woman he only now realized he loved. Yes, he was obsessed with her, but he loved her in the only way he knew how.
She’s yours—for at least a year, likely longer. What does it matter if she’s not your wife? Nora is yours.
But instead of feeling comforted, he lowered his head in his hands and gave free rein to his anguish.
❈❈❈
“Forget about Edward,” Cat said for the millionth time. “He’s probably at some brothel right as I speak.” She saw Nora flinch and had a brief pang of remorse. But she shoved it aside. The sooner Nora learned Edward was no good for her, the sooner they could get on with their lives, without him. They could do like those two women who’d moved to Wales together. Although Cat didn’t think either of them had been married when they ran off together—and likely not pregnant, either. But those were just details and didn’t matter. Besides, now a woman could seek a divorce without fear of public stoning.
Cat realized Nora hadn’t responded. They were in the sunroom. But instead of painting and fucking, they were sitting here talking. About Tedward.
“Nora, come here, I want you.”
For the first time ever, Nora said, “No.”
She stood and left the sunroom not bothering to shut the door even though Cat was naked. By the time she’d wrapped her robe around her and went into the bedroom it was to find Nora staring at a small chest.
“What’s in that box?”
“A man and woman who love each other and live happily ever after.”
Cat couldn’t have heard that right. “Nora?”
Nora turned to her and smiled, but it was a strained smile. “Nothing, just a foolish jest. Will you give me half an hour, Cat? Perhaps you might go and put on the gown we chose—the rose one.”
Cat squinted, not liking her odd expression. “Of course—if you’re sure you’ll be all right.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Cat would remember her words later.
❈❈❈
Nora stared at the box, still unwilling to open it although it had been in her possession for over a month.
Something about the mystery it represented soothed her. Or maybe she liked it because it was such an easy mystery to solve—unlike the riddle of what had happened to her life. All she had to do to solve this riddle was open the box.
She took the small key from her bedside table and fitted it into the lock. It clicked open easily. Inside there were no jewels or the world’s smallest donkey or even a couple who loved one another and lived happily ever after. There was a letter with her name on it and a fat packet of documents—the kind you received after a large transaction. A contract of some sort.
Nora sat on the bed and opened the letter.
Nora:
I can imagine how you must have stared at this box and wondered what I could possibly have to give you. If I know you—and I flatter myself that I do, a little—you didn’t open the box immediately.”
Nora smiled, her eyes watering.
“I’ve wondered about you since our last night—questioning whether I did the right thing by not stopping you—by not offering for you, myself. At the time it seemed selfish: you are a young woman and deserve a man your age. But in the weeks that followed, I thought of you daily—not just about all the pleasure you gave me, but about what mark I would leave on the world. I know that is an old man’s arrogance, but the thought has been heavy on my mind. Tw
o weeks after you left, I did a bad thing: I pried into your life. I knew from our time together that you were good friends with the young man named Charles.”
Nora stopped and shook her head. “Charles, Charles, Charles,” she said under her breath. But for once she was glad of his greedy nature.
“He wouldn’t take my money—” Nora stopped to offer up a silent apology to her friend and continued. “But he did allow me to look at the three paintings you were submitting to the Royal Academy. All I can say, dear Nora, is that what I saw humbled me. You are a magnificent artist and will one day be a great one—your name long remembered.”
Her tears fell on the page but she kept reading.
“And this is where the story comes back around to me, my dear, because I’m a selfish old man. I will die soon, very soon. Being with you on your last night at Tosca’s was also my last night of pleasure. I was brought to bed shortly after that night, and I will never leave it under my own locomotion. As I’ve lain here in this bed, week after week, I realize there is a way to snatch a tiny bit of posterity: I can hitch my wagon to a star. You, Nora, are that star. The papers in the box will see to it you are never homeless and hungry. I’ve given you a cottage—a small manor, really—that has been in my family for generations. I’ve spoken to His Grace about the disposition of the house and the establishment of a trust for you. He is a wealthy man in his own right and you need not fear any anger or retribution on his part. I hope that you will find shelter at Rose Cottage and that my house, which I loved dearly although I spent so little time there, will feed your spirit. But, most of all, I hope you will paint. And paint. And paint. All I ask of you is that you never doubt yourself and that you keep painting.
I’ve left enough in trust for you that you will not have to worry. I hope—being the vain man I am—that someday, when you are an old lady comfortable in your incredible genius—you will mention my name, and how you came to live in Rose Cottage and perhaps painted your masterpiece there.
Your friend, lover, and admirer, Anthony.
Nora’s heart, which she’d believed was already broken, cracked a little more. And she wept.
His Harlot (Victorian Decadence Series Book 1) Page 21