Nora grinned, stepped inside, shut the door, and then locked it for good measure.
❈❈❈
Edward couldn’t stop gawking and consuming. It was him: just him—everywhere. Him clothed, him naked, him from the back, him from the front, him aroused—bloody hell he looked good with an erection!—him in dozens of other ways. There were paintings—at least a dozen—and what looked to be hundreds of sketches. It was . . . well, it was—bloody hell, he had no words for what it was.
He turned around. She was smiling, her arms crossed as she leaned against the doorframe. Looking very, very pleased with herself.
He had to ask, “These are things you’ve drawn and painted . . . lately?”
She laughed. “No, Edward. These are things I started drawing right after I met you.” She strode across the room and pointed to a charcoal drawing of a stern, terrifying image of himself.
“Did I really appear that way to you?” he asked in wonder, turning from the powerful black and white drawing back to her.
She nodded, a solemn expression on her face. “You also looked like this.” She pointed to a different sketch and he caught his breath.
The perspective was as if the artist had been looking up—as if she’d been on her knees. He wore his shirt, but it had been unbuttoned and exposed a broad column of stomach and chest. He appeared massive and his eyes as they looked down were cruel and satanic, his grin the feral smile of a man about to orgasm. It was powerful, sexual, and painfully arousing—and he’d already been painfully aroused.
“This one,” she said, pulling his attention away from the mesmerizing image and directing him toward the biggest canvas: a painting of his naked body on its side, facing away. There was nothing overtly erotic about the image, but something about the posture—his posture—spoke of sated passion. The room in the portrait, he realized suddenly, was their room.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, and then winced. “Am I allowed to say that about a picture of me?”
Nora laughed, a joyous, gurgling sound he’d heard so very rarely. He turned to her and grabbed her by the waist lifting her up to kiss her—the kiss he’d dreamt about for months—years. Her arms wrapped around his neck so tight it was difficult to breathe.
“I missed you so much, Edward.” She squeaked when he held her even tighter.
His eyelashes were wet. Once upon a time that would have terrified him. “Nora?” he said her name against her neck, not wanting to stop kissing her.
“Yes, Edward?”
“Was there anything in that contract of yours about, er, marriage?”
She stiffened so utterly his throat shrank to the size of a pea and he could hardly suck in air. Had he ruined things before they could get started? “I’m sorry, Nora, I didn’t—”
“You’d have to tell me, Edward.”
He held her out so he could see her. “I’d have to tell you what?”
She smiled. “Whether there is anything about marriage in the contract. After all, you’re the one who wrote it.”
“What?” he demanded even though he’d heard her. “You gave me my own contract to sign?”
She nodded, biting her lower lip.
“Why you little wretch.” And then something occurred to him.
“Oh, no—” she said, “I recognize that look.”
Edward gave her an evil grin as he swung her into his arms and stalked toward the door of the sunroom. “Open it,” he ordered.
“But, Edward? Where—”
“Nora.”
“All right, all right,” she grumbled, but he could hear the pleasure beneath her words.
He strode to toward the room he’d cleaned every month, but never really hoped to use again.
“Edward? Edward! Just where do you think you’re going?”
“I think you know the answer to that, you little witch.”
“But it’s six in the morning.”
“I don’t care what time it is. You need to reach in my pocket and get out my keys, I’ve rather got my hands full, darling.”
She stopped squirming and her beautiful opal eyes widened. “Am I, Edward? Your darling?”
“You’re so much more than that, Nora, you’re everything to me.” He had to clear his throat and blink rapidly before looking down at her again. “And when I decide to let you out of this room—perhaps a few months from now—I’ll make you my wife.”
The look she gave him was dewy—there was no other word for it. “Oh . . . Edward. I love you.”
“I know you do.” Edward said, proud of the fact there was no quaver in his voice. “But right now we’re going into our room and I’m going to punish you properly for playing such a vile trick and getting me to sign my own damned contract without reading it. If word of that ever got out, I’d be ruined.”
“That was bad of me.” She blinked those huge, beautiful, pale eyes up at him. “I’m terribly sorry, Edward.”
“Hmmph. You will be. Now, open the bloody door.”
Edward didn’t need to ask twice.
Keep Reading for a sneak peek at
The Valet
Book II in the
Victorian Decadence Series …
Chapter One
London
Stephen sipped his brandy and leisurely studied the woman kneeling before him: she was exquisite. Her name was Sharon and she’d given her age as eighteen, although he suspected she was closer to twenty-five.
That was fine, he’d not chosen her because of her supposed youth, he’d picked her because she possessed exactly the type of body he adored. Although at perhaps five foot six she was a bit shorter than Stephen generally liked. At a shade over six and half feet he simply found very small women too physically challenging.
Sharon had wavy brown hair which fell to her waist when unbound, which it was now. She had womanly hips that narrowed to an impossibly tiny waist, one which his massive hands could easily span, even without her corset. But it was her breasts that were her true glory: full, rounded, with large nipples that were a dark rose. His mouth watered looking at them and it took all his restraint not to seize her and suck her to hard, pebbled points.
But he could do that later, after he’d drank his fill of looking at her delicious body.
His gaze slipped from her lovely nipples over the gentle swell of her belly and stopped on her sex.
As he’d requested, she was completely without body hair. Stephen had decided a few years ago that he preferred the sleek look shaving afforded. He also liked the fact that at least their bodies could keep no secrets from him.
Right now, for instance, Sharon’s pudendum was flushed and swollen and her engorged bud peeked from between her lips: she was aroused.
The fact that she couldn’t hide such a private fact from his probing eyes only served to make him harder.
Stephen smiled at the thought and took another drink. He knew his deeply suspicious nature coupled with his almost pathological need for control made for a personality that was far from attractive.
He also knew that when it came to sex, his desires were not normal. Luckily, he’d accepted both those facts about himself a long, long ago. But just because he knew the truth about himself did not mean he shared that truth with others. Indeed, he shared nothing of himself, if he could help it. Especially not with the whores he paid to satisfy his needs.
People thought his excessive reserve was standoffishness and most disliked him for it. He had few friends, but friends were something he’d never wanted. He’d learned to his detriment, long ago, that it was better to live without friends and not have to wonder about the inevitable betrayal or lies or manipulation.
Worrying about his business partners was bad enough, although after years of working with the three men he was less wary of them than anyone else in his life. Even so, he was never foolish enough to trust them. If he’d ever possessed the capacity to trust another human being, he didn’t recall it.
“Open yourself for me,” he said, his voi
ce gruff from disuse and arousal.
She parted her lips.
Stephen’s pulse—already racing—quickened; she was wet. He believed she liked being studied and admired like a beautiful object. He’d discovered many of the women he engaged found such admiration an aphrodisiac. He adored watching but couldn’t help wondering why anyone would like being watched. Was it just because it was different from a typical client’s behavior? Were most men in a hurry to fuck, viewing a woman as nothing more than a vessel waiting to be filled?
Stephen was also planning to fill her at some point this evening—likely soon—but for him, this process—this silent exchange—was an important antecedent to ejaculation: it was a dialogue without words.
Stephen set aside his glass and began to unbutton his trousers, savoring the quickening movement of her chest and the way her eyes dropped to his lap, where the fine wool could not hide his arousal.
He lifted his hips to slide off his trousers and drawers, pushing them to the floor. When he wrapped his hand around his shaft, he had to grit his teeth against the swell of pleasure, controlling himself against too precipitate a release, subjugating his body the way he controlled every other aspect of his life. He would come when he’d taken sufficient pleasure from her and not before.
Control in all things; that was his way.
His mouth pulled into a wry smile; perhaps he should draw up a family crest like a pretentious cit and have that motto scrolled across it in Latin?
He gave himself a swift, firm pump, not that he needed it. He was primed for her: slick and hot and hard. He wanted to fuck her, but he also loved the way her eyes caressed his cock. So it appeared he did enjoy being looked at, after all. At least when it came to his prick.
Even in his hands—hands that suited his oversized frame—Stephen’s erection looked large. That’s because it was large. While he enjoyed being proportionate, his size was sometimes a problem for women. The way her pupils flared told him it wouldn’t be a problem for Sharon.
Stephen stroked himself from root to crown, his balls tightening as the tip of her pink tongue darted out and moistened her full lower lip. He’d been uncertain as to which of her entrances he would fuck first, but that action decided him.
“Come here.”
Her lips curved into a wicked smile and she dropped onto her hands, crawling toward him on all fours, and taking her time about it.
He felt his face shift into an expression it rarely wore: a smile. “Very pretty,” he praised.
She lifted his feet one by one, freed him from bunched up wool and fine muslin, and pushed his knees apart. Her eyes were heavy lidded as she dipped her head, using her hot, wet tongue to caress his sac.
“Yes,” he hissed, pushing his hips toward her, while his palm slid over his weeping slit and he slickened his shaft. “Take them in your mouth.”
She sucked first one and then his other testicle into her silken mouth, rolling his full ballocks with her skillful tongue.
Stephen dropped his head against the back of the chair and gave himself up to pleasure, his hand absently stroking. She tongued and sucked and kissed, her mouth worshipping him until his balls were tight and aching for release. And finally, her hand covered his and he released himself, eager for her expert handling.
A wicked tongue probed his slit and she lapped up the moisture, humming with pleasure.
“Suck,” he murmured.
Again, he had to leash his lust as she stimulated the tiny hole and sensitive crown, tonguing and stroking until he groaned and shivered. A slender, wet finger moved from his balls, going back and back and back, until the soft pad probed his pucker in a way that was humorously polite.
Stephen had not used Sharon before, but she must have done her preparation to know he enjoyed a finger up his arse while he was being brought off. He pushed his hips forward in invitation, his body tense and expectant.
The wet heat of her mouth disappeared from his cock and he heard the clink of the glass stopper on the big bottle of oil that sat on the table beside him.
When her lips and tongue returned to his swollen head, her hand slathered him with oil from his sac to his hole.
Stephen wanted to dig his fingers into her thick hair and yank her lower, plunging into her hot softness until he bumped against the back of her throat, but he forced his hands to lie flat on the arms of the chair: he’d see what she had to offer before he took from her.
One hand massaged his snug balls while she took his shaft deeper with each suck. She’d risen up high on her knees to take him but he knew the angle was a challenging one. She took her time, lightly prodding with her slick finger, deeper each time.
“Yes,” he hissed as she stretched the tight band of muscle. “Deeper,” he urged, grunting when she complied. “Harder. More.”
She didn’t stop until her knuckles rested against his sensitive flesh, and then she turned her finger and beckoned. Stephen gasped and stiffened as she prodded the spot that erased the last of his restraint.
“Oh God, yes,” he murmured, lost.
❈❈❈
Jo knew it was terribly wrong to spy on one’s employer while he was engaging in sexual acts with a prostitute.
Actually, wrong wasn’t a strong enough word: it was morally reprehensible. And it was also more than a little dangerous when one’s employer was as suspicious and strict as Mr. Stephen Chatham.
But none of that was enough to make her stop what she was doing—what she’d been doing for months now.
It was inevitable that Mr. Chatham would catch her and when he did, he wouldn’t just give her the sack, he’d exact the same thorough revenge he’d taken on the newspaperman who’d tried to bribe one of his servants about him, or the whore who’d thought to blackmail him by claiming she was pregnant with his child.
Mr. Chatham hated liars more than anything else in life and he’d have every right to his vengeance against Jo since she’d been lying to him since the day she met him.
Mr. Chatham had told her, on the day he’d offered her this exceedingly well-paid position, that he did not tolerate lying. Nor did not tolerate servants who were indiscreet when it came to him or his business or personal affairs.
Jo had not been indiscreet—gossiping about one’s employer was a betrayal of trust she found reprehensible—but she lied and abused his privacy daily.
And she knew she would keep doing it.
Jo flicked open two trouser buttons, just enough to slide a hand down her tight, quivering belly to her shaved sex. Six months ago Jo had finally used the razor she’d kept in her kit for over fifteen years. She’d not used it on her face, but to shave off all her body hair, including that covering her sex. She’d done it for him, although he’d never know.
Jo stroked her smooth lower lips, which were swollen and sensitive after watching him for almost half an hour. He was sprawled in his big leather chair in front of the fire and he’d kept the whore kneeling before him. The woman was bloody gorgeous—just the type Mr. Chatham liked. Just the type Jo liked, too: lush, womanly, and submissive.
Mr. Chatham’s long, muscular body was impressive even in repose. He was a titan of a man, a good head taller than most others of the male species. Jo, who was herself tall for a woman—and even for a man—still had to look up from her five foot ten inches. Not that she often looked him in the eye.
After all, it wasn’t her place: he was her master and Jo was his servant.
Of course it also wasn’t her place to be lurking in his bedchamber, peering through a crack in the door, and frigging herself while her employer got sucked off.
Only an hour ago Jo had promised herself she would restrain her impulses this time and just watch. But when he took out his big, beautiful, slab of a prick she lost all control, just as she always did.
It didn’t take much work to bring herself off and she was gasping and shuddering in less than a minute, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood to keep from crying out.
She hunched again
st the door frame as the waves of pleasure receded, breathing so hard she was stunned neither of the people in the next room heard her.
But when she peered through the crack again she knew she could have howled like a beagle and her employer wouldn’t have heard it. The woman must have slipped a finger up his arse because he was dead to anything but his pleasure.
As for the possibility of the whore hearing Jo? That was even more unlikely since throating that huge cock and breathing at the same time were probably occupying all her attention.
His head had dropped back and his thin lips parted as he breathed in rough, labored gasps. His eyelids were covering those too-penetrating eyes of his.
Even somebody who lusted for and perhaps even loved Mr. Chatham could not say he was handsome. Neither was he ugly. Rather his face—unlike his tall, muscular body—was average. If the same face had been on a smaller man, Mr. Chatham would have gone unnoticed most of the time.
Unless a person was to look in his eyes. Oh, how she loved looking at, if not into, his huge, hooded gray eyes. It wasn’t so much their color—a rather common slate gray ringed with a darker shade of gray—but their weight, if that made any sense.
While his mouth always remained flat and stern, his eyes glinted with interest, annoyance, curiosity, and even dry amusement on occasion. But they could also peel away a person’s flesh layer by layer. Luckily Jo had only suffered that particular visual dissection on one occasion.
As cutting as his gaze could be, Mr. Chatham had never raised his voice with her. Indeed, the more displeased he was, the softer and more slowly he spoke.
Mr. Chatham was the most self-contained person, man or woman, that Jo had ever met. Except for times like this, and she loved watching the person who inhabited that huge, glorious body unravel.
Imagining that it was her mouth he was fucking made her greedy for another climax, but Jo wanted to watch and enjoy his orgasm and she couldn’t do that when she was caught up in her own.
So she reluctantly slid her finger from her slit, used her snow white handkerchief to wipe off her hand, and buttoned herself up.
His Harlot (Victorian Decadence Series Book 1) Page 35