by Bonnie Dee
“I…” He hardly knew how to answer. It was an unusual request, but he was his own man now, with his degree completed and his future plans not yet implemented. He had time at his disposal. “I suppose I could visit for a while. I should enjoy helping you create a working greenhouse.”
She smiled and clapped her hands together. “Marvelous! I’m sure together we can entice some life out of the barren soil. It shall be an experiment neither of us will ever forget.”
Chris frowned, feeling her words held some hidden meaning, but he supposed he simply wasn’t used to the way women expressed themselves. He was around them so seldom. “Yes. It should be lovely,” he replied.
The countess hooked her hand over his arm, sending another warm tingle through him as he escorted her into the house for tea.
• • •
The lecture on South American plants was long and full of even longer Latin words. Meredith suppressed a yawn as the lecturer droned on. The colorful illustrations his assistant placed on the tripod broke the monotony a little, but she found herself trying to count how many of them were still to be displayed. If each picture prompted a five minute explanation, then it looked like there may be as many as forty-five minutes left in this lecture. If there was some kind of concluding speech, they could easily be here another hour.
She glanced at her companion, Christopher Whitby, and smiled at the avid expression on his face, his gleaming blue eyes and slightly parted lips. He was as entranced with the lecture as she was bored. While he had shown her his garden and talked about the plants, she’d found his enthusiasm about his chosen field of study endearing. His informal air and self-effacing presence was charming, and his features were handsome in an understated way.
His hair was tousled, but not in the styled way that society rakes arranged their curls. Christopher’s was naturally messy. Sandy brown locks fell over his forehead, and she longed to ruffle her hand through his hair. A sweet ache and a hot flash of lust swelled simultaneously in her breast.
The man appeared more boyish than his years, but in the hard planes of his face and the set of his jaw, Meredith detected the strong-willed man he had the capability of being. In the few hours since she’d met him, Christopher’s eyes had often appeared unfocused and dreamy as if he were somewhere other than sitting at a tea table engaged in stilted conversation. Yet when he’d talked directly to her in the garden, he’d been engaged and focused. Power and energy flowed from his piercing eyes and vibrated from his body. She had no doubt this passion channeled into lovemaking would be formidable.
It had been easy to engineer an invitation to accompany him to the presentation at the Royal Botanical Gardens and, honestly, she was quite intrigued by the prospect. She’d envisioned walking in the fragrant, tropical warmth of exotic climates protected by the glass bubble. She hadn’t counted on the lecture being so very long and dull. But, she’d already decided to take on Lord Whitby’s proposition, and the first step to gaining her new lover was to show an interest in what fascinated him.
Meredith didn’t generally believe in operating on pretense. She’d given that up after her husband’s death, when his money had freed her from society’s constraints and she’d finally begun living life by her own rules. She no longer had to feign interest in every little thing a man said or did. That wasn’t necessary in order to gain what she wanted from them. But she did try to at least understand the passions that made them tick, whether they were hunting, gaming, business, politics or books. She’d learned a little about all things considered masculine and could readily converse on any subject of interest to her paramours.
“Have you heard enough?” A low whisper and faint brush of warm breath against her cheek roused Meredith from her reverie.
She glanced at her escort. He leaned toward her, his face mere inches away, brow furrowed and blue eyes peering into hers. She had a sudden impulse to lean in and kiss him, to replace his look of anxious concern with one of shock and desire.
“I wouldn’t mind a stroll,” she murmured.
Christopher rose from his seat, took her hand and helped her to her feet. Together they made their way down the nearly empty row of seats to the door of the lecture hall.
The conservatories were nearly empty so late in the evening and lit by flickering gaslights casting strange, leaf-shaped shadows that eerily shifted and moved. As they passed from the arid climate of the desert room to the damp humidity of the tropical garden, it was like entering an alien, green world from which a jungle beast might suddenly leap. The humid air was dense and redolent of earth and growing things.
Meredith’s kid shoes crunched on the white gravel path and her dress clung to her perspiring skin. She would’ve liked to strip it off and wander through the palm fronds and ferns in a diaphanous gauze gown like some preternatural dryad. “I can see why you love them,” she said to Christopher, who strode silently by her side. “The plants, I mean. It’s so peaceful here.” She spoke in a reverent hush as though in a church.
“Nature truly gives one a glimpse into the mystery of the universe. To the untrained eye, plants might appear to be just a lot of green leaves and pretty flowers, but the structure of each is unique. Each has adapted in miraculous ways to survive in its environment.” He stopped and rested a hand on the bark of a towering tree, the canopy of which brushed the fogged glass high overhead.
“They’re like people in that regard,” Meredith said, moving in close beside him. “Each of us has to adapt to our world in various ways, don’t we?”
When he turned to look at her, she was right there. She tilted her head back and offered him an invitation with her eyes, curious as to whether he would accept it. His tongue swept over his lips, but he remained poised, inches away, with his gaze trained on her mouth.
This was early in the game to make a bold move. She didn’t want to frighten her quarry away, but that ripe lower lip was too inviting to ignore. She raised her hand and cupped the side of his face, tracing her thumb over his mouth. “Shall we take a small detour from the path?”
His eyes were wide and shining, his breathing uneven and shallow. Silently, he nodded.
The countess took her hand from his face and grasped his warm palm in hers. “Come, then.” They walked from the main path toward a bench secluded in a grove of trees and screened by some kind of flowering vine.
He gripped her hand and followed her like an obedient child. But he wasn’t a child, and his first lesson in becoming a man would begin this evening.
• • •
The onslaught of sensations, the racing pulse, ragged breathing, prickling skin, heightened senses and burgeoning heat in his cock took Chris completely by surprise. It wasn’t as though he’d never felt any of these things. He was an adult male with a man’s lust and yearning when he caught sight of a pretty face, deep cleavage or a flash of ankle, but he’d never felt such a tumult of emotion all at once. All because Madame de Chevalier had touched his lips and peered into his very thoughts with her wise gray eyes.
He couldn’t be imagining this, could he? Perhaps he’d fallen asleep during the professor’s lecture and was dreaming this erotic encounter. But the solidity of the cool stone bench beneath his trousers and the warmth of the lady’s hand in his assured him the moment was very real.
Once seated on the bench, she turned her body toward his and again reached to stroke the side of his face. Her fingers were cool and soft as silk, and his eyes closed part way in response to her touch. She slid her hand around the back of his neck and encouraged him to lean toward her. It was actually happening—a kiss, something he’d fantasized but had pushed to the back of his mind because it didn’t fit into his plans for a life devoted to academic study.
Tilting his head slightly, he closed his eyes completely as her face loomed closer. Sightless, his mouth found and covered hers. Their lips pressed together and he couldn’t suppress the quiet moan that rose in his throat. Her lips were soft and yielding. He pressed hard against them. A kiss. His
first kiss—embarrassing to admit at age twenty-five, but there’d been no opportunity before now. He wouldn’t steal favors from a housemaid as some men did, and young ladies didn’t bestow kisses until an engagement ring was offered. The one chance he’d had to experience mindless pleasure was with a prostitute, a gift from his father that Chris simply couldn’t accept.
Ah, but he would indulge now with a woman he barely knew. A friend of his mother’s no less. What kind of woman was the countess that she bestowed kisses on strange men on a whim? Christopher stopped thinking and focused on the moment, the feel of her waist beneath his hand as he slipped it around her, the yielding softness of her mouth beneath his and the mounting pressure in his cock as it strained against his breeches.
The countess pressed a hand against his chest and pulled away. Chris wanted to reach for her blindly and pull her back again. He nearly whined at the interruption, but instead opened his eyes to look into her face. “I-I’m sorry. I was wrong to…”
“No. Sh.” She covered his lips with her finger, then stroked them with her fingertip. “Not that. I want to show you a little something about kissing.
“Oh.” He resisted the impulse to suck her finger right into his mouth and waited while she slid the tip back and forth across his lips until they tingled.
“When you kiss a woman, you must think of her lips as a flower, a bud which you’re seducing into opening for you. Light, delicate strokes of the tongue, soft pressure of the lips are the keys to making that flower bloom. Understand?”
Her analogy was wrong. There was nothing a person could do to make a flower open. It happened when it was time. But he understood her meaning and blushed, realizing his technique had been off. Mashing his mouth hard against hers clearly hadn’t been satisfying for her. He nodded.
Her shining eyes continued to gaze into his and her hypnotic finger to stroke his parted lips and dip just barely between them. He dared to touch it with the tip of his tongue and a ripple of something passed over the countess’s eyes. She made a small sound.
“Yes. Keep your lips relaxed, moist but not wet, and tease mine into opening for you. Then we shall see what will follow.” Her thick, dark lashes swept her cheeks in lush fans as her eyes closed and her face lifted toward his.
Chris took his time. He touched her face as she had his, stroking her soft cheek and jaw, caressing her mouth until her pink lips parted. Then he rested his hand on her throat and felt the pulse beating in it like butterfly wings. He slid his hand around her neck and let it rest under the base of her skull, supporting her. The hairs at her nape tickled the back of his hand. He inclined his head and kissed her again.
This time he followed her instruction, feeding at her lips as a hummingbird sips nectar. Closing his mouth over her pouting lower lip, he pulled on it lightly. He pressed little nibbling kisses to the corners of her mouth and then slipped his tongue over the seam of her lips. They opened as she gave a small gasp of pleasure. His tongue slipped inside the heat and moisture of her mouth and encountered her tongue, slippery and sinuous. The percolating heat in his belly flared to an inferno from this simple touch. A raging beast was awakened, which Chris recognized as the primitive animal inside every man. He ached to devour her, to kiss her until she couldn’t breathe, to throw her down on the ground and ravish her.
His soft, exploratory kiss grew harder and more demanding. His tongue swept inside her mouth, tasting her and filling her just as his cock ached to fill her body. The powerful intensity of animal emotion was overwhelming. His penis throbbed with each beat of his heart and he was afraid it would explode into his drawers. With a low groan, he released her waist and the back of her neck, gripped her shoulders and pushed her away.
Gasping, he gazed into her suddenly wide-open eyes. “We must stop now.” He rose abruptly from the bench, stumbling backward and treading on a sample of Floribunda segunda before quickly stepping away from it.
“This is too…” He trailed off, not knowing how to express his thoughts. Too powerful. Too intense and real. Too dangerous.
She smiled up at him. “Christopher, don’t be alarmed. I’m a widow. In our society, widows may take their pleasure where they wish, as long as they’re discreet.”
He waved a hand at the bower of trees and flowers around them. “This is hardly discreet. We’re in the Royal Botanical Gardens.”
The countess stood, and he took another step back. “Would you feel more comfortable elsewhere?” she asked. “We could go to my house.”
“I…” Good Christ! The woman was stunning, regal, elegant, beautiful, and asking him to come to her home. Her invitation left little to the imagination. What could possibly hold him back? Any man would jump at the chance to share la Comtesse de Chevalier’s bed. “I must go now.” His voice was a hoarse mutter.
Without another word, he turned and walked away, buttoning his jacket over the bulge in his breeches. A torrent of emotions, which he tried to tame into submission, raged through him. Science and reason had always been the guiding forces of his life. Animal impulses were for uneducated, unthinking louts. There must be more to life than satisfying base lust with bestial coupling; otherwise the whole of society might as well run about in animal skins cooking shanks of meat over open fires.
Besides, if he once gave into passion, Chris didn’t know if he’d ever be able to return to the person he’d been before. And if he wasn’t that man, the quiet, reserved man who studied and raised plants, then who was he?
Chapter Three
Meredith lounged in her peignoir in the salon of her country home, reading a racing form, a black cheroot clamped between her teeth. Wisps of smoke wafted from the thin cigar to wreathe her head. She didn’t really care much for smoking, but the cigar was a ritual for her, a device she used to recall her dead husband, le Comte de Chevalier. Like the carved tusk on her mantle, it was her touchstone, something to remind her of the man who’d shaped her life and ultimately given her freedom. It was also a tribute to the girl she’d been and a statement about the weakness and vulnerability she’d left behind.
As a young bride of seventeen, she’d wed the count and left her parents’ home to move to France. It was an advantageous marriage for her family, since her father had inherited a title, an estate and little else. Stephan had spied young Meredith at the first ball of the Season and claimed her within the week. Swept off her feet by the charming, attractive older man, Meredith had readily agreed to his proposal. Her mother was overjoyed and immediately began trumpeting to anyone who would listen about the marvelous match her daughter had made.
Meredith remembered how nervous yet exhilarated she’d been at the prospect of marriage. She’d only just left the tutelage of her governess. Barely launched into society, she was already chosen. Romantic fancies of what married life would be like spun out in her mind, fueled by novels she kept hidden in her room.
The reality of the marriage bed had been a harsh awakening.
The count had bedded her roughly the first time, nearly tearing her clothes off in his haste to see her naked, then plunging into her fast and hard. She was dry, not at all prepared for his entry, and it hurt. He grunted and thrust like an animal. When his lust was sated, he rolled off of her, put on a dressing gown and paused in the doorway to look back at her, curled into a ball on the rumpled covers.
“You shall get used to it, ma petite. It only hurts the first time.”
He was wrong. The count never waited for her to become slick with anticipation, and always used her hard and rough as if she were a whore instead of a wife. He seemed to get great satisfaction from her pain and often grasped her hair and twisted it while he pumped into her. He murmured French phrases she’d never learned from her governess, which she imagined were obscenities, and pinched, squeezed and slapped her at random.
Over the course of a few days, he fucked her a dozen times, then announced he was leaving for a hunting expedition in Africa. He left her behind in his vast chateau under the watchful eye of Madame Ba
illon, who he told her would see to all her needs. The woman was a guardian to make sure she didn’t try to go home to her parents or entertain male visitors while the count was abroad. There was no wedding tour as promised, just a young girl abandoned in a vast, echoing house with servants who clearly resented her English ways and made her feel powerless and young.
Meredith spent days crying and barely leaving her room, before she shook off her bitterness and despair and decided to make the best of the situation. She walked the gardens and grounds with Baillon always just behind her. She attempted to meet ladies from the neighboring homes. They were barely polite. The French hatred for all things British kept her always an outsider in their society.
When the count returned home after several months, he brought her the carved tusk, and a renewed onslaught of sexual abuse and mounting degradation. At least, when he was home, they were invited to social events so there was something to fill the long, empty days. But she was very grateful after a few months, when her husband announced he was leaving again, this time on a trip to South America.
That had been the sum of her marriage, a series of long, lonely stretches of time followed by assault and mounting violence from the stranger she’d chosen to marry. He grew increasingly angry when she didn’t conceive, and his temper exploded through his fists and cock. He began to use her even harder and to experiment with perverse tortures and bondage, all the while heaping verbal abuse upon her.
Several years into the marriage, Meredith began to consider whether dying might not be preferable to her miserable life. But instead, she fired Madame Baillon while the count was away on one of his expeditions and dared to take her life into her own hands, sailing to England and leasing a house in London. Perhaps Stephan would come after her and drag her home. Perhaps there would be repercussions for her escape, but at least she was trying to make a change.