“I had some great teachers but I need practice. Shall we take lessons together?”
Nothing he said could have pleased her more. “I’m a mere dabbler compared to you, but I would enjoy it very much. May I have the drawing?”
“If you wish. As long as I have the original.”
The glow that had warmed her blood while he drew and talked, bloomed to full heat. Peeking sideways, she found him looking at her with unabashed hunger. Whatever else her husband felt, he desired her.
They were alone in a bedchamber with nothing else to do. Did it matter that it was barely noon?
She took a deep breath, then cursed the door and whatever servant had decided to knock on it.
“Come in,” Damian said.
It was Harrison, the coachman. “Excuse me, my lord and my lady. It has stopped snowing and it’s warming up fast.” So it was. She had been too absorbed to notice the change in the quality of the daylight. “Will you be wishing to travel today? One of the wheels got knocked about a bit in the storm last night. The ostler here thinks it’s safe, but I’d like you to have a look at it, my lord.”
“I? I know nothing of wheels.”
“I’d as soon not travel without your agreeing.”
Damian raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Assuming that the carriage is, in my expert judgment, ready for use, I’ll return shortly and we can discuss our movements.” His smoldering gaze suggested that his immediate plan was very much in line with her own.
“And my lady,” Harrison went on.
“Yes?” Cynthia trusted she wasn’t expected to render an opinion on the soundness of the horses.
“I found some items of yours when I cleaned the carriage this morning. I gave them to Miss Matthews and I believe she brought them up with your bags.”
While Damian performed his unwelcome errand, Cynthia wandered into the other room to see if the things Harrison had found included her favorite shawl, which she hadn’t been able to find when they packed in a hurry. She discovered a pair of lace mittens, her silver needle case, and a familiar portfolio.
How did that come to be in the carriage? It must have been stowed under the seat on Damian’s orders sometime in the last few days. With guilty excitement she carried it into the larger bedchamber and spread the pictures on the bed. Should she lock the door? No need. Matthews wouldn’t enter without knocking and if Damian came back? Well, she wouldn’t mind being surprised by him in the act of examining his portfolio. It would save her from bringing up the subject.
There were a dozen of them, just as beautiful and outlandish as she recalled, glowing with gilt and rich vibrant colors. Like Oliver she pondered the technique, but only in a passing thought. Her attention settled on a painting she hadn’t looked at in detail before. A sloe-eyed lady, entirely naked save for a pair of bracelets, lay on a pile of pillows. No one was putting anything into anything in this particular view. What shocked her was that there were two men with her. Turbaned and robed, they sat cross-legged and impassive, just looking at her, avidly and with utmost concentration, as though she were the most fascinating thing in the world.
Thus had Damian regarded her while he drew her portrait and she had glowed under the intensity of his gaze. Supposing, instead of being swathed to the neck in wool, she had undressed for him. Her breathing deepened.
Two men! Did women actually consort with two men at the same time? The idea amazed, appalled, and on a deep level attracted her. What if she were that reclining beauty? It was a thought that would have her thrown out of Birmingham forever, if she dared voice it, which she never would. For a moment she let herself dwell on the notion of sharing a bed with two men at the same time, but there was only one she wanted. However, it didn’t do any harm to let her fancy toy with a little foreign wickedness. She’d never act on it and no one would ever know what went on in her head. Imagining herself in the position of the Persian lady, she felt silk cushions under her skin, heard the distant song of a fountain, inhaled the scent of strange flowers. Two pairs of eyes seized every inch of her revealed flesh, admiring and wanting her. She was all powerful and utterly vulnerable.
Moaning, she leaned against the stout bedpost and clasped her hand to her aching secret place. Pressing and rubbing relieved her ache for a moment, and then her desire mounted and the intervention of wool and linen was an unsupportable barrier to pleasure. She clawed at her skirts, burrowed beneath the layers, and found herself wet and wanting. It was easy, she discovered, to pleasure herself, and she regretted all the years she had done without. She didn’t even have to look at the picture. It was etched on her mind when she closed her eyes and imagined lustful gazes devouring her. Her middle finger found the place that, when agitated, brought her to the height of joy. She tumbled into bliss and feared her legs would collapse under her. A pair of strong arms and a hard body saved her from falling.
Oh God.
She tried to pull away, shamed to her toes that she had been discovered like this, her hand up her skirts.
“Don’t,” Damian said softly against her temple. “Stay.”
Face on fire, she hung her head. “I don’t . . .” She couldn’t even complete a sentence.
“Watching you pleasure yourself was beautiful. And exciting.” Because she was looking down she saw the proof of it, straining against the fall of his breeches. “I take it you like my pictures.”
“Why are they here?” She dwelled on an inessential.
“I was going to give them to a friend and I am glad I did not. I thought you would be shocked.”
“I am, but . . .” Daring to look at him she found that his gaze, hot and steady, rekindled her heat.
“That makes me very happy. Tell me what you think when you look at them.” Keeping an arm around her, he pointed at the one with the two men. “At that one, say.”
“She likes to be looked at.”
He tilted his head and regarded the miniature with his artist’s eye. “So she does. By two men at once, no less. Would you like that?”
“Not really. But I like it in the drawing.” She spoke barely above a whisper. “I like it when you look at me.”
“And I want to oblige you.” His smile was wide and his dimples pronounced. “With fewer clothes, I think.”
Fever rippled through her. “Yes, please,” she said.
He set about undressing her with the quiet competence of a well-trained maid, except that it was nothing like being disrobed by Matthews. When her maid got her ready for bed her breasts didn’t swell or her belly throb. When Matthews loosened the drawstring of her shift she didn’t have strong, masculine hands, artist’s hands, to slide the garment off her shoulders. Matthews didn’t leave her naked and she did not stare at her mistress.
“Stay there,” he commanded. “Put your hands behind your neck and hold on to the bedpost.” The posture raised her bosom and left her body exposed, without a hand to offer a fig leaf to her sex. Stepping back a couple of feet, he surveyed her slowly, starting with her bare toes and moving up her legs, lingering over the fair curls, her curved hips and belly, the prominent breasts. As his eyes passed each place, she fancied he touched her with a feather’s caress. Her skin tingled, her nipples tightened, and her private place grew wetter. She clenched her inner muscles and swiveled her hips.
“Don’t move,” he said. “See how excited you can become just from me looking at you.”
She’d often felt invisible, starved for notice and attention. Never had she envisioned this delicious scrutiny. “Do many people enjoy being looked at?”
He considered his answer with the same calm deliberation with which he continued to examine her body. “I don’t know if it’s common, but you aren’t alone. Some people have special things that arouse them. Can you guess what mine is?”
Wide-eyed, she shook her head. He came over to her, casually tweaked her hard nipples with his fingertips, and whispered in her ear. Something in French she didn’t understand except for that one word.
“
I see,” she said. “You like to use the kind of words they don’t use in Birmingham.”
“Dreadfully dull place.”
“Do you always speak in French?”
“Sometimes German or Italian. I shall have to tutor you.”
“I would like to learn words for certain things.” She touched her sex and, greatly daring, the bulge of his, through the soft doeskin of his breeches. “Also, I should like to look at you.”
“While I undress, look at the drawings and tell me what you see.”
Turning her back on him, not without a sway of her hips for his benefit, she picked up one of the miniatures. “The man is lying back on his elbows. The woman straddles him and is about to lower herself onto his . . . male member. There must be a better word for it?” She heard rustling cloth and a heavy garment tossed aside.
“There are dozens. I prefer cock. Short and sweet.”
“In this picture the lady seems to think so. Or sweet, anyway, since she is about to taste it. I would estimate that the gentleman’s cock is not especially short, though I don’t have a frame of reference for comparison.”
“You have quite a talent for dirty speaking yourself, my lady.” More rustling and a boot lying on its side, visible from the corner of her eye.
“Thank you, my lord.” She dropped a curtsey, which ought to give him a splendid view of her bare bottom. Feeling his heated eyes on her behind made up for not watching him remove his clothes. She visualized the emergence of his . . . cock. Cock. It was good to know its name since she intended to think about it a lot henceforth.
“Describe another.” His voice was muffled so he must be removing his shirt.
“Goodness, this one is very peculiar. The man is lying on his back with knees against his shoulders. His cock is sticking up and the lady has her back to him and seems to be about to sit on it. I should think it would be quite uncomfortable.”
“In that case we won’t try that one.” His voice shook with laughter.
She turned and discovered him almost as naked as she. “Are we going to try any of them?”
He stepped out of his breeches and flung them over the back of a chair. “Only if you would like.”
He was a magnificent specimen, her husband, firm and muscled and proportioned like a statue of a god. His cock looked long, hard, and ready. “I would like to try them all. Though maybe not that backward one.”
“Make your choice.”
Making herself return to the array of miniatures now that they had a rival for attention in Damian’s bare flesh, she put her imagination to work. “I am torn. This one is interesting. The woman is on her hands and knees and the man is taking her from behind.”
“How does it make you feel?”
“They all make me feel like that thing we don’t say in Birmingham.”
“You want me to fuck you?”
He was snickering at her and she couldn’t let him get away with it. She spun around and gave a good push to his solid, very shapely chest. Taken by surprise, he landed on the hearthrug, knees apart and supported by his elbows. “I think I shall fuck you,” she said, and followed him to the floor, settling herself with a knee on either side of his thighs. Nice thighs. She tested one with her palm. Powerful.
“It would be my very great pleasure, Lady Windermere.”
Hands on his shoulders, she lowered herself until his stiff cock brushed her privates. “What is my sex part called?”
“Some men of a poetic bent have been moved to title it the ‘cradle of Venus.’ ”
“Very poetic and quite a mouthful.”
“A wonderful mouthful.”
“Is there anything shorter?”
“Cunny or quim are possibilities. The words are generally thought crude—”
“—and cock isn’t?” she interrupted with a snort, letting the cock stroke to and fro along her quim. “I understand. Not in front of Lady Ashfield.”
“Unless you wish to give her an apoplexy.”
Seeking a rhythm and not getting enough purchase, she took it in her fist and rubbed it where she was slick and wanting. It was like pleasuring herself, but better. A cock was more satisfying than her finger, not least because next—soon—it would fill her and deliver sensations she couldn’t achieve alone.
“I hope the good people at the Birmingham Academy for Young Ladies appreciated what a diligent student they had,” he said, breathing hard.
“Both my understanding and application,” she replied, positioning herself carefully and descending until his long, thick cock was firmly lodged in her quim, “were greatly appreciated.” A gusty sigh marked the satisfaction of feeling him fill her, echoed by his own groan of pleasure. Much better than a finger because it was part of Damian and they were joined together in a way that made her heart flutter like a mad thing, even though that particular organ wasn’t involved in the physical transaction.
He tilted his head back and his groin forward. “I think I must be the luckiest man in the world. Now, fous-moi.”
Chapter 22
She was, quite simply, extraordinary. Once she worked out what to do, she rode him like a golden angel with muscles of steel, coming twice before sending him over the top and wringing out every drop of seed he had in him. She sprawled on top of him on the floor of this shabby inn. The Swan at Egham would always hold a special place in his heart as the place where he had known he was in love.
When had it happened? When had his wife, Cynthia, become the most important thing in his world? He knew exactly the moment when he first wanted her: seated at dinner laughing at Julian, whom he then believed to be her lover. He did not know when desire turned to love, only that it had happened between then and now. She had all he would have chosen in a bride and thought he would never have when he married her: beauty, intelligence, and excellent French. But those qualities of the perfect diplomatic partner were admirable, not lovable. Humor, strength, generosity, and a deep-rooted kindness that he would never have had the sense to search for in a wife, those were what he loved. And something else that might take a lifetime to define. A lifetime of talking and painting and laughing and lovemaking. A lifetime for him to defend her against the depredations of other men and her own foolish generous impulses, like rescuing kittens in the snow.
Stroking her silken back, he found gooseflesh. “It’s growing cool. We should go to bed.”
“It’s barely afternoon,” she objected, all rosy and tousled.
“You need to lose this obsession with time. The right hour to do anything is when we say it is.”
“Is this the immensely correct Lord Windermere speaking? The doyen of the diplomatic service? What would the grand duchess think of such disregard for propriety?”
“She’d be envious,” he said. “Help me put away the miniatures and we’ll get under the covers.”
Bustling about, he found her nightgown and his shirt. He would have preferred to keep her naked and suspected she would have been happy to oblige him in the matter. But he had a faint recollection that she was susceptible to chills and wouldn’t risk her catching cold. How on earth had he been so lucky, undeserving bastard that he was? He’d managed to fall into a marriage that fulfilled every dream he might have conceived, had he ever dared aspire to such glory. Now he must see if there was a chance she could ever love him as he loved her.
He wasn’t above using her new sensual tastes to bind her to him. He drew up the covers slowly, worshipping her with his eyes as inch by inch her gorgeous flesh disappeared into her nightgown and beneath the blankets. His mind wandered to the science of improved heating, so that he could keep her naked all the time.
First he had to ensure their future. Even gripped by extreme lust, he had noticed her interest in the picture of one woman and two men. While he was ready to indulge any sensual desire she could think of, and doubtless many she could not, sharing her with another man was not on the table. Not Julian, or any other.
He got into bed beside her and sat upright. He want
ed to be able to read her face as they talked. What he’d learned about Cynthia since his return from Persia would fill a litany of praise, but he wanted to know everything.
“Why did you choose to marry me?” he asked. “I was so bound up in my need to regain Beaulieu that I scarcely gave your feelings a second thought.”
“Choose? I wouldn’t say I chose the marriage, though I did consent to it. In theory I could have said no.”
So much for any slight hope that she had been attracted to him. “Why did you say yes?”
“My uncle would not let me stay in his household if I refused you. The alternatives were worse.”
“What were they?
“I could have become a governess, not a good prospect without a recommendation. Or I could have married Mr. Maxwell.”
“Your uncle’s business partner?”
“The man responsible for raping Aggie and others. Though I was not yet aware of his worst habits, I knew I would do anything to avoid him.”
So she preferred him only to a life of drudgery or marriage to a villain. And he had thought her lucky to get him. “Did you even care that I was an earl?” Surely he’d had something to offer her?
“I hardly knew what an earl was when you called on us in Birmingham at Old Square, and certainly never dreamed of wedding such an exalted creature. I had no notion of any future beyond remaining as my Aunt Lavinia’s companion.”
“I thought you were getting something from the marriage as I was. I got Beaulieu, you got a titled husband.” He couldn’t disguise his pique. “It seemed like a fair exchange, but now you say you gained nothing you wanted from our marriage.”
She patted his hand. “Not having to marry Maxwell was certainly something.”
“I suppose I should be flattered that I rated higher.”
“Much higher. If you had seemed a cruel man I would have defied my uncle and taken my chances as a governess. When you called on us you were kind to Aunt Lavinia.”
“Kind? I treated her with normal courtesy.” He remembered Mrs. Chorley as a nervous little woman, cowed by her domineering husband. “You forget that it is my job to put people at ease. What did you think of me?”
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