He slid back inside of her again, till she felt his balls slap against her and she gasped at the feel of it.
He started a slow pattern of retreat and thrust. She marveled at each new sensation as he picked up both speed and force.
Finally, she held on, for he was grabbing her thighs in his arms, her buttocks in his hands, sucking at her neck, as he pounded into her.
He was fucking her, finding his own pleasure now, and she wrapped herself around him, moving her hips to meet his, to aid him in his goal.
When she felt his body tighten, felt the acute pleasure of his cock readying for release, she felt an answering rise in her own body. His embrace tightened and his body jerked against hers, again and again.
Giddy, almost victorious with him climaxing in her arms, inside her body, Lucy hugged him tightly until he quieted and stilled.
Chapter Six
Robert stayed within her until he hardened and grew. That time, when he moved, there was hardly any discomfort and what there was, the pleasure quickly overshadowed.
Finally, after they’d both found their release, he lay beside her, pulled her tired, sweaty, sticky body against him, curving himself around her.
In the distance, church bells rang out the hour. All too soon, the sun would rise. He was expected in Richmond in the afternoon, but there was still time yet, time to lie here and contemplate the utterly unexpected events of the night.
He wasn’t a man who went looking to sleep with virgins. In fact, it had been nearly thirty years since he had last and the experience hadn’t been exactly pleasurable for either the girl or for him. He had assumed, of course, that his future wife would be one, but he wasn’t particularly looking forward to it.
Tonight, however, had been a revelation. He understood suddenly, in the most primal way, why men prized virginity: he had been the first.
Robert knew quite clearly that if the night had been as he had expected, he would be able to walk away come morning and continue his life as always. But there had been that little thread of skin and all the mystery it suggested.
This was not a one-night affair. He would not let it be. Perhaps it would take a week, perhaps a month, but he wanted more.
He would have more.
Lucy didn’t realize that she had fallen asleep until his wandering hand stirred her.
His voice cleaved the silence.
“May I?” he asked, touching the silk mask that still obscured her face.
She shook her head.
“You wish to keep your secrets,” he said softly, “but there’s one secret you gave up tonight. I thought I knew, without a doubt, that men had joined you here and left satisfied.”
“There are many ways to satisfy a man.” Lucy smirked, unwilling to reveal more than she wished. She wriggled against him to punctuate her words. His cock stiffened against her. “Just as there are many ways to satisfy a woman.”
“True,” Robert conceded. “But then why me? Why now?” He traced the circle of her nipple with his finger.
That one Lucy could answer honestly. “I was tired of anticipation. I knew I would be in good hands.”
He lifted her leg, moving his knee beneath and then she felt his erection pressing against her. He grasped her hip and slid in.
It was very different from this angle, in this position, with them lying on their sides and him behind her. His thrusts were slower, more languid.
“I want to know all your secrets,” he whispered in her ear.
She looked down at his right hand splayed over her breast.
Secrets.
“Perhaps I’ll stay here, keep you in this bed, until you reveal them.”
Which made her remember exactly where she had to be later that day: in the other end of London, where she did her duty every other week. However, morning was hours away and Lucy relaxed her attention back to the sinuous movement of Robert’s hips, which made the two of them move together as if they were the ocean, swirling off the Cornish shore.
“You’ll leave after breakfast,” Lucy gasped, making certain he understood that here in Harridan House she was just as powerful as he. “But I’ll welcome you back, Sir Robert, when you return.”
“Tonight,” he agreed, his mouth hot and open against her shoulder.
Chapter Seven
With Sir Robert gone, Lucy once more put on her gray dress and tidied the room. While it was the chambermaid’s work to replace the sheets every day, the small bloodstains on the counterpane horrified Lucy. She stripped the bed quickly and remade it with fresh linens.
Lucy bundled the counterpane with the other laundry and hurried downstairs.
“Morning, Sara, Felicia,” she greeted the two laundresses. Unlike most homes, the linens in each of Harridan House’s rooms were changed daily and sometimes more frequently than that. There was constant work in the hot basement room.
“Morning, Lucy,” Sara said, turning her head to offer a smile, but her hands never stopped moving and she quickly turned back to her work. Felicity, however, put down the cloth she was about to feed through the wringer.
“What gossip do you have for us, miss?”
Lucy laughed, depositing the sheets in the basket for Madame Rouge’s personal items and then taking a bar of lye soap to the stains on the counterpane to treat them before they soaked. She ran through the few details she remembered from the previous night, before Sir Robert had appeared.
It was not unusual to see Lucy with the laundresses for she often cleaned Madame Rouge’s clothes herself. However, she was keenly aware how odd it felt to be washing off the last remnants of her virginity while chatting with the other women.
When finally she could retire to her own little room on the fourth floor of Harridan House, Lucy freshened up as best as she could, promising herself an indulgent bath when she returned in the evening.
She was late as it was, for it was Thursday again, her afternoon off, and at half past one she was due at Mary’s.
The boardinghouse was in the east end of London, in the older warrens of the city. The proprietress, Mrs. Jones—although she’d never been married—mostly rented the rooms out to prostitutes.
Mary Penneck’s room was on the third floor. Lucy knocked on the door and waited until she heard the plaintive cry.
“Is that you, Lucy? Well you’d better come in…”
Lucy opened the door and stepped into the cramped space. The room was at the rear of the house, and a narrow, dirty window, the wood frame splintered, was cracked open to let in the weak breeze off the river. Lucy fought the urge to close the window, for she found the summer stench of the Thames far worse than a stifling room.
“…as I know you are late and if you had any consideration…”
Mary looked well, better than usual, lying in her bed, a blanket draped around her body.
“…for a working woman…” Suddenly the tirade stopped and she sat up in her bed and scooted so she could rest her back against the wall. “You’ve fucked!”
Lucy blushed furiously despite herself.
“Don’t deny it, Lucinda Leigh Penneck! You have that look about you. Who was it? Was it that lusty baronet you keep blabbering on about?”
Lucy gaped at her sister. Had she really revealed so much that Mary could guess in but seconds all the wondrous news of the night? A bit deflated, Lucy sat herself down in the single frayed chair.
“And you gave it up for nothing too, didn’t you? You’d have to go waste your virginity like that. I’ve told you time and again, sis, that when you’re ready to do it, you tell me. There’s many a man who’d pay a pretty price to pluck a flower.”
“I didn’t want just any man,” Lucy mumbled stubbornly, half wishing she hadn’t come. But she had a duty to her older sister that she couldn’t simply forget or dispatch. After all, despite their youth, when Lucy had shown up on her doorstep, Mary had taken her in, at least until the fortuitous encounter with Lady Blount.
“What’s done is done is what I always say
,” Mary said with a heavy sigh and a shake of her head that let Lucy know just how little the matter was done. For months now she’d hear complaints that Lucy could have made their fortune if only she’d sold her “flower” to the highest bidder. “So, do you have a taste for it now? You giving up all your lady’s maiding to whore out?”
Lucy rolled her eyes at her sister’s vulgarity. Mary was only two years older than Lucy but she had been living in London since her fourteenth year, when she’d run away from home. She’d turned to prostituting almost immediately, and for all Mary’s advice, she had once in a drunken haze admitted to Lucy that she’d lost her virginity at the age of eleven to their cousin.
Lucy’s experiences had given her different opportunities. She’d left home six months earlier than Mary to work as a maid in the manor house. Then, when the daughter of the house, Brigit, married, Lucy went with her to her new home. Then finally, when Brigit’s new sister-in-law married and moved to London, Lucy became part of that household. She’d had ample opportunity to see the way the rich folk lived, to study their manner and speech.
The first time she had visited Mary, in a room even worse than this, Lucy had been horrified.
“I’m having what is termed an affair,” Lucy returned evenly. “And for the record, I do believe I have a taste for it.”
Mary laughed, clapping her hands.
“Well, you’re my sister, of course you do. It’s only surprising that it took you this long with all those months of watching others do the fucking. At least when we do buy that pub, there’ll be two of us to service all the men.”
No, Lucy thought decisively, it would never come to that.
Chapter Eight
Could he have achieved a greater contrast if he had tried? Robert thought as he entered the modest Tudor cottage in Richmond, his grandmother’s house, where his mother now lived as well. Had it really been only that morning that he had left Lucy’s decadent boudoir?
The elder Lady George sat in her Bath chair, her head drooping forward with sleep. His mother took her cup before it spilled and placed it back on the table.
“Forgive her, darling. She couldn’t sleep last night, so worried she was about your cousin.”
Robert winced. He never liked hearing about Archibald, his uncle’s youngest child, much spoiled after two daughters, who at twenty-four had just been let go from his position as a land steward for Lord Cheltham.
“I offered him a position and he rejected the idea,” Robert reminded her, dismissing the subject. He was not close with any of his cousins, which didn’t stop the lot of them from asking for funds intermittently. When it had been his female cousin’s sudden widowhood, his cousin Philip’s new crop experiment, or his uncle’s ill health, he had given freely. Archie, however, was a man of no discipline and his recent dismissal was due to his own extreme negligence.
There were many faults Robert could excuse in a man but that was not one of them. As dissipated as much of Robert’s life was, his moral code was clear. Which was why this last year he had finally decided to marry and have a legitimate heir. With his uncle likely to die before him, and his cousin Archie next in line to inherit all the entailed property, it was clear to Robert that he needed a responsible successor.
“He’s not my blood relative,”—his mother excused herself—“any nephew of mine would recognize that working as a clerk, no matter how ignoble the job, breeds discipline.” But there was something in her tone that suggested she thought Robert too particular, that he should demand his cousin work at such a demeaning effort as clerk.
“Naturally,” Robert agreed, with a cynical twist of his lips.
“Of course, it does raise the question, when I may expect a grandchild,” she continued. “And don’t give me that uncouth answer that I have three already. I do not wish to hear of them again. It’s really not fit for polite society.”
“I said not a word, madam.” Out of years of training, Robert forced himself not to fidget. He should be used to this by now, the snide little ways she made her disapproval known.
His mother sniffed.
“Well, I’ve found you a lovely girl,” she whispered, “but your grandmother is adamant that you should keep Archie your heir. Regardless, she’s a distant relative of mine, from Yorkshire. Uncle Clive has been caring for her since she was orphaned. He writes that she is everything one could wish for: young, attractive, properly modest, which you know is hard to find these days.”
And clearly someone who would be properly grateful for his mother’s interference and amenable to her influence.
“I will not be traveling to Yorkshire.”
“I would never put you to such an inconvenience, Robert. I’ve invited Miss Ambrose to visit here.”
Chapter Nine
As far as Lucy knew, Sir Robert did not have a fixed schedule. He came as he pleased, in the afternoon or late in the evenings, three, four times in a week or not at all. She supposed his desires fluctuated with the day, as did hers.
However, this night, she knew he would come. He had said he would. She waited for him on the first floor at the top of the stairs. As she watched him ascend, she admired the way he walked, as if he were molten sensuality poured into his trousers. And his cheekbones—the man was blessed with the sort of hawkish features that only perfected with age.
She’d appreciated his physique on numerous occasions, but it was far different to observe that same body having known its power intimately.
“I’ve thought of you all day,” Robert growled, moving to take her in his arms. She stopped him and took his arm instead. She might chance her dismissal by having an affair with Sir Robert, but she would not do so in the public rooms where anyone could see them.
“I thought of you too,” Lucy admitted. “Actually I felt you, the memory of you inside me, with every step I took.”
He looked pleased, which of course he should be, Lucy thought. She’d given him a rather large compliment.
He followed her into Madame Rouge’s rooms, reaching for her again the instant the door closed behind him.
“Why only in private?” he asked just before his head dipped down and his lips met the sensitive skin of her neck.
Lucy let her head drop back against the door, let his arms be what kept her upright.
“You watch others,” he continued, his kisses continuing as well, across her neck to her other shoulder.
“Hmmm,” Lucy murmured, “do you wish to watch me?”
Robert’s answer was to grab her buttocks and urge her up against him till she lost her balance completely and had to wrap her arms around him to keep upright. He lifted her up and his hot mouth closed over her nipple through the silk of her dress.
“You don’t like answering questions, do you?” he said finally, letting her body slide back down his.
Shakily, she stepped away.
“This is Harridan House, Sir Robert,” she reminded him, reaching to undress him. “The only question relevant is how much pleasure.”
When later she carefully lowered herself down on top of him, the fullness of his cock inside of her brought both pleasure and pain, reminding her of the newness of the activity.
There was no pain the next night nor any night after, and Lucy reveled in it, in her new lover. He pressed several times for explanations, for she was what he termed “an enigma.” Lucy found herself wanting to answer him, wanting to give him anything he desired. She held back and teased him instead, invoking the throaty laugh she had learned from Lady Blount—a laugh she knew she had perfected in recent days as if the loss of her virginity had been the necessary payment.
Yet Sir Robert found different ways to question her and there was the night, some two weeks into the affair that she couldn’t quite maintain the shield.
“Do you never take these off?” Robert asked, reaching over her to where her arms rested on the back of the chaise longue. He stroked her wrist through the silk gloves, feeling the pulse of her blood under his fingers. He vaguely
remembered, even as he asked, having seen the pale curve of a forearm, jewels sparkling off of fingers. But everything in the past had melded into one indistinct dream. What was real was the present—this woman who had managed to surprise him when so few things did these days.
He slowly slid his hands down over her shoulders, the smooth skin of her back. Then he grasped the swell of her hips, and pulled her back against him to thrust deeper.
Lucy moaned, tossing her head, and he watched the long brown wave brush across her skin.
“A woman always removes her gloves before a meal and at many other times,” she gasped.
“But do you?” he pressed, not really expecting her to answer. It had almost become a game between them, for him to ask questions and her to avoid answering them.
And then there was her disguise. Even naked beneath him, she still wore her mask and her gloves. At first he had found the secrecy intriguing, but with each day that passed, the strip of silk that covered her face infuriated him more.
He increased his pace, pumping into her, till her arms bent and she shuddered her climax, collapsing against the chaise, her cheek pressed against the velvet. He pulled back on her hips, to lift her up again. Her little moan was music and she tossed her hair again, moving the heavy mass away from her face—
Her bare face—for the red silk mask lay puddled beneath them.
His hips stilled. He studied her, barely breathing. Her face was still turned down, he could see nothing but the pale gleam of her ear.
He watched her shift her weight. One gloved arm reached down to pick up the mask.
Robert swiveled his hips against her so that she had to brace herself to keep her balance. He caught a fistful of her hair in his right hand and gently tugged. She resisted at first but then turned her face, slowly, the bare curve of her cheek illuminated by the candlelight.
He slid out of her. She pushed herself away from the chaise to stand as well.
There was nothing earthshaking about seeing Lucy this way, unmasked. She looked much as he had imagined she would. Yet somehow, bare and vulnerable, she was even more lovely.
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