“Eva?” Gone was the sneering, distant aristocrat.
She glared down at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “What?” She didn’t care if she sounded petulant.
“Do you want me to stop? This is not—” His already flushed cheeks darkened even more, and his inability to articulate what exactly was going to happen made her braver; he was not as composed as he looked, not nearly so much in control.
His body was tense with the effort it took to restrain his eager limbs and he hummed with want. For her.
“Have I—” He bit out a vulgar curse. “Are you afraid, Eva?”
She was afraid, but not in the way he thought. “No.”
His mouth pulled into an odd, lopsided smile, and amusement joined lust on his devil-angel face. “No, you wouldn’t be—would you?”
She pushed her hips against him in answer and his pupils dilated almost to the edge of his irises.
His gaze dropped. “Hold your skirts up,” he ordered in a raspy voice that made her hands shake as she obeyed him.
“Higher.” His haughty lips thinned and tightened in a way that made her legs weak. She felt his hands lightly drifting over her exposed knees, thighs, and then cool air on that most private of places.
Again, thanks to the precious information Mia had shared, Eva knew what he was going to do—and her body wanted it with a ferocity that dazed her.
He looked up at her, his expression smug, knowing, and . . . arousing. “Spread your legs for me, Eva.”
She held his gaze, torn between the desire to disobey his arrogant command and the much stronger desire to feel what he wanted to do. So she moved her feet slightly and he lifted his eyebrows. Not until she’d spread her feet to the width of her shoulders was he satisfied.
“That’s a girl,” he muttered, the low, harsh desperation in his voice sending actual shivers through her. Eva bit her lower lip hard as he traced the seam of her sensitive lips, his finger grazing her swollen peak, which had grown larger and more sensitive.
Each stroke elicited a shudder and she tightened her inner muscles, prolonging the pleasure. His actions were skilled and confident, as though he’d done this same thing countless times before. Which he likely had.
Eva thrust away the stab of jealousy that pierced her chest at the thought—what did she care for such things? All she wanted from him was—
His thumbs parted her lips, opening the most private part of her to his view. He sucked in a harsh breath, looking awestruck. “So very, very beautiful,” he whispered, entranced.
Eva knew what he was seeing because her stepmother had urged her to learn the secrets of her own body—not to wait for some man to teach her about them. So she’d eagerly looked at herself in her dressing room mirror, examining the part of her that could be so demanding of attention, and could give such joy when obeyed. While it delivered unparalleled pleasure, she’d certainly not thought it was pretty. Nor had she been as dumbstruck by her sex that she’d stared the way Visel was currently staring.
He leaned forward and took her bud between his lips and her knees buckled, a strangled cry escaping her tightly clenched jaws.
He steadied her hips with his hands but his lips did not release her. Instead, he engulfed her with the soft wet heat of his mouth. And then he began sucking and massaging her with his tongue.
Eva’s vision doubled and she was making a gasping sound as she struggled to breathe. Her eyelids were heavy but she pushed them open: she needed to see him—to see his mouth on her. When she pulled her skirts higher, his eyes looked up into hers, his mouth bathing her in slick heat.
Her body slipped her control and shook hard; she was close to climaxing, but this time, unlike the others, she tried to keep the feeling in check, to savor the sight and feel of him. She tightened her muscles, as if that would hold back the flood. He released her swollen peak, his lips red and slick, his chin glistening. When she pushed her hips toward his mouth like a wanton begging for more, his mouth pulled into a smile that caused her muscles to flutter madly. And then his hand slid into the wet heat between her thighs and pressed at the entrance to her body. He circled the sensitive opening, around and around.
Eva spread her feet more and his eyes kindled as he inserted a finger inside her. She bucked against him and babbled something even she couldn’t understand. And then he leaned down and sucked her into his mouth again and began to pump her with strong, rhythmic thrusts. She could hold back the flood no longer.
* * *
Godric watched her come apart under his hands and mouth, her lithe, young body shaking beneath him, her orgasm explosive in its intensity. He didn’t know what he’d expected of a maiden, but it hadn’t been such calm acceptance of an action that would send most married women of their class screaming in fear or outrage. But she’d not only enjoyed his oral attentions, she’d watched him and had done what she could to intensify her orgasm, welcoming him into her body. He tried to ignore the stab of angry jealousy when he considered where she must have learned about such pleasures: inns and pubs and mills, likely.
Well, he was no vestal virgin himself.
Godric waited until she was limp, boneless, and utterly his. And then he made her come again, just because he could. He drank in the sight of her pleasure until his engorged cock soaked the front placket of his breeches and he ached with want.
As the last of her contractions died away, he kept his two middle fingers buried deep inside her, loath to leave her snug heat, wanting to see her come apart again. And again. But enough was enough.
When he removed his hand he saw no blood. So, she’d not been lying: she wasn’t a maiden, which went a long way to explaining her lack of inhibition. Godric felt an odd sense of relief mingled with disappointment: relief that he’d not just debauched her with the kind of activity one usually only practiced with one’s mistress or a whore; disappointment that he’d not been the one to initiate her into this particular pleasure.
He shoved away both thoughts and pulled down her skirts before standing.
She gazed up at him from beneath heavy lids, her mouth slack. He slipped his arm beneath her knees and lifted her with ease. She was small, but she had a woman’s flared hips, and the swell of her breasts looked generous for her narrow ribcage. He regretted not exposing her body to his view, but there would be plenty of time for that later.
“Mmmmm, so tired now,” she mumbled into his coat.
Godric wasn’t surprised: she’d just had more orgasms in the last thirty minutes than he’d enjoyed in the past thirty days.
When he laid her out on the bed, her eyelids lifted slightly as she struggled to stay awake.
“Do you want me to play lady’s maid and remove your dress and stays?”
She nodded and yawned noisily, her heavily lidded eyes looking into his. “Please do, I can’t believe I’m so tired, yet again.”
If he’d had as many orgasms as she’d just experienced, he’d likely sleep for a month.
“I hate stays. Need I wear them?”
He had to swallow hard to answer her question, as if his cock had leapt into his throat. His brain was crammed full of images of her breasts free and unrestrained. “You needn’t wear them for me,” he said gruffly, his groin throbbing madly. He turned her on her side and located the tape that kept her bodice cinched beneath her breasts. He slid an arm under her and lifted her off the bed as he pulled her loosened dress to her waist. She moved pliably in his grasp, anticipating his instructions before he made them, clearly at ease with being undressed after a lifetime spent with a body servant.
Beneath the simple gown, she wore white muslin stays and a chemise. Her breasts were high and lush with large nipples that were dark pink and hard against the thin fabric. Godric’s hands shook as he turned her again on her side and loosened the laces. She gave a soft, sensual sigh as he released her body from its bondage and he almost ejaculated in his breeches.
Good Lord. It had been far too long when unlacing a woman’s plain cotton corset c
ould make him this hard.
Once he’d loosened the garment he gently rolled her onto her back.
Astoundingly, she was asleep, her plump lips parted, the pearly skin over her collar bones stained with the vestiges of her passion. Her curly mop of hair contrasted starkly with the pale linen. He’d had a difficult time completing the bloody cut, his cock hard almost constantly, his brain trying to distract him with images of bending her over the chair back and hilting himself inside what he now knew was a sweet, tight sheath that would feel like heaven wrapped around him.
He groaned as his sensitive crown rubbed against his clothing. He needed to take care of the situation before he sullied his remaining breeches. He draped her cloak over her before putting the blanket on top. The bed linens looked clean enough, but they were damp and musty smelling.
He leaned over without realizing what he was doing and kissed her smooth temple, the action burying his nose in her short, ticklish hair. He inhaled her like a wine whose merits he struggled to identify, filling his lungs to capacity before expelling air in one noisy breath. He took another whiff, holding her scent in his lungs.
As he exhaled slowly, it hit him: sugar. She smelled like sugar, which he’d not even realized had a smell until that moment.
Godric pulled the blanket up to her shoulders as he looked down at her. She resembled a storybook princess and the image was far more potent than he’d ever have expected: skin like cream, lips like cherries, and hair as soft and black as a raven’s wing. She was achingly beautiful and unlike any woman he could remember. She was part antagonist, part hoyden, part siren, part child.
Like any man, Godric enjoyed beautiful women, but his sexual desires had not always—or even mostly—been ruled by a woman’s beauty. He’d not loved Lucia because of her physical appearance, but because of the lively spark in her dark, flashing eyes, and the joyous smiles she summoned so easily. In truth, Godric knew his dead wife had been pretty at best—until you knew her.
But Eva de Courtney? Hers was the rare beauty of a priceless object in a museum, and he felt an odd compulsion to collect her and put her on a shelf behind glass, to lock her away. He wondered if that impulse in others was what had made her the way she was—suspicious of men who wanted her only as a beautiful object.
She was not a piece of porcelain to be kept under lock and key. She was a living, breathing woman with wants and needs. Wants and needs he was ill equipped to satisfy.
Godric realized he was smiling. But it was a sad smile. He would try not to crush her spirit—to hem and hedge and control her as she’d accused him of attempting several times. But he didn’t think that would be the problem. As much of a hoyden as she was, she’d proven tonight that she had the body and desires of a woman: a very, very sensual woman.
But she was also a girl, and he could see the way her eyes softened whenever he was kind to her. Girls, even hoydens, had romantic fantasies, and they would be fantasies he could not possibly satisfy, no matter that he knew his outward appearance might be that of an angel or storybook hero. Once upon a time he’d even been a bit like that hero, but not anymore.
He stood and gave her one last look before snuffing the candle and returning to his own room, leaving the door between them open.
He pulled off his boots and removed his coats and ruined cravat, keeping on his buckskins, stockings, and shirt. Not only did he not wish to lie naked on this disgusting bed, but he didn’t want to shock her in the morning—in the extremely unlikely event he might get some sleep. She might be more comfortable with her own body than most of her countrywomen, but that didn’t mean she would be comfortable with his.
After banking the fire, he lay on top of the blankets, one arm behind his head as a pillow. With the other, he opened his fall and wrapped his hand around an erection so hard it had become painful. As he stroked his slickened shaft he thought about how she’d looked standing exposed and open before him; how she’d tasted; how she’d sounded when she covered his hand and mouth with her sweetness.
It didn’t take him long to bring himself to climax, his orgasm intense but far too brief, the mind-numbing pleasure dissipating too quickly and turning into the feelings of loss that always followed.
He would not sleep tonight, just as he had not last night. The fact he’d slept that first night could only have been a result of the whack on the head. He reached back and felt the lump, which was still sensitive but had lost some of its swelling.
His insomnia was not new. He’d been this way for a long time—even before what happened to Lucia and Carl, although it had been worse since they died. It was a somewhat predictable routine: three or four nights without sleep would pass and then he’d sleep like the dead for ten, sixteen, or, once, thirty hours at a stretch. Godric hadn’t given in to insomnia without a struggle. He’d tried drinking himself to sleep, working himself to sleep, and, with Lucia, well . . . there had been many nights she hadn’t slept, either.
Thinking about Lucia brought the inevitable guilt in its wake. Guilt that he’d not been there when she needed him, guilt that he’d not simply sent her to England after Carl was born—that he’d kept her with him because he was selfish. Guilt that he was about to forsake her memory and take a new wife—and that he was looking forward to the marriage in at least one way: he wanted Eva physically. And—after tonight—he wanted her badly.
Godric hadn’t been a monk since the death of his wife. Quite the reverse—he’d fucked his way through his remaining time in the army and then fucked his way through London when he’d decided to extract his revenge. But always when he’d bedded women, he’d known it was to satisfy a physical need, not because he had any intention of forgetting his past and beginning a new life. As if he deserved to start over again after what he’d done.
Godric turned his head until he could look through the open door toward the bed where she slept. He could make out only a vague outline of her form, but he imagined he could see the rise and fall of her chest. He didn’t love her—hell, he didn’t even like her a good bit of the time—but he liked her body and, he realized after tonight, he’d not be able to deny himself the pleasure of it.
He was glad he could at least give her sexual pleasure—and a stud farm. The irony of the combination was not lost on him, and he smiled. But his smile drained away when he thought about the truth of their future together.
Godric only hoped physical pleasure and horses would be enough when she found out that was all he had to give.
Chapter 9
For the second morning in a row Eva could hardly look him in the eye. In fact, she hadn’t; ever since they’d entered the carriage, she’d been staring at his chin, mouth, and nose. His mouth, she noticed, was flexed into a curve of tolerant amusement that made her yearn to hit him. But even that wasn’t enough to make her look up.
Eva wished her stepmamma had told her how mortifying it could be to face a person after one engaged in shocking sexual relations with them.
She’d woken this morning to find he’d already dressed and gone. He’d had hot water brought up to her and then sent up a meal of coffee, bread, butter, plum preserves, ham, and boiled eggs. She ate alone, dreading his arrival but not worried enough to keep her from eating. She was far hungrier than she would have expected in her anxious state.
When he had finally shown up, it had been to tell her the carriage would be ready in a quarter of an hour and she should be, too. He spoke to her in a level, civil fashion, but she could hear the humor in his voice. No doubt because she was bright red and couldn’t make eye contact.
The morning started off dry, if not clear. The sky was still the same dull gray it had been for days. It suited her mood.
Although he didn’t speak, but just looked out the window, she could see the slight curve to his lips. Eva knew that he was thinking about last night. And that he knew she was thinking about last night. And she knew that he knew—
“Shhh,” he said, leaning toward her, the sudden movement making her flinch.
The sound made her remember last night, when he’d soothed her like a skittish colt and then—
“I’m sorry if I shocked you last night, but we have done nothing to be ashamed of, Eva. I know I should have waited until we are wed—”
“You didn’t shock me,” she lied, her heart thudding. “I knew about—about, er—” What had her stepmother called it? Oral pleasure? She could not bring herself to say those words. She looked up and realized he was still waiting. “I know about that. And I know about plenty of other things, too,” she added for good measure.
He sat back and nodded, his nostrils flaring, his mouth pursed tight. She had no idea what that particular expression was supposed to mean. And no intention of asking, either. She was just glad he’d stopped talking—especially about last night.
* * *
If Godric laughed right now—after her inability to articulate the word cunnilingus and her solemn pronouncement of her extensive sexual knowledge and expertise—she would probably kill him in his sleep tonight.
So instead he sat back. “If we continue at this pace, we should reach the border by noon tomorrow.”
She nodded, swallowing hard enough that he could see the muscles of her throat moving. The action plucked at heartstrings he’d forgotten he even possessed. The girl was certainly an enigma: last night she’d participated in an act that was so erotic and earthy, most Englishwomen married fifty years had never even heard of it. She hadn’t just participated, she’d watched him with hungry eyes, encouraged him with spread legs and thrusting hips, and reveled in the sensations he’d given her.
Yet today she was back to being a naïve nineteen-year-old.
He had to admit it: he was . . . intrigued. “How many Seasons have you had?”
She frowned and for a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer his rather abrupt question. “This was my first.”
“Isn’t that a bit late?” Hell. Why didn’t he just shut up? What did he know about young ladies and their come outs? Until five months ago he’d not set foot in a London ballroom in his life.
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