Willful Depravity

by Ingrid Hahn

  He poured them each wine from the pitcher on a table at the far end of the room. The fire had burned low, the dim light enhancing his beauty. A long hollow traced the center of his powerfully built back where his backbone lay, and two tiny dimples rested in the small of his back above smooth and muscular buttocks.

  Patience positioned herself under the bedclothes, nestling in the fine linen and overabundance of down pillows. No doubt the room had been specially made up to the man’s specifications. There was indulgent, and then there was what the marquess required. A world of difference lay between the two.

  “Are you well, Miss Emery?”

  Well was not the term to describe what she was. She was resplendent. Satisfied. Whole.

  If there was a book in which Patience could write her name for the devil to collect her soul, she’d scrawl ink across the paper without a second thought. If that’s what it took to keep the marquess. Nothing in her life felt as good as this sin.

  And she never wanted to stop.

  “Mmm. Yes, thank you, my lord.” She took the crystal glass he offered, wet her lips, and let the fragrant liquid infuse her senses. With a deep inhale, a bouquet of red summer berries, plums, and wildflowers filled her nose. How had she never known before that wine was a sensual act of lovemaking for her mouth and tongue?

  Because part of her had needed this before these small bits of life, instead of being taken for granted, could assume significance. She’d needed to explore a man’s body. Needed a man to explore her body. And for the two of them to use their bodies together.

  The fucking. Ashcroft had promised. Ashcroft had delivered.

  But delivered so much more than she could have dreamed. By opening her legs, he’d opened her eyes. Again.

  …

  Fucking always left him thirsty. Giles tipped his cup back, drank deeply, then poured more wine.

  This time, however, instead of drinking, he sauntered back to the bed.

  Patience Emery was the sort of creature a man didn’t work out of his system. Hell, he didn’t want to work her out of his system. There was no part of him that wanted this to be finished.

  Coupling with her had proved how right his instincts had been.

  Close to her, he reached out and fingered the loosely curling strands of her hair, examining the texture. So soft.

  They’d already devoured one another—what they needed most, they’d taken. Now they could delight in one another, slowly and deliberately, exploring new avenues of lust.

  He dipped his finger in his wine and traced a curve over her arm, leaning over to follow the line he’d made with his tongue. She inhaled. Giles glanced up, grinning when he met with her surprised and aroused expression.

  Finger wet with wine, he began to draw swirls and lines over her skin. Each stroke was followed by his tongue. As he went, he breathed in the scent of her skin and the perfume of the wine mingling with the light fragrance of sex that permeated the air.

  The arm was merely the beginning. He traced up to her smooth shoulder and over to the base of her neck. And then down, paying homage to the beauty that was this woman and her capacity for sensual pleasure.

  Her breasts he handled with special care, exploring the texture of the areola, licking and blowing and biting to see how they would react. When his teeth found her nipple, she sucked in a breath. “Good?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  When he sank his teeth harder, she squealed and jumped. “Too much, my lord.”

  Giles maneuvered himself over her, his knees sinking into the soft mattress. He proceeded to her stomach, traced her navel, and then kissed his way lower. At her thigh, he paused, swirling wine and lapping it up. He used his tongue as a brush to paint her—paint her in pleasure. He attended to each plump knee, each curving calf, and the narrowed cylinders of her well-turned ankles, then kissed each toe.

  Kneeling by her feet, he swallowed the last of the wine and tossed the glass to be lost in the tangle of bedcovers piled at the end of the bed. He reached down to palm himself, cock already hard at the idea flowering in his mind. “I want to watch you touch yourself. I want to see how you make yourself come.”

  If he’d expected a modest resistance to the suggestion, he was in for a pleasant surprise. With nary a hint of embarrassment or discomfort at the idea, Miss Emery spread her legs open and reached a hand to her open lips. Her first and second finger explored the rosy labia. She began to swirl her clitoris, starting slowly. Miss Emery’s eyes closed, and she circled faster.

  He curled his hand around his cock and stroked himself, pushing his foreskin up over the head of the shaft for maximal stimulation. It was very nearly too intense, even for him.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he growled.

  “I’m thinking about what it felt like to be filled by you.” Her voice was husky with need.

  “Was it different than you expected?”

  “Better…better by far. Everything I ever wanted and so much more.” She frowned in concentration. Her mouth opened, and her body began to tremble. Her breath came faster. “I loved having you inside me. You were so hard…you made me…make me complete.”

  Giles worked himself harder. Just as the first cry of passion left her lips, he let himself go, riding the peak in waves, and shot his seed out to fall where it would.

  Chapter Twelve

  Deep into the night, the flavor of forbidden delights lingering on her tongue, Patience turned her head. Giles slept on the pillow beside her.

  They’d left the curtains partially open. Moonlight cast his form in a sharp delineation between white and black. He was always warm, he said, and slept with no more than a crisp sheet as high as the midpoint between his belly button and the base of his cock. If she could paint, this was how she’d depict him. A god in repose.

  After all they’d done, having him next to her in bed shouldn’t shoot a daring thrill to the tips of her toes. It did, though. A rousing feeling that made her want him all over again, as if she weren’t sore from having taken all of him.

  She reached her hand between her legs and idly swirled a finger around her clitoris.

  Nothing could have prepared her for the wonder of coupling. Sharing her body with a man. Intellectually, she’d understood the basics since she’d worn her mother down and received a begrudging explanation. Or confirmation, rather. Her mother hadn’t shed much light on the procedure.

  Patience had had an inkling, of course. Animals did what animals would do—often and without shame. She hadn’t been able to decide whether people were the same until her mother had confirmed it.

  And now she’d done it. Quite without the benefit of marriage. Perhaps her mother’s command to not do it until after she was married was something she’d made up after the fact. Was it her guilty conscience? Her conscience didn’t feel unduly weighted. Whether that was the bigger sin—well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.

  …

  Giles stirred in the early light of dawn and reached, as he always did, downward. He was rock hard. No matter what or whom he’d done the night before, when dawn began slinking over the horizon, the pump was once again primed.

  An unusual note lingered in the air. A fragrance that put him in mind of something beautiful.

  He stirred, blinking into the hazy gray and idly stroking himself. A warm heap lay beside him. A vixen born for carnal delights.

  Giles smiled. Sleeping with his mate was a rare occurrence. A fine one, no mistake. And not unheard-of in his experience. This was all together more pleasant, though. Because the woman next to him was Miss Emery.

  He went to the windows and threw back the partially closed drapes. The cool morning air made his hair stand on end and his nipples pucker. Then he crawled back into the downy nest.

  Beside him, she stirred. “You’re awake?”

  He rolled to his side and wrapped her in his arms, nuzzling her neck with his nose. Masses of her dark-gold waves poured over the pillows, the tresses catching glints of the encroac
hing sunlight as they were strewn lazily this way and that when he moved. “Every last inch of me.”

  To prove the point, he held his engorged penis against her bottom as if to imprint her with a special kind of brand, and pressed a kiss into her soft skin.

  She made a sound of pleasure. “It’s morning.”

  “And I want to fuck you again.”

  She turned her head so their lips met. His body burned for hers, his hunger violent as need bashed the insides of his veins.

  Strong appetites were nothing new to him. Day in and day out, he cultivated pleasures to satisfy the urgency of his base requirements. All the while, she existed in the world, made for him. An instrument of pleasure ready and waiting for a proper tuning.

  Oh heaven, this woman. What she did to him… When next he gave thanks, he had one particular thing for which to express his gratitude above all else.

  Giles pushed away the bedcovers and climbed atop her. She grabbed for him, opening her legs to welcome him against her body. His fingers raked her hair. “Everything I ever wanted has been channeled into you.”

  The world between them caught fire. His arousal shot from present and ready to clamoring with near-hostile demands. Her hands were all over his skin, bold and willful and utterly without shame.

  The blunt tip found the opening of her body, the portal between this world and heaven. His stiff prick wanted to jam inside like a battering ram, thrust once—hard—and let his orgasm slam through his body.

  That he could not allow. Not for himself, and certainly not for her. He moved slowly, with deliberate care…letting her feel every part of his length as he edged inside her. Lest it be over far too quickly, he paused after every fraction her body gave for him before pushing deeper.

  She moaned, rocking against him, easing him in faster than he’d anticipated, and brought him to the brink of spasming. His whole body tensed as he fought to hold himself back. When he regained mastery of himself, he let himself take all of her in.

  The first moments were always the worst. There he was, doing everything he wanted—specifically, doing a woman with the body of a pagan goddess whose mere existence made him hard—wetting his cock in her sweet quim, feeling her snug interior as her softness gave way for his hardness. It was all he could do to prevent himself from coming.

  A woman’s inside was hot and welcoming. Miss Emery, though, was no mere woman. A dewy flush over her face left the impression that she was not a creature of this world.

  He leaned down to claim her mouth, allowing her body to take some of his weight. Breaking away, he went lower, clamping his mouth on one luscious nipple and sucking. It was intoxicating, savoring this much beauty. He was, without doubt, the luckiest man alive.

  Looking up, he caught his reflection in the mirror at the headboard. They were two bodies together on heaps of rumpled bedclothes. His bottom moved in smooth, rolling motions as he stroked her interior.

  He returned to her breasts, buried his face between them, the warmth of her smooth skin permeating his. If he suffocated here, no paradise waiting on the other side could match this. True, he would never be allowed to trounce upon Eden, sullying the gardens, but this memory would keep him happy while he burned in hell for the remainder of eternity.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Patience woke a second time when the sun was high in the sky, the bright light of a crisp late-spring day flooding the room. She tensed her thighs. A lingering soreness accompanied the ghostly impression of his huge cock.

  She reached a hand to Ashcroft’s side of the bed. It was empty. Her eyelids fluttered open. Oh yes. He’d gone some time ago. Before he’d left, she’d asked him how he could be up at such an ungodly hour. “I don’t sleep much. Never have.”

  It made a certain amount of sense. A man like the marquess, with his vibrancy and vitality, wouldn’t have time for something as mundane as sleep.

  She smiled, stretched, and leaned over the bed to pull the cord. Waiting for the servant, she slipped into a wrap that had been set along the foot of the bed, then grabbed the discarded curtain and replaced it over the mirror on the headboard.

  By God in heaven. She’d done it. It’d been real. She’d lain with a man. She’d watched herself do it, too. She was no longer a virgin—and thanks be for that. Patience smiled. Thoroughly debauched, that’s what she was. Thoroughly, happily, and wonderfully debauched.

  A maid arrived. A woman of about thirty-five years, with a pleasantly featured, ordinary kind of face, and an easy demeanor to match, who introduced herself as Dinah. “May I fetch you a tray, Mrs. Warrington?”

  “Chocolate please, Dinah. Your very biggest pot.” Patience smoothed the bedclothes. She was going to have whatever she pleased, enjoy it, and not spare one thought of another person.

  “Of course. Anything else?”

  Patience paused. Did she dare? Yes. Yes, she did dare. And not because the marquess had fucked her twice and called her beautiful. Because she—Patience Emery, unrepentant of any appetite, sexual or otherwise—was now living by her own rules and utterly bereft of apology. “No, two of your biggest pots. Nothing else.”

  Dinah’s face remained unchanged, the picture of the perfectly trained servant. Of course, the Marquess of Ashcroft would demand no less, so it shouldn’t have been surprising.

  Patience was used to her mother involving the servants in her plots to “help” Patience. Another stinging layer of humiliation, like a blanket woven of nettles and cast about her huge shoulders. Another burden she could shuck readily enough, for when she returned to her old life, she would not be the same.

  She was changed—for the better, too. No more interference from servants would be tolerated, her mother’s orders or no. It was not their place, nor their concern.

  “Very good, Mrs. Warrington.”

  “Thank you, Dinah.”

  After the maid left, Patience slipped out of bed and found her writing book, a stub of pencil, and a volume of poetry. Back in the covers, she shifted the track of her thoughts to the next chapter of The Haunted Tower, wrote in fits and starts until the tray came, and read while relishing the morning indulgence.

  An hour later, after savoring every last sip of the thick chocolaty goodness and properly dressed, she had a servant point her in the direction of the marquess. He’d transformed the castle’s old solar into a studio. Easels strewn about the long room could be seen through the open doorway as she approached. She ducked to pass through into a narrow space with high wooden beams lining the pitched ceiling, and leaded windows allowing in northern light. The gaping fireplace stood empty, and an earthy smell hit her nose, pleasant. Reminiscent of him.

  Ashcroft watched her from the middle of the room. He stood enclosed in a circle of easels spread about a foot apart—eight in all—and wore nothing but white shirtsleeves, fawn trousers, and black boots. His hair was wavy, a bit disheveled, but he could not have looked more perfect. “I’ve been waiting for you, Miss Emery.”

  This was the man she’d allowed inside her body. First, he’d tasted her. Then he’d felt her. Then he’d fucked her. She’d watched his cock sink into her flesh. Watched them join their bodies. Felt him inside her, so big and hard and insistent.

  When he looked at her, she never wanted him to stop. Because with him, she wasn’t merely another beautiful object in a life cluttered with so many pretty things, the word had lost its meaning. Quite the contrary. With him, she was the most beautiful living, breathing, passionate creature in the world.

  She wanted to try everything again, from start to finish. Move together, feel together, find ecstasy together. Set free their untamed desires. All the things no other person would allow in her, he coaxed from her and cherished in her. “You’ve done all this since we’ve come?”

  “No, not all. I brought some to reference.”

  “Reference?” She tore her gaze from one canvas to glance at him.

  “Some who write will travel with books. I paint. I travel with drawings.”

&nb
sp; “I never thought about it before.” It wasn’t the way of traveling with a book or a bit of stitching to entertain oneself on the journey. “May I have a look, my lord?”

  He bowed graciously. “I would be honored.”

  She padded across the thick carpeting strewn over the stone floor, wool soft from years of wear. There were other easels and half-finished canvases littered around the place. Drawings on paper were strewn over every surface, some even on the floor as if having been blown by the wind from an open window. Some of the pictures were decidedly erotic. Others were subtly so.

  Patience stepped into the circle, like the fairy rings she’d danced in as a child, imagining a world permeated with magic. Her breath caught. There were four paintings in all. Each was a jewel, the colors lifelike, but more so—rich and brilliant. Her color vision was perfect, but seeing these brought a rush of awareness of how much there was in each sweep of the eye that went unremarked upon.

  “They’re beautiful.” Except her insipid words did the pictures no justice. They weren’t beautiful. They were extraordinary. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  Damn the wobble in her voice. The paintings were unfinished. They had no right to be so moving.

  Each canvas showed a woman, the same one in all four, with an unusual golden shade of hair and tilt of the nose. The subject was nude, but neither overtly aware or unaware of the male gaze upon her. It was about watching and being seen…and somehow neither, but a moment’s repose being nothing but what she was.

  Patience turned to the marquess, the man before her suddenly far more complicated than she’d expected. She’d spent the brief time at Glenrose waiting for the mask to fall and him to reveal his true self. She’d thought she’d have to wait longer.

  How blind she’d been. He’d never been anything other than his true self. Truer than all the hypocrites who denied their base needs and subverted their carnal nature. “How do you do this?”

  He lifted his brows at her and glanced around before looking back at her. “What do think it is I do?”