Didn’t Grace know that, to her detriment? Mrs Willowbank had determined David’s future the moment he’d been born, and studying landscapes with a master in Florence did not feature. It was why David had felt it safest to entrust Grace with Signor Bettoni’s letter the night before he went up to Cambridge in his first term. He planned to visit a sympathetic cousin en route to borrow funds so that when he returned to Barton Manor he’d have all in order.
And Grace would go to Florence with him.
The letter. Oh God, if only there’d been no letter, thought Grace, none of this would have happened.
“I do not intend being an object of pity to my wife,” David went on with growing emotion. “I intend to repay Miss Lenders for taking me on. So show me how I can do that. Show me how to make her desire me.”
“Come with me,” Grace whispered, drawing him up from his chair and guiding him across the room to the four-poster bed.
He stopped uncertainly when he reached the edge. Grace angled herself close and ran her hands down the front of his trousers.
“Let me take them off for you,” she whispered, deftly working the buttons, enjoying the feel of his smooth flanks, resisting the urge to trail kisses from his ankles to his lips. She was too afraid their time would be cut short and she was determined, now, to be possessed by David in the fullest sense. The memory would serve as her protection when she succumbed to the inevitable with each future client. “Now climb onto the mattress. I’ll join you there.”
Almost desperate with need, Grace climbed onto the bed and laid her naked body over his. Instinctively his hands went to her rump, his palms cupping her bottom, sending spirals of heady desire coursing through her veins and making her sex throb with anticipation.
So many men.
She’d had so many men and now, at last …
“I think you feel sorry for me, which means you don’t regard me with the same revulsion you do your other clients,” he murmured, his breath tickling her ear. “I hope not, because …” He’d transferred his attention to her inner thighs, where he’d enjoyed her responses earlier. His touch ravaged her with urgent desire.
“Because why?” she whispered, pressing her cheek to his chest as she moved her body slowly, suggestively, over his. His erection pressed into her belly and she rubbed herself up and down upon it, sighing with the satisfaction of feeling it swell.
“There’s something about you … I can’t explain it. You remind me …”
The thrill Grace felt was truncated as he muttered, “Only it seems wrong to compare you.”
“Because she was pure? And I am not?”
Grace raised her head and studied his face. His heightened colour was his only answer.
Forcing his painful words from her mind, she rose to a sitting position, reaching down to cup his balls. He gasped at the unexpected sensation, hardening instantly, holding his breath and clasping her shoulders as she gently squeezed.
“You like it?” Her voice was husky. Suggestive. The same tone she used on all her clients, yet what was in her heart was so different.
“I shall disgrace myself in two seconds if you continue.” His breathing was laboured. “Stop doing that. I want to feel you.”
She remained sitting, straddled upon him as his hands roamed over her, as if he were committing her to memory. Grace registered his frown, his growing excitement as he contoured her with the concentration of a sculptor exploring the possibilities of his subject.
“I can feel you … like I can see you.”
She breathed deeply and surrendered herself to his touching. How thrilling it was to again be the object of his enjoyment.
He raised his head as if looking for something, pulled her down so he could take her nipple into his mouth, then gently sucked while his other hand massaged her right buttock.
“I can imagine every part of you,” he marvelled, drawing his head away. “I’m an artist. I can’t paint you but I can … make you. I could make you in clay.” His breath came faster.
So did Grace’s. Electric impulses surged through her, excitement roiled in her lower belly and moisture glistened between her legs.
“You can be my muse. I can sculpt you. I can.”
Hope clawed at her, just a little more forcefully. Perhaps there really was a shared future for them …
“Tell me everything. Your hopes, your dreams, your disappointments. I need to know you from the inside. It’s the only way I can create you.”
His rising excitement coincided with the crashing of her hopes.
His muse? She’d told him enough, already. She lay still beside him. “If I tell you everything, sir, you will want nothing more to do with me.”
At the dull resignation in her voice, he checked himself. “Are most whores as honest as you?”
Despite herself she gave a soft laugh. “We quickly learn when we must lie. But I am not lying when I say I want you to make love to me.”
“You really want that?”
Ever so briefly she touched her lips to his mouth before drawing back in sudden alarm as the familiar longing surged through her. It was too dangerous. Before long she must leave him.
Probably forever.
“Yes, I want you.” She heard the almost desperate note in her voice as she rose above him, rubbing her sex over his now rampant erection.
He held her tightly, his breath hot in her ear. “And I want you, too. Oh, God—”
She’d reached down to grasp his cock, which she was sliding the length of her slick entrance and back again. His breath was now coming in convulsive gasps which matched hers as she guided him into her slippery depths—and as he filled her she felt the most heightened sensation of coming home.
“David.” She breathed his name upon the faintest of whispers as he withdrew slightly before thrusting into her again and she felt herself clamp over him as need and joy and pleasure swirled through her.
“Oh God!” he cried again as he re-entered her, his passions ratcheting up with unstoppable force on a journey she shared.
He was still little more than an untutored virgin and she didn’t mind that he came quickly upon a final thrust for she was so ready, shattering around him, her brain whirling, her heartbeat pounding as she collapsed on top of him.
For a long time companionable silence enveloped them. The clock in the passage struck three o’ clock and the sounds of carriage wheels from the street below lent a strange normality to the sensation that nothing and everything was changed.
David was the first to speak. Shifting her against his side so that her head nestled into the crook of his neck, he held her close as he gently stroked her.
He laughed softly. “I hope I can last a little longer the next time.” He paused, then asked awkwardly, “Why did you have no one to turn to?”
Surprised by his interest, she decided to lay herself bare.
“My family refused to have anything to do with me after I … disgraced them. My mam gave me what savings she had and sent me to London, making me promise I’d never contact them again.”
His warmth was comforting, the familiarity taking her back to the days when they could speak of so many things as he sketched or painted her: the many injustices Mrs Medley meted out and David’s troubles concerning his controlling mama.
She snuggled closer and he reached across to pull the covers over her as she went on. “In London I became apprenticed to a milliner until she, too, dismissed me when I could no longer hide my growing belly. I used the last of my money to pay the midwife and was going to take the babe to the foundling home. I had no means of supporting either of us, of course, but the babe became sick and as I nursed it, I grew to love it. I couldn’t let it die so I called a doctor but I couldn’t pay him … or get medicine.”
He frowned, indicating for her to go on. “The doctor suggested … I pay him in kind.” She swallowed painfully. “I had no choice. He took me against the wall in the room where I slept because my baby was screaming on the bed. He came
often after that—” She breathed deeply, “—until my baby died.”
She glanced across at him. David’s eyes were dark with sympathy as he lightly caressed her.
“Were you not able to get respectable work?”
“I tried.” Oh God, she wasn’t going to cry, was she? “But I’d been dismissed without a character. No one would employ me so I had to return to the streets until I was procured by Madame Chambon.”
“Is she a good employer?”
“I can’t complain, I suppose, though she knows how to make her money out of us girls. Nevertheless she’s taught me how to hold my own with a duchess. I now speak like a lady, am fully versed in proper etiquette and I can converse on the current affairs of the day in order to entertain the customers. That’s why Madame Chambon charges so much for one of her girls.”
“And that is why you are here.” Carefully he ran gentle fingers over her eyes, cheeks, jawline. “And for once I’m glad of my interfering mama and her high standards.”
Smiling, he moulded her buttocks with the barest pressure. But the pressure she felt inside her was like nothing she’d known before. She’d been drained by the telling of her story but he’d not reacted with revulsion. He still wanted to touch her. The excitement she’d felt during their lovemaking was returning, and with even greater force.
She’d told him everything and it seemed he was ready to repeat the intimacies of earlier.
Now he raised himself, feeling his way over her until his body caged hers. One hand traced her hips. As if studying their shape and form, he stroked the jutting bones before sliding his hand into the juncture between her legs.
He grinned and murmured, “Oh, you really do like it when I touch you there.” He slid his fingers deeper into her heat. They glided through her moisture and she shivered all the more.
He moved his face closer to hers and for a moment she thought he was about to kiss her, then he drew back, perhaps remembering her stricture.
But, oh how she wanted to be seared by the heat of his passion—and it could be ignited by a single kiss, she knew it.
“That is … heaven,” she gasped, opening her eyes to see his glazed with passion.
A great poignant need gripped her heart. She had him in thrall. He was her slave, and how she longed to enjoy him again in the fullest sense. To feel him stretch out his responses. To claim responsibility for tutoring him in how to be the best lover he could be.
She brought his face down and kissed him deeply.
His response was immediate. Electric. His arms went round her, crushing her to him, his mouth encompassing hers completely. She could feel his heart beating fast and furious as he sucked her lip, burning her with the heat of his passion, his tongue tangling with hers, until she could take no more and thought she would drown of need.
“I want you,” she whispered. “Now! Take me!”
“With pleasure, Miss Fortune.” He felt for her entrance so he could position himself. “I’ll show you I can be both willing slave and obliging master,” he breathed with a touch of the old humour she remembered.
Over his shoulder her gaze raked the length of their bodies, so nearly joined as one. Just as she’d dreamed of for so long. He dipped his fingers once more into her silken heat before she felt the swell of his erection begin to breach her entrance.
“Oh!”
They gasped in unison, the sound a catalyst for the cataclysmic reactions that followed as he sheathed himself fully in her.
“Dear God,” he moaned, twining one hand behind her head to keep her face close to his while the other gripped her bottom. Her skin burned at his touch, her heart beat furiously and she thought she would die of pleasure as she felt his fullness inside her, a testament to his possession and, she could pretend for a brief moment, his love.
“Oh, David,” she whispered on the faintest breath as together they bucked and rode each other to the summit of their pleasure.
He didn’t last long and nor did she expect him to, but she had stretched out her response to coincide with the climactic fury of his—so she could be with him in the moment, join him for the journey and gasp her ecstasy of the aftermath with him.
With her cheek tucked into the crook of his neck she shuddered with him.
“Oh, dear Lord, that was magnificent!” he crowed, holding her tightly, his breathing still heavy as he gently played his fingers against her sex as if her twitching amused him.
As if wanting to prolong the pleasure of their coupling at the same time as reassuring himself her responses were brought on by him alone.
She brought his face round so she could kiss him lightly, lingeringly on the lips.
He did not stop smiling. Reaching out, he touched her cheek, toyed with her hair.
Grace gazed into his eyes. They could not see, but they still registered the depth of his emotion. Did he feel this was more than the practised arts of a consummate courtesan? She’d certainly never felt this depth of feeling before.
David opened his mouth to speak and Grace tilted her head. This had meant something more to him. If she could feel it, surely he could, too?
“Good God, what den of iniquity have I entered?”
The sound of the footsteps crossing the floorboards after the door was thrust open had David instinctively holding Grace to his chest in a gesture of protectiveness.
“Happy Birthday and all that, cuz. Is this the wicked little surprise your mama funded for your majority? Let’s have a look at her, then? I’ll give you my verdict. You, after all, have only her word to go on.”
Burrowing against David, Grace gripped him. Horror clawed at her. She didn’t have to see who their visitor was. Laurence’s arrogant drawl was ingrained in her memory. He was the man who had ruined her life. Ruined the life she and David had planned together. Destroyed her reputation, filled her with fear, sapped her of hope and now threatened to embroil her in his sick, poisonous power all over again.
“Can’t you see I’m entertaining? Get out, Laurence.” David spoke with more authority than Grace had ever heard.
She felt a tiny spark of hope. That she could survive this. Then she heard Laurence’s laugh. Harsh and familiar. He never let anything go.
And he was not about to start now.
“Nice rump. Your mama chose a ripe one. Come on. Let’s see what else she has to offer.”
David’s voice was crisp and Grace felt the effort it cost him to retain control.
“Get out, Laurence!”
She registered his cousin’s advancing footsteps. David did too. And he was clearly concerned for her dignity for he rose from the bed, still holding Grace against his chest as he ordered, “Pass me the dressing-gown from behind the screen. I’ll be damned if you think you can thrust yourself in here with no requisite courtesies. Do as I say!”
To her surprise she heard Laurence’s footsteps hesitate. Retreat.
Could she really be granted such a reprieve?
But no, he’d merely compromised to the extent of snapping the dressing-gown off its hook for now he was advancing towards them again.
“Allow me to help the lady regain her modesty.”
The familiar arrogance, violence lurking just beneath the surface, made her tremble.
“I don’t want your help.” Grace buried her head further into David’s chest and he held her tightly as if he really could protect her.
“She doesn’t want you, Laurence.”
“She hasn’t seen me yet, little cuz. Why, I might be her next customer … if I like her. She gets paid by the client, doesn’t she? Tell me, my coy maiden, was he good? It was his first time, though you probably know that already.” He gave a mocking laugh. “I can promise you much more satisfaction.”
David’s fists clenched. For a moment Grace thought he would strike out, leaving her vulnerable, but he continued to hold her close.
She felt the coolness of the silk dressing-gown as it covered her shoulders.
Then Laurence’s fingers diggi
ng into her upper arm as he jerked her away, forcing her head up to look at him.
The astonishment that swept away his arrogance held him frozen with shock, but not for long enough.
Not long enough for her to strike out, struggle from his grasp and make her escape.
Oh no, he was not going to let her go a second time. He was motivated by more than simple desire this time.
No, there was Laurence’s pride. She’d fought against him when he’d first forced himself on her, screaming her disgust. Then it was just the two of them. Now he had David to consider.
“Oh my God, you little slut—it’s you!”
His shocked exclamation was truncated by a burst of laughter as he gave her a little shake to disorient her before holding her away from him, surveying her as a hunter might survey his prey.
“Presented to me on a platter, so to speak.”
The relish in his tone was terrifying. “Dear me, but I did enjoy our last little encounter. I was so disappointed to hear you’d left without a word.”
David put out a hand, his tone bleak. “You know her?”
Laurence jerked her out of reach, his mouth twisted in an ugly smile. “I’ve sampled her wares, yes. Tasty little morsel. I have a mind to have another go. What’s your going rate these days?”
Grace struggled. For a moment she couldn’t speak for the horror that was unfolding around her.
“Get away!” she managed to rasp. “I’d rather die than have you touch me again!” Her voice was rising. She could feel hysteria choking her. Laurence was in control. As he always had been.
David struggled off the edge of the bed and moved forward with grasping fingers; Grace reached out, desperate to be within his protective hold, pleading with his cousin, “Let me go. You have no right to do this. You never had any right. You destroyed—”
Laurence snatched her back to him, clamping his hand roughly across her mouth.
Saving Grace: Hot Down Under Page 3
