“Good,” he murmured. “Now focus on how your body feels. Where you might want to be touched.”
Breasts. I want your hands on them again.
“I can’t say,” she whispered. “I feel so bashful.”
“You don’t have to say anything, sweet girl. Just touch yourself. Pretend I’m not here.”
She shook her head. This was absurd. He was beside her like the golden dawn itself with his tousled damp hair and glinting amber eyes, swollen in his most intimate places because he wanted her, and what she wanted was for him to take her in his arms and make her feel better. Not to observe her performing some scientific inquiry into lust.
She opened one eye and peeked out at him. “I can’t. It’s too odd. It won’t work.”
He reached for his cravat and began to unwind it from his neck.
“Perhaps it would help if you couldn’t see me,” he said softly. “Lift up your head, and I’ll make it a little easier.”
She obeyed, if only because it was an excuse to let him touch her.
Gently, he lowered the linen around her eyes and wrapped it snugly, tying it behind her head.
It smelled like him. Oh God, it smelled like him.
A bit of light flooded through the soft cloth, but she could not make out any shapes. It was not like he wasn’t there, but it at least saved her from having to look at him in her state of infernal bloody wanting.
“Is that better?”
“Maybe,” she whispered.
She felt him sit down at the end of the mattress, near her feet.
“I can’t tell you how to find pleasure. Every woman is different. But I’ll tell you what I’d do if we were lovers. And if you’d like to try yourself, you may. And we can stop at any time, and forget this ever happened.”
Sneakily, very sneakily, she shifted so that her heel touched against his hip. The contact with him sent a jolt up through her leg.
“Tell me what you would do,” she whispered, because she suspected whatever he would do, she would like. She brushed her arch against his thigh, as if by accident, and tried not to exhale at the pleasure of touching him. God, how she wanted to touch him.
“Hmm,” he said softly. His tone was not at all playful. “First I think I would touch your breasts.”
Could he read her mind?
She closed her eyes beneath his cravat and inhaled his cedary smell, and, summoning every last filament of courage in her body, actually did it. She pretended it was his hands that grazed her as she reached up over her breasts and pulled the fabric taut. “Like this?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said, except it sounded more like Mmm. “Just like that. And then I might squeeze your nipples through your nightdress, so I could just make out the pink.”
Her nipples grew firmer beneath the linen, and when she rubbed them through the cloth, it felt so tight and good that for a moment she forgot that he was watching.
She heard a heavy sigh, and felt him shift, making the slightest, slightest contact with her toe. Almost like he wanted to touch her too.
“Oh yes, just like that,” he said raggedly. “Rub them between your fingers.”
She did, and the friction of the smooth linen gown over her puckered flesh felt achy and lovely and made feelings in her stomach spark. Her breath quickened. Normally she would be horrified that he might notice and try to hide it, but with the fabric draped over her eyes, she felt strangely free. Almost like she wanted him to notice. She bit her tongue and flexed her leg, so that her heel pressed against the muscle of his thigh.
He didn’t move away.
“Yes,” he said in a voice that was not quite a sigh. And when she heard the hitch in his breathing, and knew he liked it too, a flood of distress shot down to her belly.
“Does that feel good?” he inquired.
“Yes,” she admitted. An understatement. “But I have yet to experience the death.”
He chuckled. “Sweetheart, sadly you are nowhere near the death. But don’t worry. We’ll see if we can kill you yet.”
“How?” she whispered.
“Well, what I would do is get that gown off you entirely, because I would be dying to run my hands over your skin.”
She smiled at this admission that he liked her skin. And then she imagined him actually looking at it—here, right now, in this bed—and got very, very hot. “Yes,” she agreed, “that sounds like just the thing.”
She could not imagine letting him see her nude under normal circumstances. But at this moment it seemed rather necessary and urgent that she no longer be clothed.
She shimmied her nightdress up over her thighs and pulled it over her head, careful not to let her impatience disturb the ties of the cravat. She had no desire to see him watching her. She just wanted to imagine it. She leaned back against her pillows and ran her hands along her naked breasts and belly and heard him breathing as he watched her.
“Oh, you’re a beautiful creature, Constance.”
“No, I’m not,” she objected. But it was disingenuous, because in this moment she did feel beautiful. Especially when he said:
“Show me where else you want to be touched. Pretend you’re guiding my hands wherever you want them.”
Lower.
She traced her hands over her belly, which provoked a sharp reaction between her legs—a pang. Did she dare follow it? In front of him?
Yes. Now was not the time for hesitation. She brought her fingers down to trace the path of the distress. But there she lost the thread, for it was somewhere deep inside her, and every time she’d ventured to locate the source of it alone, she’d only left herself sweaty and frustrated and irritable, unable to produce the relief that she desired.
Her fingers paused at the hair between her legs.
“Yes, that’s exactly where I’d want to touch you,” Julian whispered.
Tentatively she ran her fingers lower, but stopped at the shock of what was happening there.
“You’re so wet,” he murmured, and the tone was not confusion or disgust but something more like … hunger.
“That’s good?”
He groaned. “Very good.”
She ran her fingers over her flesh, exploring, though feeling rather aware that he was watching her and she had no idea what to do next.
“What now?” she asked.
“I’d spread your thighs a little wider and stroke you right there, at that lovely swollen bit, below your middle finger.”
She moved her fingers slightly. Oh.
“I might stop there and linger for a while. Stroke you. Just to see what makes you feel the best.”
It all felt good. It felt acutely good. It made her jam her heel even deeper into his thigh, not even bothering to pretend it was an accident. But he didn’t move away. Only kept talking in that low, intimate voice.
“But I would also want to make sure you felt good all over, so I might explore a bit to see what other places make you shiver. Deeper, between your legs, where you are very, very wet. Just slowly. Just to make sure we’re being very thorough.”
She did as he suggested, and more of her seemed to awaken in response. But the “lovely bit,” as he had called it, seemed to cry out for more focused attention. She kept finding her way back to it.
She heard herself make a little noise and froze, worried he would laugh at her.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he breathed. “Yes, just like that. Let me hear how good it feels. Stroke yourself there. A bit faster if you like, in little circles, until you just can’t stop and go right over the edge.”
She rubbed her fingers rhythmically. “Julian, the distress is getting worse,” she gasped, curling her toes into his leg.
“I know, sweetheart.” She heard a smile in his voice. “It gets worse before it gets better. But it’s worth it, I promise.”
His low, rumbling voice made her feel woozy and she pressed her fingers to her fleur a bit harder, and was rewarded with a shock of pleasure. She gasped.
“I might sl
ip a few fingers inside you, Constance, now that you are close. Feel how hot and slick and tight you are.”
His voice was heavy, thick, and he had moved closer, so his thigh was flush against the bottom of her foot. Close enough that she could feel the heat from his body radiating through his clothes into her instep.
“I’d want to take care of you so you feel full and needy, like you have every possible sensation that you want. All at once.”
She did. Oh God she did.
“I’d do it just like that until you were in agony. Until I was in agony with you.”
A little cry escaped from her involuntarily, shocking her. In response, she heard him emit a low, painful-sounding groan.
“Oh, sweetheart, I would be so happy to hear how good it feels. It makes me so hard to think about it. To watch you.”
Hard. She remembered how it had felt when his manhood had pressed against her in the butler’s pantry, and that memory made her feel empty in a way that was unbearable.
“I want to feel it. You,” she said. “Please, it’s not enough.”
“I can’t, Constance. I want to, but I can’t.”
She continued to touch herself, trying to get past the edge of intensity that promised something better, but she couldn’t.
“It’s not enough,” she said again. It was never enough. She had tried so many times to bring whatever it was she wanted, and this was better, certainly, but still left her agitated, and she knew she would be distressed forever. She closed her legs, wanting almost to cry in pure frustration.
Suddenly the mattress shifted and her foot lost the contact with his thigh. She heard him walk across the room and fumble through her things.
“Oh God, don’t leave me like this.”
The mattress shifted once again, and she felt him back beside her. “I have an idea. Give me your hand.”
She did so, and he placed something firm and round in her palm.
It was … an apple. An apple from the basket she kept on her desk.
“What … Julian … Your solution to my misery is to offer me a piece of fruit?”
His voice was amused. “Constance, I am going to tell you a secret. On Wednesdays, when a lady visits the club wishing for satisfaction in a way that will not compromise her virginity … certain items can be used to help her find her pleasure. Like the one you found in my trunk. I can bring you a more permanent solution, but in the meantime you might find this feels a bit like the hardness of a man.”
She was, quite literally, speechless. She remembered the pang of arousal she had felt upon pulling the obscene marble carving from his chest and realizing what it was—the frank rudeness of it was unlike anything she’d ever seen—but this was not a phallus. It was a food.
“What would you have me do with it?”
His voice was low, and seductive, and not at all shy. “Put it between your legs and pretend what you’re feeling is my cock.”
His cock.
The sultry, frank way he said it made her want to try, even though what he suggested struck her as absurd.
“Like this?” She took the apple and placed it at the juncture of her thighs.
It felt … round. And hard. And smooth. And not unpleasant.
“Lower, so it rocks against your quim.”
She slid the apple between her legs. At first the strangeness overwhelmed the pleasure. But as her warmth and wetness met the fruit, suddenly it felt … rather lovely. Full. It hit her in all the right places at once.
“Oh my,” she whispered.
“Oh, sweet girl, yes,” he said. “Make it nice and slick and wet, like it’s my cock, straining to be inside you.”
She arched back and extended her foot until she felt it, again, the hardness of his cock beneath her toes. She grazed it as she stroked her flesh and moved against the fullness of the apple, pretending it was him.
Something broke apart inside her.
She could feel it. She could feel the death rising up, taking hold of her.
She ground her heel into his thigh and gave herself over to the rhythm of her hips as her fingers performed a miracle she wished she had known about before.
She cried his name out as it took her.
And when she came back to herself, she decided he was wrong.
This feeling was not a death.
It was more like waking up.
Apthorp watched her shudder. He watched her slowly, sweetly recover, her blond hair spread beneath her like the moonlight, her face half-hidden by his neckcloth, pale skin flushed, her body limpid, the glistening red apple tossed aside in her damp and twisted sheets.
He watched her smile. The way the corners of that lovely, lovely mouth twisted up in satisfaction squeezed his chest. He would not forget that smile for the rest of his natural life.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He breathed out through his mouth. “The pleasure was all mine.”
“No.” She grinned, reaching up and unwrapping his cravat from around her eyes. She met his gaze shyly and wiggled her foot—her erotic fucking foot, the memory of whose roamings he would carry to his grave—against his straining cock. “It wasn’t.”
God, he wanted her in that moment. All flushed and saucy, the knowledge of a newfound private power shining from her eyes.
She rolled over on her side and looked up at him brazenly. “But it could be.”
Her eyes traveled from his face down to his lap, where his erection was making its interest known quite obnoxiously beneath her toes.
She stared at the bulge it made with open interest.
“Is it the same for you?”
“Not quite.”
Her foot ventured nearer and it took everything he had not to press her toes on top of him just for sheer relief.
Damn him, he had let this go on too long. It had been one thing when they could both pretend she touched him accidentally, lost in the throes of passion. This was beyond his private contract with himself.
He shifted away.
“You don’t have to move,” she said thickly. “I’d be curious to learn. If you wanted to provide a demonstration.”
To want something so badly was pure torture.
It would be so easy to undo his falls and bring himself off here while she watched, narrating the experience of his pleasure. Telling her how badly he wanted her, how hard she made him. How the memory of binding her hands had left him … distressed … many times. How he was jealous of a piece of fucking fruit.
She must have noticed his erection straining at the thought, for she scooted forward and placed her hand beside it, on his thigh.
“Oh my,” she said. “May I touch it?”
The entire Renaissance had not produced a more appealing vision in all its attempts to capture heaven.
Please, I beg you.
He was so tempted. And not just bodily.
It was hard to put aside the desire to plead, once again, Only if you’ll marry me for real.
But she didn’t want that.
So making love to her would not make the situation better. It would merely make him unable to live with himself, and lose her anyway.
He stood.
The effort nearly killed him.
And as he did, he told her the truth. “I just can’t, Constance. I couldn’t bear it.”
Chapter 14
Constance counted the hours that stood between herself and freedom. One hundred and sixteen and three-quarters.
She longed for it. Perhaps then, finally, she could rest.
Pretending to be in love had become excruciating.
It had been far more amusing to pretend before her edict that she and Apthorp behave the same in private as in public. Now every single day was an agonizing exercise in tender, sweet dishonesty.
He’d not renewed his suit to marry her. He’d not repeated his claim he was in love with her. He’d not acknowledged the moments they’d spent together in her bedchamber.
No one observing them would
perceive that anything had changed.
And yet, somehow, everything was different.
He was different.
His mouth, which had always been so resolutely stern, rested in a smile when he was with her. He laughed more easily and stood more languidly and talked more freely. He found reasons to touch her—adjusting her cloak around her shoulders, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. He began to call her my love.
In private.
Without a touch of irony.
But the true difference was in his eyes. There was a softness to them, as though a veil had been lifted and he was letting her see him for the first time. And when she looked into them, some emotion blazed back at her that looked immoderate and unsettling and naked.
It looked like adoration.
It was the way she’d always wanted to be looked upon by someone, and yet when she saw it in his eyes, it made her so nervous that she had to look away.
And so each day she retreated, not sure what to think or how to feel.
Her mood did not lend itself to entertaining. She did not wish to perform; she wished to go into her bedchamber and lock the door and be alone and think. She wished to write in her journal for hours and hours, for days and days, until her hands cramped and she was up to her elbows in spilled ink and she knew, somehow, what to do.
But hours and days were not a commodity she had to spare. Every waking moment between now and the morning she would climb out her window and depart for the coast was consumed by the production of The Courtship of the Century, the theatrical masterpiece in which she served as star and playwright.
And tonight was the most climactic scene: she must so impress the Spences with her homespun, pious manners and infectious matrimonial joy that they agreed to support her fake fiancé’s bill once and for all.
I’d rather be stabbed in the eye.
Stop it. Blindness would stand in the way of your writing and you would look very odd with an eye patch.
She smoothed a woven cloth she’d personally secured from the servants’ kitchen at Westmead House over the old oak table in Julian’s dining room, for she’d learned Lord Spence enjoyed a humble home. She’d spent weeks subtly seeking clues on how best to win him over and staged the night accordingly. The family Bible was prominently displayed on the mantelpiece, for Lord Spence was pious. The house smelled deliciously of roasted beef, nutty bread, and stewed apples, for Lord Spence had a weak stomach and preferred plain foods. The table was laid without wine, for the Spences eschewed spirits. Tulips were arranged in glass vases, for Lord Spence invested in the tulip trade.
The Earl I Ruined Page 17
