by Rose Lerner
“I can’t eat at home either,” she told him. “My mother always thought I was eating too much. I can’t eat when she’s watching me. I used to get up from the table starving and sneak back into the kitchen at night. I still feel guilty when I empty my plate, even if no one can see me.”
He stared at her.
“I think when wanting something doesn’t help you get it, there’s maybe not much point to wanting.”
She was right, of course. Unlike Mr. Moon, food did not mean love to Nick. It meant the family dinner table: anxiety and squabbling and a close scrutiny of his every move. Food had become separated from hunger. It had been, like everything else, something you did for effect.
He saw that the rest of it functioned on a similar principle. There had never been a point to asking for what he wanted; after a while, there had been no point to wanting at all. It should have felt freeing to finally see that. In a way it was, but he hated it too. He didn’t want to do the hard work of sorting it all out, any more than he wanted to live with this damn pain in his leg. He wanted to be done with it.
She traced a design on the tabletop. “So you’re afraid that if you ask me for what you want, I won’t like what I hear. And I’m afraid that if I ask for what I want, I’m selfish and unwomanly.”
He had to laugh. “The spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.”
“They do indeed.” She laughed a little too, stray locks of dark hair shaking as they fell across her face. All at once he felt light-headed. Honesty was difficult, but this was his reward. His heart was in his throat, but he had faced down French guns. He could do this.
He leaned in. It was hard not to put on a seductive mask, not to let his voice go husky and his eyelids droop. Everybody knew how this moment was supposed to go, how he ought to sound, how a man ought to look at a woman he meant to bed. He could let momentum take over, say the words as if he were reading lines from a play that was already written. But she wanted more, and he wanted to give it to her. So he met her eyes straight on and said seriously, “I think we both want the same thing.”
She swallowed. “Do we?”
He took a deep breath. “I want you. I want you very much.”
There it was. No saying later he hadn’t cared one way or the other. No pretending she hadn’t understood him. No possible salve for his pride if this went wrong.
It was strange, but saying the words straight out like that, letting her feel the truth of them—he felt the truth of them. Wanting rose along his skin like the tide coming in. He held his breath, trying to keep the desire down, keep it in.
Her smile widened and widened, that one pointy tooth indenting her lower lip. Her face glowed like a bonfire on a rainy day, warming every tingling inch of his skin. He smiled back, helplessly.
“I have an idea,” she said.
“You do?”
“It’s—it’s like a game.” Her smile dimmed a little, turning uncertain again, but she forged ahead. “We’ll take turns. Saying things we want. Just—little things. We can ask for anything, but we have to say it, not just do it. And either of us can always say no, and then we’ll just ask for something different.”
It wasn’t going to be like any sex he’d ever had, but it sounded—fun. Not just arousing or wicked or bound to drive him mad—though it was all those things—but fun.
It was also going to be more difficult than any sex he’d ever had. But hell, he was ready for a challenge. He nodded.
“You have to go first this time,” she warned him.
He considered for long, doubtful moments. In the end he decided on, “I want to go upstairs.” He could leave it at that, but he added, “My leg hurts, and the bed will make things easier.”
She beamed and stood. Strange how with her, speaking it aloud made the shame and self-consciousness less, not more. She went around to all the candles, blowing them out one by one and taking the last to light their way.
“Bring the berries and cream,” he said.
Her eyes widened, but she cradled the bowls in her free arm. “Can you get the door for me?”
His leg had hurt that morning. Now it was also stiff from sitting still all day. He hobbled like an old man as he followed her to the door.
“We can wait until tomorrow if it hurts too much,” she said. The obvious reluctance in her voice made him smile.
“I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow.”
She let out a sigh of relief. “Me neither. You just looked so miserable—”
“I’m not miserable. It does hurt today, but that isn’t really the worst of it.” He realized what the worst of it was, suddenly. “I used to be able to pass unnoticed. My leg makes everyone look at me. And it means—well, it means I’m not in control of what they see.”
She laughed. “Try being fat and having breasts the size of footballs.”
“You’re not fat!”
She shrugged. “At least being fat doesn’t hurt. Although these things make my shoulders and back ache some days.” She waved the candle back and forth in front of her breasts. “I didn’t mean to laugh at you. You’re right, it’s an awful feeling sometimes.”
He felt the way he had talking to Miss Jessop or to Mrs. Sparks’s friends—the sudden realization that he wasn’t the only one. He wasn’t Childe Harold with his unfathomable, solitary pain. He was just a man, with ordinary human problems that plenty of other people shared. It was lowering, maybe, but it was a relief.
He held the door open for her. “You don’t mind that I like your breasts, do you?”
She threw him an incredulous, amused look as she passed him. “Did it seem like I minded on Friday?”
She’d rubbed herself against the front of his coat, face suffused with desperate, lovely desire, right here in this kitchen. His cock rose in an instant. No, it hadn’t seemed like she minded.
“My leg also…” He swallowed. “It makes certain things more difficult.” Like steps. He started grimly up the spiral stairs after her, watching his feet and wishing he could watch her arse instead.
She sighed. “I know. But I’m confident you can think of terribly wicked things to do, even if you can’t—take me standing up.” Her little hesitations and shames filled him with a curious tenderness. Neither of them were on solid ground.
Sparks had two small, orderly rooms above the shop. The furniture was old and worn, but it matched, and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. “All the curtains are already drawn,” he noted.
“I shut them all Saturday morning,” she admitted. “In case you came back.” There was a fire laid in the grate; she knelt to light it with the candle.
He wondered what else she’d planned, just in case. “It’s your turn,” he reminded her as she set the bowls down on the edge of the washstand.
She eyed him indecisively, her gaze dropping from his face to his chest, his hips, and down. His cock hardened further; he wondered if she could tell. What would she ask for? Her gaze ran back up his body. She chewed on her lower lip. He couldn’t even imagine possibilities—his mind froze, waiting, completely empty of thought. Finally she said, “I want you to take off your coat.” They were starting slow, it appeared. That was all right. He set his cane on the bed, pushed his coat off his shoulders and hung it from a bedpost. He shook out his crumpled sleeves. Her boots sounded on the floorboards. He looked up.
“Mmm, I knew your arms would be splendid,” she said in satisfaction, reaching out a hand to touch his shoulder.
He held the bedpost for balance with one hand and caught her wrist with the other, grinning. “It’s my turn now.” She made a moue of disappointment and waited, leaving her wrist in his grasp.
What did he want? He could have anything. This room was so homey and innocent, he found himself loath to simply be wicked. Then he remembered something he had wanted from her, the first time he had been in this house. He let her go. “I want you to take that thing out of your neckline.”
She tugged obediently at the fichu, baring
the perfect tops of her breasts and the glorious hollow between them. Baring them for him. He reached out, fully expecting her to remind him that it was her turn. She didn’t.
He ran his index finger down the curve of her right breast and up the curve of her left. Going back the way he had come, he dipped his finger into her neckline and tugged gently. She drew in a breath, her lips parting and her breasts rising on either side of his finger. “I want to touch your arms,” she said.
He let his hand fall. She put her hands on his upper arms, squeezing and kneading through the worn linen of Tony’s old shirt. She ran her fingers lightly down, humming. He felt each fingertip like a brand. Today, he meant to feel everything. No thinking. No ignoring his own sensations.
She took both hands and tried to circle his right arm. “I can’t quite reach.” She sounded almost smug, a little curl at the corner of her rosebud mouth, as if his strength had been created just for her. He didn’t point out that she had small hands. Before the evening was over, she was going to touch him like this everywhere, that pleased, proprietary touch.
He was unbelievably warm. Could she feel it through his shirt? His cock pressed against the front of his breeches. It was uncomfortable, but pleasantly so, a reminder that this was real. He shifted, the buttons of his drawers scraping across sensitive skin.
“It’s your turn,” she said.
He hesitated. What if she laughed at him? What if she thought he was pitiful? He could always frame it as a simple favor, unrelated to their game, and she would never have to know how much he wanted it.
Damn it, he wanted to be naked with her—not just in body, but in mind and spirit. He wanted her to see him. “I want you to take my boots off.”
Her dark brows drew together in puzzlement; he felt an unexpected tenderness at the small furrow in her brow. Then she shrugged and gestured for him to sit, kneeling down on the floor in front of him. He held out one foot—the good one. It meant bracing himself with the other, and he gritted his teeth.
“Am I going to hurt you?”
“Not much. Please don’t worry about it.”
She took hold of his boot and pulled it off. He didn’t wear them very tight, but she still hunched forward for leverage, giving him an unimpeded view down her neckline. She caught him looking and rolled her eyes, obviously thinking she’d figured out his motivations. His second boot snagged on his ankle, and she had to yank. He sucked in a breath, and her dark eyes flew to his face with concern.
Generally it was Toogood who did this for him, impassive and efficient, not flinching even if Nick made an involuntary sound of pain. Nick preferred it that way. But Mrs. Sparks set his boots to one side and ran gentle hands down his leg, and for a moment he imagined that she was his wife and she loved him, that they were so close her pity didn’t sting.
She stood. “I want you to take my clothes off.”
He blinked, his domestic fantasy dissipating like mist when the sun comes out. “All of them?”
Her face lit with amusement, her mouth folding in on itself with trying not to smile. Then she grinned anyway. “All of them.”
He swallowed. “I can do that.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Still sitting, Nick gathered her to him by her skirts and turned her around to get at her buttons. She reached down to gather up the hem, which pushed her generous arse towards him. He squeezed it.
She jumped, throwing him a minatory glance, but as she pulled her dress and then her petticoats over her head, the shape of her arse became even clearer. He tugged her towards him by her hips. “Sit here.” He arranged her between his legs, that splendid backside snug against him. The curve of her neck was so near and inviting that he kissed it without conscious thought. When he leaned back to get at her laces, his erection pressed against her.
She squirmed her hips teasingly against him. For a moment, he forgot how to untie a knot—but only for a moment. He loosened her laces and she stood to pull the corset over her head. Now she was in nothing but her shift, stockings—and boots.
She laughed at the muddy incongruity and bent to untie them, facing him. Her unbound breasts dangled, swaying. He tugged loose the bow at the neck of her shift. Startled, she grabbed at his shoulder for balance. He caught her with a hand on each breast.
He thought she would scold, or at least glare, but instead she laughed again and stayed there, pushing her breasts into his hands with the weight of her body as she toed off her boots. She was so close that the utter rightness of every line of her face, every delicate shade of color in her eyes and hair and skin, was almost too much. His heart beat wildly. He wished she were close enough to kiss, so he could shut his eyes.
He’d wanted this, though. He’d wanted it to be too much. “You’re not naked yet,” he reminded her.
They both instinctively held their breath as he lifted her shift slowly past her ankles and up over her calves. He snickered, and she craned her neck to see what he was looking at: the darn in her striped stocking, and the two small holes she hadn’t bothered to darn yet.
She winced. “I—drat, I’ve no excuse.”
“A careless shoestring, in whose tie / I see a wild civility,” he said, quoting the Herrick poem again, “do more bewitch me than when art / is too precise in every part.”
He loved the way she laughed. He loved this—it was strange and awkward, but at the same time it was more comfortable than he’d ever been with a woman. He’d never talked so much in bed. “That was always my favorite part of the poem,” she said, “because if you say it with a Sussex accent ‘civility’ and ‘tie’ almost rhy—” She broke off as he bared her cunny to the cool air. The dark curls quivered as her muscles tightened.
Oh, she was splendid. The wide, luscious curve of her hips and the expanse of her thighs were a land of milk and honey. He raised her shift over her belly and the curves of her waist. “I am so, so glad that God created woman.”
She took the fabric from his grasp, pulling it over her head and dropping it on the floor with her other things. Untying her garters without fanfare, she quickly peeled off her stockings—and then she was as naked as Eve, every last bit of her skin available for his delectation.
Even with the fire, she shivered under his gaze, her body moving in all the right places. “Your turn.”
He wanted to touch her. He wanted to touch her everywhere. He wanted her pressed up against every part of him, and he wanted to feel it, close and vibrant, no barriers anywhere. “I want to be naked too,” he said, quieting the little voice that said, She’ll be cold, and Would she rather I was clothed? and What if someone comes? One of you should look presentable to answer the door.
She smiled as she undid the buttons of his waistcoat and pushed it off his shoulders. His shirt was stuck to his skin with the day’s sweat. She leaned in as if to suck his nipples, clearly outlined through the linen—and snapped his braces over them. He jumped, and she snickered and did it again before pushing the braces off his shoulders.
Putting a hand flat on his chest, she shoved. He fell backwards obediently onto the quilt. Her nails dragged up his belly and chest as she pulled his shirt out of his breeches, her hands chilly against his hot skin. His stomach muscles contracted, sinking him further into the bedding, where he felt the quilted seams against the bared skin of his back.
She straddled him as he put his arms over his head, a steady pressure on his cock. He couldn’t see as she pulled his shirt off, but he felt her weight shift as she braced herself on her knees. She lifted off him briefly; he pressed upwards, blindly chasing sensation. Then the shirt was off, and he looked down to see her bare cunny settling onto the flap of his breeches. Christ, that was nice. As much as he wanted to be skin-to-skin, he couldn’t resist taking hold of her hips and encouraging her to rub herself against him through his clothes.
It was torture, the sensations filtering through nankeen and linen unpredictable and a little too rough, one moment a stab of unbearable pleasure and one moment just an awkward
scraping. He liked it.
So did she, her breath coming in gasps and her dark eyes going darker than ever as she watched her hips move, her sensitive places dragging across the rough fabric and leaving it damp. He would let her spend first and take his time afterwards. He liked sated women, the lazy, satisfied way they moved.
Her clouded eyes met his and slid away. Then she looked back, her face almost solemn as she moved. She stayed there with him, acknowledged what they were doing. “Yes,” she said. “Please—oh—” He couldn’t wait to see her spend.
But she pulled away, sharply. “I was—you said—wait—” She fumbled to unbutton the flap of his breeches, because he’d said he wanted to be naked. “Let go.” She climbed off the bed to pull his breeches and stockings off.
It bared his scar, a great ugly thing running half the length of his thigh. She sucked in a breath. “It’s larger than I expected,” she said, sounding a little awed.
“They had to make an incision to take out some of the bone.”
She gave a high breathy giggle, flushing. “Oh. I meant—that is. The scar is large too.”
He let his head fall back against the quilt and laughed at the low, whitewashed ceiling. “Thank you.” Her hand closed around his cock. He yelped in surprise, and she let go immediately.
“Sorry,” she said. “I forgot I was supposed to ask. I want to touch your—”
He discovered that her blush didn’t extend past her neck and upper chest, but her upper arms flushed faintly on the outside. He was glad that he knew now. He was very, very glad.
“Yes?” he inquired innocently. “My what?”
She rolled her eyes. “Your cock, Mr. Dymond. May I touch your cock?”
He had thought he couldn’t get harder. He had been wrong. “If you like,” he said, attempting to sound careless but mostly sounding smug.
She didn’t even try to look stern, only flicked his thigh hard with her thumb and index finger. He jumped, and she took his cock in her hand. The firm, even pressure after all the teasing had him on the edge at once. “I can stop, if you like,” she said.
