by Rose Lerner
No matter what he did, it was never the right thing. “Then be less grateful.”
She laughed. “I couldn’t possibly. I’ve been thinking about this book recently. I wanted to show it to Helen, but she won’t come in here. She can’t stand the layer of dust on top of everything. Look at this one.” She flipped unerringly to the engraving she wanted and pointed at the opening verse.
Children of the future Age,
Reading this indignant page;
Know that in a former time,
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.
“Do you think it will really come?” she asked. “A time when no one will be ashamed?”
Quite shocking, indeed. Shocking to imagine a world where it would be the most natural thing in the world to take the person you loved to bed. A world where Phoebe wouldn’t have to blush when she asked him to touch her. A world where Miss Knight could have her baby openly, and keep it without lies. It was unimaginable, even disturbing. “I don’t know. Do you?”
Her expression hovered in uncertainty for another moment. Then she set her jaw. “Yes.”
It was his mother’s same stubborn insistence that what she wanted to believe was the truth, when it was only a wish. It should have annoyed him. It didn’t. “Then let’s not be ashamed,” he murmured. “I’m buying the book.”
A guinea was not, actually, pocket change to him. But he did have a guinea in his pocket. He set it down on the counter with a click.
The bookseller raised his eyebrows. “Auspicious day! I began to believe I would take that book to my grave despite all Mrs. Sparks’s efforts to talk some wide-eyed gull into buying it.”
“It’s lovely,” Nick said.
The bookseller shrugged. “Even with my spectacles the text is impossible to read.”
Nick opened the book. The bloom of color and feeling was expected now, but still startling. He didn’t want to close it again. Love seeketh not Itself to please, he read.
“The clod believes that love is selfless,” Phoebe said at his elbow. “But the pebble says love is selfish, and grasping.” By the end of the sentence, her voice was tense. Evidently it was a question that troubled her.
“Which do you believe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Young people.” The bookseller snorted, handing Nick a half-crown. “Both are true. Your change, sir.”
Nick took the half-crown and the book. “Thank you.” He waited until they were outside and out of sight to hand her the book. He felt a pang when it left his hands. He had wanted to keep it, he realized with surprise. He coveted it now. But Phoebe held the volume lightly, unconsciously sweeping her thumbs back and forth across the paper cover. Her lips curved as she walked, her eyes on the pavement. She wasn’t smiling at him to thank him. She was smiling because she was happy.
His own face felt suddenly alien to him. If she glanced at him, he would know how to look. But without anyone watching, he didn’t. Was he happy? Was he sad? He didn’t know.
She glanced at him. He softened his expression. “I have to go back and tell Helen we’re getting married,” she said. “But—” She blushed and turned her eyes to the street ahead of them.
He ached with desire, realizing with a start that he was already hard. His tongue felt clumsy in his mouth. “Is there somewhere we can go?”
Her mouth curved again, that private smile, but wider. She looked down as if trying to hide it. He made her happy. He wanted to kiss her right there, in the middle of the street. He wanted to pull her into one of the Spanish dances he’d learned on campaign. “Owen isn’t coming into the printing office until ten,” she said.
Today Sparks’s stairs weren’t an unbearable gauntlet of pain and humiliation. They were just a frustrating chore that had to be got over with. And then they had been got over, and the two of them were in the room upstairs. Phoebe set the book down carefully on the nightstand. “Oh! We forgot the berries and cream.”
“Are they quite spoiled?”
“I doubt it. It’s been cold.” She examined the bowl of berries. “This one’s still good,” she said, dropping it in his palm. “And this one—oh, and here—”
He popped them in his mouth and licked away the juice from his palm. Her eyes darkened as she watched him, eating a few berries of her own. They were a touch overripe. His tongue crushed them easily against the roof of his mouth, and the juice was too sweet. He swallowed. “If I sucked your nipple right now, it would turn purple.”
When her lips parted, her tongue was stained dark. Her eyes sparked. “This time is for you. I promised.”
All her talk of not wanting to forget—yesterday morning she had after all. She hadn’t wanted to talk. So he’d made her forget, he’d given her what she needed and she’d promised desperately that next time would be for him. He could feel his senses dimming, the taste fading from his tongue. That had been easy, but this meant he had to tell her what he wanted, and he had to convince her it was true, and if she laughed at him— You can do this, he told himself. It doesn’t have to be perfect. There are plenty of things you’d like to do to her. Just pick a few.
She lit the fire. Then she put her boot up on the chest at the foot of the bed and began unlacing it, petticoats pooling around her knee. “I’ll just take off a few things while you’re thinking about it,” she said teasingly.
He wanted to wrap his hands around her calf. He wanted to roll her stockings down. That was what he wanted right now. But what would he do after that, and after that? Would she enjoy it? “I want to stop thinking,” he said. “I want to stop worrying about what I ought to do or say.”
Her forehead creased.
His mouth was dry; he couldn’t breathe. He sounded so weak, so unmanly.
“I don’t know what that means,” she said finally, toeing off her boots and shaking out her skirts. “I don’t know how to do that.”
If he laughed and told her never mind, she’d never accept it. “I want you to be in command.” His heart was in his throat. “I want you to take responsibility. Just this once. So I can simply be here, and feel.”
“You want me to be in command.”
He nodded.
“So…whatever I want to do to you, I can do it,” she said slowly, as if searching for the catch.
He nodded.
She grinned. “Really?”
He grinned back. She liked the idea. His dead, crawling anxiety faded, leaving a deliciously buoyant flutter of nerves. “Why, did you have something in mind?”
Her eyes sparkled, those wisps of curls at her neck and temples bouncing as she nodded. “They sell naughty lithographs downstairs, you know.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “There’s something I’ve wanted to try forever. Will wouldn’t.”
There it was again, that flare of jealousy. She and Will had pored over naughty lithographs together, had they? He resolved inwardly that no matter how depraved her request was, he’d do it just to show up Will.
“She—” That blush again. She bit her lip, that one pointed tooth sliding wickedly over rosy skin as she smiled. He wanted her a truly monumental amount.
He pulled her in for a kiss with a hand on her lower back, sucking her lower lip into his mouth and drawing back with a slow slide of teeth. She melted against him. She was his. They were getting married. She’d be his forever.
Her dark brows arched, half-rueful and half-naughty. “She tied him to the bedposts.” She squeaked when his hand tightened on her lower back. “Is that—can I?”
He’d never done anything like that before. But he found he liked the idea. He wouldn’t have to wonder what to do next, or what she wanted. He wouldn’t have to worry that she might leave without warning. She could hardly leave him tied to the bedposts, after all.
“Would you let me tie you to the bed?” He slid his hand down her arm and circled her wrist, tugging.
She smiled. “Oh, I’ve done that dozens of times. It’s fun.”
His mind ob
ligingly supplied an image of her naked and tied to the bed. Unable to do anything but beg as he teased her breasts. Unable to close her thighs against his caress if the pleasure became too much. Unable to hide.
Her face fell. “You don’t want to. No matter. I’ll think of something else.”
Even though it was her idea, it was still hard to admit he wanted it. It was embarrassing. “I want to.”
Her eyes glinted black with surprised pleasure. She gave him a small shove, grinning shyly. “Take your clothes off, then.”
A shock of arousal. He shrugged his jacket off, thankful his fingers still knew what to do with his waistcoat buttons even though his mind was no longer capable of directing them.
“Good boy.” Her mouth curved sensually. He didn’t quite understand it, but her hesitation had faded when he officially handed her command. Was it simply a role she knew how to play, as it was for him? Or had her shame come only from being unsure how far she could go? Either way, confidence and control fit her like a second skin. She was a queen, a goddess.
In a flurry and scramble, they both stripped. She wrestled with the last of her petticoats, making annoyed noises as she strained to pull it over her head. Her shoulders and head were enveloped in flannel, while the rest of her was exposed to view in only shift and stays. It was sweet and arousing at the same time.
“Ha!” She emerged triumphantly from the garment. “Undo my laces.” When her stays were off, he reached for the hem of her shift. She shook her head and stepped back. “I didn’t say you could do that. Stand up.” She pulled the quilt off the bed and pushed it onto the floor. “Lie in the center.”
He obeyed. Unsure what to do with his arms, he stretched them over his head in readiness. She could see every inch of him now. He was presented to her to take or leave, no words or seductive smiles to protect him.
The chilly morning air caressed his skin, his nerves strung doubly tight with fear and anticipation. Poems danced in his head but he quieted them, focusing on the tension growing in his belly and the ache in his cock. The very agony of waiting made it the most erotic thing he’d ever done. For the first time he understood the lure of gaming for high stakes.
She ran her tongue over her bottom lip, an unconscious gesture of hunger that aroused him unbearably, and took his cravat and his handkerchief from the discarded pile of clothes. He could feel her proprietary gaze on his skin, warming him like a flame. “Give me your hand.” She wound the cravat firmly and tied it. “Is that too tight?”
He shook his head. She dragged his arm up by the cravat and tied his wrist to the bedpost.
Just like that, he was trapped here. His breath caught, and when she rounded the bed and reached for his other hand, he pulled it back.
“Is everything all right?”
He nodded, knowing that in a moment this feeling of fear would pass. But a few seconds later, he said, “They held me down to operate on my leg.” Of all the things one shouldn’t talk about in bed, that filthy operating room topped the list. But letting her see his body and his thoughts was all of a piece. The words flowed with the same swirling tension as his arousal. “But it was understood that an officer shouldn’t struggle. He shouldn’t make a sound.”
She sat on the edge of the bed. She listened with her whole body, mouth frowning, head tilting, shoulders leaning towards him, dark eyes focused on his face. He knew he must look ridiculous, but if she noticed, she didn’t show it.
“I’ve never felt pain like that before or since,” he told her. “But every time I moved or winced or strained against their grasp, I knew I’d failed in my manly duty. And I remember the shame more vividly than the pain.”
She leaned down and kissed him; he gathered her up against his side with his free arm.
“It’s hard to be a woman.” She sighed. “Sometimes I forget how hard it is to be a man.” She traced a finger over his scar. He tensed, holding himself carefully still. The skin there was sensitive; her touch tickled and teased. “Is it perverse that I want to lick it? To you it means pain and shame. But all I see is you.”
To him, the scar looked like an ugly growth, a cancer, something that would leave him clean if it could only be removed.
But he could feel her fingers on it. He felt it when she leaned down and ran the tip of her tongue up it. She couldn’t really see, that close, and he felt it when she missed the jagged bit at the end. To her, it was just a part of him, like his fingernails or the dark blond hair on his chest.
Then he saw what he had tried to do: take his pain and his shame and put them in the scar, pretend they weren’t really part of him. But they were, and they couldn’t be amputated or lanced. He had to feel them.
He didn’t want to.
“Do you want me to untie you?” she asked.
He shook his head, flushing. “Thank you for listening. It’s not a very arousing story.”
She laughed. “Oh, please! You’ve been seducing me with your war stories since the moment I met you.” Her smile turned shy. “If you have a friend that loves me, you should but teach him how to tell your story…”
And that would woo her. Desdemona’s line, when Othello told her stories of his life. Othello was a great general, not a mediocre lieutenant, but Desdemona hadn’t loved him for his victories. She loved him for the dangers he had passed.
The tender, aching feeling in his chest when Phoebe spoke of her troubles—evidently it went both ways. He had never thought that his weakness could be loved as well as his strength. “No friend,” he said. “Only me.” It wasn’t quite a declaration. He didn’t have the courage for that yet. But he held out his other hand.
Chapter Twenty-Six
She tied it to the bedpost, and then Nick couldn’t reach for her anymore. She straddled him, up on her knees so they only touched where the inside of her thighs brushed the outside of his hips. The hem of her shift was just long enough to cover what he most wanted to see. She smiled. “You make me want to write erotic novels.”
“What?”
“Something this spectacular is only supposed to happen in fiction.” She ran her hands possessively down his shoulders and chest, her palms brushing across his nipples. He drew in a sharp breath. “But here you are. With me.”
He felt warm from head to toe. “Yours to do with as you wish.” Saying it, even playfully, made the warmth flare into abrupt heat.
She drew in a deep breath and arched her back. “Mmm. Mine.” She smiled. He was on fire. “At the sight of him spread before me thus, like a rich banquet to a queen, so confused and excited were my appetites that I knew not which dish to sample first.”
It was an apt imitation; she must read erotic novels. He imagined her curled up in a chair with a book, looking quiet and studious and all the while growing wet between her legs. She’d raise her head and ask him if he wanted to try out something obscene as if she were asking whether he fancied trout for dinner.
She would be his wife.
Suddenly he couldn’t be still. He stirred restlessly, canting his hips towards her. Touch me, he thought.
“But as every meal begins with wine,” she continued, “I thought I could hardly do wrong in first decanting the liquor offered me by the tall vessel between his legs.” She crawled backwards, and without any more preamble than that, took his cock into her mouth.
He yanked at the bindings on his wrists. She couldn’t fit all of him in her mouth, so she set her hand at the base of his cock and worked him swiftly as she sucked. With an effort, he raised his head to look at her. God, she was beautiful. The strap of her shift was sliding down one perfect round shoulder. One hairpin had slipped out of her bun and was on the verge of falling. Her mouth stretched around his cock was hot and wet and perfect; it was too much, he had already been close. He couldn’t stop her, couldn’t move away. “I’m going to spend,” he warned her, head falling back. “I’m—”
Her other hand squeezed his balls, and he lost the power of speech. He lost the power to think in words. He coul
d only feel the press of her tongue and her fingers. The pleasure radiated out along his nerves to his entire body. He yanked at his bindings again just to feel the linen against his skin. Her hands were everywhere.
He tried one last time to warn her, but as he opened his mouth she rolled one of his bollocks between her thumb and forefinger. “Aiaaaaaaah!”
She laughed, her mouth curving around his cock and the back of her throat vibrating. He spent.
She nursed him through it, hands slowing and mouth continuing its torturous slide. Only when he was still, his hands sagging limply in their bonds, did she sit up, swallowing his seed.
“But…” How would he pleasure her now? He couldn’t even finish a sentence. He stared at the beams in the ceiling, feeling the rise and fall of his own chest with startling clarity.
“Think of it as priming the pump,” she said cheerfully. “I wouldn’t want you worrying about spending too quickly when you’re actually inside me.”
His cock was too tired to twitch, but the rest of him did. She smoothed a hand over his stomach. “In the meantime, I thought I’d go downstairs and make myself breakfast.”
He jerked his head up indignantly.
She laughed, visibly pleased with herself. He’d never seen her this smug. Command suited her. “I couldn’t resist.” She lowered herself until she was on forearms and knees, the top half of her body resting on him. His spent cock pressed into her belly. As she wiggled, settling herself, pleasure echoed through him.
She slid her fingers into the dark blond hair on his chest, tickling pleasantly, and scratched lightly at his breastbone. Ohhhh. Why had no one ever done that before? In a moment he’d be purring like a cat. No, wait, that sound was him purring like a cat.
He felt drugged, floating. She leaned down to suck on a nipple, soft ripples of pleasure like a pebble tossed into still water. He hummed again, his hips tilting up of their own accord. She moved up, exploring his arms with fingers and mouth, biting lightly at his biceps. “You like my arms,” he said.
