Stroke of Genius

by Marlowe Mia

  But if she was willing . . . if she wanted him . . .

  She doesn’t know the way of things and you do. The small voice in his head sounded much sterner now.

  Give a conscience a toe-hold and the bloody thing tries to take over.

  “Do you remember asking me to teach you about flirting, the impolite variety?”

  “Of course.”

  “This is that lesson. There is a way,” he said softly, wondering at the words coming from his own mouth. “A way for me to give you pleasure that will leave your virtue intact.”

  She blinked in surprise. “And what about you? Will that give you pleasure?”

  He cupped her breast again. “Let me worry about that. Will you trust me, Grace?”

  She pressed her palms to both his cheeks and kissed him again, long and deeply. “Yes, Crispin. I trust you.”

  Chapter 24

  Pygmalion claimed he didn’t need people.

  But he did need.

  Badly.

  What am I thinking? Grace wondered as Crispin kissed his way along her neck out to the point of her shoulder.

  She’d allowed a man into her bedchamber. She let him unfasten her nightshift. She watched his dark head dip to do wicked things to her breast and did nothing to stop him. And now she’d told him she trusted him.

  She wasn’t thinking at all.

  She was feeling. The warmth of his breath on her skin. The joy of his mouth anywhere it touched her. The solid hardness of his chest. The strength of his arms around her.

  And his hands! No wonder Crispin Hawke was proclaimed a genius. His hands made her whole body sing. They’d smoothed over her hills and valleys. Now he hefted both her breasts, strumming her taut nipples with his thumbs.

  Grace bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out at the aching joy of it. She was awash in new sensations, drowning in bliss.

  “Stand up,” he ordered in a stage whisper.

  It didn’t occur to her not to obey.

  Crispin was her guide in this sensual odyssey. She’d be lost without him.

  He rose, too. The wrapper slipped off her arms and fell to pool around her feet. Crispin gathered her close to kiss her again and she melted against him. His talented hands were bunching the thin linen of her nightshift. When he released her mouth, he drew her gown up and over her head. She lifted her arms in surrender.

  Then he stepped back to look at her.

  Suddenly shy, she covered herself fig-leaf style. He shook his head. She swallowed hard and let her hands fall to her sides. It felt suddenly like the most natural thing in the world, as if she were his life model and she were merely striking a pose for him.

  No, not quite. Her jittering belly told her it was far more than that. She wanted him to see her. Wanted to know if he found her fair. Still burned desperately to know which part of her Crispin Hawke thought was her best feature.

  His gaze traveled down her body, an assessing, leisurely stroll. Heat followed in its wake and when he reached the juncture of her thighs, she felt as if her heart had dropped to her pelvic floor. It pounded hard between her legs.

  Then he looked back up at her face and smiled. She smiled back at him, giddy that he seemed pleased with what he’d seen. He signaled for her to turn slowly.

  She obeyed, feeling her bottom pink as she turned it toward him. Her whole body was deliciously hot by the time she faced him once more.

  “You’re exquisite, Grace. More lovely than I imagined.”

  Her heart fluttered under his approving gaze. Then a thought struck her.

  “Oh, no!” A hand flew her mouth. “I just remembered Claudette’s warning.”

  “What was that?”

  “That a woman must remain clothed from the waist down to keep her virginity.” Her face crumpled. He’d tricked her.

  She sank onto the bed and covered her face with her hands.

  “No, Grace, it’s a bit more complicated than that.” He sat down beside her and hugged her to his chest. “So long as one of us remains clothed, you’re safe.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I will never lie to you.” He played with the end of her long plait, tickling the ends around her aching nipple. “But you really should convince Claudette to give you more complete information.”

  She’d been mortally embarrassed by the intelligence she’d already gleaned from her maid. To have demanded more would have been terribly uncomfortable.

  “I’ve read all the right sorts of books, but it seems they reach a certain point and then resort to euphemisms so obscure I’m left with my own speculations.” And some of those speculations seemed so ludicrous. Even if she were right, she couldn’t imagine the women she knew—her mother especially—engaging in anything so indelicate. So animal-like. “Why don’t you tell me the rest?”

  “Because then I’d want to demonstrate. Believe me, Grace, this is going to be hard enough.”

  “So if I put my nightshift back on, you could remove your clothing.” She reached down and scooped her shift off the floor. Seeing Crispin in the altogether would be a wonder indeed. “And I’d still be safe.”

  “Only if the bottom of your nightshift was stitched closed,” he whispered. “Or if I were a much finer man than I am.”

  She cocked her head at him. “A much finer man wouldn’t have crept into my bedchamber, would he?”

  “Not unless he got the chance.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You maintain there is very little difference between one man and another. But I think you’re wrong, Crispin.” She took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. “There’s no one like you.”

  * * *

  All the air whooshed out of Crispin’s lungs. This wasn’t some art critic waffling on about his latest creation. It wasn’t the words of the peerage, fearful over what he might do to them in marble if they disrespected him. It wasn’t the gushing of an unhappy wife of an inattentive husband enraptured over the delights he gave her body.

  Grace said it simply, as if it were an indisputable fact.

  There’s no one like you.

  He mattered to her. Not his work. Not his success. Him. Just Crispin.

  The thought terrified him. And thrilled him.

  And to add the exclamation point to her declaration, she was naked sitting beside him on a bed when she said it.

  He laid her down on her thick feather tick and began worshipping her body. He laid his hands on her, smoothing over her skin, alert to every sharp intake of breath or pleasured sigh. From head to toe, he explored her, every curve and crease.

  He sneaked darting glances at her face while he touched her. Delight, confusion, revelation—one by one, they paraded across her features and glowed in her amber eyes. He mentally tallied his discoveries.

  Grace is ticklish on her ribs on the right side.

  The skin of her inner elbows is soft as a newborn’s.

  Circling her navel makes gooseflesh ripple across her belly.

  Her nipples draw tight when I simply look at her breasts.

  When he passed his fingertips over her mound for the first time, she drew a shuddering breath, but she didn’t look away from him. Her mouth parted when he came back to that delicious bit of her, and the trust he saw in her eyes made him weak and strong at once.

  She was nothing like he’d dreamed her. When her doppleganger first started invading his dreams a month or so before he met her, she’d been a practiced succubus, as worldly as his most experienced lover. Wanton, erotic, demanding . . .

  The real Grace shivered under his lightest touch. She responded with small gasps and sighs. She covered her mouth to keep from crying out.

  She made him feel more a man than ever in his life.

  “Raise your arms over your head,” he whispered.

  She reached up and grasped the railed headboard, arching her back.

  He claimed one of her upthrust breasts with his mouth and suckled her, while he teased her legs apart. She opened to him and he found her slick a
nd warm. His cock ached to fill her. In another time, another world, another dream, he’d have taken her, virginity be damned, in the blind heat of rutting rage, but he controlled himself in this one.

  This was about Grace. He wanted to prove she was right. There was no one like him.

  He traced her parts, separating her intimate folds, luxuriating in her wetness, in her swollen sensitivity. Her little point of pleasure had risen to be stroked. He toyed with it, circling it, feather touches that had her lifting herself into his hand.

  When she finally growled with frustration, he covered her mouth with a kiss to swallow the sound. Then he relented. He touched her directly this time and she groaned into his mouth. He stroked her with two fingers, lightly at first and then with more pressure. Fresh moisture from her depths cheered his efforts.

  Crispin could have roared in triumph. She wanted him. Desperately, achingly, passionately.

  He rocked his sheathed cock against her hip without realizing he did so. Her hand found him through the fabric of his trousers and stroked.

  There was no artifice, no technique. She didn’t try to be anything other than herself. She wanted to touch him and so she did.

  And tormented him beyond bearing in the process.

  His fingers fell into a steady rhythm against her spot and he felt her body begin to tense. He deepened their kiss and she arched into his hand. When the first tremor in the soft lips of her sex started, he slipped the tip of his long middle finger into her virginal tightness. Her inner walls spasmed around his fingertip and his cock throbbed in time.

  Her whole body shook and she tore her mouth from his with a gasp.

  Oh, to be inside her when those concentric rings of bliss fanned out.

  He held her little wet self till the storm subsided and her breathing returned slowly to normal. She turned to look at him then, her eyes wide.

  “I never imagined,” she whispered.

  “Neither did I.”

  It was as though his previous trysts had been mere exercises in plumbing, fitting this piece with that for such-and-such a duration until one or both of them reached a terminus of sorts. He and his other lovers had merely taken what they needed from the other. There’d been no trust. No one had ever so sweetly and utterly surrendered herself to him.

  In Grace’s complete confidence in him, she’d opened a doorway to her heart. Crispin had glimpsed her soul. And a human soul is a terrifyingly beautiful thing to behold.

  He’d offered her pleasure and she’d accepted it. He’d never been so intent on giving. Though part of his anatomy was still very set on receiving, his soul was satisfied to have given.

  He laid his head between Grace’s breasts, still holding her wet mound. His cock screamed at him, demanding that there be more. He drew a deep breath, willing his body to settle.

  Grace trusted him. There was no one like him. He wouldn’t betray her.

  She’d been a virgin when he climbed in her window. She’d still be one when he climbed out.

  Her fingers brushed over his head, smoothing his rumpled hair. Her chest rose and fell and her heartbeat slowed under his ear.

  “I assume there’s more,” she finally said in hushed tones.

  He raised his head and nipped her breast. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  He removed his hand from between her legs and she shuddered once more in involuntary joy when his fingertip grazed her just right.

  “No, Crispin. I didn’t mean . . . that was wonderful. Extraordinary.” She propped herself up on both elbows, artlessly unaware how fetching the pose rendered her and looked pointedly at the bulge in his trousers. “I meant for you.”

  He sat up, needing to put a little distance between them now. If he was going to keep her trust, he had to remove himself from temptation.

  “Yes, Grace, there’s a good deal more. For both of us.” He rolled off the bed and found his discarded shoes.

  “Really? Can you show me?”

  She drew her knees under her and sat up on them. For a moment, Crispin imagined rubbing his cock between her breasts. An image of her head dipping down made his vision waver. She could take him in her mouth.

  His balls tensed for release. He’d dreamed it so many times. But the Grace in his dreams had blood-red lips and a knowing glint in her eyes.

  The Grace before him was still an innocent in so many ways. Besides, he’d never be able to keep from growling his pleasure to the moon if she actually did it. And her parents were only a thin wall away.

  Her brows tented on her forehead. “Don’t you want to?”

  More than he wanted to keep breathing. And it might come to that if he woke Mr. Makepeace.

  He leaned down and kissed her forehead. He didn’t dare anything else.

  “Yes, Grace. I want . . .” He wanted to spread her wide and bury himself in her sweet flesh. He wanted to flip her over and ride her till they were both spent. He wanted to tangle himself with her so thoroughly they’d never be able to separate. “But not here, not now.”

  She nodded. She climbed out of bed and draped herself on him. He held her, running a hand down the smooth length of her spine and staying to dally with the indentations above her buttocks.

  Dimples on both sets of cheeks. Just as he’d hoped.

  “Grace,” he murmured into her neck.

  “Hmm?” she said as she pressed her soft body against his. They fit together with such rightness.

  “You have to put your wrapper on or I’ll never be able to leave.” She smelled of scented soap and musk and satisfied warm woman. He wanted to capture her essence and carry it with him. To put her in his pocket and keep her next to his heart.

  “Perhaps I want you to stay.”

  “If you’re prepared not to marry a title, I just might.”

  Where the hell had that come from? A woman might mistake that for a ham-handed proposal.

  Instead, it seemed to remind Grace that she was a virgin who needed to remain one and galvanized her into action. She stooped to retrieve her wrapper and slipped it on.

  “You’re right. Good night, Crispin.” She stood tiptoe and pecked his cheek.

  He ought to feel relieved. He’d thought her such a sensible female that first day in his studio when she decided to ignore that initial ill-considered kiss.

  Had she decided to ignore the pleasure she’d just experienced?

  He frowned down at her. Did this night mean nothing to her?

  “Crispin,” she whispered.

  “What?” How long had he been staring at her?

  “I’m wearing my wrapper and you’re not leaving.”

  It was a dismissal.

  His chest ached. His cock ceased its clamoring. The muscle in his thigh that hadn’t throbbed in the last hour sent an urgent message of pain to his brain. He hurried out the window and made his hitching way along the ledge without a mishap with the geraniums.

  As he dropped from the ledge to the stone wall and then to the garden courtyard, he seemed to hear her voice in his head again.

  There’s no one like you.

  Apparently there was no one like the Marquess of Dorset either.

  Chapter 25

  Pygmalion finally settled on a name for his beautiful creation. Galatea

  Her smile was his undoing, her milky white skin, his torment.

  The next week passed in a blur. Grace and her parents accepted invitations to soirees and private dinners, theatricals and gallery showings. Lord Dorset was a ubiquitous presence, not exactly proprietary, but definitely declaring his interest in Grace with special marks of favor like seeing that her punch cup stayed full. Hostesses took note and began seating them together.

  Not that the marquess had much to say to Grace. He conversed admirably about the weather, but never inquired whether she had any interest in the subject. Whenever she tried to introduce meatier topics like politics or philosophy or the arts, he stared at her for a moment as if she’d suddenly sprouted a second head and then excused himself. />
  Politely, of course.

  She was beginning to dread the house party as if it were a coming plague.

  And she hadn’t seen Crispin once since he climbed out her bedchamber window. Her heart ached at the way he threw the fact that she was still set to marry a title at her. It had made her feel small and mercenary. And once he scuttled out her window, she felt more than a little used.

  Crispin was just playing another game.

  He hadn’t finished the casting. She’d gone round for a sitting, but was told by Mr. Wyckeham that the artist was not at home.

  Even from the threshold, Grace could hear the determined tap of his hammer on the chisel and the splintering of stone reverberating through the central atrium.

  Now she was packed and waiting for Lord Dorset’s promised carriage to arrive for their outing to his country estate. Her mother didn’t notice or didn’t care that Grace was less than enthusiastic when the topic of Crispin joining them came up.

  “Well, of course, he’ll ride with us in the marquess’s equipage,” Grace’s mother interrupted her musings. “One wouldn’t expect Mr. Hawke to ride a horse all the way to Clairmont. Not with his . . . well, the man does use a cane, after all.”

  “He prefers to call it a walking stick,” Grace replied absently. Crispin in the same carriage. Her mind raced after this new development, zigging and zagging like a terrier on the heels of a rabbit.

  That night played over and over in her head.

  She didn’t know what else to call their tryst. There was no word in the English language for it, was there? Her soul had taken a leap and he’d been there to catch her. How did one reduce what she’d experienced to mere sounds? It was too carnal, too spiritual, too lovely, too filthy for words.

  She wanted to see Crispin, if for no other reason than to prove to herself that their midnight meeting had actually occurred.

  But how on earth would she manage traveling in the same enclosed carriage with both her mother and the man who’d seen her naked?

  And not just naked in body. Naked in her emotions. Naked in her spirit.

  Perhaps she should ride a horse all the way to Lord Dorset’s estate.