Nothing on Earth & Nothing in Heaven

by Susan Fanetti

  Her hands came up and cupped his face. “Yes. Perfectly sure. But … Do I … Am I … attractive to you?”

  That was the cause of her doubt? “My God. You’re so lovely it’s hard to remember you’re real.”

  She smiled at that and squirmed like a cat. “I know that feeling.” Her hands dropped from his face to take hold of her breasts. He watched as she tweaked each one between her fingers; her hedonistic sigh went through him like the lightning flashing outside. Dropping to his elbows, he nudged her hand away from a breast and took that lovely pink button into his mouth. She cried out, and her back arched up, and he suckled her, feeding his need and hers until she writhed beneath him and tore at his shirt.

  “William!”

  He was at the frayed end of his tether; the frantic battering of her hips against his would be his undoing, and he would come in his drawers like a boy if he lingered too long. But he’d long imagined giving Nora her first time, and in his mind, it had been slow and gentle. He’d teased her and settled her virgin’s nerves, and drawn her innocent responses to sensual pleasure up with patience and care.

  Instead, it turned out that his lady was a hoyden, free and wild, demanding satisfaction from him. Her insistence, her assuredness, had him back on his heels.

  She made a frustrated growl and yanked at his shirt as if to tear it from him. It was the only one he had here in Dover, so he released her breast and pushed himself off the bed. Standing at the side, between her legs, he held her gaze and opened his shirt himself, smiling at the greedy rapture that slackened her features. He tossed his shirt and undershirt, and then his trousers and drawers, away, and stood there for a moment to let her look.

  She did, taking him all in, then pushed her drawers down, lifting her hips and kicking the cotton away.

  She lay bare before him, an angel in alabaster and gold, turquoise eyes staring steadily, unabashedly up at him. Such a slight frame to hold so much fire. “You are lovely.”

  “William. Please show me.” She held up her arms, and he fell into them, covering her, trying not to crush her with his own need. Settling between her thighs, he pushed her leg up, hooking it around his waist, and positioned himself, brushing his hand over her to be sure she was wet enough to ease his way. She was, still hot and slick from her earlier pleasure—how long ago had that been? Minutes? Hours?

  He took hold of himself and pushed against her entrance, moving as slowly as he could. She’d been tight around his single finger, and he meant to be gentle with her now. When her heat enveloped his tip, he groaned, and the elbow holding him up nearly gave way. She gasped at his pressure and arched her neck.

  “Tell me”—his voice broke under his strain—“Tell me to stop, and I will.”

  Her head thrashed wildly to and fro. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

  With each inch that he pushed into her, she sucked in a noisy breath and squirmed beneath him, driving his need to nearly unmanageable heights. His arms shook with the tension of his will. Then she rocked her hips hard and took the rest of him in all at once, seating him fully inside her, and he barked out the shock of it. She was clenched like a fist around him, encompassing him in molten sensation.

  He studied her face, trying to know how she felt, but he couldn’t decipher her expression—was it pain, or shock, or intense pleasure? “How are you?” he managed to ask.

  Her answer came in another flex of her hips and a soft, sensual moan through lips that had turned up sweetly at the corners. She was fine.

  “I need to move, Nora. I’m at the end of my tether. But I will stop if you say.”

  She nodded and twisted her fingers in his hair, pulling him down to rest more fully on her. “Oh, you feel … oh, William.”

  “Ah, my darling,” he muttered, and claimed that sweet mouth and all its utterances. He pulled back, groaning as her sheath gripped him, and pushed in again. She whimpered against his lips and rocked her hips, and pulled his hair, and he picked up a rhythm that was slow and careful but firm and steady, pacing himself to give her time and drive her need up to its highest pitch.

  Focused on her, William found a few more inches of play in his patience. He turned from her lips and curved his back, keeping his tempo as he bent to suck a nipple into his mouth again. As soon as he did, Nora went wild in his arms, arching her back sharply, yanking his hair, clasping his waist with both her legs, moaning and grunting and muttering sounds that might have been words.

  He’d had a few virgins before, in his younger years, when he wasn’t so long past that state himself. In his early twenties, he’d decided that he wasn’t in the business of deflowering girls and would from that point on limit his attentions to experienced women. And he had, until Nora. As far as he could remember—and his memory was sound—Nora was unlike any virgin he’d had before. They’d been tentative and passive, lying still beneath him while he worked himself into a sweat to find their pleasure, and surprised and even shamed when he found it.

  Nora, however, was fully engaged in their act. He could feel her seeking, shifting under him, rocking, clutching, learning. She drove his need into a fever as she chased her own heat. He’d felt that before, when he’d shown her how to pleasure herself. She’d been surprised at first, shy and a little afraid of the intensity, but then she’d pursued it with abandon.

  Feeling his own climax rolling toward him, William let go of her nipple. He tried to still Nora’s hips and gain another inch of restraint, but she wouldn’t be denied. Her fingers left his hair and dug into his shoulders. Her head had come up from the mattress. With her eyes shut tight in concentration, she held on and rocked her hips, discovering instinctively how to move to find her release—and his.

  If he couldn’t slow her down, he had to speed her up. Shifting to one arm, he pushed his other hand between them and down, between her legs. While she rocked and he thrust, he pushed his fingers over her, making the same rhythmic pattern he’d taught her to make.

  She threw her head back at once. “Oh God! This! Oh! Oh! William! Oh yes! Please!”

  Sweet lord, what a treasure she was. To be so free in her own body already, so unreserved in her ecstasy?

  She came, going taut and silent in his arms as she had before. The clutching spasms of her body around him finished him off as well. Slamming hard into her one last time, he jerked his hips back, pulling clear. He threw his head back with a bestial howl and came, his seed surging from him in an arc and landing on her bare belly. As the climax burst through him, his sight dimmed. He was locked in that rigid explosion until his lungs clamored for air, and the need for breath finally overtook the pleasure. His muscles softened, and, no longer able to hold himself up, he dropped to her side.

  “My God,” he muttered when his heartbeat had returned to something like normal.

  “I understand now,” Nora whispered—and then the room filled with the music of her trilling laughter. “I really do.”

  William laughed and rolled to his side. She was pushing a finger through the mess he’d made on her. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s fascinating. This is what makes babies?”

  “My part of it, yes. I thought your father let you read in his library when you were younger. Did you never study any science?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think there are science books at Tarrindale at all. I learned maths, and some things about plants and gardening, from my governess. She also tried to teach me how to manage a house and comport myself in Society, but I wasn’t a very good student in those subjects. Father reads history and philosophy and literature. In French, German, and Italian, as well as English. I know a great deal about Rousseau, but what I know about the human body is … not enough. Clearly.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I know that my monthly time comes when I’m not pregnant and will stop when I am. I know that sex makes babies, and that a baby grows from a man’s seed planted in a woman’s womb. I honestly thought that seeds came out of the man. Like columbine seed
s. Or daisies.” She lifted her finger and studied the whitish substance, then sighed. “You’re right. I am ignorant and stupid.”

  “Ignorant of some things, but not stupid at all. Far from it. You only need the chance to learn. And this”—he pushed his own finger through his leaving and held it up beside hers—“is full of a kind of seed. You weren’t so far off.”

  She turned to him, one eyebrow up skeptically. “Are you condescending again?”

  “Do I sound like I am?”

  After a few seconds’ thought, she shook her head. “No. Thank you.” She paused again. “May I ask something else?”

  “Of course.”

  “What is that thing—that … button?”

  Understanding, William set his hand on the puff of gold at the juncture of her thighs. His slid his finger into the top of her folds and lightly grazed the point of her query. Her core was still slick with sex. Her eyes fluttered shut, and her belly quivered. “You mean this?”

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  “It’s called the clitoris.”

  “Well, it’s wonderful.”

  “Yes, it is.” William watched her face as he teased that small node, and saw her climb again toward bliss. She spread her legs and went soft, opening herself to him again. He bent his head and latched onto a breast, and gave her more of what she wanted.

  When she was sated again and lay dazed in his arms, William kissed her lightly and pushed himself from the bed. He went to her water closet and washed himself, then wet a washcloth with warm water. Back in the bedroom, he found Nora propped on her elbows, watching him curiously, her hair tousled, her sweet, pert breasts pushed up high, her skin still flushed with pleasure, and William hated to say what he had to say.

  “I have to go now, darling. I’ve stayed too long.”

  She sighed and dropped back to the mattress. “I really do think we should simply tell them.”

  He sat beside her and cleaned her belly. “I think that would be a terrible idea, Nora.”

  “What choice will they have but to accept us? And Christopher is on our side! He’ll help with Father.”

  If Chris knew about this, William didn’t think he’d be their champion. He knew his friend well enough to understand how deep his training in tradition went. Chris liked to be a rebel, and he enjoyed his sister’s moxie, but he shared his father’s ideas about honor. He thought William was the most honorable match—but would he still think so if he knew that he’d fucked Nora in a Dover inn? Unlikely.

  “It’s not a good idea, Nora. The risk is too great. We’ve taken enough risk to have done this.”

  “I suppose you’re going to go back to being gentlemanly and proper and distant around me, once we get back to Tarrindale.”

  He set the washcloth aside and stretched out beside her, leaning over her. She played her fingers through the hair on his chest, and he closed his eyes and savored the touch. “I can barely trust myself around you. When you get too close, I have to clench my hands together so I don’t reach out for you. Yes, until your father accepts me as yours, I need to keep my distance.” He smiled and chucked her chin gently. “Unless you want to run away with me.”

  “I’ll not sneak like a thief, stealing my own future.” Another heavy sigh left her slight breast. “I wish we could just stay here forever.”

  William hated Dover. It was dirty and bleak at its heart, and his brilliant project had died a humiliating death in an overheated office overlooking the harbor. He’d grown to hate England itself. A more maddeningly stubborn people he’d never known.

  What he wanted was to go home, with Nora at his side. For that, if Nora wouldn’t simply come, they needed the Tate men to agree to the match. They’d just put that in grave jeopardy. But he couldn’t be sorry to have shared this time with her.

  “Regrets?” he asked, drawing his finger over a tiny pink nipple.

  She shivered under his touch. “Not a one. Except that you’re leaving now.”

  “When we’re married, we’ll do this every single day.”

  She quirked a grin at him. “Only once a day?”

  He laughed and kissed her. “Minx. We’ll do it as often as you can handle. I love you.”

  “Oh, how I love you.”

  Dressed again, William left Nora tucked into bed, buried under the heavy duvet and settling into sated sleep. The flash and crash of the storm had settled, leaving only a steady rain.

  The corridor was dark and quiet—even the inn below had gone to sleep. He’d left his pocket watch in his room, with his vest, and could only guess at the time, but he didn’t imagine the restaurant below closed before midnight, or eleven o’clock at the earliest.

  He’d spent hours with Nora. Far too long. Had Chris come back? Had he heard them? His room shared a wall with William’s, across the hall from Nora’s. If he’d gone straight to his room, he probably wouldn’t have heard anything. And if he had, wouldn’t he have knocked on her door?

  William opened his own door. In his surprise at Nora’s demand, he’d left it unlocked, with all the lights on. Thus, he saw Chris as soon as he stepped into the room. His friend sat in a chair by the windows, one leg crossed over the other, one arm propped on an armrest, his head seated on that palm. When William came in, he didn’t move, but his blue eyes blazed.

  William didn’t attempt to deflect or to affect confusion. Chris knew, and he wouldn’t insult him by pretending he thought otherwise. He wouldn’t lie. “Chris.”

  His friend lifted his head and took a long, slow, deep breath, letting it out just as slowly. He uncrossed his legs and stood. William stood where he was, aware of the rumpled state of his clothes, and the wildness of his hair, through which Nora had delighted in raking her hands.

  “Chris,” he said again, but his friend said nothing.

  He walked up to William, stood right before him, and took another long, deep breath, wrinkling his nose—he was picking up the scent of sex, and making a show of it.

  “Nothing has changed, Chris. I love her, and I mean to marry her. I did nothing she didn’t want.”

  He’d thought he was prepared for it, but he’d expected Chris to say something first, to shout or rail, or at least make a nasty sarcastic remark. He did none of that. Instead, his fist shot out like it had been loaded into a cannon, connected with William’s jaw, and nearly knocked him off his feet.

  His first impulse was to hit back, but he got hold of it just in the nick of time. “Chris, just lis—“ he ducked the next blow. Obviously, his friend was in no mood for conversation.

  After carefully wiping his bleeding fist with a linen handkerchief, Chris said, in an eerily calm voice, “Transatlantic passenger ships don’t sail from Dover. The train here will take you to Liverpool, and the Mauretania will take you back where you belong. I’ll have Gaines see that your things are packed and sent to the port.”

  “I can’t leave without her. I won’t.”

  “You will. You will leave this inn right now and vanish into the night. If you come near her again, or me, or Tarrindale, or the house in London, or anything else connected to my family, I will rescind my good word for you, and you’ll be deported on the basis of your arrest. If you are still on British soil a week from now, I will do the same.”

  “I am not leaving without her, Chris.” Chris had to know how it would hurt her for him to disappear immediately after what they’d shared. He couldn’t want that for the sister he loved so much. He wanted her happiness. William knew how much he cared—they’d had many friendly conversations over whisky and cheroots about their families.

  But the man standing before him was his friend no longer. Chris folded the bloody handkerchief and tucked it neatly into his suit pocket. “You can go quietly, or I will tell my father, and he will deal with you, and her, in his way.”

  William’s stomach rolled. He couldn’t let that happen. It was the only threat that could work, and Chris knew it—he knew William would do what he must to save Nora pain. The bastard knew his
feelings for her were true, and still he stood there and made these threats.

  Nora wanted to tell them both, but William knew her father would take it out on her—Chris’s reaction now was crystal-clear evidence that his instinct about the Tate men had been right. Things had to be their way. God, what would the earl do if he knew? “Chris! Just listen!”

  Chris walked to the door. “I trusted you. With the most precious thing I have.”

  Nora wasn’t a thing to be had, but William didn’t press that point. “I’ve honored that trust. I’ve honored her. What about what she wants?”

  “She doesn’t know what she wants. Her head is full of fancies about a world that doesn’t exist. You were supposed to be the hero of her story.”

  “She’s the hero of her story.”

  He laughed. “If you think that, you’re all the fool she is and more.”

  ELEVEN

  Dr. Davies, the Tate family physician, pushed his fingers under Nora’s vest and set the stethoscope on her back. “Deep breath now, my lady.”

  She took a breath.

  “Deeper, please.”

  She took another. Whether it was deeper than the one before, she didn’t know. Nor care. He moved his hand, and the tool it held, to her front and set it over her heart, again inside her vest. Nora took a breath without being asked. She darted a glance to her father, who stood next to her armoire, watching the doctor, his arms folded across his chest and a chasm dug between his eyebrows.

  “Thank you, Lady Nora. Lie down, please.”

  She lay down on her bed. The doctor picked up one hand and held it out, studying the arm attached to it. Setting it down gently at her side, he turned to his leather bag and dug out a measuring tape. He wrapped it around her arm—her biceps, just below her elbow, her wrist—then made notes in a small ledger, with a stub of a pencil. He did the same with her other arm, and her legs, and her neck, all the while frowning behind his spectacles and white walrus moustache.

  He looked up at her father, and Nora looked, too. When her father nodded, dropping his head slowly once, Dr. Davies untied her drawers and pushed both hands into the loosened waist. Nora shuddered at the touch of his cold, shriveled fingers. He pushed hard on her belly, all over, like he was searching for something or trying to feel the outlines of her organs through her skin. He pushed all the way down until she could feel his fingertips in the hair between her thighs. Nora shut her eyes as tightly as she could and steeled herself, waiting for his vile, unwanted fingers to be where no one else but William and herself had been.