Parting her lips, his tongue explored inside her mouth, behind her lips, over her teeth, even under her tongue. When he had learned every shape and texture inside her mouth, his tongue retreated to the tip of hers, where he teased until she responded by teasing back. His lips barely touched hers.
She sighed as his fingers tickled over the flesh of her breasts and tugged at her towel. He spread the fabric aside and brushed his open palm over one sensitive nipple. The towel dropped beneath her arm. When his chest pressed to her breasts, she experienced for the first time the naked pleasure of skin against skin.
Barely breathing, she closed her eyes and his warm, wicked, wonderful mouth took hers with possessive insistence. His tongue delved, hot and wet, filling her mouth with urgency. Mindlessly, she ran her hands over his back, caressing the silken firmness, smoothing over the muscle as he adjusted his body to fit with hers.
One of his knees parted her thighs and his male arousal pressed into the hollow of her hip. She suppressed an urge to reach down and touch him. Instead, despising herself for willing his hard pecker where her need ached, she tightened her bottom and curled her pelvis away from him.
He raised his mouth. Her arms dropped to her sides.
After a long stare into her eyes, he moved an elbow near her ear and supported his head on his closed fingers. Without speaking, and with his luminous eyes staring into hers, he moved a hand to her rib cage and caressed there, running his open palm over her quivering flesh. His thumb glided over the lower part of her breast. She wanted to guard herself, but she could only lie on her back, caught by his mesmerizing eyes and the slow seductive movement of his hand.
Her mouth dried. She swallowed and wet her lips with a nervous flick of her tongue.
“You look terrified,” he said gruffly. “I can’t believe anyone could use you roughly. You’re so very sweet.”
She couldn’t answer. Her breath came in shaky, uncontrolled surges.
Circling his knuckles around the outer side of her breast, he connected with her arm, which he slid his hand down until he reached hers. He lifted her fingers to his chest, placing her palm right over one of his nipples. “I liked you touching me here earlier. Repeat the pleasure and you will see that I’m only flesh and blood like you. My nipples react exactly as yours do, and down there,” he glanced at his arousal covered by the towel and flattened against his belly, “I have a similar reaction. I can’t control the reaction, but I can control what I do about it.”
Never once had she had cause to mistrust him. Never once had she cause to disbelieve him, and she did neither, hadn’t even thought she might. Starling Smith was the only person she doubted, the orphan who had never known love and who wanted kindness so much that she hurt. Love had not been offered by this tall, strong man who made her feel more secure by the moment, but gentleness and consideration had.
She couldn’t trust herself not to pretend that this was enough for her.
Pushing thoughts of Lavender to the further reaches of her mind, as he apparently had, she searched for insincerity in his face but found none. She couldn’t deny this man a simple touch.
As she had this morning, she put one palm over each of his nipples. Of their own accord, her fingers caressed the surrounding flesh, noting how dissimilar he and she looked. Where she was soft, he was hard. Where she could be gathered and lifted, he could only be smoothed. His mouth curled with contentment. She appreciated him expressing pleasure. She appreciated even more the lowering of his lips to hers.
Undeniably, she enjoyed his mouth. His lips gave the love he didn’t feel. His kiss could persuade her to pretend she needed nothing more. She enjoyed his warm hands closing gently over each of her breasts, softly squeezing and relaxing. When he took his mouth from hers and wet her nipples, she tightened her fingers in his hair, arching as his lips covered the peak of one breast.
Her emotions confused her. She knew she couldn’t love a man she’d known barely a few days, but this sharing of sensations seemed closer to love than any feeling she’d yet experienced.
His lips returned to hers as if he needed to keep reminding her of his kisses. His hands, palms, and fingers caressed her nipples. She sighed, encouraging every move he made, and glided her hands down his back to the safety of the towel around his hips, stopping there.
He groaned, took her fingers in his, and delved them beneath the towel, loosening what she thought of as her protection. The towel slid off.
Her eyes opened as she touched the taut perfection of one rounded buttock. Not like hers, nothing like hers. His flesh was tight and hard and utterly masculine.
“Starling, Starling,” he whispered and her name sounded like an endearment. His lips covered every inch of her face and her eyes closed to the glorious sensation of his mouth on her eyelids.
Touching him while he touched her was the most empowering experience of her life and, judging by the sounds he made, one of the most pleasurable of his. If only her days could be like this forever, clean, warm, safe, guarded by a man who had promised to stop whenever she said.
His hand edged between their bodies, placing her palm on his pecker. For one moment she let her fingers be swept along the length. Like him, his male appendage was solid and unyielding. For one moment she thought she loved him and he loved her. The vulnerability in his action lulled her. For one moment.
When he closed her fingers around his arousal and glided in her hand as she knew he wanted to glide inside her, she realized he didn’t love her. He merely desired a woman. He hadn’t even hinted he loved her. From the time he’d combed her hair, one action had led to another...as he had planned. She straightened her fingers and moved her hand to the coverlet behind her back.
His forehead dropped to her shoulder. “Flesh and blood, Starling, just like you,” he said blurring his words against her upper breast.
The mist of his expiration cooled on her skin. She angled from beneath him, trying not to touch him, and sat up, dragging her knees to her chest and resting her cheek on one side.
For a minute or so, he lay beside her, flat out on his stomach with his face pressed into the bend of his elbow. Then he moved his jaw slowly over his arm as if he couldn’t think unless he stroked his chin. Finally, he sat up, too.
He took one of her hands from her shin and held her fingers in his. His thumb rubbed over her palm and he turned her hand over. “Your hands are much softer,” he said. “But your nails need reshaping. They’re ragged.” He brushed his lips across hers.
When she moved her hand back to her own leg, he sighed and tipped his head back until his gaze focused on the ceiling. “You don’t need to say it. I know I was way out of line.”
She shot a glance at him from around her arm. She would never have said that. The fault hadn’t been his. She had encouraged him and hadn’t given a thought to where her acquiescence might lead until she touched his pecker—flesh and blood perhaps, but no less beautiful for being real. Like him. Real: a man generous enough to take the blame that didn’t belong to him. Real: a man wealthy and handsome enough to have any woman he chose. Real: the urges of the flesh that were difficult to repress.
Real: rough hands on a hired woman.
She eased out a breath. “I’ve never had nails long enough to cut because I’ve always bitten them. But perhaps I bit them because I never had anything suitable to cut them with.”
“Never had scissors?”
“Only access to those big enough to cut off a finger instead.”
Tightening his towel around his waist, he rose to his feet. “I don’t think owning nail clippers has ever made me feel important before.” When he smiled at her, warmth spread throughout her body, the warmth of the companionability she’d experienced with him for days.
Keeping her cheek on her knee, she watched him search through his top tallboy drawer, appreciating his back view perhaps more than she had before. She’d caressed that firm, rounded bottom and she’d enjoyed doing so.
>
He returned to the bed and sat beside her. “I’ll cut your nails. I just happen to be an—”
“—expert at cutting nails,” she finished.
“No need for insubordination. I wouldn’t do this for just any female. In fact, I wouldn’t do it for a woman unless I’d kissed her breasts first.” He held out his hands for hers and didn’t glance at her face, which had warmed.
“I don’t want to know how many women’s nails you’ve cut,” she said tightly as he clasped her arm under his. The point of the scissors forced under her nail and snipped. “Ouch.”
“Only yours. Other than that, I’ve cut mine, which gives me far more experience than you have. Keep your hand still. It isn’t easy cutting a nail that’s barely visible.”
She rested her chin on his shoulder to watch what he was doing. “Have you kissed many women’s breasts?”
“Changeable little thing, aren’t you? Now, why would you want to know that?”
“I’m only checking to see if you’re an expert there, too.”
“Don’t you have any basis for comparison?”
“No.”
“I’m only an expert if you liked what I did, and I think I can safely say that you think I’m an expert. Leave your hand there. I haven’t finished. Now, since you want to know how many women I’ve had, I can only tell you that I haven’t counted. I’ve bedded a few women, but I’ve only made love to one.”
“Lavender.”
“Yes, the lady I plan to marry. Give me your other hand.”
“Is there a difference between bedding and making love?”
“Not physically. Don’t start worrying. You can certainly enjoy fucking without being in love. When you are, you want to hold that person in your arms longer and you want to look after them and save them from themselves. You feel protective. Lavender needs love. She’s never been given it. Her parents were rather harsh and taught her values that...well, they’re not my values.”
Starling kept her face against his shoulder. Without knowing, he’d said he felt sympathy rather than love for Lavender, but, because Starling didn’t know a thing about love, she didn’t comment.
Although she wished she had an equal tolerance of Lavender, she didn’t. Lavender had been given two parents. They couldn’t have been harsher than the custodians at the home, who taught values and used severity to gain obedience. Lavender had been given everything that money could buy, plus the most beautiful face this side of heaven. Starling doubted that any woman could be sympathetic about the last. Envious, more like. Nevertheless, she resolved to be kinder in her mind to Lavender than previously.
She inspected her nails. “They certainly look better.”
He smiled. “Never doubt an expert.”
* * * *
Alasdair dressed and changed into a white cravat, gray-striped waistcoat, black tailcoat, and black trousers for dinner while Starling examined her renovated gray gown, doubting she would ever understand men. Alasdair wanted Lavender for his wife, yet he held out his promiscuity as a lure to Starling. And he had lured her with his kindness, his gentleness, and his ability to make her feel desired.
“Wear the blue gown tonight,” he said, sounding abstracted. “We want to impress our guest.”
She wavered, not sure she should try to impress anyone, though last night she’d been complimented on the new look Ellen had given her hair. Only a less pathetic creature than she would not court the same attention again. She put away the refurbished uniform. He finished and left. After pulling the bell cord, she slipped into her chemise. Without the stays, she could gown herself, but only Ellen could arrange her hair into a fine enough style to suit the blue gown.
Unbuttoned, she sat at the table. She heard Ellen’s knock. “Come in. My, you were quick.”
“I don’t have to do Mrs. Frost’s hair now. Freda’s doing it.”
“Won’t that take her from her kitchen duties?”
“Yes, but I’ll fill in where I can.” The maid collected the hairpins from the tallboy. “And that will work out better,” she said with a satisfied smile.
Sure she ought not comment on the situation she’d apparently not changed, Starling sat in silence. “Do you know the story of Adam and Eve?” she asked, lulled by the brushing of her hair.
“Silly story, that. I only know one snake what can talk.”
“As a rule, most don’t.” Starling wished she hadn’t given Ellen another opportunity to complain about Mrs. Frost. “But I wasn’t thinking of that aspect of the story. I think the telling of it should have been the other way around with Adam tempting Eve. I don’t see how a woman could tempt a man.”
“You oughta watch Mrs. Frost then.”
“I meant the average woman, not the ultimate. Mrs. Frost doesn’t have to do anything to tempt a man other than exist.”
Ellen snorted. “She spends more time tempting men than she does padding her hair and painting her face. Can I leave some of these back curls free tonight? It’d show how graceful your neck is.”
Starling nodded. “Have you ever been in love, Ellen?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m walking out with Derry. Was.”
“The gardener? My, Ellen, what a catch. He’s very handsome.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ellen tightened her lips. “Very handsome and as thick as four planks.”
“Should you describe him that way?”
Ellen swiped the cleaning brush over the hairbrush. She gave a harsh laugh. “I wouldn’t have until today when he met Eve, the lady who offers her apples to every man what passes.”
Starling frowned. “You mean Mrs. Frost? You can’t blame Derry for being polite to her.”
“Polite? If he wants that painted-up pretense of a person, I say let him have her and with my blessing, too.” Ellen lifted the top section of Starling’s hair.
Starling could hear the fury in Ellen’s voice. “He picked her a flower because she asked for one.”
“And he took her to the stables because she feels at home with horse manure?”
Starling glanced down, schooling her expression. “Your young man might admire her beauty, but if he loves you, you don’t have a thing to worry about.”
“I wish I could be like you.” Ellen made a thin, rueful line of her mouth. “You trust your man, and he respects you enough to be honest with you. Derry’s a womanizer. He takes what he’s offered and he lies about it. He says that a man has to have...you know. I don’t think a woman should give herself before marriage.”
“That’s what I was talking about before. Adam tempting Eve. I don’t have the answer, but I wish that just once I had the apple.”
“The master’s a lucky man,” Ellen said gruffly. “Let me finish your hair. I’m not cross anymore. What’s done is done, and I can’t change it.” She put the pins and brush in the drawer, came back, and buttoned Starling’s gown. “You could pull the shoulders down a little. The material doesn’t need to be hiked up when it’s cut on the slant.”
Starling went to the mirror and shifted the material. Her hands no longer shamed her. The blue of the gown pinked her cheeks and whitened her skin. She turned her head this way and that. “The gown is beautiful, but don’t you think I look a little bare with my shoulders showing?”
“Mr. Burdon sent over some orchids from his hothouse today. They’re pure white and they’d set off your skin a treat. We could attach one to a ribbon and tie it around your throat. I’ll get them.”
Ellen was right. The tiny delicate flowers filled in her neckline, giving Starling an amazingly ladylike appearance. She slipped on her black satin shoes, certain she would never look as elegant as this again.
“Don’t you look just lovely,” Mrs. Trelevan said when Starling arrived taller than usual in the kitchen. “Them flowers was meant for you.”
“The Burdons sent them over for me?”
“Course they did, but I didn’t mean that. I meant that you look lovely wearing th
em.”
“Thank you,” Starling answered, blushing. “We have a guest for dinner. Mr. Seymour thought feeding another person wouldn’t be a strain on the kitchen.”
Mrs. Trelevan laughed. “He never does. Often tells me this sort of thing at the last minute. I can make do.”
“If there’s a problem, I don’t mind if you give me—”
“Bless you. Don’t you go thinking anyone will have to go short. Got plenty of food in this house, and we’ve certainly got enough for the mistress. It’s the second remove I was thinking of. Might have to make an alternative. Freda! Drat that girl. Freda!”
“I imagine she’s with Mrs. Frost. Can I help?”
“No, no, not in that gown, but I guess you could set another place.”
Starling also arranged flowers on the dining table, taking longer than she expected. Dressed as a real lady, she felt strangely shy about presenting herself. When she arrived in the sitting room, she was introduced to the newly arrived guest, Mr. Hamilton Fredericks, whose eyes skimmed over her with masculine appreciation. Never before admired for her looks, she warmed inside and smiled with pleasure at the gentleman who, in truth, did resemble a frog with his bulky body and long, thin arms and legs.
“I’m privileged,” he said with a courtly bow. He had flat curls around his face. “I hadn’t heard about this marriage of Alasdair’s. It gives me an opportunity to be the first with the latest gossip.”
“I hope you won’t gossip about this marriage,” Starling said, catching Alasdair’s glance. She surprised a half-smile out of him and a predatory gleam. “At this stage, it’s a secret shared only by family.”
“Then I’m even more privileged to be considered family,” Mr. Fredericks said smoothly. “I won’t say a word until given permission. May I ask why the secret?”
Starling glanced again at Alasdair.
“Why indeed?” His gaze left her face, reached the floral decoration at her throat, and flowed down her body to her black satin slippers. When he met her eyes again, she could see her hairstyle and the blue gown had changed her from a hireling to a desired woman.
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