She groaned and went up on her toes, which meant Levi had to steady her in his embrace. Penelope Carrington was the perfect armful of female, soft, curvy, and warm. While she kissed him and nuzzled at him and made delightful yearning sounds, she got softer, curvier, and warmer.
“I forget…?”
“You forget—” Levi traced his hand down the side of her ribs, slowly, slowly, coming within inches of her breasts. She was corseted, and he would delight in relieving her of her stays. “You forget that I am not a rabbit.”
In the face of that eternal verity, she rested her forehead against his chest, which meant Levi couldn’t see her face. He could feel her, though, pliant and lovely against him. How long had it been since he’d delighted in the simple feel of a willing female wrapped in his arms?
“I do not know how these affairs are conducted, Levi, how one prosecutes a dalliance, other than to expect copulation is involved.” She sounded like a barrister addressing opposing counsel. All big words and careful admissions.
“I am glad you don’t know. I have little experience with it myself.”
She looked up, her gaze suggesting she needed to verify that he wasn’t jesting. He let her see that he was in earnest, and she gifted him with such a smile—shy, intimate, pleased.
Pleased, with him.
“We go on as we prefer, Penelope. I prefer to savor the gift of intimacy with you rather than devour it in a headlong fit of gluttony.”
She was clearly torn. She wanted to be savored, but wanted an agenda as well, a map to guide her around the worst heartaches and embarrassments a dalliance might entail. That much, Levi could give her.
“Here’s how this works, my dear. We disport for our mutual pleasure, as friends and as intimates, and when you say the disporting is at an end, it ends.”
Hopefully, it ended with a ring on her finger.
“You can prevent a child?”
“The only way to entirely prevent conception is to abstain. We can share pleasures short of joining or be cautious in our intimacies.” He would not use the careful, Latinate word she’d chosen: copulation. Let the rabbits copulate. With Penelope Carrington, Levi intended to make love. He kissed her temple. “If we create a child, we will marry. You can have no doubt of that, or our dalliance stops before it’s begun.”
She nodded against his chest. He hoped she was blushing. He also hoped that marrying Penelope—should God grant him that blessing—didn’t precipitate litigation for breach of promise that would mean professional and social ruin. Hope had never been his strongest suit. He vowed to improve on that.
“Levi?”
“My dear?” My love.
“Will you help me take off my dress?”
Such courage. “If you will assist me out of my clothes as well.”
He let her take the initiative, let her be the one to lead him into her bedroom, an inviting, airy space featuring an enormous bed embowered by green velvet hangings. The quilt sported red roses on white, the whole of it welcoming in a way that was both domestic and feminine.
“You like soft textures,” he said, running his hand over the quilt, which was, of all things, flannel. “Is that why you raise those rabbits?”
She untied his cravat, took his sleeve buttons and cravat pin. “Anybody would love stroking my bunnies. Angora wool soothes the soul. You like fine clothing.”
He did, which was an insight. Part of the pleasure of being a man of business was looking the part: competent, well put together, tastefully prosperous.
“I’d like for you to get me out of my fine clothing, Penelope.”
She smiled that secret, pleased smile, folded his shirt and set it on the clothes press. He was left standing in only his breeches, wonderfully aroused, while she was fully clothed.
“When does your monthly befall you, Penelope?”
Her smile disappeared like a rabbit popped into a hedge.
Levi wanted to kick himself. Penelope wasn’t like those other widows, and certainly wasn’t a soiled dove. Regarding this topic, she might be more like Ann, who would have had a tart lecture about a woman’s bodily privacy had he asked her such a question.
“In about two weeks. Why?”
Bloody hell. “You are fertile now, in all likelihood. We will limit our pleasures.”
She looked at the bed, not at him. “You will explain this to me?”
“Later. Now I will be your lady’s maid.”
Discordant, uncomfortable thoughts hopped around the edges of his lust as he undid the dozens of hooks down the back of Penelope’s dress.
This was how he’d pictured his nights with Ann. A contented domestic intimacy, such that he’d have no need of a valet, and she’d become comfortable with his tending to her at the end of the day. He would brush her hair at night, she’d watch him shave in the morning.
Marriage to Ann hadn’t been like that. She’d kissed his cheek after dinner and wished him pleasant dreams.
If he’d wanted to visit her later, he’d tell her, “I’ll be up in a bit, if that suits.”
She’d had two answers: “Perhaps another time,” which was for when her female organs kept a calendar different from the one in Levi’s head, or, “In a bit, then.”
Just once, might Ann have smiled at him and suggested he make haste to her side?
Penelope kept her back to him, her nape begging to be kissed in the broad light of day.
“Will you undo my stays, Levi?”
“Soon.” Levi slid his arm around her waist and set his lips to her shoulder. “You carry the scent of roses even here, and your skin is softer than that wool you spin.”
She drew in a breath as he brushed his fingers over her back. “This is how you savor me?”
She said nothing more for long, long moments while Levi used his mouth to learn the contours of the bones at the top of her spine and his fingers to take every God’s blessed pin from her hair. He was pleased to see she didn’t lace too tightly, nor did she tense when he had her standing in only her chemise, still facing away from him.
“Don’t turn around, Penelope. Give me one minute.”
“One minute only, Levi. Whatever you’re about, standing here in my shift in the middle of a room with little fire is not how I’d intended—”
He turned her by the shoulders. “I folded your clothes most carefully. We’ll warm up the bed in no time.”
Oh, the look on her face. The wondering, awestruck, pleased look on her face. “Levi, you are naked.”
He’d gambled, stripping off all his finery for her, and he’d apparently won. “This savoring business goes both ways, Penelope.”
“You are completely, utterly, nakedly lovely.”
While he stood before her, cock at full salute against his belly, Penelope went on an inspection of his person. She walked ’round him one way, then the other. She ran her hands over his chest and back—and his derriere—and took a nibble of his shoulder. Her touch was soft, warm, and lovely. He could have spent merely from the sensations of her hands on his belly and thighs.
“This part of you,” she said, frowning down at his cock, “looks quite in readiness for breeding.”
I am not a rabbit. Levi developed instant sympathy for those young bucks unable to hold their fire when faced with impending delights.
“That part of me is possessed of as much patience as you need, Penelope. Though I’d rather exercise my patience on the bed.”
“Shall I take off my chemise?”
If she did, he’d lose all dignity. “You’d rather leave it on, wouldn’t you?”
She blushed, a hot pink testament to inexperience that rose from her chest up her neck to her hairline. “I’ll leave it on for now, Levi.”
Thank God. “Into bed, Penelope. We’ll cuddle, and you can decide what to do about that chemise.” Assuming he didn’t tear it to shreds first.
She climbed onto the bed, taunting him with a flash of delectable, well rounded derriere, and then flopped back the covers
to welcome him onto the mattress. When he settled in beside her, she slipped an arm beneath his neck and tucked her body right next to his.
He had said they’d cuddle. It would not occur to a woman who cuddled rabbits and cats that she was to be the cuddlee rather than the cuddler.
“I understand better why Franklin is such a sanguine fellow,” Levi said. “You excel at cuddling and you smell divine, Penelope.”
To his surprise, he was rather accomplished at cuddling himself. While she played with his hair and he with hers, they talked of the years he’d spent studying the law, of Gervaise Stoneleigh, whom Penelope decided had been made lonely by brilliance. Between Penelope’s explorations of Levi’s chest and ears, they described favorite desserts and books and music. As Levi talked about campaigning across Spain, Penelope stroked her fingers over him, lazily campaigning her way past his reason.
And yet, when she leaned up and kissed him, Levi was nearly surprised. Penelope’s hand sliding down, down, to trace the length of his engorged cock nigh unmanned him.
He retaliated by cupping her breast, an exquisite handful of female softness, topped by a ruched nipple that fit delightfully against his palm.
“Enough savoring, my lady.”
She didn’t turn loose of him. “What comes after savoring?”
He applied a touch of pressure to her nipple. “Pleasuring.”
“Levi, I don’t know—”
Kissing was part of pleasuring. In the course of kissing her, Levi shifted them so Penelope was on her back, and the Chemise of Perpetual Modesty went sailing across the room.
“You first,” he said. “The lady’s pleasure always comes first.”
Not all ladies were capable of experiencing pleasure, but Penelope was. Levi knew that like he knew the elements of a valid contract.
To his immense satisfaction, the lady’s pleasure also came quickly. She liked the attention he paid her breasts, arching into his hand, clutching him to her when he settled his mouth over her nipple.
He liked that when Penelope began to move restlessly against the sheets, it was all he could do not to mount her and thrust home. Instead, he trailed a hand down to tease at her curls.
She went still, opened her eyes and lay panting on her back. “There’s more isn’t there, Levi? You won’t leave me in this condition and call it pleasuring, will you?”
He brushed her hair back from her forehead. “Tell me about your condition.”
“I am expiring with want, fevered and desperate, for you, Levi, for more of your touches and kisses. Why are you looking at me like that?”
Such words. Words freely given, to him.
“We’ll make you want harder, Penelope, then harder still.” He urged her over onto her side so he could arrange himself along her back and insinuate a hand between her legs. A few minutes of exploring damp heat, and he knew she liked his third finger applied just there in a steady rhythm with a sure pressure. When she came, he felt how her body clutched at the pleasure he gave her, tightly and then more tightly still, until she was silently consumed with it, shaking against him, then sighing with the aftermath.
“Levi.”
To hear his name whispered like that, rosy with affection, laced with a touch of awe, made his heart thump oddly against his ribs. Penelope took his hand from between her legs, shifted so she was lying as much on her belly as her side, and used his arm to drape his larger frame over her, a blanket of male heat and desire over her prone form.
“May I conclude my lady is pleasured?”
Her pleasure mattered to him. Ann hadn’t sought that sort of satisfaction, and had Levi forced it upon her, she would have been vastly discommoded. Penelope’s pleasure was a different matter altogether.
“I am thoroughly pleasured.” She kissed his fingers, which had to bear the fragrance of her arousal. The notion was intoxicating. “You are not.”
“Hold still.” He fitted himself to her closely, so his cock was wrapped in her heat, angled to rub along her sex without risking penetration. “Hold very still.”
She braced herself back against him, letting him thrust into the slick, sweet torment that wasn’t quite coupling. He wanted this to last, wanted to savor this too, but it had been too long since he’d indulged himself, and his reserves of restraint were sorely depleted.
He came in one endless cataclysm of satisfaction. He didn’t worry that he was imposing, that he was taking too long, that he was making a mess, that he was too heavy. For a succession of moments, wrapped around Penelope Carrington, Levi simply and completely gave himself over to pleasure.
And then, when he’d kissed her nape and tucked the covers up around them, gave himself over to sleep.
He awoke with a profound sense of relaxation permeating his body, mind, and spirit. Penelope slept on though he was half-lying on her, his nose buried in her hair.
Soft hair for a redhead, fragrant, silky—
Before his cock could add a few more adjectives to the litany, Levi untangled himself from Penelope. He eased from the bed, made sure she was completely covered, put the wash water to use, and got into his clothes.
A remarkable encounter, all around. That Penelope should choose him to break the fast that had started after her wedding night was extraordinary in itself. The pleasure had been profound, the conversation…
The cuddling.
Levi let Thomas walk the entire distance home, the better to wallow in memories that would take their place among his most cherished recollections. The proprietary manner in which Penelope had wrapped him in her arms, the way she had moved against his hand, the shy passion that had blossomed into roaring female lust.
As Levi handed the reins to his groom, unbuckled his spurs, and turned for the house, a pang of grief hit him.
Outside the stables, all was brisk sunshine, freedom, and the lingering scent of Penelope on his skin. Inside his house were coal fires, responsibilities, client files, and the whole sticky, stinking mess of that woman’s designs on him.
He took a deep breath of pure December air, summoned the feel of Penelope in a boneless sprawl against his naked body, and forced himself to walk into the house.
Where he found, sitting right on top of his stack of correspondence, a note from Miss Amanda Houston, informing him she would adore the honor of his escort to the Christmas assembly in two weeks’ time.
*
“I had a specific purpose for my call this afternoon, Mrs. Carrington.”
Mr. Amblewise was such a serious fellow, though kind. Very kind. When Penelope’s sister Doreen pestered him with theological questions, he was the soul of patience.
“I’m always pleased to see my friends,” Penelope lied smoothly. She would have been much more pleased to continue dreaming of the unbelievable intimacies Levi had shared with her. “More tea?”
Amblewise’s blond brows twitched, as much a facial tic as an expression. “Please, and perhaps some of those excellent sandwiches?”
Vicaring was hungry work when undertaken with such sincerity. Penelope refilled her caller’s plate and wondered what Mr. Amblewise would think of a visit to the rabbits. He’d probably have a sermon all ready on the virtues of meekness.
Franklin gave one mighty thump with a back leg from his place under the piano, causing Mr. Amblewise to startle with a sandwich halfway to his mouth.
“That is a very disagreeable noise. Do they make it for any reason?”
“They make it as a warning, I suppose. The back legs that propel a rabbit across the heath at such speed can also lay open a man’s arm. Then too, rabbits are well supplied with teeth. One doesn’t want to cross a rabbit, particularly not a breeding buck, unnecessarily.”
I am not a rabbit. Though hadn’t Levi been an endless treat to pet and cuddle and enjoy? Pen’s mind fairly boggled with what had befallen her less than two hours earlier. No wonder rabbits were such happy creatures.
Amblewise cleared his throat and kept his unfinished sandwich in his hand. “As I was say
ing, my call today has a specific purpose, Mrs. Carrington.”
If he started quoting Ecclesiastes, Penelope would stomp her foot—loudly.
“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me directly, Mr. Amblewise.” Though not like Levi had enlightened her.
“Indeed. As your spiritual counselor, and as pastor to our little flock at St. Melangell’s, I have watched with great attention and admiration the manner in which you have borne your grief this past year. I have kept you ever in my prayers, prayed that the burden on your spirit might be no heavier than is meet for a lady whose spouse went to his reward in the fullness of his years.”
He had a lovely voice, a voice more substantial than his slight, pale frame, and yet his words said nothing, not until he got to the part about, “… and there comes a time when, though it requires courage and fortitude, one must walk again in the proper society of one’s devoted friends. I believe that time has come for you, my dear Mrs. Carrington, and thus extend to you my sincere hope that you will regard me as your escort at the Christmas assembly.”
Should she offer a murmured “amen” in lieu of “more cakes?” A rumored leak in the parish hall could mean the holiday gathering would default to her own ballroom, and thus, of all women, she might well require no escort.
She certainly did not want the vicar hanging about her all evening, for in observance of the waning days of her mourning, she would not dance a single set.
“You raise an interesting point, Mr. Amblewise, and remind me that winter is advancing. I will quite possibly host the assembly—Sixtus always enjoyed the holiday gatherings—but am concerned that my sisters will feel self-conscious should they not have escorts for the occasion.”
Though her sisters would be dancing the night away, while Pen kept an eye on the dessert table, the punch bowls, and the young men alternating between the two. Sixtus had more or less sponsored the living, and thus Penelope had taken a generous interest in the assemblies in St. Melangell’s parish hall.
“Your sisters, Mrs. Carrington? Both of your sisters?”
“They do tend to go about as a pair.” Then the implication of his question struck her: All those earnest questions from Doreen, Amblewise bowing lingeringly over Doreen’s pretty hand, Doreen’s penchant for sketching knights errant of ascetic mien with prominent crosses on their banners and shields.
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