Claimed by the Marquis

by Carole Mortimer

  “Shall I bring refreshments, my lady?”

  Sally blinked in order to break the spell of that compelling emerald gaze before stepping back, at the same time pulling her gloved hand from the clasp of Oxbridge’s warm and elegant fingers. Those same fingers he had stroked between the dampness of her thighs before bringing those fingers to his lips and— “My lord?” she prompted sharply.

  Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. He had spent the past three days—and nights—with his cock painfully erect and hard as stone, refusing to take himself in hand like a young boy who had no control over his desires, and Sally Derwent was now offering him refreshments? “No. Thank you,” he added with polite impatience.

  “That will be all, Craddock.” She dismissed the butler, waiting until the elderly man had departed before speaking again. “If you would care to sit down—”

  “I would not.”

  About to sit down herself, Lady Sally instead straightened back to her full height. “You seem somewhat…tense today, my lord?” She eyed him warily as he began to pace the room, hands behind his back.

  “Delayed sexual gratification has that effect on me. On most men, I believe.” He scowled.

  She blinked. “I’m sorry…?”

  “Not half as sorry as I am,” Nicholas muttered as he unclenched his hands from behind his back before reaching out to clasp the tops of her arms and pull her in against him, making her fully aware of the hard length of his throbbing cock. “I am here to demand satisfaction, madam.”

  The delicacy of her throat moved as she swallowed. “You are challenging me to a duel…?”

  He gave a humorless snort. “Only if that duel were to take place in the bedchamber!”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t flinch from meeting his gaze. She was every inch the haughty and independent Lady Sally Derwent today. “I believe I owe you an apology, my lord. I realize now how my conversation must have seemed to you the other evening. How it must have sounded.” She gave a shake of her head. “I did not explain myself properly, and you were naturally…confused as to my intentions.”

  Nicholas had been more than confused. He had been thoroughly aroused. He was still aroused. He was also very angry. He should have traveled the forty miles back to his estate some days ago, had already made plans to do so immediately following Blackmoor’s wedding. To that end, he had also alerted his estate manager and his mother, who lived in the Dower House on the estate, of those arrangements.

  He had sent a note since informing them he would not be back for several more weeks.

  Because of Sally Derwent.

  His nostrils flared. He did not like having his plans altered. Did not like Sally Derwent for being the reason for having changed them. “This collection of erotica really exists?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Then show it to me.”

  She eyed him uncertainly. “Show it to you…?”

  He nodded. “If it exists, show it to me.”

  Her chin rose. “You doubt my word?”

  “I would doubt the word of any decent woman in Society who claims to own a collection of erotica. Let alone one she says was left to her by her grandmother,” he said with scorn.

  Sally could only assume Oxbridge had not been well acquainted with her grandmother. As the Dowager Countess of Hartford, Lady Sarah Derwent had been indomitable. So much so that few still remembered her from her days as the scandalous Countess of Hartford. The fact she had left her granddaughter a collection of erotica, as well as the means with which to be completely independent of any man or marriage, spoke volumes as to the dowager countess’s character.

  “I am not sure which I find more insulting.” Sally eyed Oxbridge coldly. “That you continue to doubt my word, or your implication I must be without decency to own what is, after all, an historical collection.”

  He shrugged broad shoulders. “Show me this collection, and we can dispose of at least one of those accusations.”

  Sally thought of denying him. Of sending Oxbridge away with one of her grandmother’s famous set-downs ringing in his ears. But then she remembered it had been her own lack of sufficient explanation that had caused this misunderstanding in the first place. He had taken advantage of that misunderstanding, yes, but she was responsible for having created it.

  “Come with me.” She didn’t wait to see if Oxbridge accompanied her as she marched out of the sitting room, through the entrance hall, and then up the wide staircase to where the bedchambers were situated on the second floor—and Oxbridge could make whatever assumptions he liked of that.

  To say Sally had been shocked when she first took receipt of her grandmother’s erotica collection and realized exactly what it was would be an understatement. But once she had seen it…

  Paintings. Books. Statuettes. Sketches. Dozens and dozens of those in separate portfolios. The collection itself was so vast, so plentiful, some of it beautiful, most stirring and arousing, Sally knew it could not continue to be contained within the trunks in which she had received it. At the same time as she knew it was not for the eyes of her father and brothers, or the members of her household staff.

  The solution had been obvious once she thought about it. She had no intention of marrying, and so the bedchamber adjoining the master bedchamber—which Sally had taken as her own—would never be put to use. It was the perfect place, after a sturdy lock had been installed to which only Sally had the key, in which to arrange and display the collection. For her own eyes only, of course.

  Except she was now about to share the collection’s existence with Oxbridge.

  Because he doubted her word. Doubted she was a lady.

  She came to a halt in the hallway, taking the key from the pocket of her gown before putting it in the lock and turning, the satisfying and well-oiled click telling her they could now enter the bedchamber. A bedchamber that contained no bed but instead housed the erotica her grandmother had collected from around the world during the course of her lifetime.

  “You keep the room locked?” Oxbridge drawled.

  Her cheeks felt warm. “And I have the only key, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You will see why in a moment.”

  “Well?” Nicholas taunted as she now hesitated to actually open the door and enter the room.

  He had met the older Lady Sarah Derwent, Dowager Countess of Hartford several times, knew her to have been a formidable and outspoken lady. Which was probably the reason why he could not reconcile the elderly matriarch he had known with a collection of erotica.

  She was not always an elderly matriarch.

  No, obviously not, but—

  Good God!

  Nicholas stood frozen in the doorway of the bedchamber Sally had already entered, his disbelieving eyes flicking quickly from exhibit to exhibit. He had been skeptical as to the existence of the erotica collection. He could be so no longer.

  A large glass cabinet stood on one side of the room. Inside it stood small statuettes of naked men of all cultures and colors. The only thing they all had in common was the engorged and sometimes overly enlarged phallus thrusting out before them.

  A similar cabinet contained plates and other pieces of pottery, lamps and coins, all depicting various sexual acts. Of men and women, woman and women, men and men, and also a combination of both sexes together engaged in acts so carnal, Nicholas felt a heated throb in his already aroused cock.

  There was a table displaying dildos, again of different sizes and colors, made from ivory, glass, alabaster, more abrasive pottery, and all of them perfectly executed to give the appearance—and possibly the feel?—of the real thing.

  Dozens of books were stored behind yet more glass, with one large tome on display, and opened at a page showing a drawing of three men and one woman. The woman was on all fours and entered from behind, while the cock of the second man thrust into her mouth, and the third man had his cock buried in the ass of— Nicholas turned away with a pained wince at the thought of having a cock inside him t
here.

  Everywhere he looked there were sketches and paintings, each showing the many and various ways of enjoying the sexual act. Nicholas had seen similar frescoes in the houses of the demimonde, crudely executed to titillate and stir the desires of the men who frequented such establishments. The erotica in this room portrayed sexual acts. But they were not crude or lewd, rather, they were beautiful in their admiration of the human body and the different pleasures to be found within it.

  Lastly, his attention was drawn to the large painting on the wall over the unlit fireplace. It was of a nude woman lying alone on a four-poster bed, her expression one of euphoria as she lay with her legs splayed and revealing every delicate fold of her pink pussy wrapped about the ivory phallus she was thrusting inside herself, while the fingers of her other hand pleasured the swollen clitoris above.

  A beautiful and familiar blonde-haired woman, her nipples rosy-red from having been stimulated and pinched, the darker blonde curls between her legs wet with her cream, and her eyes the gold color of the nectar taken straight from the honeycomb.

  “My grandmother,” Sally supplied softly as she saw what held Oxbridge’s mesmerized attention and guessed that he believed the woman posing for the portrait to be herself. “I was named for her, and apparently, we were very alike at this age.”

  “Obviously,” he bit out gruffly. “I am guessing this painting was not meant for display in the family gallery?”

  “Doubtful,” Sally acknowledged dryly. “I had certainly never seen it before the collection came into my keeping four years ago. Have you seen enough to understand why I choose to keep the collection behind a locked door?” She had felt compelled earlier by anger and indignation at Oxbridge’s obvious skepticism regarding the collection’s existence, but now that the two of them stood surrounded by the portrayal of the sexual act in its many forms, Sally found herself feeling less than comfortable.

  And aroused.

  It was far too easy, with the man of her fantasies standing in the room beside her, to imagine the two of them together, engaged in one or more of these arousing acts—

  “Yes, I believe I have seen more than enough,” Oxbridge answered her question abruptly.

  “Then might I suggest we return downstairs—”

  “I have seen more than enough to reconsider your suggestion, and instead agree to your sketching me in the nude, to add to your…collection,” he continued huskily.

  Sally’s breathing became shallow as she stared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  “On one condition.”

  It was difficult for Sally to answer him when her mouth was so dry.

  Even more difficult to think when her head was suddenly filled with images of a naked Nicholas Sefton lying on a bed, legs sprawled apart as one of his hands wrapped around the pleasure of the ruddy length of his engorged cock, his balls taut and full to bursting beneath.

  Sally moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “What condition?”

  Nicholas could see that he had surprised her with his sudden acquiescence to be sketched after all.

  How much more surprised would she be once told of his condition for doing so…

  Chapter 6

  “You cannot be serious!”

  As Nicholas expected, Sally was far less sure of herself now they had returned downstairs and were seated together in the sitting room, and she heard his condition for removing his clothes and allowing her to sketch him. “After what I have just seen, I cannot believe your reaction to my suggestion to be one of shock…?” he deliberately mocked, baited her.

  His cock was throbbing more painfully than ever after he’d seen Sally’s collection of erotica. It throbbed for this woman. To possess and claim this woman. But on his own terms, not hers. It would never be on anyone else’s terms but his own.

  Her cheeks flushed, whether in temper or discomfort he wasn’t sure. “I told you, it is my grandmother’s collection. I am merely the guardian of it.”

  “Which you wish to add to with naked sketches of me.”

  “Well…yes,” she conceded resentfully.

  “Then that now makes it your collection.”

  She glared her frustration with his logic. “I merely thought—I only wanted—”

  “Yes?” Nicholas quirked a mocking brow.

  “Your request that I remove my own clothing—”

  “It is not a request, it is a condition of my full cooperation. A not unreasonable one in the circumstances. I will, after all, be displayed in front of you naked for hours on end.”

  Hours without end if he did not soon make love to this woman in all the ways he now imagined. In all the ways she knew so intimately, some only by gazing upon and examining her grandmother’s collection, perhaps, but she did know of them.

  “Tell me, Sally, do you practice often what you so obviously covet?” Impossible for her to deny what had been so obvious, in the way each and every one of those items of erotica had been arranged with such care and admiration. Or the fact she admitted to having the only key to the room, and none of the articles displayed had a speck of dust upon them. Which meant she handled those items often. Caressed them. Possibly even played with them—

  “A lady does not discuss such things with a gentleman.” Her mouth had thinned disapprovingly.

  “No?” He eyed her skeptically.

  She shot him an irritated glare. “You are the only other person, apart from myself and my grandmother, who has ever seen the collection.”

  The knowledge pleased Nicholas, at the same time as it did not succeed in answering his question. “And how many gentlemen have been privileged to share the…fruits of the sexual knowledge you have gained from it?”

  Her eyes glittered. “You have made a condition that I remove an article of my own clothing before each of your sittings for me—a condition to which I have not yet agreed. That does not give you the right to ask questions about my intimate private life.”

  “I asked that you remove another item of clothing before each of my sittings,” Nicholas corrected. “We will agree on the number of items before we begin—gown, camisole, two stockings, et cetera—and the clothing already removed from previous sittings will remain removed.”

  “You negotiate with the slyness of a lawyer!”

  “I am not averse to drawing up a legal contract to this effect, if you wish it,” he assured determinedly. “I also believe my question to be a valid one.”

  Sally could not tell this man, over a dozen years her senior and even more so in sexual experience, how shocked she had initially been by some of the scenes of sexual relations portrayed in her grandmother’s collection.

  Sally’s own mother had died giving birth to her, and so her grandmother had been the only other female in the family available to talk to her of the relationship between a man and a woman. Her grandmother’s collection of erotica proved that lady had not been as forthright with Sally on the subject as she might have been.

  But after four years of looking at each and every item in that collection, of reading every book, Sally’s sexual knowledge was now extensive. On a cerebral level. The only gentleman she had ever fantasized enjoying any of those sexual acts with on a physical level was now seated in front of her.

  “Tell me, which of the dildos is your favorite?” He softly invited the confidence. “Is it the long and thick one at the back of the display? Or perhaps the more slender one next to it that allows for deeper penetration—”

  “Stop it!” Sally stood up, too agitated to remain seated any longer.

  “Or perhaps you prefer a combination of the two?” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “So many toys and not enough hands with which to play with them,” he taunted. “How frustrating for you. I will be more than happy to help out with that once we have reached our agreement.”

  “I said stop it!” Sally glared down at him, her hands clenched so tightly at her sides, she could feel the nails piercing the skin of her palms. “I showed you the colle
ction as a way of convincing you it does exist, and that my interest in wanting to sketch you is academic and not sexual.”

  “You had no desire to titillate and excite me…?”

  “No.” She gave a frantic shake of her head.

  “I do not believe you.” He rose to his feet, towering over her.

  Requiring Sally to tilt her head back in order to look up at him. She felt a shiver of excitement run down the length of her spine as she saw the eyes looking back at her were a dark and stormy green. “I— You are being ridiculous.”

  “Am I?” he mused as he grasped her wrist and pulled her in close against him. So close she could not help but be aware of the hard length of his erection pressing against her mound. “I do not need any added titillation or excitement where you are concerned, have been in this god-awful state of readiness since last we were together. I’m sure you recall I did not take my own pleasure that night?”

  Of course Sally recalled. She remembered everything about that evening, in minute detail. Had even felt disappointed, once she had returned home, that she had not had the opportunity to see or touch the large swell of his cock so clearly outlined beneath his tailored pantaloons. As it was again today…

  “So, I will pose naked for you,” Oxbridge continued. “Allow you to sketch me. And in return, you will remove an article of clothing at the commencement of each of those sittings.”

  “I do not see how that will help…relieve you of your problem.” Her pulse was racing, a fact Oxbridge could not help but be fully aware of when his fingers encircled one of her wrists. Her heart was beating so loudly, he must surely be able to hear that too. And she felt hot, so very hot between her thighs, that he must be aware of it when his body was pressed so intimately against her own.

  “You will relieve me of my problem,” he stated with certainty. “Maybe not on the first day, or even the second, but by the third day, you will be aching to touch me. By the fourth day, the two of us will be so uncomfortable in our arousal that I fully expect our coupling to become almost animalistic in its desperation,” he added with satisfaction.