Hidden Paradise

by Janet Mullany

  “Not nearly as bad as I should, thanks. And I guess I have to thank you for getting me to bed. I’m sorry I was such a mess.”

  He nodded. “My pleasure.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, shit, that came out wrong. I mean, I was glad to be of service.”

  “You’re a knight in shining armor,” she said, touching his arm before she realized what she was doing, amazed that as fully clothed as they both were, the brush of her gloves against his sleeve held such significance.

  He gave a bark of laughter. “Tarnished armor. Where are we going?”

  “I want to see the summerhouse. The boys sent me pictures of it.” As they approached the small building, she heard the murmur of voices. “Oh, Cathy and her husband—I can’t remember his name—are there. They may not want company. I think they’re newlyweds.”

  “His name’s Alan,” Mac said. “Well, well. Looks like a lovers’ tiff.”

  Sure enough, Cathy and Alan stood in the center beneath the domed roof, clearly visible through the arches that formed its construction.

  “I want to go home,” Cathy was saying as Mac and Lou approached.

  Mac took her elbow and drew Lou to a halt behind a bush.

  Alan gazed at the mosaic floor and kicked one of the marble pillars. “Come on, love—”

  “I don’t like it here. I don’t like having to dress up and do what I’m told and not being able to wear knickers, and last night at dinner you paid me hardly any attention at all.”

  “But everyone else did,” Alan said. “You practically had an orgasm over that ice cream.”

  “What?” Cathy shook her head. “I can’t help it if you—”

  “If I what?” Alan advanced on his wife, unbuttoning his coat.

  “Uh-oh,” Mac whispered to Lou. “Make-up sex is imminent.”

  “I think we should go,” Lou said, unable to tear her eyes from Alan and Cathy, now kissing, Alan pushing his coat off and letting it fall to the floor. “Maybe they know we’re here.”

  “So what?” Mac said calmly. “Oh, yeah, here come the titties.”

  Sure enough, Alan fumbled at the drawstring of Cathy’s gown, revealing small pointed breasts.

  “You know,” Lou said, “I’m tired of being a voyeur. Or should that be voyeuse? Twice in two days, and you’re involved both times.”

  Mac’s breath was warm on the back of her neck. Her hair stirred as he laughed softly. “Don’t you like watching people fuck?”

  “Not particularly,” Lou said, but was aware that she wanted to stay and watch this, watch Alan caress and tongue his wife’s breasts, hear Cathy’s soft sighs, and see her head tip back, eyes closed, just as she’d reacted to the ice cream at dinner. Cathy’s nipples had hardened to dark points.

  Alan stepped away and tore off waistcoat and neckcloth—at least, his intentions showed some haste, but unwinding the foot or so of muslin took some time. Cathy meanwhile unbuttoned the front flap of his breeches, pushing them down over his hips.

  “Damn, I don’t think he’s going to undress her,” Mac said.

  “Why don’t you go in there and show him how to do it?” Lou said. “No! I didn’t mean that.”

  “I’m shocked,” Mac said. “I think they would be, too. Hey, it’s oral sex time.”

  “Shut up,” Lou said. “You’re like an annoying sports commentator.”

  Alan pushed Cathy onto one of the stone seats in an alcove of the summerhouse, lifting her legs over his shoulders and burying his face between her thighs. Cathy’s hands gripped the stone and she moaned, her muslin gown folded up around her waist.

  Lou involuntarily squeezed her thighs together. Oh, yes, she remembered what that felt like, the luscious wetness, the sight of Julian’s head bobbing between her spread legs and her pubic hair darkening with his saliva and her own juices.

  “She’s coming,” Mac whispered. “Look at her face.”

  “I can’t. It’s too private.” But she did, and watched Cathy’s head tip back and her fingers clench and whiten on the edge of the stone bench, heard her cry out, her face ecstatic and blank.

  The couple was still for a moment. That moment when Julian’s lips would close on her clitoris in a slow caress of completion, calming the shocks. Sometimes he’d dart his tongue out to slide it inside her, lapping, promising more.

  Alan, breeches now around his boots, stood and lowered himself to penetrate Cathy, his mouth on hers. Taste yourself, Lou.

  Did her breathing hitch as Mac’s did? And then guilt and shame took over: What was she thinking, watching this, and watching this in the company of a man who she barely knew? She’d leave. She’d leave now. No, immediately after they’d finished.

  Alan’s cock slid in and out of Cathy’s pussy, hard red flesh engulfed by glistening pink.

  Lou was still here. But she wouldn’t subject herself to any post-game discussion with Mac. Absolutely not.

  “Look at her cunt,” Mac said softly. He brushed against her. Was it deliberate? Yes, he had a hard-on. The bulge in his breeches stirred her muslin skirts.

  It’s your hormones, she told herself. He wasn’t even someone she liked particularly, or at least knew too little about him to know whether she’d like to know him more. Only hormones. Nothing to do with him, nothing to do with the couple fucking a few feet away, both of them groaning and Alan’s back shining with sweat. Cathy’s hands left the stone, gripped his hips and pulled him, positioned him, her feet digging into his thighs.

  “I love you,” Cathy gasped, and Lou turned her head away, eyes closed. This was too intimate, too painful. Cathy gave that same high cry, followed by a groan from Alan.

  Lou kept her eyes closed. No more. Sunlight filtered by branches formed spangled, shifting patterns behind her eyelids, and scents of cool greenery and distant, subtle flowers overlaid with bergamot and male sweat filled her nostrils. Birds whistled and trilled.

  “So, Lou.” Mac’s voice was a gentle whisper. He brushed against her again and one finger stroked her neck, the leather warm and soft against her skin. “I wonder what you look like when you come.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You wish,” Lou said. Even to herself, it came out as unconvincing, her voice throaty with desire—no, not desire, pollen. Yes, that must be it, those damn oversexed trees jerking off shamelessly all around them.

  “Look, I’m not suggesting we fuck,” Mac said. “Peter and Chris told me about your husband, and I’m sorry. They said you’re pretty fragile. Anyway, we’re not each other’s types and besides…”

  “Besides what?” she asked, eyes still closed. “I know. You’ll be saying next that you like me against your will, against your reason and even against your character.”

  “You’ve got to admit that I’m probably the only guy you’ll ever meet outside your work who can identify an Austen quote when it’s slapped around my head.”

  “Well, that’s something.” She opened her eyes. “So what are you suggesting? Do I possibly have something Viv doesn’t?”

  “Well.” He stepped away from her, hands linked behind his back, and smiled. A friendly, sexy sort of smile that she told herself sternly to ignore. “It’s up to you. We could make out or do…other things. You look really horny and I know I am. No obligations, nothing more.”

  “Or I could walk into Meryton to buy some ribbons.”

  He laughed. “Come on, Lou. Make up your mind. It’s pretty damn uncomfortable in
these leather pants.”

  “You really are a romantic, aren’t you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m honest. It’s about all I can offer you, a bit of no-strings fun. Think of it as a physical necessity.”

  “Even worse. And where do you propose this lovely consummation of honesty and physical necessity take place?”

  He grinned that wolfish grin. “I should tell you that your strict-schoolmarm act turns me on. I love a woman who can use the subjunctive correctly.”

  “Asshole,” she said with more friendliness than she intended.

  “You realize you keep looking at my cock?” He took her gloved hand and placed it on the fall of his breeches.

  Her fingers closed around the hard length pushing against the leather before she could stop herself. “I’ve seen it in action. Remember? And it was certainly on display at dinner last night.”

  “Good thing there was a tablecloth to give me cover,” he replied. He took her hand off his cock and tugged her forward. “How about the summerhouse? Alan and Cathy gave it a test run and it seemed to work for them. Nicely set up, with those stone benches and the view over the lake.”

  “A nice view for whom?” she asked. But she walked forward with him, hand in hand, their feet sinking into leaf mold. “I guess there might be some sort of cosmic balance if someone else watched us.”

  He handed her up the stone steps into the summerhouse.

  * * *

  Mac

  WHAT WAS HE DOING? DESPITE HIS good intentions, it was still his cock driving him forward, to do something he might regret with a woman he didn’t even know and who might not even like him. Same old, same old. He’d look damned stupid if he backed out now, although the temptation to run from her was almost overpowering. He could always take care of things later, alone.

  Her hand was still in his. Naturally, idiotically, they still had their gloves on. Amazing how readily they could fall into their roles, half-crazy with lust but with not a stitch of clothing removed. He cleared his throat.

  “Yes?” Cool as a cucumber, eyebrows raised. Wait, remember her last night, sprawled on her bed and crying, vulnerable, talking nonsense. Did she remember that?

  She removed her hand from his and slowly began to work at her glove, twisting the fingers and easing the fabric from her hand. He watched with all the attention of a teenager in a strip club as she peeled the glove off and fluttered her fingers a little, airing them out. Then the other. It wasn’t meant to be seductive, he was fairly sure of it, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  “Well?” She stowed the gloves in a pocket at the side of her dress. “Don’t tell me you’re turning chicken on me.” She raised her hands and unbuttoned what he thought was part of her gown but was, in fact, a sort of short jacket over it. What was the name of that piece of clothing? He couldn’t remember for the life of him. Pelisse? No, he didn’t think so. Spencer, that was it.

  She folded the garment and laid it on one of the stone benches. Nice to see someone else was scared of Viv.

  He stripped off his own gloves with more haste than elegance, quite unlike her slow unpeel and reveal. There wasn’t room for them in his pants pockets, so he shoved them into his coat pockets and then started the laborious process of shrugging and wriggling the coat off.

  She sat on a stone bench and watched him. “Let’s establish ground rules.”

  “Okay.” Coat off, he removed his waistcoat and sat opposite her.

  “Contact?”

  “What?”

  She rose to her feet and he tried not to shrink back as she covered the space between them in a few swift strides. She pulled at the knot in his neckcloth and loosened it, slipping her hand beneath the folds and loops of muslin to unbutton his shirt. Her fingers fluttered on his chest, cool and gentle. “Who does what to whom?”

  “Kiss me.” His voice was throaty and uncontrolled. Immediately, he was mortified. He’d asked her to kiss him?

  She tipped her head back to look at him, her lips parting. Her bosom, ridiculously high from her stays, lifted a little more as she sucked in a breath. The muslin scarf at her neckline, fine white cotton with subtle shiny white dots on it, parted to reveal a shadow of cleavage. Something was definitely wrong with him, that he was taking note of her clothes and the fabric first, and what lay beneath after. Maybe he’d learned more from Viv than he knew, or else he was about to channel Henry Tilney and advise her on laundry.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “I mean, if you want to, I could, well, I—”

  “Oh, shut up, Mr. Darcy.” She raised herself on her toes. “Your reputation is entirely safe with me.”

  “My reputation?”

  “I won’t let anyone know you succumbed to sentimentality.”

  Her lips brushed against his as she spoke, a gesture that would have seemed almost innocent if her hips had not ground against his erection. Her tongue darted against the corner of his mouth, soft and wet.

  He thought for one shameful moment he was going to explode in his pants.

  He stepped away, loosening his hands from where they’d clamped on to her butt, and cleared his throat. “Yeah, look, we don’t have to—”

  “Yes, we do. I do.” She glared at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m, uh, surprised.” Yes, he was surprised and lustful and a little afraid of this volatile creature. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

  “You want me to spell it out?” She sat on the stone bench again, and propped one ankle on the opposite knee, pulling at the laces of her slipper. It dangled briefly from her foot and fell to the ground.

  Another quick gesture released the ribbon holding her stocking up—not very sexy, these Georgian stockings, with all the allure of a tube sock and much the same shape. She unrolled the stocking and wiggled her toes. And that, somehow, was amazingly sexy. Her toenails were unpainted, her feet and calves muscular and pale.

  A quick flash of white thigh and white petticoat—he remembered her petticoat floating from her last night and the sudden shock of her corseted breasts, round and constrained, almost under his nose—and she started on the other foot. “Come on,” she said, “you wanted to see what I look like when I come. So do something about it.”

  She raised one foot onto the stone seat, turning so she sat sideways, and lifted her skirts. Fabric rustled as she raised skirts, revealing long pale thighs. She ran her fingertip up the inside of her thigh, back and forth.

  Her fingertip slowed.

  He groaned. He couldn’t help it.

  “Do it to me,” she said breathlessly.

  Today she wore a gown that pinned at the front. She undid the pins and laid them carefully aside, one-handed, her other hand on her thigh. The fabric fell, revealing the top of her petticoat and her stays, and she released one breast, pausing to stroke the nipple.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” And he was beside her, having made those few steps across the summerhouse, pulling her skirts all the way up around her waist, loving the way her thighs parted for him, the way she turned to reveal herself to him.

  She made a small, excited sound as he gazed between her thighs, at the tuft of dark blond hair and wet, plumped lips. She could wait a little, he decided. He leaned to take a nipple into his mouth, feeling it swell and harden against his tongue.

  She made a sound of appreciation, of pleasure, and her hips moved slightly in invitation. He hooked her raised leg over his arm and touched her where s
he was wet and warm and her clit was a raised, hard ridge beneath opulent silkiness.

  “Yes,” she said, and reached to adjust his finger a fraction of an inch. “You… Yes.”

  He moved his mouth to her neck and collarbone, then back to her nipple.

  She raised one hand to her bodice and fingered her other breast, and he wondered if she could come like that, if she would come like that, and would he feel cheated? He bit gently on the nipple in his mouth and knew from its sudden swell and her quickened breath that she was almost there.

  Her legs flexed, hard, and she moaned loudly. She was there, she’d gone, her eyes half-closed and he slowed his pace.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “That was so…so sexy.” She smiled at him, all her former tension gone. “And so fast.”

  He loved seeing her so relaxed, her breasts and her splayed legs, unaware of how sexy she looked. Probably. Meanwhile, his cock shoved painfully against his pants. He stood and moved away from her and tried not to look at her.

  She shifted, and her eyes took on her familiar wariness. “What?”

  As much as he wanted release, he wanted to touch her again, take his time, make it even better for her. Suck her nipples and kiss his way down her to bury his face in that gorgeous pussy. He wanted to wring more soft cries of pleasure from her and feel her warm skin heat beneath his hands, but he fell silent. He shook his head and stood, looking at the view over the lake.

  She tucked her breasts away and pinned her gown back into place, but she delayed putting on her stockings and slippers again.

  “We won’t make a habit of this,” she said. “It was one time only, right? It was very nice, but—”

  “Sure.” He tried to keep his voice casual.

  “You’re offended. I’m sorry.”

  “No, no,” he lied. “I know, it’s nothing personal.”

  “How could it be? I’ve known you all of twenty-four hours.”

  “During which time, I’ve undressed you, seen you cry and seen you come.” He knotted his cravat, fished his gloves out of his pocket and walked away from her before he made an even greater fool of himself.