Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN HER NIGHTGOWN , Marjorie dismissed her maid and opened the door to the sitting room adjoined to her bedchamber.
Arthford was sitting on a couch with a book open on his lap. His cravat was untied. “You know, I thought—after you disappeared on me—that I should like it very much if I got to watch you undress,” he said. His voice was deep and dark, like chocolate in the morning.
“Yes, I rather expected that’s what you would’ve wished,” she said. “But this is not just about you.”
“Right.” He stood up. “You hate it, then, don’t you? Undressing for men?”
She leaned against the door jamb there, hovering in the doorway between the sitting room and the bedroom. “I didn’t say that. But I don’t want it to be… I don’t want it to be about just what you want. I don’t want to be your servant. I don’t want it to be a transaction, like you said, where one of us is just pleasuring the other.”
“Mutual pleasuring, you mean?” He closed the book. “I hope that’s what you mean.”
“Yes,” she said, feeling her face heat up. “You’ll grow bored of me sooner or later—”
“You should probably know that I won’t,” he said.
She put her hands on her hips. “Men do.”
“I’m not like other men,” he said, coming closer. “My other mistress, I’ve broken with her. Entirely broken. You’ve eclipsed her in my affections, so, you see, I don’t think I’m going to get bored of you.”
She backed out of the doorway, unsure how she felt about his saying that.
“Probably shouldn’t have mentioned her,” he said, coming into the doorway. “It’s only that she was important to me. I seem to latch onto one woman, and there’s only space for one. And I seem to latch on very hard to women who don’t want me to do it. She didn’t want me, and you don’t want me either, I see, so it would likely be better if I could get bored. But I shan’t.”
“I want you, Simon,” she said softly, and she collided with her bed, because she had been backing up without looking where she was going.
“So you say,” he said. “But I think it’s much more likely that you’ll be the one growing bored with me.”
She shook her head. “I…”
“I want you as my wife, not as my mistress, but if that’s all I can have, that’s what I shall take.”
“Yours,” she whispered, thrilling to the idea of it, of being his, but also feeling something inside her shy from the idea. She did not wish to be his, not if it meant she was not free.
“If you are my mistress, then you may indeed grow bored with me. Promise you’ll tell me when you do. Don’t string me along. And also… I don’t want to share. If you want another man, you end it with me. Please?”
She sat down on the bed. “Well, I don’t want to share you either, then.”
“That goes without saying,” he said. “I don’t want anyone besides you. Did you not hear me saying how I can’t even feel a thing for my old mistress anymore?”
“Look, my not wanting to get married, it’s not about you.”
“I don’t need you to do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Try to soften the blow. Make it sound as if you’re just being reasonable or something, that it’s beyond both of our controls, that kind of thing. I know that if you really wanted me, you would just accept me.”
“No.” She glared at him. “No, it’s far from that simple. I do want you. I’ve never wanted anyone until you. So, stop acting as if I’m rejecting you.”
“It’s only…” He sat down next to her on the bed. “I want children.”
She stood up. “What?”
“Well, all right, then,” he muttered.
She put both of her hands on her stomach. She had never thought about children, except in a very abstract way, not in a way that really involved her. It was ridiculous. She had a destroyed reputation. She was never going to get married. She didn’t even want to get married. No point in thinking about it, really. “You wouldn’t want someone like me to have your children.”
“I would, but I’m not interested in forcing something like that on someone, obviously. Childbirth can be rather dangerous, and it’s a lot to take on. I can well see why you wouldn’t wish it.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m not sure speaking of children before two people engage in, er, this, is particularly the sort of thing that gets anyone in the mood for it.”
She laughed softly, thinking of him gazing at her—just like that—saying he wanted her to be the mother of his children, and something lurched inside her. “Oh, I don’t know,” she whispered. “I really don’t.”
His expression softened as he looked at her. “Let’s stop speaking of this. I’m not going to talk you into it. I don’t even wish to. I think what I’d rather do is earn it.”
“Earn it?” she said. “I have told you, there is no lack within you, nothing you must needs overcome—”
“Perhaps not,” he said. “But I think I could do better at, well, everything, if I set my mind to it.” He lifted his hand and beckoned to her with two fingers. “Come closer.”
She took a step closer.
“I’m going to lift your night dress, unless you stop me,” he said.
She grinned. “Well, all right. I shan’t stop you.”
“Good,” he said, taking handfuls of the fabric and bunching it up and he bared her knees and then her thighs. “Nothing beneath, I see. I approve.”
She giggled.
He bared the apex of her thighs and leaned in and kissed her.
She gasped. He’d said that thing about using their mouths before, but she hadn’t really thought that he was going to…
He settled down in front of her, on his knees. He kissed her there again, longer, differently. Now, he was using his tongue over the outside of her cunny, lapping at her there, again and again, until the lips covering her clitoris parted under his ministrations and he was licking her right there .
She sank her hands into his hair and held him in place.
He chuckled wickedly against her.
It felt lovely, and she shivered as the sensations worked through her. She shut her eyes and noisy breaths leaked out of her mouth and then moans and groans as the pleasure deepened, winding its way through her, making her pelvis tighten and expand.
Her legs started to shake, and he pushed her back onto the bed, though he remained on the floor. She lay on her back with her thighs parted and his head between them, his mouth between them.
It seemed the most lusciously wanton thing in the world, and his tongue was so very clever and soft and wondrous. She basked in it, thinking of asking him to do this again, thinking of his coming to call upon her in her sitting room. She imagined going over to him as he sat near the tea service and ordering him to lift her skirts and pleasure her with his mouth. She imagined him smiling at her impishly and saying he was hers to command, and her climax began to mount.
Now, she was riding two dual realities—this one and the pretend one—and they intertwined together like a vine wrapping tighter and tighter as it climbed a tree trunk.
She imagined Arthford saying that thing he’d said to her before, when they had first been together. I like your much-desired cunny. I like to think how many men have wanted to touch it.
And then he went on, in her fantasy, speaking against her, somehow able to use his tongue to pleasure her at the same time.
I wonder how many of them would have liked to lick your cunny, Marjorie. But it’s only me who gets to taste you, only me who gets to lick you. I like to think of all of them, jealous, because I am the only one who’s ever put his mouth to you here.
And then she crested in a harsh, tight series of ecstatic clenches, sobbing out his name like an oath.
He lifted his mouth. “Did you…?”
“Yes, oh, yes,” she panted.
He climbed onto the bed next to her.
She rolled close to him, gasping, with her eyes closed. “That… that…”
He kissed her mouth, and she clung to him.
He pulled back. “Now, you see, if you marry me, you could have that every single night.”
Her eyes snapped open. “You wouldn’t do the same for your mistress?”
He grinned.
“You like it, then?” she said. “You like being on your knees between my thighs.”
“Adore it,” he growled. “I love worshiping you, like you’re a goddess. I loved it when you grabbed my head and held me there. I might enjoy being a bit, erm, debased. I wish to serve you, Marjorie.”
“Serve me on your knees,” she said, grinning, enjoying that very much.
“Push me onto my knees any time you’d like and make me do it,” he said.
“Truly?” Her grin was widening.
“ Yes. ”
“You have to teach me how to return the favor,” she said, sitting up. She went for the falls of his trousers.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“I know that,” she said. “But I don’t like this earning business, not at all. The last thing I want is to be a burden on you.”
“What? Who said you were a burden?”
“Well, a responsibility, then. I’ve been a damned responsibility my whole life. Someone has always had to take me on—my father, my nephew, and now you are angling for the job, but what is it you’ll wish from me in return?”
“It won’t be that way. I thought we decided that things weren’t going to be transactions.”
“Exactly. No earning me, then.” She had his trousers undone now. She reached inside to find him, and there he was, just as thick and curved and hard as before. She smiled when she saw him. “There you are,” she found herself whispering. “Even bigger than I remembered.”
“Oh, damnation,” he groaned.
She looked up at him, embarrassed. “Apologies, I didn’t—”
“I should apologize,” he said. “You don’t have to fawn over the size of it. I should never have encouraged you to do that.”
“Why not?”
“I feel as if I took advantage of you, corrupted you in some way.”
She giggled. “Oh, is that what this has done to me?” She wrapped her hand around the girth of him. “Have I been corrupted by your very large prick?”
He groaned again.
“Such a terrifyingly huge and corrupting thing you keep in your trousers, Your Grace,” she breathed. “Perhaps it needs a bit of soothing.” She kissed the head of his cock.
He let out a noisy breath.
“I shall tame it, then? Tame it with kisses?”
“Oh, dear Christ, you…”
“No?”
“Please, do whatever you wish in that regard,” he huffed.
So, she kissed it again. This time, she licked him a little. He tasted like salt and skin and somehow like home, though she couldn’t quite make sense of that last one. She licked him this way and that way, and he grunted.
She looked up at him again. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Whatever you’re doing is quite good,” he said thickly. “You really don’t have to—”
“Show me how to do it, though?”
“I don’t know that there’s anything really to it,” he said.
“Well, if you want me to try anything besides what I’m doing…”
“You could… put more of it in your mouth. But you don’t have to. And if I—”
She slid her mouth all the way down to the hilt of him and he let out a little cry.
She liked that, actually, having a mouthful of him. It was a little bit uncomfortable at the back of her throat, but he fit fairly nicely. She made a little questioning noise.
“Move,” he gasped. “Up and down but—”
She started doing that, and then he didn’t say anything else intelligible, not for some moments.
For her part, she found it rather nice, like kissing, only involving more areas of the sensitive parts in her mouth. When he pulsed or reacted, it was all the more exciting.
He tried to stop her at some point, but she didn’t want to stop, so she kept at him. He seemed still unable to make coherent words.
So, she was a little bit shocked when he spent in her mouth.
But she had him tucked nearly down her throat, so it was easy to swallow his release away. She did that, and then kept sucking him, and he swore at her, and tore her mouth off of him, telling her that was far too much.
She was pleased with herself.
She lay down next to him, looking down at his body, his entirely clothed body, with just his prick sticking out, growing softer and softer as she peered at him.
She liked the idea of having mastered him so easily.
“Fuck,” he said. “That was an epic failure.”
She sat up. “Was it? You mean for me or you, because I’m feeling that I did rather well.”
“Oh, for me, obviously. You… yes… very well.”
She lay back down next to him. “You did very well, too, you know.”
“No, I had intentions of actually, you know, having you.”
“You think you didn’t? Do our mouths not count?”
He grinned at her. “You’re right, I’m being ridiculous, am I not?”
“I should like it if you were wearing less clothing, I think,” she said. “I should like it if I were wearing less clothes. Let’s undress and get under the blankets, and I want to be pressed up against you, with your arms around me, yes? Please?”
“Yes,” he said in a gravelly voice.
So, they did that, and she soon found herself snugly against his bare chest as he ran his large male hands up and down her back. She was happy. Really happy. Happier than she’d felt in some time.
It was odd, wasn’t it, how good it felt to belong to another person. Why was it that sometimes it didn’t feel good, however? Why was it that sometimes, it was only a prison?
She hadn’t realized she said it out loud.
But his hands stopped moving against her, and he said, “Oh, well, I think it’s a different thing to belong to someone or to belong with someone. One tends to imply a lack of consent or agency, don’t you think?”
She buried her face in his skin. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud! Obviously I don’t belong to you or with you.”
“No?” he said, resuming his rubbing of her. “You don’t wish to belong with me, Marjorie? I have to admit I rather like the thought of it, of you and I belonging together. But I suppose I don’t want you to belong to me, not as if you are a possession.”
“You said you wished me to be your duchess.”
“Well, I only meant…” He considered. “It is a bit of possession, isn’t it, sort of? It’s just a nice sort of possession, though. I think.” He was quiet. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not, and maybe it doesn’t have much to do with free will either. I don’t feel as if I choose it, really, belonging to women. I feel like it just happens to me, without my consent. One day, I wake up in love, and I don’t seem to have any choice over who it is I fall in love with.”
She felt that like a barb. “You’d choose someone else if you could.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” He sighed.
“I’d rather not feel it at all,” she said. “It’s frightfully inconvenient, if you wish to know the truth.”
He sighed. “I see.”
She sighed. “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.”
It was quiet.
She tried again. “We both seem to be wounding the other, don’t we? I think both of us would like to be desired by the other, and the thing is, I think we both do desire the other person, we just sort of feel as if it hasn’t exactly been a choice on our parts. The desire sort of came for us and took us over, both of us.”
He nodded, tightening his grip on her. “It’s always that way. If there weren’t some aspect of that in it, some bit of out-of-control-ness, it wouldn’t have the fire it needs, I don’t think. And it wouldn’t feel quite as good. There needs to be some element of that. But we do have choices, of course. It’s not as if we can’t hold ourselves back at all. If you really don’t wish to see me again, you never have to, you know?”
“I wouldn’t say that!”
“Good,” he said. “Because it would break my heart.”
“Well,” she said with a shrug. “What if we don’t choose, then? What if we just… surrender?”
He turned to look at her, brushing her hair away from her face. “Surrender, hmm?”
“Well, thus far, it’s very nice to surrender to you. It feels quite good, and I’m ever so happy, and I think being in your arms is the most perfect of places to be, and why am I fighting it? What am I truly afraid of?”
“I don’t know, Marjorie, but I suppose you haven’t exactly had an easy time of it with men. It would make sense you wouldn’t trust any of us.”
“But I want to,” she said. “I don’t want to be closed off from this, if this is good. I want to try it.”
“Are you certain?”
“Positive,” she said. “Let’s just be engaged, then. Let’s just say we’re going to do it.”
“You don’t seem certain.”
“Well, I’m not, I suppose. It sounds terrifying. But you know, I used to be afraid to go down the stairs in this house without a lamp, because I was certain that there were evil demons and beasties hiding in the corners, shrouded in shadow. And you know how I got over that fear? By going down the steps without a lamp.”
“Good point,” he said. “All right, then. Let’s just be engaged, then.”