Chapter 13
Thirteen
“You’re drunk,” her king said.
“And you’re beautiful.” The concubine spilled her wine across the table.
“Am I?” he said, amused.
“I could look at you forever,” she said and closed her eyes.
— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.
They stood outside her bedchamber. She looked at him. He looked at her.
The earl swayed towards her.
For a mere fraction of a second, his eyes widened in alarm. It was as if he had just realized he was standing on the edge of an abyss, about to tumble in. But the moment passed. He retreated, regained his icy equilibrium, squared his admirable shoulders.
He addressed the door behind her, all rigid back and formality now, no hint of the boy about him.
“I am not insensible as to how things might happen between a man and a woman.”
He shifted his gaze from the door to her face.
She wanted all the impossible things. To float in a sea the color of his eyes. To follow him everywhere without his knowing, to become a shield made of shadow. To put her hand to his temple and soothe the pain lurking in the crinkle of an eyelid, to ruffle hairs where silver had overtaken gold.
She might do that last thing. She might touch him. It was not so impossible. He was within reach, a pat on the shoulder or the hand.
No, no, no, never, never, never, don’t, don’t, don’t. She would not make him into a brother. She would not make him into something he was not.
“It has always fallen to my sex to pursue yours,” he said and stopped, but the words hung in the air, incomplete.
“But,” she prompted. She had absolutely no notion what words might come out of his mouth next, and she wanted to hear those words. She could fill her mind with impossibilities later, once she was alone in her bedchamber.
He took a deep breath. “But I have never thought it fair or fitting. Men have physical strength. They make the laws. They hold the pursestrings. They should not give chase.”
She suddenly saw herself running through a forest, screaming with laughter, and him loping after her, his hands reaching for but never quite catching her around the waist. Her breath hitched in her throat.
“They shouldn’t?” Her voice quavered.
“No.” His eyes moved again, went towards the far end of the corridor, and he mumbled, “Not fair.” Then loudly, “Good night, Miss Beasley.”
“Good night, my lord,” she said, feeling lost.
He was waiting for something, so she dipped into a curtsy, and he bowed and was off, away, down the corridor. She watched him recede until he turned a corner to cross over to the other wing, and then she took her candle and went into her bedchamber and closed the door behind her.
Henry did not believe men should pursue women. He didn’t think it was fair to task men with that when they had so many other responsibilities. Instead, it should fall to women to court men.
But women were far more vulnerable and would be criticized if they dared do something a man would be praised for doing. That was the true unfairness. And now Henry expected women to risk the open rejection of their affections, too?
Tonight was not a night for writing of the concubine and her king.
She had gotten out of her clothes and into her nightdress without paying attention. She washed her hands and face. She unpinned and brushed her wiry tangle and wrestled it into a fat, untidy plait with a bit of string at the end. She snuffed her candle and slipped into bed.
But she didn’t sleep. She couldn’t. She tossed and turned. Something wasn’t right with how she was thinking about what he had said, and she needed to sort it out, or she wouldn’t be able to rest.
Because the Henry Delamere she knew would not shirk a duty. And he wouldn’t relish his vanity being petted. He did not like compliments, even those about his honor.
His honor.
Oh.
He had been saying men had all the advantages. That was the thing that was not fair. And it was not fair for someone to use his advantages—wealth and power and strength, et cetera—in courtship.
Susannah burrowed into her pillow. Yes, she understood him perfectly now, and her understanding matched what she knew about him.
She thought of beautiful women like the late Countess of Ashthorpe coming to Bledsoe Park, all those recruits of the marchioness-aunt pursuing the earl, paying court to him.
She flipped onto her back. Henry needed to tell his potential wives his opinion on the matter, or they wouldn’t know what he expected of them.
She sat bolt upright.
He was her employer, and he would not impose on anyone in his employ. He was a lord. He was rich. He was a man. And this was why he would not touch Susannah, kiss her again, tumble her.
She hadn’t been mistaken about the heat between them. He did have more than curiosity about her. He did feel more than friendship. But he would rather be alone and feel himself honorable.
She scrambled out of bed and into the corridor and across the gallery and found herself outside the door she thought was his. She put her hand on the knob and pushed and stepped into a moonlight-streaked darkness even more full of his scent than his study.
Her bare feet sank into a thick carpet. She took her time moving forward. She didn’t want to jam her toe into a piece of furniture and let out an undignified squawk. She made her way to the side of the bed. He was lying there, still.
His eyes were open and looking at her.
“It’s me,” she whispered.
He cleared his throat but said nothing.
She twisted her hands into the front of her nightdress. “You must give me some indication I understood you correctly. You want me here?”
A hand reached out. A hand attached to a naked arm, naked shoulder, naked chest. So much pale, male skin in the moonlight. The hot, silver hand settled on top of her twisting ones.
“Yes,” he said. “Brave girl.”
His hand fell away, but it was only to fold down the counterpane, to invite her into the bed with him.
She got into the bed, marveling at how easy it all was.
“You want me,” she said, half with wonder, half with glee.
He did not answer, but his hand cupped her waist, his thumb drew a circle on her belly through her nightdress.
“I’ve done this before,” she volunteered.
He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort.
His face was in shadow, so she couldn’t even try to read his expression.
His hand slid around her back, cupped her opposite flank, and the strong forearm attached to that hand brought her against him, knocked breath from her lungs, erased all thought from her head.
Because . . . sudden, sharp, forceful. It was a jerk. He had jerked her to him. The most thrilling jerk of her life.
Because he was all warm, naked man. And his warm, naked tallywag was hard and pressed snug between them. His other arm pushed beneath her, went under her, curled over her back, and reinforced his clasp.
“Oh,” she breathed. His nose nudged hers, asking. His breath was hot on her cheek. “Oh.” She sighed.
He must have taken her sigh as agreement because his mouth found hers.
Lips, pliable and yielding but not smooth. A little roughness, a little chapped bit on his lower lip. A prickle at the edges. The taste of port wine.
It was over too soon. It had demanded too little.
This time her mouth sought his, and she explored, kissing the bow of his top lip, so much more pronounced than her own, dipping into the corners of his mouth where a heady saltiness and the stiffness of his whiskers made her bring a hand up to stroke one corner as her own lips busied themselves in the other.
His breathing became a trifle more pressured, more jagged. One of his hands clutched her bottom. His tallywag felt bigger. She rubbed her lips along the bit of roughness on his lower lip and slid her hand between their bodies and touched his hard shaft with the tips of her fingers.
He did not loosen his grip, give her room to grasp him and pleasure him as Ned had once liked.
“Henry?”
It was the first time she had ever said his name to him, and he shuddered, pressed her even closer if such a thing were possible, gave her hand no room to move.
She whispered, “Do you not want me to . . .?”
“I want.” His voice was harsh. “I want to kiss you and hold you. I want to strip this nightrail from your body and do all kinds of unspeakably filthy things to you. I want to make you tremble and claw at me with your fingers and howl my name in ecstasy. But, more than anything, I want to do whatever will make you want to come back to my bed, over and over again.”
“Oh,” she said, even more out of breath than before. Everything he said sounded wonderful to her. But just to be clear—
“You don’t favor a tug on your tallywag, is that what you’re saying?”
“Oh, my God,” he gasped. “Susannah. Did you just call my cock a tallywag?”
“I did,” she said. But cock was better. She thought of a proud, strutting rooster. She rolled the syllable around in her mouth silently. Cock.
“I see,” he said. “No, I don’t favor a tug. Not at this moment. Thank you.”
Oh. She snatched her hand out from between their bodies, but she didn’t know what to do with it, so it fluttered at her side.
“Was that wrong of me to say?”
He rolled on top of her, and a startled Susannah flung her arms around his neck. His face came close to hers again, and he put his lips to her ear.
“Nothing you say can be wrong. Nothing you do can be wrong. Here. With me. You have free rein.”
She liked the weight of him pressing her into the mattress. And she liked his big hardness pressing into her, too, as if it had not been insulted one bit by being called a tallywag. “But—”
“I selfishly did not want to come to my end so quickly, that’s all.” He settled his hands flat on either side of her and pushed himself upwards, away from her, putting space between them. “But if it would please you, tug away.”
She loosened her arms from around his neck and peered down the length of his body.
His chest was beautifully shaped and had a mat of thin, golden hair.
His tal—er, cock resisted the pull of the earth as it arrowed resolutely towards his navel, but his belly was not as flat as she had thought it was.
There was a slightest bit of doming there, under a whorl of light hair.
Her perfect earl was not perfect, and she was the only one—besides his valet and his tailor—who might know.
Oh, the intimacy of it all. Of him, his body, his bed.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I can wait.”
Yes, there was no hurry. They were under a roof, in a comfortable bed, with a closed door between them and the rest of the world. She wasn’t seventeen, out of doors and under the stars with a hasty Ned Greenway who had never once made her howl in ecstasy.
He leaned to the side and stroked a hand over her hip, smoothing the rucked-up folds of her nightdress. “May I remove this?”
No one had seen her completely bare since age six. And now she was old and sagging. But moonlight was forgiving. There were sheets and a counterpane.
And he was naked. She wanted to be naked, too. Fortune favors the bold.
She shivered. “Yes.”
He gathered a handful of muslin and brought it up and over her thighs. She lifted her bottom and raised her arms and tugged on her sleeves, and the nightdress was over her head and off. He tossed it somewhere.
“Ah,” he said, staring down at her breasts.
She would not apologize for her loose flesh. She would not. He had seen her gray hair, he knew how old she was. He could not have had any reasonable expectation of ripe roundness.
She ran her hands down his flanks to his waist—oh, yes.
Her discovery made her giddy. There was maybe a spare inch on either side.
Oh, she wanted to croon with delight over those little bits of softness.
But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even let herself pinch them in case he didn’t like them.
Instead, she just settled her hands there and pulled him towards her.
“Come back,” she said, and he grunted and lowered himself onto her again. Oh, the delicious slide of his hot skin against hers, his cock against her belly.
She nudged his chin with hers. “Kiss me more.”
He did. He lay on top of her and kissed her lips and face and neck, his elbows on the mattress, his fingers in her hair. He even stroked his nose against hers and against her cheek, just as she had imagined him doing.
So much tenderness, so much care, so much attention from him.
In time, he moved and lay at her side, and she turned towards him, and he kissed her and ran his hands up and down her back and squeezed her bottom.
The kissing turned rather randy then. Susannah’s doing, not his.
She was tottering on the edge of something desperate.
She lifted her head and angled her neck and opened her lips and forced her tongue into his mouth.
And he responded with his tongue in her mouth, first melting, then thrusting as he groped at her breasts.
She needed, she needed. She was all restless need. But she needed to tell him.
Instead, she sprawled on top of him, shameless, his shaft prodding indiscriminately at her slit and the crack of her arse. She was greedy, she wanted more of his tongue and lips and desire.
She finally forced herself to take her mouth from his. She was panting.
“I have to warn you I’m not natural.”
His mouth hung open. He was panting, too.
“I—”
“I don’t want you to be disappointed. I can’t . . . complete, so if that’s important to you . . . well, I can’t help it, so perhaps we’d better stop now.”
He blinked. His arms around her tightened.
“Can’t complete?”
“I don’t achieve satisfaction.”
An arm left her back, and his fingers brushed her cheek. “Never?” His eyes were full of feeling.
A laugh erupted from her. “No, not never. I learned how to do it on my own. You needn’t be as sad as all that.”
A tentative twitch to his lips as if he were attempting a smile. “So when a . . . with your own touch, you do?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will touch you.”
I will touch you.
She had thought she knew what she was doing with him, here, in this bed.
She was going to pleasure him, allow him the use of her body. And in return, she would have kisses, his skin against hers, the privilege of watching him unravel, knowing she had done that.
She had thought she knew what she was doing with him.
She had been with Ned, after all. She was a woman of experience.
But she wasn’t, not really, because she had never thought to ask for more, to demand more.
She had thought that was the way of things between men and women.
She had thought it was like the world. Women made sure men got what they needed.
She had thought she knew what she was doing.
She knew nothing.