Chapter Nine #3
Her body held curves in every place that it should, her breasts, her hips, the roundness of her stomach.
She reminded him of the sirens in the paintings that he had seen in Paris on a trip taken a year or so before he’d married Gretel.
Erotic, splendid paintings of the sensual form. He had never forgotten them.
She watched him closely, reading his expression, a smile in each corner of her lips. She knew how beautiful she was and did not try to hide it. She stood there in all her glory and lifted her chin.
‘My husband was never pleased with my body shape.’
‘Was he blind?’
‘He liked thinner woman. He thought I was licentious. That was a word he used and I had to look it up to find out the meaning.’
‘Sexually unrestrained?’
‘No, not that. He would certainly not have liked that. I think he leant more to the other side of the word. He did not wish for me to tempt men, is what he said, and made me dress in clothes that were several sizes too big. He said that my body was lewd and that many would find it offensive.’
‘Hardly.’
His hand reached to one breast and he stroked the fullness of it before his fingers fell lower to the curve of her waist and then the shapeliness of her hip.
‘I have scars on my left leg. You have not yet seen those but if I tell you now they will not be such a surprise.’
‘Do you really think I would care?’
She pulled up her petticoat and he looked because she seemed to want him to.
‘How did it happen?’
‘My husband’s telescope fell.’ Words under words. Lionel St Claire had been a bastard. Everything she said made that fact truer.
One hand came across his arm, the small, well-kept nails, unadorned fingers, and smooth skin.
‘You are safe here, Wilhelmina.’
‘I know.’
Removing his jacket, he loosened his necktie and disposed of that as well.
He was a good five inches taller than her and he could see down the front of her petticoat, everything showing.
With care he lifted up a strap and pushed it down over her arm, his mouth falling to her nipple, claiming the largesse and sucking hard.
She took in a breath, quivering in surprise.
Earlier he had been tentative but tonight he was not.
He wanted her to understand the power of sex, not the shame.
His other hand moved down, hiking up the lawn.
Finding the warmth between her thighs, he stopped.
She looked at him then, her golden eyes challenging, her heartbeat faster, the sheen on her skin of pure, damp want.
‘This is your centre.’ He thought she needed the words. ‘This is where women rule men. This is the place of a woman’s potency and a man’s privilege.’
She opened her legs and invited him in.
But not yet.
Moving her back against the wall, he knelt and placed his mouth where his finger had been, tasting the sweetness, lathing his tongue up into the folds, finding her, finding himself.
Softly and without force. It was a quiet path to ecstasy, not a blunt one.
Any wrong move now and she would stop him.
She was like a yearling learning to be broken in.
The minutes lengthened and her fingers clawed into his hair, a growing rigidity in her body, the slick wetness telling him what she needed. One moment or two and he would have her, ripe like a summer fruit. Readied.
He was driving her to madness, every part of her body reaching for that place where nothing mattered, where the room fell away behind tightly shut eyes as she concentrated on what her body was saying. More. More. More. Further. Harder.
And then gone.
She opened her eyes in surprise, breathing fast, barely able to speak, not wanting the end, the slither of red-hot feeling in the pit of her stomach unwilling to let go of what she had been so near to finding.
Delight. Why would he stop? Was that it? Was there not more?
He stood and lifted her easily into his arms and laid her down on the thickly tufted rug in the salon next door, a green room of little furniture but with long curtained windows down one whole side. Stepping back, he removed his shoes and trousers.
The shock of seeing him like that sent shivers of surprise through her. Lionel had looked nothing like Phillip Moreland. He’d been a man with red hair, a fat belly and skinny legs, and his private parts had reflected those characteristics.
Phillip Moreland on the other hand was like an Italian marbled statue and all in perfect proportion, so much proportion in fact she wondered if they would even fit together. That thought made her breathing deeper, because there was a certain anticipation that could not be denied within it.
As he knelt he took her hand and allowed her to feel him, his hardness and his length.
The candles burned in their sconces above this makeshift bed; there were no blankets, no closed doors either.
It was as if he had fashioned a tryst, with all of her needs for delight furnished.
She would not be able to hide and he would let her discover him without shame.
An open, honest pleasure with no time limit, the whole night before them in his empty house.
As he came down beside her she felt the warmth of his body fully along hers, his hands bringing her face to his as he kissed her, more quickly this time before his fingers turned to other places. Her nipples, her bottom, feeling his way around her until she could no longer lie still.
In response she ventured in the same manner across him, stopping as he looked at her.
‘Is this allowed?’
‘Everything is. There is nothing forbidden in any of it. Only choice.’
She licked his throat and tasted salt, and then she sucked his skin in the way he had hers, leaving a red whorl, marking him as hers.
The joy in it was exhilarating. She could play with his body without censure?
Her hands crept lower and she stroked him, his sex moving with each ministration and hardening further.
Power consumed her. Making love was something done together, with consent, with gladness, with the building passion guiding her, letting her know the way.
She wanted him in her, holding him there, and she moved against him as he came across her and opened her legs.
A finger slipped inside, and then another and then his member was pushing up and up until the largeness filled her and she felt him in all the places no one had ever touched before, every nerve inside glowing and reaching and wanting.
Her release came on his final push as they strained together, rigid with passion and never wanting an end.
Paradise.
She had been transported there, the wetness between them attesting to the beauty of it, even as she kept him within.
Lust had a language that was undeniable and wonderful. She could feel neither guilt nor shame nor worry.
Much later she woke in another room on a wide bed with a velvet cover pulled across her and the moonlight slanting in.
He was sitting beside her, watching. He still wore his white shirt, wrinkled now from their exertions, and there was a smile on his face. He looked so much younger like this; gone was the stern aristocrat and in his place was the quieter version of a contented lover.
‘How did we get here?’ She rubbed her eyes and looked around. ‘And where is here?’
‘You are in my bedroom and I carried you up.’
Her petticoat had been removed and her hair fell all around her face, the pins gone.
The memories of the evening rushed in and she felt the blush on her cheeks rising.
They had made love three times after the first at various hours of the night and in different ways.
He was not a prig in the art of sex and she was very glad of it.
She felt sated and sensual and satisfied.
‘Delight was everything I had hoped for.’ She stated this quietly because truth seemed important between them.
The smile on his face broadened. ‘I could say exactly the same.’
Bringing her in against him, she felt his fingers tracing shapes softly across her skin and in the darkness honesty seemed important.
‘My husband was always angry with me, especially after he realised I could not conceive a child.’
His fingers stopped their tracing and rested on her. ‘In all honesty I am probably the same, as Gretel and I tried hard enough to conceive at first. This way there are no complications in our delight, no extra worries. A simple, easy and sensual life. What could be better?’
She began to laugh and the moment between them that could have been terrible was beautiful instead.
‘You do not have a hankering for heirs?’ She asked this gently.
‘I don’t because I already have them in Oliver’s sons. Two estates, two boys and more than enough money to see that Juliette is well provided for as well.’
He sounded as if he genuinely meant it and the emptiness that had always been inside her as a result of her inability to bear a child was filled instead with something else entirely.
Acceptance perhaps and relief. When his fingers began to move again she shut her eyes and enjoyed the feeling until the clock in the corner rang out the hour of four and she knew she should leave before too much longer.
But he turned her into him and this time he was neither gentle nor temperate. No, this time he kissed her in a way that had her accepting everything he was seeking and more.
He had seen her off into his carriage, her clothes, hat and coat all again in place and her hair retied into a knot at the nape. The hour of five was already upon them and to be seen in the daylight hours alone in a coach after an entire night out would be ruinous for any woman.
He could not accompany her, either, for the very same reason.
A hidden affair. An illicit coupling. A sensual escapade that he could barely believe had just happened. He was almost thirty-three and he had never once in all his life felt like this. Breathless. Yearning for more. Wanting it with an ache.