Chapter Twenty
When Eden had imagined sleeping beside a woman, he’d pictured her snuggled in his arms, using his chest as a pillow, pretty and peaceful as an angel.
This was not the tableau that greeted him at five in the morning, when he awoke with a stiff neck, nearly dangling off his side of the bed.
Tha?s was no angel. She was a thief.
One who was sprawled on her stomach across the mattress like a climbing vine taking over a wall, with one leg flung over his calf, the other scissoring off the bed, and her arm nearly crushing his neck.
And she snored.
Loudly.
It was so absurd he might laugh were her arm not pressing down painfully on his windpipe.
He wriggled out from under her, trying not to rouse her but also not so committed to her sleep that he was willing to suffocate.
She stirred, mumbled some incoherent curse, stretched out even wider to fully colonize the space he’d wriggled out of, and promptly went back to snoring.
It was reassuring to see her in so ungainly a pose. A reminder that as alluring as he found her, she was a human being, not a goddess. Which was heartening, after the way he’d humbled himself before her last night.
Through no fault of her own, of course.
She’d been so kind in the face of his mortification and so confident in her belief she could alleviate his affliction. And when she’d urged him—helped him—to release before he slept, it had felt like an invitation to surrender.
He didn’t have to hide from her. He could come to her for mercy.
He wished he had not resisted her for so long. He’d wasted a week hiding his hindrance. Now that his problem was in the open, he felt lighter—grateful that he had a woman like Tha?s who knew how to help him, and eager to try the remedies she’d suggested.
He was most intrigued by her assertion that he could make a woman sweat using his mouth and fingers. He imagined a woman—Tha?s—as desperate for his touch as he was for hers. God, how proud he’d be of himself if he could accomplish that. This was what he wanted to be able to give his wife.
And to learn how, he had to face his fear of failing and ask Tha?s for help.
He would stop hiding behind chaste lessons in courtship—lessons that, if he were honest, he didn’t really need—and summon the bravery to trust Tha?s with his body and his fears. To teach him how to be the lover he wanted to be to his woman.
He left Tha?s to sleep and went downstairs.
As Elinor would be arriving in a few hours, he went around the house and tidied up. Tha?s had left her playing cards and furniture brochures and letters scattered about the parlor. With any other person this messiness would annoy him, but he felt oddly charmed by it. Tha?s’s chaos was like her complaining and her cursing: things he shouldn’t like but did.
He changed the sheets in Tha?s’s room so Elinor would have fresh linens and left a note for Hattie to dust and sweep the parlor. Then he retreated with his tea to his study, enjoying the peace of the sunrise.
Until the cocks began to crow.
Tha?s was not wrong about the roosters here. They seemed louder and redder and more truculent than was typical of their kind, crowing deep into the morning and pecking ankles whenever they had the chance. They reminded him a bit of Tha?s.
He heard stomping upstairs, then heavy footsteps on the staircase. “Alastair!” Tha?s called. “Go outside and kill those birds.”
He rose and stuck his head out the study door. She was wearing his nightshirt and nothing else.
“Go upstairs and dress, please, before Hattie sees you.”
“Legs aren’t anything Hattie hasn’t seen before. She has a pair of her own, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Yes, but I doubt she’s seen many sisters wearing their brother’s nightshirt. Let alone half-dressed ones.”
“I will if you come upstairs with me,” she said.
“I’m busy.”
“You haven’t had your morning session.”
“What session?”
She made a crude gesture at her groin. “That session.”
“Absolutely not. Hattie will be here any moment.”
“Then you’ll have to be quiet.”
“You’re being ridiculous. Go get dressed.”
“Would you rather do it tonight, with Elinor in the next room?”
He’d rather sleep in the henhouse.
“Elinor is not to know we’re...”
“What else do you suppose Elinor will think is happening here? You paid twenty-five thousand pounds for my services cleaning your fire grate? Driving your coach? Teaching you Latin? Of course she’ll know.”
He reckoned it had been unrealistic of him to think he could avoid the truth. Tha?s would be sleeping in his bed, after all. And after last night, he preferred it that way. He didn’t want to sleep without her.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m being foolish.”
“Come upstairs, love. You’ll be wanting a bit of satisfaction before you have to spend two nights beside me depriving yourself of my favors.”
Given he had skipped his morning ceremony, perhaps there was merit in this idea. He would certainly not engage in any sexual activity with Elinor under his roof. Though, with Tha?s in his bed, it would be a form of light torture to keep his appetites in check.
“You’re indulgent with me,” he said.
“You get what you pay for.”
He followed her back up the stairs and to his room, where she had left the bed a nest of tumbled sheets and blankets.
She closed the door behind him, locked it, pulled his nightshirt off and dropped it on the floor.
His nerves instantly gave way to desire.
So much desire.
It made him pant just to look at her.
“Let’s play a game,” she said. “No touching me, or me you. You can gaze upon me all you like while you touch yourself. I want to see how you do it.”
This, at least, he was an expert at. But the act was so personal. He’d never once imagined, before her, that there could be anything but embarrassment in letting someone watch.
Trust her, he reminded himself. She’s here to help.
And looking at her, naked and beautiful, he wanted a frig powerfully.
He slid his breeches to his thighs and pulled his cock out.
“Nice staff you have there,” Tha?s said. “I like them thick like that. Hits the cunny good. Though, you’ll have to be careful with your virgin. Make sure she’s nice and ready so you don’t make her sore with what you’re swinging.”
The idea of Tha?s liking the shape of his penis made him even harder. He could scarcely make sense of what she said about a bride because all he could think about was what it would be like to be inside Tha?s. My God, her cunny.
The word sent desire crashing through him. His cock trembled, and he mindlessly reached down and gave it a blessed tug. He was already close.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” Tha?s said. “But do you usually do it with your breeches still on?”
He snapped back to attention. “Er, no. Usually in bed, when I wake up.”
“Then let’s have you do it that way.”
He stripped and sat on the bed. She continued to stand where she was.
“You aren’t joining me?”
“Better view from here. For both of us.”
God, she was really going to watch this. He was really going to let her.
He sat back against the headboard to get comfortable, then slid his hand up and down his shaft with a loose grip, not taking his eyes off Tha?s.
Tha?s’s breasts, specifically.
He fought the urge to yank his cock in a few firm grips and let the peak rip through him there and then. But no. He would control himself, enjoy this view for as long as he could last.
Seeing where his eyes were, Tha?s ran her hands over her breasts, tracing the shape of them.
“Feels good,” she said. “It will feel better when it’s you touching them.”
He stopped moving his hand, knowing that if he didn’t take a break he’d burst.
“Don’t torment me,” he said. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself.
When he reopened them, she was smiling at him indulgently. “You’re awfully handsome, Eden,” she said. “I like to look at you.”
He didn’t much think about his appearance, but it was gratifying to hear that she didn’t find him wanting. “Thank you,” he said.
“Back to it,” she said. “It’s all right if it’s quick. This is purely for my education.”
“I want to enjoy it,” he admitted.
“I want you to as well. But you can’t enjoy it if you don’t do it at all. Have a stroke.”
He positioned his hand in the way that he liked—the way that was so familiar—and tightened the grip. Keeping his eyes on her, he began to have himself in earnest.
He focused on the up-and-down motion, letting the anticipation flow through his belly, his nipples, his limbs.
“That’s it,” Tha?s murmured. “You like a long, slow stroke, aye?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Would you do it faster, if I weren’t here?”
“I might. Depending on my mood. Some days I—” he stopped talking for a second to catch his breath “—some days I prefer to linger. Like now.”
Despite this desire, the sensations were becoming more urgent. And he was dying to touch under his balls.
Fuck it, he would.
He gripped them with his left hand and used a finger to put pressure between his thighs and gasped at the heightened sensation.
“Ah, yes,” Tha?s whispered. “You like that, indeed. I’ll keep it in mind when I have my way with you.”
At the idea of her fingers providing this pressure for him, he nearly choked.
He quickened his pace, gripping harder. He was moments away, and he’d dragged it out as long as he could stand to and—
He heard the door open downstairs.
Hattie.
He dropped his cock, horrified that if she’d come a few seconds later she might have heard him.
Tha?s shook her head. “Don’t stop,” she whispered. “You need this.”
He did need it. Without the stimulation of his hand his cock pulsed painfully in the air, screaming for relief.
He had to finish.
He just had to be utterly, utterly silent.
He put his hand back to his dick and squeezed his balls. He felt it deep behind his groin.
“That’s it,” Tha?s coaxed, so quietly her words were barely perceptible.
He yanked the bloody hell out of his cock and felt a bolt of something so powerful he nearly screamed.
But he couldn’t.
And the effort not to make a sound made it even more intense.
He shook and rocked as wave after wave of pleasure gripped him. He felt almost attacked by it. The bed creaked as his hips bucked, but he couldn’t help it. He took a pillow, buried his face in it, and groaned as softly as he could.
It took a full minute until he was fully spent.
He lay sprawled and limp and exhausted. Tha?s was smiling at him, looking downright proud.
Silently, she brought him a cloth to wipe himself clean.
And then she bent over and kissed him on the lips.
“That made me hot between my legs,” she whispered. “I can’t wait for you to touch me.”
He reached out to cup her arse, but she stepped away.
“Not yet, Alastair. I can’t promise I can be as quiet as you can.”