Chapter 5 #2
“What do you want, darling?” he murmured against her mouth, as if he could sense her restlessness.
“You.” She pressed her hips against his. She could be shameless, here. He wanted her; it was clear in the firm coax of his mouth, the weave of his hands over her hair and back, the hard press of his arousal against her thigh. It was a kind of madness, how she wanted to devour him.
“I want to touch you,” she whispered against his cheek.
“You may.”
She loved the low rumble of his voice, his breath catching, saying he was affected by her. He might have had dozens of women, but in this moment, he was hers.
She mapped his chest with her hands, all the fabrics and textures.
Her gloves were long gone, back in the Peacock Room with her shoes and modesty.
She plucked his cravat pin from the crisp folds and pinned it to her own robe, near the clasp at the shoulder.
If she put it anywhere else, it would be lost in the dark, and she’d seen him wear the ruby jewel more than once.
She unwound the long length of linen from his throat and then slid her hands around his neck, warm, firm, as strong as the rest of him.
He kissed her all the more voraciously, as if he were glad to be in her hands.
She had never touched a man. Never thought about it.
In the dark, her hands were her eyes, while the music and his ragged breath filled her ears.
He smelled of smoke and sandalwood. She pressed her lips to his throat and reveled in the way he sucked in his breath.
He dragged his hands all over her, down her spine and legs, squeezing her buttocks and the backs of her thighs, as if he, too, wanted to touch her everywhere at once.
Effie unbuttoned his coat, then his waistcoat, and pushed the stiff layers of fabric away.
He wore no padding. She slid her palms down the front of his shirt, catching her breath in wonder.
He was all solid muscle, curves and ridges, like the ancient Greek statues they had sketched in drawing classes at Miss Gregoire’s.
Miss Gregoire did not believe it would distress young ladies to know what a man looked like beneath the layers of fashion.
Effie wished she could be Psyche and lean with a candle over her love so she might drink in his beauty.
She was being foolish. He was not her love. He was her willing partner in her first sensual encounter, and that was all.
She tugged his shirt free from his trousers and slid her hands inside the hem. He jolted as her palms scraped his skin.
“You are like my cat,” she murmured. Lean, muscular grace, she meant. “Only not as furry.”
She raked her fingertips across his belly, downward, and his manhood surged against her. “My lady.” He moved his mouth to capture her earlobe between his lips. A molten arrow shot down her spine to that place between her legs, fanning the fire.
“I want to call you by your real name,” he whispered.
No. If she were not Effie in his arms then she could not be blamed later for being here, doing this with him.
Kissing Jay was not Effie’s doing, not Effie the good girl, her mother’s pride, the most decorous of Sir Porten’s daughters.
She was Erato now, a siren risen from the sea, a mermaid who had chosen her human lover and meant to have her way with him.
“You are Hephaestus,” she said. “And I am Erato.”
She pushed up his shirt and lowered to her knees before the bench where he sat so she might bend and kiss his chest. He tasted of mace and salt.
She swept her tongue over the curve of his pectorals, across the ridges of his ribs, down his belly.
He was broader through the chest than the models they had sketched, more solid, simply more.
She wanted all night to map all the slopes and planes of him, the bands of muscle and the places where he was vulnerable, like this line of smooth skin right above the waistband of his trousers.
The hard ridge of his arousal strained at the fabric, and she searched for the fastening, eager to discover all of him.
“Erato.” His voice was rough as stones tumbled by the tide. He caught her hand, and while she sensed he stared at her, she was glad he could not read her face in the shadows.
“You should know,” he said, “I hope to be married as well.”
Her fast-beating heart wheeled and then swooped like a swallow falling from the sky. He belonged to another. He was not hers.
“Shall I stop?” she asked, barely managing the words.
“I only—hmm.” He made an odd sound, a small rumble in this throat. “I want to be here. With you. But is it strange I should feel I am betraying her?”
Effie did not feel she was betraying her cousin. He’d entirely faded from her mind.
“Because you want to marry her,” she said, her lips numb.
A huge hand reached into her chest, squeezing all her tender organs.
He wanted someone else, this unnamed, unknown woman, and what was she, Effie?
A slide of shadows, a pair of hands and lips in the dark.
This time with him meant everything to her, and he would put it from his memory when they were done.
Unless she ensured he never forgot her.
Jay slid his hands into her coiled hair, fingers pressing her scalp. “You are so remarkable,” he said, his voice low and sultry. “You deserve to be worshipped.”
She did. She did. And she never would be. Effie caught back the sob that threatened to choke her.
“Go to your lady tomorrow,” Effie said, pressing a palm to his chest. “But have me tonight.”
His answer was to lean his head back against the wall and give himself over to her.
She felt like an explorer mapping a new continent, determined to find and claim the prize.
But a new despair drove her, too. This time was stolen from the run of their ordinary lives, a secret in the dark that neither would speak of.
A treat stolen from the banquet that, in guilt, they could never confess they had devoured, even if the appetite was too powerful to be denied.
His hands sketching designs on her shoulders, threading through her hair, made her feel bold and wanton. Perhaps he ached like this, too. For her, and not that other.
Effie parted the button of his fly and found the opening in his small clothes, and then the prize was before her.
Nothing like the small inchworm that had curled between the legs of their drawing models.
This was a spear. Effie rolled him in her hand, analyzing the texture, the velvet skin over the hard length like nothing she’d ever known. Jay hissed, and elation filled her.
Heddy, who had more knowledge of such things than anyone else of Effie’s acquaintance, had told her what men liked above all else. They begged it of their mistresses and women they bought in the streets. It reduced them to jelly, made them a woman’s slave.
She didn’t want Jay her slave. But she wanted him shuddering with passion and longing. For her. She wanted him overcome by the pleasure she gave him.
She leaned toward the velvet length of him and licked.
He clenched his hands into fists, catching the back of her gown. She slid her lips around the tip of him and his back arched. His cock moved of its own accord, eager, swelling in her mouth.
Oh, yes, this pleased him. This was the way she could claim him. Be special. Would his little wife give him the forbidden kiss?
She didn’t know what she was doing, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Jay sucked air through his teeth as she curled her tongue along the length of him, sliding him in and out of her mouth.
His entire body was rigid, like a bow strung taut.
She feasted on him and his ragged murmurs fanned her sense of power, along with the aching hollow between her legs.
Moisture dripped there. She didn’t care.
She stroked with her fingers what wouldn’t fit in her mouth—he was so big—and the tender pouch beneath.
His hips bucked off the bench, as if he teetered at the edge of restraint.
She loved that she drove him to such wildness.
“Erato.” He tugged at her hair with his fists. His voice was a hoarse rasp. “I’m going to spend in your mouth if you don’t stop.”
She wanted him to. Heddy had told her how it went. Jay was raw and wild and hers, wholly, and if she took all of him then it was as good as leaving a brand. Some part of him would belong to her, no matter what happened next.
She leaned into him and sucked harder. His chest heaved.
He reached between them and closed his hand around hers, pinching her fingers around the base of his cock, and then his hips bucked again as he filled her mouth and surrendered.
He tasted briny and sweet, like an oyster, and her body pulsed with want as she cradled her mouth around the throb of him and knew he was hers, hers, hers.
She smacked her lips and smiled, raising her head. She thought his eyes fluttered open.
“You,” he said hoarsely.
She almost crowed with triumph. Me.
She wished she had let him use her name, so he might say it in that rasp of wonder. Of satiated delight.
He surged toward her like a beast emerging from its lair, like a sleeping giant waking from the earth. His hands swept down her back to her bottom, lifting her. “My turn.”
“Your—what?”
“I get to kiss you now.” He laid her back on the bench in one fluid glide, hovering over her, his thigh pressing against hers, a thrilling shadow of solid flesh. His lips hovered over her throat. “Do I get to kiss you now?”
“I sup-pose you may,” she stuttered.
It had been thrilling to touch him, to be the one directing the scene.
But now he had taken charge of her character and Effie was no longer herself.
She was some new creature emerging from Effie’s shell, a selkie rising from the sea and shedding her seal skin to reveal a woman beneath, a woman remade with the pulse of passion and the heat of Jay’s kiss.