Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Marco was eager to continue but forced himself to pause.
He felt absolutely certain that if Alice had any feelings of disquiet about him touching her, she would have voiced them, but he still felt like he needed more verbal permission from her.
He did not want to push her further than she was willing to go.
He looked down at the soprano on the stage, singing lustily about her paramour while thinking about what to say.
He turned his head slightly to the side and leaned closer to her, so his words would fall against her ear.
Her soft auburn curls tickled his nose when he asked, "Are you enjoying everything about the performance this evening, Alice? "
Before she could answer, he raised his hand to caress the flesh below her hip. She sucked in a breath at his touch and shifted slightly so her lower body was angled more towards him, but her torso stayed facing the stage. It was clearly meant as encouragement.
“Shall I continue?” Marco asked, his fingers beginning a slow but deliberate trace of her skin.
“I would like you to continue, please,” she said without turning her head.
The soft but firm ‘please’ sent a shiver down Marco’s spine.
He fought back the instinct to grip her harder.
He wanted to leave his mark on her perfect skin, to brand her as his.
The feeling was so overwhelming that he could not speak.
Only when he was sure he would not do something shocking did he continue.
“You mentioned your previous kisses were nothing like mine,” Marco whispered, trying not to growl out the words when he thought of another, even a boy, touching her in any way. ”But I wonder. How did you learn to do it so well if you had never been properly kissed?”
He had wanted to know the answer to that question for three days.
Her kisses had been confident and sensual, nothing like an untired miss would offer, at least not a society miss.
He had driven himself mad, wondering who had taught her to part her lips and allow a man's tongue to enter her mouth.
Who had taught her to gently nibble a man's bottom lip until he felt he could take no more.
“Maids often gossip, Marco. They share stories of their own and of what they have seen. Even the young ones are often called upon to help support ladies in their confinements and even assist with births when necessary. Servants know far more than society ladies," Alice whispered.
Marco pondered this and felt it was the truth.
He had often overheard the girls in his factory gossiping together about the boys they would be meeting after their shift.
He felt a strange rush of affection, imagining young Alice among them.
He wondered if she would blush to hear those tales or if she would lean in eagerly to hear more.
“What else did you learn besides the art of kissing?” Marco whispered. His hand was still on her hip, and Alice had moved her own to rest upon it. He didn't think it was to stop him from going any further as she was lazily tracing patterns on his knuckles.
“That intimate touches can bring both a man and a woman pleasure,” Alice whispered back hesitantly.
Marco sensed that whilst she knew this was far from an appropriate conversation, her fiery nature wanted to continue.
She always seemed ready to spar with him or urge him on, and he could not help but find it fascinating.
“I also know that kisses can be enjoyed on places other than one's mouth.”
Good lord, she was going to kill him. She had to be a temptress sent from the devil.
His body hardened at the image her words evoked.
He needed to shift in his seat to ease the discomfort.
He instantly pictured himself kissing her all over.
Of his lips trailing over the lace at her gown's neckline, tasting the soft, lightly freckled skin with his tongue.
Then delving lower to the crease between her breasts.
His mouth was dry, and he moved his hand over her hip, across her belly.
He rested it just over her center, where her legs were pressed tightly together as if she was too trying to ease an ache.
"That is indeed true," he drawled, sneaking another peak at her to see that her cheeks were flushed with desire, and her chest rose somewhat rapidly with her breaths.
The sight made him push further. "I would very much like to drop down to my knees right now and kiss every part of your leg, right up to the top of your thigh. "
“Would you?” Alice croaked. She swallowed stiffly, and Marco waited. He wondered if there was some way he could be seen to leave the box and then sneak back in on his hands and knees to do just what he wanted. Alice interrupted his insane thoughts by adding, “That might draw some attention.”
Her glib turn of phrase caught him off guard, her dry sense of humor unmanning him for a moment, and he let out a small snort of laughter.
A couple of heads right below them turned up to look at him quizzically, and he prayed that he had not inadvertently laughed at a sorrowful moment in the opera.
He truly had no idea what was happening on the stage anymore.
Alice was far too enchanting for him to care.
Alice smirked and bit her bottom lip in a smug and alluring way. Marco felt the irrational need to unsettle her, to see her blush as he was now blushing.
“Indeed, if were in bed together right now, I would do even more,” he said daringly. He caught the way Alice’s perfectly arched eyebrows rose at this. Still, she did not avert her eyes from the singer below. “Not that pleasure can only be found in a bedroom.”
“No indeed. I have heard tales of girls being taken in all manner of places.
The pantry, the stables. Up against a tree.
" Alice's voice was husky. As she spoke, her fingers slipped under his cuff and traced the pulse pounding in his wrist. Marco took this as the encouragement it was and moved his hand slightly lower until it almost touched her intimate curls.
Immediately, Marco thought of their furious kisses against the oak tree. He fought down the groan of desire that threatened to escape his lips as he imagined hiking her skirts to her waist and sinking into her there.
"That is indeed something that could have been done when we were alone on my estate," he whispered.
“When you kissed me,” Alice said, her voice low.
“A kiss you did not object to,” Marco reminded her softly.
“I did not, and you are free to speak of it,” Alice said, and Marco’s heart leaped when she parted her legs slightly.
“I'd rather you tell me more of what the other maids got up to with their lads," he whispered breathlessly, tracing the boiling silky flesh of her inner thigh, amazed at its softness and heat. Alice's fingers spasmed around his wrist but did not pull his hand away.
When she spoke, her words were breathless with desire. "One girl told me her beau roughly shoved her up against the stable wall and pulled her skirts up. She said he then unbuttoned his breeches..."
“And then what did she say happened?” Marco asked, his fingers inching ever closer to her core.
“And then he parted her legs and joined with her,” she whispered, turning her face to look deep into his eyes for the first time.
Marco's breath stuttered as her assessing golden gaze arrested him.
When her tongue slipped out between her lips to moisten them, Marco thought he would combust in the box.
“Indeed,” he whispered, daring to drift his hand further until it hovered at the center of her body. “I suppose you know there is pleasure in that act.”
“For the lad certainly,” Alice whispered back, her voice trying to hold on to her usual unflappable tone but failing due to the slight hitch of her breath. “And for some of the lasses too, others said the pleasure was in the kisses and touches, not in the joining.”
“If done properly, there is pleasure in all of those,” Marco replied gently. His fingers finally brushed against Alice's tight curls, and she gasped lightly, quickly biting down on her lip and looking down at the soprano with unseeing eyes.
“Perhaps you know more of pleasure than the village lads the maids dallied with,” she whispered back, her hand trembling where it rested on his wrist. The other hand, he noticed, gripped the arm of her chair.
“Undoubtedly,” Marco said fervently, his fingers lightly stroking her mound, longing to delve deeper. “I have much I could teach you if we were married.”
“Is what you truly want, Marco?” Alice asked quietly, she squeezed his wrist firmly, and Marco stilled his fingers. He looked up and saw her sincere eyes watching him. “Do you want to marry me, even with my terms?”
“If I do, will you allow me to teach you all I know of pleasure?” Marco swallowed hard. Everything hinged on her answer, and he forced his fingers to stay still while waiting.
All the debauched things he longed to show her raced through his mind. His groin tightened painfully with unholy desire as he imagined her spread out upon their marriage bed, screaming with pleasure as he drove into her.
“If they did not interfere with my terms, then I would welcome your tutelage,” Alice said, trembling.
Her terms. She wanted no children to result from their union.
He thought of all that might be lost to him if she would not allow them to fully consummate their vows.
Then he thought of everything else he could do with her body.
Of all the ways he could make her writhe and beg without risking a child.
The thoughts were far too tantalizing to resist making them a reality.
“Then I will gladly be your tutor,” he whispered. He felt her grip loosen upon his wrist. He did not hesitate and stroked his fingers through the tight curls around her sex to part the slick folds.