Chapter Two
Joss’s double bed was his most expensive possession—and the only item of furniture in the small quarters that he owned.
A man his size couldn’t sleep on a regular bed—at least not the size to be found in a servant’s quarters.
He stopped in the middle of the room and removed his hat, tossing it onto the nearby table with a dull thunk.
The body on the bed jerked upright, allowing him to see the face, not that he’d been in any doubt.
“I thought you’d never get back. I was just about to leave.
” Annie Philips was a parlor maid, and, as such, she was a good-looking girl.
She came from the country, so she wasn’t like the pale, slight girls one often found in London.
Instead, she was what his father would call a proper armful, or a strapping wench.
Joss let his eyes drift over her body, taking his time unbuttoning the expensive coat Lady Selwood had provided for him, the cut of the garment distinguishing him from her other servants.
The countess dressed Joss in gentleman’s clothing rather than the usual garments that branded a man a servant: velvet breeches and clownishly laced coats. Indeed, Joss’s coat was no different than that of any toff, a rich black wool that was unadorned by foppery.
His cock, which had just begun to deflate with some distance from his mistress, was once again alert, aware, and interested. How could it not be with such a vista before him?
Annie had curly brown hair, long, long, legs, and breasts that would fill both his hands twice: and Joss had very big hands.
She’d stripped down to her stockings, which must have been her best pair, her garters covered in needlework flowers, like a garden bordering her dark brown bush.
Joss hung up his coat, never taking his eyes from her body, and then leisurely removed his cravat and waistcoat before dropping into the room’s only chair, his knees spread to offer some relief for his cramped organ.
“How’d you get in?”
She had to sit upright to see him over the end of the bed.
She brought her knees up to her chest, shielding her breasts from his gaze but inadvertently exposing another, even more private, part of her body in the process.
Joss’s eyes dropped to the small pink peak that thrust from the tangle of brown curls.
It took a hellish amount of effort to force his eyes back up.
She bit her lower lip between even, white teeth, lowering her lids to display a thick sweep of dark lashes. Her coquettish look made him wonder just how inadvertent her pose really was.
“I borrowed Mr. Feehan’s keys. But I put them back,” she rushed to add.
Joss was impressed. After all, who didn’t like being wanted enough by a pretty girl that she would steal and risk immediate discharge just to be with you?
“Help me off with my boots,” he said, not bothering to make it a polite request. If she wanted him, she’d better know right now exactly what it was she was wanting.
When it came to fucking—at least if Joss wasn’t being paid for it—he liked things his way.
If she found that unacceptable, it was best they both knew it before things went any further.
She scrambled from the bed without hesitation and he raised one foot, amused and aroused when she turned her generous bottom toward him. Joss enjoyed the show, throbbing so hard by the time she’d straddled him twice he was in actual pain.
When she’d finished the second boot, he jerked his chin toward the cupboard in the corner of the room. “Put them inside and then come back here.”
Joss brooded on what he was about to do while she followed his orders; her eagerness to please arousing him far more than was normal or healthy. But he’d long given up wondering why he enjoyed submission in his lovers.
He knew it was unwise to fuck where one ate, but he’d been dodging Annie’s attentions for months.
It had been a long time since he’d had a woman. Working for Lady Selwood and knowing what it was she did when he accompanied her on these nights had left him raw and wanting. He’d been behaving like a monk, as if he were saving himself. For her?
Joss snorted at the stupid thought.
As for Annie? Well, he was tired of rejecting what the girl offered him day after relentless day: mindless pleasure and release.
She came to stand before him and he gave her another chance.
“Have you considered what you’re doing, Annie?”
She raised her chin. “I’m not a maiden.”
He supposed that was an answer, of sorts.
“And I’m not looking for a wife.”
She flinched at his words and her cheeks darkened; Joss thought she might leave.
“And I’m not lookin’ for a husband, Mr. High-and-Mighty. Just because Herself dresses you like a nob and you’ve always got your nose in a book doesn’t make you better. Just because you think you’re such a fine catch doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”
Joss was amused by her fire. But just because her words were brave didn’t make them more convincing. Still, he’d fought her for weeks, how much was a man supposed to take?
He spread his thighs wider and she swallowed, the musculature of her throat fascinating to watch in the dim light of the tallow candle.
Hers was not the kind of body Joss was accustomed to seeing naked. Instead of soft and of middle years, Annie’s body was young and firm thanks to hard work.
“Kneel,” he said, pointing to the floor between his wide-spread feet.
A dark flush spread over her neck and chest, her muscles tensing and flexing as she slowly knelt between his legs.
As ever, his cock hardened and lengthened in response to such immediate obedience. “Undress me.”
Her hands shook as they reached for the fastenings of his trousers.
Joss’s coats, trousers, and shirts had been made especially for him, the only such garments he’d ever owned. He knew why he wore them because Lady Selwood had told him.
“Your position in my household is singular and you will be seen with me in a variety of social situations, so you shall dress accordingly. I shan’t need you all the time, but when I do, you will be attired like a gentleman.
When I have no need of you, you may present yourself to my stable master, Mr. Carling.
He has been informed of your skills and has also been informed he will have to accommodate your unique position.
In other words, my needs will supersede his. ”
Carling, a big, bluff, good-natured bloke, had smirked at Joss the first time he’d reported to the stables.
“Aye, I know who you are. Lady Selwood’s groom-cum-secretary-cum-whatever.” But he’d laughed when he’d spoken. “Lady Selwood is an American,” he’d said, as if that explained her strange behavior. “And they do things different over there.”
The other servants had not been nearly as sanguine, but they’d eventually adjusted to seeing Joss dressed like a gentleman—not that they’d grown to like it.
Annie reached the last button and Joss lifted his hips. She pulled the fabric down, handling the garment with reverence and folding the trousers without being instructed before setting them aside and turning back.
His white linen drawers were monstrously tented, a wet spot making the thin fabric transparent.
“That’s for you,” he lied, but only partly.
While it was true he’d been hard for hours, on and off, imagining what his mistress was doing with her effete, aristocratic fop, his body had become eager for the woman kneeling before him since the moment he’d seen her naked on his bed.
He was a man, after all.
She pulled the tape and freed him.
Joss grunted and gave himself up to her care, letting his head fall back, and closing his eyes. Her hand was work-roughened, but the friction was not unpleasant. And the way she gripped and stroked him told Joss she’d done this more than a few times in the past.
Good; he had no interest in innocents.
Her hot mouth lowered over him and her tongue swirled his head while she sucked him hard enough to be painful, but a good pain.
Pictures formed behind his closed lids: another woman kneeling between his thighs; another woman worshipping him with her mouth; another woman ready to be filled by him.
Joss ached at the thought of spending into the mouth of his fantasy woman and he reached out to fist her glossy, smooth hair.
But it was thick, tight curls his hand encountered.
Frustration and lust mingled inside him as the carefully constructed image in his mind’s eye wavered and began to dissipate. No, not yet. Don’t go yet.
But it was too late, his brain chose reality rather than fantasy: it was the girl he felt, not the woman.
He opened his eyes and loosened his grip on her hair, freeing her. But she didn’t pull away. Instead, she took him deeper with no pressure from his hands, no thrusting from his hips.
Her willingness to please him shot Joss full of guilt and the last vestiges of his fantasy lover disappeared like a thin taper of smoke from a cigar.
The girl’s curly brown head—bobbing up and down so eagerly—might not be the one he imagined every night and a good part of each day, but she was here, she was real, and she wanted him.
Joss relaxed and enjoyed her enthusiastic, if clumsy, efforts for a few moments before sliding his fingers beneath her jaws and gently lifting her head. When she looked up, it was with glassy and questioning eyes.
“D-didn’t you like it?”
His thumb went of its own volition to her slick, swollen lips. Her mouth opened to take him, but he merely stroked the soft, wet skin. “I liked it.”
Her lips curved and her cheeks tinged with pink at his meager praise. He stood and lifted her to her feet before pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it onto the chair.
“Get on the bed.”
While she obeyed, he opened the drawer in the only nightstand. Inside he had a small leather envelope. He extracted the flattened not-quite translucent rectangle and put it in the washbasin, pouring water over it to turn it supple and soft. He turned to find her watching, her eyes wider than ever.
Joss lifted the sheath. “You have not seen one of these?”
She shook her head.
Joss put the softened tube against his swollen head, wincing as the cool, wet sheep’s intestine touched his hot skin. He began to pull the snug sheath up his shaft.
“It will protect us both—from disease, from pregnancy.”
Her creamy skin flushed brick red. “I’ve got no diseases.”
“Nor do I.”
“Then . . . why?”
Joss tied the sheath tight. “I don’t want to put a child inside you.”
Annie’s face took on an odd expression and Joss wondered if it wasn’t that of a person thwarted. But then she smiled, her eyes dropping to his erection as she reached for him.
He brushed aside her hands and took her by the hips, pulling her generous bottom to the edge of the bed and pressing her thighs wide with his knees.
“Lay back,” he ordered. He dropped into a crouch, parted her lips with his thumbs, and sucked her tight bud into his mouth. She was hot, sweet, and as responsive as hell and it took only moments to bring her to orgasm.
She came fast and hard, her young body taut and slick with sweat as she thrashed beneath him, grinding herself against him and using him to bring on a second climax.
He waited until her body went still before he positioned himself at her opening and entered her in one long, smooth glide.
She cried out and bucked against him when he rammed his length home.
Joss kept her filled with his cock as he lifted her hips off the bed, his hands beneath her smooth thighs and his knees bent for balance and strength as he began to pump.
She lay stretched out before him like a banquet and he gazed down the length of her ripe, curvy body, his eyes lingering on her breasts, which were full, hard tipped, and bounced with each savage thrust. He regretted neglecting them, but his balls could no longer be denied.
He reached down to where their bodies were joined, thumbing her while he watched the mesmerizing sight of her body stretching to accommodate his. He made her come quickly—and then again.
She shook her head from side to side as her contractions faded. “Please, Joss,” she begged as his thumb began to caress her again. “I …can’t…. Not again.”
He smiled, both at her begging and at her contractions, which drove him toward the edge of self-control, until all he cared about was his own pleasure and the oblivion it would bring.
Joss gripped her legs so hard his fingers ached and he fucked into her with brutal stabbing thrusts, until his body stiffened and he held himself deep within her convulsing heat.
He came until it hurt, until he was drained of everything: everything except futility and frustration. Everything except the knowledge of who he was and why he would never, ever have what he wanted.