“Better yet,” he murmured, rolling one garter and silk stocking down her leg. Looking up a second later, her stocking and garter discarded, he held her gaze for an overlong moment. “Since now you’re
“Sexual addiction.”
He shook his head and began removing her other stocking. “My everything addiction-my eat, sleep, every- waking-minute addiction.” His useless detour to Clarissa’s a case in point.
She smiled. “How sweet.”
“Fuck, yes,” he said, but he was smiling too as he dropped the second stocking on the floor. “You fucking up my life is sweet as hell.”
“How nice of you to say,” Rosalind murmured, sultry and low, his wanting her as much as she wanted him delicious and wonderful. And not at the moment open to the threat of logic.
“Just so long as you like the things I
“We already do,” she said, watching him lie down beside her, cross his arms under his head, and stretch out in all his powerful, virile glory.
“This should smooth the way even better.” He held out the jar of salve.
“I’m not sure I need this.”
“Why take a chance? I heard the doctor was very good.”
Rosalind was tempted to ask how he knew and who had told him and how much she was involved in that conversation, but this close to his splendid erection that was her
He in turn was tempted to ask whether this episode would be featured in chapter two of
The scent of lust pervaded the small sunlit bedroom.
Subverting smaller discontents.
Sitting cross-legged beside him, she uncapped the jar, scooped out a small dollop of lavender-scented salve, and said with a gratified smile, “I think he’s bigger than usual.” Fitz’s upthrust erection lay hard against his stomach, stiff and massive, the red crest brushing his navel.
“He’s been thinking of you.”
“What a sweetheart.” Bending low, she brushed the swollen tip with her lips, drew it into her mouth for a fleeting second before sitting up again. “He smells like soap.”
“I just had a bath.”
Her first thought was to ask why, but she doubted he’d tell her, and in any case she didn’t really wish to know why he was bathing in the middle of the afternoon. “How thoughtful of you,” she said instead and reached for his penis.
At the slight umbrage in her voice he automatically braced himself, not entirely sure of her mood. But he visibly relaxed as she gently grasped his cock.
She grinned. “Nervous? ”
“Not anymore.”
“I wouldn’t be so foolish when I need this.”
“Much obliged,” he drawled.
Both highly motivated, they avoided the subtext of their conversation in favor of imminent sexual satisfaction.
Drawing his rigid erection away from his stomach, she held it upright and placed the dollop of salve on the turgid head of his penis. “It looks like you just came,” she said, admiring her handiwork.
“Keep it up and I might,” he said, a muscle twitching over his high cheekbone. This little game was going to require considerable restraint when he’d been wanting to fuck Mrs. St. Vincent since he dropped her off this morning.
“You have to wait.” She drew a portion of the ointment down one side of his penis, her finger gently tracing the thick webbing of dilated veins on her descent.
“Then you have to hurry,” he said on a suffocated breath, calling on all his willpower to resist doing what he wanted to do. And it wasn’t playing this game.
“So I’m not always the one who wants to rush.”
“You just came.”
“And you didn’t? ”
That small fretful tone again. “Not since last night,” he lied.
“Then I’ll hurry and you wait just a little and,” she said, the pique gone from her voice, “we’ll see if we like this”-another swift brushing downstroke that gleamed down his erection-“or not.”
Very soon-not as soon as he’d have liked, but soon-his penis was glistening with ointment.
“It looks very tempting,” she said with a little wistful sigh. “I wish it was eatable.”
“Next time I’ll bring jam.”
“Bring lemon curd. I love it almost as much as I love him,” she murmured, sliding her fingertips around the shiny head of his cock.
It was his own fault, he decided, letting her come first. Usually she was famished for sex. Although he also knew with anyone else he could have waited for hours. Not a thought he cared to dwell on. “If you indulge me now, darling, you can name your price.” An unprecedented declaration from the Duke of Groveland who had always been able to take his pleasure with a notable insouciance.
“My goodness!”
Her look of feigned surprise was so operatic he burst out laughing, momentarily distracting his thoughts from orgasmic goals. “Don’t plan on making a living on the stage, darling.”
“And I suggest you refrain from making such outrageous offers. Someone might take advantage of you.”
“The offer’s still open. You have five seconds. Five, four, three, two-”
“Stay with me tonight.”
“Little fool, I would have anyway. Ask for something later.” Past waiting, like some randy adolescent, he pushed her onto her back, rolled on top of her, and put his glossy cock into her luscious cunt.
There was something to be said for a frictionless fuck, the ointment adding a new impressionable dimension to the concept of unreserved access. He had to deliberately curb his forward progress in order not to batter her and the head of his cock in the bargain. But once he found his rhythm, the lady quickly accommodated him, and with a familiarity of considerable practice now, they made their way to that blissful elysian of orgasmic delight and sensory bewitchment they’d discovered together.
She didn’t know it was as new to him as it was to her.
Nor did he understand she felt the same as he.
For a woman who wrote erotica, he expected a certain libidinous propensity.
While everyone knew, she thought, that Groveland reveled in prodigal sensation.
But rather than discuss nuances of feeling that bordered on fondness and affection, they chose to verify those sensations in more pleasant ways. With a kind of sumptuousness and self-indulgence, with happiness, with gratitude in the end.
Chapter 23
THAT SAME AFTERNOON, in the village of Riverston, in a remote corner of Yorkshire, a barrister from London was seated in the cluttered and noisy morning room of Rosalind’s parent’s. Birds of every size and color chirped and sang from cages, their living presence in contrast to the other miscellany of dead objects from nature in the form of skulls, insects, animal skeletons, and dried flora laying topsy-turvy on shelves and tabletops.
Amidst this repository of nature, Lady Pitt-Riverston and Mr. Symon were having tea and chatting as they awaited the arrival of the Honorable Algernon Pitt-Riverston who had been sent for to lend his expertise to the occasion. Rosalind’s mother was by nature warmhearted and agreeable, and soon Mr. Symon was discussing his
