The Virtuoso

she wet his length, then wrapped her fingers around him, and used her hand in concert with her mouth.

To feel him growing more aroused, harder and hotter in her grip and her mouth, was prodding Ellen past curiosity and a need to give him pleasure, on to fueling her own arousal. She took him into her mouth and set up a rhythm like the ones he’d used with her, while desire crested higher in her own veins.

“Ellen, I’ll spend.” She heard him, though she barely recognized that harsh rasp as her lover’s voice. She heard the desperate heat in his words and drew on him gently in the same rhythm that her hand was stroking his strength.

“Ellen… God…”

He cupped her jaw and carefully disentangled himself from her mouth, then closed his hand over hers. The firmness of his grip was surprising, the feel of his hot seed spurting over their joined fingers a moment later both intimate and shocking.

When he subsided, his hand still around hers, Ellen remained where she was, her head resting on Val’s chest for a long moment while his arousal faded. She relaxed against him, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing beneath her cheek, while tenderness for him threatened to overwhelm her.

Was this what he felt when he gave her pleasure? Was this sense of trust and communion as precious to him as it was to her?

“I need to hold my tigress.” There was a different note in his voice—softer and perhaps slightly awed.

Ellen uncurled herself from him, groped around for her handkerchief on the nightstand, and tended to him as he’d tended to her. “Your tigress needs you to hold her, too.” She tossed the hankie away and tucked herself along his side, hiking a leg across his thighs as if she’d protect him with her very body.

“Thank you, tigress.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and Ellen felt his lips against her hair. While the storm raged outside, beneath the covers she felt safe and warm, well pleased with her tiger, and pleased with herself, as well.

When Ellen’s breathing signaled that she’d drifted into peaceful slumber beside him, Val lay for a long time, gliding his hand over her hair, listening to the storm.

There was a lesson for him here, in Ellen’s courage and generosity—in her trust. This intimacy she shared with him came from her heart, and the resulting depth of pleasure was unprecedented in Val’s experience.

The best music Val had ever created, the most sublime, had come not from the thrill of playing before a packed salon of educated connoisseurs, not from demonstrating hard-earned technical prowess before fellow students at the conservatory, not even from the polished efforts he’d put before his most learned teachers.

The best, loveliest music he’d ever created had come from the need to give something of value to someone he cared for—reassurance, comfort, consolation, relief from pain or despondency. The best music he’d ever created had come not from his fingers or his musical mind, but from his heart.

* * *

The next day was spent largely cleaning up after the storm. Because neither Axel, Val, St. Just, nor the boys were inclined to attend services, they spent the day cutting, dragging, and cursing fallen trees and trees limbs.

“Where is Nick Haddonfield’s considerable brawn when it’s needed?” Val asked the sky as he paused to swig some cold cider.

“Probably in bed with his new countess,” St. Just muttered.

“You miss your Emmie,” Axel observed, a curious smile on his face. “And you are anxious to start your journey north.”

“I am, though I am not pleased to be leaving my brother in such unsettled circumstances.”

“I’m not unsettled.” Val tossed the jug of cider to him. “I am looking forward to moving into my house and living like a human for a change, instead of some forest primate in the tropics. Why is it always the big trees that come down?”

“Not always.” St. Just took his drink and passed the cider to Axel. “Your oaks have withstood centuries of storms.”

“My oaks?”

“As in the oak trees growing along the lane of the property you own and have still refused to name.”

“It isn’t that I’ve refused to name it.” Val slipped the reins of the waiting team around his shoulders and under one arm. “A name just hasn’t come to me.”

“Names.” Axel grunted as he took an axe to a sturdy root. “I can’t get Abby to name our unborn child.”

“She will.” St. Just took up a second axe and began to hack away at the root in alternating swings with Axel, while Val used the team to keep tension on the entire tree. They kept a steady chop-chop, chop-chop, until Val began to hear something like a clog dance in his head. Hearty, energetic music that managed to be both buoyant and solidly grounded at the same time.

“Look sharp, Val,” St. Just called as he heaved the axe in one mighty, final swing and hacked the root in twain. The team jumped forward but hawed obediently as Val steered them over to the side of the lane, dragging the great weight of the tree trunk with them.

“This one will keep you warm for while,” St. Just said, wiping his brow. Val urged the team forward to get the remains of the tree as close to the woodshed as possible.

“That’s the last of the big ones.” Axel glanced at the sky. “I’m guessing it’s close to teatime. Let’s call it a day.”

“Amen,” St. Just muttered as Axel bellowed instructions to his sons. They waved from where they were sawing branches off another fallen tree and signaled they’d follow by way of the farm pond.

An hour later, the men were scrubbed and presentable for dinner while the boys had yet to be seen.

“We’ve company, wife,” Axel said as he passed Abby a small serving of wine. “The boys should be here in time for dinner on those rare occasions when we allow civilized folk to dine with them.”

“It isn’t like them to be rude,” Abby replied, “we’ll just enjoy our drinks and be patient a while longer.”

“One hopes,” a baritone voice intoned from the door, “there is a drink for my weary little self?”

“Nick!” Val watched as Abby passed her husband her drink and pelted across the room to fling herself against the newcomer. “Oh, Nicholas Haddonfield, you are a sight for sore eyes. Axel, did you do this?”

“I was warned.” Axel smiled at his wife where she stood in the careful embrace of a blond, blue-eyed, enormously tall, enormously good-looking man.

“Professor.” Nick’s smile gleamed with a pirate’s sense of mischief. “I see you’ve been busy, and holy matrimony is agreeing with our Abby. And my little Valentine.” Nick beamed at Val. “Gone ruralizing in the wilds of Oxfordshire, leaving me all by my lonesome in Kent. I am desolated without you, Val.”

“You are happily married without me,” Val chided, but he stepped into Nick’s arms anyway, as one just did.

“And who have we here?” Nick turned to Ellen and flashed her a charming smile.

Val performed the introductions. “Ellen, may I make known to you Nick Haddonfield, the biggest scamp in the realm, and since his marriage, the happiest. Nick, Ellen Markham, Baroness Roxbury, my neighbor and friend.”

“Baroness.” Nick executed a very proper bow but kissed Ellen’s hand—a shocking presumption—rather than merely bowing over it.

“Ignore him,” Axel warned. “Any attempt to chide, flirt, or comment only encourages him, and this is after he has found a woman willing to marry him.”

“And bear my children,” Nick added, eyes twinkling. Talk from there wandered over mutual acquaintances, family, and various females in confinement.

“Does your countess cry a lot?” Nick asked St. Just as they moved in to dinner. “Poor Leah cries at the sight of a kitten, a puppy, or a foal. Of course, this necessitates that I comfort her, which I am all too willing to do.”

“One would think she’d cry at the sight of you,” Val said.

“Oh, she does.” Nick’s teeth gleamed, and his blue eyes sparkled. “With rapture.”

“Nicholas,” Abby chided, but Nick only grinned more broadly.

“Pass my starving Valentine the peas,” Nick suggested. “He’s likely to chew my leg off if we don’t get him some more food. Aren’t you keeping well, Val?”

“I’m working hard,” Val said, but he did take another helping of peas. And potatoes and more ham. “It tends to whittle off the lard. You look to be in good health.”

“I am. Leah insists I stay more in one place, and as long as she’s in the same place, I am content.”

“How did we merit a visit?” Abby asked. “Though I’m delighted to see you.”