Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait

the right, and yet both were beautiful and perfect, and both rosy nipples were puckered, though his room was warm.

The man in him cast anything approaching scruples far out into the Channel and frankly stared at the bounty before him. He’d seen her before, seen her nude, spent, and gloriously happy with it in his arms.

But he’d not taken even a moment to behold her, to caress the glory of her with his gaze, and to savor the way firelight cherished each curve and hollow of her naked body.

“Genevieve Windham…” He raised a hand, then let it drop before he’d cradled her jaw against his palm.

“I want it to be you, but a lady can’t do the asking.” The determination was still there in her voice, but she was pleading too, for him to capitulate, to comprehend—

The gentlemen in him, the perishing, damned, inconvenient gentleman in him grasped both the plea and the solution. So simple and so wondrous, to give her what she sought and what Elijah needed.

“I want it to be me too. It shall be me, and for me, it shall be you.” He leaned forward and kissed her, not touching her anywhere else, so he might savor the kiss sealing that vow.

“Elijah—” She sank a hand in his hair and hauled herself closer. “Yes, please and please again.” She became a woman possessed, dragging herself up to her knees, locking her arms behind his neck, and devouring him with her kisses.

“Genevieve, slow down. Slow—” His hand curved around her flank and pulled her closer, and yet, the angle was awkward. He was half-turned toward her on the bed, she was clamped around him, and the damned covers were so much linen seaweed, dragging about them in all the wrong directions.

“I want you so, Elijah. I could not have borne to leave here in the morning without—”

He rose off the bed, turned, and stepped away. “I could not either, but if I don’t get my damned breeches off, I will not answer for the consequences.”

She knelt among the blankets, rosy, naked, and smiling as if she’d just landed her snowball directly on his arse, which in a metaphorical sense, she had. Marriage to this woman was going to be wildly delightful.

“Let me get my breeches off, Genevieve, for both our sakes.”

She said nothing, her gaze riveted on his chest. From somewhere, Elijah found the strength of will to slow himself down. This night would mark a beginning for them, and Jenny relied on him to make it the best beginning they could share.

“You do it,” he said.

Innocent that she was, she blinked at him in bewilderment.

“My falls, love. I want not a stitch between us.” He wanted to give her summer sunshine on naked flesh, he wanted soft breezes, and he wanted long, sweet nights full of pleasure for them both.

She knee-walked to the edge of the bed, studying his falls. “I’ve never done this before.”

“I should hope not.” He couldn’t hide his amusement, but he did manage to stand there, hands relaxed at his sides, when her mouth made him think of things vulgar, naughty, and—with Genevieve, he dared to hope—within the realm of possibility in the not-too-distant future.

Her hands shook minutely as she unfastened the buttons to his falls. He could feel the tremor as well as see it as the flap gradually draped open.

Genevieve dropped her hands, sat back on her haunches, and worried a nail between her teeth. “Now what?”

Now came the time when the man, the artist, and gentleman would collude to make this experience everything the lady had ever dreamed it might be. “Now I bring you pleasure.”

Her smile was lovely, naughty, and a little worried. She moved to the center of the bed and scooted down beneath the covers.

“She hides her treasures,” Elijah grumbled to no one in particular as he shucked out of his breeches. He heard her draw in her breath, and in a fit of spontaneous martyrdom, readjusted his immediate plans.

Rather than launch himself onto the bed, he stooped to pick up his clothes. She braced herself on her elbows and watched while he gathered up the sartorial casualties of his earlier haste and folded them one by one on the clothes press.

“Elijah?”

“Tidiness is a habit,” he explained, though when a man’s cock was bobbing against his belly, tidiness was a ridiculous habit. The idea that Jenny would one day tease him for his comment pleased him.

He moved behind the privacy screen, used his tooth powder, and prayed for fortitude.

And stamina. A determined woman deserved stamina in her prospective spouse.

“I have missed seeing you like this,” Jenny said.

She would be seeing a great deal of him like this, and soon, if he could talk her into a special license. “Scandalous woman.”

“I am, aren’t I? My favorite session was when you took Mr. Jackson’s pose for Satan Summoning His Legions.”

A pose that illuminated the subject’s genitals nearly as well as his face, because all the light in Sir Thomas’s painting was from the netherworld at the bottom of the image. Then, too, Satan’s upraised arms required a pose that made the model’s arms ache abominably.

Elijah approached the bed, noting when Jenny’s gaze fell on his upthrust cock. She ran her tongue over her top lip, and he nearly vaulted onto the mattress.

“Shall I come to bed, Genevieve?”

A small, sensible part of him wanted her to fling back the covers, snatch up her dressing gown, and announce that she’d changed her mind. They were going about things backward, though many couples did. As much as Elijah wanted her, and wanted to please her, he also wanted her to know he’d wait for her.

For the three weeks necessary to cry the banns, he could wait for her.

She did not take her gaze from his cock. “Please, come to bed.”

He climbed onto the mattress. “You use the word ‘please’ a lot.”

“When I’m around you, and yet… often I want to holler it at you, Elijah. I want you to pause as you climb onto the bed, so I can capture the combination of eagerness and wariness I see in your eyes. I want you to hold a position over by the clothes press, because your body makes a perfect contrapposto pose angled to the firelight. I want to draw what I feel of your lips when we kiss—”

He remained on all fours on the bed and kissed her to shut her up. “And to think you couldn’t even ask me to remove my shirt.” Their marriage was not going to suffer from an abundance of clothing. The artist, the man, and even that other fellow were cheered by the notion.

She slid down farther beneath the covers, and that meant Elijah had to follow her, until he was crouching over her, the covers between them.

“You are an indecently good kisser, Elijah Harrison.”

“One grows inspired by the company. I have a title, you know.” This was a paltry gift laid at the feet of a woman who’d been Lady Jenny since she emerged from the womb.

She squeezed his biceps, testing the resilience of his muscles, maybe, artist fashion. “Earl of Bernward. You ought to use it.” She did it again, then levered up to press her face to his throat. “Elijah, I’m nervous.”

He loved her. The knowledge came to him like a whiff of her jasmine—unmistakable no matter how faint or subtle. This was not mere affection, not infatuation, not a passing preoccupation. He’d caught the love, well and truly. He loved her for entrusting him not only with her beauty and with her past disappointments, but also with her nerves and her future.

He cradled the back of her head with one hand and braced himself over her with the other. “Nervousness is to be expected with a new experience. Give your nervousness to me, Genevieve.” He was not nervous—this was the most right thing he’d ever done. He was aroused, though, and impatient to win her trust.

She angled her head to peer up at him. “This is a new experience, isn’t it?”

“Completely, for both of us.” The first of many.

He let her subside onto the mattress, then climbed under the blankets with her.

“You are warm, Elijah.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. “I’m on fire.”

In less than a minute, he’d ignited his lady’s passions too. He denied himself the pleasure of covering her,