“Miss Lenders is a worthy young lady.” His tone was uncertain as he clasped her waist. “I’m told she’s not unattractive. She’s agreed to the contract, though I daresay I have the better deal.” He gave a short laugh. “The least I can do is learn a thing or two to try to please her so she won’t take a lover in the first year.”
“You don’t have much faith in a woman’s constancy?”
“Experience has taught me otherwise.” He tried to speak carelessly. “I like you, though. You feel … nice. Show me how to bring pleasure to a woman. To my wife. Where should I touch you?”
Unconsciously, his hand was gently trailing up and down the valley of her breasts creating whorls of sensation Grace had not experienced since David last caressed her.
She whispered, “A woman’s urges are just as strong as a man’s if she desires him. Unlace me and I’ll guide you to her forbidden places.”
She twisted her head to watch him clumsily work the laces and imagined the way he’d once looked at her. Eyes bright with determination as he vowed that the day he reached his majority and was free of his mother he’d take her on a journey across the world.
He neared the end of his task, making sounds of growing satisfaction, while Grace studied him, his remembered promise filtering through her growing anticipation. “My annuity won’t be much,” he’d told her—it seemed a lifetime ago, now—“but it’ll be enough for the two of us and I’ll supplement it with my painting. I’ll be a real artist, then.” He’d patted the drawer where he’d hidden the letter upon which he’d pinned his future. Their shared future. The letter from a famous landscape painter in Florence who’d offered to make David his student for a year. The letter that would change both their lives in ways he would never know.
The past was the past, she tried to remind herself, as she removed the rest of her clothes. No point in tormenting herself with it.
Now completely naked, Grace returned to his lap. He put his lips to the hollow beneath her shoulderblade as he held her in the way he used to when she’d fly in from the passage with a moment to spare between cleaning the drawing room and making the family’s beds. Her contours would be different now, of course. She was no longer the scrawny servant he’d remember, with hands roughened from scouring pots and scrubbing floors.
“Are you cold?” he asked, and when she said she was not, he frowned. “Then why are you trembling?”
She nestled her head beneath his chin. “You have a lover’s touch. See?”
His pleasure was real when he felt her nipples spring to attention as he gently circled them before bringing down his face and taking first one and then the other into his mouth.
Grace threw back her head and moaned softly, guiding his hand to her inner thighs. “Feel what you’re doing to me,” she whispered and laughed softly at his surprise when he felt the slippery wetness between her legs.
“Is … is it—?”
“It’s called desire,” she whispered in his ear.
“But how—?” He shook his head, unable to finish.
“It’s something a woman cannot feign. The physical manifestation of desire comes from within. For a woman, that is,” she added. “Men are different. If their desires were whipped up only by the women they loved there’d be no need for … whores.”
Though he frowned, he was clearly enthralled by the responses he was eliciting through his increasingly bold exploration of the folds of her sex and the swollen nub at their heart. Excitement was fairly fizzing through Grace’s veins, making her gasp and jerk as her sensitivity grew.
“You must be enjoying it. You’re so wet,” he marvelled. “Look at the effect it’s having on me, too. I … didn’t think I’d ever feel desire again.”
Opening lust-heavy eyes, Grace grasped his growing erection, making him wince, his voice hoarse as he whispered, “You are obviously … practised at making a man feel he is your heart’s desire. I hope you will want to come again.”
Cradling him, Grace laughed softly, avoiding an answer as she murmured suggestively, “I would like to make you come again, but perhaps you’d enjoy it if our pleasure coincided. A woman’s climax is as enjoyable to her as a man’s. You’ve already seen how my pleasure escalates when you touch me here.”
He laughed and increased the pressure on the exact area between her legs which most excited her while his other arm held her close.
“Oh, that is very enjoyable,” she whispered, nibbling his earlobes.
Suddenly both his arms were around her and his mouth was moving against hers, his voice urgent. “I’ve been closeted from the world for three years. I know only a schoolboy’s love.” He added haltingly, “Are you accustomed to what we’re doing now?”
“Never!” she told him with more sincerity than she had felt in three years, pushing aside the urge to touch her lips to his. “I have never been with a man as tender and willing to please a woman as you.”
“It’s your job to say that.”
Before she could answer he added, almost roughly, “Why have you chosen this life?”
“In a brothel?” Pulling back, she gave a bitter laugh and rose to her feet. She had the strangest feeling she had put him in danger of being singed by her wickedness. “At least it’s better than the life I had.”
“Which was …?”
“On the streets.”