Page 29

She had no intention of doing such a thing.

Now that she had begun, now that she had started to cast off the layers of restriction, Evelyn had no idea how she had ever managed to live like this.

It was… freeing was not a sufficient enough word to encapsulate the elation that slowly untying and unbuttoning her gown, allowing it to fall to the ground, gave her.

The euphoria was akin to that of finishing the perfect painting, yet somehow more so.

What she was doing was wrong—Evelyn knew that. She was a lady. Lady Evelyn Chance. Her family expected more of her, better of her, but nothing had ever felt better than this.

She shivered as the camisole and petticoats fell to the floor beside the pool of cotton that was her day gown. Now there was only her corset, chemise, stockings, and drawers left.

Ah. This part, she had not anticipated.

Evelyn looked up and met Richard’s hungry eyes. “Dear me, I appear to need assistance. Would you be a dear, and—”

She did not even manage to finish her sentence. With a groan more animalistic than human, Richard dropped the pencil he had been folding and launched toward her.

Within an impossible amount of time, his body met hers. Evelyn gasped at the sudden contact but gasped again as his lips met hers, possessing her, delving his tongue between her lips to taste her, conquering her as though she were the ocean and he a ship sliding between her wet folds.

“I can’t help myself,” Richard muttered, raining kisses down her neck as his fingers scrabbled at the corsetry at her back. “God forgive me, I need you.”

“I need you .” Evelyn gasped, honesty breaking through the limits of her vocabulary. “You think I would do this for any other reason?”

He laughed at that and she laughed with him, and the studio appeared to be filled with nothing but their laughter and the scent of oils and charcoal.

Evelyn could hardly believe this was happening. Finally, after such longing, after such need, after weeks of not understanding where this had come from or what it was, she could finally succumb to the need that had been building between her legs whenever she saw Richard.

Whenever she was in his thrall.

He was continuing to kiss her neck, his lips brushing along her décolletage and shooting desperation to her core. Evelyn had been clinging to his shoulders, hardly aware how she was managing to stand, but now her right hand hurried to find his left and move it to—

Richard dropped her and stepped back as though burned.

The burning was real, and it was in her cheeks. Evelyn turned away, startled and horrified to discover what she had done in the heat of the moment.

Where had that come from? Why had she—had she made him do that?

“Evelyn?”

“Don’t look at me,” she whispered, shame rushing through her like a tide. All she had dammed up, all she had tried to ignore, came rushing into her.

Why had she done such a thing?

Footfalls. Evelyn did not need to turn around to know Richard was standing mere inches behind her. She could feel him, sense his warmth. Smell his scent.

“Evelyn, if you want me to touch your breast…”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, hating how swiftly she had been overtaken by her desires.

Slowly, soft hands grasped her shoulders and turned her around. She refused to look into his eyes, preferring to look instead at his chest.

His wide chest. A chest that was familiar to her, even with a shirt on. How strange that was; that she should know Richard’s chest far better without clothes than with them?

“Evelyn. Evelyn, there is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Perhaps there was not. It had all felt so right, so natural, to move Richard’s hand to her breast.

Evelyn slowly raised her eyes to Richard’s face. He was smiling. It was not the delighted sneer of a rake, nor the frustrated grimace of a rogue. It was a smile that said what she had done was not only acceptable, but… preferred .

“I’ve never done this before,” Evelyn whispered.

Richard nodded, lifting a hand to cup her cheek. “I know. And if we are to continue, you have to be sure.”

“I am.”

“Because I shouldn’t—I mean, you are a lady and—”

“‘Shouldn’t’? I think we must ,” Evelyn said quietly, delight now soaring through her as she took note of Richard’s hesitation.

He was a good man. A great man. This was the man she wished to spend the rest of her life with, and the sudden realization was enough to shock any final sense from her mind.

Whatever the future held, Richard would be in it. And that was enough.

“Please, Richard,” Evelyn said quietly, seeing he would not move forward until she requested it. “Please. Ravish me.”

And then he was kissing her—kissing her as he had never kissed her before. Evelyn gasped, surprise jolting her body, and the kiss deepened. She moaned as tendrils of desire became arching need, her body thrumming with the prospect of more, more, more.

She could not have expected this giddiness, this desperation to be closer. In fact, it was only when the kiss ended, Evelyn gasping for air, that she realized her scrabbling fingers had somehow removed Richard’s coat and waistcoat. His shirt was somehow only half-buttoned.

And it wasn’t enough. “I need—I need—”

“I know.” Richard panted, grinning as his fingers made light work of her corset, slipping it over her head and managing to somehow remove her chemise and then her drawers in two fluid movements. “Oh, Evelyn. You are magnificent.”

“Magnificent”?

She wasn’t sure about that. Magnificent suggested there was much to look at, and from the investigations Evelyn had carried out while painting herself in the nude, there wasn’t much to impress.

Though when she caught Richard’s eye, she wondered if perhaps she should rethink that assessment. There was a look in his expression that suggested he very much enjoyed what he was looking at.

“You are so beautiful,” he said slowly, inexplicably dropping to his knees. “So beautiful, Evelyn.”

Evelyn stared, bemused. “I never thought my breasts and… and my secret place would bring anyone to their knees.”

Richard swallowed for a moment, gazing up at her, then said softly, “Do you think you can be quiet?”

“Quiet”? What on earth does he mean? “Of course I can be— Richard !”

She could not be quiet. She had cried out his name, half-panic, half-ecstasy, as Richard leaned forward and kissed her secret place.

Evelyn’s hands swiftly reached for his shoulders. It was all she could do to find them, her eyelids fluttering shut as the shock of his tongue entering her—her there —overcame her.

Oh, this was too much. Too much, and somehow, not at all enough.

“Richard,” she whimpered.

His reply was one of lips and tongue, but no words. His mouth possessed her, his hungry tongue slowly licking down the slit of her folds until she opened for him, his hands on her hips, steadying her.

The steadiness was greatly needed. Evelyn’s whole mind was reeling from the intimacy, from the cascades of pleasure soaring through her body, the twisting ache in her center needing more as his tongue delved deeper.

“Richard, oh, ohh, yes…”

It was all she could do to breathe as the pleasure pulsed, a tight, aching throbbing between his lips as Richard nibbled her nub and she was gone—nothing more than colors streaming through light, her whole body set alight as the pinnacle of pleasure pulsed through her.

When she finally stopped crying out his name, Evelyn was able to look down with bleary eyes at the man who had brought her to such a climax. “That… That was—”

“I want to make you do that again,” Richard said hungrily.

Evelyn almost fell over. “‘Again’?”

Was it even possible to feel that sort of ecstasy again? Surely, that had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience; such a thing could not be repeated?

Richard had risen to his feet, frantic hands pulling off his boots and trousers until—

Now that was one way to distract her.

There he stood, in all his glory. And it was glorious.

The planes of his torso and the strength in his arms and legs—those were not surprises.

Evelyn had taken her fill of those before, knew them well, had sketched that line and this freckle.

She knew his scars, the long, thin ones, the curve across his chest, the painful-looking scars from fire that had flickered across his arms and shoulders and back.

But that…

Evelyn swallowed. She had known what a gentleman’s manhood looked like, in theory.

The number of art books in the Lindow library was extensive, and her father had been most unusual and permitted her to obtain the ones intended for gentlemen, those with color plates of Roman and Greek statues that did not always feature the delicate fig leaf.

But still. This was… He was…

Richard glanced down, looking at what Evelyn was staring at. “Am I suitable?”

Evelyn wet her lips as she stared at the jutting thrust of flesh that bobbed slightly. “Y-Yes. Quite suitable.”

He grinned, taking her hand and leading her to the pile of furs and blankets. “I knew these would come in handy.”

Evelyn could not help but flush. “That is not why I have them.”

“I know,” he reassured her, brushing the back of his hand down her cheek, then allowing it to continue as it grazed her collarbone, the peak of her nipple. “I know.”

And he did know. Somehow, and Evelyn could not explain it, Richard knew everything: precisely how she wanted to be kissed, how she wanted to be lowered down slowly onto the rugs.

When he covered his body with hers and she gasped at the sudden intimacy, the sensation of flesh on flesh, the way his wiry chest hair scraped across her breasts and caused an aching flicker of pleasure, he knew to wait, not to move as she settled into the moment.

And all Evelyn could think was that this could not have been happening… and she was so glad that it was.

“Are you certain?”

Evelyn blinked up at him. Until now, there had been a way back. It would have been scandalous if the truth of their activities—unchaperoned—had ever surfaced, but they had not— she had not crossed that line which once crossed could never be uncrossed.

She nodded. “More certain about this than anything.”

“Are you ready?”

“Ready”? Evelyn flushed to think how damp her secret place was, how it dripped in throbbing need with every kiss that he had bestowed on her.

She nodded again.

And then he was in her, filling her, and Evelyn gasped at the sudden intrusion but felt none of the expected pain. In fact, this was—

“Ohhh,” she moaned, wrapping her legs around Richard’s buttocks. “Oh, yes.”

The rhythm started slowly. With each slow movement of his manhood almost out of her, then deeply back in, Richard stretched her until the tweaks of unexpected stinging had gone and nothing remained but waves of pleasure.

And they were building, the waves of pleasure.

Richard was building them, and he knew precisely how to work her.

One hand clasped her cheek, keeping the connection, while the other moved to her breasts, mercilessly worshiping her nipples so that with every twist, tweak, tug, the building need in her center heated up.

And Evelyn looked up into the eyes of the man she knew she loved.

“Evelyn. Evelyn, I have to tell you—”

“I know.” She gasped, her hands grasping his shoulders as though doing so would keep her attached to the earth. “I know—oh, Richard!”

The second time she climaxed somehow overcame the first. There was something so intimate, so intoxicating about having the man she loved thrusting inside her, propelling her closer and closer to her peak until she flew off it, that Evelyn almost wept as she clung on to him and the pleasure overwhelmed her.

“Damn—God, yes!” Richard’s thrusting had changed. The rapid pace became a frenzy as his face worked and he poured himself into her.

When he fell into her waiting arms, Evelyn could only imagine the picture that they presented. Two happy, sated lovers in a tangle of blankets and furs.

She would have to paint it tomorrow. When she could stand.