Indiscretion. Anthony wasn’t even certain he could manage it. Not without coming in his trousers like a green boy and embarrassing himself more than already he had.
And still she toyed with him, like she knew precisely the effect that she had wrought upon him. Which, now that he considered it, she must have done. Her elegant fingers spread his waistcoat open, delicately flicked the buttons of his shirt through their loops one by one.
“Your lover must know,” she said, a sultry heat to her voice, “that she is desirable to you.”
She would have been desirable to a blind man. She could have seduced a dead man back to life, if only to hear one more sweet word from those full lips, to receive one more glance from those thickly-lashed dark eyes.
Charity was a courtesan—or had been. She had built a career on her inherent sensuality, on the purveyance of pleasure. Did he have even the slightest prayer of satisfying her?
But something within him came untethered as she smoothed open his shirt and placed her hands upon his chest, sliding her fingers across his skin. Of its own accord, his hand found the nape of her neck, curled around it, pulled her closer. The motion dislodged a few pins, freed a cluster of silky curls to spill down her back. A shiver raced down her spine, but her lashes lowered, eyes gone heavy-lidded. She met his lips with a sort of eagerness he could not have expected, as if she had held the kiss in every bit as much anticipation as had he.
Her breathy sigh seared his ears. The rake of her nails across his skin stiffened his cock to steel rigidity. The teasing stroke of her tongue on his sent his senses reeling.
Indiscreet. She wanted indiscreet—whatever that meant.
“Tell me what I should do,” he said against the plush softness of her lips.
“Tell me what pleases you.”
He felt the curve of her smile. Teasing; maddening.
“You wish me to instruct you?”
“Yes. I have some skill with following orders.” A habit formed long ago to obey his superior officers—and in this, she was most certainly his superior.
A melodious trickle of laughter. Her shoulders shook with her mirth.
“You were a captain. You were better at giving them, I expect.” Her palm flattened upon his chest, pressed firmly until his spine was flush against the back of the sofa.
“Help me with my laces,” she said.
He doubted any of this could have been done quite so comfortably in the confines of a carriage, but it didn’t seem to be a point worth belaboring at the moment. At least, not when she turned to straddle his hips, leaning down to cup his face in her hands and bite gently upon his lower lip. His cock throbbed beneath the tautness of his trousers. She had to have felt it.
Her laces. He was meant to be loosening her laces, but his clumsy fingers could not seem to manage it, catching and tangling themselves in the strings. He hissed out a curse, drew in a steadying breath, filling his lungs with the warm, flowery scent of her perfume. She’d asked only one thing of him, and he was bungling it.
A firm, desperate pull, and at last he felt the laces come loose. She wore no stays, no chemise between her skin and her gown, relying only upon the clever design of her gown and the tightly-laced back to conceal that fact. Warm, smooth flesh met his fingertips as he wrenched that gap wider, until her bodice sagged. Until her cleavage—already scandalously revealed by the low neckline—deepened and her breasts were bared. Round and full, perfectly formed, crested with taut, coral nipples.
“Christ,” he said.
She tipped her head back and laughed, full-throated and delighted, and it occurred to him that this was what she had meant when she had said she wanted his indiscretion. She wanted the words, the helpless exclamations, the sounds, and even the clumsy touches. She did not require practiced eloquence, nor any particular skill.
Only sincerity. Whatever form it took.
She shrugged her shoulders; an elegant motion that sent her sleeves slipping down her arms.
“It would please me,” she said, in that brandy-smooth voice, “if you were to touch my breasts. Kiss them.”
Anthony’s heart pounded wildly in his chest as he cupped the globes of her breasts in his hands, explored the impossibly soft silk of her flesh. He said, “I’m going to come in my trousers.”
“Of course you are,” she said, her voice warm and indulgent. Her head tipped back on a sigh of pleasure as he thumbed her nipples.
“I’m going to make certain of it.” She rolled her hips, and the hot, firm pressure of her riding his cock through the tight constriction of his trousers sent every thought fleeing from his mind except—
This could not be real. She could not be real. But she was, and he had the pert little points of her nipples caught between his fingers to prove it. He had her fingernails scratching at the nape of his neck, sliding through his hair as she pulled his head toward her bosom. He breathed in that same flowery fragrance, evidence of a few drops of her perfume sprinkled in the valley between those magnificent breasts.
His lips touched warm flesh, satiny-smooth and lush. Found the bead of her nipple, sucked that ripe point into his mouth. And she sang for him—a melody of sighs and moans, praise lavished upon him with the sounds that spilled from her lips, with the rake of her fingertips through his hair, with the race of her heart behind the cage of her ribs.
Her well-intentioned pity he had prepared himself for. Perhaps even her charitable indulgence, offered in the spirit of the friendship he thought they had begun to cultivate. But the uninhibited reality of her? Beyond imagination. So far past what even his wildest fantasies could have conjured that it seemed an impossibility that she could be like this.
With him.
He couldn’t hold his seed, felt his climax climbing his shaft with every rhythmic roll of her hips. And then it was upon him, and he groaned against the tender flesh of her breasts, shuddering with the force of it, his hands seizing her hips to prolong the exquisite friction, draw out the bliss.
His heart thundered. His breath misted her dewy skin. He’d come in his trousers, just as she’d promised he would. But she hadn’t come.
With a little sound of self-satisfaction, she peeled his right hand from her hip and drew it to her bare thigh, guiding his fingers beneath her rumpled skirts until he touched the hot, wet heart of her. The evidence of her own arousal slicked his fingers, and he marveled at the softness of her private flesh. Her breath hitched as she taught him how to touch her, how to manipulate that tiny bead of flesh at the apex of her thighs with his fingertips until her face and throat and those lovely breasts glowed with a rosy passion flush. Until her thighs trembled, and her head fell back, and she released his hand entirely to grip his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin through the linen of his shirt.
“Yes,” she said, in a dreamy tone.
“Yes, just like that—yes, yes—” A gasp. A sigh. Unfeigned pleasure slid across her beautiful face. Beneath his fingers there was the delicate pulse of female flesh, the tiny contractions of her release. Brought about by his clumsy hands.
Her trembling fingers framed his face as she wilted in spent repletion. Her lips touched his temple; gentle, fond.
“Ah, you good boy,” she sighed.
“I knew you had it in you.”
***
“It isn’t my intention to be rude,” Captain Sharp said, his voice still somewhat ragged, no doubt owing to the staggered pitch of his breath which had not yet returned to its even rhythm.
“But I really do have to change my clothes.”
Yes; he seemed as though he would be the fastidious sort.
“Not just yet,” Charity said.
“You cannot abandon your lover so soon afterward. You will give her the impression she is unwanted. It’s a messy business, I’ll admit. But you can endure it for just a few minutes, can you not, Captain Sharp?”
“Probably—after that, I mean to say—it would be acceptable for you to call me Anthony.”
She smiled, charmed.
“Anthony, then, if you please. You do have to let me go, however. I’ve a feeling you could very much benefit from the after bits.”
“The after bits?” He did release her, though the sluggishness with which he did suggested it had been a difficult thing to make himself do.
She eased off of his lap, let her gaze drift away from the dark stain upon his trousers lest it embarrass him.
“Yes, the after bits. Wherein you lie curled together only to be close. Chat, perhaps, if the mood strikes you.” She shoved her skirts down, shuffled toward the other end of the sofa and stretched out her legs.
“Come,” she said as she patted the sofa and turned onto her side.
“There is room enough for two.” But barely. It would be a tight fit.
Somehow he wedged himself there behind her, pressing his back against the sofa as if trying to maintain a respectful distance between them.
“And this is something your lovers would do with you?” he asked.
“The ones of whom I was fondest certainly did,” she said.
“No one likes to feel used. Not even those who are paid for their services.” Charity fished behind her, found his arm, and pulled it over her waist.
“There. Isn’t that nicer?”
“Nicer. Yes.” He began to relax somewhat, his chest touching her back as he inhaled. Catching the scent of her hair, she thought.
“What are we meant to chat about?”
“Oh, anything. The demands of the day, perhaps, or plans for the coming days. I’ll be kind and let you select a subject.”
“You know my plans already, well into the future.”
“Then you might tell me what kept you so late this evening,” she suggested mildly.
“A meeting with my solicitor,” he said.
“A formal accounting of my assets. Properties, estates—”
“What, you didn’t know that much already?”
“Some of it,” he said.
“But I have long been out of the country. The only true constant of which I could be certain was my father’s estate in the countryside, our ancestral home. It alone is entailed. My father might have bought or sold any number of other properties in the years since last I knew what our family holdings consisted of.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Is that why you offered Hattie—”
“Northall House,” he said.
“Yes. Father bought it perhaps ten years ago, for my brother Frederick’s use as a countryside retreat. I didn’t know of it until this afternoon, when its significance was made clear to me.”
“That was kind of you.” She laced her fingers through his, pressed his palm to the flat of her belly.
“To give your nieces a permanent home.”
“It should always have been theirs,” he said.
“I never meant to take it from them. I never wanted it for myself.”
Of course. He’d wanted to be a duke probably about as much as she had wished to be a duchess. No eager inheritor he; only a bereaved brother and son, forced into the place he now occupied because too many loved ones had been stricken from it before their time.
A lull; a few brief moments of silence. Not unpleasant or uncomfortable. Just a companionable quiet.
“Do you miss it?” he asked.
“Your career?”
“Certain aspects,” she admitted with a shrug.
“I do not miss the lack of privacy, the dependence upon a protector for my security. I do not miss the demands upon my time, of which I was obliged never to complain, since I had been well paid for it. But I do occasionally miss the companionship.” She heaved a sigh.
“There is much that goes with being a mistress, and when one leaves that life—well, sometimes there are unexpected sacrifices.”
“Such as?”
“A certain level of prestige amongst the demimonde. It would not mean much to you…or to your social set, I should say. But there was a time that my company was desirable, that I was much in demand. I suppose I still am, in a sense.”
He had got a knack for it now, the act of lying together. Or perhaps he had simply developed a taste for it after all. His hand stroked her belly absently. His knees tucked up behind hers.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“The demimonde has its own social world,” she said.
“It is rather like a naughty echo of the Ton, for those of us not fortunate enough to be born on the right side of social respectability. You have galas and garden parties and musicales—”
“You have Cyprians’ balls.”
“Yes.” Or house parties filled with revelry and debauchery. Everything more than a little askew of what a lady born into a noble household might expect, but still with a certain prestige amongst her own peers. A seedier side of society, and one she had enjoyed immensely for its lack of pretension, the tribute it paid to hedonism.
“I received an invitation to one a few days past. I regret that I cannot attend.”
“Can you not? Have you some other obligation to which you must attend?”
She laughed, light and airy.
“No; nothing. It is just that such events are meant for gentlemen to show off their paramours. An open secret of sorts. No one speaks of what happens within, but they are events designed for men to preen before their peers, to convey their worth and status to one another, often in the form of the lady upon their arm. If I were to arrive unescorted it would send a false message—that I am seeking a new benefactor.”
“But you’d like to attend,” he said.
“If you could.”
“I enjoy a good party, a bit of honest hedonism. The merriment, the excitement of it. The fun of doing something wicked. Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Possibly I’ve never done anything wicked enough to have formed an opinion. Ton events have not, thus far, struck me as a particularly enjoyable experience. You said no one speaks of these balls?” he asked.
“They are known,” she said, “by those in attendance. However, many of the men who attend with their mistresses are married. It’s acceptable to have a mistress, but one is generally obliged to be discreet about it. If one wishes one’s contemporaries to guard their tongues, one must guard one’s own. Gossip begets gossip, so to speak.”
“Hm.” The sound had a tone of contemplation to it. After a lengthy pause, he ventured, “If it is as you say—that is, if there is no danger of anyone speaking of it in public, lest they reveal their own sins in the doing of it—could I not escort you?”
“Would you?” Charity wriggled, turned round to face him.
“Would you, really?”
“I’ve never been to one,” he said.
“It sounds…better.”
Than Ton events, she expected he meant to imply. Freer, fewer restrictions. Less social judgment. Less chance of making a mistake which would be whispered of behind his back, since there would be no one foolish or indiscreet enough to risk it.
“Yes,” she said.
“I suppose you could escort me. But you would have to give up an evening to do it. It might mean sacrificing an event which could bring you closer to Lady Cecily.”
“I’m not yet certain I wish to court her in earnest. And she must know as well as I that it will be several months at least before it would be acceptable to court her openly, besides,” he said.
“When I am—if ever I am—I will give such considerations more weight.”
“Then I will accept your offer with all due gratitude. The ball is one week from today. I’ll come here after nightfall, so we might arrive together. And now that I think on it,” she said, and lifted her hand to toy with the loosed buttons of his shirt.
“It might well be the perfect place to show you how to evade notice at such an event. How, when, and where you might steal a kiss from your intended.”
“I shouldn’t like to be caught out.”
“I should say not. If you were to be caught out, you’d end up with Lady Cecily as your wife whether you had decided you wanted her or no,” Charity said.
“Fortunately for you, I am quite skilled at sneaking about.” She suppressed a shiver as the slight chill of the room began to cool her overheated flesh.
“Are you? I hadn’t thought such a thing would be required of a mistress.”
“Not required, no. But it is great fun indeed. It should be the same within a marriage, I think. Not because it is necessary—but because it is fun and thrilling and memorable. A bit of wickedness to indulge in together, for its own sake.”
“I shall have to take your word on the matter. At least until I have the requisite experience necessary to pass my own judgment.” Idly his hand smoothed over her back. The weight of his arm over her waist was a comforting one.
It felt—different than she had recalled. Or perhaps it merely was different than she had ever experienced. There was no subtle atmosphere of expectation looming past the borders of the gentle embrace, no aura of impatience. It was only pleasant. Comforting. Soothing, the way the warmth of his palm chased the chill bumps from the bare skin of her back, exposed through the pulled laces of her gown and the parted fabric.
Had she ever experienced an intimate touch untainted by such things? Or had she—like Anthony—simply never had cause before now to understand the difference? But there was one, she was certain. She could feel it in the warm fingers that had found the nape of her neck, kneading away the tension caused by the somewhat awkward angle of her head upon the sofa.
She could feel the difference in a touch not intended to entice or to incite. A touch that was simply…warm. For a moment—half of one, at least—she let herself feel the instinctive flash of envy that tumbled through her. For the woman who would inevitably become his wife. The woman who would one day be entitled to the tenderness of which those strong hands were capable.
Lady Cecily, in all likelihood. Who had best find herself damned grateful to have acquired such a husband, or—or—
His hand stilled upon her neck.
“Have I upset you?”
Charity blinked. Shook herself free of the odd jumble of her thoughts.
“Not at all. Why do you ask?”
He neither looked, nor sounded, particularly convinced.
“Just for a moment, you looked like you wanted to do murder.”
“How uncouth of me. Naturally, I do try to keep any murderous inclinations I might harbor to myself. Just occasionally my face gets the better of me.” Still, there was an odd undercurrent of danger that pooled in her belly, one she had best get herself clear of before any more fanciful notions could bloom in her mind.
Or worse still, her heart.
What a ridiculous thought, that. The very supposition that even the tiniest weeds of feeling could find a place to take root in the meager, barren soil of her heart. Thrusting one arm beneath her, Charity shoved herself upright once more, throwing off his arm in the motion.
“I ought to be going. Will you do up my laces?”
“I’ll bungle it, most likely,” he warned, even as he rose once more.
She offered a shrug.
“Redding has got my pelisse. Even if you do, no one will see. And it is good practice, besides.” For Lady Cecily, she reminded herself. Not for her.
And still, she enjoyed the fumbling of his fingers, the occasional brush of them against her skin as he worked at the task she had laid out for him. More than she should have done. More, certainly, than was wise.