Page 161 of The Ladies Least Likely

She said something else, but it wasn’t in English.

She rose from her seat and came around the table and seated herself in his lap, her bottom nestled against his groin, her knees draped over his thighs.

His cock rose instantly toward her warm, firm flesh.

Her beautiful breasts were at the perfect level to feast his eyes upon, within kissing distance.

She scooped the pudding with a broad spoon and held it toward him, cupping one hand beneath the utensil.

“And you have never treated me like a dirty, throwaway urchin who might have been illegitimate, and who definitely needed a lesson in manners,” she said.

“Try the pudding? It turned out, unbelievably. Look, it quakes just so.” She shook the spoon gently and the custard obligingly wobbled from side to side.

He leaned forward and enclosed the spoon in his mouth, feeling the sweetness rush over his tongue and down his throat as he swallowed.

“Perfect. Delicious.” He leaned forward and licked her lips, capturing the smear of butter, the trace of wine, and the warm, rich custard.

“Mmm. You’re right.”

She tossed the spoon onto the table and curled her hands in the lapel of his coat, thrusting her tongue into his mouth.

He groaned as her breasts fell into his eager hands, full and warm and pliable.

Her nipples tightened in his palms, and his cock surged to full and immediate attention as she shifted her legs to straddle him.

She pulled at her skirts and Ren seized on the opportunity to slip his hands inside, running his palms over her long, strong thighs and over her hips to the lush mounds of her bottom.

She was gloriously warm and firm, her skin smooth as cream.

She moaned as she wriggled her hips onto his erection, and Ren stiffened his back as pleasure arced through him.

He was close, dangerously close to spending early, embarrassing himself and annoying her, but he didn’t see how he could clamp down on the exquisite sensations of Harriette melting in his arms, Harriette making those little moans of passion, Harriette smelling of rosewater and tasting of everything sweet.

“Rhette,” he gasped, wondering how to warn her that he wasn’t very good at this, if indeed this was even allowed. “I’m not—not going to last very l-long.”

She pushed lightly against his chest as she swung her leg off his lap and rose easily to her feet. “Then get thee to bed, and get thee naked. Up, milord,” she teased.

He meant to protest against these needling milords she’d been delivering all night, teasing him about his title as if she were still the country waif running wild around the countryside.

But Harriette was steering him toward the enormous bed which stood under a red and gold canopy, occupying a full half of the room.

The smell of lavender and sweet clover drifted up as she pushed him down upon it.

Harriette must have made up the bed with fresh linens as he made his rounds of the house.

“I am not protesting,” he said as she set to work on the buttons of his coat.

This was like when she had undressed him to sketch him, only this time he aided her by tugging at his neckcloth and twining his hands under hers to work on his waistcoat.

“But I had thought you said we couldn’t—because of Fr?—”

He regretted even hinting at the man’s name. “Because you are to be m-m-married.”

The word came out with difficulty. The very thought that she would belong to another made his mind rebel.

She bent and pressed her lips to his temple, his ear, his jaw as her clever fingers loosened his buttons.

“I know. I thought that I owed it to him. But it occurred to me today, as I was sorting through my mother’s things, that once the vows are spoken, he will have legal control over my body.

And I won’t. I will be a femme covert, invisible to the eyes of the law.

He will speak for me, own my property, and use me to beget heirs for the duchy. ”

She shuddered and pressed her forehead against Ren’s shoulder, growing still. Her palm pressed against his chest, over his heart, as if she were listening to its erratic beat.

“When he marries me, I will disappear.” Her voice cracked on the whisper. “So I will do what I wish and take every pleasure I can before that happens. And I wish,” she said against his neck, “for you. ”

Ren shook with the raw, ferocious heat that seared through him at her confession. “I wish that as well.”

He tore off his coat and shed his waistcoat, tossing the expensive fabric aside heedlessly. Harriette pulled his shirttails from his breeches and whisked the large, loose linen shirt over his head.

“God, Rhette, I’ve dreamed—so many t-t-times—” His cursed tongue was swelling, throttling his mouth. He couldn’t even tell her what this meant to him, what she meant to him.

“I know,” she whispered. “I’ve dreamed of it, too.”

She slid down his body to kneel on the floor and patted the top of her thigh.

Obligingly he braced his boot on her leg and she began working the leather and wood framing free of his mauled foot.

Once again she showed not a hint of revulsion as she set the boot aside and rolled down his stockings. Instead her mouth quirked in a smile.

“Worsted wool?” she questioned. “No silk hose for his lordship?”

“Absorbs the sweat,” he answered. “And prevents chafing from the leather.”

She set to work on the boot of his good leg. “I shall make you a set of blue worsted,” she said. “And you can be like Mr. Stillingfleet, who came to Mrs. Montagu’s salons in his blue stockings and gave name to the whole circle.”

It felt absurd to be having this conversation with his erection so blatantly in evidence between them.

She’d noticed, he could tell. She rolled down his second stocking and tossed it aside, then climbed up his body to attend to his breeches.

He leaned back and closed his eyes as she unbuttoned the front flap, and sudden memories of his many previous failures assailed him.

He reached out and grasped one of her hands before she could slide his breeches over his hips.

“Rhette—I need to tell you?—”

“Tell me what?” she asked in a throaty purr. The hand he wasn’t holding slipped inside the fall of his breeches, inching toward his cock. He gasped for air.

“I’ve—I’ve had?—”

“I know.” Her voice changed. “All the courtesans. The legends preceded you back to London. The long, very long list of women you’d pleasured.”

“Lies.” Shamefully, he kept his face in the shadow of the canopy. He squeezed her wrist, willing her to understand, to forgive him. “I paid those women to brag of my prowess. In truth, I’m—I’m rubbish at this.”

His face burned, and he wondered why he, who dreaded talking, couldn’t seem to stop words from tumbling out, even mangled.

“I f-f-f-inish too—too early, or I dr-dr-droop and c-c-can’t…

” He stammered to a halt, but even then he wasn’t done humiliating himself.

“I—I’m g-going to d-disappoint you, Rhette. ”

“Sssh.” She pressed herself along his body and laid her lips to his.

“You won’t disappoint me, my love,” she whispered between kisses.

“I want to touch you so badly. I want you to touch me. Even if we’re both rubbish at this—and I think I might be, too—there are ways we can bring each other pleasure. ”

She settled against him, bringing one hand to cradle his face. With the other she touched the old pendant around his neck.

“Think how old this is.” She traced the intertwined Greek letters. “And we found it ages ago.”

“Your first gift to me. My sign that I would conquer.”

“Ren.” She turned her face into his neck, hiding the vulnerability that fleeted across her features. “My Ren. I’ll be content if you do nothing but kiss me all night. I want nothing but to be with you.”

He fisted his hand in her hair and kissed her, hard and devouring. “I wish to do more than kiss you,” he growled.

“Good.” Her throaty laugh thrummed inside his chest, like their bodies were already in tune.

He shoved his breeches down his hips, lips never leaving hers, and she gave a happy sigh of satisfaction as she nestled against his nude body.

He sucked in air, nearly choking, when she settled herself over his erection.

He could feel her, hot silken flesh and the tickle of soft hair, but she was still draped in swaths of fabric.

“I can’t find you in all this,” he growled, trying to plunge his hands in her neckline to access her breasts.

She laughed and pulled the loose morning gown over her head, tossing it aside and letting the white fabric billow through the air.

He froze at the sight of her in her shift, her shadowed form outlined by firelight.

Then she scooped her shift over her head and tossed that aside, too, and Ren’s eyes burned with the effort to take in every detail at once: the mass of hair spread loose over her shoulders, the perfect breasts so high and round with their dark upthrust nipples, the elegant curve of her torso from shoulder to nipped-in waist, the flare of hip around the dark patch of hair between her legs, and the long, elegant length of her legs, so strong and perfect.

“Are you ready for me?” She climbed onto the bed and braced her arms on either side of his shoulders, leaning close to look at his face. He scooped a pert, begging nipple into his mouth, nipping with his teeth.

“Rhette, I’ve been ready for you since—since?—”

Best not to say he’d had erotic dreams about her when he was fourteen, when she still had the body of a child but the mouth of a tavern wench and the brain of an Oxford scholar.

He couldn’t tell her every fantasy woman of his youth had worn her face, that every time he’d serviced himself in a dark foreign bed he’d imagined her mouth, her body doing the work of his hand.