In the Flesh (16 page)

She wanted to yell at him,
For heaven’s sake fuck me, you contrary beast!

But she managed to resist.

“Well, then, let’s get to experimenting, shall we?” she said, her head coming up as she offered him a smile as challenging as his own. She hoped.

“Oh Beatrice, Beatrice, Beatrice, you’re adorable. What more could a red-blooded man want?” He stared at her, smirking broadly. Yet suddenly, even in the very midst of his good humor and obvious desire, Beatrice saw the strangest twist of sadness. Something in his eyes…just for a moment—the shadows of unbearable pain, softening her heart.

And then the moment was gone again, and there was only mirth—and lust—in those dark ocean-blue depths.

“Why don’t you undress, Bea?” said Ritchie, still twizzling the ivory cock idly between his fingers. “I’ve yet to see
your
beautiful body in the flesh, and you will insist on reminding me I’ve paid handsomely for the privilege.”

Tingles of apprehension raced through her. The moment of truth. She’d undressed for Eustace, of course, but only behind a screen, and then floating on a tranquil sea of intoxication. Now, despite the excellence of Sofia’s spiced Madeira, she was stone-cold sober and in full possession of her faculties. For a moment, she wished she’d drunk another warming glass, then realized that despite her nerves, she wanted to be fully aware, all senses acute. She had less than a month now with Ritchie, too short a time to spend in insensibility.

“Very well.” She plucked at the ribbon on her chemise, trying to steady her shaking fingers.

“Wait!”

Her fingers froze again. What now?

“You’re not cold, are you, Bea?” Ritchie dropped the
godemiche
on the bed and sprang up, heading for the fireplace, where a small fire puttered against an unseasonable chill in the air. Had Ritchie seen her shivering?

“Maybe a little.”

Ritchie built the fire a bit, then strode to the window. Sofia’s villa was secluded, and set in extensive gardens, but the distant windows of another residence were visible. Ritchie pulled the thick velvet curtains together, cocooning them in total privacy.

“There, that’s better. Nobody to pry on us now, Bea.” He turned up the lamps. “We can be simply ourselves.”

Whoever
you
are, Edmund Ellsworth Ritchie?

“Yes, that is better, thank you, Ritchie,” she said.

But to be sequestered in their own secret realm was intoxicating. Here, she could do anything, be anybody; whatever and whoever Ritchie wanted her to be. A great and very sweet sense of lightness and freedom enveloped her senses.

Her nervousness a strange pleasure now, she returned to the task of unfastening her chemise.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Secret Realm

HE FOLLOWED THE
small manipulations of those slender fingers as if his life depended on it. His heart thudded. His cock thudded too. It was the first time all over again, anticipating the sight of a beautiful woman’s body. He’d felt like this with Clara, and yes, even with Margarita, though less so with his more experienced paramours. But right now, he couldn’t for the life of him bring to mind the particulars of any other woman’s form.

Was Beatrice nervous? If so, she was making a very good fist of feigning nonchalance. Was she afraid? No, not that. He’d seen that, and the bright anticipation in Beatrice’s eyes was not the same.

He wanted to plunge across the gap between them and assist her unveiling, but he had to let her take her own time, her own pace. Her fingertips were so beautiful and delicate, the way they moved, and he imagined her handling the
godemiche,
and handling him. His cock bucked hard in his drawers and his heart lurched wildly.

At last the ribbons and buttons were undone, yet the fabric remained tantalizingly unparted. In a graceful yet primal gesture, she plucked at the hem of the soft garment, pausing just a second. Her breasts lifted beneath the cloth as she sucked in a deep breath, then with a tug and a twist and wiggle, she dragged the chemise off over her head. As the white muslin came away, it appeared to dislodge a hairpin or two as well, and her casually formed coiffeur tumbled around her shoulders in a cape of haphazard fire. Unable to stop himself, Ritchie shot forward, and retrieved the pins, his head full of lily of the valley and his eyes dazzled by desire.

“Dangerous,” he muttered, tossing the pins onto the small chest at the side of the bed. He wasn’t sure what he meant—them, or her.

As a virgin, she should have been shrinking, covering herself with her hands. As a natural enchantress, she drew in another breath, her breasts lifting and her head coming up, her eyes so bright and proud they almost struck sparks.

“Oh, Bea…you’re perfection.”

His fingers flexed, ready to reach out and cup the soft, sweet orbs, but he couldn’t move. He was afraid to, in case he fell apart in shattered fragments of awe and lust. The other day, at South Mulberry Street, he’d seen a little of this beauty and it had all but floored him. Now he had a better view and he felt light-headed.

The jewel-green eyes seared him with questions. How could she possibly not think he found her to be the acme of all loveliness? But it seemed she did, and her falter of self-doubt nearly felled him completely.

“Here, let me help you.” Amazed he could still speak at all, and completely incapable of holding back further, he reached for the fastenings on her drawers. His usually deft fingers fumbled, but he sent up a prayer of thanks that she’d taken heed and wasn’t wearing woolen combinations. They were a hindrance to fashion, but Beatrice would still have looked exquisite bundled up in the sanitary creations of Dr. Jaeger, he was sure.

Their hands bumped at her waist, and they worked at cross-purposes until Beatrice gave an exasperated sigh and left him to it.

“Lie back.” Ritchie swept aside the box and all the playthings on the bed, his impatience scattering everything hither and thither. “Hup!” he urged, pulling lightly on the billowing muslin drawers as Beatrice subsided amongst the pillows.

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t hesitate. Resting on her elbows, she wafted up her hips so he could divest her of the last of her garments.

Still holding the bundled drawers in his hands, Ritchie gazed.

So this was it. The sight he’d longed for, the vision that had made upwards of twenty thousand guineas into small change.

Worth every last farthing.

His fingers twisted in the fragile cloth and he felt it tear. She was beautiful. Supreme. Breathtaking. Yet not in the way of some earthy and voluptuous love goddess. Beatrice Weatherly was gentle of figure, neat and trim and softly curved, almost girlish despite her twenty-four years. He saw faint marks on her waist and thighs where not too long ago she’d been corseted and gartered, and he wanted to rub his face along each one, kissing and soothing.

Her dainty puss was a crimson bloom, dazzling and seductive against the snowy contrast of her skin.

“What’s wrong?” Sitting up again, she frowned but didn’t cover herself. “Not what you were expecting from the cabinet cards?”

“Far better than the cabinet cards. Infinitely better.” He tossed aside the drawers, realizing he must have been sitting there like a foolish youth, still mangling them.

“Well, thank goodness for that! I thought I was going to have to give you your money back, and return all the new frocks and fripperies I bought this morning.”

Her talk was bold, but her skin gave her away. A pearly pink blush had stolen over the skin of her cheeks, her chest, and the slopes of her breasts. She was enacting the bold sangfroid of a high courtesan, but inside she was a bashful, modest girl.

“No refund necessary, Bea. You’re everything I anticipated.” He fought to keep his voice calm but inside he was a tempest. Leaning over her, he stole a kiss because he could no longer bear not to.

For a moment, she lay inert, her mouth soft beneath his. Then, as if animated by the power of electricity, she came to life, winding her arms around him and pressing her bare body to his clothed one. Ritchie twisted where he sat, to hold her better.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t fuck her today, but now he wasn’t sure he could contain himself. How could he hold out against her, the sweetest concoction of enthusiasm and innocence? Boldness and a divine, essential purity?

She created an ache in him that had never ached before.

Not even when he’d loved and married twice.

* * *

I’m naked and I’m kissing a man. I’m naked and I’m kissing Edmund Ellsworth Ritchie.

Who would have thought she would have come to this? Yet, as Ritchie’s firm, delicious mouth dominated hers, Beatrice felt for the first time in her life that she was truly where she’d always been meant to be.

She loved Ritchie’s lips. Their texture was velvety and their muscular mobility was both dominating and tender. She couldn’t help but respond in ways that seemed opposed to each other. Defy, yet yield. Govern, yet submit. How could a mouth, a pair of flesh-and-blood lips, create such artistry?

Squirming and wriggling, she rubbed her skin against his clothing, the texture of the fine worsted a caress in itself. She wanted to see him as naked as she was, but this stark contrast was excitingly provocative.

His hands began to rove, as she’d known they would. Another texture. Another provocation. Warm, caressing flesh against her flesh. Strong fingers floating over her skin, leashed power contained. She could feel the tumult in him humming like a spinning top, yet his touch was measured, not greedy, not licentious.

If anybody was licentious, it was she, unable to stop herself from rubbing, rubbing, almost undulating against him like a purring cat in ecstasy. But she made a sharp sound of displeasure when he sat up, withdrawing from her.

“I
do
wish you’d get on with it,” she said, then cried,
“Oh!”
and laughed at her own absurdity.

“I’d love to, sweet thing. Just let me take my coat off, and kick off my boots.” Ritchie didn’t laugh at her, but his face was full of smiles and sudden, happy youth. It had never really occurred to her how old he was before, but he had at least a decade on her, perhaps a bit more. And when he was sad, which she’d seen once or twice, he looked his years.

But now…now he looked joyous, almost angelic. Like a young god with his thick fair hair and his wicked smile.

The well-cut coat was flung across the room in the general direction of a wing chair, and in a flash, he’d unlaced his polished boots and kicked them away. Then, with barely any more care, he whipped out his elegant stickpin, and tossed it amongst the little heap of her own hairpins, before tugging at his neckwear and wrenching it free.

The beautiful foulard sailed through the air to join his coat, and as it floated, he unfastened his high, stiff collar and pulled that off too. Then, about to plunge forward again, he paused and unhitched his watch and chain
and set those aside, too.

He
doesn’t want them to dig into me.

This small act of consideration twisted her heart and doubled her longing for him. A longing for his touch, his lips, his skin. Everything. They had but a month and she wanted him now.

The finite nature of their relationship made every sensation more intense, more luminous. Tugging at his shirt and waistcoat, she drew him to her again, searching for his mouth and finding it. When he surrendered his lips to her, she wound her arms around him, loving again the sensation of cloth on skin, the piquant rub. She parted her legs, pressing her pelvis against him. It was so easy. So natural. So strangely apposite.

Ritchie’s kiss was hungry but measured, and her heart leaped when he stroked her body as he devoured her. His hands were warm, and they smoothed over her, leaving a glow, a tingle in their wake, almost as if they’d been coated in
épice Divine.
The more he touched, the more she moved. Was compelled to move. His tea-scented mouth consumed her soft, anxious cries.

“Let me pleasure you,” he murmured, blending the words into the kiss. “Let me concern myself solely with
you
for the moment. I want to see your face, the way you move, the sound of your voice as you spend. I don’t want to get lost in my own desire.”

Beatrice stared at him in puzzlement as he drew back and looked down on her, his face alight with a near zealous glow. He wasn’t at all what she’d expected of a man, especially one who purchased a woman to satisfy him. Were all men like this, or was Ritchie very special and rare?

“But—”

He stopped the words with his fingers on her mouth. She could smell the scent of her lily of the valley toilet water on his skin, and other odors, also hers, but more exciting.

“Your pleasure is my pleasure. Indulge me. There’ll be time enough for us to fuck. To see a woman
in extremis
is a rare and wonderful thing. It needs to be savored.”

His hand slid from her mouth, down over her chin and neck and settled lightly on her shoulder. He stared at her, his indigo eyes intense as if he were still speaking with them, and she understood. At least a little.

Watching her respond to him, watching her squirm and struggle with an excess of sensation, then spend helplessly, meant as much to him, if not more, than the act of congress.

So be it. Who was she to argue? How many hundreds of disappointed wives, used quickly and without thought by clumsy husbands, would give anything to be in her place?

“I’m yours, Ritchie,” she said simply, and meaning it. On a far deeper level than the terms of their monetary transaction, so deep and sudden it alarmed her. “My pleasure is yours.” She paused, her heart floating. “I’m happy to give it.”

“You’re a treasure, Bea.” His face was complex tapestry of emotions; some clear, like satisfaction and desire, others more fleeting and inchoate. But joy and erotic fervor won the day. “Now lie back and be my odalisque. Let me serve you. I promise you’ll enjoy it.”

“I don’t doubt that. You seem to have a considerable degree of flair in that department.” Beatrice smiled up at him in what she hoped was a sultry manner, lowering her eyelids, aware of a great irony yet feeling no distress in it.

This was
exactly
how she’d posed in the photographs Eustace had taken of her. Languid. A creature of the senses. A goddess or houri, her body draped on a couch, offered and available. But that had been facade for the camera, and this was real. Real like breath and life and blood and desire.

Ritchie loomed over her, kneeling on the bed at her side, his own eyes hooded, his mouth curved and knowing. His fingertips coasted over her shoulder, her collarbone, then skated down to her breast, settling on the nipple and plucking it provocatively between finger and thumb.

Beatrice’s hips jerked. Her body loved this, though she knew not why. She remembered the way he’d tormented her like this in the morning room, back at South Mulberry Street, and between her legs, her sex fluttered, hungry and suddenly slick.

Ritchie’s smile broadened and he switched to the other teat, teasing and tweaking. Then back again, to and fro until her nipples were pink and hard and crinkled, exquisitely sensitive, and almost with a life of their own, silently calling to his fingers, begging for more. Without warning, he plunged down, took one between his muscular lips and sucked on it.

“Oh! Oh, my goodness!”

Between her legs there came a grind of pleasure, intense and keen, almost painful. Not a crisis, but close to it, and she cried out again. She wanted to grab Ritchie’s hand and conduct it to the fierce little bud of her clitoris, but somehow, he constrained her, forbade her to move, through sheer force of will.

“Yes. Good.” His breath was hot against her breast, and he paused only for a second, to utter the words. Then he was sucking again, tugging hard and flicking with his tongue. As if he’d read her mind, and deduced the exact way to plague her most, he settled the flat of his hand on her belly, fingertips touching the edge of her intimate hair but going no further.