In the Flesh (22 page)

Such dominion was an aphrodisiac elixir, as was his sublime male beauty. Deep within her belly, and between her thighs, Beatrice’s own flesh shivered, and what had been a gathering heaviness became a grinding ache of need.

Yes, tonight, she
must
have him. She could wait no longer. She had to learn and become whole, possess him as much as he would possess her.

Swirling her fingertips around him, Beatrice met Ritchie’s hot look with one of her own.

“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want any brandy,” she said, holding him firmly. “At least not here. I’ll take it in that reserved room, upstairs, if I may.”

Ritchie stared at her, his eyes luminous as if he beheld the light of the world.

“You’re a wonder, Bea,” he said, his voice almost vibrating. “A perfect wonder.” He paused, drew in a great shuddering breath, almost as if she’d knocked it clean out of him. “But I’ll need a moment…the state I’m in…to rearrange myself.”

“Perhaps I can assist you with that?”

“Oh, I’m sure you can…I’m sure you can.”

And with that he reached over and kissed her, full on the mouth, while she still held him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Moments of Truth and Beauty

IT WAS A LOVELY ROOM
. A beautiful, extravagant room, sumptuous with velvets, gold leaf and fine furniture. But as she wandered around it, clad in just her chemise, her drawers and her corset, it wasn’t exactly the setting in which Beatrice had imagined she might lose her virginity.

Even allowing for her liaison with Ritchie, she’d anticipated the deed being done in either her own bedroom or his. But clearly that wasn’t to be the case, and Beatrice stared around the handsome chamber while the man himself took his turn in the remarkably modern bathroom she’d just explored.

“Ladies first,” he’d said, patting her on the rump, and she’d spun around, astonished. Not at the barely felt tap, but the sound of his voice. For a well-known Lothario he sounded unexpectedly tentative.

Perhaps what he’d said was true? Perhaps his mistresses really did number relatively few and his reputation was exaggerated? A cold shudder gripped her. Maybe he didn’t normally consort with untried virgins, and he wasn’t looking forward to her first bedding with much enthusiasm?

Oh no, not so. His seductive smiles were hot, and full of hunger. He did want her, she was sure of it, and the state of his flesh, down in the restaurant and at other times, couldn’t lie.

But was he still concerned that he might hurt her?

But what if you do, Ritchie? I don’t care! If there’s pain it’ll be over in a moment…and then…and then…

And then what? Judging by what she’d felt and fondled beneath the tablecloth, he was bigger than the faux phallus. He’d be over her, inside her, imposing himself upon her. They’d be together, as one, the closest two human beings could ever be together apart from a child in its mother’s womb.

Oh Ritchie, do hurry up! Don’t keep me waiting.

As if summoned like some mythical djinni out of the
Arabian Nights,
Ritchie appeared in the suddenly open doorway to the bathroom. He’d shed his frock coat and his neckwear already, but now his waistcoat and his shirt were unfastened, too. Strolling toward her, he flung off the waistcoat, aiming it blindly, but with surprising accuracy at a mahogany chair as he flipped his braces off his shoulders, to leave them dangling.

“Beatrice…you’re such a lovely woman,” he said in a low intense voice, sitting down beside her. His smile was intense too, and infinitely complicated. It flickered around his mouth like a poem of emotion, and blazed in his eyes, both light and dark. He touched her face with the tips of his fingers, setting points of heat against her skin for just a second. Then he bent down and unlaced his boots and kicked them away before pulling off his socks. As he tossed those away, Beatrice suddenly wished that he’d let her sink to her knees before him, as his handmaiden, and uncover his feet. Her fingers tingled as she imagined massaging his strong, narrow toes.

Good grief, what an absurd idea, Bea! You’re a temporary concubine not some kind of slave.

Thinking on the matter, she’d never really seen herself in the conventional woman’s role of support and helpmeet to a man. She wasn’t that domestic paragon, it didn’t sit right with her nature. Yet for just a moment, she’d understood the role’s allure.

But it was only a moment, and to assert herself, she launched forward and sought his mouth with hers, reaching up to wind her hands around the back of his neck and dig her fingers into his thick, fair curls. He smelled of soap and shaving lotion and fastidious man, but she longed for the real male, the savage beneath, red-hot and wild.

Kissing him hard, she felt his smile, and was suddenly cross.

Take me seriously. I’m not a toy or a girl. I’m a woman.
She kissed harder, pressing her body against him, compelling him to acknowledge the contours of her breasts where they pressed up, shaped by her corset. Almost wishing now that she’d shed every stitch of clothing and not retained her undergarments, she slid a hand down over his shoulder and along the length of his arm, then grasped his hand and drew it to the mound between her thighs. Her drawers were newly purchased from Sofia’s modiste, all Parisian silk and froufrou and as pretty as a picture, and at least their traditional style retained the oh so convenient opening.

“So impatient,” he murmured against her mouth, but he squeezed where she wanted him to. The pressure made her squirm and bear down, loving the pressure and wanting more, more, more of it.

“Of course I am,” she growled back at him. “I’ve waited too long. I want to know what it’s like.” She rocked against the fulcrum of his hand, already halfway to pleasure. “I’m tired of having a risqué reputation without the experience that goes with it.”

“Very well then, siren, let’s not waste another moment.”

Still caressing her sex, he pushed her back against the bed.

* * *

BLOOD SURGED
around Ritchie’s body, pounding in his head, his heart and his groin. Ever since it had dawned upon him that Beatrice Weatherly was still a virgin, he’d fought to maintain control and rein in his desire.

He wasn’t an animal. He took no woman roughly. Now more than ever, he held himself to be a considerate lover, one who used his skills to ensure his lover’s pleasure. For an instant, cold horror gripped him as he remembered the last time he’d been teased and goaded into releasing the check he’d always levied on his passions. The nightmare haunted him to this day. And yet, at the time, he’d believed his husbandly enthusiasm to be welcome.

The grimacing, blank-faced shadow hovered momentarily over the bed, but when he snapped open his eyes, Margarita disappeared.

Ceding all his attention to a creature of light and warmth.

What man could think of another woman with Beatrice Weatherly in his arms? Her smile and her scent were a healing benison. As was her sweet honesty, perhaps an even greater power.

Beautiful Bea…beautiful Bea, you really want me, don’t you? This is no act, no facade, no fickle game of a mind that doesn’t know itself.

The last dark shade of his insane wife fought to clutch away his happiness, even in absentia, but he shook his senses, and drove out it and her, breathing in lily of the valley and a far more earthy scent.

He kissed Beatrice. He dug his hand in her luxuriant red hair and twisted a hank of it around his wrist; not to pull, but to bind himself to her. Between her legs, he squeezed in a deep, passionate rhythm, loving the way she rocked and squirmed and locked her thighs around his hand to keep it there.

Even if Beatrice had been possessed of all the arts of the divine Madame Bernhardt herself, there were telltales that could not be simulated. His fingers had worked their way into the vent in her dainty silk drawers, and he could feel her moisture seeping onto them from her sex. She was deliciously wet, running like a river, sweet and ready. He’d planned to utilize a
lubrifiant
when the time came to penetrate her, to ensure her comfort and ease. Perhaps he still would, just to be sure…but to his hand she felt so slick that it probably wouldn’t be needed.

But I’ll pleasure you first, adorable one. That’s a promise. A necessity.

Eager and well prepared as she was, the shock of accommodating a man for the first time might well steal away Beatrice’s pleasure, even if he was gentle, so it was a point of honor that she climax first, by his hand.

Or perhaps another, just as luscious way, if she’d let him.

The thought made him smile against her mouth, and circle his tongue around the soft margins of her lips.

* * *

BEATRICE WAS SIMMERING
, teetering on the brink, her body gathering itself and her clitoris throbbing beneath his hand. But as she thrust herself against him, Ritchie suddenly pulled away.

“No, please…what are you doing?” She grabbed at him, trying to pull him back, pure instinct and basic need making her beg.

“Hush, sweetheart, don’t worry.”

Slowly he kissed her lips, then pressed his mouth to the hand that’d held his in place at her groin. That kissed, he moved to the swell of her cleavage where it almost spilled from the top of her corset and nestled his face there, too. “I’m going to do something for you…something nice…something I hope you’ll like.” His tongue snaked out, licking her curves, flickering and teasing the slope of each breast, tasting the perspiration on her skin. “But if you don’t like it, you must tell me and we’ll try something else. Promise me that.” He paused and looked up impishly, his tongue still against her skin as he punctuated his words with more teasing licks. “But I’ve a feeling you will like it…very much.”

Suddenly it dawned on Beatrice
exactly
what it was he might be talking about.

Oh! Goodness me!

For the moment though, his mouth continued to rove over her cleavage, and to facilitate that, he popped open a couple of the hooks at the top of her corset. Prizing aside the lacy frippery of her chemise, he bared her, bringing her nipples out into the open and then lapping at them with his tongue.

Oh, that felt so good. Warm and wet, like a soft bath of pleasure flickering over each teat, one after the other, and back again. Beatrice tossed her head where she lay, still sideways across the bed, her fingers buried deep in Ritchie’s blond curls, stirring up the light but intoxicating fragrance of his hair lotion.

If his mouth felt this wonderful at her breast, what unimaginable heaven would it feel like when it wandered lower?

He seemed in no hurry though. Lingering in a leisurely fashion over her nipples, he licked and sucked them, and occasionally took each one between the edges of his teeth and worried it lightly. Beatrice moaned, loving the delicate spike of danger, the not quite discomfort that made her hips start to wiggle as if she were an automaton, and her bottom squirm and rock against the bed.

As Ritchie nipped at her and clamped down hard on her puss with his dividing fingers, her legs kicked and she shouted aloud, suddenly spending.

Waves of exquisite sensation pelted around her body, but before she could barely appreciate them, Ritchie was moving and sliding from the bed onto the floor. With a perfect grace that she was almost beyond appreciating but still somehow managed to catalogue, he settled to his knees, between her thighs, and gazed at the center of her pleasure.

“Relax, my beautiful Bea, relax,” he murmured, ever his mantra, then before she could draw another breath, he plunged on in.

Beatrice knew that men did this to women. She’d seen it in the “educational” reading material at Sofia’s house and in Charlie’s forbidden periodicals. But those were just images, and this was a warm, real mouth. Ritchie’s mouth. And it had settled between her thighs to explore her grove.

At first he just kissed lightly, petting the fleecy curls of her pubis with his closed mouth, as if her were a male animal nuzzling its mate in greeting. The contact was elusive and teasing, and devilishly calculated. He was goading her into wanting much, much more.

“Ritchie, please, I want more,” she groaned. What use was it to dissemble with him? He understood her needs. He could read her sensual soul. She couldn’t hide her desire from him and she didn’t want to. He cherished her honesty, and it was an easy gift to give.

“And you shall have it, my sweet. As much as you like.”

With his strong, flexible thumbs, Ritchie dove into her pubic hair, pressing and parting to expose her. Wet as she was, the warm air of the room still seemed to tingle on her delicate flesh. When Ritchie blew on her, she keened and rocked, grabbing his hair again.

“Do you like that, Bea?” he whispered, right against her trembling, fluttering clitoris.

“Yes, you terrible devil, yes! Don’t taunt me…just do whatever it is you plan to do!”

Ritchie laughed, directly into her sex, his mirth a caress in itself. She seemed to feel his low chuckle right in the quick of her belly.

But a second later, he wasn’t laughing, he was licking, his wicked tongue traversing her every fold and contour.

“Oh my Lord! Oh my goodness!” cried Beatrice, astonished even though it was what she’d been aching for since he’d hinted his intentions. She had no idea what she’d been expecting, but this was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. As she lifted her hips, pushing herself against his hot, moist mouth, she felt Ritchie cleverly rearrange her, lifting her thighs over his shoulders to press his face in even closer.

And then he began to suck as well as lick, varying and alternating and playing heavenly games with her. He teased the delicate inner lips, lapping, tickling, slipping his tongue around, exploring and arousing.

But like the wicked tormentor and prevaricator she knew him to be, he avoided the critical zone. The little knot of flesh that ached and screamed for him.

“Ritchie, please!”

“Please what, Bea?” His voice was muffled yet still sounded devilish, the ultimate sinful tease.

“You know!”

“Yes, I do.” His tongue furled to a point, swooped down and delicately probed inside her, as if supping her nectar. “But I still want to hear you say it, my glorious girl.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She tugged his hair, punishing him, but he didn’t falter, still pressing his tongue against her entrance, scouting the territory. “Lick my clitoris, you frightful man, and stop trying to drive me to distraction.”