In the Flesh (30 page)

They stared at each other. The thoughts and ramifications hurtled and circled through her head like images in a kaleidoscope, and she could almost see the same thing occurring behind Ritchie’s blue eyes.

Slowly, he relaxed, releasing her. Beatrice rubbed her wrists, realizing how tightly he’d held her, and almost immediately he took hold of them again, gently soothing and massaging the little hurts.

Then he sighed. “We seem to have landed ourselves in something of a conundrum, Bea, haven’t we?” There was fire in his eyes, but it was inward now.

“Yes, somewhat…I’d say.”

Ritchie gave her a long, appraising look as he let go of her. It wasn’t judgment, more searching, looking for something he had to face that was not entirely amenable to him.

“You want more, Bea, don’t you? More than this?” His gesture was slight, and openhanded, but it seemed to encompass their entire relationship.

More? Yes, I do want more. With you I want everything.

It was true and this time she didn’t suppress the notion. She did want to marry him, and be with him forever. And give him children.

And as so very often, she could tell he knew exactly what she was thinking.

“But you know I can’t give you that. I’ll never be able to.” His voice ached with regret, with sorrow.

Beatrice wanted to hold him, kiss him, and yes, even take him to bed right now in order to ease what was troubling him. And she felt a window open inside her, a window onto a new way of considering their future.

“Maybe I don’t want quite what you think I want.” She held his gaze boldly. “We don’t have to marry. I don’t care about that.” And as she said it, it dawned on her that she didn’t, not the marriage part. “We could live together, just as if we were married. I don’t give two pins for respectability. I said farewell to that concept quite a while ago.”

“No, that’s not good enough.”

“How so?” Had she misread him? She didn’t think so. She didn’t have his clever powers, apparent as they were, but she was intuitive enough.

“You deserve the very best, Beatrice. You deserve a wedding, respectability. A comfortable, secure place in society. Not a half life.”

Men! How could they be so stubborn? Whoever said that women were the more contrary sex was completely mistaken.

“I’ve told you. I don’t care.”

“But I do! I want to give you everything you lost, thanks to Lloyd.” His jaw tightened and he threw back his head to stare at the ceiling, as if for inspiration. “But I can’t.” He lowered his gaze, to look at her. “And I think it’s probably better that we conclude our relationship now, before I lead you on any further and cause you any more pain.” He drew in a breath as if the very passage of oxygen was agonizing. “If you quit me now, perhaps something of your reputation will be salvageable. With a bit of money behind you, you’ll soon attract another suitor. A man who can give you what I cannot. A decent man who’ll love you and make a life and a home with you.”

“Which you don’t want to, presumably?”

The room suddenly seemed frozen in ice. Why in the name of all that was holy had she said that? In her heart, she knew he cared for her—why had she goaded and insulted him so?

It was the madness of love. Perhaps he now had a mistress lacking in wits as well as a wife?

“Don’t be absurd, Beatrice.” If he was aware he was mirroring her own utterance, he didn’t show it. His face was like thunder, a bright and righteous thunder. “I care for you, you stupid woman! Can’t you see that?” He drew her hand to his lips and kissed it passionately. “And that’s precisely why we should part now, for your own benefit. I’m done with ruining women’s lives. I’ll not hurt you further.”

The feel of his lips against her fingers, his breath against her skin was like a dousing with pure pleasure. A reaction which she was sure worked both ways, and made her more and more infuriated at him for being so obtuse.

“I’ve told you. I don’t care. Why must we go around in endless circles like this? And why has a notorious womanizer like you suddenly turned into such a paragon of moral decency to rival our Queen herself?”

He dropped her hands. Moved back on the settee, the slide slow and weary. And reluctant.

“I think it’s best if you leave, Beatrice. The longer we go on like this, the more difficult it becomes.” He reached for her gloves and her little bag and held them out to her. “But don’t worry, the money is yours, free and clear, as is the annuity and the sums committed toward your family debts. That’s the least I can do.”

“No! I will not be paid off!” In the folds of her skirt, Beatrice clenched her fists again. She was going to do something silly, she could feel it, so the tighter she held on to herself the better. “I’ll take only enough for Charlie’s debts and to set me up at typewriting school…but no charity!”

She straightened her spine and glared at him, daring him to contradict her.

The gloves and the bag hit the carpet. “Don’t be ab—” Ritchie stopped short, almost as if he was about to laugh, then his face seemed to mutate through a dozen changes of expression at rapid succession: anger, fear, frustration, despairing amusement.

Then something else.

“If I didn’t know what insanity was truly like, Beatrice Weatherly, I’d swear you’ve driven me to it.”

Drawing in a great sigh, almost a gasp as if she’d knocked the air out of him, he slid forward again on the settee, and before she could react, he hauled her into his arms and brought his mouth down on hers.

The kiss was hard. Harder than he’d ever kissed her. But she welcomed it. No matter what happened in the future between her and this most unhappily married man, this moment and this embrace was theirs completely.

“One last fuck, Bea…that’s all I ask of you,” he said against her lips.

“Don’t say ‘last.’ We’ve not settled anything yet,” she contradicted, against his lips. “Concentrate on the matter in hand, Mr. Ritchie. Don’t start a new discussion.”

Ritchie’s hands threaded in her hair, beneath her hat, and both the pins that held her coiffeur and the hat itself began to slide. With his tongue in her mouth, swirling and tangling with her own, she felt him growl when he pricked himself on one of the pins’ sharp points.

“Accursed, wretched things,” he snarled, snatching his mouth away for a moment, and attacking her headgear. Pins flew everywhere and her hat went sailing over the back of the settee, then his hand slid into the auburn mass of her hair again, shaking it free and loose over her shoulders.

“You’re perfect, Bea,” he said simply, and very fiercely, then pressed his mouth to hers again, parting her lips immediately and pushing her against the upholstery.

As are you…as are you…

Unable to speak, she let her hand converse for her, sliding over Ritchie’s shoulders and upper arms and exploring the musculature beneath the velvet of his dressing gown. He was bare, beneath, exciting and naked, and the idea of one single layer of cloth between her fingertips and him was infinitely stimulating.

As he cupped her breast through the fine-woven fabric of her jacket, and all the confabulation of blouse and bodice and corset beneath, she slid her hands swiftly to the front of his robe and wrenched it open.

She felt him gasp, but pressed on, even though he was as intent on exploring as she. While he attacked the buttons of her jacket, then her blouse, she ran her hands briefly across his flat belly and took a firm hold on his cock.

“Oh dear God, yes,” he panted, steadying for a moment, his hips jerking against her on instinct. “Yes, oh yes…”

Yes indeed.

Beatrice loved the sensation of Ritchie’s cock in her hand. She loved to caress him and feel all that power contained in turn by her own power. Their relationship she likened to a seesaw of supremacy, and when she had her fingers wrapped around her lover’s member, she had control.

But they were still tilting at each other. Even as she caressed him, her strokes daring, a little ragged, lacking in finesse, Ritchie had the presence of mind to pursue his own agenda. Buttons carefully secured by some unknown seamstress went flying around the room just as the hairpins had done before them. Ritchie wrenched and tugged and, yes, tore at her clothes, pulling everything open at the front. Furiously intent, he sat back a moment, sizing up the hooks of her corset, then unfastened some of those too, so determinedly that Beatrice could swear he bent most of the little metal shapes.

Ripping open her chemise beneath he bared her breasts.

Then he slid his hands beneath and cupped them, lifting and squeezing them even while she still squeezed him.

Slumped against the upholstery, Beatrice regarded Ritchie from beneath lowered lids, her body aflame with delicious sensations, her fingertips massaging her treasure. His face was all beauty, somehow both intent and distracted, his lips parted, his white teeth digging a little into the lower one. Where his robe was parted, his body gleamed, and his cock was large and ruddy against the pallor of her caressing hand.

Questions of money and commitments and personal freedom seemed distant in the face of this intimacy. Nothing could be wrong when they were touching each other. All was well…

Then a tread in the corridor beyond set her jerking upright on the settee, snatching at her clothes in a flutter as she abandoned her lover’s hot shaft to its own devices.

“Rest easy, my darling. Nobody will enter. There’s only Agatha and the cook and a footman in the house, and they know better than to disturb me when I have company.” Nevertheless, Ritchie drew her close and shielded her body and his own erect nakedness.

Yes, I’ll bet they’re banned from even knocking on the door when you’re entertaining one of your woman, in case they put you off your stroke.

His women. She knew now that there had not been all that many, and bearing in mind the sorrow and anguish of his situation she could hardly condemn him for seeking some solace and physical comfort.

But still the footsteps had unnerved her a little. “If you say so,” she murmured doubtfully, glancing at the door and edging her way further into the protection of Ritchie’s body.

He stroked her face, looked into her eyes. His were still full of desire, but also tender and solicitous.

“Let’s go to my bedroom. We’ll be more comfortable there.” Leaning down, he kissed the slope of her breast, lightly as a feather’s stroke, yet still infinitely arousing. “I need to be inside you, beautiful Beatrice, and my bedroom is where the French Letters are.”

As Ritchie began to fasten up her corset as best he could, and somehow restore order to garments that he’d decimated, Beatrice almost suggested that they forgo the prophylactics. But that was foolhardy, ridiculous, and he’d never agree, no matter how keenly he wanted to fuck her.

Much as she would love to have a baby of Ritchie’s to love, and no matter how her every instinct yearned to give him a child, to become pregnant would destroy every last fragment of her reputation for good and ever, and Ritchie would never allow that.

“Yes, let’s go to bed,” she said, and helped him finish making the best of her ruined clothes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

To Sleep, Perchance

SHORTLY AFTERWARD,
Beatrice found herself in Ritchie’s bed, naked.

It was a nice bed, deep and comfortable with firm mattress and fragrant, freshly laundered linen. But it could have been a fakir’s nail-studded cot and rife with fleas and lice and sundry other livestock for all she cared.

Just as long as she had Ritchie on it with her.

Her heart surged as he slid into bed at her side, reaching for her. His eyes were intent and gleaming, and his brow puckered in a slight frown.

Was this their last time? Oh, please, no! It was imperative that she find a way to persuade him that she didn’t care about reputation. Assure him that she didn’t care a jot about marriage. The pleasure of his company and his body would suffice for her, regardless of the dictates of church and society. This was what she wanted, and as she wound her arms tight around him and pressed her belly against his cock, the way his flesh blindly sought hers made her melt in body and spirit.

He kissed with fervor yet also tenderness, his hand sliding down her back, drawing her closer against his hard, hot shaft and cupping her buttocks. The tips of his fingers tantalized the groove between them, exactly in the wicked way that most excited her. With a little whimper she jerked her hips, rocking against him.

“Beautiful Bea,” he murmured, in between kisses.

Her fingers explored too, as she twisted against him, floating over the marks on his back and caressing them as if affection might heal them. Or at least heal the more profound pain for which they stood.

She longed to cradle him in every way: heart, mind, body. Take him into herself and make him forget all past hurts and remember only happiness, and at the same time perform that process on herself. Hungering, she eased her legs wider, rubbing his sex with her own for both pleasure and invitation. Her clitoris throbbed as she rode his stiff member.

“Ritchie, I have to have you,” she groaned, working against him as their bodies slid and strained, their limbs entangled. Delicious heat gathered at the most intimate point of contact, but his happy laugh, against her lips, was an equal pleasure.

“And I you, my luscious siren. I you.” His fingers danced and flickered, still plaguing her for a moment, then he eased back. “But first we must take the required measures.”

Ah yes, the blessed French Letter. But if it was his preference, and his wisdom, she wouldn’t argue her own foolhardy case just for the sake of it.

Ritchie’s muscles rippled in the lamplight as he turned, opened a small drawer in his bedside secretaire, and drew out a now familiar tin. In a flash, he had one of the small and clever rubber devices in his grasp. As he prepared to sheathe himself, Beatrice reached for the prophylactic.

“Let me this time. I think I’m sufficiently proficient by now.”

“Very well, clever Miss Weatherly.” With a creamy grin, he lolled back against the pillows.

Inclined over him, her long hair dangling across his body and about to do the deed, Beatrice was struck by a sudden, daring thought. Ritchie loved her auburn waves, and loved to run his fingers through them. How would he feel if she used her tresses on a very different part of him? Leaning further over, her cheek almost on his belly, she wound a thick lock of her hair around his rigid, upthrust shaft.

* * *

RITCHIE GASPED ALOUD
. The audacity of her. The wicked sweet inventiveness. The clever little minx, she’d read one of his secret wishes and made it real.

Falling back against the pillows, he smiled for pure happiness. Beatrice Weatherly couldn’t be real, she was so perfect, the living embodiment of all his dreams. Dark thoughts, worries, his anxiety for their future, and for her, they all faded away like wisps of smoke in a deeper mist of sensuality.

Her hair was silk against him where she slid it over his cock, up and down, sleeved in her hand, the sensation quite unlike any other caress, however skilled. Moaning and shifting his hips, he looked down at her, and found her gazing back up at him across the planes of his body and from beneath her lowered lashes. Pure devilment gleamed in her emerald eyes, and then with a grin, she adjusted her pose, and licked the tip of his cock even while she rubbed it with her hair.

“Dear God in heaven, Beatrice!” he growled, both lost in the sublime sensations, yet experiencing life with a pinlike clarity. He was both dazed with pleasure yet thinking clearly, as never before.

I cannot lose you. I cannot survive without you. I want only you.

And it was true. Though he’d loved before, and deeply and truly at the time, he could not remember experiencing love like this.

Beatrice Weatherly was far more than just a supremely natural and enthusiastic bed partner with a rare gift for the sensual arts. She was spirited, kind, and loyal to others almost to a fault. And she was also good-humored, not proud, and had the wisdom not to take herself too seriously.

I love you, Bea.

He was sure he hadn’t spoken the words aloud, but nevertheless, Beatrice looked up at him, her green eyes knowing as she swirled her tongue around his cock tip.

“Bea, you’re a she-devil!”

This time he did cry out, because she did a wicked clever thing with that naughty tongue of hers that made him gouge the bed linen and nearly tear a sheet asunder. And she went on doing it until he almost reached the end of his tether.

“Enough! Or I’ll come in your mouth!”

Reaching down, he gently prized both Beatrice and her splendid hair from around him. She allowed him to do so, but reached for the abandoned prophylactic. For an instant, barely more than a flash, Ritchie saw a sweet vision of her in a white nursing gown, those lush red waves fanned across a mountain of pillows while she cradled a babe with similar red hair and his own blue eyes against her bosom. The imagined child could never replace the little son he’d lost, but he could love it just as much, in a different way.

But then the idyllic vision was gone, and he was faced with reality again. But not such a terrible reality, all things considered, as he watched Beatrice lean over him, her pale brow puckered with intense concentration as she negotiated the rubber device and the process of introducing his penis into it.

He almost laughed as she unconsciously stuck out her tongue, not in sexual devilment this time, but because she was so intent on what she was doing, and doing it right.

Beautiful girl. Beautiful, clever Bea. I cannot lose you.

And as Beatrice finally sheathed him to her satisfaction, and gave him a grin to mark her pride in a job well done, Ritchie resolved to find a way to keep her on whatever terms she specified.

* * *

I can’t lose you. I don’t care that you have a wife. I want you and I want you on any terms.

Unable to wait longer, Beatrice grabbed Ritchie’s shoulder and urged him closer, opening her legs to invite him to enter her. Every moment was precious with this married yet not really married man, and it pained her to waste a single second of it not entwined with him.

“Kindly don’t keep me waiting, Mr. Ritchie,” she commanded, as he moved his body over hers. Reaching between them, she grasped his cock and positioned it at her entrance.

“You’re very bold, Miss Weatherly,” he answered, allowing her to manipulate him, “and very demanding.” He laughed and she felt the ripple of it in every inch of their contact, even where she held him between her legs. “You must be patient and allow me to service you.”

“Then kindly proceed, sir!” She laughed, wondering if he could feel it, the same way.

“That I shall!”

Ritchie nudged away her hand, then worked his strong hips, pushing inside her. Pushing deep.

Ah, that sensation! Ever the same, and yet always different and new. There was no way to describe the delicious yielding that also conveyed power. Beatrice could do nothing in that moment but wind her arms around Ritchie, her lover, and be his.

What had begun in hasty passion and playfulness became more stately. Slow, measured love, their bodies rocking against each other in harmony and grace despite the raw, animal nature of the act.

Pleasure though, gathered quickly for Beatrice, her flesh quivering around Ritchie’s shaft. She tried to contain herself, but reading her intimately with his amazing perceptions, the man fucking her growled in her ear.

“You mustn’t resist, beautiful Beatrice…you must never resist.” He paused, pressed his mouth hard against the crook of her neck and her shoulder. “Take your pleasure now, my love. Relax…spend now.”

My love? My love?

Beatrice wailed. Sublime pulsations rippled through her loins, making her shake her head and grab at Ritchie’s back and his bottom, digging in her nails.

He loved her. He loved her. How could she not be in heaven?

* * *

IT WAS SO DIFFICULT
to stir when she felt so cozy and safe. It was almost as if she were back at Westerlynne, comfortable, secure, with not a single care in the world. Happy.

Beatrice blinked. Squeezed her eyes shut. Opened them again. The room was unfamiliar, well-appointed but spare. Very masculine. Warmth at her side, and a familiar, delicious scent instantly told her from whence that manly aura emanated.

Ritchie!

She’d been asleep in Ritchie’s bed and, judging by the low, steady breathing she could hear, so was he. She hardly dared turn and look at him for fear it was still a dream.

And there he was, slumbering just as she’d suspected, deep in the arms of Morpheus, sprawled almost like a boy, face down against the pillows. His fair hair was tousled like a fallen angel’s and his lips bore a slight smile as if his dreams were pleasant.

Gooseflesh prickled Beatrice’s arms and her heart galloped, but not from fear and apprehension, but simply sheer wonder. Hadn’t he told her he never slept in the presence of a lover? That even if a woman slept, he stayed wakeful, on guard?

Yet here he was, sleeping like a contented babe, beside her. It was momentous, and beautiful and significant. She hadn’t imagined his words of love. They had been real and true, and here was the confirmation of his trust, and the fact he felt at peace with her.

Torn between trying to return to sleep herself, and never sleeping again, so she could watch him like this until the end of her days, Beatrice felt her limbs fill with nervous energy. She didn’t want to wake him when he looked so tranquil, but the urge to fidget was almost unbearable. Her fingers ached to stroke his back, tangle in his thick blond hair, follow the line of his ear, neck, shoulder. Her mouth tingled as if it were suffering some small degree of pain from not kissing him.

Slowly and with infinite care she slid from the bed and cast around for her chemise.

A few minutes later, after exploring the splendidly appointed private bathroom adjacent to the bedroom, and almost swooning when she sniffed at his bottle of shaving lotion and his fine, custom-blended soap, she crept back toward the bed. Only to have her eye caught by certain items that sat atop the elegantly fashioned chest of drawers.

A pair of Morocco leather-bound photograph albums if she was not mistaken.

The first brought a wry smile to her lips, for it contained the very photographs of herself that had brought her ultimately to this place. She had only ever actually seen one or two of them, purchased discreetly by Polly, via a third party, at her behest. Mixed feelings beset her. She was still annoyed and let down that Eustace would betray her in such a low, ungentlemanly way, and yet at the same time, she couldn’t help but grin, wider and wider. For all his faults, her ex-fiancé had created a beauty for her that was far more exotic than she believed was accurate.

She could almost imagine that a man like Edmund Ellsworth Ritchie might become so besotted with her physical form on the strength of them, and proceed to set down a small fortune to possess the body depicted.

Is it just these breasts? These thighs? The mysterious grove between my legs?

Tracing her fingertip over her own form, she asked the questions, but she was aware now that they knew each other, it was more. So much more that the thought made it difficult to breathe.

Setting down the source of her notoriety, she opened the second leather-bound album and found it could not have been more different. Or astonishing.

These were family photographs…from a man who seemed to exist without family because all thought of the same clearly brought him pain.

Several of the depictions were of an oval-faced young woman with an old-fashioned coiffeur and a plain but elegant dress. Her expression was mild, but her eyes seemed bright and happy, even in the indistinct image, and there was a warmth and humor there that Beatrice found instantly appealing. She knew the woman not at all, but somehow felt that she could be a friend if life had turned out very differently. Even though she was obviously Ritchie’s first spouse,
Clara,
from her name printed neatly beneath the image.

When she turned the next page though, Beatrice experienced a pang. Here were Ritchie and Clara together, looking every inch a pair of excited newlyweds, despite their formal expression for the camera.

Oh, you look so young, my darling! And so full of joy and love…