Lost in Pleasure (3 page)

Errin gave herself over to the sensuous pleasure of trying on
first one dress then another, morning gowns and evening, half robes and full.
There were silks and satins, sprigged muslin and figured, jaconet and finest
cambric, blond lace and scalloped sarsenet. Errin twirled and preened in front
of the long mirror in the elegant fitting room, enjoying Richard’s obvious
appreciation, posing and pouting in a provocative manner that would have
horrified her usual buttoned-down self and yet was wholly gratifying to her new
Regency persona. She relished his admiring glances, frankly, and hungered for
more. It was—stimulating. Titillating. The old-fashioned word sprang to mind,
making her smile inwardly at its aptness. She bent over, deliberately
provocative, in a pretence of adjusting a flounce on the hem of her robe.
Richard’s pupils darkened in response. A slight flush highlighted the planes of
his cheekbones. Errin’s stomach muscles tightened.

He got abruptly to his feet. ‘I think we’ve seen enough.’

She couldn’t have agreed more. Settling hastily on two day
gowns and three for evening, Richard gave instructions for something mysterious
called
necessaries
to be included along with the
requisite gloves, hats and stockings, and ushered her out to the carriage. The
journey back to Cavendish Square was accomplished in a state of heightened
awareness, every brush of thigh on thigh, arm on arm, shoulder on shoulder,
making them flinch apart, allowing the slow, irresistible graduation of their
bodies towards one another to begin over again.
A
form
of
pleasurable
torture
, Errin thought, wishing it to be over,
willing it to last forever.

She was hardly conscious of the carriage pulling up outside
Kilcreggan House, of Richard helping her down, leading her back through to the
library. But when he had divested her of her domino she found it difficult to
meet his eyes. ‘What are necessaries?’ she asked apropos of nothing more than a
need to fill the awkward silence.

‘Undergarments.’

His voice was husky. She could hear him breathing, shallow and
fast, like herself. Aroused. Like herself. ‘Like a bra and knickers?’ she asked,
risking a glance, rewarded by another of those hungry looks she so relished.

‘What are they?’

Errin hesitated. They were fast reaching the point of no
return. Her normal self would have said way too fast. Her current self said not
fast enough. She wanted this. Her wanting overrode even her native caution.
‘Underwear,’ she said. ‘I’m wearing them now.’

Richard was standing behind her. She leaned back against him
and felt rather than heard the way the movement made him moan softly, yet she
sensed him hesitate. ‘Errin, I don’t want you thinking I’m expecting anything in
return for the dresses. You don’t owe me anything.’

‘I know.’ And she did. It was such a nice feeling, this
certainty that he wanted nothing from her. He wasn’t Mark. He was, as he had
said, a gentleman. And she was, as he had said too, no lady. ‘So, do you want to
see them, from the point of view of scientific curiosity?’ she said
audaciously.

His arms circled her, slipping under the loose fastening of her
jacket to cup her breasts. He bent his head and nuzzled the sensitive skin at
the back of her ear, his thumbs caressing her nipples, his erection pressing
into her bottom. ‘Need you ask?’

He turned her round then and kissed her hungrily. Errin
clutched at the slippery silk of his waistcoat to pull him closer, her fingers
running through the soft-as-silk night-black hair to fasten his mouth harder
onto hers. Little gasping moans escaped her as the need for more kisses, harder
kisses, grew inexorably, like a craving she could not deny.

Her nipples were tingling, puckered and hard. There was a path
of heat blazing from there down to her belly, to her sex, every tiny movement of
his thumbs sending a shiver and a connection, like a series of jolting
electrical pulses, until she thought she could bear it no more, even though he
hadn’t even touched her bare skin yet.

Skin. Her fingers found the nape of his neck but were
frustrated by his neckcloth. She struggled with it, then gave up.

Skin. Richard had never wanted to touch someone so much in his
life. He had not thought desire could be this heady. He had not thought need
could be this achingly exciting. With a growl of frustration he broke off the
kiss to tear off his coat, his neckcloth, her jacket, her shirt and then his,
and then his mouth was on hers again, his bare chest pressed against her, his
hands stroking her shoulders, her back. He sensed she was as aroused as he. Her
nipples, budding hard through the lacy scraps of her tiny undergarments, pressed
into his chest, begging for his attention.

He skimmed her shape, down her spine to cup her bottom, round
to span her waist, up to her breasts, kneeling before her to remove the rest of
her outer clothing. She had beautiful legs, long and well shaped but strong,
like a dancer’s. And smooth—her skin was like silk. Supple too.

The preposterous things she called undergarments seemed more
like extravagantly decorative bits of lace tatting held together with some gauzy
material he could not name. Designed to entice attention rather than for any
more practical purposes. He cupped his hand over her sex, feeling the heat of
her through the transparent material. Then he kissed her where his hand had
been, a sort of breathy kiss that spread heat and promise into her, making her
gasp with pleasure and anticipation.

Her pulled her down onto her knees and kissed her breasts
through the protective lace of her undergarment. Eager to free her from its
confines, he searched in vain for the usual lacings and buttons.

‘At the back,’ Errin whispered urgently.

Richard’s fingers wrestled with the unfamiliar fastening.
‘Damnation! A locksmith would struggle to gain entry,’ he muttered impatiently.
‘If this is progress, you can keep it!’ He yanked at the unyielding clasp, then
resorted to brute force. The expensive froth surrendered with something
resembling a sigh. With a growl of satisfaction Richard fastened his mouth onto
Errin’s nipple.

A hot, jagged jolt of pleasure seared through her as she in
turn fumbled for the fastenings of Richard’s pantaloons. He made to push her
hands aside to help her. ‘I can manage,’ she muttered, determined to exert some
element of equality. Her fingers encountered a button. She undid it, and then
another and another, and slid her hand inside, wrapping it around the solid
length of him, making them both gasp—he with pleasure, she with
satisfaction.

She stroked him, relishing the fact that her doing so took him
by surprise. She stroked him again, enjoying the pleasure she was giving every
bit as much as much as the pleasure she was experiencing. That was new. Her
thumb flicked over the sensitive tip of his shaft, making him moan again, and
she felt the hot, damp heat between her own thighs increase.

Richard stilled her hand. His fingers edged under the lacy trim
of her knickers to stroke and dip, his mouth sucking and tugging hungrily at her
engorged nipple. Her climax was building quickly, too quickly. She didn’t want
it to be over, not yet. ‘Wait,’ she said pleadingly.

But he shook his head, pushed her onto her back, ripping off
the remainder of his own clothes as he did so, and Errin gave up any pretence of
control. She lay on the carpet under him, looking up unashamedly at his
nakedness. Skin unexpectedly pale, as if it never saw the sun. His muscles had
not the prominence of a man who worked out, yet they were there all the same, an
integral part of him, built for power rather than show. A smattering of dark
hair on his forearms and on the broad sweep of his chest, a thin line tapering
down over the flat of his stomach to his lower abdomen, where his erection
jutted up. Like the rest of him, solid and hard and potent. She had never
considered the male body beautiful but this man, although not perfect in the
style of a stylish men’s magazine cover, made for compulsive viewing
nonetheless. She wanted every thick, hard inch of him inside her. And soon. Her
insides seemed to twist and curl, tightening themselves into a knot.

Richard knelt down between her legs. So slim and taut her body,
yet soft in all the right places. He longed for her to touch him again, but he
wanted more than anything to be inside her. His erection strained as he felt the
damp of her sex through the tiny scrap of lace he pulled down over her long,
beautiful legs. Toes red, like her fingernails. He lifted her foot, kissing the
delicate hollow at her ankle bone, licking the pulse at the back of her knee,
savouring the taste of her, relishing the way she responded, her eyes flickering
closed, her breasts rising and falling quickly, her stomach rippling like the
quiver of a wave on soft sand.

He licked the inside of her thighs. Lemon scented, her skin,
with the salt and vanilla tones of her arousal like a top note, just
discernable, totally delectable. Dark auburn hair, soft and downy, short and
neatly trimmed. Most unusual. He liked that too. He blew delicately over the
soft folds of her sex, watching the ripple of her stomach muscles again, feeling
the answering ripple in his own gut. He was more than ready, but he didn’t want
it to be over. Not quite yet.

He traced the shape of her with the tip of his tongue, tasting
the bittersweet essence of her, teasing his way in a little deeper, flicking
over the hardening bud. He dipped his finger into her, just enough to sense the
contraction, to imagine how it would feel tightening around his shaft.

Errin bucked under him.
Not
yet
, she thought,
not
yet
, but Richard resumed his tender assault on her,
with his tongue, his fingers, tantalisingly lightly, sending sparks coursing
through her blood, running white heat through her, coiling hot and hotter deep
inside her. ‘Now,’ she said hoarsely. He licked again, did something with his
tongue and fingers, plunging and circling at the same time, and her insides
twisted sharply, her climax centred like a molten wild thing that had suddenly
found its shape, sharp and glinting on the edge of something. ‘
Oh
God
,
oh
God
,
oh
God
.
’

The sense that he had been the first to ever induce this state
of abandon in her Richard found wildly erotic. His lips sank into the sweet, wet
edges of her as she surrendered herself to pleasure, coming against him with a
fierceness that tested his control to the absolute limit.

She felt herself unravelling. Exposed, shattered by the
intensity of her climax, lost in pleasure as it drummed and rippled and surged
again, higher and sharper, pushing her irrevocably over the edge, so that she
was nothing and everything, reduced to pure elements of sensation.

But it still wasn’t enough, for as soon as the pulses began to
ease their thrumming, she sought him blindly, her hands on his shoulders,
levering herself up so that she could kiss him. Errin ran her fingers down his
back. The muscles were tense. Knotted. She felt the delightful nudge of his
erection at the apex of her thighs, and sensed a corresponding melting inside
her.

‘Now you,’ she said, surprising him by rolling over, pushing
him flat onto his back, reversing their positions so that she could cup him. She
leaned over to touch her tongue to his shaft.

‘Stop, not yet. Wait,’ he said, his voice harsh with
passion.

Errin looked up and smiled at him, a slow, assured, devastating
smile that almost sent him over the edge, for her pleasure in his pleasure was
writ large on her flushed countenance, in the golden depths of those hazel eyes,
in the tight buds of her nipples, the blush of her climax tinging her pale skin.
‘No,’ she said, and took him in her mouth again.

Delicate and soft her mouth was, like warm liquid honey,
unbelievably arousing. She nibbled and then she licked, and then her mouth
enveloped him. He pushed back the fall of her hair so that he could watch her,
feeling the thickening of his shaft as he did so. He tugged at her shoulders and
she released him, her nipples brushing his chest, and kissed him hard as she
mounted him, sheathing him slowly, slowly, unbearably slowly, until he was
enclosed, and she sat up and pulsed her muscles around him, closing her own eyes
in ecstasy.

‘Now,’ Errin said, clenching herself around the silken weapon,
relishing the inevitable, unstoppable shivering of her impending climax as she
moved, a tiny shift, and that was all it took. She came again, the strength of
her orgasm triggering a new urgency in him. Richard flipped her over onto her
back and thrust powerfully and repeatedly, coming inside her with an intensity
to match her own.

Chapter Three

The slow descent into morbidity to which he had become
accustomed didn’t materialise. It didn’t even register. Richard lay naked on the
floor of his own library with a woman who wouldn’t be born for nearly two
hundred years and felt as if he had been rejuvenated. ‘Wow,’ he said, using
Errin’s own word and grinning at the strangeness of it. ‘Wow. Did I get that
right?’

‘You got everything right,’ Errin replied with a sleepily sated
smile.

‘I’m not the only one. I’ve never known a woman who could enjoy
intimacy with such relish.’

Errin blushed. ‘You mean I was too...’

‘You were perfect,’ Richard said, marvelling at the way bliss
engendered such easy frankness.

‘I didn’t know it could be like this.’

‘I know.’ And he believed her. He was not her first, but it
felt as if he was. No one had done to her what he had done. No one had made him
feel what she had made him feel. ‘I know,’ Richard repeated uneasily. Because
what would happen now?

Errin seemed to sense his change of mood, for she sat up and
reached for her underwear, pulling it on hastily, followed too quickly by the
rest of her clothing.

Richard too sat up and began to dress, his elation settling
into something more sombre as reality reasserted itself. ‘We’ve been pretending
that this situation is normal, but it’s not. We can’t keep ignoring...’

‘The elephant in the room.’

‘I’m not even going to ask,’ Richard said, his expression one
of sheer bafflement. ‘You claim you got here by sitting in my armchair, but
that’s preposterous.’

‘I know, but it’s also true.’

‘And completely illogical, not to say scientifically
impossible.’

‘I know that too.’ Errin pulled on her boots and fastened her
jacket. ‘But it’s what happened all the same. You said you believed me.’

‘I know, but I realise now I was carried away by the
strangeness of the situation. As a man of science, I should have known it was
not sufficient simply to eliminate other possibilities. Without evidence, such
an explanation can only be surmise, not proof.’

‘Fine. Then I’ll prove it to you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ll repeat the experiment, of course.’ Without giving herself
time to think about it, Errin flung herself into the wingback chair. Nothing
happened for a few seconds, long enough for her to begin to panic. What if she
couldn’t get back? And if she did—she didn’t want it to end like this, on a sour
note without time for goodbyes. ‘Richard,’ she said, ‘can’t we just...?’

But it was too late. The chair enveloped her. She couldn’t get
up. Her eyes were forced closed. When she finally got them open again he was
gone, and she was back in Pandora’s Box, and her watch showed her that only
about a minute had elapsed.

Maybe it had been a dream after all? And maybe, Errin thought
sadly, that was for the best, for where did the alternative leave her? Bemused
and confused, she left the shop and headed back to her hotel, where, after a
long soak in a piping-hot bath, jet lag caught up with her. She fell onto the
wide white bed of her air-conditioned room with its soft Egyptian-cotton sheets
and slept.

* * *

Richard stared at the empty chair in complete disbelief.
One minute she was there, the next she was gone. He could swear he had not
closed his eyes, but he must have, for he had not seen her leave. He rushed to
the door and called to his footman, demanding to know if Errin had left that
way, but she had not, nor had she gone through the baize door to the servants’
quarters, nor ascended the stairs, nor ducked into any one of the other
downstairs rooms. She had vanished into thin air.

Richard returned to the library and stared at the wingback
chair. He sat in it and wished for her to return. Feeling foolish, he closed his
eyes and wished for her again, but nothing happened.

Her absence seemed to mock him. The room was redolent of her
presence. He thought he could smell her citrusy scent on the tooled leather of
the chair. She was certainly there, the tantalising trace of her sex, on his
fingers. She was no illusion. She was the most real person he had ever
encountered. And now she was gone.

Slowly, it dawned on him that he had missed the opportunity of
a lifetime for a student of science like himself. The chance to quite literally
see into the future. All the wondrous things she could have told him, scientific
advances she could have revealed to him. But all he had been interested in was
her. Only her.

‘Errin.’ She didn’t answer. Of course she didn’t, though it
didn’t stop him saying her name many times in the course of the following week.
It didn’t stop him constantly reliving every moment of their encounter, which
made his longing for her increase with every passing day. And with every passing
day his certainty that she would never return increased also.

The clothes duly arrived from Madame Celeste but he couldn’t
bring himself to send them back. They hung like spectres in his dressing-room
closet. He remembered thinking, just before Errin appeared from nowhere, that
there was something missing from his life. He remembered thinking there should
not be. Now he knew that there was, and who it was, and that she would always be
missing. The future stretched out before him, unappealing, grey and tedious.

* * *

Errin awoke the next morning determined to put what she
had by now almost convinced herself was a particularly vivid dream firmly behind
her. She filled her day visiting sale rooms and going through the catalogues of
two upcoming country-estate auctions, but come four o’clock she found herself
not far from Pandora’s Box and couldn’t resist going back in. Just to satisfy
her curiosity, she told herself.

The wingback chair was there in exactly the same position. She
sat down nervously.
Get
a
grip
,
Errin
.
You’re
losing
the
plot
, she told herself. And then she felt it envelop
her, and it happened again. Just like that, she was back in Richard’s library in
1816 and he was there and it all started again. The attraction. The connection.
The fun. And the lovemaking.

* * *

A pattern emerged. At the end of every day, Errin went
back to Pandora’s Box, acquiring in the process all sorts of unusable bits and
pieces of junk to justify her visits. Sometimes only a few days had elapsed in
Richard’s time, sometimes more. She dressed in her Regency clothes and played
the Regency lady. She dined with Richard and breakfasted with him and supped
with him. They went riding, and later he kissed better the bruises on her
pommel-chafed thighs. They went to the opera, and Errin, used to the reverential
hush of the Met, was appalled at the constant hum of chatter and laughter from
the audience, most of whom seemed oblivious to what was happening onstage.

She knew she should put an end to these episodes before it was
too late, but she could not. It was like playing the ultimate virtual-reality
game. She quickly became addicted and, like all addicts, became a master of
self-delusion, persuading herself that she was simply acting out a fantasy that
would run its natural course. What harm could there be in continuing? As Richard
kept reminding her, there was no logical reason to artificially cut short such a
fascinating once-in-a-lifetime experience. In fact, it would be a criminal
waste. And the insights she was getting into Regency life, surely they would
contribute in untold ways to her career?

Errin didn’t argue, because she didn’t want to. And then she
didn’t argue because it was too late. Life with Richard was no longer simply
fascinating but altogether necessary. Her real life, her real self, began to
blur and recede, to take on a dreamlike quality. She felt she was acting out a
role she no longer understood or cared for, alienated from the life she had
worked so hard to create. She was truly herself only when she was with him.
Richard had become her reality. Errin McGill, Manhattan interior designer,
became a shadowy figure compared to Errin McGill, Regency lady.

He was the first person she thought of when waking and the last
person she thought of before she fell asleep. She spent her day saving up things
to tell him, share with him, ask his opinion of, imagining how he would laugh,
or how his brow would furrow in concentration. Whatever she had to say, no
matter how trivial, he always listened. He didn’t interrupt her or trample on
her opinion with his own, and he didn’t hold forth the way Mark had, even on
subjects in which he was expert. She had never been in the company of a man
whose desire for her encompassed her mind as well as her body, whose delight in
her was so universal. But then, she had never met anyone like Richard. He was so
perfect she wondered many times during the course of each day if she had somehow
invented him, if he existed only in some bizarre parallel universe that she had
created. She’d rush through whatever she was doing then, arriving terrified and
anxious at Pandora’s Box. Each time she awoke in the chair to find Richard
before her, it was like a little death—or a new breath of life.

She was falling in love with him.

No. She had already fallen in love with him. Hook, line and
sinker, just exactly as she’d always dreamed. Just exactly like a dream. Because
it was a dream? Or not?

It didn’t matter, she told herself. What mattered was that she
loved him. And didn’t they say that love—true love—conquered all?
Reality
check
,
Errin
! Even Romeo
and Juliet only had a couple of warring families to conquer. Two hundred years’
time difference—that was a whole other ball game.

The situation was impossible. Perhaps if she bought the chair,
took it back to New York? Could they keep this thing between them going
forever?

Come
on
,
Errin
,
I
said
reality
check
! Love means being with someone properly.
Completely. Always. For the bad bits as well as the good. It was about making a
life together, which for them was impossible. And what about Richard? What if he
met someone or decided to marry for the sake of the title, as he was saying just
the other day his sister was encouraging him to do? One thing for him to have a
mistress, but a mistress that wouldn’t be born for two hundred years? No way.
And anyway, she didn’t want to be a mistress. She didn’t want to share. She
wanted it all. All of it, all of him.

But she couldn’t have it all, or even very much of it.
Unless...

Unless it was what Richard wanted too. Except he’d given no
sign at all that he did. So...

Errin swallowed hard. So. Tonight must be the last time. It had
to be. If she couldn’t have it all, she’d be better, much better, living
without. She owed it to herself. ‘Somewhere out there, Errin McGill,’ she told
her reflection in the hotel-room mirror, ‘is Mr Right. A twenty-first-century Mr
Right. And when you meet him, what you sure as hell don’t want to have to
explain is that you’re already in love with a guy who will be two hundred and
thirty-three years old next birthday.’ Except she was. And what if Richard was
Mr Right, the only Mr Right? She didn’t want to think about that one. Way too
scary.

Errin picked up her bag and headed for the door. Out in the
muggy London afternoon, the early rush hour had just begun as people streamed to
the Tube stations for the mundane journey to suburbia. In Pandora’s Box, the
wingback chair was patiently waiting to provide transport of a quite different
sort.

* * *

For Richard, three months had passed since they had
first met, though for Errin it was twelve days. They had dined that evening on
lark pasties and sweetbreads Provençal, then gone to a ridotto, a masked ball,
to which Errin wore one of her exquisite gowns, a half robe of gold satin with
an overdress of scalloped lace. ‘French trimming,’ Richard had informed her as
he ran his hand sensuously down her spine, ‘in the style made popular by the
ladies of the Palais-Royal.’

‘You forget, you told me that there are no
ladies
in the Palais-Royal.’

Richard laughed. ‘So I did. But you need have no fear—no one
would ever mistake you for a member of the demi-monde.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. There’s something about you that sets you apart.
A sort of innocence.’

‘I’m not an innocent. In my world, that would be seen as
criticism.’ Errin said, startled.

‘I’m glad I don’t belong in your world, then.’

‘I’m beginning to feel
I
don’t
belong in my world.’ She said it only half-jokingly, wanting to test his
reaction, but Richard said nothing. He simply put the button hook down, turned
her towards the mirror and told her how lovely she looked. She knew he meant it.
She loved that he always made a point of complimenting her, but tonight it
wasn’t enough.

‘I wish...’

He looked at her enquiringly, but she could not bring herself
to spoil the moment. ‘Nothing,’ Errin said. Richard kissed her forehead, and she
was almost relieved when he did not press her further on the matter.

The ball had exceeded all her expectations. Masked and
dominoed, the
haut
ton
mingled with merchants, courtesans and those of
the middling class whose curiosity had overcome their scruples, all freed by
their disguises to behave outrageously with impunity. Errin longed to dance but
knew neither the steps nor the music to the cotillions and quadrilles, and the
MC’s instructions to
jeté
,
coupe
balote
or
pas
de
basque
meant nothing to her. Eventually a waltz was
struck up and Richard swept her onto the floor, holding her so close she had no
option but to follow him, twirling and whirling round the floor just exactly as
she’d seen them do on that celebrity dance show. Errin threw herself into the
festivities with gusto, abandoning her reserve and managing to forget all about
the awful task that lay ahead of her. The end of the evening. The end of
everything.