Page 56 of His Mistress, His Muse, and Other Madness
“Oh, no. I will. We will. But I will be careful not to get you with child.”
“How?”
“I will not spill my seed inside you.”
“You can do that? Without a… a French letter?”
“Yes.” He tugged her braid to tilt her face up to him more. “Shall we begin tonight, when you slip into my bed once more?”
“No.” A tremor in the single word. “I plan to sleep then, considering how little I’ve slept the last several days. I think… I think I’d like to begin now.” She raised up on tiptoe, dragging her body against his as she did so, and kissed him.
He ran his hand down her back and found the tapes of her wrinkled gown. He loosed them, and when the gown bunched, he pulled the sleeves low.
She gasped and broke the kiss.
He took the opportunity to circle her. “You are going to enjoy this.” He would too. “I’m going to make your bones melt into the mattress then bury myself deep inside you and make you scream my name.” Heat flushed across her cheeks, her shoulders, the tops of her breasts as he pushed the gown lower down her body. “But first, I want you naked. I want to look at you.”
She raised her chin as the gown slipped to her waist. “You too. Every stitch of clothing, gone.”
“As you wish,” he whispered near her ear, rubbing a hand over her shoulder and down her arm as the gown puddled at her feet.
He made short work of her stays and shift, leaving only her stockings and slippers.
He angled the chair toward her and sat. “Take them off.”
Covering her breasts with crossed arms, she huffed. “Truly? As if it’s a… a show?”
He nodded, his body hard already.
She looked about the room, somehow thoughtful and playful at the same time, and then she sat on the bed, wagged her eyebrows and lifted one leg, and bent toward her knee, revealing her full breasts as she pulled on the end of one ribbon holding her stockings up. Hell. Perfect in every damn way.
She dropped the black ribbon to the floor once she’d unknotted it and rolled the stocking down her leg, revealing the creamy, slender appendage beneath. She did the same with the other, and by the time she finished, entirely open to his view, he’d become almost too hard to move. Thick hips and thighs with deep-red curls between them. His mouth dried with need. No work of art more beautiful than her.
She moved then, slipping to her feet and padding back to him, taking his hands, she pulled him to standing. “Now. No show for me. I want to undress you myself. No help from you, thank you very much.”
Had her voice always been so husky? Did he truly fill her with as much desire as she filled him? Hell, if he’d known it sooner, he would not have waited to begin this liaison. Neither of them believed in love, and he found with each of her kisses that he felt as she so openly did—he wanted to be wanted, too. Particularly by her. He wanted what she did—an affair that burned hot and quick.
He closed his eyes and held his arms out wide.
* * *
The first time Cordelia met Lord Theodore, someone had been undressing him in her drawing room. The widow in question hadn’t gotten terribly far. He hadn’t wished to be undressed, after all. He’d been stripped only to his shirtsleeves, his waistcoat, and cravat—all rumpled, but still in place.
Cordelia would get much, much further today, would see what the widows had wanted to see, what she had wanted to see, as well. At the time, she’d thought nothing of the wanting. The man filled out his trousers admirably, and curious women did not hire male models to disrobe before them without having a variety of reasons to lead them down that path. Curiosity one. Fun, another. The forbidden, too.
Theo certainly looked forbidden. Tall and strong with a scruffy shadow about his jaw. He must not have shaved that morning. Had he skipped his morning ablutions so he did not wake her? Emotion nipped at her heart. She quieted it. No room for any emotion but lust just now.
He dressed as he had that first day, tucked shirt and unbuttoned waistcoat, an unnecessary cravat. She tugged at it, unwound it, and eventually revealed the strong column of his throat. She kissed it, and his head fell back, offering better access. She slipped the waistcoat off both arms at the same time, pushing her hands over the muscle of his shoulders. When the waistcoat fell without a sound, her curious hands traveled south along his front to untuck the shirt from his waistband, to throw the shirt over his head where it could join its fallen compatriots.
She trailed her fingers down his chest, enjoying the crisp hair there, then down his abdomen to where a line of that hair disappeared beneath his trousers.
She licked her lips. “So well built for an artist.”
“I like to box.” His voice gruff.
“I am not surprised you enjoy hitting others in the face.” She chuckled, though she did not feel like laughter. Her body thrummed only with desire, no room for anything else.
Hands trembling, she worked at his fall, only slightly distracted by the ripple of muscle above it. Well, perhaps more than slightly. She kept stealing another look, an impossible impulse to resist, so she gave into another and kissed the area just below his navel.
