Page 222 of The Ladies Least Likely
He leaned her back in his arms and bent his head and pulled at the loose drawstring at the neck of her gown with his teeth. Before she could gasp or scold or tell him how much she was looking forward to it, his mouth grazed her breast, worked down to a nipple, and closed over that begging bud, sucking with teeth and tongue. She went boneless, a hot pool of breathless sensation, a melting arc of pure need.
She nudged her hips against his cock, rubbing shamelessly, and felt no shame either in the panting mewl that escaped her when he closed one big, warm hand over the breast he’d just explored and moved his mouth to the other. This was pleasure like she’d never known, and an ache like she’d never known, an inferno she wanted to throw herself into. She clung to his shoulders as she gasped and writhed under the onslaught of his mouth, teeth, so-clever tongue, ready to let him do anything to her, ready to follow him into the maelstrom and?—
“Ahem. I left you more than sufficient time to be done with this already,” came the voice, loud and firm and disapproving.
“Go—away,” Harriette panted, writhing against Ren’s hips. His guttural agreement came out against her nipple as he lifted his head from her breast. His expression looked as dazed and fierce as she felt.
“I will not,” Princess snapped. “Someone has to vow to Fritz that you honored your promise of marriage, at least as soon as you found out about it. You wouldn’t have me lie to the man’s face, would you?”
“Franz Karl.” Harriette groaned and pulled the bodice of her gown back into place. The name was a cold wind snuffing the flames of desire. Good heavens, hadn’t she just finished telling herself she couldn’t have Ren, instructing herself to be chaste and reserved? And it had taken less than five minutes for her to crawl all over him like an alley cat in heat.
Ren held completely still, and she realized that, for him, Harriette’s voluminous morning gown was all that lay between Princess and utter indecency.
“Really, your Highness,” she said, which was how she addressed her friend when she was supremely annoyed, “you are interrupting a delicate situation. I am—er, preparing to sketch Ren in the altogether, and he won’t appreciate witnesses.”
Princess snorted. “What man alive doesn’t appreciate a woman witnessing him in the altogether?”
“Rhette,” the man beneath her whispered, his expression strained. He moved his leg, hiding his damaged foot beneath her hem. She turned in his lap and spread her skirts over his nether regions to hide him properly. Her new position snugged his cockstand directly into the crevice of her bottom, and when she squirmed again to add an inch or two of space between them, he groaned and clutched her hips.
“Renwick doesn’t,” Harriette said as primly as she could, given that she was perched on the erection of a mostly nude man. She met her friend’s exasperated gaze and nodded toward the small heap of Ren’s clothing on the floor, beside which stood his custom-made leather boots. “Truly, I’ll be good. But can you not—go into the next room or something, and give the man his modesty?”
Princess, too, looked at the boots, then looked at Harriette, understanding. “Very well,” she said, “I will withdraw into the morning parlor. But,” she tossed over her shoulder as she took her portable writing desk out the door with her, “if I hear the faintest sounds of copulating—or anything wet and smacking, anything at all—I shall call up everyone below and bring them with me to separate you.”
“No smacking sounds from us!” Harriette called after her, then slithered off Renwick’s lap.
His fingers around her wrist gave her pause. “Is that all we shall have, Rhette?”
It was all they ever could have: stolen kisses and the brush of bodies, but no promises, no future. She couldn’t bear for him to see her weakness, even though it was Ren, and she hid nothing from him. She forced herself to give him a careless curtsey, as if he held her hand to lead her out into a dance.
“I can give you the afternoon, milord, but that is all I can promise. And you must let me sketch you. I know exactly how I might finish your portrait, now.”
She made short work of the sitting. She had to. Ren watched her with hooded eyes, slouched on the couch with a linen sheet over his lap, his good leg propped on the edge of the couch and his scarred leg tucked beneath the sheet. His bare feet and bared chest, muscular body, and lazy, sensual gaze were the most powerful aphrodisiac she could imagine.
This wasn’t stealing, not this. These sketches were his last gift to her, a salve for her longing when she was far away and had nothing but memories of this time in his arms. She made sketch after sketch, her crayon flying across the pages, imprinting him indelibly upon her eyes just as he was imprinted on her heart. She couldn’t give him a lifetime. She couldn’t even give him one day. But she wanted to make this single afternoon last as long as possible.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Everyone in the small dressing room stared at Amalie’s face as Harriette painted it with a small brush.
It was much like preparing a canvas, save that the girl’s skin was already as smooth as fine porcelain and needed no scrub with the pumice stone. Harriette brought her basic pigments with her to Renwick House and after some trial and error had achieved the same tint as Amalie’s skin, the blush of an early spring rose. The others insisted on watching the proceedings: Lady Amalie’s nurse, because it would be her place to apply the paint hereafter, and Ren, because he wanted to be on hand during the conversation in which Harriette gently informed his sister that her makeup was poisoning her. The Countess of Renwick also insisted on being in the room, largely to make known her disapproval of Harriette.
“That’s done it, then,” the nurse maid said in a tone of admiration mixed with disbelief. “Ye can hardly see the mark. A shame our girl has to bear it, when she’s so bonny otherwise.”
Harriette wondered if the countess found it harder to accept her daughter’s flaws because her beauty was otherwise so striking. A plainer girl might have driven her to less despair. Both Ren and his sister were uncommonly good-looking, andas their mother had little to recommend her beyond wealth and a close attention to grooming, Harriette suspected their beauty had been a gift from the late earl. It was not inconceivable that a man blessed all his life with a divinely handsome face might detest his less-than-perfect children. It was unjust of him, but not inexplicable.
“Did you know that medieval painters often left a deliberate flaw in their compositions?” Harriette said. “A friend of mine from school explained it to me once. She said that monks illuminating holy manuscripts would leave a tiny imperfection on purpose, because only God is perfect.”
“God gave me a very great flaw,” Amalie said bitterly. As before, the sleeves of her gown were edged with lace that covered the stump of her left forearm.
“But that keeps you from hubris, the fatal flaw of Greek tragedy,” Harriette said. “Think of all the ancient mothers of myth who tried to hide or deface their beautiful daughters so they wouldn’t draw the interest of Zeus. Because how much worse would it be to suffer Hera’s jealousy? Callisto, turned into a bear. Io, transformed to a cow. Or Danaë, stuffed into a trunk and cast out to sea?”
“I wish you would stop filling her head with such fanciful tales,” the countess said. “They sound like they come from some terrible cheap romance.”
“They are the most ancient and revered of Gr-Greek myths, M-mother,” Ren said.
“Well, I think your preparation works the same as the other, Lady Harriette,” the nurse announced. “And a sight less dear than what the apothecary demands.”
“I will leave you the exact recipe, just in case,” Harriette said. “Though I hope I will be able to send you fresh supplies from—wherever I am.”
