Passion Wears Pearls (27 page)

“Now you have to tell me!” She pinched his shoulder playfully.

“Ouch! What a bully you’ve become. …” He kissed her on the nose.

“Confess, Hastings.”

“Come, then.” He rose from the bed and wrapped her in his robe, and before she could ask, he swept her from the bed, carrying her from the room cradled against his chest.

“Where are we going?”

“Shhh! Remember you asked.” He knew his way about the rooms without lighting a single candle, every dimension memorized and every step counted and recounted so often he had no fear of stumbling with his priceless armload. He carried her easily, enjoying her weight in his arms and the heat of her body to his with her arms encircling his neck. He pushed the door open to a small, rarely used study with his bare foot and went inside to set her carefully down on a soft chair. It was a windowless room, dark even in the early afternoon. He found the matches in the top drawer and lit a small lamp on the desk. “I can’t recall the last time I was in this room.”

Instantly, he knew the portrait on the wall would have come to life, and Eleanor’s gasp confirmed it. He barely glanced in its direction, the charms of its subject long faded for him.

Eleanor, on the other hand, was just now experiencing them. “Oh my! She’s beautiful!”

Posing as some obscure Greek goddess carelessly holding a bunch of grapes, here was a dark-haired woman, lush and lively, happily wearing little more than a scandalous drape of cloth that bared far more of her curves than it covered. Her features were pert and playful, with wide, lovely eyes the color of brandy and a heart-shaped bow of a mouth that was a ripe wine red that begged for kisses.

“Daisy was.”

“I’m almost afraid to hear this story now.”

“No need to fear her.” Josiah closed his eyes. “I grew up in the country, my father being a member of the country
gentry, as I told you. The family holdings were ideal, I think, for a young boy, and my brothers and I would often roam wild to escape my sisters. My father swore we had too much freedom, but I, to this day, don’t even know what that meant. How can there be too much freedom for a boy?”

Nostalgia gave the memories a softer glow, and he relaxed into a subject he hadn’t spoken of since he’d been chained in the dark of a dungeon with Rowan. “There was a girl in the village, and I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love her. It was ridiculous, but Daisy always seemed so worldly and wonderful to me. She left for London at sixteen, fostered out to a rich aunt who’d requested her company, and I yearned for her.”

“That’s sweet.”

“It wasn’t sweet! It was miserable, and I can’t believe the hours I wasted pining away for her. Especially since absence does make the heart grow fonder. We secretly corresponded for quite some time until I was tossed out by my father and headed to London to make my own fortunes. I was poor but proud, and when I met her again years and years later, I was completely smitten—all over again. She had grown into a gloriously groomed creature, and there wasn’t a perfume-scented ribbon out of place. Daisy had gained polish and I was dazzled.”

“What man wouldn’t have been?” Eleanor sighed, envious of the woman’s place in his heart.

“I begged her to sit for me and I fell in love with her all over again. I imbued her with all the qualities I’d credited her with over the years. I thought she was natural, not shameless. I thought she was innocent and spoiled, not conniving and greedy. I thought I’d found my muse and my future wife. But when I announced as much, she laughed in my face. I was a diversion, a rather wicked diversion, but she had no intentions of shackling herself to a starving artist without the benefit of fortune or family. She’d found a rich patron and was already enjoying his gifts and his bed. She was going to inherit her aunt’s house and money and live the jolly carefree life of a courtesan. She said I was
welcome to paint her or pleasure her as I saw fit, but that was all she wanted of me.”

“Oh my!” Eleanor’s fingers covered her lips. “How could she?”

“I threw her out half naked while she was cursing and spitting like a cat coming out of a rain barrel. I made a vow then and there about painting women. I didn’t ever want to look at something so false and give that lie to the world.” Josiah did his best to look at the portrait, but it was just a gray outline of a figure on a colorless wall. “Not that I proved to be any great moral example myself, but heartbreak does lead to some interesting choices. After gadding about London like a fool for several years, playing the rake to prove that she hadn’t hurt me, I left for India and was painting there and playing the fool when the rebellion simmered over and caught us all off guard.”

He waited while Eleanor silently looked at the painting, absorbing the story behind Daisy’s sultry looks. After all, here was exactly the sort of portrait she’d been expecting on that first day—

“Why keep her on your wall, then? Why force yourself to look at her every day?”

“It was supposed to be a bit of masculine bravado. I think I said something about wanting a reminder of the lesson so that I wouldn’t forget it. But I’ve kept it up for another reason entirely.”

“Is she—still in London? Do you see her sometimes?” Eleanor asked quietly.

He shook his head. “She is, but … we don’t run in the same circles. I heard that she’d changed her name to Delilah and had done a few turns in the theatre. But I never cared enough to seek her out.”

“Not all women are so false.”

“Time has given me better perspective. Daisy wasn’t false. She never presented herself as anything other than what she was. I was the one who saw her differently and punished her for not living up to my expectations. I’d not have you think me that heartless, but I once was. That
painting is proof that I’m horribly flawed.” He shifted to lift her up and sit her on the edge of the giant desk in the middle of the study and then stood facing her, nudging her soft thighs apart. “But you are not false, Eleanor.”
And when you break my heart, it will be for exactly the opposite reasons as Daisy. She had none of your character. But because of that proud character I’ve come to worship, I care too much for you to humble you with a useless man for a husband.

I am the one who is false.

The Jackal will be in motion and I’ll let Fate intervene.

But today, you are mine, Eleanor Beckett.

He cradled her against his chest, but the tenderness of the scene gave way to the desire to claim her there and banish the ghosts of the past once and for all. Not Daisy in particular, but Josiah had the irrational urge to wipe every woman he had ever known from his mind. Each time he made love to Eleanor, they’d all faded a few more degrees until he was sure that there would be no memory of any woman he had been with—leaving only Eleanor.

As it should be.

He gripped the lapels of his own robe, admiring how much better it appeared when wrapped around Eleanor’s alluring body, and used the cloth to pull her close, the backs of his fingers deliberately grazing the peaks of her breasts.

Eleanor leaned forward, increasing the contact as her nipples grew turgid and firm, snaking her hands upward to caress his chest and lick the sensitive lines of his throat. She loved the way his pulse quickened and his warm skin quivered wherever her mouth teased him with her tongue.

His fingers lifted up each lace-edged strap of her chemise to push it off her shoulders, drawing the soft cotton slowly down across her sensitive peaks, and Eleanor abandoned her campaign to kiss his neck so that she could throw her head back and revel in his attentions.

Her breasts were bare, and Josiah tasted each one, tonguing each circle of firm flesh until it pebbled at his kisses. She gripped his hair to beg him to suckle her, and
Josiah obliged her without hesitation. He lathed and licked the ruddy tips of her breasts until she was shuddering and writhing against him. She became the sustenance his body craved, and Josiah’s appetite for his beloved Eleanor overcame a world of shadows and made him believe that happiness might be his.

Her hands roamed over him, never still as she sought a way to please him, even as the first hint of her impending climax began to arc from her breasts and radiate out through her limbs. She fanned her hands out to massage his shoulders and map the hardened planes and angles of his chest and back. Eleanor tipped her head forward again, luxuriating in the sight of Josiah at her breasts, and felt every inch the pagan goddess for it.

But the growing ache inside of her demanded participation, and Eleanor wriggled forward to free her hands and loosen his pants. The head of his cock was already straining for release, and Eleanor slid her hand down its length, lifting one of her legs to press her own wet core against the solid heat of him through the cloth of his breeches.

“So beautiful …” He sighed, lifting his head to kiss her, shifting his hips forward as well, following her lead to add to the pressure and tease her with his shaft.

The desk’s height was ideal, though Eleanor doubted the makers had intended it for such a purpose. But then another wicked thought occurred to her. “All this time, Mr. Hastings, I’d say you’ve spent far too much time surveying the view.”

“And what do you suggest?”

She shimmied off the edge and pressed against him, only to turn him around and guide him to lean back up against the desk. “It is my turn to survey beauty, Mr. Hastings.”

She knelt down between his thighs, and kissed the bones of his hips, teasing him as he had her and demonstrating that she was an extremely quick study in the art of love. His pants were already loosened from their love play, and Eleanor eagerly dispatched with the buttons to free his cock for her attentions. The jutting prowess of his erection was a
sight to behold, and Eleanor stared at it in admiration and wonder that such a thing existed. She wrapped her fingers around him, testing the marvelous weight and heft of him in her palm. The color ripened at her grip, and Eleanor experienced the thrill of newfound power.

His breath whistled as he pulled it through clenched teeth. “You’re torturing me on purpose, aren’t you?”

“No, but I might,” she said, then leaned forward to gently kiss his swollen head.

She tasted the musk of his skin and boldly sampled the solitary pearl of moisture that heralded his deep arousal, savoring the salty-sweet flavor of his body. His cock jerked against her lips, and Josiah groaned as her tongue found the sensitive juncture at the underside of his swollen head. She licked him there, laving and teasing the taut skin, before she kissed him again, only to take him into her mouth. She moved against him, using her mouth and her hands, instinctively finding the rhythm and pressure to push him over the edge of rapture.

Every texture of his sex, every ridge and silken line was explored. Her hands and mouth moved in a concert of friction and ardor.

For Josiah, it was a glorious combination of heaven and hell. For he had to hold perfectly still while Eleanor took charge, her unpracticed attentions angelic in their perfection. He was a caged beast as every move of her mouth and hands against him stripped him of his control. When she took him inside of her mouth, the velvet pocket of that inner sanctum froze him in place, consuming him with a fever that threatened to wrest his release from his grip. Every kiss scalded him with honey that made his bones ignite with need.

Josiah couldn’t take it anymore.

He lifted her up with a groan to pull her onto his lap, throwing her petticoats up to sit astride him, and penetrated her with a primal growl, grinding up into the tight, wet confines of her body in a merciless stroke. He buried himself inside of her, until his cock was nestled up against the
opening of her womb and they were both breathless. He began to rock upward, his hands locked onto her hips to seize and savor the white-hot release that danced just out of his reach.

Eleanor cried out, wrapping her legs around his waist, but suddenly, Josiah’s eyes opened and he stopped moving, cursing under his breath as their love play took a very sudden stop. “Damn it.”

“W-what is it?” She wriggled against him, hoping to spur him on, but Josiah seized her hips and forced her to be still.

“I have no condoms in this study.”

“Oh!” Eleanor bit her lower lip in frustration. “Should I—”

He gripped her bottom, cupping her firmly, and Eleanor forgot what she was going to say. “Miss Beckett, hold on to my neck, please, if you don’t mind.”

She complied, only to find herself lifted up completely from the desk, still wonderfully impaled by his magnificent erection as he stood and began to carry her out of the room.

“J-Josiah?”

“Bedroom,” he growled, concentrating on the issue at hand and praying he didn’t spill his seed from the delightful sensations of this unique form of transportation. It was an extremely unorthodox stroll back to the privacy of his room, but he was determined to reach his goal.

Within seconds, they were ensconced safely on his great bed and he had withdrawn only for the brief moments it took to secure one of the French letters from his nightstand. “Where were we?”

“You were going to punish me for torturing you.”

“Woman. You have
no
idea.”

Eleanor laughed as he swept her back into his arms and the “torment” began in earnest until they were both lost in the fires of pleasure and pain. Every stroke and touch pushed them closer to the edge, blurring the lines between possession and surrender.

She threw back her head, crying out shamelessly, and he
could feel her orgasm flow over him, her muscles gripping him with exquisite spasms that sent his own release spinning out through his frame. Josiah couldn’t think as searing crème was wrenched from his body, and he plunged into her to ride out each crest and prolong the moment.

Long moments of silence followed as they each tried to recover and collect their thoughts. Eleanor’s heart was pounding so loudly she feared if he whispered endearments she wouldn’t hear them, but from his own labored breathing, she doubted the problem would arise.

At last, she was confident that her soul was once again safely tethered to her body, and Eleanor curled up against his side, tucking up to absorb his heat and savor his touch.