Provocative in Pearls (32 page)

“I must try another wile, I think,” she said. “This one?” She closed her hand around his erection. His reaction tensed through him.

She circled the tip with her thumb, then used both her hands to caress. His own touch grew less gentle, and he rubbed her nipples until the sensation grew so intense he might have been rubbing the flesh hidden by her mound.

“What is it you want?” he asked.

“You, inside me soon,” she said. It was getting harder to stand. Harder to breathe or speak.

“I meant what is the favor you want? The request?”

She glanced down at her hands. She must be better at this than she thought, if he was capitulating so early. “I expected to need a few more wiles.” And it may be better if she did, no matter what he asked now.

He cupped her head in his hands and looked at her intensely. “There are things I want from you, and that I want to do to you, and I do not want you to agree because of such things. Whatever it is you are requesting, it is yours. There is no need to give me pleasure for that reason now.”

“You do not even know what it is.”

He nodded. She embraced him tightly, and kissed him hard. “I am fortunate indeed to have a husband whom pleasure makes so agreeable.”

She received a savage kiss in response, and an embrace so encompassing that his arms surrounded her. One hand gently squeezed her bottom, then followed the line of her cleft suggestively, finally finding those sensitive lips. She almost cried with joy at the feeling, and after two subtle strokes madness started closing in.

“Touch me again,” he muttered in her ear. “Caress me again.”

She did, taking pleasure in the wildness she felt straining at his control. “Is this all you wanted me to do? It was already yours.”

“Not all,” he said between feral kisses.

“What, then?”

“Your mouth, if you are willing.”

That made no sense, and yet she understood what he meant. “That sounds very scandalous.”

“Some think it is. I have shocked you.” He kissed her hard. “Pay it no mind. Come, off to bed with you.” He lifted her in his arms, carried her into his chamber, and laid her on the bed.

She waited while he dimmed the lamp, watching his body in the deepening golden wash of light. His dark hair hung recklessly around his head now. He came back to the bed while she still pondered his request. She eyed the object of his fascination.

“Perhaps . . .” she said.

“Perhaps?”

“Is it something ladies do?”

He got into bed. “Not most, I don’t think so. Some do.”

“The kind that go to orgies and such?”

“Others too. Some. Think nothing of it. I should have waited five years if I mentioned it at all.”

“I may have only found the suggestion very funny in five years. It may be the sort of idea that it is best to strike at while the iron is hot.”

“That was my thought on it. However—”

“Here is why I hesitate, other than the oddness of the notion.” She looked down at the object under discussion. “It just seems that it would make more sense, and be less odd, if I knew it tasted good.”

He covered his eyes with his hand and laughed. “I really can’t help you there. I do not know.”

She gave his erection a poke. “Do you have any wine in this apartment?”

He uncovered his eyes, startled and encouraged. “I have port.”

“I like port.”

He was gone at once, and soon returned with a glass and a decanter of port. He poured her some. She sipped it, and gestured to the bed. He lay down again.

She dribbled the port down his chest and loins, and made sure a goodly amount covered the area she wanted. Some of it dripped down his sides to stain the sheets.

“Oh, dear. Drummund will be furious.”

“Drummund be damned.” He reached to grab her.

She slapped his arms away. “Don’t move. I don’t want all that port on me, and it might ruin the pearls. Just lie there and hope I do not do this wrong or lose my nerve.”

He placed his hands behind his head. “Do your worst. I will survive.”

She thought him very brave. She rose up on her hands and knees and lowered her head to lick the wine off his chest. A good deal covered his flat nipples, and he seemed to like that part. Her tongue flicked and flicked down the rivulet of dark liquid, to his abdomen, tense now, so very tense. When she arrived at his erection, it seemed a natural thing to just flick more. She tasted, and tasted again, and Hawkeswell muttered a curse of euphoria.

 

 

H
e was doomed.

That thought entered Hawkeswell’s head while he lay in weightless contentment with Verity in his arms.

Doomed. He did not give a damn right now, but even the blissful aftermath of the finest climax that he had experienced in memory could not keep the truth at bay forever.

He took some satisfaction that he had in no way coerced her to experiment tonight. He had promised her anything she wanted before she agreed.

Only now, anything could be . . . anything.

Worse, she was aware, he was certain, that she had just discovered a great secret to getting whatever she ever wanted, again and again, for as long as she lived.

He could not shake the notion that he had just ceded some critical ground in a battle that he was not even sure he was fighting.

She was wide-awake, but content in her own way. Not the most important way, however. Not the way he needed her content. He would take care of that soon, when he had recovered. Already his body was finding the notion appealing.

He fingered the strands of pearls, and admired their soft glow above her lovely breasts.

“What is the favor? The request?”

She bit her lower lip, and thoughtfully watched his fingers from beneath her lowered lids. “I will not hold you to your promise. It was not freely given.”

“I was in no way tricked, and do not need any excuses. Now, what is it?”

“I need your help in something. As a lord, you know people and can obtain answers that I cannot. I need you to help me learn what became of Katy’s son.”

“Michael.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to find Michael.”

He did not get truly angry, but his mood sharpened and the bliss died. Of course she would want to know what had happened, he told himself. It meant nothing. This Michael was no rival.

Another voice from deep within, from his soul, reminded him that she had been born for Michael or a man like him, and that she had never really wanted the Earl of Hawkeswell.

The odd part, the hardest part and even the most surprising part, was just how sad that other voice felt as it acknowledged the truth behind all the pleasure, no matter how glorious it may be in passing.

A good deal of anger emerged with that admission. More than he expected. It carried pain within its resentment. He looked at the pearls threading through his fingertips, and the snow white of her skin, and her delicate profile, and in his weakness of the moment he could not ignore the source of his reaction.

Little Verity Thompson, the ironworker’s daughter, had stolen his heart, and he was condemned to love her in vain.

Doomed. Far worse than he had imagined.

“Good news or bad—I just want to know what became of him. Even if the truth is that he is dead.”

“And if he is not? What then? Will you also want me to obtain his freedom, or bring him back to Oldbury?” The anger wanted to roar now, in defiance of his weakness. It wanted to block out the thick sorrow weighing like lead in his chest.

She turned on her side and looked at his face. “I am sorry I asked it. But it’s not just a matter of Michael. . . . I believe others may have suffered the same fate.” She told him an odd theory about Bertram and Cleobury and others, maybe even Albrighton, making men disappear. When she was finished, she kissed him. “I have no proof, of course. I know it’s unfair to ask this of you.”

Yet she had. She had trusted that he was better than he was.

He arranged the pearls, so they were high on her neck. He reached past her to the table that held the glass of port. “I am thinking that I should do for you as you did for me.”

She frowned as the liquid dripped on her breasts. Her gaze followed the path he made down her body, and reflected growing surprise. She appeared relieved when he stopped at the top of her mound. He set the glass back on the table.

He swirled his tongue through the port on her breast. “Lie as I did, and just take it.”

She set her hands behind her head. The position arched her back so her breasts rose high.

“Spread your legs,” he said. She obeyed, completing the erotic image he had in his mind.

He gave her pleasure with his mouth and tongue, but he gave himself as much at least. Little anger remained in him now, just a small vestige that imbued the pounding desire with a ruthless edge. He tasted slowly, savoring skin and wine and scent and her cries. He worked his way down, as she had, determined to have what she had agreed was his, especially since he never would possess all that he wanted.

She startled when he did not stop where the wine ended, but instead kissed her mound. “But you did not—”

“I did not want to ruin it.” He caressed high between her thighs gently so that the pleasure would defeat her shock. “I promise you will like it.” He lured with his hand as well as his words, using sensation to overcome her misgivings.

She rocked against his hand and closed her eyes. Instinctively, almost imperceptibly, she parted her legs more. He positioned himself so the musk surrounded him.

The devil entered him then. He brought her along slowly, teasing her until she groaned. He maddened her until she cried out again and again, and finally begged for more. For relief. For him.

She came hard, thrashing, screaming. That strained his own control. Howling with a chaos of hungers both physical and darker, he rolled off the bed and pulled her to its edge and set her feet on the ground.

He turned her and bent her so her bottom rose in offering. She looked back at him, startled again despite the reveries of her release. He didn’t give a damn about that now, only the unbearable effect her erotic position had on him. Teeth gritting, jaw tight, he pushed her back lower until she submitted the way he wanted her, with her arms and head on the bed and her bottom rounded and high, and her vulva visible, pink, and wet.

He caressed until she shivered with need, then entered her hard. He held her hips and thrust again and again until he released all angers and hungers in his body and soul.

H
awkeswell rode his horse down the Strand, having spent two fruitless days looking for Michael Bowman.

He had passed many hours in clerks’ offices looking at dusty books of records, only to find nothing. Michael had not been transported; that was clear. Nor sent to the hulks. Nor tried in an assize court. Nor, the best that he could tell, did Bowman stand at the Quarter sessions in Shropshire, Staffordshire, or Worchestershire, although those records were secondary, the complete ones being in the counties themselves.

It appeared, on the face of it, that the young man had simply taken off to seek his fortune elsewhere. It was an explanation that Hawkeswell would be happy to accept.

He remained lost in his thoughts as he neared the western end of The Strand. The appearance of another horse near his own flank jolted him alert.

Bertram Thompson paced his horse into place beside him. Beaver hat high and blue coat crisp, Bertram took the place as though he had a right to be there.

“I need to talk to you, Hawkeswell. You have not replied to my letters.”

“I have been ignoring your letters. I would think that my intention not to see you was clear, Thompson. Have you been following me all about town just to waylay me like this?”

“I had no choice. I have been approached by some gentlemen regarding the works. I am unable to reply to them until you consider their offer.”

“There has been an offer for the works?” He had no choice but to stop his horse then, and move it to the side of the Strand.

Bertram followed, smugly satisfied that he had at least managed to make Hawkeswell pause in his tracks. “A very handsome offer.”

“It is not for sale. I have the use of that property, and its income, but it is still owned by Verity. A judge would want assurance that she freely agreed to sell it before permitting such a thing. I am sure she would never so swear.”

“The offer is not to purchase the works. It is to lease it.”

Hawkeswell knew all about leasing land, but was out of his depths when it came to leasing a business. He did not intend to let Bertram know that.

“How much do they offer?”

“An average of the income from the last five years, minus fifteen percent. What with the variable demand for the iron now, and the decrease in orders overall, the security of this amount per annum has great appeal.”

It certainly did. It would have more appeal if the five years being averaged did not include the worst years in the works’ history. Even so, only a fool would not give serious thought to an offer that removed the essential gamble inherent in any business off the table.

“How long is this lease?”

“Fifty years.”

Fifty years of dependable income, unless the new managers were idiots, in which case they would go bankrupt and the lease would be broken. He could not deny the attraction of this offer, and Bertram’s knowing smile said he saw as much.

“And you, Thompson? What will you do if this occurs?”

“I’ve other interests to pursue; don’t you worry. I will not mind leaving that house and that hill and all that trouble. Should I be having them draw up the papers, so we can see just what the particulars are?”

Fifty years. He’d be dead by the time this lease ended. With the security of that income he could take care of his properties and responsibilities with an ease that would never be possible if he had to wait year by year to see what profits were made.