To Catch a Rake (20 page)

Read To Catch a Rake Online

Authors: Sally Orr

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #Regency

BOOK: To Catch a Rake
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Of course, she faced the possibility that the mere deed might lead to pregnancy or romantic love, but she dismissed those concerns. She had never become with child in the months she spent with her husband. And as for as falling in love, George had, in his own way, let it be known that this would be a single, shared moment of passion. Yet the possibility that her heart might be vulnerable remained. She shook her head, dismissed her concerns. Today she’d join him in celebration, bestow upon this irresistible man her most intimate regard, celebrate together, share the victory, and relish the moment.

Stifling her embarrassment, she excused herself from returning home in Lady Sarah’s carriage and indicated Mr. Drexel would escort her home, once he had become free of the lingering guests. If her friends suspected something amiss, they hid it well. Meta stood there, watching the ladies enter their carriages and leave. All the while, she felt like a schoolgirl about to enter a room after being told not to do so, hoping to find an unguarded treat.

When the time arrived to join Mr. Drexel, she became anxious and almost ran to the inn. The surroundings on the way blurred. She could not catch her breath. She easily found the side door, like the doors found in many physicians’ offices, discreet entrances hidden from the main street.

She entered the inn and let her eyes adjust to walls of dark wood, a probable relic of Elizabethan times. The sour smells of ale, smoke, and the river wafted in from the inn’s ground floor. The loud voices of the workmen in the taproom masked the sounds of her arrival. She climbed the stairs out of the haze and onto a bright landing with an open window on the far end. Here the sun shone on a vase of open-form red peonies placed on an old wooden table, a modest effort to brighten this one corner of the world.

Meta soon discovered the door left ajar and entered a small room with a single leaded window. A shaft of low afternoon light reached across the entire room, illuminating a cupboard with strong iron hinges reaching across the entire front. Besides the cupboard, bed, and washstand, the room contained a dark oak spindle chair almost black with age. Above the bed hung a rather crude oil painting of a prized cow, charming regardless of the painter’s lack of skill.

The room also contained one very tall and dark engineer. He rose from the chair and moved to hold out his hands. “Come here. Let’s celebrate.”

Somewhere in her mind, she realized that if her courage failed her, now would be the time to make polite excuses and leave. Instead, she struggled to mask her excitement and appear calm. Calm in the face of a gentleman of well-practiced allure. There was no sign of the bear, only a handsome man standing before her in polished black shoes, black trousers, and a white lawn shirt. His hat, coat, and waistcoat were piled on top of the dark cupboard. His loosened cravat hung like a white silk snake around his neck, while the three buttons on his white shirt were open, revealing a strong neck and tanned skin, all set upon impossibly broad shoulders.

“You’re a courageous woman, Mrs. Russell. Allow me.” He moved slowly to first embrace her in a standing hug before he began to kiss her. He kissed lightly. Mere fleeting touches repeated many times, escalating waves of joy. Smiles mixed with giggles and punctuated by chuckles in between. “I’ve planned this single moment to express my complete thanks for your efforts. You will enjoy this, believe me.”

“With your reputation, I have no doubts on that score.” His kissing talents had abolished any uneasiness she possessed when she entered the room and left her with a happy anticipation of the lovemaking to come.

“You see, the secret to pleasuring a woman requires many traits unique to engineers.” His wholly wicked smile appeared on a pleased countenance. “There are steps to consider for maximum satisfaction. It’s like building a bridge: first you must find the right site. In this case”—he locked the door—“the site needs to be secured.”

Meta found herself pleasantly surprised that from his lighthearted words, “single moment,” neither of them would take this any further than just this one time. And while she anticipated enjoyment in the act, she now firmly believed she would remember this stolen moment of passion forever.

This voice took on a low seductive tone she had not heard him use before. The deep rumble sounded like an approaching thunderstorm, causing within her a resonance of languid ease.

The wholly wicked smile frolicked just above that deep cleft in his chin. “Of course, the site must also be removed of existing structures.” He took her hand and led her to the bed.

She sat, waiting.

He moved to stand in front of the cupboard. “Of course, the gentleman must go first.” Swiftly removing his socks and white lawn shirt, he pulled his cravat off and flung it on the bed.

She stared—she couldn’t help it. Never had she seen a man with a more broad, sculpted chest. His torso, lightly covered with dark chest hair, seemed too perfect to be real, like the marble statues of Greek warriors in the British Museum. Then she remembered him working alongside the Tunnel’s miners in manual labor, the likely cause of his large, smooth undulating arm muscles. Her throat dried. Upon the realization that he had allowed the exact amount of time needed for her perusal and physical response, she blushed.

He slowly moved his hands to the four buttons on the top of his falls.

She glanced upward to his face.

He wore a smirk of promised satisfaction. “The site must be completely bare, you understand?”

Nodding slowly, she licked her lower lip.

Flicking the buttons open with practiced skill, his trousers dropped to the floor. This time he lingered once again, giving her the time to fully take in the sight of his erection.

She had never been granted the opportunity to examine her husband naked. Their lovemaking had always been in bed, under the covers. Now with the freedom to take her fill of him, she couldn’t pull her eyes away—she couldn’t. She softly sighed.

He picked up his trousers and hung them over the cupboard. “We are only halfway to fully uncovering our building site.” Standing in front of her, he held out his hand.

She desperately wanted to stroke him, but she placed her palm in his large hand instead. A gentle pull, and she found herself standing.

He began to disrobe her. “The site must be cleared and laid bare for a full examination.” He knew exactly the order of which garments to remove and the method of removal. A swift tug with a flourish for outer garments, but for those items of dress that lay next to her sensitive skin, he pulled achingly slowly, leaving a stimulating trail of pleasant sensation. She had noticed seconds into his “site” examination that his full erection grew between them. But he had obviously trained himself to continue on, without overt regard to his state of arousal.

Soon she found herself naked, except for her drawers, standing still while he alternately moved his hands and lips across every inch of her sensitive skin in a thorough “site examination.”

“Hold your arms out to the side.” He trailed his finger from the top of her ear, down along the curve of her neck, and then out along her shoulder. “So many curves on a woman. Curves are the hardest part of engineering to get right. They must be given special attention. And only the most skilled craftsman can hammer out a curve in iron or carve it out in wood.”

The effects of his touch lingered on her skin. Her languid ease vanished and transformed into a deeper, wetter, urgent sense of desire.

He swiftly removed her drawers. Then his finger started on her low hip and traced the curve of her body all the way up and under the long line under her arm. “So many curves…beautiful curves.” He stepped closer to straddled one of her legs with both of his, so she could intimately feel him against her hip. Then he started to rock her slowly between the bed and his thigh. Meanwhile, his clever fingers stroked, circled, and flicked across her sex. He looked down between them at her large firm breasts. “And then the most alluring curves of them all.”

She smiled and watched his fingers move up to trace curves from the bottom of her breasts to the top. Then they circled around in even smaller circles until he repeatedly flicked his finger firmly across her nipple. She softly moaned, thoroughly eager for release.

Kneeling before her, he used his tongue and skillful lips to retrace the trail his finger had taken and moved upward. “Any engineer worth his salt knows the nature of these curves. The question is”—he traced the curve of her breast again from the bottom to the top—“the physical forces involved. What we have here is the force of a downward weight seemingly without support.”

She dug her fingers through his black locks falling around his neck. “Do you play the inquiring engineer with other ladies?” She glanced down at her breasts currently held upward with both of his hands.

His deep chuckle resonated. “Not when I was young, because I lacked the discipline to collect the relevant…data.” He moaned before licking each nipple again, one after the other. “In other words, analysis required a presence of mind that I frequently lacked for
two
obvious reasons.”

She sighed and managed to say, “You are a delightfully wicked man.”

“On my best days.” A bout of leisurely kisses began again, his tongue savoring her entire body from her intimate folds, to the sensitive spot behind her ears. His attention then returned to her breasts. “Now, the two choices for opposing forces to counter gravity are a vertical hold”—once again he placed both hands under her breasts and lifted them—“from a tight stay or some hidden buttress system.” He then tenderly kneaded or lightly flicked his fingers along the side of both breasts.

She dropped her eyelids, moaned, and let herself relish the pleasure of his tender touch. “It’s the tightness of the stays that provides a supportive shelf, correct?”

“You are a lady of some mechanical talent. But you are getting ahead of the force analysis.” A long kiss followed, an escalating dance of lips and tongues. He gasped for air. “So let’s examine the problem. On a normal gown, the downward force of weight is countered by an upward force of cloth just about here.” He proceeded to lick and kiss her thoroughly just under her neck.

Her breaths came faster and her moans louder. “The force of stays is…different…than…that…piece…of…cloth.”

“Correct, so there is little upward counter force in a stay. So what holds these lovely breasts up?” He reached over to the bed and grabbed his long black cravat. “Kneel before me, please.” His eyelids lowered a fraction, and he held out his hand to steady her.

With her heartbeat racing out of control, she climbed up and knelt on the hard bed.

He stood directly behind her. With both hands, he wrapped the cravat around her breasts and held them tight from behind. “Stay engineers have two weapons to solve the gravity problem. The first is friction.” Wearing his wicked smile, he pulled the cravat tighter and rotated it back and forth several inches.

Heaven
. She lost all comprehension of his words.

“The expression on your face tells me friction is the preferred method of force.” He chuckled. “Now the second method used by stay engineers is a mechanical force provided by the whale bone, in the center or along the sides.” He held the cravat under her breasts and lifted the ends upward, so the cloth resembled a giant U. Then he alternately pulled the ends to cause friction on the bottom of both breasts.

She sighed. If she were in a normal state, she’d probably giggle, but her body had become a liquid pile of warm, reactive flesh, and her brain succumbed solely to obedience of his intimate touch.

He stopped moving the cravat, but still held it tight around her. “Of course, if these two forces, upward and counter, are not sufficient to counter the downward force of gravity, a disaster might happen.” He let go of the cravat ends.

The silky cloth fell across her sensitive skin until it pooled on the bed. Her bare breasts a fetching pink due to the lavish attention they had received.

“It would be a great tragedy if insufficient force caused a disaster, and you appear unsupported and bare as you do now, let’s say, in a crowded room.”

“More.” She chuckled. “More please.”

He wrapped his long fingers around both her breasts. “You know, I suddenly realize the similarities between these forces and those related to a cantilever beam.”

His sentences became too long, her need too great—she wanted him now. “Please stop talking.”

He chuckled before lowering her down on the bed, then covering her with his solid, warm body. Then achingly slow, he penetrated her with a single plunge. Holding himself up on his arms, he began to thrust.

She felt the rhythmic lifting, the sense of fullness, her softness filled with his solid, hot flesh. Her need climbed, climbed, climbed, and became restless. “Ah.”

“Yes.” He grabbed her buttocks and swiftly pounded into her.

Then her bliss came with an abbreviated sigh. “Oh.”

He continued as long as he could, before he withdrew at the right moment. A long moan escaped his lips as he released his seed upon the sheet.

They lay side by side, panting.

She had enough wits remaining to consider his control remarkable and not unexpected for an experienced rake. All she desired now was to do it again. How could she have been pleased with the thought that they would only do this once? Now the memory of his passion changed her mind and filled it with an aching desire she might not be able to forget—ever.

They both remained still, breathing hard, and clutching each other. Then, following a kiss under her ear, he buried his head in the crook of her neck until his panting slowed.

She remained still, relishing the warm slickness he left beside her. Around her the heady smell of sex mixed with the stench of the Thames seeping in through the window.

They held each other close and listened to the rain begin to tap upon the window. He rose, shut the window, and returned to the bed. “Let’s nestle. Funny, don’t think I’ve ever really appreciated nestling before. The physical part, I mean. Usually I avoided it, since it is the universal moment desired by all women to
talk
.”

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