Beauty and the Earl Page 6

  “Remove your clothes, Violet. Slowly.”

  She swallowed hard, and the strain of obeying was clear on her face. She was so accustomed to men who wanted her to take the lead that she bristled under command.

  And yet, she surrendered despite her hesitation, lifting her hands to the buttons along the front of her gown and loosening them one by one. Slowly, she peeled the fabric open and revealed a pretty pink chemise beneath the silky fabric of her day dress. A pretty pink chemise he wished to rend in two, perhaps with his teeth.

  But he remained seated instead, watching as she shimmied her dress down her body. She kept her dark stare on him the entire time, reading his reactions, metering her movements to torture and best please him.

  Finally she shoved her gown to her waist and let it hang there. She lifted her hands to her breasts and massaged them until the nipples became hard against the flimsy fabric of the chemise. He shifted.

  “Take it off,” he repeated, his voice low. “Take it all off.”

  She gave a husky laugh. “Your wish is my command, my lord,” she murmured, then slid her fingers beneath the chemise and shoved both gown and underthings down the length of her body.

  She toed off her slippers, then lifted one leg and slowly, so slowly, rolled her stocking down to remove it. She let her hands drag across her stomach with a hissing moan before she repeated that action on the other leg.

  She kicked all the clothing away and stood before him deliciously naked. His heart stuttered as he stared at her in the glowing firelight and dimming lamplight. Her curves were almost unreal. From her full breasts to her rounded hips, it was a body men would have painted in the Renaissance. A body men had worshipped since the dawn of time.

  “Are you only going to stare?” she asked, arching her back to give him a better view of the breasts he wished to suckle until she screamed in pleasure.

  “For now, yes,” he managed to choke out. “Touch yourself, make yourself ready for me.”

  She laughed, and the sound was intoxicating. “If you don’t already think I’m dripping and ready, you underestimate your allure, my lord.”

  Plenty of women had said something similar to him over the years. Women who then flinched when they looked at his scars. But the scars didn’t seem to bother Violet. She hardly seemed to notice them. He could almost believe her.

  “Touch yourself. Now,” he repeated. “Or I shall punish you.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “How?” she asked, but she was breathless and her nipples got even harder.

  He stood up but didn’t approach her. “I will hold you down on my bed while I lick your pussy until you are writhing and begging for release. And I won’t give it to you. I will hold you on the edge of pleasure until you weep and scream my name. Is that plain enough?”

  Her hand slipped between her legs, and she shuddered as she touched herself. “I’m not certain that would be a punishment. It sounds like heaven.”

  “Breaking you sounds like heaven?” he asked. Her eyes widened, and he chuckled. “Actually, I tend to agree.”

  “You can’t break me,” she replied, but her hand worked in earnest and, judging from the flush that had begun to work across her chest and up her neck, Violet was enjoying the idea he presented.

  “Don’t tempt me,” he said. “Now stop touching yourself. I don’t want you to come until I give you the orgasm you will so richly deserve.”

  She hesitated but pulled her hand from between her legs. He could see the shining evidence of her utter arousal on her fingertips. Without warning, he reached out to catch her wrist and dragged her closer. He lifted her hand to his mouth and sucked her fingers, licking her earthy, sweet essence from the tips.

  She shivered, and he thought she might come there and then.

  “You said you want to please me,” he continued, releasing her hand reluctantly and reaching for a pillow, which he dropped at her feet.

  She looked down and smiled. “Please you, my lord?” she repeated.

  He nodded slowly. “Yes.”

  She unfastened his trousers as she slithered down his body to kneel on the pillow he had provided. They hit the floor as she did, and he stepped out of them and kicked them away, just as she had done with her gown a few moments before. She pushed his shirt up and away from his waist and he went to work on removing it, even as he watched her, her face a breath away from his hard cock.

  She cupped him gently, looking at him like he was a treat she had been offered after a long fast. She licked her lips, and he nearly spent right there and then.

  And when she darted her tongue out and swirled it slowly around the head of his cock, his knees buckled and he had to reach back and balance himself on the bed before he finished stripping his shirt away. She sucked his cock into her mouth and at the same time slid a hand up his hip to stroke her hand over the hard muscles of his stomach.

  He clenched at the bed with a groan. God damn, she was good at this. She took him deep into her throat and back again, using her tongue to lave him even as she popped him away from her lips. She looked up, and the wickedness of her stare was a challenge and a promise he could hardly ignore.

  Slowly, she took him again, gripping the base of his cock in one firm hand, licking and stroking, dragging him toward release. He stared at her, eyes closed, humming pleasure deep in her throat, and he realized this was how she maintained control. Distance. She pleasured and knew that with most men they didn’t care about anything else.

  He shouldn’t have, but he did care. He wanted more than her mind-blowing mouth. He wanted her purring beneath him, above him. He wanted her begging. He just wanted her.

  “Stand up,” he ordered.

  She froze, looking up his body slowly. She sucked just a fraction before she popped him from her lips. “You don’t want this?”

  “I want you,” he said, sitting down on the bed and pulling her to stand before him. He put a hand behind her knee and dragged it onto the bed next to his hip.

  She smiled and straddled him, lifting straight on her knees so that she was slightly above him. She didn’t lower her body onto his cock yet, but instead reached up into her hair and pulled a few pins loose to clatter on the floor. The mass of thick, dark, perfumed locks came down around her shoulders, her breasts, his face.

  Violet’s gaze stayed on his, unwavering, unflinching as she lowered herself onto his waiting erection. As he entered her, they both shuddered, her hands coming to grip his shoulders. Normally pain would burn from his injury at such a touch, but for now he was too focused on her welcoming slit to care.

  Once she was fully seated, he reached out and tugged her legs out from under her, forcing her to lock them around his back. They were face-to-face, nose-to-nose as he thrust up and growled out a noise of possessive pleasure.

  Her head tilted back as she ground her hips against him, panting and mewling with every thrust. He cupped her backside, pulling her closer, guiding her movements, pounding and reaching to go deeper, to pull more from their joined bodies.

  He could tell when she was close to orgasm. Her back arched and her gaze became clouded and distant. Her pulse throbbed as she slammed her hips to his. Finally, with a cry of his name, she buried her face in his neck and sobbed as her pussy clenched his in an erratic, wild rhythm. She pulled at him, milking him, and his balls tightened as his own orgasm loomed. He held back, trying to work her through pleasure as long as he could.

  But when he could take it no more, he stood up, turning to place her on the bed, and pulled out to spill his seed with a growling cry of utter satisfaction. He collapsed over her, showering kisses along her neck and chest, cupping her breasts, stroking his hands over her hips, her legs, as if he could memorize her lines to savor in his mind later.

  She held him close, dragging her fingernails along his spine as her breath slowed. She sighed, content as he rolled for a better position on the bed. Stretching like a cat, she moved to rest her head on his chest and smiled up at him.

  “I might
like being told what to do after all.”

  She teased but those words did so much to him. Too much.

  He looked down at her in all her exotic beauty. “How did a woman like you become a courtesan?” he asked.

  She stiffened for a brief moment, and he knew he had hit a nerve. He expected her to pull away, but instead she began to stroke her fingers over his chest in a small circle.

  “I was offered a marriage with a man I didn’t want,” she explained softly. “Or perhaps offered is too gentle a word. My father…well, he is a man of means, of power. He never publicly acknowledged me, but when I came of age, he decided to ‘help’ me.”

  Liam nodded. “Help you how?” he urged.

  She was quiet for a long moment, and he didn’t fill the silence, but allowed her to collect herself. “He demanded I marry a man I loathed. But the man had a son, who…”

  She stopped abruptly and was silent, as if she were considering the prudence of revealing something personal to a man she hardly knew. He recognized the look on her face. One of regret, sadness, the remnants of fear. He shouldn’t have wanted to know more, but he did.

  So he waited, without offering her an easy escape from her tale.

  “To prevent a dilution of his father’s inheritance, his son did something that made certain that his father wouldn’t want to marry me.” She shook her head. “That anyone would want to marry me.”

  Liam’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do?”

  She looked up at him, dark gaze hooded and her expression one of silent, long-fought acceptance of a painful past. “He tricked me into getting very drunk. I was young and didn’t understand what he was doing. And then he…well, he did what some men do with girls who cannot say no.”

  Liam swallowed hard. “So he raped you.”

  “My father didn’t call it that.” She shrugged, but there was nothing dismissive in her low tone. Acceptance or not, the story still hurt her to her core. “He demanded that if I had ruined the good match he had lowered himself to arrange for me, that I now marry the man who had taken advantage.”

  Liam sucked in a breath through his teeth. He might have complicated issues with his sister, but he couldn’t imagine demanding she do such a thing. He couldn’t imagine anything but murdering a man who harmed someone he cared for.

  “I refused and walked away. Cut off from what little protection he once offered and without my virginity to bargain, I had little choice but to turn to alternate methods of protecting and supporting myself.” Her lips were thin, they were pressed so tightly together. “I met Olivia not long after I left my father’s protection, and she helped me.”

  Liam nodded. “Do you regret your choices?”

  She pondered that a moment. “No. No, I believe the path I am on is the one I was meant to travel. I came to enjoy sex, to appreciate the men I choose as my protectors. My body is my only commodity and I think I have used it well, without being harmed or abused.”

  She smiled and Liam could hardly stand how beautiful she looked in that moment. Her strength ran deep and made her all the more alluring.

  “I’m sorry you endured so much,” he said, stroking a hand along her arm.

  She smiled. “We all endure, Liam. I think you know that better than anyone. Once we are dealt our cards, what else can we do but play them?”

  He stared at her, so certain in her life and her response. How she had “played her cards”, as she put it, was very different from his way.

  She sat up, tossing long locks of hair from her shoulder.

  “What time is supper?” she asked.

  He yawned, just as happy for the change of subject. “Eight o’clock.”

  She glanced at the small clock beside his bed and stretched. “Then I have just enough time to ready myself beforehand. Where is my chamber?”

  Liam hesitated. He had prepared a chamber for her, even though he hoped she would spend her nights with him. But sharing space with her things was far too intimate.

  “Normally I would put you in the guest wing with your friend,” he explained. “But that is too far for my taste. I’ve put you across the hall.”

  She smiled as she slipped from his bed and gathered her discarded gown and other things. When they were piled neatly in her arms, she blew him a kiss and turned to pad naked out his door and across the hall, with only the barest glance back at him.

  Liam stared, then flopped back on his bed with a laugh. He had never known a woman like Violet Milford before. And he had a feeling he would never experience a force like her again.

  So he had best enjoy it while he had it.

  Chapter Seven

  An hour later, Violet was sitting at the dressing table in the chamber Liam had provided, staring at her reflection as she replayed everything that had transpired between them. She had revealed something of herself, as was her plan…but the knowledge that she had become so vulnerable made her hands shake as she pressed them against her hot cheeks.

  There was a knock behind her, and she called out, “Come in.”

  In the reflection from the mirror, she saw Olivia come into the room. Her friend’s hair was still down, but she was dressed for dinner.

  “Did they perhaps put my small bag in your room by mistake?” Olivia asked as she stepped inside.

  Violet motioned to the stack of trunks and luggage that had been deposited in her corner by the time she claimed the room. Rachel had wanted to unpack her, but Violet had refused, insisting on time alone after she had been dressed and her hair fixed.

  “Look there, it’s possible. Who knew we had so many things? It’s a little embarrassing.”

  “We are women, we must have many things. I feel no embarrassment whatsoever.” Olivia laughed as she went to the pile and began moving things around. She glanced up as she went about her work. “Your face is a little grave—did things not go well with the handsome earl?”

  Violet strummed her fingers along the top of the dressing table and shook her head. “No, everything went just to plan.”

  “Ah ha!” Olivia emerged from the pile with a small bag, and Violet couldn’t help but laugh even though her nerves persisted.

  Olivia didn’t excuse herself immediately, but sat down at the end of Violet’s bed and looked at her.

  “If everything went ‘just to plan’, as you say, why do you seem so nervous and anxious? It isn’t like you to be so affected by a man.”

  Violet wrung her hands. “I-I told him just a little about John Salsworth.”

  Olivia stared at her as the bag she had been clutching in her hand slipped away to clatter on the ground.

  “Why?” Olivia asked, her voice rising. “What would make you be so forthcoming?”

  Violet swallowed hard. Her friend’s reaction was making her question the prudence of an action she already doubted.

  “Have you ever heard of Scheherazade?” she asked.

  Her friend shook her head. “You know I’m no scholar. What is a Scheherazade?”

  Violet pushed to her feet. “She is the main character of a story written very long ago in a country very far away. I read a translation in French when I was a girl. Essentially it is the story of a king who executes his wives after spending just one night with them, for fear of them cuckolding him.”

  “A vast overreaction,” Olivia said with a shake of her head.

  Violet shrugged. “That is another discussion entirely. In the story, Scheherazade is given to the king as another in his string of brides. She doesn’t want to die, so on the first night, she tells him a story. Well, part of a story. He’s so interested that he doesn’t kill her and encourages her to tell him more. Every night for a thousand and one nights, she continues to tell him a piece of her tale. By the end, he is in love with her and does not murder her, but keeps her as his bride and queen.”

  “Well, I hope you don’t think the earl intends to kill you,” Olivia said.

  “No, of course not. But I do think that I, like Scheherazade, must lure him in. Capture hi
s interest.” She sighed. “I give him my trust in the belief that he will return it in time and tell me more about himself so that I might complete my mission for Lord and Lady Rothcastle.”

  “How much do you intend to tell him?” Olivia asked.

  From her expression, Violet saw that her friend was as torn about this idea as she was. As courtesans, they dealt in mystery, not this kind of intimacy.

  “I don’t really know,” she admitted. “I know there are things I shall never reveal.”

  “You mean about—”

  Violet nodded to interrupt her. “Yes. About him. But as for everything else, I’ll have to see how far I need to go to open Liam’s heart and get past his defenses.”

  Olivia pursed her lips.

  “What is that expression?” Violet asked, folding her arms.

  “I worry, Violet,” her friend admitted, utterly serious, which was unusual. “You say you are trying to open this man’s heart, but I fear you will be opening your own as well. What if you come to care for him, even love him, because you shared so much of yourself?”

  Violet straightened up, her heart clenching with her friend’s pointed question.

  “I had to consider that, of course,” she admitted. “But I know what we are, Olivia. Courtesans cannot love—we cannot afford it.”

  Olivia’s gaze dropped from hers and her cheeks paled. “I-I suppose you are correct about that.”

  Violet shrugged, as if to dismiss the topic. “And this man has made it clear he will not want to keep me. If he uncovers my deception, he certainly won’t want to keep me. So I do this with no illusion that it is anything more than deception on my part.”

  Olivia nodded. “Be careful,” she advised, then stood up. “Now I should finish readying myself before supper.”

  Violet smiled at her friend as Olivia slipped from the room. Olivia worried about her, which she appreciated. But she could handle this. She had to.

  With a sigh, she moved from the chamber and walked downstairs. Since there was time before supper, she had the perfect opportunity to do a little looking around. She knew full well one could tell a great deal about a person from examining his surroundings.