“Only if you are indiscreet. Although,” she posited, dipping her fingers beneath his collar to toy with the coarse, crisp hair upon his chest, “sometimes that is half the fun of it. The thrill that you might be caught in an ardent embrace.”
“I don’t know that I’d much like to be caught,” he said, and in the pale glow of the lamplight she could see a fine mist of sweat shining upon his brow. Despite the formidable restraint he had exercised and his own inhibitions, still he was undeniablyaffected. “But I am not feeling particularly…discreet, at the moment.”
How delicious. “Is that so?” she purred. “Then by all means, be indiscreet.”
Another hard swallow followed by a grave shake of his head. He tensed his thighs for a moment, as if he tightened his own leash. “I must restrain myself if I am to learn how best to please you,” he said. Reflexively, his hand tightened upon her thigh. Relaxed it once again when he realized he had done so.
A gurgle of incredulous laughter trickled up Charity’s throat as she was struck with a sudden understanding. “You poor, dear man,” she said. “Did you think I was torturing you just for the fun of it?”
“I had assumed there was some manner of lesson to be learned,” he said thickly.
“Oh, there is,” she said. “It is that this is meant to be pleasurable for both parties involved.” Such a good, earnest soul, so eager to please. Of course she would have to indulge him. “What would please me most,” she whispered at his ear as a shiver slid down his spine, “is yourindiscretion.”
Chapter Twelve
Indiscretion. Anthony wasn’t even certain he could manage it. Not without coming in his trousers like a green boy and embarrassing himself more than already he had.
And still she toyed with him, like she knew precisely the effect that she had wrought upon him. Which, now that he considered it, she must have done. Her elegant fingers spread his waistcoat open, delicately flicked the buttons of his shirt through their loops one by one. “Your lover must know,” she said, a sultry heat to her voice, “that she is desirable to you.”
Shewould have been desirable to a blind man. She could have seduced a dead man back to life, if only to hear one more sweet word from those full lips, to receive one more glance from those thickly-lashed dark eyes.
Charity was a courtesan—or had been. She had built a career on her inherent sensuality, on the purveyance of pleasure. Did he have even the slightest prayer of satisfying her?
But something within him came untethered as she smoothed open his shirt and placed her hands upon his chest, sliding her fingers across his skin. Of its own accord, his hand found the nape of her neck, curled around it, pulled her closer. The motion dislodged a few pins, freed a cluster of silky curls to spill down her back. A shiver raced down her spine, but her lashes lowered, eyes gone heavy-lidded. She met his lips with a sort of eagerness he could not have expected, as if she had held the kiss in every bit as much anticipation as had he.
Her breathy sigh seared his ears. The rake of her nails across his skin stiffened his cock to steel rigidity. The teasing stroke of her tongue on his sent his senses reeling.
Indiscreet. She wanted indiscreet—whatever that meant. “Tell me what I should do,” he said against the plush softness of her lips. “Tell me what pleases you.”
He felt the curve of her smile. Teasing; maddening. “You wish me toinstruct you?”
“Yes. I have some skill with following orders.” A habit formed long ago to obey his superior officers—and in this, she was most certainly his superior.
A melodious trickle of laughter. Her shoulders shook with her mirth. “You were a captain. You were better at giving them, I expect.” Her palm flattened upon his chest, pressed firmly until his spine was flush against the back of the sofa. “Help me with my laces,” she said.
He doubted any of this could have been done quite so comfortably in the confines of a carriage, but it didn’t seem to be a point worth belaboring at the moment. At least, not when she turned to straddle his hips, leaning down to cup his face in her hands and bite gently upon his lower lip. His cockthrobbedbeneath the tautness of his trousers. She had to have felt it.
Her laces. He was meant to be loosening her laces, but his clumsy fingers could not seem to manage it, catching and tangling themselves in the strings. He hissed out a curse, drew in a steadying breath, filling his lungs with the warm, flowery scent of her perfume. She’d asked only one thing of him, and he was bungling it.
A firm, desperate pull, and at last he felt the laces come loose. She wore no stays, no chemise between her skin and her gown, relying only upon the clever design of her gown and the tightly-laced back to conceal that fact. Warm, smooth flesh met his fingertips as he wrenched that gap wider, until her bodice sagged. Until her cleavage—already scandalously revealed by the low neckline—deepened and her breasts were bared. Round and full, perfectly formed, crested with taut, coral nipples.
“Christ,” he said.
She tipped her head back and laughed, full-throated and delighted, and it occurred to him thatthiswas what she had meant when she had said she wanted his indiscretion. She wanted the words, the helpless exclamations, the sounds, and even the clumsy touches. She did not require practiced eloquence, nor any particular skill.
Only sincerity. Whatever form it took.
She shrugged her shoulders; an elegant motion that sent her sleeves slipping down her arms. “It would please me,” she said, in that brandy-smooth voice, “if you were to touch my breasts. Kiss them.”
Anthony’s heart pounded wildly in his chest as he cupped the globes of her breasts in his hands, explored the impossibly soft silk of her flesh. He said, “I’m going to come in my trousers.”
“Of course you are,” she said, her voice warm and indulgent.Her head tipped back on a sigh of pleasure as he thumbed her nipples. “I’m going to make certain of it.” She rolled her hips, and the hot, firm pressure of her riding his cock through the tight constriction of his trousers sent every thought fleeing from his mind except—
This could not be real.Shecould not be real. But she was, and he had the pert little points of her nipples caught between his fingers to prove it. He had her fingernails scratching at the nape of his neck, sliding through his hair as she pulled his head toward her bosom. He breathed in that same flowery fragrance, evidence of a few drops of her perfume sprinkled in the valley between those magnificent breasts.
His lips touched warm flesh, satiny-smooth and lush. Found the bead of her nipple, sucked that ripe point into his mouth. And she sang for him—a melody of sighs and moans, praise lavished upon him with the sounds that spilled from her lips, with the rake of her fingertips through his hair, with the race of her heart behind the cage of her ribs.
Her well-intentioned pity he had prepared himself for. Perhaps even her charitable indulgence, offered in the spirit of the friendship he thought they had begun to cultivate. But the uninhibited reality of her? Beyond imagination. So far past what even his wildest fantasies could have conjured that it seemed an impossibility that she could be like this.
