As soon as she was back in her rooms on the top floor of Goodrum’s, she ordered a carriage from the mews.
She startled Margot and Gabrielle who were curled up side by side on the sitting room settee poring over Mary Shelley’s latest novel,The Last Man.
“What’s wrong? You’re home early.” Margot pulled off her spectacles and rubbed at her eyes.
“Thereissomething wrong,” Gabrielle insisted. “It’s that Bow Street runner again, isn’t it?”
Charlotte hung her head. She was terrible at keeping emotions off her face. She’d make a pitifully incompetent investigator…damn…why had that thought popped into her head?
Margot came and put her arm around her. “Itishim. You poor thing. What can we do to help?”
Charlotte faced both of her house companions squarely. “I must read the rest of those journal pages tonight. Will you help me?”
Instead of answering, her friends fell in behind her as she climbed the stairs to their second-floor bed chamber aerie where the journal pages were still spread out on the massive bed where they’d left them.
6
Charlotte separated the pages they had yet to read and spread them out on the floor so that she and her house companions could see them all at once.
Gabrielle volunteered to read one of the early seductions.
“Tonight Marie showed me something truly magical. When I pulled her atop my hardness, she laughed and pushed me away.
“When I frowned like a pup who’s been slapped away from the table, she pulled me close and spoke low near my ear. ‘Let me guide your hand,’ she insisted. I stiffened when she pulled my hand away from her breast, but stilled, intrigued, as she slowly lowered my palm to the hot, moist place where the tops of her long legs began. She stayed my hand there a while, slowly pressing the heel of my hand to her mound and moving me in a slow rubbing motion while she writhed and moaned with each new move.
“Suddenly, she pulled my index and middle fingers lower and pushed a slow dance of my fingers at the entrance to her quim. When I shoved inside in my eagerness, she withdrew the fingers, carefully kissing and licking each one.
“You have to be patient, my beautiful boy,” she said, and placed the very tips of my fingers inside the front edge of her slit and rotated them slowly and carefully until I could feel a throbbing sort of small button beneath them. The heat and throbbing burned down to my soul while I nearly forgot my own need. Hell, I nearly forgot my own name.
“She moved against me, slowly at first, warning me not to move my fingertips from the nubbin that seemed to be the center of a whirlwind of pleasure. Her cheeks pinkened, her eyes closed, and she threw back her head in a keening of pleasure.
“After a few minutes, she opened her eyes and in one swift movement, pushed me to my back, knelt over me, and took my hardened cock inside her. My heart pounded in time to her careful thrusts, and just when I thought she’d let me release inside her, she rolled over suddenly and took my cock slickened from her juices into her mouth.
“I tried mightily not to pulse my seed down her throat, but when she sucked hard at the tip of my cock while sliding her hand up and down my shaft, I had no choice. When I came with a shudder, she took some into her mouth and then pulsed the rest onto my belly with her hand. Her lips glistened with my seed, and she laughed her fey laugh before kissing me and blending the tastes of both of us inside our mouths.”
When Gabrielle finished reading the last page, the quiet in the room was broken only by the swish of branches against the dormer window. She took off her glasses and polished hard with the hem of her nightdress.
Margot finally spoke. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I need to get under those sheets, and one or both of you are going to have to pleasure me till I get the vision of what she did to him out of my head.”
Charlotte’s stomach fell with a sickening plunge. The vision that Gabrielle’s reading of the pages had evoked in her mind was that of Mr. Colwyn, pleasuring her throughout the night until she begged him to stop. However, lacking access to the Bow Street runner’s tantalizing body, she decided the idea of pleasuring herself with her companions was not such a bad idea, either.
* * *
Col staredup at the soft light spilling out from the villa’s high dormer window onto the leaves of the plane tree above him. He pulled a battered cap low over his eyes and leaned back against the lamp post out on Blenheim Road near the corner of Loudoun.
He’d used his influence at Bow Street to find out where the infamous chess mistress from Goodrum’s kept her private hideaway. The long walk to the villa - more than an hour - had been worth it. He now had a better idea of what he was up against if he were to entertain any hope of stealing back his journal pages.
What could she do when she found they were gone? Report them stolen? He didn’t think so, but still he felt guilty about planning the theft. He’d play a third chess game with the maddening woman, but that was it. After a final game, all would be fair in theft and chess. He didn’t even consider he might win. He knew better.
He still smarted from the soulful look he’d gotten from Dee when he’d read her chosen story that night with as much speed as she’d tolerate.
“You hafta work again,” she’d accused in a small voice when he’d taken a deep breath and pronounced, ‘the end.’ She hadn’t spoken the words as a question, but a sad statement. He’d apologized and offered to read another story, but she’d laid her head down on her little pillow and turned to the wall, refusing to answer. The dark golden curls spilling across her pillow reminded him so much of her mother that an ache started deep in his chest and threatened to carve out his ribs from the inside.
After she’d fallen asleep and he’d donned his disguise for the evening, even his valet had given him a baleful look as he’d slipped out the door to their rooms and headed for the street below. He knew George would get over it, especially when their widowed landlady crept downstairs later to commiserate with him over their nightly cup of tea.
The light streaming from the villa’s top floor bedchamber suddenly darkened, and Col pulled out his pocket watch. He’d give them twenty minutes, and then he’d go to work.
When the time was up, he waited a little longer before slipping from the shadows of one tree to another. He stood for long moments, using his acute sense of hearing to assure himself the entire house, including servants were well asleep. When he finally squatted in front of the rear entrance to the villa and went to work with tools out of his slim leather bag, he shook his head sadly. This woman with so many secrets and precious belongings had nothing more than a simple lock on her door. Any minor thief could work his way in with a few twists of a wire.
