She flushed at the implication.What have you gotten yourself into?
“One cannot underestimate the necessity of an education in the art of pleasure, particularly when time is of the essence. You’ve less than a month, my dear. You will need to please whichever lordling sets his sights upon you, and I won’t have you besmirch my good name as a lover of repute by being completely ignorant in how to do so.” When he turned his gaze back to her at last, his eyes were positively wicked, sinful sapphires glimmering in the candlelight. “Your lessons will be on the art of seduction and lovemaking, Miss Eastwick. You’ve much to learn, and who better to teach you than an unrepentant rake?”
By the time she was back in her own bed that night, a little felt as if she’d been set up on hot coals, smoking from the inside out. She tossed and turned fitfully, falling her fists at her side in aggravation, uncertain how she was meant to go to sleep with fire bubbling in her veins.
When he’d risen from the table, the shape of his cock stood out in relief within his tight trousers. He was hard, and the realization thatshehad been the one to cause the reaction in him made her heat at the time, press a giddy hand to her mouth on the carriage ride home, and now she writhed beneath her sheets.
Everything he said was true. She was, for all intents and purposes, a virgin in all practical matters of sensuality. She had likely seen more than most, thanks to the theater. Patrons were shameless with their hand-picked favorites, and so too were the couples backstage, ballerinas and musicians and stagehands, all coming together to find a place to come together.
She had watched — from a hidden vantage point in the flies, where she had stopped to eat her lunch – the costume mistress on her knees before the rehearsal conductor, suckling his cock tip as he groaned. She had happened upon chorus girls being rutted from behind by their patrons and stagehands lazily stroking themselves, but she had never been a party to it. She had no idea what to do, what to say, how to go about initiating or receiving . . . But she had made Silas Stride’s cock grow stiff, barely even meaning to.
There was going to be no sleeping that night, not unless she extinguished these licking flames that were practically cramping her stomach. Closing her eyes, Eleanor skated her nails down her body, pulling up her night rail with her lip caught between her teeth.
When he feeds from her nectar, the dip of his tongue is an ecstasy, Miss Eastwick.She tried to imagine what it might feel like, her monstrous husband, if he, too, would have clawed hands, horns, or wings, or if he would have the towering stature of an orc, or the slithering tail of a serpent. She imagined the drag of neatly manicured claws down the front of her thin night rail, cupping her full breasts and catching at her hardened nipples. She wondered if she would feel the drag of his fangs against her stomach, if he would push open her legs slowly. She had seen this act only once, but once had been enough to emblazon it upon her mind, a memory she had revisited over and over again over the years. Lord Stride’s vivid butterfly metaphor insinuating the same act had left her aching.
Eleanor tried to imagine his hot breath against her petals, blossoming open with the heat of his mouth and the stroke of his tongue. She slid a finger through her silky slick folds, imagining that it was his tongue doing so instead.With the proper mastery, I assure you, it is extremely pleasurable for the flower. She had no doubt that he would be a master at his sinful craft, moving her fingers to stimulate the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, the flicking of his tongue against her most sensitive part, that aching little pearl she had discovered quite on accident in the bath and now revisited only beneath the privacy of her bed sheets. He would know just how to move his tongue, she was certain. He would lick her, dipping his tongue in her taste, stroke her with its heat, and suckle it with his lips.
Silas Stride was a rake and a rogue and an unrepentant profligate, and she would be glad to be rid of him once the ball was over. But there was no question that he would be a skilled lover, able to bring her to ecstasy. She had extricated a promise from his lips before she had climbed into the carriage that night — that his instruction would be academic, theory and technique, but not practical application. He had laughed, shrugging again with an expansive gesture.
“Whatever you wish, Miss Eastwick. We shall do our best in any case.”
That was the smart thing to do. Let him teach her what she would need to know to please her husband, what she would need to do at the ball to catch his eye, whoever he might be, excite his blood, and stiffen his cock. It would be for him to teach her beyond that, whoever her monstrous mate would be.
But Silas Stride would make her scream. All of those women, those titled women with so much to lose, they wouldn’t keep allowing him in their beds if he wasn’t a skilled lover. Her hips left the mattress, rising to meet her hand, his tongue, the heat of his mouth. When the tension within her broke, Eleanor pressed her fist against her teeth, swallowing her moan.
She couldn’t stand him. He was rude and smug and entirely too pleased with himself, and she would be glad once his instruction was over and she was married, all of her problems laid to rest. Until then, though, allowing the Marquis of Basingstone to give her hands-on lessons in lovemaking might not be the worst idea she had ever allowed herself to be talked into. She sunk into the pillow, pushing away the troubling thought, the sound of his cold laughter, and the mischievous glow of his dark blue eyes. She only had to get through a few more weeks, and then this would all be over.
Silas
EleanorEastwickwasavexation; one of whom he’d be glad to be rid of soon enough.
The second time he had visited her in her home, all three of the other ladies of the house were eager to present themselves — the two children, of whose presence he was aware, and an agéd grandmother, who had not been mentioned previously. He might have been a libertine of the highest order, but poorly mannered he was not, and it took little effort on his part to charm the two young ladies as well as the older matron.
His eyes had wandered around the room as the young girls recited a poem for his benefit, picking out a spot on the floor where the wood was darker, denoting a piece of furniture that had long stood there. From its odd shape and his hostess’s musical education, he guessed a piano. Silas did not like the twist in his stomach when his gaze moved from the empty spot to Eleanor Eastwick’s quickly downcast eyes, as if she were watching him looking and knew exactly what it was he would see. The library, too, seemed somewhat emptier to him than it had been the first night he met her, graciously accepting the glass of port he’d been offered as the younger girls went to bed.
“I hope you don’t mind an old lady like me being your chaperone this evening, my lord,” the old dowager had chided gaily as Eleanor went to tuck the girls in. He decided not to take it as an affront to his charm that she was already dozing in her chair by the time Miss Eastwick returned, reminding him of what a strain on the family his visits likely were.
“I do apologize, Miss Eastwick. I’m sure it’s frightfully inconvenient for you to play hostess at this time of night.”
She’d shrugged prettily, topping off his glass and pouring herself two fingers of the rich liquid, grinning at his raised eyebrow. “If I’m to have a cup of ratafia, my lord, you will be having one as well. And as I told you once before, Lord Stride, I’m a bit of a night owl. Always have been. I assure you, these hours are quite normal to me.”
Something moved inside him at her admission, a queer shift in his chest that left him feeling slightly out of breath, and he worried he was forming some condition. Of course, she would be used to late hours, he reminded himself. How many times had he left the concert halls and theaters, arriving at some private salon for a post-theater sup at near midnight? The performers at such venues would be doing the same, a celebratory drink and meal with cast and crew mates at taverns or else leaving on the arm of a wealthy patron for a private party.She’s more apt to keep your hours than half your staff.
“Do you know why I so enjoy the theater, Miss Eastwick?” he asked suddenly, watching her eyebrows raise. “I keep an apartment in Paris for much the same reason as I keep a permanent residence in London, you know. Partially for business but mostly because I do so enjoy patronizing the arts. Symphonies and operas, theaters that produce concerts and plays and exhibitions, like the one where I heard you sing. They all have one thing in common, my dear. They’re designed to be enjoyed at night.”
Her eyes were bright, her full lower lip trapped between her teeth in a gesture he was beginning to recognize as familiar, something she did unconsciously.It’s a poor way to treat such a lovely little lip. “There is much in this world I do not experience,” he went on, forcibly pulling his eyes from her inviting mouth. “Things of which I only know of through tales and books and illustrations . . . but sitting in a crowded room and hearing an incomparably lovely soprano singing of loss and heartache is not a pleasure to be undertaken in the afternoon. So I suppose the existence of lovely nightingales such as yourself are the trade-off for a lifetime in the dark.” Silence stretched between them for several long, yawning moments after his uncharacteristic disclosure, but it was strangely comfortable, and he had no desire to fill the space with chatter.
“You know, now that you mention it,” she said after a moment, leaning forward in her seat, “it was a bit odd discussing flowers and butterflies with someone who is stone throughout the day, my lord.”
The genuine bark laughter that escaped him at her words was startling.Definitely coming down with something.He was so used to the sound of his own icy affectation, and it had been too long since someone made him laugh in a way that caused a stitch in his side, possibly not since Cadmus had last visited.What was in this port? Are you drunk?!
The entire situation was such an unusual tableau to find himself within — a silent home at night with sleeping children, all candles and lamps extinguished except the ones surrounding them, their quiet conversation taking place in a room partially devoid of furniture with a septuagenarian snoring lightly in the corner. There were no half-naked duchesses lying about, no countess on her knees before him with cum-smeared lip rouge, and no empty wine bottles to be found. There was only this girl, with her quiet dignity and hideous dress and her singular ability to make him behave completely out of character.
“Do you know, I have no bloody idea what I’m talking about most of the time?” he continued to laugh, attempting to stifle himself and failing miserably. Eleanor was wheezing with an unladylike lack of restraint, pressing her mouth into the crease of her arm. “I don’t know that I’ve ever even seen a butterfly. Pinned, of course, and in pictures, paintings . . . Ah,” he harrumphed triumphantly with a start, raising a finger to herald his reversal of fortune in the conversation as she shook with laughter. “If we were to reframe our earlier conversation with the use of moths instead, Miss Eastwick, I should be back on even footing with you.”
She had continued to laugh like a crystalline bell, and the words were out of his mouth before he could give it the thought it should’ve surely required.
“Have you ever been kissed, Miss Eastwick?”
