David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) (14 page)

David kissed her, lest her confessions become more heartbreaking. “You deserve desire, Letty Banks. You’ve parted with your innocence and nearly starved as a result. The goddamned least you deserve is desire, pleasure, and satisfaction.”

And she trusted him—
him
—to give them to her.

“I am a madam,” she said, in the same tones she might have said,
I
have
given
my
kingdom
for
a
mess
of
pottage
. “I would learn something of desire.”

“Right now, you are the woman sharing a bed with me. The woman who will share pleasure with me.”

David trailed his palm over her nipple, letting that movement be the only caress he offered. He would accustom her to his touch and to the pleasures it could yield rather than distract her with more kisses—for now.

Letty’s fingers came up to encircle David’s wrist where his hand poised over her breast, her touch was neither restraining nor encouraging.

“You will enjoy this, Letty-love.” A mandate, instead of a prediction.
David
enjoyed it, liked the ease and warmth of being snuggled up with her, the sense of wonder and intimacy.

“I might.”

“You might enjoy this too, then,” he murmured, closing his fingers gently over her nipple and offering her the slightest pressure. She closed her eyes in response, while David detected the barest arching up against his hand, the smallest token of encouragement.

This should have felt like work. To move so slowly, one caress, one sigh, one touch at a time—it should have been frustrating, and even tedious, but encouraging Letty’s passion was no more work than unwrapping a long-anticipated gift. Even a casual partner deserved the courtesy of arousal, but David was also learning Letty, learning her responses even as she was learning them herself.

The realization was humbling and exhilarating, and even greater than the gift of Letty’s responses was the gift of her trust.

“Kiss me?” she whispered.

Satisfaction rose up, fueling greater arousal. She had asked him for something, a small something, by arching her back slightly. A not-so-small something by asking for his kisses.

To his utter pleasure, she followed up her request by taking a small kiss for herself.

And
we’re off.

But it was the most languid start to an erotic race David had ever known. Letty’s lips trailed over his, her tongue shyly inviting his into the kiss. She did arch her back then, pressing the fullness of her breast against his hand with unmistakable entreaty. He obliged, letting his caress become a gloriously sensual exploration of the weight, contours, and responsiveness of her breasts. And even as he provoked more arching and sighing from her, he deepened the kisses, using lips, breath, and tongue to orally mimic the act of copulation.

“I wasn’t going to allow this,” she whispered.

He had to focus on her admission, another gift that surpassed the mere, predictable endearments the situation might have merited. “You weren’t going to allow me to touch you?”

“I wasn’t going to allow myself to want.”

Maybe a woman who’d lost her innocence had to learn the art of not wanting, because much,
much
, was no longer hers to even wish for. That conclusion brought with it anger and sadness, which had no place in the same bed with a man who sought to bring his lady pleasure.

David trailed his mouth down her neck, then along her sternum. He pillowed his cheek on the swell of one exposed breast and paused deliberately.

He wanted Letty to anticipate his next touch, and wanted time to gather his wits. The last thing he could afford was to rush her, to give her any excuse to marshal her defenses or to direct her practical, thinking mind to what happened when intimacies became meaningful.

She wanted to know about desire, about intimate and pleasurable bodily sensations.

Lest his own mind hare off in the direction of desires of the heart, David raised himself over her, and slowly—giving her time to anticipate—lowered his mouth to her nipple. Her hands came around the back of his head, again neither pulling him to her nor thrusting him away, as if her fingers and palms could eavesdrop on the pleasure he was visiting on her breast.

And pleasure it was. When he drew on her nipple, he surrendered to bliss shot through with bright streaks of something hotter and more intense. A sigh that edged toward a groan escaped Letty, and David paused, treasuring even that sound, before resuming his pleasuring. Her fingers moved on his nape, massaging, and eventually, holding him to her.

But so lightly, only a hint of an embrace, the merest suggestion of an invitation. The pace of their caresses, like the deliberate steps of an old pavane, forced David’s own arousal to unbearable intensity, but still he held back. Letty was becoming interested, but she was not yet in pursuit of a goal. She was letting David lead her, because a need for her own gratification hadn’t yet begun to drive her.

David moved his mouth to the second breast, which allowed him to lean more of his weight onto his lover. In response to his cock’s insistent demands, he flexed against the crest of Letty’s hip. Moving felt good, not good enough, but better than completely ignoring his own wants, so he set up a slow, lazy rhythm, pressing himself to her hip, then easing back, only to press in again.

Letty’s hands went on a quest, slipping down his back, around his hips, then back up, into his hair, over his face, and off again. She had the most provocative touch: light, curious, and increasingly bold. When her fingers feathered over David’s throat, chest, and face, pausing to explore his lips, it was his turn to sigh and moan.

“Easy, love,” he murmured, “or we’ll finish too soon.”

Her hand stilled over his heart. He covered it with his own and dropped his forehead to her collarbone. Their position was a variation on the embrace of the waltz, with her arm around his back and their hands joined. Letty waited unmoving, and again, David had the sense she was trusting him, willing to follow his lead for yet a few more steps.

Because he’d managed to find the most innocent madam ever to preside over immoral commerce in the history of London.

He glossed his palm down her breastbone, taking his time, exploring the contours of her ribs, then the smooth, flat plane of her belly and her hip bones. She remained still as his hand trailed lower, holding her breath physically and perhaps emotionally as well.

“Let me pleasure you,” he whispered, kissing her neck below her ear, where her rosy scent was sweet and strong. “Let me ease the ache for you.”

He entreated, because what she wanted was an experience of pleasure, and what David wanted was to give that to her, and in a way her previous paramours had sadly neglected to do. For reasons novel and unexamined, he needed to be different from his predecessors, and was curiously grateful for their ineptitude.

He shifted up, enough to kiss Letty properly, and found to his horror that tears had gathered in her eyes. The sight pierced him with a profound sadness, and worse, a tenderness for Letty, who should have been beyond the reach of tears when sharing intimacies.

“I want only to pleasure
you
, Letty,” he said, sifting his fingers through the curls shielding her sex. “We needn’t do more.”

As it turned out, he hardly needed to do anything. His fingers learned the soft, damp contours of her intimate flesh, and explored the responses he could inspire by attention to the seat of her pleasure.

“I’ll go softly,” he whispered, kissing the corner of her mouth when she wrapped her grip around his wrist. “Close your eyes and trust me.”

She would never entirely trust him, but she might tolerate him as a lover. That thought made him patient, determined, and attentive, such that her every little sigh and hitched breath informed his fingers, his mouth—and his self-restraint.

Pleasure took her silently and beautifully. She turned her face into David’s throat while her body convulsed, the contractions of sufficient strength he could feel them as he palmed her sex.

She remained against him when it was over, burrowed into his embrace, her restraint and misgivings nowhere in evidence.

Something peculiar turned over in David’s chest. She’d trusted him, just as he’d asked. Maybe not quite as much as he’d wished—and when had he ever courted a woman’s trust?—but she had. He would not betray that trust with selfishness now.

They remained thus for several minutes, Letty’s breathing gradually returning to normal. When David levered his body over hers, she allowed it, her hands finding their way to his hair, and then in slow strokes, to the long muscles of his back. He settled his weight on her, hoping it brought comfort, at least.

“May I ease myself on you, Letty?” He punctuated the question with a slide of his hips that had his cock gliding along Letty’s damp flesh. In reply, she brushed her lips across his, then wrapped her arms tightly around his waist.

Acceptance, then, of a request, if not of him.

David repeated the movement, a slow hitch of his hips that moved his cock tightly against her.

For long moments, he was content with that pleasure. He toyed with the knowledge that he could change the angle ever so slightly and be inside her. She was a madam and assuredly not a virgin, so she knew well the risks she ran with what she allowed.

If he’d asked for more, she might have granted it, but as arousal rose in David’s blood, he also knew that permission was not going to be enough. When—not
if
—when Letty took him as her lover, it would be because she wanted him for herself, not because she
permitted
him liberties.

So he rocked against her slowly, savoring the heat and feel of her beneath him. She held him closely, not the embrace of a woman tolerating an obligation, but the embrace of one who could become his lover.

He lifted his hips to trap his cock against her belly, and thrust a few more slow, powerful strokes. As he came in hard, hot spasms, Letty kissed him on the mouth.

The relief David tasted in that kiss eradicated any lingering sense of frustration. It vindicated his judgment that Letty hadn’t been ready to take him as a lover in the fullest sense of the word, though that mattered little compared to how much intimacy she was willing to grant him.

David’s satisfaction was more than sexual as he returned Letty’s kiss. He was content, for now, to have given her as much pleasure as he could, to have shared pleasure with her. The contentment surprised him, but there it was.

He straightened his arms, fished on the night table for his handkerchief, and used it to swipe gently at Letty’s stomach and then at himself. He tossed the handkerchief aside and rolled onto his back, wrestling Letty into lying against him.

He should probably offer her some conversation, but he was too content for words, the sexual lassitude blending with a sweetness words might disturb.

He was thus inordinately pleased when Letty’s hand stole over his chest to cover his heart. She rustled around in the covers until her head rested on his shoulder and her leg lay across his thighs. David wrapped her hand in his, and his arm around her shoulders, a feeling of such peace and rightness enveloping him that he almost told her about it.

Sleep, fortunately, came to the aid of his common sense, and he and Letty both drifted off, warm, content, and for the present, not lonely at all.

***

Letty woke alone, the covers tucked in around her and a pot of tea under a towel on a tray beside her bed. Her body was rested, contented, and pleased with its new knowledge of satisfaction and desire, but her mind was groggy and overwhelmed. David, no doubt the bearer of the tea tray, was likely downstairs, ordering Mrs. Newcomb about, and making himself at home in yet another household of women.

How could Letty face him? She’d invited him to share intimate pleasure with her, invited him to remain in her bed. Fatigue and pragmatism might account for ending up in the same bed with him, but loneliness, foolishness, and even wickedness had been involved in the passion that had followed.

Tea before further self-castigation seemed a good idea.

Letty sat up to pour herself a strong, aromatic cup. She was pleased to find the room uncharacteristically warm because David had also built up the fire. Oh, to be taken care of… David’s thoughtfulness was as seductive as his kisses, as his arms, warm and strong around her, as his voice, rumbling beneath her ear in the darkness.

Her musings were interrupted by a hard rap on the door, followed by David’s smiling presence in her bedchamber. He bore another tray, and wore a towel over his shoulder.

“I’ve brought you sustenance.” He set the tray on the night table, went to the window and pushed back the drapes to let in a gray, wintery light. “The weather is still foul, but the snow has slowed down. I expect you are hungry?”

“I am.” For food, too.

He sat on the bed at her side and shifted the tray to her lap. “I made you some pancakes, and there’s jam and butter, as well as a coddled egg. I couldn’t find the pepper, but salt should do. You have no fruit in your pantry, Letty. That will not serve.”

He was nervous. He had the peculiar competence to whip up pancakes and coddled eggs, he exuded his usual casual charm even unshaven and sporting a towel over one shoulder, and yet, Letty was certain he was nervous. “Thank you for breakfast, for the tea, and for building up the fire and for…”