Black Silk (28 page)

Maryanne’s cheeks were hot as she returned to Dash holding her muslin wrapped package “I smuggled it in—and it was the very devil to do so. I couldn’t risk having a maid find it during the unpacking. But I have a small compartment in my case.”

Dash’s mind ran riot. A whip? A large dildo? What would be Maryanne’s secret? Slowly she drew the muslin down, revealing curled pages, and then finally she flicked the translucent material away to reveal a stack of paper with an ivory ribbon tied around it. She picked it up, cradled it, and then handed it to him.

Handwriting, tight and neat, covered the first page. The writing angled in every direction as though the notes had been added haphazardly and at different times. Then he picked out the words:
A Novel by M. Hamilton
.

“This is your book. You wrote all this yourself?” He patted the bed beside him.

“Yes.” She laughed.

But it still seemed miraculous to him. That she had created a story and diligently set all these words to the page.

“No one has ever read it before. I’ve never shown it to anyone. I was always too afraid to let anyone see it. But I would like you to read it.” She ducked her head, cheeks pink. “You see, it is an erotic story.”

“Hell,” he muttered, instantly erect, lusty, yet completely astonished.

“You must wonder why I did it,” she hurried on. “And I really cannot say. I edited those stories for the courtesans who wrote for us, and I…I felt a compulsion to put down words myself. To tell a story. Of course, since it is an erotic story, I was hampered by a certain lack of experience.” She stood by the bedpost, her arm curled around it.

Too shy to join him while he read her book? “Not anymore.” He grinned, sat up, and spread his legs. “Come and cuddle between my thighs while I read.”

“I don’t know. You may find parts that are…silly.”

“I doubt that, love.”

“Or physically impossible.”

God, he was hard with anticipation. As he turned to the first page, he watched Maryanne. A curl brushed her cheek, she looked so sweetly demure. Then he looked to the first lines.

I was brought into the ballroom by my guardian, his lordship. Gauche in my uncertainty, I feared only one thing—disappointing him. He had dressed me in a low-necked gown of white, gauzy silk, one that revealed my every curve when I stood in front of candlelight! A fanciful corset trimmed in scarlet narrowed my waist until it was merely as wide as the span of my hand. My breasts, youthful and firm, spilled over the top.

And his lordship had the advantage of height—he could see down my dress. That made me blush, yet excited me, too. I wanted him to look.

I imagined the scene before I stepped through the doors. Thousands of candles! Dazzling debutantes in soft, brilliant silk, breezing through the gathering like flickering flames. And the gentlemen. Surely there would be handsome gentlemen to charm lovely ladies.

Oh, the room was indeed bathed with light. But the women were nude. And bound with lengths of black silk. Rows and rows of nude, bound women crouched on their knees, waiting to pleasure gentlemen with their mouths.

Startled, confused, and oddly hot, I looked to my guardian. My heart beat faster as his lordship grinned, as unabashed at the sight of depravity and sin as the Devil.

“Welcome, sweet nymph, to pleasure—”

Entranced, Dash had to breathe deeply to slow his heart. “A sweet innocent in the power of a debauched rake?”

“It is not us.” She jumped on the bed finally, vehemently shaking her head. “I didn’t even…” A smile warbled on her lips. “I’m supposed to be ‘Verity,’ and the truth is that I did fantasize about you—for months before we ‘met’ at the hunt. But you aren’t the devilish lordship in…” She sighed and crawled between his legs. “All right, you are.”

Dash was touched to his soul.

“This is the point where I should put your story aside and make love to you until you scream my name and faint with passion,” he teased. “But I have to admit, your story is too enticing to put down.” And he read, “‘He walked me up and down the rows to observe the way the women delightedly sucked the men’s swollen and rigid members. He remarked on the different techniques used by each courtesan. There were those that paid greatest attention to the head with lips and tongue and even teeth. And those that took the entire beast down the throats, as their eyes watered. It hardly seemed pleasurable, but it excited his lordship. His trousers tented out in front and—’”

“Stop,” Maryanne admonished. “I hoped to sell many books and knew, of course, that I must depict male fantasies. But it sounds rather silly when you read it.”

“I think you like making sport of male fantasies.”

She smiled. “That is true.”

He laid down the book. “Why not tell your fantasies? Why not reveal what a woman really wants?”

“Georgiana told me that a man would only want to publish fantasies that appealed to men—and our publisher, who actually typeset and created the books, was a gentleman, of course. That was why we had to be so subversive about showing how women reach orgasm.”

Dash laughed. “I would like to know how to please you. How to give you your fantasies.”

“But you already do.” Brows drawn together, she pointed at the manuscript pages. “You are the hero of the story. You are my fantasy.”

His heart simply ceased to beat.

“I love this,” Maryanne whispered. “Being able to tease you. I would have never dared do this before meeting you.”

“I can’t believe that. You’ve always been bravely outspoken.” He undid the belt of her wrapper, caught his breath as he flung open the sides and drank in the sight of her lovely, curvaceous, nude figure.

Smiling shyly, she fumbled with the buttons on his trousers. He helped her. “I wasn’t though, truly,” she remarked as she freed his cock. “I was only a saucy piece with you.”

She stroked his shaft, and he dropped his head, eyes shut tight.

“Good,” Dash murmured. “Because you, my love, are my fantasy. I fantasized about finding love, having a family of my own. A happy family. It seemed a dream I could never have.”

He slid off the bed, darted around it with his hard cock jutting out. Her feet dangled over the edge of the bed, and suddenly, because he knew he should, he dropped to one knee in front of them, in the classic stance.

“What are you doing?”

“Proposing.”

“But you already did.”

“But I didn’t ask the right question last time.” Dash had hoped to form the right one, but his heart hammered too hard. “Maryanne, will you marry me and become my wife because I love you and because I cannot imagine living without you? You agreed to marry me out of duty. Now I’m asking you out of love.”

“Oh, dear!”

Not the reaction he’d hoped for. “What?”

“I’ve forgotten what you actually said the first time. That’s terrible, isn’t it? You would think a woman would remember the words for the rest of her—”

“Maryanne, you haven’t answered me yet.”

“Yes, of course. Yes.” Her voice wavered, rich and aching with joy. Tears sparkled in her large brown eyes. “Yes because I love you.”

“I want to protect you for the rest of my life,” he vowed.

But she shook her head. “The point of marriage is that we protect and nurture each other.”

“Remember these words for the rest of your life, Maryanne. I love you.”

She grasped his wrist and tugged him up, so Dash obeyed and joined Maryanne on her bed. “I’d like to read a little more of your story.”

But she shook her head and playfully pushed him back on the bed. “I’d much rather act out our fantasies for real.”

“One of mine is you on top,” he suggested hopefully. And Dash groaned as she climbed on top of him and took his cock inside her, joining them.

She rode him, her body lit by sunlight, her face beautiful in pleasure. They arched together, slowly, languorously, and he wanted this—to spend a decadent afternoon in bed. Making love. Ah, he couldn’t ask for a better Christmas.

He cupped Maryanne’s face as she rocked on his shaft. “You took away the pain of my past and showed me that all that matters is now and the future. Our future. Our family. And love.”

And then she bent and kissed him.

Perfect happiness.

Forever after.