Judith Ivory (32 page)

“Stuart—”

“You’re repeating yourself. Besides—” He lowered his voice to a whisper again. “If he’s across the hall, you’ll wake him. Shut up or he’ll be in here—and armed.” He whiffed out the lamp as he rounded the bed, nothing but moonlight and his approaching shadow that said, “In the dark”—a low chuckle—“he might miss and shoot you instead, my dear collaborator. Now collaborate a little bit here. How would you like your ravishment to begin?”

“I—I wouldn’t!” She was going to add,
Don’t!

But, by then, when she opened her mouth, he was close enough to lay his finger over it and say very quietly,
“Shhhhhhh.”

Why should this have been soothing? No reason, but it was. The sound and his smell. Oh, the smell of him, as rich as a Persian bath. And
shhhhhhh
—like a rush of steam over cardamom and orange peel and rose petals. Why did Stuart smell so blasted good?

He leaned over her, brushing his lips at her neck. He’d
been outside, his mouth, his skin cool. She found herself breathing in the warm odor of him, a sunny, spice market brought into her dark English bedroom…straw baskets of colorful powders…umber, ocher, saffron…cinnamon, russet, red, orange…fire, heat, eye-blaring waves of it that rippled the air.

He spoke softly into her ear. “I hope you don’t mind, but—” A pause. Mind what? It was the pauses in his imagination that gave her, well, pause. He continued, fulfilling the gasping promise. “But I can’t,
aa-ach
,” he made a little vocalized sigh, “I just can’t get the sight of you on that chair out of my mind. It drives me wild. So I’m going to tie you to another and have you the first time like that.”

She was already shaking her head so vigorously, it was hard to shake it more. “No, I—”

“All right. Then to the bed. Turn over.”

This was her choice? A chair or on her stomach on the bed? His shadow yanked at something at his neck. His damned cravat. The man was insane. “Stuart—” she started. “I’ll make room.” She scooted over.

“Oh, that would be nice.” He was immediately pacified—then let out a little snort that said just possibly he’d been aiming more or less in that direction all along. He joined her. “Now open your legs a little. I think that would be fairly consoling.”

She let out a breath, anxiety and, God help her, excitement. She wet her lips.

“Can you open your legs a little wider?” he asked, as she rise onto her elbows, moving.

“Give me a minute, will you?”

He laughed, shoving back covers, and took her ankle, pulling it all the way out to the bedpost. She had to scramble back toward him to accommodate how tight to the bedpost he wanted her foot.

She couldn’t help it. “Stuart, I—I—I don’t like losing control. It frightens me.”

“I know. That’s why I’m going to help you.” He pushed her back flat, her elbows going out from under her. “Relax.” He bent one of her knees so as to get her legs as far apart as he wished.

He immediately pushed her nightgown up. All the way. Till moonlight poured over her, privately bare.

Oh, God, the feeling of it. She rose onto her elbows again, lifting at her belly, watching. While Stuart knelt over her, coming up onto the bed, where he loosely tied her foot to the bedpost with his cravat. Then he looked over at her, gazed down. And gazed and gazed, as if he could indeed perceive in the dark like a bat. In the moonlight. She felt exposed, that was certain, though it wasn’t enough. He reached out and cupped her pubis in his palm, then pressed.

And she arched, her head back. She let out a kind of gulp. Pleasure. He brushed his warm palm up, then down, rubbing, feeling his admittance, announcing his arrival at the door to what he wanted. Stuart, beautiful, dark Stuart, spreading her flesh with his hot fingers.

She heard his low laughter. “Clearly too tame,” he murmured, “since you’ve given in already, you strumpet.”

Oh, she had! When he slipped his finger into her, she didn’t even consider stopping him, protecting herself. She opened her legs wider on her own, kicking her ankle free of the cravat—he hadn’t been very businesslike about it. She held her arms up to him. “Come to me,” she said in a whisper that had turned so husky she barely recognized her own voice.

“In my own time, my own way.”

He slowly unbuttoned his shirt, watching her. He was bare-chested when he bent and undid the ties of her nightgown. He pushed it off all the way, up over her arms, up and up. “Lift,” he said softly and took it over her head. He drew back to stare again at her nakedness. Then he settled his weight on her. His trousers were open already. It was happening so quickly. Her mind rushed. Privacy gone…intimacy present…Stuart’s body, bare where it touched her.

He was thick and hard, hot, when he entered her. He made love to her, holding them both back briefly, but they were each too eager. In minutes, she was near screaming…coming…climaxing…. He kept covering her mouth with his, taking the sounds, his own as well, into his throat. When they finished, they were both shaking. He was laughing silently.

Then he murmured at her ear again, “Too tame. Roll over. Put your hands over your head.” He drew his hands firmly down her bare back, kneading her ribs, then her waist, then her buttocks…dark Stuart with no rules, save one: if it sent her into rapturous shivering pleasure, he’d do it…his own damp body, hot, aroused, glistening in the pale light with sweat…in her ear, the quick, emphatic pant of breath, of exertion…

She was going to make sounds again…the urge to call out. She kept biting her lip, tightening her throat, but it was no use. The realization made her eyes wide with fear. Anyone nearby would know what she was doing. Anyone awake…everyone….

Stuart whispered, “You’re going to have the whole place, Leonard included, in here, Emma. We have to go up on the roof.”

“The roof?”

“Yes. We’ll walk naked there. There’s a set of fire stairs at the end of the hall just down half a dozen doors. Go out, turn left. The fire stairs are over a dead-end alley. The alley is dark and a little smelly, because it’s over the kitchen, but the kitchen is closed. No one will see. I looked it all over. You can count on it. It’s safe.”

“You
planned
that we’d walk naked to the roof?”

“Yes. I like to play. I thought it would be fun.”

“Fun?” She was bewildered. “No,” she whispered, “I won’t walk naked down any hall to any fire stairs.” She laughed at the absurdity. Safe. Oh, yes. “People would see
us, Stuart. Plus, it’s the dead of winter. We’d freeze to death.” My goodness, the man needed a warden. Preferably someone with experience from Bedlam.

“No one will see us. It’s the middle of the night. Plus there’s a steam vent from the heating system or the laundry, I don’t know which. But it’s a pipe with a little tin hat on it. Steamy-hot air blows straight down all around it. I took one look at it and thought of you.” He made his breathy, dirty laugh. “Naked,” he said. “Under it. It’s toasty warm—”

“Fine. Feel free. You go. I’m staying here. I’m happy here. Stuart, look at me. I’m short and, um, a little pudgy. You aren’t. I understand. If people see you naked, they might secretly admire you”—she laughed again, light-headed from the insanity he continually came up with—“once they got over the shock, that is, of a naked viscount. Me, though, they’d laugh at my belly—”

The blessed man interrupted immediately. “No, they wouldn’t.” He added with what seemed perfect sincerity, perhaps even surprise, “Your belly is beautiful, Emma.”

“Reubenesque.” She snorted.

“Exactly.”

“Which means
fat
, Stuart. In a nice way, of course.” Didn’t he see her? She was plump: fat in a nice way. Not that she didn’t like herself; she did. She simply had no delusions that every human on the planet might enjoy the sight of her round and generous naked body, though she trusted that Stuart did, believed it for a fact. She told her lover, “My sweet man, I don’t pretend it’s entirely propriety that stops me—it’s partly vanity—but I wouldn’t walk naked anywhere in public, let alone down the hall of a posh hotel.”

It turned out, though, she would
run
naked down one. Because in the next moment he picked her up in one arm, the bulky duvet in the other, and carted them both through her front sitting room, then out the door, with the room key in his teeth. In the hallway, he pulled the door to, thus locking them
out, with her squirming and pounding and trying to crawl over him to get back inside, all in a kind of wild, silent pantomime, since God help them if anyone heard them, let alone their neighbor across the hall.

He set her down and simultaneously reached overhead to lay the room key above, on the doorjamb of the mammoth double doors to her suite. Emma stared upward for one flummoxed instant. Which was how she learned she was willing to tear down a public hallway, barefoot, starkers, and giggling, as Stuart chased after her.

On the roof, on the duvet under the steam vent, with the planets overhead, he let her scream all she wished. She screamed into the night. To the stars. At one point, with his lying atop her, he said, “Look over my left shoulder. Venus is visible tonight.” Then he pulled the covers away from her, wrestling her for the duvet, as he called, “Here she is, all you Venusians”—he lifted out his arm, using it to span the celestial horizon—“and the rest of you planets out there: the most beautiful woman on Earth, spread-eagled for your pleasure!” He laughed. “At my disposal,
mm-m-m
.” He bent down, nibbling, kissing her neck with his teeth, his lips, his mouth.

What a night they had. Normal? Had she actually ever thought the word to apply to herself? If so, she took it back; Emma was no longer a fan of
normal
. It seemed synonymous with
commonplace, ready-made
. When she wanted a custom life, bespoke, not bound by others’ measurements. Hers were good enough. Anything else would be a sloppy fit. Thus, she entered new sexual territory, one full of imagination and dark, serious, enormously fun play. Intensely involving. As when a child, pretending scenarios of adventure. Only this was an adventure of the senses, an adventure of her own body.

While Stuart loved giving Emma more than she bargained for, then withholding what she demanded. Power. It was a wonderful game to him. In a world that was hard to affect, Emma wasn’t.

He had no illusions as to who was truly in charge though:
Emma. In this game, it would always and forever be sweet Emma at the helm—and denying it, taking no responsibility for it: the perfect seat of power. She could go merrily along her way, while he, the “bully,” struggled to know her, please her in ways even she didn’t grasp. How to please the deep, dark Emma at the back of Emma’s mind. That’s who was truly in command here. He served Emma’s desire. Her libido. He and this Emma were in cahoots against the vicar’s widow who raised sheep—and could shuffle cards so fast they were a blur or bend and unbend the corner of the queen so quickly you never saw the movement of her agile little finger.

Stuart let his fingers glide up the inside of her thigh, such a delightful thigh—generous and substantial with muscle. He stroked the strong thigh of an active woman, thick, sturdy, shapely, its resistance against his drifting fingertips a beautiful contrast to skin softer than silk, flawless. Every inch of skin on her whole body was like that.

Emma’s waist was surprisingly narrow. She had a small rib cage. Not so surprisingly, though, her belly was round: a soft, curvy little pot. She was in fact very shapely—just small and short-waisted with lovely melon-sized bosoms, so that on first glance, especially if she didn’t wear a frock that cinched at the waist, she appeared pudgy. She wasn’t. Or not exactly. Everything on her was firm, youthful, nicely contoured muscle rounded out with delicious, soft feminine flesh.

Her cheeks were apple-round. Her friendly blue eyes danced over them. Her nose was small and turned up. A pixie. An elf. With little cherub toes as pink and clean as a baby’s.

Afterward, the two of them lay bundled up together. The vent grew less warm—perhaps the sheets were clean for the next day or the steam had been turned down inside. He huddled, extending their time as long as they could, two silly people enjoying themselves when they shouldn’t be, against all the odds.

“A harem,” she murmured into his neck and laughed at
last at the notion. “I can’t believe you had a harem. You are hilarious, Stuart.”

He laughed. At himself. “I hated men. I loved women. I wanted them all. It seemed logical to start to accumulate them.”

“What an amazing life you have had.” Her own seemed so prosaic beside his.

“What an amazing life we both have had,” he answered. “And for neither of us is it over. How amazing life itself is.” He smiled at the stars. “And here we are. You’re going to let me buy you a house in London, aren’t you? Your own? Or are you going to come live in mine? Whatever you wish.”

“Marriage,” she said, “is what I wish.” Lying curled up against him made her bold. She couldn’t believe she’d said it. A sheep farmer telling a viscount, if he wanted her, he had to marry her. Yet this was what she’d been raised to want, and she wasn’t going to fight it. Not even after having it work out so badly once—there was nothing wrong with the concept, just the partner she’d chosen for it. “I believe in marriage,” she told him. “I believe in husbands. In fidelity, loyalty. A wedding, friends, a respectful place in the village, a union before one’s peers.”

Which was, of course, the problem. Stuart was a peer. Her peers weren’t his.

His face, lit only by moon and stars, faintly frowned as he contemplated her. He said nothing.

She recalled his telling the Stunnels matter-of-factly, “Since we can’t marry of course.” She recalled his saying that if a child came along, it could live as his bastard. He’d been blunt:
not that nice
, she remembered. No, they would never live as husband and wife.

She was not the answer he was looking for. He was not hers.

He nodded, a silent understanding. Then said, “I will attempt to respect your wishes. I’m trying. I’m not very good at it.” He laughed, looked down into her face, stroking her
hair, his palm curved to her skull. “A natural-born tyrant rehearsed from birth to rule the world.” He smiled and changed the subject. “You are remarkable,” he said.