Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait (17 page)

And yet, she surprised him by straddling him instead.

“We can do it this way, can’t we? I’ve studied those exotic prints in Louisa’s library, and last night—”

Marriage to her was going to be a scantily clad, glorious, exhausting undertaking.

Elijah treated himself to the feel of her breasts against his palms. “We can make love any way you please, Genevieve.” Though, pray God, let it be soon.

“I like that.” She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, her braid tickling Elijah’s thighs. He pulled it over her shoulder and dabbed the end around her right nipple.

“Do you like that too?”

She opened her eyes, expression puzzled. “I like your hands better. I love your hands, whether they’re sketching, painting, holding William, or touching me.”

He trapped her fingers and brought them to his mouth. He would take her to Paris. He would take her there as often as she liked, and stay for weeks at a time. When he might have shared these sentiments with her, she tipped forward as if to kiss him, and Elijah thwarted her by taking a luscious nipple into his mouth.

“E-li-jah Har-ri-son.” Her hand wrapped around the back of his head as he drew on her, and the heat of her sex so very near his cock burned at his self-restraint.

Because words were moving beyond his reach, he anchored a hand on Jenny’s derriere and urged her down. She obliged, her damp, warm, lovely sex sighing onto his erection.

“That… That makes me want to kiss you, Elijah.”

He switched breasts rather than tell her what it made him want to do. Without him asking, she started moving on him, a slow, wet drag and return that stole his breath and sent arousal spiraling out through his body.

She would not describe herself as a virgin, though to Elijah she was more deserving of consideration than if she had been. He gave up the pleasure of her nipple in his mouth and watched her face.

“Genevieve.” He had to say her name, so absorbed was she in the stroke of her sex over his cock. “Genevieve, take me inside you.”

Jenny stared at him, as if she groped for the sense of his words.

Elijah took her hand and wrapped it around his cock. “Take me inside you, now.
Please.
”

He fitted his hand around hers and positioned himself at the entrance to her body, then nudged up and went still. Her expression was fierce, aroused, and in some regard holy, like Lawrence’s rendering of the dark prince. In a dim corner of Elijah’s awareness, he wanted to paint her thus, poised on the brink of accepting both him and the pleasure that was her due, and yet he knew such an image exceeded his talent by leaps.

She snugged her body down enough to start their joining. “There? Like that?”

“Exactly like that. Kiss me.”

She folded forward carefully, close enough that Elijah could fill one hand with the abundance of her breast and sink the other into the hair at her nape. “Like this.”

He synchronized his tongue and his cock in slow undulations, until her body was moving smoothly over him, taking him deeper and deeper into bliss, deeper and deeper into
her
.

He felt her arousal welling up, felt her slowing her movements as if she’d cower away from the pleasure—and that he could not allow.

“Be brave, Genevieve. Be greedy and strong. Be
mine
.” He took control of their joining, anchoring an arm low on her back, thrusting into her hard, and watching her face.

“Elijah—” She arched her back, her throat gleaming white in the firelight as her body gave itself up to pleasure. Elijah had to close his eyes lest the sight of her surrender send him past control. In some ways, that decision was ill advised, for he could feel her fisting around him, feel the one, endless spasm that wrenched a groan from her throat, and feel when desire eased its grip on her and let her sprawl in a boneless heap on his chest.

A boneless, satisfied heap.

For long minutes, he contented himself with stroking her hair, her back, her derriere. His passion was not sated, and yet he was content. As he drew a queen of hearts on her back with the tip of her braid, Elijah debated telling Genevieve Windham that he loved her.

Such a declaration might be better saved for their wedding night, or for when he presented her with an engagement ring. Or perhaps—

Along with the lust throbbing gently in his veins, along with affection for the lady in his arms and pride in her fearless passion, a quiet thread of joy coursed through Elijah.

He’d take her to Flint Hall after the New Year—after he’d been officially admitted to the Academy—and tell her there that he loved her, for even a stubborn, idiot man who’d wandered in a wilderness of pride for ten years was entitled—was
required
—to show his bride off to his family.

Jenny shifted on his chest, nuzzled his sternum, then settled again.

He was a better man for loving her, he was a better artist for loving her, and he would tell her that too when he brought her to their home.

“Elijah?”

“Love?”

She kissed him and peered at him with the sort of intensity Elijah suspected had to do with questions a newly engaged woman found difficult to keep to herself.

How many children did he want?

A special license or St. George’s or a wedding in the Morelands chapel?

Would they reside with his family at Flint Hall, or live for a time at Bernward Manor?

When would he speak to her father?

She brushed his hair back from his forehead, a wifely caress if Elijah had ever felt one.

“When I go to Paris, I will miss my family, but I will also miss… this.” She kissed him again, sweetly, gently. “I will miss you so very much.”

Elijah’s hands stopped moving on her back; his lungs stopped drawing in air.

When
she
went to
Paris
…

When she went to Paris, exactly as planned, as if this night, as if
he,
meant nothing more than a passing whim.

As if he’d completely misconstrued her words, her glances, her intentions, and seen them through a haze of lust and longing that had obliterated his judgment.

But not his pride.

Anger welled up, at her, at himself, at Paris, and following immediately after, like an undertow follows a wave, despair surged—for himself and for her. He did not want to go to Paris, much less in the company of a woman whose view of their dealings was radically different from his own.

Jenny would go to Paris, though he was coming to suspect something more than artistic compulsion drove her there, perhaps something she did not understand herself.

For the past ten years, he had wanted to go
home
, and home he would go.

***

Allowing intimacies with Denby had been stupid and disappointing but not tragic. Marriage to Denby would have been tragic. These thoughts, along with both satisfaction and loss, coursed through Jenny as she sprawled on Elijah’s chest.

Denby had been a selfish, inept boy, just as Jenny had been a selfish, inept girl, while Elijah was… a man, a skilled, generous, passionate, caring, talented…

Jenny very much feared that intimacies with Elijah Harrison were going to have consequences tragic for her, though she couldn’t quite fathom how. She could still feel him, feel the pleasurable fullness of him inside her body, and suspected she’d feel him in her heart for far longer than was prudent.

“Elijah?” She could not say these things to him, and yet she wanted to say something.

“Love?”

The sensation of him using her braid like a paintbrush on her back was peculiar and soothing. He gathered her closer, and she kissed him, kissed him with all the regret and longing in her, with all the sorrow and loss too.

“When I go to Paris, I will miss my family, but I will also miss… this.” She kissed him again, because the missing had already started. “I will miss you so very much.”

His hands went still on her back, and Jenny’s heart stopped beating.

He smoothed her hair back from her forehead and studied her, guardedness replacing the tenderness in his eyes. “You said you wanted it to be me, Genevieve.”

“I did, and it was, and I thank you for that.” One did not thank a man for indulging one’s passions. Jenny realized that as she watched the guardedness cool yet more.

“You’re pleased then, with this night’s work?”

Work? He’d emphasized the word slightly, or maybe Jenny had heard emphasis where none had been intended.

“I am—I was. I’m not now.” Their bodies were still joined—she was more or less lying on
him
—and yet, something was off, something was terribly, terribly off, and she was desperate to right it.

He closed his eyes, heaving up a sigh that Jenny felt bodily. “Why are you going to Paris?”

To study art. That was what she was supposed to say to him. Jenny folded down against his chest, relieved beyond measure when his arms came around her.

“I cannot bear…” She tried to stuff the words back into her mind, back so far under propriety and familial regard even she didn’t have to acknowledge them. “I can no longer tolerate the company of my family. They don’t know me, you see, and yet they love me.”

This was as honest as she knew how to be, and yet, the answer didn’t feel complete.

His hand moved on her back, no braid-paintbrush in his fingers, just his hand, slow and warm. “They know you. Our families know us even when we wander off for years, Genevieve.”

He sounded so sad and faraway, and yet he was holding her close too.

“My family thinks I’m good, and when I see them gather together every Christmas, I’m reminded that I’m not good at all. I don’t want the things I should want, and I do want things I shouldn’t—selfish things.” The feel of him inside her was diminishing, and Jenny gave up any notion that he’d indulge her in yet more passion. The pain of that loss helped dilute the pain of the topic she’d raised.

“My sentiments regarding you lie near your family’s, Genevieve, and under most circumstances, I am not accounted a foolish man. You are a good woman. Headstrong, passionate, and misguided, but good.”

Her brothers called her pigheaded, her sisters made her the subject of despairing looks, and her parents smiled and expected her to grow old in their keeping, and yet, they were all convinced of her goodness too.

Of them all, she could be honest only with Elijah.

“I hate them sometimes, with their cozy glances and knowing smiles. My sisters and brothers never used to nap, and now it has become something of a family institution. Mama and Papa are in some ways the worst. The grandchildren—”

Elijah kissed her temple, a small gesture full of encouragement.

“Their Graces see their own children through the grandchildren. Westhaven is father to the next heir, St. Just dotes on his daughters, Valentine dedicates sonatas to his, while I… I want to paint. I have to paint and sketch.”

“Has nobody offered for you, Genevieve? A woman can paint and sketch while married and raising children. My mother certainly did.”

His question was reasonable. She hated that his question was reasonable, and yet she could never hate him.

“I’ve had a few offers, but they all put me in mind of—”

Two fingers pressed themselves to her lips. “Don’t say his name.”

Elijah was right. That name did not belong in this bed. “Those men wanted a Windham daughter, a lady, a pretty, sweet, proper, well-dowered, biddable—I’m getting angry just thinking about it. If I’d told any one of my suitors I’d sneaked into drawing classes, if I’d told them I went to the workhouses to sketch the children, if I’d told them I still want to sketch those children, they would run shrieking in horror.”

Elijah was silent for a time, his hands moving more slowly. “Don’t go to the workhouses alone, Genevieve. Promise me that.”

His tone was uncompromising, though his touch remained gentle. How Jenny wished she’d gone to those bleak, diseased, miserable places alone. “I promise. One need not frequent such locations to see poverty in London, and besides, I’ll be in Paris.”

Where there would be no indulgent, blissfully married, surviving siblings, but where—according to Elijah—the stench was miserable. How could a woman enjoy her croissant and coffee on a street corner that stank?

“Where in Paris, Genevieve?”

The same uncompromising note underlay his question, and entwined with him bodily, Jenny did not even consider dissembling. “I don’t know exactly. I was hoping you might have some suggestions.”

“Of where to live?”

Something else lurked in his question, but Jenny had nobody else to ask.

“That, and other things. Antoine said his friends are all dead or no longer teaching. I’m sure there are galleries and shops—”

She went still, very much aware that Elijah had left off stroking her back.

“Genevieve, Antoine has been teaching in London since my father came down from university. He knows everybody with artistic aspirations here, on the Continent, and probably in darkest Africa. If he did not offer to aid you in establishing yourself in Paris, then it’s because he chooses not to. Very likely his patrons and familiars would be offended to learn of it if he did, to say nothing of what your parents could do to him.”

Gone was the tender lover, and in his place was a fierce, frustrated stranger. One who spoke aloud the conclusions Jenny had tried to spare herself.

“You could help me.”

The words cost her, particularly when she could feel something shift in Elijah’s body. Beneath her, he was no longer a warm, relaxed, naked man, he was
Satan
Summoning
His
Legions
, full of ire and power though he had not moved.

“I would be more comfortable with that observation, Genevieve, had you made it fully clothed and somewhere other than my bed.” His body might have been that of a ferocious, dark prince; his tone was colder than the ninth circle of hell.

“You think I’d—” Offer sexual favors in exchange for his connections and knowledge of the Paris art world. The thinking part of Jenny, the part that had come up with Paris as a solution in the first place, saw how he might reach such a conclusion.