My Lady's Pleasure (2 page)

She did as she was bidden, not quite knowing what to expect. Jeremy had been her only lover, but she assumed he had had others, given his way of surprising her.

He stood over her as she lay on the sofa, and put his hands between her slightly open thighs. He eased her legs apart, and she had to put her right foot on the floor. He sat on the edge of the sofa between her legs and ran his fingertips up and down the insides of her thighs. He pressed hard enough not to tickle, but not hard enough to satisfy her craving for his touch. Feeling his fingers on the soft skin that no one but Jeremy ever even saw, let alone touched, always opened her to him. She felt the beginning of wetness deep inside her, and half sat up so she could reach out for him again.

Again, he didn’t let her. Instead, he put one of the cushions from the sofa behind her. “Lie down,” he told her. “Be comfortable.”

She did, and was, and he sat back down between her legs. He leaned in close and kissed the inside of first one thigh, and then the other. His firm lips had never felt so soft. And then those lips opened, and she felt his warm, wet tongue on her skin. It worked its way up, up one leg and then the other, closer and closer.

She knew where he was headed, and she had the fleeting urge to stop him. They had gotten to this point before, and she
had
stopped him, but had later been ashamed of what she thought of as cowardice. As a young woman, she had gone out into the world determined not to be bound by the constrictions society placed on her sex, and of all those constrictions, chastity bothered her the most. That ladies were required to sit in their drawing rooms painting or reading, playing whist or piano, while men prowled the streets, the clubs, and the theaters in search of thrills and adventure, had enraged her from her adolescence, when the wonder of her body first began to be revealed to her.

Jeremy had helped her understand that wonder—what her body could give, what it could receive, what it could feel, and the pleasure it could bring others. Why, then, did she balk? Where did it come from, that visceral reaction that prevented her from accepting the ministrations of his tongue? Why did it feel
dirty
?

Intellectually, she didn’t believe it was dirty or wrong, and she was determined that her head would triumph over her viscera in this battle. It felt odd for Georgiana to lie practically naked on a sofa, with her lover’s head between her thighs, and will her intellect to assert itself, but that was what she did.

She found, though, that circumstances had compromised her intellect, and she couldn’t stop herself from sitting up once more, taking Jeremy by the shoulders, and pushing him away. When he looked up at her, she didn’t say a word, but her conflicting emotions were written clearly on her face.

“It won’t do, you know,” he said to her with a small, sympathetic smile. “You’re going to have to learn to let me do this.”

“I want to,” she said, hesitating. “I do. But it’s as though my body tightens automatically, all on its own, against my express wishes.”

“Then we shall have to find a way to make your body submit,” he said simply. He pressed her to lie down once more, and again ran his hands over her legs. This time, though, he headed toward her feet. He unlaced her delicate little boots and took them off. He held her feet in his hands for a moment, pressing his thumbs into their fine, high arches. Georgiana closed her eyes and savored the sensation that was part sensual, part sexual.

Then Jeremy put her left leg down on the couch and held her right in one of his hands as he ran the other up the length of her ankle and calf, which were covered by a sky blue stocking of the sheerest silk. He released the stocking from its elastic garter, and expertly rolled it down her leg, leaving Georgiana wondering just how a viscount’s son learned to remove a lady’s stocking. The thought had barely entered her mind when it was displaced by curiosity. What was he up to?

Jeremy had taken both her slender wrists in one of his hands, and lifted them above her head. He put one of her hands under the arm of the sofa, and one over. He brought her wrists together again, and wrapped the stocking around them so that Georgiana was tethered to the sofa’s arm.

“What are you doing?” she asked with a curiosity just tinged with alarm.

“I’m making sure your body will obey your express wishes,” said Jeremy. “We are ensuring that
it
does what
you
want, and not the other way around.” He paused. “Does it hurt at all?”

Lady Georgiana considered. “No,” she said. She was about to add that she wasn’t sure she was quite comfortable, but Jeremy didn’t let her.

“Good,” he said as he stood up and took his position between her legs again. “If it begins to hurt, tell me.”

It took a moment for Georgiana to reconcile herself to the situation. Yes, she was helpless to stop him, but wasn’t this what she wanted?

It was, and she trusted him. He had earned her trust over the course of a year of generous and considerate lovemaking. As she gave herself permission to let this happen, she was awakened to a very new sensation—the confluence of extreme arousal and enforced passivity. The idea that she was powerless to participate, powerless to manipulate, powerless to do anything but focus on her own sensations was a new one for Lady Georgiana, and it didn’t at first sit comfortably with her. She was determined, in all things, to control her own destiny; the very act of taking a lover had been an exercise of control. And yet here she lay, all her control, all her power, wrested from her.

But then she realized that it hadn’t been wrested from her. She had given it. With that realization, she began to truly relax. She began to see that her mind, freed from worry about what she should do next, could focus completely on what was happening to her.

And
oh
! What was happening to her!

She didn’t feel just his lips as they danced up her inner thighs; she felt the smallest movement, the subtlest change in texture, in temperature. She was more aware of her own response than she ever had been. In all their lovemaking, there had never been even a moment when some part of Georgiana’s mind wasn’t occupied with Jeremy—what he was feeling, what she’d like him to feel, and how she could make him feel it. Now, though, there was only her own self. Her skin, and how he felt against it. Her desire, and the way it turned her insides to honey. Her need, and how it was growing.

When Jeremy reached the velvet junction where her legs met and her sex flowed, the first touch of his tongue was revelatory. She had imagined it many times, and she had imagined that it felt good, but this was beyond good. The warmth and the wetness were just the beginning. The way his tongue moved over her, following her contours, now skimming, now diving, sent impulses of pure pleasure the length of her body. He pressed the very tip to the button of her clitoris, and moved it almost imperceptibly back and forth. Just as a tremendous, insistent orgasm started to build deep inside her, Jeremy pulled back. She gasped, and fought to contain the sensations his mouth had unleashed.

When those sensations had subsided, she felt his tongue return, going around and around her pussy in ever-tightening circles. By the time he came back to that magical button, she knew, as he did, that there would be no more containment. He slowly, deliberately, moved his tongue back and forth, and she felt as though he were touching her very essence. Her orgasm consumed her. It rose up and took up all the space not just in her body, but in her mind and her spirit. She had never, never felt its like, and as it ebbed she marveled at its power.

She didn’t realize her eyes were closed until she opened them and saw Jeremy standing over her, smiling and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. She’d also forgotten that her hands were tied until Jeremy bent down to release them.

“Are you all right?” he asked as he handed the silk stocking back to her, quite a bit worse for the wear.

“I am,” she said, and looked at the torn, misshapen stocking a little ruefully. “But had I known what was in store for my stockings, I think I would have chosen the cotton ones.”

Jeremy laughed. “I’m terribly sorry about your stocking,” he said. “If you let me have it, I will try to find a replacement of the same color next time I go up to town.”

“That’s very kind,” said Georgiana, “but I think I shall keep it as a memento.”

“My memento will be your scent,” said Jeremy, holding his hand to his nose and inhaling deeply. “I’m not going to wash until you get back from Penfield,” he said. She was planning to leave the next morning, and this would be the last time she and Jeremy would meet until she returned.

“But I can’t leave you like this,” Georgiana said, tracing the clear outline of his erect penis through his trousers.

“Ah, but you can,” he said. “I want what you just felt to be the feeling you take with you. That is,” he added, “if you really must go.”

“It’s not a question of must,” she said. “I want to go. Paulette is a dear friend, and the party is one of the best in the country.” Paulette was Lady Loughlin, and the party was the annual masquerade ball that the Loughlins hosted at Penfield, their country estate in Hampshire.

“Why don’t you come?” she continued. “I know your father frowns on masquerade balls, but really—we’re only five years shy of the twentieth century. Can’t you convince him that what simply wasn’t done when he was a young man is now done by just about everyone?”

“It’s not just masquerades in general, as you very well know,” said Jeremy. “It’s the Penfield masquerade. It has something of a reputation, and not the kind that my father looks kindly on.”

They both smiled, he ruefully and she expectantly. He needed to stay in his father’s good graces in order to keep both his allowance and his expectation of financial independence once his father went to his maker. As the younger of two sons, he was at his father’s mercy. The estate was entailed on his elder brother, John, but the crumbs—substantial enough to support a family in something like high style—were his father’s to distribute as he would. If Jeremy started socializing with the likes of the Loughlins, the Viscount Newbury most certainly wouldn’t distribute them to his younger son.

Lady Georgiana understood all this, and didn’t press her lover.

“I’m sorry you won’t be there,” she said, “but I’ll be back in a fortnight, at the most.”

He kissed her hand with a gallant intimacy. “Enjoy yourself, but come home to me,” he said, and took his leave.

A
s she rode to Penfield, Lady Georgiana thought about what Jeremy had said. When they first became lovers, they had agreed that theirs was an intimacy without conditions and without expectations, but Georgiana was beginning to think that Jeremy was repenting of his bargain. Lately, she sensed in him a seriousness, a determination that their relationship be something more than ephemeral pleasure. She had the idea that he wanted to
keep
her. It was an idea that flattered, but also chafed.

She prided herself on being forward thinking. She was of the twentieth century, although she wouldn’t be in it for five years yet. As fond as she was of Jeremy—and she was very fond indeed—marriage to him would be capitulation to a convention that the nineteenth century, and all centuries previous, had foisted on women: Get married, young, to a gentleman of your class, and bear him an heir as soon as ever you can. She didn’t object to marriage, or gentlemen of her class, or heirs; she objected to their being her only choice.

Strength and independence were, for her, cardinal virtues, inextricably linked. She strove for them herself and looked for them in others, men and women alike. Where men were concerned, the world’s views were aligned with hers. When it came to women, the situation was more complicated. Females were expected to be, if not weak and clinging, at least delicate and submissive. To defy those expectations required not just a degree of boldness, but also societal latitude—latitude much more readily granted to a scion of nobility than a scullery maid.

Lady Georgiana wasn’t a fool, and she understood that her freedom was a function both of her personality and her position. She was, perhaps, inclined to overvalue the first and undervalue the second, but that’s to be expected in a girl of spirit.

Spirited she certainly was. Her wit was sharp and her mind was keen. While her education had been only middling for a girl of her class, she had read widely, and was conversant with matters of politics, and agriculture, and even natural philosophy. What she couldn’t do was draw. Neither could she sing. She couldn’t arrange flowers or embroider handkerchiefs. Her piano playing was so rudimentary as to be embarrassing.

She had steadfastly refused to acquire those accomplishments, partly from a natural disinclination borne of her understanding that she lacked the gifts of ear and eye, and partly from sheer obstinacy. She sought the traditional occupations of men as assiduously as she shunned those of women. She smoked cigars. She read newspapers. She would have opinions, and freedom, and lovers.