“Genevieve Windham, get out of my bed.”
In keeping with his new status as lunatic, Elijah had whispered those words, not shouted them. The lady was asleep, probably worn out from chasing Kesmore’s daughters, helping them build a snow fort, and bellowing instructions to them for how to best thwart their father’s and Elijah’s efforts to steal the precious bag of carrots that had been declared the afternoon’s prize.
The ladies had soundly trounced the gentlemen. Kesmore’s poor aim was in part to blame—at least half the time his snowballs had pelted Elijah instead of the opposing team, and much merriment had ensued as a result.
Elijah brushed a strand of golden hair from Jenny’s cheek. “I had fun today.”
He’d also ended up with a sorry case of holiday heartache, that particular brand of homesickness that afflicted him when in company with happy families this time of year.
Jenny’s eyes fluttered open. “You’re here.” The sleep faded from her gaze as a smile rose in its place.
“And you, my lady, are leaving.” When had he taken a seat at her hip?
The smile ebbed, though she made no move to obey him. “I
am
leaving. Louisa told me Their Graces left Town today and will likely be by to collect me tomorrow.”
She rolled away from him, which meant Elijah could see she wore nothing—not her frothy nightgown, not a robe, nothing—beneath the covers.
He shook off a fascination with her bare nape and focused on her words. “Your parents’ arrival means you must help yourself to my bed?”
Her parents’ arrival meant he would never see her like this again. The artistic grief of that reality was eclipsed only by the sexual frustration of it. She said nothing for a moment, then rolled back to face him. Her hair was in a thick braid, one he could wrap around his wrist several times.
If he were fool enough to touch her now that she’d awakened.
“Our paths are not likely to cross again, Elijah. Not unless you travel to Paris, or I come back here to visit family.”
Elijah turned his back on her and pulled off a boot. “I have had a bellyful of Paris. It stinks, and the French are mean, though in fairness to them, they’re as mean to each other as they are to the rest of the world, and I miss—”
The French were not mean—practical was not at all the same thing as mean—and Elijah’s mother had been born in France. Elijah was grousing because he missed his brothers and sisters. He missed Flint Hall. He missed his parents, and he hated Christmas more each year as a result.
“What do you miss, Elijah?”
He yanked off the second boot and draped his stockings over the tops. In some regard, this casual disrobing was more personal than all the kissing and petting he’d indulged in with Jenny previously.
“I am missing my wits, if what I’m contemplating is any indication.”
The covers rustled, and the bed bounced beneath him. “I want it to be you, Elijah.”
He knew exactly what she meant and nearly strangled himself getting his cravat off as a result. “No, you do not. You do not want it to be anybody. Can’t you save yourself for your art?” His favorite waistcoat went sailing across the room to land in a rumpled heap near his easel.
“Now you are being mean.” She’d trotted out her Aunt Jenny voice, the same tone she might have used to convey disappointment in one of her nephews.
“I do apologize.” Elijah got two buttons undone before wrenching his shirt over his head and tossing it toward the nearest chair—and missing. “I am not in the habit of finding naked women in my bed, particularly not women who regard a second deflowering as an item to attend to before taking ship.”
One
cannot
be
deflowered
a
second
time.
He knew she was thinking those very words even when he could not see her. He could smell her, smell jasmine and soap and a hint of peppermint tooth powder.
“You weren’t like this last night.”
Only his breeches remained on his person as evidence that he possessed a shred of honor or sense.
“Last night, I set limits, if you’ll recall. I indulged your whims and dealt with, with—” He’d brought himself off. How did one discuss vulgar realities with a near virgin who happened to be naked in one’s bed?
“You denied yourself.”
Elijah felt a hand stroke over his shoulders. Jenny’s caress was gentle and platonic, and yet, he felt it directly behind his falls.
“I expect you deny yourself often, Elijah, and think little of it, but must you deny me?”
Curses started piling up in his head. How was a man to know what honor required when a naked woman—a lonely, innocent, determined naked woman—turned the thumbscrews of guilt so easily?
“Do you want more pleasure, Genevieve?” He turned on the bed to face her, hoping he might placate his guilt and her determination with more half measures. “You can bring such pleasure to yourself, you know. There’s no reason a woman—”
The rest of his homily on female self-gratification flew from his head. Jenny reclined against the headboard, the sheet draped across her lap. Her braid fell over one pale shoulder and her breasts…
The artist in him noted that her left breast was ever so slightly lower and boasted a bit more fullness than the right, and yet both were beautiful and perfect, and both rosy nipples were puckered, though his room was warm.
The man in him cast anything approaching scruples far out into the Channel and frankly stared at the bounty before him. He’d seen her before, seen her nude, spent, and gloriously happy with it in his arms.
But he’d not taken even a moment to
behold
her, to caress the glory of her with his gaze, and to savor the way firelight cherished each curve and hollow of her naked body.
“Genevieve Windham…” He raised a hand, then let it drop before he’d cradled her jaw against his palm.
“I want it to be you, but a lady can’t do the asking.” The determination was still there in her voice, but she was pleading too, for him to capitulate, to comprehend—
The gentlemen in him, the perishing, damned, inconvenient gentleman in him grasped both the plea and the solution. So simple and so wondrous, to give her what she sought and what Elijah needed.
“I want it to be me too. It shall be me, and for me, it shall be you.” He leaned forward and kissed her, not touching her anywhere else, so he might savor the kiss sealing that vow.
“Elijah—” She sank a hand in his hair and hauled herself closer. “Yes, please and please again.” She became a woman possessed, dragging herself up to her knees, locking her arms behind his neck, and devouring him with her kisses.
“Genevieve, slow down. Slow—” His hand curved around her flank and pulled her closer, and yet, the angle was awkward. He was half-turned toward her on the bed, she was clamped around him, and the damned covers were so much linen seaweed, dragging about them in all the wrong directions.
“I want you so, Elijah. I could not have borne to leave here in the morning without—”
He rose off the bed, turned, and stepped away. “I could not either, but if I don’t get my damned breeches off, I will not answer for the consequences.”
She knelt among the blankets, rosy, naked, and smiling as if she’d just landed her snowball directly on his arse, which in a metaphorical sense, she had. Marriage to this woman was going to be wildly delightful.
“Let me get my breeches off, Genevieve, for both our sakes.”
She said nothing, her gaze riveted on his chest. From somewhere, Elijah found the strength of will to slow
himself
down. This night would mark a beginning for them, and Jenny relied on him to make it the best beginning they could share.
“You do it,” he said.
Innocent that she was, she blinked at him in bewilderment.
“My falls, love. I want not a stitch between us.” He wanted to give her summer sunshine on naked flesh, he wanted soft breezes, and he wanted long, sweet nights full of pleasure for them both.
She knee-walked to the edge of the bed, studying his falls. “I’ve never done this before.”
“I should hope not.” He couldn’t hide his amusement, but he did manage to stand there, hands relaxed at his sides, when her mouth made him think of things vulgar, naughty, and—with Genevieve, he dared to hope—within the realm of possibility in the not-too-distant future.
Her hands shook minutely as she unfastened the buttons to his falls. He could feel the tremor as well as see it as the flap gradually draped open.
Genevieve dropped her hands, sat back on her haunches, and worried a nail between her teeth. “Now what?”
Now came the time when the man, the artist, and gentleman would collude to make this experience everything the lady had ever dreamed it might be. “Now I bring you pleasure.”
Her smile was lovely, naughty, and a little worried. She moved to the center of the bed and scooted down beneath the covers.
“She hides her treasures,” Elijah grumbled to no one in particular as he shucked out of his breeches. He heard her draw in her breath, and in a fit of spontaneous martyrdom, readjusted his immediate plans.
Rather than launch himself onto the bed, he stooped to pick up his clothes. She braced herself on her elbows and watched while he gathered up the sartorial casualties of his earlier haste and folded them one by one on the clothes press.
“Elijah?”
“Tidiness is a habit,” he explained, though when a man’s cock was bobbing against his belly, tidiness was a ridiculous habit. The idea that Jenny would one day tease him for his comment pleased him.
He moved behind the privacy screen, used his tooth powder, and prayed for fortitude.
And stamina. A determined woman deserved stamina in her prospective spouse.
“I have missed seeing you like this,” Jenny said.
She would be seeing a great deal of him like this, and soon, if he could talk her into a special license. “Scandalous woman.”
“I am, aren’t I? My favorite session was when you took Mr. Jackson’s pose for
Satan
Summoning
His
Legions
.”
A pose that illuminated the subject’s genitals nearly as well as his face, because all the light in Sir Thomas’s painting was from the netherworld at the bottom of the image. Then, too, Satan’s upraised arms required a pose that made the model’s arms ache abominably.
Elijah approached the bed, noting when Jenny’s gaze fell on his upthrust cock. She ran her tongue over her top lip, and he nearly vaulted onto the mattress.
“Shall I come to bed, Genevieve?”
A small, sensible part of him wanted her to fling back the covers, snatch up her dressing gown, and announce that she’d changed her mind. They were going about things backward, though many couples did. As much as Elijah wanted her, and wanted to please her, he also wanted her to know he’d wait for her.
For the three weeks necessary to cry the banns, he could wait for her.
She did not take her gaze from his cock. “Please, come to bed.”
He climbed onto the mattress. “You use the word ‘please’ a lot.”
“When I’m around you, and yet… often I want to holler it at you, Elijah. I want you to pause as you climb onto the bed, so I can capture the combination of eagerness and wariness I see in your eyes. I want you to hold a position over by the clothes press, because your body makes a perfect
contrapposto
pose angled to the firelight. I want to draw what I feel of your lips when we kiss—”
He remained on all fours on the bed and kissed her to shut her up. “And to think you couldn’t even ask me to remove my shirt.” Their marriage was not going to suffer from an abundance of clothing. The artist, the man, and even that other fellow were cheered by the notion.
She slid down farther beneath the covers, and that meant Elijah had to follow her, until he was crouching over her, the covers between them.
“You are an indecently good kisser, Elijah Harrison.”
“One grows inspired by the company. I have a title, you know.” This was a paltry gift laid at the feet of a woman who’d been Lady Jenny since she emerged from the womb.
She squeezed his biceps, testing the resilience of his muscles, maybe, artist fashion. “Earl of Bernward. You ought to use it.” She did it again, then levered up to press her face to his throat. “Elijah, I’m nervous.”
He loved her. The knowledge came to him like a whiff of her jasmine—unmistakable no matter how faint or subtle. This was not mere affection, not infatuation, not a passing preoccupation. He’d caught the love, well and truly. He loved her for entrusting him not only with her beauty and with her past disappointments, but also with her nerves and her future.
He cradled the back of her head with one hand and braced himself over her with the other. “Nervousness is to be expected with a new experience. Give your nervousness to me, Genevieve.” He was
not
nervous—this was the most right thing he’d ever done. He was aroused, though, and impatient to win her trust.
She angled her head to peer up at him. “This is a new experience, isn’t it?”
“Completely, for both of us.” The first of many.
He let her subside onto the mattress, then climbed under the blankets with her.
“You are warm, Elijah.”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer. “I’m on fire.”
In less than a minute, he’d ignited his lady’s passions too. He denied himself the pleasure of covering her, needing the check on his self-restraint to withstand another spate of kissing from his lover as they lay facing each other on their sides.
“I will forever associate tongues and paintbrushes when I’m around you, Elijah. I want to paint
you
.”
“You have.” He dipped his head and nuzzled her breast. “You shall.”
She hiked a leg over his hips and pulled herself closer. “I mean I want to apply paint to your naked body, put colors on you
everywhere
—” Elijah felt a soft, female hand trace down his midline, then close around his shaft.
“Wicked, passionate,
imaginative
woman.” He rolled to his back and prepared to be tortured. Of course she would want to see him. Male artists could inspect themselves in the mirror or gawk at models when they were working with nudes.