Once he forced himself to wait it became almost impossible to bring him to climax. Sometimes she had to leave him unsatisfied—on the days he took her by her arse. But today, she must give him special pleasure, for she knew he had secrets to reveal.
She tongued the head, drawing out a moan. His story had been true. Even shackled she possessed great power. She kissed the bubbling eye. “You can’t paint at all?” she whispered.
He tried to thrust himself inside her mouth, but she kept her lips together, teasing the engorged head. “But that is not so tragic,” she reassured. “Wouldn’t your books become more valuable if it is known there is to be no more?”
“I wish there weren’t,” he muttered, speaking more by reflex than by conscious thought.
She took him inside then let him out to torment him once again.
“It doesn’t work that way, love,” he said louder. For a man experiencing skilled pleasure to his cock, he looked decidedly grim. “I done a few things considered shocking in the world of publishing. Keeping me copyright, for example. But if the volumes stop, me blunt will.”
So if she wanted anything from him, she must get it now.
“And hell, since me money’s gone, I’m to be in dun territory. Again.”
“Don’t think of such things, master. Let your slave suckle you and please you.”
“You’re a talented and cunning lass, aren’t you, Lydia?”
No, she could not let him think her cunning and calculating. She must play the courtesan who loved to please, even if he could readily see through the ruse.
She took him deep into her mouth and he rewarded her skill by swelling large. She grabbed his buttocks and let him thrust into her as vigorously as he needed to. She curled her lips over her teeth and endured. His explosion rocked him, and for a moment she feared that his heart was not strong enough. He collapsed to the bed beside her, muttering endearments and words of appreciation.
She breathed hard and murmured words of pleasure. He still seemed to be semi-conscious as he struggled to free her of the ropes, as he gave her the key to free her own hands.
“Yes, you’re a talented woman…” He flopped back.
Knowing Rodesson, she guessed he’d played cards all night and had not yet slept. Curling up beside him, she stroked the damp gray hair on his chest, and waited until he drifted into a post-coital slumber.
Lydia slipped from the bed and drew on her silky wrapper. As she tied the belt around her waist, she padded out of the room.
Once in her library, she scanned the leather-bound books on the crowded shelves. To extract the one she wanted, she had to tug hard to free it. With a warm sense of pride, she surveyed the books surrounding her. Her library was as well appointed as any gentleman’s.
Stroking a finger across the gilt letters embossed in the rich leather, she lay the book on the large table. Opened it, flipped the pages until she found the first erotic picture. She then took a second book and laid it beside the first. Rodesson’s last two books,
Tales of a London Gentleman
and
A Gentleman’s Pleasures.
Why should his inability to paint be a secret, unless…
She studied the pictures closely. The poses. The expressions. The style.
Her guess had been correct. These pictures were…different.
Who had painted Rodesson’s work?
W
hat would her jaded lord do with his hands while the lovely courtesan knelt between his legs and kissed him intimately?
Venetia Hamilton tapped the end of her brush against her lips as she studied her watercolor painting. Even though her earl—yes, she’d decided he was an earl—was a most experienced man, this time he’d met his match in the delightful auburn-haired woman pleasuring him.
She couldn’t resist smiling at her imaginary earl’s downfall in the arena he believed he reigned supreme. Since his lordship was so steeped in vice, so bored by customary sensual acts, he’d begin with definite ennui, merely an onlooker to his own seduction.
In his right hand, Venetia sketched a glass of fine champagne. In his left, since he was in the theatre box of the pretty woman, she gave him a peeled orange the size of an ample breast, large enough to fill his strong hand. No, he would not touch the woman, she decided. But in his expression…there she could show not only the desire, but the growing wonderment as his heart began to open, to unfurl, to delight in the pleasures bestowed upon him.
She turned her attention to the audience, for her earl was receiving these daring caresses to his intimate parts in full view of the Drury Lane theatre. Ah, the expressions told the tale—the matrons pretending to be scandalized, but really enraptured by his magnificent proportions, his exquisite form, his handsome face. Envy on their husbands’ faces. And the leering looks of the mob in the orchestra.
Now she must tackle the earl’s expression. Capture perfectly the growing astonishment on his face as this act that he must have experienced a thousand times—at least—became new and special and wonderful once more…
She took short, unsteady breaths as she stepped back from naughty fantasy to the reality of her tiny studio. When she drew, she became one with the scene—not a participant, but a figure in the shadows, holding a brush, telling a life’s history in one erotic moment.
Her body hummed with desire, ached with it. She should be ashamed to admit it, but she wasn’t at all as proper as her mother had raised her to be. She was, after all, her father’s daughter.
With a sigh, Venetia plopped her brush in the jar and swirled it until the water blushed pink, lit by the fragile spring sunlight that spilled through the paned window. The only raven-haired scoundrels in her life lived on the canvases stacked on the narrow shelves of her studio, all safely hidden beneath muslin covers.
She knew perfectly well that love was a woman’s folly. That rakes never truly reformed—
A sharp rap on the door had her almost knocking over the water glass. The rap came again. Followed by a breathless, “My heavens, Miss Hamilton!”
She had to take the time to turn the easel so her painting faced the wall and Mrs. Cobb burst through the door just as she hid the scandalous picture.
Mrs. Cobb puffed from the jaunt up the stairs. Her cheeks blazed red, her cap was askew. She held out a card. “There is a
gentleman
to see you, mum. A gentleman calling upon you alone!”
“Which gentleman?” Her father? Rodesson outwardly appeared to be a ‘gentleman’. But he wouldn’t dare visit.
Her housekeeper pushed her cap upright. “The Earl of Trent, mum! I put him in the drawing room. Tea? Should I put the kettle on?”
Venetia’s heart tapped a frenzied dance in her chest. She pushed her chair back, snatched up the studio key, and crossed the floor in a heartbeat to take the card. Her thumb slid over thick, textured vellum embossed with a crest. Her gaze fell to the title, in bold text. It did indeed read—
THE EARL OF TRENT
.
She slumped against the doorframe in disbelief. How
could
the earl know who she was?
Mrs. Cobb lurked over her shoulder, demanding a decision on tea as Venetia locked the door to her studio with shaking hands.
“N—no tea,” Venetia stuttered. Lifting her skirts, she hurried down the hallway in the most unladylike way. But if she was running into disaster, she wanted to get it done with.
Plodding footfalls told her Mrs. Cobb was following but couldn’t keep up.
The most preposterous notion dawned as Venetia sped down the stairs. What if her father had gambled again, hoping to win his vowels back from the earl? What if this time Trent had won
her
at cards?
Reaching the open drawing room door, she stopped, smoothed her skirts, and gulped down steadying breaths. She must be careful. If she ruined her reputation, she ruined her sisters’ reputations. Maryanne, Grace…they at least deserved a chance at the lives Mother hoped they would lead—marriage, children, happiness…
The earl, she noted, had found the only warm spot in her chilly drawing room. As soon as she stepped inside, the cold seeped through her dress and wrapped its icy fingers around her bare neck. Since she never received guests, she never heated the room. At least a fire now crackled in the hearth.
His lordship stood so close to the licking flames, she feared a spark might set his trousers alight. His left elbow was propped on the mantel, between the unfortunate bric-a-brac left by the previous tenant—two candlesticks shaped like nude women and a bronze of his favorite mount.
Venetia closed the door gently behind her, then stopped short, still clutching the doorknob.
The earl balanced an open book in his large gloved hand and he lazily flipped the pages. The faint sunlight cast a bluish gleam on his coal-black hair and slanted across his straight shoulders. Even in a casual stance, he easily topped six feet and she couldn’t help but admire how his midnight-blue superfine emphasized the taper from wide back to narrow waist and lean hips. Skintight trousers displayed magnificent legs and disappeared into Hessians with a mirror finish.
She arched on tiptoe to spy around his broad frame. Pictures. The book did indeed contain pictures but she couldn’t see the detail—he stood too far away. But
Tales of a London Gentleman
was bound in burgundy leather, in exactly the same shade as the book lying across that massive hand.
The earl paused at a plate, then turned the book in his hand to study some detail that had caught his fancy. A flush prickled along the back of Venetia’s neck.
He moved to capture the light more fully on the page, and she saw his profile. Raven hair, darkly lashed eyes, patrician features, and wide, firm lips.
Her stomach pitched to her toes.
Trent
was the dark-haired gentleman who had appeared in her father’s pictures. The man she’d copied for
her
book. She’d thought him an invention of her father’s brush. But since he stood before her in the flesh, obviously her assumption had been wrong.
It made sense. Rodesson attended brothels and orgies and hells. Why wouldn’t he base his pictures on actual patrons? On the actual scenes he had witnessed?
The titles flew through her whirling mind.
The Fair Lady Bound. The Jermyn Street Harem. The French Kiss
.
Even
The Trapeze
in which the nude lady had been seated on a suspended bar over the gentleman’s upright—
Venetia pressed her hand to her churning stomach. Her father had changed Lord Trent’s appearance, she saw that now. She, in utter innocence, had decided to make
her
gentleman more handsome. By horrific accident, she had succeeded in making him look more like the actual man.
A soft groan spilled from her lips.
The earl looked up sharply and she stared into vivid turquoise eyes, the color startling and beautiful in contrast to his long sooty lashes and straight black brows.
That extraordinary shade had not appeared in her father’s pictures. Could
she
capture it? If she blended cobalt blue with a touch of—
“This is my personal favorite, Miss Hamilton. I think you have caught my likeness perfectly in this one.” Dangerous amusement rippled through Lord Trent’s seductive baritone and his deep masculine voice held her transfixed. “You have a remarkable talent.”
A remarkable talent
. She felt a warm flush of pride, even as her knees almost buckled.
“My—my lord.” She managed a curtsy, a wobbly one, her plain gray skirts crumpling as she dipped. “I am afraid I don’t understand to what you are referring.”
He closed the book. His brows arched over those turquoise eyes—
cerulean
blue would do it, blended with a dab of yellow oxide—
“Your book of erotica in which I play the starring role.”
Erotica
. The word flowed off his tongue in a nonchalant manner, as though they had met in the park and he had just touched his hat and commented on the rain. But it struck her with the force of a lusty slap on her backside. She thought of the pictures he was looking at, pictures she’d created, and all the confidence she’d struggled to earn evaporated in a heartbeat.
His lordship rested his elbow on the mantel and smiled at her confusion.
No. She had finally succeeded in taking charge of her life and she wasn’t about to surrender her control. Earl or no. She must bluff him. And, for the sakes of her mother and sisters, she must prove better at bluffing than her father.
She stiffened her spine. Prim disgust. That’s what she sought. She imagined Lady Plim, the wife of Sir Plim, and the sharp-tongued tartar of Maidenswode. “My lord, it may be the fashion amongst the aristocracy to carry scandalous tomes about and view them before unsuspecting women, but I am afraid your behavior is—”
He waved an elegant hand. “Don’t waste my time, Miss Hamilton. You’ve got paint on your sleeve.”
“Watercolors. A lady’s pastime.”
He chuckled and a shiver raced down her spine. She’d never heard a laugh like that. A low, rumbling, purely masculine laugh. It held a naughty suggestive sensuality that she’d never been treated to before.
He inclined his handsome head. “Rodesson has told me all about you, my dear. He came to me to plead for the return of his vowels—for the sake of his illegitimate daughters.”
Venetia flinched at the word
illegitimate
. It never failed to make her feel her parents’ actions had been her fault.
“But—” Her last-ditch attempt to protest that Rodesson was not her father died on her lips. His lordship knew the truth and she was not going to convince him otherwise.
He crooked his gloved finger. “Come here, Miss Hamilton. I don’t wish to shout our conversation across the room and I suspect you wouldn’t want that either.”
She glared, not willing to go at his command, but he was right, of course. She would bet pounds to pennies that Mrs. Cobb had her ear pressed to the keyhole. Reluctantly, Venetia marched toward the fireplace and the analogy of flinging herself from the pan to the flames leapt to mind.
She stopped at the worn and sagging wing chair, keeping it between them. But even separated from Lord Trent by a bulky piece of furniture, she felt small, dainty, and vulnerable confronted by his size and superb build. Her throat tightened. Her heart galloped. A quiver that she hoped was fear, but suspected wasn’t, arced down her spine.
The earl left the mantel and strolled toward her, the spine of her book cupped in his large palm. “Your father insisted he had no means of supporting his family other than the royalties for his books. He explained that his innocent eldest daughter has been forced to embark on a dangerous career painting erotica.”
What a fool her father had been! Trent was a rake, a scoundrel. He exuded so much sin and devilment, she suspected he didn’t dare walk into a church. Everything about him screamed debaucher. He moved with a tantalizing predatory grace, his twinkling eyes threatened disaster to an innocent heart, and as for his seductive, insolent grin—
“My father is aging!” she cried. “He was despondent, confused. He forgot he had painted pictures that were not previously published. Really, how could I have possibly created that sort of risqué work?”
“I don’t know, my dear. But you did, since it is obvious Rodesson didn’t paint them.”
Her heart hammered as Trent paced around the chair until he stood behind her. She refused to turn, but glanced back out of the corner of her eye. He towered over her. Trapped between his large body and the chair, she couldn’t retreat. He bent until his warm breath whispered along the rim of her ear, exposed by her severe chignon. She lurched back in shock, rewarded by the rasp of his closely shaved jaw along her cheek.
Despite her skittering nerves, she forced herself not to move. If she turned, her lips might touch his.
The maddening temptation to tilt her head toward his took her by surprise. She was hot, perspiring beneath her corset and tight-fitting bodice. Tense and wound up like a coiled spring.
This man had made love to a bound woman! This rogue had lain on a sumptuous bed, suckling the breast of one woman while another took him in her mouth—
Yes, the earl might look exactly like the sort of fantasy man she created with brush in hand—the gorgeous libertine felled by love—but it was an entirely different matter to have a real rake in possession of such devastating knowledge. And she didn’t think for one moment Trent would be felled by anything.
He rested her book on the back of the chair. To her astonishment, he flipped it open, turning the pages until he found a plate. “Ah,
The Page Turner
.”
She knew the picture by heart, of course. A young man holding a candelabrum and turning the pages while his fetching lady played. The buck’s pants were open, the lady’s breasts freed from her dress, her skirts pooling over her bared thighs. The lady pursed her pink-lipped mouth delicately toward his member. In the shadows beneath the instrument, another man—Trent as the lady’s secret lover—pleasured the lady with his fingers. A silly fantasy really—created because she had hated practicing her pianoforte.
Now devastating, because it involved him. Even over the crackle of the fire, her quick, shallow breathing seemed to fill the room.
“Exquisite.” The earl’s smooth rich voice wrapped around her like silk. “But while your style is very similar to your father’s, there are marked differences.”