In the Flesh (26 page)

Shaking her head as if to dislodge him, she set about her clothing, easily summoning the handsome image of Ritchie but somehow still unsettled by the sudden thought of her former fiancé. That insulting note continued to nag at her, even though she pitied the man too.

For ease, Beatrice had chosen a moiré dinner gown, in midnight-blue, that unbuttoned down the front. Even though she had Polly to help her with dressing and undressing, sometimes, in the past few months, the maid had been so hard-pressed with her other duties in the house that Beatrice didn’t like to insist on her services as a personal servant, and had often dressed and undressed on her own. She’d developed certain canny little tricks for dealing with buttons and corset lacing and the like, because even though she knew some ladies were helpless under the dominion of their draconian underpinnings, she’d never been one to let anything get the better of her. Especially the time she’d fled from Eustace.

Still, the layers of silk and flannel and whalebone, and more silk, took a while to shed, and despite the fact she’d half hoped Ritchie might arrive before the process was completed, Beatrice stood naked on the rug beside the bed with still no paramour in sight.

Ritchie! Come now!

The command was silent, and unanswered. In the pier glass across the room, her bare body mocked her, so she shook out her hair and raised her arms, striking a classical pose.

How could he resist her, the Siren of South Mulberry Street, in all her glory?

Pushing away thoughts of the photographs she’d posed for, Beatrice lifted the coverlet and slid between the sheets. She felt a fool just standing around in her birthday suit, with not even a wretched camera for company, so maybe a short nap would fill in the time until Ritchie’s advent.

The bed linen was cool and fresh and felt like a chin-to-toe caress on her heated skin. Her intention to doze was derailed by the passive sensuality of the cotton as she moved her limbs beneath the sheet. She sighed, her stomach fluttering as the crisp fabric rubbed against her puckered nipples.

Still snaking around, she cupped her breast and fondled herself, seeing dark blue eyes glitter in her imagination. He liked her to touch herself, so she would do it. Regardless of the fact that he wasn’t present to enjoy the show.

This is for my pleasure, Ritchie, not yours. In fact, I shall make
you
a show in my mind.

Closing her eyes, she imagined him standing where she’d stood on the rug, as naked as she was. It was easy to imagine the way his body might be formed, and in respect of his cock, she had her recent memories for reference.

Ritchie wasn’t a massive man, but the way he moved, swift and light, suggested the athleticism she now pictured. He was graceful too, in both larger movements and the detailed articulation of limbs and hands. The latter were a poem as they roved over his own body, the left, flat against his chest, touching the nubs of his nipples, the right extending down to grasp his sturdy reddened cock.

She bade him stroke himself, and his imagined simulacrum being far more biddable than the real man, he obeyed her.

Now it was his turn to be a classical image, like a god from ancient times at his self-pleasure. Limbs flexed, back arched, throat a long taut line as he tipped back his head and thrust with his pelvis, pushing his erect member back and forth through the ring of his fingers.

Beatrice seemed to hear his voice too, then almost laughed when she realized it was her own voice gasping and murmuring. She was breathing heavily, tossing and moaning under her breath, her own fingers at play at her breasts and between her legs, mimicking Ritchie within the limitations of their pleasingly different anatomy.

How easy it was to summon pleasure while imagining him. She could almost feel the weight of his body resting upon her, pressing open her parted legs even further. Her sex rippled, her inner channel clenching as if it were trying to caress him inside her.

“Oh, Ritchie,” she gasped, putting both hands to her mound, flicking at her clitoris with her fingertip while pressing two fingers of her other hand inside herself. It wasn’t a substitute for his fine shaft, but it was better than nothing, and still delightful in itself. Working herself, she squirmed around the bed, her mind filled with visions of him and his avidly imagined nakedness.

The tension began to gather. Pressure. Heat. The sensation of reaching, reaching, reaching for a sweet treasure. She rubbed furiously with her finger and, astonishing herself, pushed another inside.

“Oh…oh, goodness…oh yes!” she chanted, feeling as if the angel of sexual fulfillment was descending to her, coming ever closer, clad in blinding light.

Then the doorknob turned and the door swung open, and closed again.

Dancing on the brink, Beatrice wanted to curse. And cheer. She screwed her eyes tight shut, still straining, and at the same time fervently convincing herself that a waiter or a maid would
knock
before they entered. Neither of those would be removing an overcoat, and perhaps a top hat, and hanging them on the stand by the door—the actions suggested by small sounds of rustling cloth.

“My dear Miss Weatherly, what
are
you doing?”

Just that low, laughing voice nearly triggered her.

“What does it look like, Mr. Ritchie?” she gasped, still struggling for the exquisite prize, then slumped, relaxing her straining muscles.

“It looks to me as if you are a very naughty, impatient young woman and you didn’t wait for me. Either to eat, judging by the state of this repast, or otherwise.”

Beatrice snapped open her eyes, and saw Ritchie sipping lemonade from the same glass she’d used herself.

“And you are a very naughty, obtuse gentleman. You
told
me to eat without you!”

He laughed, knocked back the drink, then set aside the glass and strode forward her, unpinning his necktie as he came.

“Ah, but I didn’t tell you to diddle yourself without me, did I?” His tie, a shimmering silk length of midnight blue, and gold pin dropped onto the cabinet set beside the bed. Eyes narrowing in determination, he set about his studs.

Giving him an old-fashioned look, Beatrice shuffled and started to sit up.

“Now what are you doing, Bea?” queried Ritchie, still unfastening.

“Waiting for you.”

“Oh, no you don’t, madam. You carry on where you left off. Don’t you dare cheat me out of the rest of the show.” In a dramatic gesture, he reached out and whipped the bedding away.

Exposed, Beatrice flushed pink. Almost everywhere, it felt like. Her ears were burning and her chest was rosy, as were her face, neck and shoulders. Despite that, it didn’t occur to her to demur.

Sliding back against the large, plump pillows, she let her hands find their way back to their previous locations. Her clitoris throbbed beneath the pad of her forefinger, and her channel was so slippery her fingers breached it easily.

“Divine,” sighed Ritchie, sitting down on the bed’s edge to get a better view.

Hot and twitchy, Beatrice scowled at him. “I know I am…but it’s so unfair. I’ve barely seen anything of you yet. I wish you’d take your clothes off too.”

He gave her a long, odd look, as if assessing not just her body, but her mind and her heart, too. It should have disturbed her, interrupting her train of pleasure, but somehow it only nudged her closer.

“All in good time, Mistress Impatience. You’ll get your wish. Although you might not be all that impressed when you get it.”

Now she was a bit distracted. Whatever did he mean?

“Well, all looks promising from where I’m sitting.” Abandoning her clitoris for a moment, she reached out boldly and gripped the muscles of his thigh through his trousers. He felt solid and well exercised, in peak condition.

“Uh-oh, get back to the business in hand.” Gently but firmly, he pried her fingers off him, conducting them back to her crotch.

“I’ve lost my thread now.”

“Well, whose fault it that?”

Beatrice studied him, especially his eyes. He’d looked troubled a moment ago, but now the familiar playfulness was back. Her heart and her sex gave a delicious lurch of anticipation.

Whatever he wanted, she was ready to perform.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A Flawed God

AH, SHE UNDERSTANDS, she understands.

Ritchie’s nerves seemed to vibrate with pleasure. Some women never truly understood eroticism, not in a hundred years, nor in a thousand fucks. But naughty Miss Beatrice Weatherly was ready willing and able to put on just the show he wanted.

“Whose fault is that?” he repeated more softly.

“Mine.” She shifted her position on the bed, and the fingers that had stalled began to move. The flame of desire leaped in her glittering eyes.

“Thread found again, I see.”

She didn’t answer, but just continued to diddle herself, fingertip circling and hips working as she bore down on the fingers inside her and squirmed her bottom against the sheet. The very goddess incarnate of rambunctious sensuality with her sleek limbs and her rioting tumble of Titian hair, she tilted her hips as if offering a better view.

Ritchie gasped silently, not sure what tempted him most, the sight of her working fingers—beating on her clitoris and sliding in and out of her puss—or the pale arch of her throat crying out for kisses. The way she wriggled about and murmured and pleasured herself made Ritchie want to tear open his trousers and his linen and beat himself off, too. His cock ached like a bar of molten lead, and as Beatrice’s eyes closed, he cupped himself through his fine suiting and squeezed.

Oh Beatrice, Beatrice…

Her beautiful bottom lifted from the bedsheet as she reached for fulfillment, gifting Ritchie with a glimpse of the sumptuous curves of her bottom.

“Oh! Oh, my goodness!” Her lovely face contorting, Beatrice bounced on the bed, her fingers working furiously as she spent in front of him. Amidst the spasms, she let out a most unladylike oath, delivered in such a refined yet animal voice that Ritchie couldn’t help but laugh out loud, loving her free and uninhibited way of pleasure.

“My dear Miss Weatherly, where on earth did you learn such a word as that?” he demanded as she subsided back against the mattress, hot and gasping.

“I used to be a country girl, remember,” she panted, her pale hand still cupping her blazing red bush, “and stable hands and farm boys use much worse words than that.” Her coral-pink mouth curved in a smile as if she were chanting those wicked words in her head.

“Well, I’m shocked, Beatrice. I thought you were a well brought up gentlewoman, and now it turns out that you spent your young womanhood in the company of rough countrymen, learning the bluest of language and the Lord alone knows what else.” Unable to stay away from her a second longer, he inclined over her prone, smirking form and looked deep into her laughing green eyes. As if she were unable to prevent herself, she licked her rosy lips, the sight of it almost unmanning him.

* * *

BEATRICE QUIVERED
all over at the fire in Ritchie’s eyes. “Isn’t it my turn to get a treat now? It’s only right…I put on a show for you.”

“Really? You think so, do you, Bea? That you deserve a treat?” He was sitting beside her, twisted at an angle, his head tipped to one side as he studied her. “After all that foul profanity and lolling about with your legs open, making free with yourself without my permission.” He pursed his lips for a moment as if containing a laugh.

Beatrice huffed out a breath, then arched and stretched, her limbs languid with pleasure. “Oh, la-di-da, Ritchie, you know that you liked it. And by that token, you should grant me my reward.”

Ritchie continued to stare at her, his eyes assessing her body. “Very well. Choose one thing,” he said crisply, smiling a challenge at her.

She didn’t need time to think. “I choose that you take your clothes off. It’s only fair.”

His hands stilled, and he looked resigned. Why was he so reluctant to disrobe? He was handsome as the devil and his body was lithe and strong. What had he to hide?

Ritchie didn’t speak, but glancing away from her, he slid to his feet and began by flinging off his waistcoat. As trousers and dress socks followed, he moved with economy and no show of bravado. It was as if his body was just a mechanism to him, physical machinery that was fit for purpose, not a work of art to be admired…as Beatrice perceived it.

At the stage of drawers and unbuttoned shirt, he paused, giving her a long, indecipherable look. Was he bashful? Surely not. But there was a hint of apprehension in the way he looked at her.

With a shrug, he peeled his shirt off over his head.

Beatrice’s heart thudded hard.

Oh, he was beautiful. Sublimely formed, indeed, but that wasn’t what made her gasp.

Ritchie had scars. They’d been hidden when his shirt was just hanging open, but now they were revealed and made Beatrice wince in her tender soul, and ache with sympathy.

At some time, Ritchie had been subject to fire and it had left him with a number of burns on his arms and his shoulders. Was his back also marked, Beatrice wondered, and as if he’d heard her, Ritchie turned slowly.

Astonishingly, somebody had taken a knife to him too, and he had a couple of angry red gouges across his shoulder blades, long and deep looking.

Although she wasn’t aware of flinching, Ritchie’s eyes narrowed as if she’d cringed from him. “I did warn you, Bea,” he said softly. “Would you prefer it if I put my shirt back on?”

“Why on earth would I want you to do that? I’m not afraid of a few trifling little scars and they…they don’t repulse me, if that’s what you’re so concerned about?”

In a long pause, Ritchie seemed to weigh her words, her demeanor, everything about her. She knew he could detect a lie in her, but she hadn’t told one. Even so, his intense scrutiny made her tremble and wish for the courage to reach out and caress the marks that must have pained him so much in their creation.

“I do believe you’re telling the truth.” His cautious expression dissolved into a slow, familiar smile. A sultry grin that made her tremble for a different reason.

“Of course I am, you dolt! Now please stop plaguing me with half measures and get your drawers off and show me the rest!”

Ritchie exploded in a guffaw of laughter. “You really are the living end, Beatrice Weatherly, as God is my judge!” Shoulders still shaking, he moved closer to the bed, giving Beatrice a better view of the considerable disturbance behind the flies of his drawers. There was an impressive bulge that seemed to be growing by the second.

Beatrice knew he was used to women far franker than she in his amorous exploits, but now wasn’t the time play the dainty miss. “Well, you’ve teased me long enough as it is, Mr. Ritchie, so I’d appreciate it if you’d remove your undergarment.”

“Very well,” he said, deftly divesting himself of it. As he flung the garment aside, his sturdy cock bounced upward, propelled by the momentum of the throw.

Ah, here was an anatomical feature that bore no scars. It was immaculate in its strange, mammalian beauty. Beatrice’s fingers prickled with the urge to reach out and touch it once more, it was becoming such a friend.

As she raised her eyes from the appendage that entranced her, she met Ritchie staring at her as if he too were entranced. She almost heard a metallic clash as their gazes locked.

“Satisfied?” He slid onto the bed beside her, and Beatrice swore she could feel the heat of him before they even touched.

“Not by a long chalk,” she shot back at him. “I have a feeling I should emulate a cook or a housekeeper, and test the condition of the provisions manually first.”

“Is that so?” With a low laugh, he moved against her.

“It is!” But touching without permission was a contravention of the game.

“Presently,” replied Ritchie, his beautiful eyes flashing, “your treat is to
look,
but not touch, Bea. I want free run of your body, without your roving hands to distract me.”

Beatrice wanted to protest, but Ritchie’s words and the heat in his eyes were too exciting. There was something deep and thrilling and strange about being vulnerable to him. As if he were a god, a flawed god, and she his willing sacrifice. Her skin tingled as if soft, cool flames were racing across it, and between her legs her cleft ached, her hunger for him gathering heavy and voracious. Instinctively, she reached out toward him.

“Behave yourself,” he growled, and lay against her, half over her. His thick cock pressed against her hip and thigh, and one of his own thighs lay across her, the crisp tickle of his light body hair an extra stimulation. “Behave yourself,” he repeated as she stirred against him, instinctively moving and pressing. “Grip the bed rail if that will help.” Laying his lips against the exposed slope of her neck, he settled his hand across her aching nipples once more.

Beatrice complied, gripping the rail, but she couldn’t keep still. She was a ferment of sensation, of frustration. Twisting her hips, she opened her legs and tried to press her sex closer to him.

“Beatrice, Beatrice,” he breathed, lightly toying with her, moving his lips against her skin, causing a tingle of pleasure with just a simple exhalation and the dance of his fingertips.

Her body cried for him. Screamed for him. Demanded him, and the solid bar of his penis where it butted against her. She tried to rub him with her thigh, but that was unsatisfactory. She wanted to know him with her fingers and her puss.

Or perhaps my mouth?

Her eyes shot open. What a voluptuous, daring thought. Her mind briefly sorted through images of Sofia sucking enthusiastically on her beloved Ambrose’s sturdy organ, and Arabella Southern making a meal of the handsome, swarthy Yuri. Yes, those ladies had appeared to be having a perfectly splendid time with their lovers’ cocks in their mouths, even though there was no apparent stimulation for them.

Oh, I should so like to sample you, Ritchie.

Still clasping the rail, she twisted to look at him, and as if he’d heard her, his long lashes flicked up and he stared into her eyes from close quarters.

“What is it, Bea?” His look was narrow and knowing, and her heart thumped. How could he read her so easily, and divine her schemes.

Almost without thinking, Beatrice ran her tongue around the edges of her lips again, and against her thigh his cock leaped as if he’d read her salacious thoughts.

“Nothing…just hungry for you, Ritchie.”

His mouth curved, playful and a little smug. “Indeed. Would you care to specify
how
hungry, my delicious siren?” His hips rocked and his hard flesh slid to and from against her, hot and provocative.

“
Very
hungry,” she answered firmly. “I should like to savor you, Mr. Ritchie. In fact the very thought of you makes my mouth water. Really it does…” She gave him a slow look out of the corner of her eye, hoping that he found the expression seductive. “In fact if you’ll allow it, I’ll show you just how much.”

“Really?” His smile widened.

“Really.”

He didn’t answer, but kissed her very hard, his tongue pushing into her mouth as if to subdue her naughty tongue. Or perhaps suggest another possession, somewhat similar but more comprehensive. Beatrice accepted the intrusion, hoping it would confirm her intention to taste him.

Still kissing her, and imposing his strong body over hers, Ritchie reached above her head and unwound her fingers from the rail, as if freeing a bond. Instantly, Beatrice grabbed for him, clasping at his back and muscular flank, arching her torso against him.

After a long breathless grapple against each other, Ritchie put her face from his and looked into her eyes, his face alight with mischief. “So, Miss Weatherly, you want to
savor
me, do you?” This time it was his turn to run his tongue around the firm lines of his lips, and he did it so evocatively that between her legs, Beatrice’s flesh rippled.

“Yes,” she whispered, sounding less sure than she would have liked. She was no experienced Sofia or Arabella, well schooled in giving pleasure with her tongue.

Ritchie stroked her face. “Don’t worry, Bea, you’re a most adaptable young woman and an astonishingly quick learner. I haven’t the slightest doubt in the world that to be
savored
by you will be truly sublime.”

Beatrice pulled away from him and sat up, blushingly aware of the way the action presented her naked breasts to him. Sitting around like this in her birthday suit with an equally unclothed man stretched out beside her was a novel experience, and it reminded her how much of an ingenue she still was, despite having posed naked for photographs.

“I hope you’re right, Ritchie,” she answered simply, placing her hand on his thigh and letting it rest lightly there, an inch or two from his fine, upstanding cock. “Because I really don’t have a clue what to do.”

“Use your instincts, Bea.” Ritchie’s voice was soft and infinitely kind, which seemed incongruous in this erotic situation, and yet very much him. “Anything you do to me is beautiful.” Placing his fingers over hers, he squeezed encouragement.

Where to begin?

Beatrice gazed at Ritchie’s cock. A man’s sexual organ was a strange thing really, but she found it intriguing. Well, she found Ritchie’s intriguing, and with little in the way of comparison, she deemed him an excellent specimen, neither too small nor too large, perfectly in proportion with his general dimensions. The proper size, and both elegant and primitive.