worth. He wanted it to last, to go on and on. Maybe forever.
Yet still, in one of his mental compartments he was still thinking, frantically thinking, thrashing around for explanations. How in heaven’s name had Adela learned to handle a man like this? Even if she did have a sweetheart, she was no Coraline, no high demimondaine. Yet her touch spoke of a legion of enslaved lovers, discarded yet still begging her to return to them. The shadow of the woman he’d so recently considered marrying hovered over him, but he closed his eyes and compelled her back from whence she’d come, angry, yes, angry that Coraline had intruded at this moment. He didn’t want to think of another woman when the woman he was with could do that with the tip of her finger.
Wilson bit down hard on his lower lip. He had to last, even if Adela was intent on driving him clean over the edge.
“What were you doing in here, Della? Surely you didn’t pick the lock just to play with the praxinoscope?”
His voice was high and strangled, and he couldn’t keep his hips still. They jerked convulsively, wafting forward, seeking more and more of the divine ministrations of his cousin, the unexpected love goddess.
“Oh, so you saw that....” Her fingertips teased and twirled. Wilson fought, fought hard for control. “I’d heard that the earl had a collection of erotica and I wanted to see it. The praxinoscope was simply an amusing bonus.”
“But why would you want to see lewd drawings?” His fingers twitched, preparing to drag her hands off him before he screamed and howled. He wanted to close his own fingers around hers so she never, ever let go. “I would have thought that by now you’d have grown out of youthful curiosity.... It’s not exactly a ladylike interest, is it, erotica?”
Adela’s laugh was sharp and derisory. Her hand stilled. “Good grief, you men. You’re all the same. You have no comprehension of the inner life of a woman.” She gave him a narrow look, one that made him feel small, even while he was rampant. “And I thought that you were different, Wilson. A man of vision...yet it seems you’re just as narrow in your views of women as the rest of your sex.” She started to pull away, but he caught her hands and held them on him.
“Please...please, don’t stop, Della,” he gasped. “I’m sorry. I was making unsupported assumptions. It’s just...”
What the hell was she doing to his brain? He couldn’t think straight. The compartments were all collapsing into one blind, yearning mess. Not even Coraline had ever done this.
“You can’t imagine why a gently bred woman like me would continue to be interested in the life of the senses, eh? Someone as plain and dull as me?” Her dark eyes flashed, but blessedly, she began to caress him again, her fingers slow and taunting. “Someone with so little in the way of glamour and savoir faire to recommend her?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Della, stop saying that. It’s just willful. You aren’t plain and dull. You’re a handsome and alluring woman...I’ve always believed that. Why won’t you believe me?” He gasped, the glittering jewel of release barely a breath away.
“Do you have a handkerchief?”
His eyes snapped open. What?
“A handkerchief, Wilson? Do you have one? Even someone who dresses as bizarrely as you can’t be seen to be sporting semen stains, and it would be the height of bad manners to ejaculate all over the earl’s fine furniture or carpeting.”
Wilson almost choked with laughter. She was priceless. He fumbled in the pocket of his dressing gown and wrenched out a freshly laundered white handkerchief. Adela snatched it from him, shook it open and enrobed the tip of his cock in it.
Then she went to work on him in earnest. Stroking firmly, back and forth, back and forth, she slid her fingers up and down his length in a way that made him grunt, jerk his hips...and finally, in a savage rush, release his seed.
For a few seconds, Wilson was blind, deaf and dumb, existing only in a state of ragged bliss and pounding sensation. The moments lasted a century, yet also a micro pinpoint of time, then, reluctantly, he tumbled back into himself again, as if falling from a cliff high above. With some distaste, he observed his subsiding member wrapped up in the bundle of his own handkerchief.
With a spirit-crushing little moue, Adela withdrew her hands, relinquishing him as quickly as she’d grabbed him in the first place. Wilson watched her rub her fingers together as if anxious to wipe off his spoor.
“There, all done,” she said briskly. “Everyone’s satisfied. Now I must go, if you don’t mind. It’ll soon be time to dress for dinner, and with just one maid among four of us, that takes quite a while.”
In the midst of stuffing himself back into his linen, and his handkerchief into his pocket, Wilson realized that she’d grabbed up her portfolio and was halfway to the door.
“Don’t go. Stay just a minute. I have so many questions....” He fumbled with his buttons even as he shadowed her across the room. It was only by physically leaning on the door itself that he stopped her from quitting the room without another word.
Adela tapped her foot, pursed her lips, visibly desperate to be rid of him. Where was the languorous sybarite who’d charmed him barely moments ago? She seemed cool, detached, irritated.
Irritation flooded Wilson, too. Was he so repugnant to her that she regretted everything? Dash it, she’d enjoyed herself at the time. Not even the most accomplished actress could have faked those moans and the way she’d wriggled and thrashed. And she’d been wet, by God, silky wet. That simply could not be fabricated. If she denied her pleasure, she was an out-and-out liar. He grabbed the door handle and immobilized it. He’d have an answer from her if it killed him, and the unyielding set of her mouth made him feel as stubborn and as mulish as she was.
“Why were you in here? What’s in the portfolio that you’re so protective of?” He fired the questions like bullets. To shock an answer from her. “Where did you learn to pleasure a man so exquisitely?”
Her glowing eyes widened, and she clasped the portfolio to her bosom. She was still calculating the probability of escaping the room, working out if she could get away with all her secrets intact. He could see her sharp mind ticking over, almost as cleverly as his. Was she weighing how much to reveal? Which of her secrets was the least critical and could be sacrificed?
Whatever were they, these things she hid?
Wilson almost gasped aloud when Adela snagged her lower lip with her strong white teeth. His cock—which he’d believed settled—kicked again, hard in his undergarment like a length of tropical wood, aching, aching, aching as if he’d never spent.
“Very well.” Her chin came up. She almost seemed to grow in stature before his eyes, a martial Amazon, girding for battle. And yet what came next was frank and unequivocal. “In respect of your first demand...I came looking for inspiration for my art. Regarding the second, this portfolio—” she tapped her forefinger against it “—is full of that art. My erotic drawings, brought for comparison with classical interpretations.” Her eyes met his, burning darkly, not exasperated as he’d first thought, but infinitely brazen. “And as to the third question? Well, I sell those drawings for a great deal of money, Wilson, and I use a portion of that money to purchase the services of gentlemen of pleasure.”
What?
Wilson’s mouth dropped open. He knew he looked a fool, but didn’t care. He’d heard words, but they hadn’t made
