Beckman: Lord of Sins (14 page)

“Little boys are so reckless. Men are no better.” Sara rubbed her thumb over the scar on his hip.

Beck slipped his hand around hers. “This man would very much like you to wax a bit reckless too.” He slid their combined hands down and positioned her fingers over his cock. “A lot reckless wouldn’t go amiss either.”

***

Tremaine surveyed the tally before him, knowing that even the sizable total on the last page was not an accurate figure when it came to the booty Reynard had sent back to England “for safekeeping.”

“There’s a bloody fortune here.”

The cat in his arms, Harriette, named for the famed courtesan whose behavior she emulated whenever allowed to roam free, purred audibly.

“I’ve cast my first lure but gotten no response.” He paused before a small painting for which anybody with a discerning eye would have paid a fortune. “A marmalade cat was a much better choice than you would have been.”

The cat in the figure made perfect graceful counterpoint to the nearly naked woman with whom it slept. “Black is trite, overdone, and probably not very interesting to paint.”

The beast leapt from his embrace, her back claws pushing away from Tremaine’s ribs with enough emphasis to make Tremaine grateful for both waistcoat and shirt. “Be that way. See who lets you cuddle up on his bed when I’m off to deal with Reynard’s womenfolk. Some of us appreciate the treasures that come our way.”

The cat, tail held high, strutted from the room, paying him no mind whatsoever.

***

Sara Hunt was driving Beck past the controlled, careful wooing he wanted to give her. His plan was not motivated by generosity but by the conviction that a more precipitous approach would fail.

And Sara would allow no second chances.

“Other men aren’t built like you, are they?” She’d shifted to her back and sent her hands running riot over his person and his… parts. She began to shape and stroke one part of him in particular, while Beck struggled to keep his breathing even.

“We all have pretty much the same accoutrements,” Beck managed, though it was an odd question for a widow. But then, some husbands were painfully modest—
he
certainly had been.

“Like a pony has the same parts as a horse,” Sara said. “When you’re like this”—she closed her fingers around his shaft—“it means you’re impassioned.”

Was that a question or an observation? When he was with her, it was an understatement in any case.

Beck let his hand wander over her shoulders and down to the slope of her breast. “Or it can mean I’ve awoken with a need to use the chamber pot.”

“Really?” She seemed intrigued. “How odd. What are you doing, Beckman?”

“Appreciating your parts, as you are appreciating mine,” he temporized, but he hadn’t even really touched her breast yet; he was merely scouting the territory. “I’ll stop if you prefer.”

“That’s…” Sara closed her eyes as his fingers grazed the soft flesh right under her nipple. “Not necessary.”

“Tell me.” He repeated the caress. “What exactly do you like, Sarabande? And how do you like it?”

She’d closed her eyes, and her hand had gone still on his cock. “I don’t understand the question.”

“Come here.” Before her eyes were open, Beck was lifting her above him and positioning her astride his lap. “Better. No, don’t start lecturing.”

“But I’m…” She crossed her hands over her breasts and turned her head so as not to meet his eyes.

“You’re modest.” Beck covered her hands with his. “With me, you should be proud, Sara. You’re beautiful, in the way only a woman can be, and I want to look at you and touch you until you feel as beautiful as you are.”

“Must you be so kind?”

“I’m being honest.” Perhaps Sara thought him both, for she allowed him to peel her hands away from her breasts and place them on his chest. Still, he sensed an awkwardness from her, as if perching upon a man’s aroused sex had not been in her marital vocabulary of intimacies.

Beck reached up to cup her nape and drew her down within kissing range. This hid her magnificent breasts from his view, of course, but it also let him get his mouth on her somewhere, thus avoiding the utter collapse of his sanity.

And this was better, Beck decided as he touched his lips to hers. Kissing let him spare them both the burden of speech and much of the burden of thought as well.

She sipped at his mouth then slipped her tongue along his lower lip, while Beck teased and coaxed and encouraged. When she grew a little bolder, he growled his approval and framed her face in his hands, the better to hold her still for his reciprocal invasion. Her fingers tangled in his hair, and the way they gripped at him suggested she was passing the point of mere comfort with their kissing.

Unable to resist the temptation any longer, Beck slid a cautious hand to Sara’s waist. By degrees, as their kiss grew more heated, he stroked his hand up, over the nip of her waist, to her lowest rib and up farther. His tongue found its way into a slow, penetrating rhythm just as his palm settled over the fullness of her breast.

She arched into his hand, and Beck felt a spike of simple joy in her response. Without breaking the kiss, he offered her a cautious pressure with his fingers, and her hips stirred restlessly.

Thanks
be
to
heaven…
He raised his hips, the better to accommodate her, and immediately, Sara’s body thanked him by settling more firmly on his cock.

“What are you…?” She tried to lever up, but Beck caught her by the back of the neck.

“Kiss me, love.” He urged her back down. “We’re just getting started.” She hesitated, her mouth a half inch from his, but then he gave her breast another gentle squeeze, and she closed her eyes and found his mouth with her own.

And that was just fine. Beck adored his prize with his fingers then went so far as to brush his thumb over Sara’s nipple in slow, languorous teases that drove her to moans and whimpers.

“Move on me,” Beck whispered, curling up to get his mouth on her nipple. She cut off in mid-whimper, her hands cradled the back of his head, and she moaned outright when he suckled her.

In his heated, lusting bones, Beck knew he was with a woman who could come and come hard, just from attention to her breasts.

By why should she have to? He rubbed his cock teasingly against her sex. She was damp for him now and not the least shy about the contact.

He cruised to her other breast. “Please yourself, love. Move on me.”

She might have heard him, she might not have, but she did begin to slide her sex over his cock, forward and back, a deliberate, purposeful stroke to which Beck could time the way he drew on her breast. Her hand came up and closed over his, showing him she wanted more pressure—a lot more pressure—and held longer, more tightly.

“Better?”

But she was beyond forming any answers, other than with her body. Beck’s body had become a torrent of articulation too, screaming at him to bury his cock in her wet heat and have her over the edge in three hard strokes, but he held back.

Trial ride, he reminded himself.
Trial
ride
;
you
promised
her.

If she decided to change the angle and plunge down on him for her own pleasure, Beck would enthusiastically oblige, but the decision had to be hers.

“Beckman…” Sara ground against him and trapped his fingers around her nipple with her free hand. “I can’t stand…”

Somewhere in the mental brawl between carnal need and self-restraint, Beck comprehended that Sara did not know how to enjoy and prolong her own arousal. She was
hurting
with a lack of satisfaction, and he had to show her where relief lay. Anchoring one arm around her back, he slipped his hand between their bodies and got his thumb into the wet folds of her sex.

“It’s here,” he rasped against her breast. He pushed hard and rhythmically with his thumb until she recalled how to push in counterpoint to that most gratifying pressure. Seizing his self-control with both fists, Beck bit gently on her nipple and felt her body ripple with the pleasure of it.

And off she went, battering his self-discipline as she writhed and keened, letting him give her two long fingers pressed deep into her sex to send her back out of her mind just when he sensed her satisfaction might be cresting.

And God above,
she
was
snug
. Her sex clamped down on his fingers, hard, repeatedly, until Beck gave up and let his own orgasm go rocketing through him. He barely got a hand around himself to deflect the worst of the untidiness onto his own belly before he was groaning quietly with the sheer, wringing pleasure of his release.

He couldn’t recall when he’d come that hard, not even in the act, and he wasn’t sure he’d survive it if such pleasure befell him again.

“Beckman?”

Sara sounded as dazed as Beck felt, and he realized his fingers were still hilted inside her. He eased his hand from her and felt her shudder with an aftershock of pleasure.

“On your back, sweetheart.” He levered up and kissed her cheek. “Careful of the sheets.”

She pitched awkwardly to the mattress, leaving Beck to get up and fetch the basin and washcloth.

“I’m… buzzing inside,” Sara said, consternation in her tone as she waved a vague hand below her waist.

“Is buzzing a good thing?” Beck brought the basin to the night table, wrung out the cloth, and scrubbed it over his belly and groin.

“Different.” Sara lay on her back, knees drawn up, her modesty apparently not yet within reach.

“The water’s a little cool,” Beck warned her, wringing out the cloth again. She let her knees fall to the sides but turned her head as he swabbed gently at her sex. “Sensitive?”

She nodded, saying nothing until he’d folded the cloth against her and applied a comforting touch of pressure.

“And you, Beckman? You found… pleasure too?”

Beck smiled at her just for asking, and still pressing the cool cloth to her sex, leaned in and kissed her. “A wagonload of it. I hope I didn’t hurt you?”

“No. Overwhelmed and buzzing, but pain is not part of it.”

“You’d have to tell me if it were.” Beck believed her, but still… he hadn’t been anywhere near as gentle as he’d intended—and Sara hadn’t been restrained.

“Why are you smiling?”

“I’m happy,” Beck said, the truth of his answer surprising him. “Very happy. Now scoot over. Company is coming to call, Sarabande Hunt.” He tossed the washcloth into the basin and climbed in beside her where she lay on Her Side of the Bed.

“None of that tea-with-the-queen business, love.” He seized her under the arms and hoisted her back over him. “We’re friends now. Cuddle up. There’s my girl.” He patted her bottom, and then his touch shifted, stroking up her back. “What?”

“I feel like crying,” she blurted out, folding forward onto his chest.

“I’ll hold you while you cry,” Beck said, his brisk humor disappearing as tenderness swamped him. “Tell me honestly, Sara, was I too rough?”

“No.” She burrowed into his chest, and Beck had the odd thought that they were—finally—getting to the real lovemaking. “I’m just… sentimental.”

“It’s spring,” Beck finished the thought for her, “and it has been a long time for you, and your daughter is facing her birthday, and you have no one with whom to share these things the way you ought.” He gathered her closer and felt a sigh go out of her. “How was your trial ride, Sarabande?” Beck kept his caresses on her back slow and soothing, but—though he would leave any day and likely never see Three Springs again—her answer mattered to him. “Will I do?”

“You.” Sara’s breath puffed against his chest again. “You know very well you are not the one whose condition has to be assessed. You probably have a different dalliance for every season.”

Beck’s hands went still. “No, I do not. You would be mistaking me for my brother Nicholas, who has a different dalliance for every day of the week when he’s in a certain mood.”

“You’re not exaggerating, are you?” Sara raised her face to peer at him. “You’re not, I can see this. You must worry for him, this Nicholas.”

Worry was not the first sentiment that Beck would have named in conjunction with Nick, but it was… applicable. Maybe more applicable than exasperation, frustration, or even anger.

“I do worry.” Beck traced the dimples at the base of her spine. “Just when I think much of Nick’s reputation is merely gossip and rumor, another of his cast-off lovers will assure me the facts are understated, not overstated. I don’t know what drives him, but it isn’t a happy impulse.”

“You said you were happy a moment ago. Maybe your brother wants that happiness.”

“Maybe,” Beck allowed, but he wasn’t convinced he’d ever understand what drove his brother. “Are you happy?”

“Disconcerted,” Sara rejoined all too readily, “but not unhappy.”

“Talk to me,” Beck said, appreciating her honesty, even if her answer wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Tell me about being disconcerted.”

Sara rubbed her cheek against his chest. “Has it escaped your notice that we are naked, tangled upon each other, and having a discussion?”

“And which of those disconcerts you?”

“The three of them.” She raised up enough to frown at his chest, then settled back down, a bit to the left. “The three of them together. How do I face you in the morning?”

She fell silent, and then the quiet took on a busier quality as Beck felt her tongue slide experimentally over his nipple.

“Behave yourself, Sarabande.”

She did it again then settled back. “Does that make you feel the way you make me feel?”

Beck smoothed his thumb over her jaw. “Now how would I be able to speak for how you feel? I can tell you I like it, it’s arousing, and I can feel it right down to my vitals.”

“Good. I’d say the same, were you to ask me—which you shall not—but you’ve avoided my question.”

She sounded shy and brisk, and Beck found both appealing. “About facing each other in the morning?”

“The very one.” She batted her eyelashes over his nipple this time, suggesting an inventiveness that boded ill for Beckman’s remaining wits.