‘Such a pity,’ said Marldon, with the merest lift of his hat. ‘I do hope we meet again, Miss … Stanton.’ He tapped his cane on the carriage floor. The coachman cracked his reins and the barouche rolled away, its red wheels sending up tiny clouds of dust.
Clarissa was motionless. She saw her future closing in like a box. She felt dreadfully afraid, and amidst that fear was a deep seam of hurt. She had been betrayed – by her father, by Lucy, by all those who had withheld their knowledge of Lord Marldon.
Lucy trotted over to her. ‘Sorry,’ she said with a light apologetic shrug. ‘Nobody thought it fair to warn you.’
Clarissa looked away, her eyes brimming with tears. Nobody, she thought bitterly, except Gabriel.
Clarissa rapped the brass knocker with furious impatience. She’d left her horse in the mews and, without bothering to change, had hurried directly to Gabriel’s address. Everything was clear to her now. At least she hoped it was; otherwise she was about to make a terrible fool of herself.
The door opened and the valet informed her that Mr Ardenzi was, alas, not at home to visitors. Clarissa had no inclination to bargain with him, nor to leave her card. She edged briskly past and, from the hall, shouted out Gabriel’s name. The valet swore under his breath and closed the door.
Gabriel, looking bewildered and annoyed, appeared at the top of the stairs. His loose white shirt was collarless, open at the neck, and his glossy brown hair fell in ragged curls about his shoulders. A tide of desire swelled within Clarissa and her heart spurred her on. She flew to him.
‘I know,’ she gasped, throwing her arms about him. ‘I understand.’ She shook Gabriel’s stiff, unyielding body. ‘It’s not that I’m to marry. It’s that I’m to marry him, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’
In a rambling explanation, she told him everything, from other people’s reticence to the scenes she’d witnessed at the ball. As she spoke, Gabriel’s strong arms encircled her. He held her tightly, nuzzling into her neck, murmuring solace, regrets and passions in her ear.
Clarissa’s mouth, half-speaking, half-kissing, fluttered over his chest and throat. She tasted the saltiness of his warm, silken skin and smelt the closeness of his masculinity. When she fell silent her body was trembling.
‘I’ve never known a woman so honest,’ said Gabriel softly. He pressed his lips to her brow. ‘You’ve broken
all the rules, Clarissa. Don’t you know you’re supposed to lure me into your arms by smiling coyly and seeming unobtainable?’
‘We have not time for that,’ she breathed, her lips lifting in search of a kiss.
His mouth descended on hers and their tongues snaked together in questing hunger. Clarissa’s hands roved over his back, her fingers thrilling to the heat of him beneath fine cotton. She felt the tension in his strong, lithe body and quivers of sharp, sweet lust tumbled through her. She wanted him. She didn’t care about the future.
‘Gabriel,’ she said shyly. ‘Will you … will you teach me things?’
There was a flicker of consternation in his amber-brown eyes. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I will not teach you things. I want to be your lover, Clarissa, not your mentor. But I will show you things. That is if you wish me to.’
Clarissa looked at him hesitantly. She did not know how strong was the promise that tied her to Lord Marldon. Once, she would not have believed her hand could be offered to a man such as he. But now she saw things differently. Her father had acted with blatant disregard for her feelings. Could he have made a commitment from which she could not escape?
‘Your maidenhead will be safe,’ said Gabriel, noting her reluctance. ‘God forbid that you should ever marry Marldon, but we would do well to tread cautiously until the matter is resolved.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Come. Once I told you not to be so trusting. Now I urge you to trust.’
Nervous, excited, her fingers hooked in his, Clarissa followed Gabriel up to the second floor. She was not sure if she could trust him to keep her honour; she knew she could not trust herself. But she would take the risk.
Gabriel showed her into a room of bottle-green walls, its oak floor covered with a square of Turkish carpet.
The brass bed seemed to dominate the space, not because it was big or unusual, but because it was a bed. Clarissa’s heart would not calm.
He stood before her, clasping both her hands. He gazed down with a hungry intensity. ‘So many times I’ve dreamt of you,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve dreamt of your flesh against mine, of my lips on your skin. I’ve dreamt of your face, trying to picture how you would look when I make you come. But I never imagined it like this. I never once dreamt that you would offer yourself so, that you would ask me to give you pleasure.’
‘Nor I,’ murmured Clarissa. ‘It was … It is bold of me. Though I fear my courage fails me now.’
Gabriel took her in a soothing embrace and kissed her for a long, tender time. Then he passed his fingertips over her face. ‘Don’t let modesty be a barrier between us,’ he said. ‘I will not do anything you do not wish me to. You have my word on that.’ He toyed with the white ruffles at her neck.
‘But I scarce know what I want,’ she replied in a timorous voice. ‘All I know is … is I want you.’
Gabriel unpinned her hat and set it down. ‘That could be difficult when you are dressed for riding,’ he smiled, brushing back errant strands of hair.
Then his slim, elegant fingers began working down the buttons of her pelisse.
He lingered over undressing her. With every discarded layer, he rained soft kisses over the newly bared skin and murmured his delight. He drew swirls over her arms, tickling the smooth white underside with the lightest of touches. His tongue lapped at the hollow of her throat and licked along the lines of her collarbone. Cloths of black and white whispered to the ground.
Clarissa stood trembling. His slow movements were reassuring, exciting. His gentleness sensitised her flesh and her nerves leapt beneath each trailing caress, each moist imprint of his lips.
Gabriel knelt before her, murmuring promises and
words of desire. He stroked her silk-stockinged legs, moving cleanly upwards from her finely boned ankles to the slender line of her calves. The deep-frilled hem of her chemise lifted and he reached beneath to untie her ribboned garters. His fingers strayed to the naked flesh above and he drifted languid circles there, teasing with an encroaching proximity.
She shivered to feel him so close. Moisture warmed the cleft of her sex, filling her out, making her lips pout needfully. But he did not touch; nor did he look. Instead he wrinkled down her stockings, divesting her of everything save for her flimsy, laced shift. Then he guided her to the bed and bid her wait for him. She was grateful. She did not want to be fully disrobed before he was.
Eager, yet a little afraid, she knelt there while he stripped off his clothes. Every revelation of his body intensified her longing. As he moved, his muscles rippled beneath honey-dark skin. A streak of sparse, deep-brown hair ran from his navel to merge with the cluster of thick curls at his groin. His cock jutted forth, sturdy and vital.
A dart of lust pierced her. Abandoning modesty, she gazed at the column of flesh. The skin was tightened to a porcelain sheen and beneath was a tracery of blue veins, some thin and delicate, some strong and pulsing. The orbed crown glistened with the purple-red rawness of a peeled plum, and the whole thing was so unashamedly male – arrogant almost in its bold, upright thrust. She found the sight fiercely exquisite.
The bed creaked as Gabriel moved to kneel opposite her. Coaxing her to raise her arms, he lifted her chemise over her head. He drew a sharp breath. His eyes, drowsy with lust, wandered over her pale, graceful contours and rested on the damask-rose tips of her bosom.
‘God, but you’re heavenly,’ he said, his voice catching huskily. Then his hands followed the tracks of his gaze. He swept meandering, easy movements over her body, tracing the dip of her waist and the swell of her hips. He
palmed her high, satin-skinned breasts and skimmed her nipples. They sprang to erection, tingling.
Clarissa moaned lightly. Her stiffened peaks were cones of sensation, spilling shards of pleasure into her glowing sex. A heavy, sweet yearning coiled inside her and somewhere, buried within the growing wetness of her folds, a pulse beat hungrily.
With a timid gesture she reached out to him. His body was firm and his skin was waxy-smooth, so smooth that Clarissa’s touch could not rest on it. Growing in confidence, she mirrored Gabriel’s sinuous explorations. She snaked her hands over the slab of his chest down to his flat, ridged abdomen. She stroked the angularity of his lean hips and the tautness of his flanks and buttocks. Then a spark of daring impelled her to touch his engorged penis. She rubbed lightly and it bobbed in searching little jerks.
Gabriel pushed his pelvis towards her. ‘Hold me,’ he breathed.
Clarissa curled her fingers around the warm shaft and nudged her fist up and down. The feel of marble-hardness under skin, velvet skin which moved when she did, delighted her. She glided along his stiffness, relishing the straining potency. Then she brought her other hand to cup the plushy weight of his balls. They tightened and drew up hungrily. Gabriel hissed and pulled back.
‘When I refused to be your tutor,’ he said, ‘I failed to realise you had no need of one. Let me take you to ecstasy, Clarissa. But please, just for now, do not touch me so.’
His head dipped to her taut, full breasts and his hand eased into the humid juncture of her thighs. Simultaneously, his lips closed about one nipple and a finger pressed into the deepest crease of her vulva. Clarissa gasped at the sudden ferocity of the double pleasures. On her rigid pink crests, his tongue lashed and his teeth
grazed lightly; between her legs, the length of his finger moved along her slippery crevice.
Clarissa was an hourglass of desire. She whimpered faintly, barely able to hold herself upright. He circled at the opening to her vagina, stirring just within its fleshy red throat, then drew back to tease the fierce little knot of her clitoris. Her arousal flared to greater heights, making her weak with hot, rushing pleasure.
‘Lie back,’ he whispered, leaning his free hand to her shoulder.
Clarissa sank supine on to the bed, her knees raised and parted for him. Gabriel lowered himself over her, his mouth moving and sucking on her neck, nibbling at her earlobe. She pressed tremulously upwards, and the touch of their bodies, warm and damp in the afternoon heat, suffused her with longing. Their limbs entwined before Gabriel drew back. Poised above her, he moved down her flesh in kisses.
He laid his hands to her thighs, spreading her still wider, and gazed upon the crinkled petals of her sex. Clarissa felt herself opening to him, like a rosebud in sunshine. Her back arched and she lifted her loins, hungry for more tangible attentions. Gabriel shifted and dropped within the space of her legs.
His breath was warm there, then his tongue, hot and wet, swept up the valley of her labia to press on her clitoris. She uttered gentle moans of bliss as he rocked licking rotations about the tiny throbbing bump. His mouth opened over the length of her split lips and pulsed rich suckling kisses. His saliva mingled with her seeping juices. It streamed through her tender grooves, bathing her folds in sliding heat until she lost all sense of her body there. She felt only a union that was frictionless, almost fleshless. And she felt too the feverish rise of her impending orgasm.
Her hands clutched at the counterpane and her head rolled from side to side. Gabriel brought a finger to his liquid caress and slowly slipped it into her snug, succu
lent passage. He thrust gently back and forth, stroking her inner walls, and she writhed against him. It seemed like for ever that he kept her there, hovering on the shivering brink of ecstasy. The prolonged intensity was almost more than she could endure. Then his mouth closed over her clitoris, and with a quick eager tongue he pushed her beyond the edge.
Clarissa tangled her fingers in his hair, crying out as she came. Tremors soared and clutched, before crashing into a flood of delirious pleasure. She clasped his head to her loins, her body racked by convulsions. When the shuddering violence melted to a gentler throb, she released her hold on him and fell limply into the softness of the bed.
She lay there languishing in a dazed afterglow, her shallow breath gradually calming. Gabriel crawled up the bed and leant over her. His chin and parted lips were glazed with her secretions and his face had paled. His eyes spoke of lust, but more than that, of pain. He trailed a soothing hand over her creamy-white breasts and shook his head.
‘Dear God,’ he breathed, gazing at her. ‘You’ve surpassed my every dream, Clarissa. And now I fear you’ll leave me with nightmares. How will I ever keep my promise?’
Clarissa reached out to slide lazy hands over his shoulders. ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t,’ she ventured.
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘A woman of your standing needs her honour intact. Whether you marry Marldon or some other, the loss of your virginity would ruin you.’
Despondency darkened her mood. She wished her father would hurry back from the Continent. She could tell him she disapproved of his choice, that she cared for another. Her face brightened with hope. ‘But, maybe we could –’
Gabriel silenced her with a kiss. She tasted herself on his lips – musky and salty with a hint of sweetness.
‘Don’t even think it,’ he said. ‘I’m a humble painter and you’re an heiress.’ He lay beside her, his head propped on one elbow, and smiled playfully. ‘Your fortune would be most welcome to me, of course. But, alas, there are others with more to offer for it than I.’
Clarissa sighed heavily. She tried to convince herself that her father would understand, but in her heart of hearts she knew he would not.
‘Then what do we have?’ she asked.
‘We have this,’ he murmured, drifting a finger down her belly. ‘We have the moment. And we shall have more moments, because that’s all life is. Moment after moment. But we shall seize them, Clarissa, use each one as if it were our last. We shall make them into everything.’ He smiled roguishly. ‘And we also have an erection, my angel, desperate for your touch.’ He guided her hand to his groin. ‘
Quid pro quo
?’