In the Flesh

“Let go of me, Mr. Ritchie,” Beatrice hissed as he manhandled her through a French door and back into the house. They were in another part of the vast Southern mansion now, one some distance from doors by which she’d entered the conservatory.

I’m lost. Lost in a big, strange house with a man who probably has far worse designs on me than Eustace Lloyd ever did.

So why wasn’t she struggling harder? She was a healthy girl with sound limbs, and if a man’s nether regions were as sensitive as Monsieur Chamfleur’s reactions led her to believe, a well-place knee delivered sharply should easily free her.

But you don’t want to be free, do you? proposed a sly, inner voice.

“No, Beatrice. If I let you go, you’ll run away again, and I want to talk to you.” Swiveling her around in his grip, Ritchie’s arms were still unyielding. They held her like iron bands, keeping her jammed up against the hardness at his groin. His cock felt warm and lively against her belly despite the layers and layers of her petticoats.

“It seems to me that you want to do considerably more than talk to me!”

The words came out without her bidding, and worse, her body seemed to have acquired a mind of its own now, too. Her hips jerked and rocked, bumping her abdomen against Ritchie’s loins as if deliberately massaging and caressing him.

What in heaven’s name am I doing?

Her thoughts whirled as he growled. Not quite as loudly and plaintively as Ambrose Chamfleur had done, but still in a way that recognized her desire.

But I don’t want you! No! No! I don’t!

Everything she’d ever read and been taught about ladylike behavior suddenly became nonsense. Stern words that had once tolled in her head were fading, fading. And there was no champagne or other intoxicant to lay the blame on this time. Not even the affection she’d felt for Tommy or misplaced feelings of fondness such as she’d experienced for Eustace.

No, with this man there was nothing more than instinctive antipathy at very first sight, and a low animal reaction to his maleness.

And yet still her hips churned and circled, rubbing her groin against Ritchie’s.

“I can’t deny that, Miss Weatherly. I want to see if that beautiful body of yours is really as luscious as the photographs suggest. I want to touch your skin, stroke you between your legs … taste you there.”

His tongue … oh, his tongue …

Had the ceiling above them opened? It seemed so. From the summer night sky itself, there shot down a bolt of lightning that struck Beatrice and took her breath away. Her legs, the very ones that Ritchie seemed so eager to put his face between, turned as weak as wet wool, making her sway wildly.

No! No! No! she railed again as his arms tightened around her, I am not a fainting miss who has the vapors just because this barbarian is trying to shock me!

“I’ll thank you not to make such crude remarks, Mr. Ritchie.” She stiffened her spine and fought his grip, but it simply became more robust. “They may impress a certain type of woman, but I actually find them boring, even juvenile.”

“Oh Beatrice, you’re such a little liar.” His breath against her cheek was as sweet and clean as his utterances were impure. He smelled a little of whiskey, and that only made her want to taste him. His mouth … his skin … oh, his cock.

Yes, his cock … I like calling it that!

Wicked thoughts, radical thoughts. But they didn’t linger, because at that moment Ritchie’s mouth came down on hers, devilish and hard.

The kiss wasn’t a bit like Tommy’s or Eustace’s. It was dry at first, hot and firm and purposeful. No tentative, boyish explorations. No messy meanderings with lips that were sloppy and vaguely slack. Ritchie’s mouth was strong and businesslike, and totally controlled. And when at last things did get wet, that was different, too. His tongue was a dart of power, pushing into her mouth and subduing her. Down between her legs, she seemed to feel it too, just as he’d described.

Sometime in their flight from the conservatory, she’d snatched her belongings from him, but now, as she tasted his tongue and her own flicked and played around it, her bag, her fan and her dance card tumbled forgotten to the carpet. She needed her hands. She needed them so she could explore his back and his shoulders through the fine dark cloth of his coat, and cling on to him when her knees went weak again.

She needed them so she could cling on when her hips started to press against him of their own accord, driven by a divine madness and a desperate hunger for the same intimate sharing the Chamfleurs enjoyed.

Her body was electric, as if filled with the same radical force that lit the glittering mansion around them, its Promethean power channeled into her every nerve and cell. She felt alight, aflame, filled with yearning and longing and an unstoppable compulsion to press her skin against Ritchie’s skin, cleaving to every last square inch of it.

When she’d had the mad urge to take her clothes off and pose for Eustace’s camera, it’d been nothing more than an anemic whim compared to this. The need to be naked for Ritchie and with Ritchie was a primal drive. An instinct in her blood, pumping and surging.

Aha, this “female hysteria” they write about so coyly in certain advertisements at the back of the Lady’s Weekly Journal. Why on earth do they imply that it’s unpleasant, and to be avoided? Because they’re wrong, so wrong! Completely wrong!

Her breasts felt sore and strange, and yet the sensation was delicious somehow, and far more than pleasant. They chafed against her fine chemise and the inside of her corset and she surged against the solid wall of Ritchie’s body, trying to increase the effect and rub her aching nipples against him.

“Oh, you’re a hot one, Beatrice,” gasped Ritchie as they broke apart to get more breath. Beatrice wasn’t sure she’d taken one for at least two minutes. She was light-headed, but it wasn’t through lack of oxygen … it was Ritchie. “You’re more than I ever dreamed, beautiful girl,” he went on, his mouth against her cheek, then her hair, his jaw brushing the side of her throat. As he spoke, his breath fanned against her, and below his hand pulled deftly at her skirts, with the skill of much practice, no doubt. Up and up they came, and then his fingers slid skillfully amongst the layers, pushing them up so he could clasp the rounded cheek of her bottom through her drawers.

Beatrice shot up in the air and started to struggle again. But just as before, without effort, Ritchie quelled her with his hands on her body and his mouth possessing hers. Conflicting urges battled. Every tenet of good behavior she’d ever had drilled into her waged war with delicious new desires—the craving to touch, taste, rub against and lay herself open to everything this man had to offer.

Her struggle died almost before it had begun, and she softened to the kiss like warmed honey. When he clasped her bottom this time, she almost purred into his mouth like a plump and lazy kitten accepting his affection, wickedly pleased that large, elaborate bustles were no longer en vogue and Ritchie could effect a firm hold on her without that extra hindrance to negotiate.

That’s outrageous! How can I think such things? Her mind raced. How can a kiss affect me this way?

The thought disappeared, drenched in oceans of sensation.

How can a kiss affect me this way?

On a wave of shock and desire, Ritchie plunged his tongue into Beatrice Weatherly’s mouth. He’d wanted her, yes, the moment he’d seen the first photograph, but this … this reality exceeded his every fevered fantasy.

Every part of her stirred him. Her soft mouth he imagined wrapped around his cock. Her delicious body he imagined writhing in uncontrolled ecstasy as he plied her with fingers and tongue, driving her to heights of sensation again and again and again. He imagined fondling the firm, rounded bottom that wriggled so exquisitely against his palm. She was a natural, unstudied sensualist and a little perversity would only spice her ultimate pleasure.

And oh, he wanted that, her ultimate pleasure. He wanted her orgasms. Her complete surrender. Her nakedness, his to enjoy in all ways, open to hand and mouth and a dozen wicked sexual contrivances. He wanted her secured to a bed so he could plunge into her, lose himself in the scent of lily of the valley and woman’s musk and forget every sad thing that had ever troubled him. In the oblivion of her flesh, there might be peace.

He had to have her.

How could he get her?

What could he offer?

A quick tumble with her simply wouldn’t suffice. So would Beatrice Weatherly be amenable to a grande affaire? A bohemian, worldly arrangement, between two adults? A woman of her age and class would normally be on the lookout for marriage, but posing naked for photographs meant she was far from conventional.

But still, the sense that there was more to her than simply a rather licentious young woman plagued him. What if she wouldn’t accept his proposition? The thought of her refusing him and the idea of never having and enjoying every last delicious part of her provoked a sensation like despair in his heart.

There was no alternative. He had power, resources, money in colossal amounts, and he’d use whatever tactics he had to in order to get her. At the back of his mind, guilt—and a distaste for his own self-serving motives—pricked him, but the jabs were faint and fast fading against the hard ache in his loins and the strangely indefinable longing that racked his chest.

Even as sweet lust gouged him, he began to make his plans. Oh, how convenient it was that her brother was such a ne’er do well.

CHAPTER THREE

A Gentlewoman’s Temptation

IT WAS EXACTLY as she imagined drowning might be. Expiring in a well of lush sensation. Transformed into a houri within the space of a few minutes, she gasped in disappointment when Ritchie broke the kiss.

She tried to resume it. Digging her fingers into his thick, curly hair, she attempted to draw his lips back down to hers. Only his hands and mouth seemed real in a world transparent.

“No, no, Miss Weatherly.” His laugh was taunting, soft. “Unless you want me to compromise you even more than you’ve already been, right here on this runner.”

He nodded toward the narrow strip of Turkish carpet adorning the corridor in which they found themselves. Beatrice blinked. How had they got here? She was so disorientated that words temporarily escaped her. She could only stare at Edmund Ellsworth Ritchie, and blink like a nincompoop.