Page 55 of To Love and to Loathe
He opened his eyes, ignoring the faint throbbing in his head, far more focused on other sensations. “I have, quite literally, never been better.”
She grinned as she rose to her knees and sank back down onto him, and his heart stuttered at the sight of her, naked and beautiful and smiling. “It seems I fell prey to an unscrupulous seductress after all,” he said on a gasp, anchoring her hips with his hands to slow their rhythm slightly.
“Indeed it does,” she said solemnly. “Fortunately, I shall take pity on you”—she gasped at a particularly well-timed thrust on his part—“and ensure that you know what you’re doing.”
Jeremy forbore to remark that, based on her breathing and the urgent sounds coming from the back of her throat, he thought he had a fairly good idea already. She leaned forward to brace her hands on his shoulders, and he stole a lingering kiss from her, their tongues twining and mimicking the movements of their bodies.
He felt heat building at the base of his spine and knew he could not hold off much longer. Previously, he would have plunged onward without further thought—he had, after all, satisfied the lady in the not-at-all-distant past—but now, listening to the sound of her breathing, he instead redoubled his efforts, sliding a hand between them and applying the same vigorous effort that had yielded such pleasant results some minutes before. He was rewarded, several minutes later, by the sensation of her tightening around him in helpless pleasure, and he dropped his hand, wrapped both arms around her waist, and—with a display of will that he thought worthy of some sort of medal—withdrew, just before joining her in the plummet to mindless release.
It was several minutes before either of them mustered much in the way of words. She was slumped atop him, her head resting on his chest, his cheek against her hair, his hand stroking up and down the smooth skin of her back. At last she mumbled something, the words indecipherable against his skin.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked—slurred? He felt as though he’d been drugged.
“Isaid,” she said, tilting her head up slightly so that her mouth was no longer pressed against his shoulder, “you’re a remarkably quick study.”
He quirked a smile at her. “I do have some experience, you know. It was more a matter of… polishing my skills.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why I expected you to exhibit some humble gratitude at this particular moment.”
“Neither do I. I am feeling rather nauseatingly self-satisfied at present, if you must know. You should count yourself lucky that I’m not preening.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked, giving him a skeptical look.
He shrugged. “I’m not perfect.”
“Of that, I promise you I am perfectly aware,” she said, sitting up straight, then glancing down and wrinkling her nose at the mess they had left behind.
“I’ll fetch a cloth,” he said, lifting her by the waist and depositing her next to him before rising to his feet and crossing to the washbasin in the corner. He dampened a cloth and gave it to her to use before he attended to the mess on the bed.
“This bit isn’t terribly romantic, is it?” she asked with characteristic candor, watching as he discarded the cloth and returned to sit beside her. He stretched out his legs and leaned back against the headboard, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. He half expected her to stiffen and pull away, now that the evening’s physical activities were at an end, but she rested the back of her head on his arm and looked up at the ceiling.
“It’s not the portion of the proceedings I’d choose to write poetry about,” he agreed. “But it’s either withdraw or use a French letter, and I didn’t have one to hand, so this charming scene is the result.” She snorted, the noise indelicate and unladylike, a sound that he could not imagine any of his previous paramours making at any point, much less when they were naked in bed with him. A fortnight ago, hewould have said that Diana was as full of artifice as any woman of his acquaintance—because even then he had known the face she showed to the public, the face she allowed him to see, was not therealDiana. But now, he also knew that no other woman he had ever met—and certainly none that he had bedded—had been as honest with him as she had been these past few days.
She stifled a yawn against the back of her hand, and Jeremy cast a glance at the clock hanging above the mantel. It was nearly two, and his body was beginning to recognize that fact, growing slow and languorous from the combined effects of a long day and an active evening. “I should go back to my room,” he said reluctantly, easing his arm out from behind her and rising to his feet. “I can’t risk falling asleep here and being discovered by one of the housemaids.”
“I think they’ll know I had a visitor,” she said with a significant glance at the bedsheets. “But you’re right—it’s likely best if they don’t know it’s you. A loose widow is far less interesting than a loose widow engaged in licentious acts with the master of the house himself.”
Jeremy was moving about the room as she spoke, gathering his discarded articles of clothing. He hastily began to dress. “Shall I come again tomorrow evening?” he asked over his shoulder as he did up the buttons on his breeches. He caught her eyes fixed on him in rapt attention, and she smiled, entirely unashamed to be caught gawking.
“Yes—hopefully in both senses of the word,” she said; he paused for a second, then burst out laughing, almost in unison with her, and as he laughed helplessly, the thought rose to his mind unbidden: he loved her.
That, at least, was sufficient to bring his laughter to an abrupt end, and he was able to finish dressing in a hurry by the time her own giggles had trailed off. He tried not to look too carefully at her—nakedand tousled, giggling helplessly at her own bawdy joke—for the sake of his dignity; if a thought like that could pop into his mind out of nowhere, it seemed only a matter of time before it popped out of his mouth, and he shuddered to think what her reaction tothatwould be, given her earlier response to the merest mention of marriage. And marriage, after all, was a far sight less serious thanlove.
Mastering herself at last, she added, “I want to start painting tomorrow.”
“I’m at your disposal, madam,” he said, offering her a courtly bow—a barefoot courtly bow, it was true, but he still thought he made a rather good show of it.
“I know,” she said cheerfully, dimpling at him. “I’m still feeling a bit wobbly as a result of that fact.”
He gave her a knowing smirk as he backed out of the room to the sound of her renewed laughter, and it was only once he was in the hall, having shut the door quietly behind him, that he allowed his smile to fade. He braced his forearms on the wall next to her door and allowed his forehead to fall forward to rest upon them with a muffled sort of thud.
“Bloody buggering fuck,” he said with feeling.
Twenty
Diana slept even later thanusual the next morning, and when she awoke she was gloriously, blissfully sore in certain muscles that hadn’t received any exercise in quite a few years—and which hadneverbeen worked so thoroughly, at that. She stretched her arms above her head and pointed her toes, staring up at the canopy over her bed, which was dappled with enough sunlight to tell her it was late morning. She contemplated ringing for Toogood and dressing in a hurry, but instead, when her maid responded to her summons, requested a breakfast tray.
“It would be too much effort to actually leave the bed to eat, I suppose,” Toogood said with her typical utter lack of grace. “Some of us have been awake for hours, whilst others lie abed until noon, a day slipping by outdoors whilst they slumber off the evening’s excesses.”
