How to Marry a Marble Marquis(16)
“You’re certainly beautiful, Miss Eastwick. Despite the fact that you dress like a matron of eighty years, you’re quite lovely to behold.”
She sputtered again, the unexpected criticism coming wrapped in a compliment, like a refreshing glass of lemonade that squirts unceremoniously in the eye.
“You have impeccable manners,” he went on, unconcerned over her offense, “and you’re a charming, if not a bit audacious, conversation partner. I’ve sat witness to your talent, and your determination to make a good eventual match for your sisters speaks to a generous heart and sacrificial nature. But it takes more than pretty songs and words to find a man willing to call himself your husband, Miss Eastwick. And these aren’t mere men, after all. Their appetites will need satisfying.”
She flushed at the implication. What have you gotten yourself into?
“One cannot underestimate the necessity of an education in the art of pleasure, particularly when time is of the essence. You’ve less than a month, my dear. You will need to please whichever lordling sets his sights upon you, and I won’t have you besmirch my good name as a lover of repute by being completely ignorant in how to do so.” When he turned his gaze back to her at last, his eyes were positively wicked, sinful sapphires glimmering in the candlelight. “Your lessons will be on the art of seduction and lovemaking, Miss Eastwick. You’ve much to learn, and who better to teach you than an unrepentant rake?”
By the time she was back in her own bed that night, a little felt as if she’d been set up on hot coals, smoking from the inside out. She tossed and turned fitfully, falling her fists at her side in aggravation, uncertain how she was meant to go to sleep with fire bubbling in her veins.
When he’d risen from the table, the shape of his cock stood out in relief within his tight trousers. He was hard, and the realization that she had been the one to cause the reaction in him made her heat at the time, press a giddy hand to her mouth on the carriage ride home, and now she writhed beneath her sheets.
Everything he said was true. She was, for all intents and purposes, a virgin in all practical matters of sensuality. She had likely seen more than most, thanks to the theater. Patrons were shameless with their hand-picked favorites, and so too were the couples backstage, ballerinas and musicians and stagehands, all coming together to find a place to come together.
She had watched — from a hidden vantage point in the flies, where she had stopped to eat her lunch – the costume mistress on her knees before the rehearsal conductor, suckling his cock tip as he groaned. She had happened upon chorus girls being rutted from behind by their patrons and stagehands lazily stroking themselves, but she had never been a party to it. She had no idea what to do, what to say, how to go about initiating or receiving . . . But she had made Silas Stride’s cock grow stiff, barely even meaning to.
There was going to be no sleeping that night, not unless she extinguished these licking flames that were practically cramping her stomach. Closing her eyes, Eleanor skated her nails down her body, pulling up her night rail with her lip caught between her teeth.
When he feeds from her nectar, the dip of his tongue is an ecstasy, Miss Eastwick. She tried to imagine what it might feel like, her monstrous husband, if he, too, would have clawed hands, horns, or wings, or if he would have the towering stature of an orc, or the slithering tail of a serpent. She imagined the drag of neatly manicured claws down the front of her thin night rail, cupping her full breasts and catching at her hardened nipples. She wondered if she would feel the drag of his fangs against her stomach, if he would push open her legs slowly. She had seen this act only once, but once had been enough to emblazon it upon her mind, a memory she had revisited over and over again over the years. Lord Stride’s vivid butterfly metaphor insinuating the same act had left her aching.
Eleanor tried to imagine his hot breath against her petals, blossoming open with the heat of his mouth and the stroke of his tongue. She slid a finger through her silky slick folds, imagining that it was his tongue doing so instead. With the proper mastery, I assure you, it is extremely pleasurable for the flower. She had no doubt that he would be a master at his sinful craft, moving her fingers to stimulate the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, the flicking of his tongue against her most sensitive part, that aching little pearl she had discovered quite on accident in the bath and now revisited only beneath the privacy of her bed sheets. He would know just how to move his tongue, she was certain. He would lick her, dipping his tongue in her taste, stroke her with its heat, and suckle it with his lips.
Silas Stride was a rake and a rogue and an unrepentant profligate, and she would be glad to be rid of him once the ball was over. But there was no question that he would be a skilled lover, able to bring her to ecstasy. She had extricated a promise from his lips before she had climbed into the carriage that night — that his instruction would be academic, theory and technique, but not practical application. He had laughed, shrugging again with an expansive gesture.
“Whatever you wish, Miss Eastwick. We shall do our best in any case.”
That was the smart thing to do. Let him teach her what she would need to know to please her husband, what she would need to do at the ball to catch his eye, whoever he might be, excite his blood, and stiffen his cock. It would be for him to teach her beyond that, whoever her monstrous mate would be.
But Silas Stride would make her scream. All of those women, those titled women with so much to lose, they wouldn’t keep allowing him in their beds if he wasn’t a skilled lover. Her hips left the mattress, rising to meet her hand, his tongue, the heat of his mouth. When the tension within her broke, Eleanor pressed her fist against her teeth, swallowing her moan.