Grace Burrowes - The Virtuoso

And the bed… It was probably intended to be a canopy, but stood without the hangings, covered by a worn white quilt gone soft and thin with age. Val entered the room only far enough to stroke a hand over the quilt and inhale the lavender scent of the bed linens.

“Lovely.”

“Humble,” Ellen countered, standing beside him and gazing down at her bed. “It was a guest room set that was being moved up to the servant’s wing at Roxbury. I appropriated it and did not ask permission.”

“It’s pretty and sensible.” Val left off inspecting her personal space and met her gaze. “Like you, and if we don’t leave this room right now, Ellen FitzEngle, I’m going to want you in that bed, naked and panting my name while I make you come so hard you can’t see.”

Ellen sat on the bed, dropped onto it, more like, her expression thunderstruck.

“Ellen?” Val knelt to peer up at her where she sat. “Shall I leave?” He put a hand on her knee then slid it up to her hip, holding her gaze as he did. She laid her fingers over the back of his debilitated left hand. They’d been heading for this moment for weeks, but now that it was upon her, she looked not just surprised but stunned.

“I’ll leave,” Val said, settling back onto his heels and resting his cheek against her thigh. “If you ask it of me, I’ll get up and see about your locks, share a cup of cider and an apple tart, ask you your plans for the week, and understand.”

“Understand?”

He brought his other hand around her waist and held on, knee-walking in close to hug her middle on a sigh.

“Now isn’t the time,” Val suggested. “You don’t feel ready, you’re having second thoughts, or you don’t particularly relish getting involved with a man who’s the target of impending mayhem.”

Much less, he thought, one who had only one reliably functional hand, even after more than a month of abstaining from his music. He was pushing her, but he wanted out from under the uncertainty of his reception in her arms. It had been almost a week since they’d been what he could call intimate, and in the intervening days his desire for her had only grown.

“Now is the time,” Ellen said softly. “But if you let me think about it, I’ll lose my nerve and make excuses, and I don’t want…”

He pulled back to survey her velvety brown eyes, finding them so somber as to unnerve him. He wanted this joining to be pleasurable for her, joyous even.

“You don’t want?”

“To never have known what it’s like,” she finished the thought, “to be with you like that. To be your lover.”

Warnings went off in Val’s head, as her words could mean she wanted only a single experience of him, wanted a taste, a sample, nothing more. He wanted more, he wanted more than he deserved of her; he wanted to devour her, to make a feast of her, and to offer himself for her delectation too.

Ah, well.

A man worked with what life gave him, and life was giving him this opportunity with Ellen. He folded himself back down against her lap in gratitude and felt her hand stroking the back of his head. The moment was made complete and more memorable by the sudden gentle tattoo of rain on her roof, a showery patter that presaged a good, soaking rain, not merely a passing cloudburst.

“Valentine?” Ellen’s hand went still against his nape. “I don’t know what to do.”

He did not sit up. “About?”

“How do we go on?” she asked, curling down over him to press her nose against his back. “I’ve never… not in daylight, not here.”

“It’s better in daylight,” he assured her. “I can see your beautiful face and your lovely body and let you look your fill of me.”

“Will you undress?”

“Of course,” he replied, smiling with pleasure, approval, and anticipation when he sat back on his heels. “With your help.” He rose and sat beside her on the bed, settling a hand on her lap so she could remove first one cuff link then the other.

“Now what?”

“Unbutton my shirt?” He could have pulled it over his head, of course, but he wanted to communicate very clearly that they were in no hurry. So one by one, he had her remove each article of his clothing until he was standing without a stitch in her bedroom.

“Let’s get you comfortable, as well.” Though comfortable was going to be a stretch, he surmised. Her blushes suggested she could barely tolerate his nudity, much less her own.

“Don’t you want to get under the covers?” Her tone was almost hopeful, while her gaze was glued to his chest. She reached up a hand toward his sternum then dropped it back to her side.

Val picked up her hand in his own. “I would adore for you to touch me.” Carefully, he laid her palm over his heart then left it there so she could feel the steady, reassuring life-beat.

“I want to touch your heart too,” Val said, stepping in to kiss her cheek. “Clothes off, Ellen, hmm?”

She didn’t comply immediately but stroked her hand over his chest, his biceps, his belly, his shoulders. She was touching him with such wonder, he could barely stand still for it. When her hands fell to her sides, he kissed her cheek, let his hands settle gently on her hips, and waited.

And while he waited, he couldn’t help but kiss her. The way she fitted her curves and hollows to his was enough to send lust singing through his veins. When she sighed into his mouth and cautiously met his tongue with her own, he gathered the fabric of her dress in his hands. By slow, stealthy degrees, he drew her into the kiss even as he drew the worn cotton up around her hips. She gave a little gasp when the sensation of air on her legs must have registered, but Val held her hips still when she would have stepped back.

“Steady,” he whispered against her neck. She nodded, and he drew the dress and chemise up the rest of the way, leaving Ellen blushing in her shoes and stockings.

And even today, no stays. Val almost cried with gratitude at that discovery.

“There you are,” he whispered, running his hands down her sides and up her back. He wanted to look—wanted badly, badly to look—but he could feel the heat of Ellen’s blush where her face was planted against his collarbone.

“Under the covers now?”

“Let me get you out of your shoes and stockings.”

He’d been careful to keep his erection away from her midriff—he was more than ready for what followed. She’d not seen him erect, not the way she might now, and he wasn’t about to frighten her.

Impress, God, yes; frighten, no. Never.

He pushed her back with one hand on her sternum so she again sat on the bed, and then knelt to remove her shoes and stockings. On impulse, he leaned in and again embraced her around the waist, pressing his face to her thighs.

“It’s different,” Ellen said softly, her hand running down the bare plane of his back. “We touched, just this way, only moments ago, but it’s different.”

“It’s better,” Val murmured, cheek against her leg. “Closer.”

“Your back…” Ellen touched him again, a slow, smooth skim of her hand up the long muscles beside his spine, then over his shoulder blades and onto his shoulders. “I think I can see every muscle God put in here, as if you’re a perfect specimen.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to explain all that muscular articulation came from playing the piano, but that would have admitted a shadow to the bedroom, and the only shadows he wanted were those cast by the soft gray light filtering in from the rainy day outside.

“I want to see your back,” Val countered, straightening, “and for that, we can get into your bed.”

“Now?” Ellen’s hand lingered on his shoulder. “You’ll let me touch you more, later?”

“I’ll let you touch me any way you please, forever and ever, but in your bed, love.”

He knew she was stalling, nervous and uncertain, but she’d warned him that had she too much time to think, she’d deny them their pleasures. That, he would not allow. Could not.

Holding his gaze, Ellen shifted back, careful to keep her legs together when she turned on her seat and scooted across the bed. Val joined her in one movement, lifting the old worn quilt and the sheet beneath it to drape over her legs.

“We need rules of surrender here,” Val said, sitting cross-legged on his side of the bed. He wasn’t bothering with the covers, and Ellen had to notice his erection, enormously swollen where it arced up against his belly.

“Rules of surrender?” Ellen repeated, her gaze taking him in with an expression of trepidation.

“Ellen.” Val’s smile disappeared. “I won’t hurt you.”

Her gaze dipped to his groin then back up to his face, and he prayed he hadn’t lied. She’d been without a man for five damned years, and Val was… he was well endowed, and he knew this for a fact. Tagging along with Nick on this or that debauch, having four older brothers, spending a couple years at public school then several more at university… Val had seen enough to know his equipment was in proportion to the rest of him.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said again, holding her gaze. “Because our first rule is you tell me if you don’t like something. Promise?”

She nodded once, but her gaze drifted back to his groin.

“If you can’t find your voice, then pinch me,” Val went on. “Pinch me hard, understand?”

“Pinch you,” Ellen repeated. “Hard.”

“Hard enough to bruise,” Val clarified. “And my arse doesn’t count, because when I’m in a certain mood, I like that.”

“Dear heavens.”

He smiled at her blush. “Rule number two.” He reached over and stroked a finger down her jaw. “We avoid conception by every reasonable means, but if there’s a child, you must tell me.” She grimaced, and Val wanted to curse, because at least one shadow had found them.