Grace Burrowes - The Virtuoso

He sat on the edge of the bed, holding the dampened cloth in one hand as he tossed back the covers with the other. “Knees up, love.”

She lifted her knees, drawing in her breath as Val gently pushed them open and held the cloth against her most intimate parts. He watched as he did it, staring at her in frank appreciation as he first held the cloth against her then swiped at her in slow, careful strokes.

“You’re going to be sore. A soaking bath might help, but I do apologize.”

“Sore how?” Ellen asked, her gaze on his face as he refolded the cloth and placed it against her again.

“Here.” He reached over with his free hand and ruffled her pubic hair. “I am a greedy pig, and I belong in your hog wallow.”

“You are a tiger,” Ellen corrected him, pulling him down against her midriff. “Lovely, fierce, and not afraid to take what bounty you find before you. You belong in my bed.”

Her hands stroked through his hair, calming him, helping him adjust from passion to reality. But the leap was long and fraught, in part because Ellen had taken to lovemaking with stunning enthusiasm.

Lovemaking, with him. Val smiled against her stomach and crawled up her body to rest his cheek against her breast.

“Hold me,” he murmured against her breast. Her arms came around him, tentatively, as if she were just now considering he might feel the same need for comfort and cuddling she did.

She settled in to the embrace, spelling on his back again, and Val closed his eyes to picture the letters she made. Earlier, she’d been bold and naughty with her vocabulary. Now, she spelled his name, which pleased him. She spelled the whole thing, not just the conveniently brief “Val.” He let his mind drift toward slumber until he realized she was repeating a pattern on his back in the soft gray light of the rainy morning.

Like a finger exercise or a scale.

He focused, resisting the pull of sleep, and felt her fingers start the pattern over again: I-l-o-v-e-V-a-l-e-n-t-i-n-e-W-i-n-d-h-a-m.

He wanted to weep but held perfectly still, listening to her practice over and over again, until the rain on the roof, the gentle caress of her fingers, and the aftermath of passion conspired to lull him to sleep.

For the first time in her life, Ellen awoke in the arms of an intimate.

In the arms of her lover, she corrected herself, keeping her eyes closed the better to savor the sensations. Val’s chest was ranged along her back, his right arm draped casually over her waist, his legs tangled with hers. His left arm was tucked under her neck and splayed along the pillows.

She opened her eyes and peered at his left hand. “It looks improved to me,” she said, looking more closely. The thumb and index finger were still visibly discolored but not as swollen. The third finger looked almost normal.

Val flexed his fingers without moving any other body part. “It feels a little better, but then it should. Between wasting much of Thursday at Great Weldon and spending the weekend at Candlewick, that hand has seen a great deal of rest in the past five days. But perhaps”—Val’s voice dropped half an octave—“if you kiss it regularly, it might heal more quickly still.”

“Scandalous man.” Ellen wrapped her hand over his right forearm. “So tell me how we go about this.”

“About this?” Val placed a kiss on her nape and nuzzled her neck.

“This getting up, getting dressed, and going about our day, as if…” She trailed off, frowning at his hand.

“As if?”

When Ellen remained silent, he gently pushed her onto her back and peered down into her face. “As if?”

“As if we haven’t just misbehaved intimately.”

He cocked his head, his beautiful green eyes shuttering. “Are you going to castigate yourself and resent me now?”

“I am not ashamed. I am shy.”

His dark brows flew up and then down as his lips curved in a smile. “Shy. I am shy too, you know.”

“Shy you might be.” Ellen tried to roll back to her side. “You are not plagued by a great deal of modesty, though.”

“I am modest, for a man raised with four brothers. What are you really asking me?”

“I don’t know.” She subsided beneath him, not truly bothered by his show of… curiosity? Caring? With men, the two could be related. “I just don’t want… awkwardness. I find it amazing we’re here in this bed, not a stitch between us, and I can even look at your face without burning alive with mortification.”

“You amaze me too, in many ways. But tell me, do you think Axel and Abby Belmont don’t romp away the occasional morning? She’s expecting, and it’s no secret the child will not be born nine months after the wedding.”

“They anticipated their vows.” Ellen reached up to trace one of his perfectly arched dark brows with her finger. “It happens.” Then she had a disconcerting thought. “You said we’d take every reasonable precaution, Valentine. What precautions did we take?”

“You are not fertile for another few days.” He turned his cheek into her palm, so she felt the slight rasp of his beard. “Your menses started on Thursday, and thus you will likely not come in season for another few days. I would not have risked making love to you beyond tomorrow.”

She eyed him curiously. “How do you know this?”

“St. Just explained it to me when I was twelve, among other things. You are also not likely to conceive the week before your courses start, but there are those many women whose patterns do not fit the usual. There’s a name for them, in fact.”

Ellen’s lips pinched with disapproval. “What is this name?”

“Mothers.” Val grinned at her. “Or brides. Now, are you going to waste this entire day trying to locate your misgivings, or will you share an apple tart with a hungry tiger?”

Ellen smiled as he bit her neck playfully. “I do have misgivings.”

“I know, dear heart.” Val growled and teethed her shoulder this time. “But I’ve put them out in the springhouse where they will not trouble you as much. Did you know tigers are fond of apple tarts, particularly when consumed naked in bed?”

“I prefer my apple tarts properly clad,” Ellen rejoined, reaching around to pinch Val’s bottom.

“She pinched me.” Val sighed dramatically. “If I didn’t adore her before, I am thoroughly smitten now.”

“You are ridiculous,” Ellen said, though the sheer ease of his humor was marvelous to her. “I appreciate the effort.”

“What effort?”

“To tease and distract me, though I have to say I like the feel of you draped around me too. You are trying to preserve me from awkwardness.”

Val closed his eyes. “Is it working?”

Ellen laced her fingers through his. “It is, a little anyway, but you mentioned apple tarts for the tiger. Posthaste.” He let her shift out from under him this time, sitting back as she reached the point where she’d have to drop the sheet to rise from the bed.

“I love to watch you, Ellen. Clothed, naked, waking, sleeping. Love it, adore it, thrive on it. It’s better than apple tarts, just watching you.”

She nodded, grateful for the encouragement and willing to believe him, because she was similarly afflicted where he was concerned—God help her.

While it lasted, this business of being a tigress was going to be much more challenging than she’d anticipated. Thank goodness there was at least one very handsome male tiger in her personal jungle to make it worth her while.

He was an awful man, Val chided himself as he ambled home through the rainy woods. Ellen Markham wasn’t suited to dallying and trifling away the summer in each other’s arms. She was too decent for that, too good and innocent and dear. And yet, as Val wandered in the woods, he knew he wasn’t going to give her up.

Not yet. Not when he’d just coaxed her into sharing a bed, and ye gods… Val would never have an uncharitable thought about St. Francis Markham again, because the poor blighter, with his dying breath, had to have known he was leaving Ellen and universes of pleasure with her yet unexplored.

When Val was with Ellen, time was easy and sweet and somehow significant in ways it hadn’t been since Victor died. She soothed something in him and tempted him to offer confidences and assurances and all manner of words he shouldn’t even be considering, much less longing to give her.

So he was awful. Virtuosically awful. A cad, a bounder, and everything he’d ever despised in his confreres among the spoiled offspring of the aristocracy and the flighty artists in their music rooms and studios. He was going to break her heart. The only consolation he could offer himself was the absolute certainty she’d break his, as well.

But not yet.

He continued his meandering in the rain, an awful, very wet man, but for some reason, the dampness felt good, and he wasn’t in a hurry to get dry. On a whim, or because he didn’t really want to face anybody else, he detoured to the pond, where he took off his clothes, stuffed them under the overhang of the dock, and dove in.

The pond felt curiously warm compared to the rain on his skin, and so he set out on laps, trying not to think.

In his head, where nothing should have been, he heard a tune. It was a simple, sweet, wistful melody, but it wanted something sturdy beneath it, so he added some accompaniment in the baritone register. Then, the entire little composition was residing in the middle register of the keyboard, and that didn’t feel expansive enough. As Val sliced through the water, he added an occasional note of true bass, just enough to anchor the piece, not enough to overshadow its essential lightness.