Chapter 13

13

NUMBER SIX AND NUMBER FOURTEEN

She understood him perfectly. ‘Not if it isn't?' But Isabella could see that he was in no state for dealing with double negatives, lying here aroused and helpless as he was, so she added, ‘You don't want to do that if it isn't on the list?'

‘I do want to. But… Just tell me, please, is it on the list?'

‘It is, as a matter of fact. Much later. I wasn't sure anyone, you, would want to…' He groaned at the confirmation, and she laughed low in her throat, and rewarded him with another lick, more lingering this time. She was playing with him and they both knew it. The sense of power he gave her was intoxicating, there was no denying. He would obey her without question, she realised; if she asserted, That comes later , or That is not something that I choose, do this instead , he would accept it. This was new, this was not how it had been for her before, but she did not have time now to think about how and why it should be so, or what it meant.

‘Very well,' she said, her breath caressing his most tender flesh and making him twitch. ‘I will suck on you for a while, for that was my intention and I think you will like it too, and then, when I feel that you are close, I will pull back and let you spend yourself… where you desire to. This will mean, of course, that number six will have to be revisited, another time. Another time, I will taste you fully.'

‘Please…' She could see that he was almost frantic with desire.

She relented, and put her mouth on him, closing her eyes and holding him lightly as she sucked and tongued him and he gasped. She knew he could have little control now and it was tempting to continue, but she had promised, and so she did not. When his breath was coming fast and ragged and she could taste the closeness of his orgasm, strange and yet familiar too, salty, she slid her mouth slowly, reluctantly from him and sat back on her heels, looking up at him, panting; he staggered to his feet almost by instinct, eyes closed still, and she rose up on her knees and pressed herself to him, surrounding him, her hands tight on her breasts, as he moved urgently against her, between her. His hands came down to clasp her head and she buried her face in his abdomen, inhaling the masculine scent of him and revelling in his warmth as he thrust into her flesh and soon cried out in powerful release. It was animalistic, perverse, fierce, wonderful. It was a powerful new memory.

A short while later he loosened his hold on her and sank back into his seat. She was still kneeling at his feet, exposed, and he drew her up to join him on the sofa. She was pink, flushed and sticky, and he whispered, ‘I should help you… Clean you…'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes, you should.'

An hour or two later, Isabella sat in her chamber, crossing items from her list. Four, five, fourteen. Six she left alone; it could be fully scored out another time. On reflection, she crossed through five again. It was only right to be accurate. He had commenced wiping his seed from her with his handkerchief, but it had been insufficient, he had worried that it would abrade her tender skin, and so after a while, he had lowered his mouth to her again and with infinite care licked away all traces of what had occurred; after that, she had been so aroused that he had been obliged to put his hands on her again and bring her to a second orgasm. He had been less tentative this time, more confident in his ability to give her pleasure, but still – always – acting only at her direction.

They had stayed in the room for hours, all told, and lost themselves so deep in erotic reverie that it had been hard indeed to compose themselves at last and leave. They had both felt that their occupation must be perfectly obvious to any persons who saw them as they emerged – but then, everyone else in the house must be presumed to be in a similar case, and it was true that they drew no attention as far as they could tell. Once home, Isabella had gained her room without meeting Blanche or Eleanor and had no idea if they had returned before her or not. Her maid had helped her undress, and if she had noticed anything amiss in her mistress's demeanour or appearance she had not betrayed any sign of it. She wasn't an old family retainer, but a Londoner of foreign birth, hired recently; she was a well-spoken and enormously self-contained young woman, so much so that it was evident she had her own mysterious life and cared little for Isabella's as long as she was properly paid for the work she did, and this seemed to suit them both.

Isabella locked her list away and climbed into bed, considering and then immediately discarding the idea of commencing a new letter to her mother. Somehow she couldn't… She'd do it tomorrow, perhaps. Her mama worried if more than a day or two passed between letters, and she had promised to be a faithful correspondent. But as her complicated reality and the anodyne world of her missives home drew further and further apart, she could see that it would become harder and harder to write and calm her mother's fears, even though she must.

She felt no desire to lay hands on herself tonight; she was, for the first time since Ash's death, entirely sated. Her limbs felt heavy, relaxed, languorous, and her breasts, her nipples and her secret parts were still tingling at his touch. Leo's touch. Ash, Ash, Ash… She realised she was weeping softly. She supposed it was no wonder. She had achieved so much of her aim: when she thought of a man's hands on her, wreaking precious oblivion, she would no longer think always of that last urgent coupling in their lodging, uniform undone, ballgown pushed aside, before he left her with a swift, desperate kiss and rode off to his waiting death. The memory of that day and its awful aftermath was a little weaker, she thought, and would be weaker still once her list was completed. It was a loss, but it was what she had wanted, what she wanted now, and if it cost her a tear or two it was worth it.

But if she were honest, that was not the sole source of her distress. She had thought herself armoured against all possibilities, in embarking on her mission to take charge of her life: she had resolved to stop at any point if the gentleman's attentions did not please her; she had been reconciled to the fact that Ash had been a considerate and skilful lover and it was unreasonable to expect as much of another, chosen almost at random as he had been. So she had accepted that the intimacy might be clumsy, awkward, perhaps unfulfilling. She hadn't expected it to be better.

Not better, she instantly corrected herself. Not better. Never that. But different. She had been a virgin, of course, when she had married. Ash had not been similarly untouched – he had been a man of seven and twenty, and experienced. He had taken the lead, inevitably, for she had been ignorant and unsure, and had always tempered his desire with gentleness and care for her. They had found themselves well-matched in passion, and explored what gave them pleasure over the months of their marriage, until they met as equals, or nearly so. Everything that passed between them had always been a matter of mutual consent, leading to mutual ecstasy. But having first taken the lead he had always done so afterwards, and Isabella had never thought to question the rightness of it. Perhaps they might have lived a whole happy life together without her ever questioning it: forty years of marriage, a deep mutual satisfaction that endured. Who could tell, since it was not to be?

But now Isabella had her list, and her wish for control – control in her own life, and control in intimate matters. She had not known, when she embarked on this course, that it would set something free inside her, something entirely unsuspected till tonight. Because when Leo had submitted himself so humbly to her wishes, she had realised that his willingness to do so – no, God, much more than that, his intense pleasure in doing so – was more powerfully arousing than anything she had ever experienced with Ash. He had given himself to her without reserve in a way that Ash never had, in a way that she had never dreamed a man could. And she loved it. It was idle to deny that she loved it. She could not help seeing it as a betrayal of her lost husband and all they had shared. And so she wept. She was conscious of the folly of it – if letting another man touch and caress her was not a betrayal of Ash, and she had firmly decided it wasn't, why should this be? It was just a quirk of her nature that had been revealed to her by circumstance. It wasn't as though she was in love with Leo. That was obviously quite out of the question. And that would be treachery.

She turned restlessly in her bed, and with a decisive thump reversed the pillow for a moment's blessed coolness. This was not what she had thought she wanted. How could she ever have envisaged this? But she had tasted it and now she needed it. Her body and her mind and her spirit craved it, all the more because she knew this opportunity was a brief one, never to be repeated. She refused to pick over the whys and wherefores of it and make herself miserable; she'd been miserable for so many months and it had driven her mad. No more.