Chapter Three

Charles believed Ariel to be asleep when her voice, leaden with exhaustion, reached up to caress his ears. "If you're American, why are you here in England?" The question was light, but contemplative, as if she'd mulled it over for quite some time before sleep had lowered her inhibitions enough to pose the query—leave it to her to view a man whom she believed to be a male prostitute enough of a human to want to get to know him.

He thought a moment before he responded, weighing the choices and debating if it would be easier to simply feign sleep. He decided against pretending, though, because she'd been nothing if not entirely open and genuine and vulnerable with him. The least he could do was answer her question with as much truth as possible.

"I was raised in Boston," he began in a low voice, tracing his thumb along the downy-soft curve of her shoulder. "But my cousin passed and there was some business only I could handle, so here I am."

"Have you been here long?"

"Not especially."

"You have no relatives?"

The question evoked a sudden and rather unexpected burst of memories. His mother, a saint and a martyr, an angel with delicate features and soulful eyes, who had died giving birth to a girl when Charles was eleven; his father, a cold man who viewed displays of emotion and affection as signs of weakness, the reason all the warmth in his life had been smothered as soon as his mother had breathed her last. For decades, Charles had believed his father's death would release the leaden weight in his chest; however, as he'd learned three years earlier at the old man's funeral, it had left him numb. His emo- tions had been so deadened from the constant threat of beatings at the sign of tears, hissed threats when laughter came too easily, that he'd merely watched them lower the box into the ground, cast a handful of soil upon it, then turned on his heel and went back to his offices to finish the day.

He took a second too long to reply and she looked up at him, concern coloring her eyes. "My apologies, you needn't answer that if you do not wish to. I—I realize this is very personal but…so is all of this…" She glanced pointedly down at their naked bodies and then back up to his face. "And it feels so strange to me to know nothing—" Charles placed the pad of his thumb against her lower lip to stall her words. One corner of his mouth raised uncontrollably. He made an educated guess that a typical male prostitute would not reveal this much about himself, but Ariel had no point of reference against which to compare this experience. And, so, he answered.

"No. I've no one." And the response was tragically true. He had no surviving siblings. Acquaintances rather than true friends. Colleagues rather than companions. No woman had ever enticed him enough to contemplate spending his life with her. He had his work as his lover, friend, and family. And now, he had a skewed sense of the self he'd worked so hard to cultivate all because a distant cousin had died without any direct heirs.

Charles traced her plump lip with his thumb, the tip just slipping inside and setting his blood back on the path to boiling.

"And you stayed here all by yourself? That seems so lonely," she said wistfully, her eyes searching his face with a sincerity that shook him.

He wanted to ask her if that seemed as lonely as a woman who was so disregarded and overlooked by Society that she had to hire a man to give away her virginity, but he didn't. Those words would have been in his father's cold, cruel tone…an echo from Charles' damaged past…and Ariel didn't deserve that. The man was dead and buried; his words deserved to be, too.

"I manage," he replied in a low tone. And he did. He'd learned to carve out an existence in the life laid out before him. Inheriting this dukedom had set him off-kilter, but he was determined to follow the path he'd charted and continue onward. He'd return to Boston and try to forget that he'd ever been to this dreary little island…but he somehow knew this woman lying against him would be much, much harder to forget.

∞∞∞

"Oh, no! I couldn't possibly—"

"You most certainly can , and you most certainly will ."

"I couldn't—"

"You can, Ariel ."

Charles had been attempting to convince Ariel of the wisdom of his demand for the better part of ten minutes and his patience was wearing thin. Why couldn't she trust him about this? He was, after all, the supposed expert in this situation.

And this was something he'd craved with ravenous intensity since the moment he'd decided to continue with this farce.

Ariel sat up in bed and was clutching the thin coverlet to her breasts in an ineffectual shield. The pink flush bleeding from her cheeks to her throat stood out in stark contrast to the fine fabric. Her eyes were downcast in a mixture of contemplation and mortification at his proposition; he found he missed her eyes, though the gilded fan of her long lashes against her cheeks was rather entrancing. Propping himself up on an elbow, Charles stretched out an arm and gently turned her chin to face him.

"I assure you;" he began in a soft yet firm tone; "I have wanted nothing more—especially not since I saw your delectable bare flesh. And, if I may be so blunt, I want to see all of you and taste every bit of your dripping cunny." His cock twitched powerfully at her sharp inhalation. She nibbled her lower lip in an unconsciously enticing mo- tion. His voice was barely above a growl when next he spoke; "And you wanted a thorough education, did you not? Let me taste you, Ariel." Her eyes slid down to his mouth and, finally, she nodded her head.

There was less than a fraction of a second between her assenting gesture and when he swiftly positioned himself flat on the bed. He then smoothly hauled Ariel from her nest of sheets so she straddled him with a knee on either side of his head. She yelped in surprise, but the sound quickly dissolved into nervous giggles.

"Grip the headboard," he instructed in a tone that brooked no questioning, his large palms cupping her rear, testing the soft pillows of flesh, spreading them and kneading them with reverence. She did so, and it canted her hips, opening her up wide to his gaze. His mouth watered as he memorized the dewy folds of her sex. He filled his lungs with the heady scent of her—the undercurrent of her lightly scented soap from an earlier bath lingering beneath the salt of their earlier coupling. "Now, come to me." She looked down at him with comically wide eyes but did not move. "Lower yourself," he demanded, his fingers digging into the lush flesh of her bottom to urge her down.

"I—I don't wish to suffocate you…" Her words were pained with embarrassment, but Charles's eyes flashed up to meet hers.

"Darling, if that is the way God wishes me to die, then I shall gladly do so. I shall perish a legend and be proud of it. In fact, it is a method of death I find far preferable to all others available." A small whimper of unwilling excitement eeked from Ariel's throat. "Now. Lower yourself onto me and let me taste you. I have been a very patient man and I believe I deserve a reward."

Charles sent up a silent prayer of thanks when Ariel finally lowered herself. She was tentative at first until he urged her flush with his face. Any apprehension she retained melted away when he began to use his lips and tongue to introduce her to a new kind of wicked plea- sure. It wasn't long before she began to press herself against him, rocking her pelvis to seek out the teasing touches he offered. He took his time learning every inch of her, exploring every petal and fold, spearing his tongue deep within her slick channel to make her shudder and moan as she clamped her thick thighs around his head. Heat flooded his groin, bringing his burgeoning arousal to painful hardness with a speed unlike anything he'd ever experienced. He couldn't resist wrapping a fist around his throbbing member, gipping it nearly as tight as Ariel's body had earlier. He pumped his fist in time with the rocking of Ariel's hips against his mouth. Her entire body trembled and clenched, she cried out and threw her head back when he sucked on the swollen, sensitive nub at the crux of her sex. He moaned against her, the sound rumbling through his body to tickle her further.

He licked and nibbled, he sucked and swirled, he relished the sweet nectar dripping down his chin and collecting on his tongue like ambrosia from the gods. His hand pumped his erection harder, palming the head before squeezing the length from tip to root and back, again, and again, and again. Likewise, Ariel's movements became more desperate and her breathing more ragged. She was close…so close he could quite literally taste it. A few more practiced flicks of his tongue and she shattered. Charles closed his eyes and absorbed her climax with every one of his senses until he could take it no more.

She hadn't quite floated back down to earth when Charles, carrying Ariel with him, sat up and laid her on her back before entering her in one deep, rough thrust that stole the air from both their lungs. He swore he could see stars flying through the darkness behind his clenched eyes. Ariel's fingers grabbed at his arms and waist. It took him a moment to realize she was trying to pull him closer rather than push him away.

Well, he couldn't say no to that, could he?

Charles retreated from her tight sheath nearly to the tip before slamming back. He was held rapt by her dreamy expression, her plump lips parted in silent gasps as he began to pound into her. His eyes roved her flushed skin, the perfection of her bountiful bouncing breasts and their ripe berry nipples, the smooth curves and valleys of her luscious hips and abdomen.

Gripping her shapely ankles, he spread her legs wide to make her vulnerable to his powerful thrusts and give him an uninhibited view of the point where their bodies joined and glided. Charles was held rapt by the sight of his painfully turgid cock sliding in and out of her body, lulled into an erotic trance by the delighted gasps of this incredibly bold, sensual woman.

He leaned forward and groaned at the delicious new angle; his pelvis ground against her clitoris in just the right rhythm he'd already learned would set her aflame. He palmed her breasts and plucked at the hard buds of her nipples, earning him a cry of pleasure. And, when she came again, he followed not far behind. He ripped himself from her fluttering sheath and spilled his hot seed across her succulent breasts.

Chest heaving, Charles gazed down at the glorious sight of Ariel laid out beneath him like a nymph on the altar of a pagan god, her rosy-blond hair fanned out behind her head like a halo and her soft, curvaceous body a masterpiece of Renaissance art in the flickering light. His heart thudded against his ribs and his pulse rattled his bones. When her mouth tilted in a small smile of wonderment, it stuttered sharply.

Beautiful.

This woman was beautiful in every sense of the word; she was also driven, brave, sensuous, desirable, and she had no idea how dangerous she was.

∞∞∞

It took Charles nearly thirty painful minutes of creeping around in the dark until he was able to successfully slip from the back door of the Townhouse to the mews, his cloak and hat in tow. He donned the garments to help him blend into the shadows as he slipped away, forc- ing himself to avoid glancing back at the rear of the brick building like a pitiful pining pup.

It had taken an otherworldly amount of strength and will to untangle Ariel's soft body from his and drag himself from her warm bed, but he knew he had to make his way through Mayfair to his own home before the sun rose. Already the sky was threatening to lighten to lilac and, soon, reality would overtake the feverish dream that was the previous night. Slipping through the streets, Charles believed with every fiber of his being that he would never see Ariel again…though a part of him was unaccountably deflated over this fact.