A Gentlewoman's Pleasure Read Free Page B

think of her being here, plain, eccentric Lucy of the spectacles and knickerbockers, all alone and stark naked in the house of a handsome and mysterious young man.
    I’ll seek you all out again, when I’m next in London. And this time I’ll have something to tell you, even if you think I’m making it up.
    Her simple breakfast over, Lucy discovered Ethan had retrieved her belongings. From her portmanteau she took out her dressing case, which contained all her personal items, and set about her toilette using the same earthenware bowl that he’d used. Although her tweed bicycling habit was still damp, her undergarments were dry. And yet she hesitated to put them on. To get dressed was to prepare to leave, and she didn’t want to do that.
    We have negotiations to contract.
    So instead of her own clothing, she took a shirt of Ethan’s from the rack and slipped it over her head. It smelled wonderful, of herbs again, and despite the fact that it almost came down to her knees and she had to roll up the sleeves, it felt deliciously sensual and provocative to be wearing it.
    Where are you, Mr. Oakley? Where are you?
    What was this business he had to deal with, she wondered as she lay back down on the bed again. Though there were books aplenty on a wide variety of fascinating topics, she couldn’t settle to read. She could only want him, her rescuer.
    Lying amongst the linen, she imagined him there with her, touching her. Experimentally, she cupped her hand around her breast, sliding the linen of Ethan’s shirt over it, tickling her nipple that had crested at the thought of him. She remembered certain breathless afternoons with Ralph, the man who’d romanced her. The exquisite sensations had been wonderful, but she’d sensed him shocked by her enthusiasm. When they’d parted, no further young men had come around, and she’d made no attempts to make herself attractive to another swain. Instead, she’d thrown herself into other pursuits: art, botany, reading, needlework and, of course, cycling. Her family were quite wealthy, she didn’t need a suitor, and so she’d settled down into her role as the eccentric spinster in their midst. At thirty-two, she’d thought herself content with her lot. And she had been until now.
    Until the moment Ethan Oakley had appeared to her, as a tantalizing stranger walking out of a rainstorm. He was a man she’d barely exchanged more than a few words with, and yet one with whom she was prepared, nay desperate, to share her body.
    The feelings of excitement gathered. Her nipples were hard and aching, and between her thighs there was a heavy, gathering sensation that called insistently for contact, for pressure, for stroking and teasing and more, more, more…
    Lost in a dream, she pressed her hand to her cleft, imagining it Ethan’s. She’d set aside her glasses on the bedside chest, but she didn’t need them to see him with her mind’s eye. His smile was beautiful as he caressed her and petted her intimately with those kind, strong fingers of his. Whipping up her borrowed shirt, she crammed her own fingers against the moist flesh of her sex and found the sensitive little pearl that nestled there.
    “Ethan,” she moaned, manipulating herself, imagining it was he. Her legs kicked amongst the bed linen and she squirmed against the firm-packed feather mattress, her body tense and striving as she continued to rouse herself in his name. She’d done this before, albeit infrequently, but never had it seemed as powerful and as meaningful as it did now.
    She was his handmaiden, preparing the way for his return.
    Parading images of him bathing, and leaning over her on this very bed, she grew more and more excited. Her sex cried out silently for fulfillment, and beyond point of turning back, she rubbed harder, reaching out for it.
    Then the crisis came, white and perfect, drowning her in pleasure and in the intensity of his blue eyes, watching and applauding her in the kingdom of her