All that pleasure chasing away the pain.
It was the most erotic sight he'd ever seen. Thea's lips pursed and those big, blue-gray eyes focused in concentration as she slid her fingers along his shaft.
He moaned, showing her that she pleased him.
Mind screaming with need now. Hands fisted into the bedclothes on either side of his hips to stop from parting the folds of her sex with his fingers and plunging his cock to the hilt.
Wrap her legs around his back and lift her hips and rock in the cradle of her body.
She'd be his equal in passion. And inventiveness. She'd ride him . . . match his movements and improvise ones of her own.
Body tensing, muscles gripping, mind blanking.
He was too ready and she was too lovely with her breasts thrust over her stays and her golden curls streaming around her shoulders as she concentrated on what she was doing.
He reached for her neck and kissed her then, brushing his tongue against her tongue, deepening the kiss while she worked his cock with her smooth, soft fingers.
She tasted like honey. Like the sweetest substance in the world and he could get stuck in her and drown, drunk with pleasure.
Bruised ribs forgotten, he molded her softness against him, thrusting into her hand, lost to everything now but the driving need coursing through his veins.
"Faster," he gasped. And she pumped him faster. Harder.
He buried his face in her rose-scented hair, dripping with sweat, convulsing with need.
His climax hit him like a fist to the gut, splintering his control and bringing blood rushing through his body and pleasure screaming through every nerve.
Flopping back onto the bed, he drew Thea against his chest. Her curls mixing with his sweat. His seed on her hand, pooling across his abdomen.
Pleasure thudded through him, fainter now, like the fading drumbeat of a retreating army. He didn't want it to end.
He stroked her hair. "That was so good, Thea. Thank you."
"You're welcome." She raised her head, smiling shyly. "Was that . . . right?"
"More than right."
When he regained enough equilibrium he grabbed his old, torn linen shirt and wiped them clean.
In the candlelight her eyes had a lighter circle of gray, like a band of silver clasped around her pupil. How had he not noticed that before?
He banded his arms around her and settled her against his chest, drinking in the scent of warm, recently pleasured woman.
He wasn't going to examine why it felt so right. Or why he didn't even care about breaking his rules. Why shouldn't he sleep with Thea in his arms?
He could drift in this pleasure a few hours longer.
It was unexpected, this happiness.
Shouldn't her mother's imperious, recriminating tones be intruding into her head about now? Remonstrating. Scolding.
Instead there was only the sighing of Dalton's breath and the steady beat of his heart against her ear, and a pleasant hum of lingering, languid sensation in her limbs.
"I find I rather like bed sport," she said. "I think I have an affinity for it."
"Mmm." He nuzzled her ear with firm, questing lips. "I won't dispute that."
Goodness, she loved hearing his breath hitch. "What do you call it, anyway? The moment of . . . completion."
"My climax . . ." he murmured drowsily. "Crisis . . . coming . . . my pleasure." He stroked her hair. "Our pleasure."
She drifted, held tight in the warm circle of his arms. If she'd known he was this agreeable after having a crisis, then she should have given him one that first night. It would have made things easier.
Thea smiled against his chest.
The release . . . the coming. And then the discovery.
She'd never considered all the possibilities of this body of hers. How she could be so much more than something inert, silent, draped in satin and stuck with feathers to entice a mate.
There was so much more to her body.
Pleasure singing through blood and contracting muscles.
And there was more to this journey as well. A destination. Leading to more discovery.
"Dalton?"
A grunt. He was still awake.
"The painting I seek in your attic is a self-portrait by Artemisia, the Renaissance painter I told you about. Her letters mention a painting she was working on entitled Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting, but it's been lost."
His fingers drifted lightly across her shoulder. "What would you do with the painting?"
"Write about it . . . perhaps an article for the British Institution. History has relegated her to a brief footnote. The seventeenth century wasn't ready for a fiery, opinionated woman who utilized her art to pass judgment on a society that restricted her freedoms."
"So you want to rewrite history."
"I'd like to think perhaps the world might be ready for the self-portrait now. Ready to acknowledge her bold, uncompromising talent."
"Perhaps. Though I wouldn't hold out much hope of that."
"Women's artwork was . . . still is . . . supposed to be feminine, and safe, and placid. Artemisia broke that mold. There's nothing pretty or safe about her mythological paintings. Blood spurts from the neck of her Holofernes, while a muscular, anguished Judith saws through bone and gristle."
He shifted above her. "Really? I'd like to see that."
"The painting's in a gallery in Florence. I think it's the reason I'm here instead of dutifully embroidering a sampler at my grandmother's house in London, waiting to be sold to Foxford. That painting proclaims that our fingers are no less skillful, our minds no less sharp and our sensibilities, the way we view the world, no less unique."
"There are others, you know," Dalton said drowsily.
She searched his face in the darkness. "What do you mean, there are others?"
"Other attics . . . rooms . . . entire estates filled with artworks and antiquities my father won at gambling. Stole, really."
"Truly?" Thea's heart pounded. "Where?"
Dalton's chest rose and fell beneath her like the swell of a wave beneath a ship.
"When I was fifteen, home from Eton on holidays, my father brought me to a large town house in Mayfair. The way he was acting, so furtive and secretive, I thought perhaps he wanted to introduce me to one of his mistresses. I was wrong."
His voice drifted into silence and Thea held her breath, needing the story to continue, afraid he might fall asleep first.
"The house was literally filled floor to ceiling with treasure, like some mythological dragon's lair. Marble statues . . . coffers of coins . . . piles of priceless, ancient paintings . . ."
Thea's breath caught. "That must have been quite a sight. What did he do with it all?"
"Nothing." A bitter note crept into Dalton's deep voice. "Hoarded it. He had an eye for beauty, the old duke, but he only wanted to claim, to possess, to become the wealthiest man in England." His voice trailed off and his breathing deepened.
Thea brushed his rough, angular jaw, wanting to soften this memory for him somehow. "It's all still there?"
"Covered in dust," he murmured sleepily. "And cobwebs . . . the attic at Balfry is only a taste. I've no idea what should be done with his hoard."
Her skin heated from his arms around her, and now her mind buzzed with possibilities. She'd gladly help him decide what to do with ancient masterpieces.
"Some noblemen donate ancestral artworks to the Institution," she whispered, keeping her voice even, not wanting to frighten him away with the excitement and fervor sparking in her mind. "The Institution exhibits the works for the public occasionally, and for students of art to copy and study."
"I like that idea." His arm twitched against her shoulder and his breathing grew rhythmic.
"Dalton?" she whispered.
No reply.
It was so unfamiliar to hear someone else breathing close to her. She'd never had anyone else in her bedchamber. No sisters. No friends who spent the night and crawled into bed to whisper secrets.
She'd always been alone.
What would she and Dalton say to each other tomorrow? How would she look at him without imagining the wicked, secret things they'd done?
Thea's entire body flashed hot, and then cold, thinking of it.
She'd truly broken loose from familial moorings now.
There was danger in that thought. Uncertainty.
But also excitement.
And a tantalizing taste of freedom.
Chapter 15
Damn, damn, damn.
Dalton woke with Thea's head nestled into his neck and her small fist tucked under his jaw. He counted one unforgivable sin for every breath she took against his chest.
Accepting a morsel of creamy trifle from her spoon.
Pouring her a tumbler of honeyed Irish whiskey.
Accepting her dare to prove he was a rake. Wrapping his cravat around her wrists.
Jesus. Had he really done that?
Lapping her creamy sweetness until she cried her release. Clasping his hand around her hand and teaching her to give him release.
And the worst crime of all?
Wrapping his arms around her and telling her that the paintings in the attic at Balfry were only a taste.
Stupid, heartless, triple-damned bastard.
He never slept the entire night with a woman in his arms, vulnerable and pleasure sated.
Last night he'd given in to a self-indulgent need for connection he hadn't surrendered to since Cambridge when he'd fancied himself a poet and drank cheap wine in taverns and written verses even more unpalatable than the wine.
What happens next? she'd asked.
He'd been dying to show her exactly what happened next.