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She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘I see. And what is it you do? When you’re alone in your room? What is it you do when you cannot sleep?’
‘Sometimes... Sometimes I dig my fingernails into my palms. I do that when I am afraid. I was doing it the night of the ball, when I was trying to get up the courage to...’
‘I see. So you have given yourself pain, but never the pleasure to go with it.’
‘I like it,’ she said.
‘Good. So do I.’
‘Do you... Do you give yourself pain?’
He chuckled. ‘No. I like to give it.’
And he could see, in that veiled expression, there in the garden, that his answer terrified and thrilled her all at once.
‘But right now,’ he said. ‘There is something else. Something else I must do.’
He lowered his head and scraped his teeth along her collarbone, and he hoped, belatedly, that he had not left a mark. If so, she would have to retrieve her pelisse immediately.
He enjoyed residual marks on a woman’s skin from lovemaking, but he admitted that marking one’s own wife before having to go back into a ballroom was likely not the best thing.
He sat her down on the bench. And it was true, he preferred a woman on her knees before him, but, he had always known the power inherent in what he wished to do to her. So many men refused. Or were not skilled in the act.
And he had found that there was as much power to be had in branding a woman with pleasure, as guiding her in doing the same to him.
There was a tipping point, where pleasure could be used as torture, and this was one of the most effective ways he had found to do it.
They would not have infinite time here. But it would be enough.
He knelt before her and began to push her dress up over her knees. She locked them together.
‘What is the matter?’
‘I...’
‘So sweet,’ he said. ‘You really are an innocent, aren’t you?’
She nodded. ‘You know that I am. The only ways in which I am not innocent are ways I was marked by your hands.’
‘I delight in that,’ he said. ‘I should like to mark you all over.’
‘Briggs,’ she said, shivering.
‘Spread your legs for me.’
‘I...’
‘Spread them.’
She did so, and he pushed her skirts up the rest of the way, revealing that delightful triangle of pale curls at the apex of her thighs.
And his mouth watered.
‘You are beautiful,’ he said.
He pressed his thumb against that source of her pleasure that he knew was there, smoothed it in a circle, and listened as she cried out in pleasure.
