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“Will his Lordship be attending the ball, then?” She asked, trying not to notice that her fingers trembled as she fitted each decorative button into its slender repository. “I shall ensure that your formalwear is ready in such case.” She thought her voice sounded a bit tetchy and hoped he hadn’t noticed.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet. I suppose it should be a consideration.”
“One would hope his Lordship had spent a goodly deal of time thinking about remarriage. It’s not a decision to be made in haste, is it?” Her words were wildly inappropriate. It was not her place to question anything Lord Ellingboe said or did, let alone his marital status.
“I’m sure those vultures at the High Tea would love to know that. It’s possible. A man does have needs, after all, regardless of species.”
“A man has plenty of servants to see to his needs,” she retorted without thinking, the meaning of his words dawning on her a breath later, bringing a flash of fire to her face. Lillie could scarcely raise her eyes from the stitching at his ankle.
“But not enough servants to prevent his housekeeper from needing to get on her knees to fasten his trousers, a task of which I would be quite capable. I shudder to think what else Gerrold has told you I’m unable to manage. And in any case, some needs should be handled by someone...closer.”
Lillie raised her head for the first time since she had begun fastening the tiny buttons along his trouser leg. She peered up through her eyelashes, Lord Ellingboe’s stormy gaze trapping her. Someone closer. She had never been as close to him as she was at that moment, and perhaps it was that nearness that turned her mind. Perhaps it was the wildness of her imagination, the vividness of her fantasies, or perhaps it was simply the way he smelled, like vanilla and pipe smoke, begging her to press her nose to his throat and inhale him into her that made her traitorous tongue continue wagging.
“Gerrold mentioned you might need help with the dressing ring, my Lord. Am I close enough for that?”
For a long, yawning moment, he said nothing. Lillie watched his throat work, watched his lips twitch around his thick tusks, huge hands opening and closing at his side, watched his eyes turn from slate to tempest. And now you’ll be sacked.
“Yes,” he agreed slowly. “I suppose he’s right. I might well need assistance with that.”
The time it took her to rise up on her knees was interminable. Their gazes remained locked, unblinking, un-breathing, and when her hands, at last, reached the open waistband, Lillie thought she might faint.
“Do you dress to the left or the right, my lord?” She didn’t need him to answer. She could already feel the shape of him, a heavy bulge at the front of the nankeen trousers, resting against the top of his left thigh.
“To the left, my dear.”
It was impossible to move her hand into the front of the material without touching him intimately—her wrist grazing the taut skin of his lower belly, the brush of coarse hair against the base of her palm, and then—he was simultaneously too large for her to grip and the only thing she ever needed to hold in the palm of her hand again. She wished she had spent more time paging through that book before she had lost it to the wilds of his study, for she couldn’t be certain if the illustrations were an exaggeration of proportion or not.
The heft of him in her hand was like nothing she could have imagined. Fat and full and burning hot, as if the weight of him might scald her. Her fingertips tarried over each snaking vein and ripple in his thick shaft, learning his shape and committing it to memory as quickly as she was able, emblazoning it onto the blank slate of her mind; a secret, priceless knowledge she would treasure and revisit every time her eyes fluttered closed for the rest of her life. The meat of his cock filled her whole hand, her fingers barely closing around the heft of him. When she squeezed, he grunted, an unmistakable reaction that ignited an inferno between her thighs.
Her fingertips kept moving down, down, down the endless length of him, thick and wild in her hand, thicker than he had been only a moment earlier, and she was reminded of the eel they had joked of. She wondered if, like an eel, he would thrash in her grip, desperate to free himself, to spend himself all over her. The pad of her thumb moved over the flare of his cock head at last, and then she was drawing back his sheath, another unmistakable reaction from him, a swallowed groan when she tightened her grip, moving her thumb over the ring that pierced him.
She was forced to let his cock go then, feeling the inside of his trouser leg for the stay. It was a small hook, no different from the ones on the front of her pelisse. Her fingers learned the shape of the hook and the width of its mouth, understanding that she was to secure it around his dressing ring, holding his cock securely in place and preventing an unseemly bulge at the front of his trousers. Keeping one finger on the hook, the rest of her hand traveled back to the fat shape of him, gripping him at the flared base of his head.
She gave an experimental tug on the ring through his tip, and the earl hissed. Lillie wondered if it gave him pleasure, if he enjoyed it being tugged in such a fashion, and what it might feel like inside her. When the small, fabric-covered hook found its target, Lord Ellingboe let out a breath, a great heaving exhalation as if he had been waiting on tenterhooks to see if she would successfully complete her task. Another soft squeeze to his slightly stiffened shaft, her nails grazing the edge of his heavy sac before her hand pulled free.
Lillie used him for leverage to pull herself up, her heart thumping so loudly in her chest that she was positive it would drown out any words that might trip off her treacherous tongue.
She had just held his Lordship’s bare cock in her hand. Held it and learned it, squeezed it. Had done all but stroke it for him. She wondered what happened to her overnight, if she had been abducted and dragged to an opium den, plied with absinthe and laudanum, or any other assortment of medicinals and vices that might have explained her actions thusly. Lord Ellingboe was breathing hard, but he said nothing. No expression of disgust, no sharp reprimand, but not either a desire for her to continue. His jaw seemed locked in place, for she watched his throat bobbing, his strong, square chin seeming stuck beneath his tusks before, at last, his throat cleared.
“I’d like for you to have Dorcas prepare a menu to send off to the manor. All of her best dishes and what they’ll entail. I’m especially fond of that roasted crown of aurochs. If there are any deviations she’s made in her specialty, please note them. A new cook won’t be able to see into her mind from such a distance.”
“Are you bringing on a new cook, my Lord?” She was still asking impertinent questions for which she should have no expectation of an answer, but his lips twitched in response.
“Gerrold is, at present, interviewing and training new staff, Miss Prichard. I thought you were aware of that.”
She caught her lip between her teeth to prevent her tongue from wagging further. Of course, she knew that, and she ought not to go out of her way to sound ignorant to the goings-on of the household. Lord Ellingboe swallowed hard, the lump of it bobbing in his throat.
“I won’t return until early evening. I’d like a bath prepared when I do, be sure to have Phip on hand to assist with the water.”
“Will you require my assistance again, my Lord?” She would thread an embroidery needle as soon as she returned to her rooms, Lillie vowed, and fasten her tongue to the inside of her lip, much in the way that she had fastened Lord Ellingboe’s cock to the inside of his trousers. The less opportunity for it to cause trouble, the better.
“Yes,” he agreed after a weighted moment, surprising her. “I do believe I will require your assistance, Miss Prichard. That is, if you’re willing to give it once more.”
Chapter 4
The soaking tub seemed even larger than she remembered. The volume of water poured in by Mr. Phip was an endless deluge, and she was shocked at the way it barely filled the bottom third of the tub.
“Once he climbs in, it’s likely to be to the top,” he shrugged when she protested.
