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A huge hand cupped the back of her head as she dropped against him, suddenly freezing in the half-empty tub of tepid water.
“Miss Prichard, there was no need to flood the whole bloody chamber,” he rumbled, and she squeaked again when she was once more lifted, set outside the tub on the slippery marble floor. “Careful, dear girl. Let’s get you out of that dress.”
She had never been naked in front of a man before, but she supposed they were far beyond the point of impropriety. She was soaked to the skin, her chemise plastered to her body, a fact emphasized by the stays of her dress. The sodden dress struck the floor, her chemise close behind. Here we are, old girl. Moment of truth. Lillie knew she was no great beauty. She didn’t need a magic mirror or the High Tea tattler to proclaim her too dumpy to be a diamond. She had never needed to be beautiful, and so it had never been something that weighed on her mind. At that moment, though, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to throw herself into his arms or sink into one of the puddles on the floor and disappear into an invisible ocean.
The unruly waves of her hair frequently fought loose from her cap throughout the day, unremarkable brown that pulled russet. She’d grown up in a small coastal town, not terribly far from the seat of his Lordship’s ancestral home, as a matter of fact. She came from a line of employed peoples, nary a title to be found. She was no secret duchess, no foreign princess masquerading as the help. She was the round-faced housekeeper with dimpled thighs and an overactive imagination, and it was too late to hope she would magically transform into something different.
The hull of a ship had been rescued from the waters by fishermen, and its rusted-out remains sat in front of the docks of her childhood home as a sort of monument. Her hair was the same color as the rusty hull—coarse instead of silken, as untamable as the waves that had pulled that ship to the ocean’s floor. She had always been solidly built, even as a child, and with age, her curves had softened and rounded out, a plump partridge instead of a sleek songbird. At three-and-thirty, she was comfortable in her spinsterhood and saw no reason to care about the fickle desires of men. At least until now.
“Such a perfect northern rose,” he murmured, which was somehow harder for her to hear than his criticisms. “We’re a different breed, aren’t we? These Londoners would crack in a Highland gale, and there’s not a’one them that could withstand a Welsh winter on the coast. Let me have you again, my little Lillie flower.”
It was going to be hard to leave after this. It would be hard to put the earl and his home out of her mind when he remarried, and she would likely leave with her heart in broken shards at the bottom of her bag, but at this point, the damage was done. “I’m here to serve his Lordship’s needs, whatever they may be.”
She did not expect to be led to the bed. It seemed incredibly personal, more than she expected. The bed was for a wife, for a mistress, for a partner of his station. Not for the help, the downstairs employees, yet Lord Ellingboe led her to his bed nonetheless. It was then that she saw it.
On the bedside table, right there, just beyond her reach, was the missing book she’d been searching for. She gasped in shock and no small bit of outrage, unable to hide her reaction.
“Some light bedtime reading, my lord?” She kept her voice light, noting the way his eyes sparkled, and his lips twitched. “Gwinnifrith’s Garden?”
“Ah, so you’re the one who keeps moving them. Do you know, I was quite convinced I was going senile? One moment they were before my desk. The next, they were behind it. One day they sat right there on the edge. I couldn’t keep track of where I had moved them and where they were being placed. I had considered we might have a ghost.”
“They’re your books?!”
“Whose should they be, in my own library? I certainly hope they belong to me.” For the very first time she could remember since she had begun her employment in the earl’s household, a sly smile stretched across his face, lips curling around his tusks. “Did you flip through, Miss Prichard? Was there anything in particular that struck you? Any favorites? I hope you took the time to read the different passages. The prose is lovely.”
“I’m quite certain his Lordship wasn’t reading for the prose.” She took the book from him stiffly when he held it out, a deep scrape of laughter rumbling from his chest. She didn’t need to go searching. She knew exactly to which page the book would flip open, one she had spent too long gazing at.
“Ahhhh, an excellent choice. Lay back, my dear. Let me read it to you. ‘The feast of idolation begins,’” he began to read aloud, pulling her legs open to kneel between them. Lillie felt her heart thumping in her mouth. “‘With a bounty so sumptuous, no man can resist taking his time to savor each flavor, each dish. The mellow morning sun, warmed on your skin.’” His mouth lowered to her clavicle, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to her skin, his lips and tongue moving in a wet arc across her chest. ‘“The heat of the day, warmed in the oven of your mouth.’”
She’d never appreciated how wide set his jaw was until that moment, but she supposed it made sense. Such thick tusks needed to be accommodated. They pressed into her cheeks, not uncomfortably, as his lips drew closer to hers.
“How long,” he murmured cryptically, thumb caressing her lip, the heat of his breath mingling with hers before his lips descended, sucking the air from her lungs as his tongue delved into her mouth. A kiss, like the bed, was something normally reserved for a lady of higher regard—a partner, not a diversion. When he withdrew at last, she was gasping, her lungs deprived of air as they’d been the morning he bade her to sit with him in the solarium. “That pinnacle of joy, to languish sated in your garden, to savor on the tongue. To feast until the fountain weeps its glory, her rushing waters cresting at my teeth.’”
The coverlet was smooth and cool as her hands clenched it, desperate for something to hold onto. When the heat of his mouth closed her cunt, she seized as if she’d been struck by lightning. Slow kisses, the wet drag of his tongue through her folds, his lips puckering around her clit, drawing a cry from her throat.
“That’s right, poppet. I want to hear you moan for me as I lick this sweet pussy. Are you going to flood my mouth, Lillie flower? Until your rushing waters crest at my teeth?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. His bed was enormous, a private complaint she had always harbored, fussing to restore the bed clothes every morning, but now it seemed somehow too small to contain her, as her hands gathered up the bedding, the only thing in the world that tethered her to the ground; that and the onslaught of his tongue. He licked and sucked her with a savage intensity, a fast and furious movement against the throbbing of her sex, one that matched the ferocity with which he stroked his cock at night in the library. She was no virgin, but neither was she experienced, and she’d had no idea the tempestuous speed and fervor such lovemaking required. She didn’t know the results would be any different if he slowed down, and if he would’ve attempted to do so then, she would’ve tightened her grip on his thick hair and pulled with all her might, for a dazzling light had begun to spark the corners of her vision, and she desperately required to stay the course. The walls of his chamber spun around her in a swirling vortex of color, two of his thick fingers sliding into her again.
A hard suckle on her clit was enough to send her over the edge. Lillie gave him the moan he was hoping for, tightening her hands around his skull as her hips rolled up into him, stroking herself against his mouth. The tips of his tusks pressed into the soft flesh above her sex, and the slight wince of pain only gilded the lily of her pleasure, flooding his mouth, exactly as he had ordered.
She would be humiliated later. When he rose above her, towering over on his knees, cock jutting out stiffly, she could see the shine on his face from her juices, a sight that should have had her burning in mortification. That moment, though, all she could do was open her legs a bit wider to accommodate the girth of his body settling between her thighs, rumbling as he rubbed his pierced cockhead against the dripping lips of her sex.
“Miss Prichard, I would quite like to fuck you again, if you are amenable.” A twitch of his glistening lips around his tusks, better than any beaming smile she’d ever seen.
“Does his Lordship wish to spend himself inside me?” She had stretched open her legs as invitingly as possible, biting back another moan of pleasure as he fed his cock into her, spreading her open once more.
“He does indeed. A flood for the fountain.”
Lillie remembered the scene she had created in her head, Lord Ellingboe between a woman’s spread-open legs, pumping away, small hands scrabbling at his back. This was much nicer, she thought. There was no new wife, no new contessa. It was her hands, her nails dragging against his green skin, settling over the tops of his generous buttocks as he fucked her deeply. He wasn’t going to last long. She could tell by his rhythm, from the speed with which his hips hitched, the deep vibration of his chest against her as he groaned.
The Monsters Ball was weeks away, she reminded herself. Weeks away, and a wedding wouldn’t take place for probably weeks more after that. Plenty of time to enjoy him this way, perhaps. After all, it was the responsibility of the downstairs staff to see to the needs of the upstairs, and Lord Ellingboe’s need was clear. She had always taken a great deal of pride in her work, and she saw no reason to stop doing so now.
Chapter 5
When she woke the following morning, she was in Lord Ellingboe’s bed. The sun had not yet risen. Alone in Lord Ellingboe’s bed, she amended, sitting up with a twist in her stomach, pulling the sheets up to her chin.
There were benefits to their unusually small household. The hallways were empty. Dorcas and her assistant rarely ventured up from the kitchens, and Gerrold, when he was residence, had a talent for materializing whenever the earl had need of him but was invisible otherwise. Mr. Phip kept his carriage house beside the stable, and the maids were wherever she sent them. She knew every nook and cranny of this house as a result, having wandered it by herself many times over. It was not hard for her to gather up the hem of her sodden dress, wincing at the wet chill of it against her skin, carrying her stockings and boots, and taking off down the hallway in a gallop. She was back in her own quarters in a blink, in a warm, dry dress, wondering what she was to do next.
