Читать книгу Sin - Sharon Page - Страница 6

What would her jaded lord do with his hands while the lovely courtesan knelt between his legs and kissed him intimately?

Venetia Hamilton tapped the end of her brush against her lips as she studied her watercolor painting. Even though her earl—yes, she’d decided he was an earl—was a most experienced man, this time he’d met his match in the delightful auburn-haired woman pleasuring him.

She couldn’t resist smiling at her imaginary earl’s downfall in the arena he believed he reigned supreme. Since his lordship was so steeped in vice, so bored by customary sensual acts, he’d begin with definite ennui, merely an onlooker to his own seduction.

In his right hand, Venetia sketched a glass of fine champagne. In his left, since he was in the theatre box of the pretty woman, she gave him a peeled orange the size of an ample breast, large enough to fill his strong hand. No, he would not touch the woman, she decided. But in his expression…there she could show not only the desire, but the growing wonderment as his heart began to open, to unfurl, to delight in the pleasures bestowed upon him.

She turned her attention to the audience, for her earl was receiving these daring caresses to his intimate parts in full view of the Drury Lane theatre. Ah, the expressions told the tale—the matrons pretending to be scandalized, but really enraptured by his magnificent proportions, his exquisite form, his handsome face. Envy on their husbands’ faces. And the leering looks of the mob in the orchestra.

Now she must tackle the earl’s expression. Capture perfectly the growing astonishment on his face as this act that he must have experienced a thousand times—at least—became new and special and wonderful once more…

She took short, unsteady breaths as she stepped back from naughty fantasy to the reality of her tiny studio. When she drew, she became one with the scene—not a participant, but a figure in the shadows, holding a brush, telling a life’s history in one erotic moment.

Her body hummed with desire, ached with it. She should be ashamed to admit it, but she wasn’t at all as proper as her mother had raised her to be. She was, after all, her father’s daughter.

With a sigh, Venetia plopped her brush in the jar and swirled it until the water blushed pink, lit by the fragile spring sunlight that spilled through the paned window. The only raven-haired scoundrels in her life lived on the canvases stacked on the narrow shelves of her studio, all safely hidden beneath muslin covers.

She knew perfectly well that love was a woman’s folly. That rakes never truly reformed—

A sharp rap on the door had her almost knocking over the water glass. The rap came again. Followed by a breathless, “My heavens, Miss Hamilton!”

She had to take the time to turn the easel so her painting faced the wall and Mrs. Cobb burst through the door just as she hid the scandalous picture.

Mrs. Cobb puffed from the jaunt up the stairs. Her cheeks blazed red, her cap was askew. She held out a card. “There is a gentleman to see you, mum. A gentleman calling upon you alone!”

“Which gentleman?” Her father? Rodesson outwardly appeared to be a ‘gentleman’. But he wouldn’t dare visit.

Her housekeeper pushed her cap upright. “The Earl of Trent, mum! I put him in the drawing room. Tea? Should I put the kettle on?”

Venetia’s heart tapped a frenzied dance in her chest. She pushed her chair back, snatched up the studio key, and crossed the floor in a heartbeat to take the card. Her thumb slid over thick, textured vellum embossed with a crest. Her gaze fell to the title, in bold text. It did indeed read—THE EARL OF TRENT.

She slumped against the doorframe in disbelief. How could the earl know who she was?

Mrs. Cobb lurked over her shoulder, demanding a decision on tea as Venetia locked the door to her studio with shaking hands.

“N—no tea,” Venetia stuttered. Lifting her skirts, she hurried down the hallway in the most unladylike way. But if she was running into disaster, she wanted to get it done with.

Plodding footfalls told her Mrs. Cobb was following but couldn’t keep up.

The most preposterous notion dawned as Venetia sped down the stairs. What if her father had gambled again, hoping to win his vowels back from the earl? What if this time Trent had won her at cards?

Reaching the open drawing room door, she stopped, smoothed her skirts, and gulped down steadying breaths. She must be careful. If she ruined her reputation, she ruined her sisters’ reputations. Maryanne, Grace…they at least deserved a chance at the lives Mother hoped they would lead—marriage, children, happiness…

The earl, she noted, had found the only warm spot in her chilly drawing room. As soon as she stepped inside, the cold seeped through her dress and wrapped its icy fingers around her bare neck. Since she never received guests, she never heated the room. At least a fire now crackled in the hearth.

His lordship stood so close to the licking flames, she feared a spark might set his trousers alight. His left elbow was propped on the mantel, between the unfortunate bric-a-brac left by the previous tenant—two candlesticks shaped like nude women and a bronze of his favorite mount.

Venetia closed the door gently behind her, then stopped short, still clutching the doorknob.

The earl balanced an open book in his large gloved hand and he lazily flipped the pages. The faint sunlight cast a bluish gleam on his coal-black hair and slanted across his straight shoulders. Even in a casual stance, he easily topped six feet and she couldn’t help but admire how his midnight-blue superfine emphasized the taper from wide back to narrow waist and lean hips. Skintight trousers displayed magnificent legs and disappeared into Hessians with a mirror finish.

She arched on tiptoe to spy around his broad frame. Pictures. The book did indeed contain pictures but she couldn’t see the detail—he stood too far away. But Tales of a London Gentleman was bound in burgundy leather, in exactly the same shade as the book lying across that massive hand.

The earl paused at a plate, then turned the book in his hand to study some detail that had caught his fancy. A flush prickled along the back of Venetia’s neck.

He moved to capture the light more fully on the page, and she saw his profile. Raven hair, darkly lashed eyes, patrician features, and wide, firm lips.

Her stomach pitched to her toes. Trent was the dark-haired gentleman who had appeared in her father’s pictures. The man she’d copied for her book. She’d thought him an invention of her father’s brush. But since he stood before her in the flesh, obviously her assumption had been wrong.

It made sense. Rodesson attended brothels and orgies and hells. Why wouldn’t he base his pictures on actual patrons? On the actual scenes he had witnessed?

The titles flew through her whirling mind. The Fair Lady Bound. The Jermyn Street Harem. The French Kiss.

Even The Trapeze in which the nude lady had been seated on a suspended bar over the gentleman’s upright—

Venetia pressed her hand to her churning stomach. Her father had changed Lord Trent’s appearance, she saw that now. She, in utter innocence, had decided to make her gentleman more handsome. By horrific accident, she had succeeded in making him look more like the actual man.

A soft groan spilled from her lips.

The earl looked up sharply and she stared into vivid turquoise eyes, the color startling and beautiful in contrast to his long sooty lashes and straight black brows.

That extraordinary shade had not appeared in her father’s pictures. Could she capture it? If she blended cobalt blue with a touch of—

“This is my personal favorite, Miss Hamilton. I think you have caught my likeness perfectly in this one.” Dangerous amusement rippled through Lord Trent’s seductive baritone and his deep masculine voice held her transfixed. “You have a remarkable talent.”

A remarkable talent. She felt a warm flush of pride, even as her knees almost buckled.

“My—my lord.” She managed a curtsy, a wobbly one, her plain gray skirts crumpling as she dipped. “I am afraid I don’t understand to what you are referring.”

He closed the book. His brows arched over those turquoise eyes—cerulean blue would do it, blended with a dab of yellow oxide—

“Your book of erotica in which I play the starring role.”

Erotica. The word flowed off his tongue in a nonchalant manner, as though they had met in the park and he had just touched his hat and commented on the rain. But it struck her with the force of a lusty slap on her backside. She thought of the pictures he was looking at, pictures she’d created, and all the confidence she’d struggled to earn evaporated in a heartbeat.

His lordship rested his elbow on the mantel and smiled at her confusion.

No. She had finally succeeded in taking charge of her life and she wasn’t about to surrender her control. Earl or no. She must bluff him. And, for the sakes of her mother and sisters, she must prove better at bluffing than her father.

She stiffened her spine. Prim disgust. That’s what she sought. She imagined Lady Plim, the wife of Sir Plim, and the sharp-tongued tartar of Maidenswode. “My lord, it may be the fashion amongst the aristocracy to carry scandalous tomes about and view them before unsuspecting women, but I am afraid your behavior is—”

He waved an elegant hand. “Don’t waste my time, Miss Hamilton. You’ve got paint on your sleeve.”

“Watercolors. A lady’s pastime.”

He chuckled and a shiver raced down her spine. She’d never heard a laugh like that. A low, rumbling, purely masculine laugh. It held a naughty suggestive sensuality that she’d never been treated to before.

He inclined his handsome head. “Rodesson has told me all about you, my dear. He came to me to plead for the return of his vowels—for the sake of his illegitimate daughters.”

Venetia flinched at the word illegitimate. It never failed to make her feel her parents’ actions had been her fault.

“But—” Her last-ditch attempt to protest that Rodesson was not her father died on her lips. His lordship knew the truth and she was not going to convince him otherwise.

He crooked his gloved finger. “Come here, Miss Hamilton. I don’t wish to shout our conversation across the room and I suspect you wouldn’t want that either.”

She glared, not willing to go at his command, but he was right, of course. She would bet pounds to pennies that Mrs. Cobb had her ear pressed to the keyhole. Reluctantly, Venetia marched toward the fireplace and the analogy of flinging herself from the pan to the flames leapt to mind.

She stopped at the worn and sagging wing chair, keeping it between them. But even separated from Lord Trent by a bulky piece of furniture, she felt small, dainty, and vulnerable confronted by his size and superb build. Her throat tightened. Her heart galloped. A quiver that she hoped was fear, but suspected wasn’t, arced down her spine.

The earl left the mantel and strolled toward her, the spine of her book cupped in his large palm. “Your father insisted he had no means of supporting his family other than the royalties for his books. He explained that his innocent eldest daughter has been forced to embark on a dangerous career painting erotica.”

What a fool her father had been! Trent was a rake, a scoundrel. He exuded so much sin and devilment, she suspected he didn’t dare walk into a church. Everything about him screamed debaucher. He moved with a tantalizing predatory grace, his twinkling eyes threatened disaster to an innocent heart, and as for his seductive, insolent grin—

“My father is aging!” she cried. “He was despondent, confused. He forgot he had painted pictures that were not previously published. Really, how could I have possibly created that sort of risqué work?”

“I don’t know, my dear. But you did, since it is obvious Rodesson didn’t paint them.”

Her heart hammered as Trent paced around the chair until he stood behind her. She refused to turn, but glanced back out of the corner of her eye. He towered over her. Trapped between his large body and the chair, she couldn’t retreat. He bent until his warm breath whispered along the rim of her ear, exposed by her severe chignon. She lurched back in shock, rewarded by the rasp of his closely shaved jaw along her cheek.

Despite her skittering nerves, she forced herself not to move. If she turned, her lips might touch his.

The maddening temptation to tilt her head toward his took her by surprise. She was hot, perspiring beneath her corset and tight-fitting bodice. Tense and wound up like a coiled spring.

This man had made love to a bound woman! This rogue had lain on a sumptuous bed, suckling the breast of one woman while another took him in her mouth—

Yes, the earl might look exactly like the sort of fantasy man she created with brush in hand—the gorgeous libertine felled by love—but it was an entirely different matter to have a real rake in possession of such devastating knowledge. And she didn’t think for one moment Trent would be felled by anything.

He rested her book on the back of the chair. To her astonishment, he flipped it open, turning the pages until he found a plate. “Ah, The Page Turner.”

She knew the picture by heart, of course. A young man holding a candelabrum and turning the pages while his fetching lady played. The buck’s pants were open, the lady’s breasts freed from her dress, her skirts pooling over her bared thighs. The lady pursed her pink-lipped mouth delicately toward his member. In the shadows beneath the instrument, another man—Trent as the lady’s secret lover—pleasured the lady with his fingers. A silly fantasy really—created because she had hated practicing her pianoforte.

Now devastating, because it involved him. Even over the crackle of the fire, her quick, shallow breathing seemed to fill the room.

“Exquisite.” The earl’s smooth rich voice wrapped around her like silk. “But while your style is very similar to your father’s, there are marked differences.”

“Impossible,” she lied. “Since the drawings are my father’s.”

“The lady’s hands are playing a chord that corresponds to the music sheet. I know the piece, my sister played it a thousand times—I used to be conscripted to hold her sheets. And in your father’s work, the females are vacuous, simpering, all of a type. But in this book, every woman is different. Distinct.”

“You look at the ladies’ faces, my lord?”

“Yes I do, Miss Hamilton,” he murmured by her ear. “Evidence of a lady’s touch, I believe.”

She kept her attention straight ahead but his scents teased her, enveloped her. A tinge of sandalwood soap. Starch in his shirt collar and cravat, cedar in his clothes, smoke and coffee on his breath. Horse and leather and the lightest hint of his sweat. The earl must be one of those gentlemen who enjoyed a good gallop on the Row at the crack of dawn.

Despite herself, she breathed deeply. Intrigued. Painted men did not have such alluring smells. She was cloistered in her studio all the time—she never met real gentlemen. To remember his scent would help her be more creative. More inspired.

His lordship’s hard biceps bumped her shoulders. The sensual brush of his body against hers set her legs trembling. Venetia balled her hands into fists, stiffened her spine. “You must be a true connoisseur of my father’s work, my lord Trent.”

How else could he have spotted her slight deviations from her father’s style? How likely was it that other gentlemen would?

“My father was,” he said. “He owned every volume of Rodesson art. He introduced me to it at an early age. I believe I was eight when he gave me my first volume.”

Eight? Eight was the age of a boy, not a man. Was a boy of that age even able to understand the drawings? To find them arousing?

If he’d started looking at such pictures at eight, when would he have first made love?

The instant the shocking thought raced through her head, Venetia found herself picturing the earl at his first sexual experience. With a voluptuous dairymaid or perhaps a bountiful courtesan. Eager. Sweaty. Naked.

Venetia, good heavens, stop! She took a shaky breath. “Are there other…differences?”

He turned the pages. “This one.”

She gaped at the picture framed by his large gloved hands.

A simple alfresco luncheon scene. This one featured the earl with his back against an ancient oak tree while his mistress rode atop him.

“This, to me, is a distinct clue your father did not do the work.”

For the life of her, Venetia could not see why. Her father had in fact done similar pictures.

“The position of the woman is the telling thing.”

Mystified, she studied the mistress. The lady’s skirts were up, revealing her plump bottom, and her head was thrown back, eyes closed, lips parted in ecstasy. Venetia had copied the expression from Belzique, the French artist of the last century who drew women in bizarre costumes, wielding whips. Pictures that disturbed her, which she would never wish to copy, but that she found inexplicably intriguing.

“In your father’s works the women are always lifted,” he explained. “In the upward portion of the stroke—” For the first time, his voice faltered.

“Yes?” Her query came out as a husky whisper.

“That position reveals the man’s…equipment.”

“His equipment,” she repeated.

“His shaft. It appeals to the male to see the shaft disappearing inside the woman. For a start, they know actual penetration is taking place.”

His tone was teasing but her chest felt squeezed, as though she’d been laced too tight. She stared at her picture, strangely hurt. “It doesn’t appeal to the male to see the woman seated back, the way she is shown here?”

So it was more than just differences in style. She’d thought her work tempting, seductive, pleasing. But, as a woman, had she not understood what men desired? Was it more complex than she’d thought?

Did this mean her career—her key to independence—would fail? Perhaps her book had only sold well because of her father’s name. Perhaps she would never sell another.

“You look so heartbroken, love,” he murmured. “I can assure you that men enjoy your drawings. Your work is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Far more arousing.”

He settled his hands on the back of the chair. She was caught between his powerful arms as his breath skimmed the nape of her neck. Tiny loose tendrils of her hair stirred and tickled.

He bent forward at the exact instant she drew back. Her bottom bumped against a solid ridge. His lordship’s…equipment, hard and jutting against her derriere through her skirts and his trousers.

He turned to the next page, revealing Two Ladies Painting Watercolors. Two young ladies of the ton sat in a garden with easels in front of them and the statue of a naked god to inspire. Both women had been attempting to sketch the nude man, but had become distracted in their arousal. Skirts and petticoats spilled over smooth thighs and they employed their paintbrushes on themselves in inventive ways.

And from the shrubbery, the Earl of Trent spied on the pretty girls.

“Now you see why I am here, Miss Hamilton.” His tone hardened. His jaded amusement was gone. Anger burned beneath his words. “You’ve depicted me as the most promiscuous and perverted man in London. At a time when I put my patronage behind Lady Ravenwood’s charity—a charity to save young women from brothels. Lady Ravenwood—my sister—was horrified when rumors reached her ears that I was doing the very thing she was trying to prevent.”

Venetia fought panic. There was no point in denying the truth anymore. “It was not intentional, my lord! I did not even know you were a real man. I did not even know your name! You were in Rodesson’s books. You did those things in public. You were naked—”

She broke off. She had just said ‘naked’ to an earl. Guiltily, she thought of The Theatre Box. Suddenly, she wanted to burn it. “I will never draw you again.”

“No, you won’t, my dear.” He lifted his hands from the book and stepped back, as though giving her room to breathe. “Your career is about to come to an end.”

She spun around. “But I must paint! How else will my family survive? My publisher expects a book in a month’s time!”

A part of her quailed at the earl’s sheer size, his intimidating pose with arms crossed over his wide chest, the hard line of his lips. But she tipped up her chin.

His lips softened. “I do not normally cancel gaming debts, Miss Hamilton. But I won’t be responsible for your ruination. I will tear up your father’s vowels.”

She should be overjoyed. He would return the money. They were saved. She had saved them all. She would return to the country. She would have to give up all her hard-won independence.

Solemnly, she shook her head. “My father always enters into deep play, my lord. He will only lose his money again. I am the only hope my family has. And you need not worry, I am not innocent.”

The lie rolled off her tongue before she could stop it.

His black brow lifted. He took a sharp breath. “Your father lied?”

“He doesn’t know, of course.”

She shivered again as his gaze swept her from curls to hem.

“You blush very prettily, my dear. But I have known of several courtesans who could summon a fetching flush on demand.”

Her face flamed hotter. “I am not innocent and I…I can prove it.”

“Can you?” Trent traced his gloved finger along the length of one of the paintbrushes in her picture. “So you have experienced the pleasures that you paint?”

Venetia was riveted by the sight. Her voice, where was her voice? “Y—yes,” she lied.

“If you are not innocent then you must know how such a caress would feel.” He circled his fingertip over the painted vulva. “You must know how a man delights in parting those soft lips and finding the heat and honey within.”

He paused. Silence stretched for many fervent heartbeats. She heard her soft, quick breaths. The tick of the mantel clock. The greedy roar of the flames.

“Do you touch yourself like this, sweeting? Do you paint your quim with your brush until you are creamy and wet? Do you enjoy threesomes? Do you prefer two cocks at your command, or another woman’s juicy cunny?”

Her knees felt as insubstantial as sea foam.

He lifted her hand from the back of the chair, gave a light brush across her knuckles with his lips. Gentlemanly. Safe. But he drew her index finger into his mouth and she was shocked and thrilled. His tongue toyed with the ridge of her fingernail, soaking the thin cotton.

How could the stroke of his tongue on her finger make her ache between her thighs?

But it did.

Why didn’t she pull her hand back? Stop him? She couldn’t. His words, his forbidden words, cast an irresistible spell.

She must relax. How would the auburn-haired courtesan she’d created behave? A woman bold enough to pleasure her lover in a theatre box wouldn’t be gasping in shock at a kiss on her fingertips.

He released her finger and reached for the hem of her glove. Goodness, she was about to lose an article of clothing. He bared her hand and her glove fluttered to the carpet.

“In one kiss, sweetheart, I’ll know if you are innocent or not.”

No, he wouldn’t. She would kiss him like a courtesan. She wasn’t certain how a jade kissed, but it must be with great passion. Unfortunately, she was entirely on her own. None of her father’s pictures depicted kisses.

With a gentle tug, he drew her to take a step closer. She lost balance, fell into his embrace. Her body pressed along his and his erection nudged her stomach. So close, so intimately close.

His lordship caught her other hand by the wrist, surprisingly quick despite the lazy grace of his movements. In a heartbeat, both her hands were captured in his.

Fighting the urge to gulp, she stared as bold as brass into his turquoise eyes. But she felt anything but bold as his lips—his perfectly sculpted, sensual lips—lowered toward hers.

She must behave like a wanton.

She was wanton. His mouth was a work of art, but all she could think of was pressing her mouth to that perfection and making it yield to her. Feigning sauciness, she slid her foot up his lordship’s polished boot. Her soft slipper followed the shape of his bulging calf. The leather fit him like a second skin.

He caught her around the waist, his large hands splayed over her hips. Her nipples ached—she needed something…some pressure against them. She arched up against him, so sinfully close her breasts pushed into his hard and solid chest.

His lips slanted over hers and her moan vanished into his mouth. She tasted his morning coffee, a trace of smoke, and heat, delicious heat.

She had no chance to pretend passion—he lured her lips apart and slid his tongue inside. She’d never kissed like this. She’d only had one peck, one boring, meaningless peck in her whole life! This was scandalous, luscious. His tongue filled her mouth, touched hers, and coaxed it into sensual play.

Venetia slid her arms around his neck and dared to let her fingertips stroke his black hair, softer than the sable in her treasured brushes.

He moaned. Hoarsely.

She’d made him moan. A thrill of power rushed through her. She felt, wild, reckless, mad. Deep in her throat, she moaned again, too. She lifted her leg, seeking to wrap it around his hips. To hold him close. To never let him go.

Why had she never thought to draw something as spectacular as a kiss?

Her body burned with need. Dizzying desire swamped her. She slipped her hands up his back—the earl’s broad, hard, beautiful back. She stroked the planes she’d drawn, imagining bare skin, sculpted muscle. His hands cupped her rear, squeezing, so she grabbed hold of his rump. Goodness, he had beautiful buttocks—hard and smooth and tightly indented at the sides. If he were on top of her, inside her, she would grab him there and clutch his muscular derriere as he plunged into her—

He set her back on her feet, pulled her hands from his rear. “That’s enough, sweetheart. You are every inch a gently bred virgin. That unskilled kiss was definite proof.”

She clung to his hands, unsteady. Unskilled kiss? Wonderful kiss. Dizzying kiss. She’d been passionate. How could he know she was innocent after that?

“I—” She wanted another kiss. Wanted more. She couldn’t think.

“Eventually your secret will get out, Miss Hamilton. Do you want to ruin your sisters too?”

She shook her head. No, that she couldn’t do. “But I want to be independent. I can’t bear living each day knowing that disaster will come at any moment. Can you not understand that?”

“It’s not safe, Miss Hamilton.”

“So you will save me against my will? Why?”

His lips lifted in a lopsided grin and her heart somersaulted in her chest.

“Because my sister, Lady Ravenwood, insisted it was the right thing to do,” he said. “My father made a career of ruining innocents. I do not intend to follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately for the males of England, Miss Hamilton, your career is most definitely finished.”