and staff the dower house, so she removed to Bath to be with friends.” Mama’s departure had only felt like an abandonment, an echo of Jacaranda’s departure years earlier.
“So you’re a happy fellow, not a care in the world?” Vera’s hand drifted across Oak’s chest, the caress nearly soothing until she happened to trail her fingers across his nipple. She apparently didn’t realize the effect on him, for she did it again a moment later.
“I am a happy fellow.” A happy, increasingly frustrated fellow. “But I cannot continue to impose on my brother’s generosity. Hence, I am on my way to London.” The third time Vera’s touch glanced across his nipple, he shuddered.
She peered at him. “Are you well?”
“I’m sensitive,” he said, taking her hand and glossing the tip of her index finger in a delicate circle. “There. That arouses me.” A stupid statement of the obvious when made to a married woman.
“It does?”
Oak pushed the covers down, baring himself in all his morning glory. “Quite.”
Vera stared at his unrepentant cock, her expression puzzled. “Touching you here…” Oh yes, she touched him again. “Affects you there.”
There was a nod in the direction of his breeding organs. “Afraid so. You needn’t—”
Ye bare naked cherubs. She used the same fingertip to touch the head of his cock. “Men are as soft here as the nose of a horse. I’ve always wondered about that.”
“Have you now?” All three words were coherent. A feat of articulation, given that she was circling the tip of his cock in a maddeningly lazy caress.
“I saw little of Dirk in this state. He was a dressing-gown-and-lights-out sort of fellow, which was fine with me. This has to be the most peculiar bit of human anatomy. I think he was self-conscious about his age.”
Oak would pity Dirk Channing his self-consciousness on some other, more saintly, day. “Vera, I’m not objecting, but if you are intent on continuing…” The words petered out as arousal became the defining beacon of Oak’s existence. He groped for his handkerchief on the bedside table, nearly knocking over the water glass in the process.
“I’ve never done this,” Vera said, reversing direction to circle him the other way. “Never toyed with a man’s parts.” She sounded as if she was mixing her pigments, trying for a particular shade of blue and coming so, so close to the desired result.
“Indulge yourself,” Oak replied. “I’m not far from indulging myself too.”
He expected she’d withdraw her attentions at that warning. Instead, she slipped her hand down to sleeve his shaft.
“What about this? Do you like this too, Oak?”
He wrapped his hand around hers, showed her exactly how he liked it, and lasted less than a half-dozen strokes before pleasure cascaded through him. He made a mess on his belly and scented the air with evidence of his satisfaction, but holding back any longer simply hadn’t been possible.
Vera took the handkerchief from his limp grasp and tidied him up, then sat back, gaze on his softening member.
“I haven’t done that before,” she said. “Did I do it right?” Again, she put him in mind of an artist turning a critical eye on an experimental composition.
“If you did it any more right, I’d be the first man to expire from an excess of bliss. Come here.” He wrestled her down against his side—not that she resisted—and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You have quite undone me.”
“You smile like the woman in that painting you found. All naughty secrets and lovely dreams.” Vera remained covered from neck to knees in her nightgown, though she was smiling a naughty smile too.
“You are pleased with yourself,” Oak said, “and well you should be.”
She turned her face against his shoulder and drew her toe up his calf. “I want to discuss what just happened, Oak.”
“Talking is about all I’m good for at the moment.”
“Why was I married for seven years without realizing…? What is a tup against the wall?”
The first rays of sunshine hit the vanity opposite the window, reflecting off scent bottles and dotting the wall with jewels of color.
Oak realized that his notion of an intimate friendship with Vera would not travel along the rutted path of his expectations. She was a woman with experience, true, but not as much experience as Dirk Channing’s wife ought to have had.
Oak tossed back the covers, hopped off his side of the bed, and stretched. “Absent drawing paper and pencil, it’s easier to show you the basic idea.” He crossed the room and beckoned.
“You aren’t