Catherine smiled slowly as he produced the long shaft of his penis, and climbed atop her. “Well. You should show that more often when you are in society. Far more interesting than your dancing.”
“While you enjoy playing the trollop in private.” Arthur held himself just outside her gates and watched her squirm. “Or is that your true nature, and the giggling miss yet another mask you wear?”
“I am not laughing now,” Catherine said, lifting her hips so that her sex caressed the swollen head of his.
Thrusting into her body made Arthur groan, for she felt as tight as a virgin. Yet the moment he possessed every inch of her warm, narrow channel she wriggled and began to squeeze him. She did so with the aplomb of a professional, so he allowed himself to take her as he pleased—hard and fast, with rude strokes that made her unable to hold him.
She did not find her pleasure, but seemed content to watch him have his.
Arthur jerked himself out of her before he spilled, painting her thighs with his seed. He then shifted to one side and put his fingers to her well-opened quim, stroking her deftly until she arched under his touch and squealed.
Stretching out on his back beside her, he turned his head to study her profile. He usually took more care with where he found his pleasure, but after the weeks of enforced celibacy the temptation had been too much to resist. He had not kissed her, which ladies of her set expected, nor had she offered her mouth. The only women he knew who had such a practical approach to intimacy made their living from it.
“Do you make a habit of such, er, spontaneity, my dear?” Arthur asked her.
“Of course not.” Catherine reached over without looking and patted his chest as if to reassure him. “I have the benefit of a vastly experienced lover whom someday I will marry, Mr. Pickering. You may credit him with teaching me to fuck. We cannot meet often, however, or my parents would grow suspicious.”
That sounded reasonable enough to him. “Since we have fucked, then, I believe you should call me Arthur.”
“Why in heaven’s name would I do that?” She slid herself off the bed and shook down her skirts. “People would make assumptions inconvenient to us both.”
Arthur watched her peer into his mirror to replace and straighten her mask, and felt the blood rush back to his groin. “I should like to have you again before you go.”
Catherine glanced back at him and fluttered her lashes. “Sir, you are insatiable.” She came over to the bed, pushed him back flat, and opened his breeches. “Let me show you that which I most often employ to avoid other inconveniences. You will not have to spill on my legs this time.”
His eyelids drooped as she curled her fingers around his hardening shaft, and brought the now-straining head to her lips. “Your lover taught you to suck cock? I am all astonishment.”
“That and more,” she said just before she took him in her mouth, and slipped her fingers beneath his ballocks.
Chapter 12
The masquerade continued in boisterous fashion as Jennet joined those gathered in the ballroom. The music, the dancers and the laughter seemed overloud after the quiet gasps and carnal sounds she and Greystone had made in the hot house, but she did not mind. The noisier it was, the less opportunity she had to dwell on what she had done. Several gentlemen came to seek her as a partner, but she politely refused each one, claiming she had twisted her ankle. Instead she watched and listened and cursed herself silently.
Her family’s reckless streak had finally emerged in her, it seemed, with a vengeance.
An odd memory of her mother sitting her down the night before her wedding came back to Jennet. Margaret had been red-faced and deeply embarrassed as she tried to explain what to expect once she and Liam were married. She’d used sparse and wholly inadequate terms for the act of marital bliss, as she called it.
Men have knowledge of such matters. You must trust in William to deal with you gently and kindly. There will be some small pain, perhaps, but only in the beginning part. If you are blessed, you will increase your family in two seasons, and give me a grandchild.
After their passionate embrace in the meadow Jennet had already guessed much of what to expect from Liam on their wedding night. The remaining facts she had deciphered long before