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He emptied himself into her as she emptied him out, a dual release that felt obscene even as it was happening to his own body. When it was over and the pearls were out of him, he felt like a hollow shell. His quick breathing slowed, and he melted into the floor. His strength was gone, his will, his ego. He was a body spent, well-used, finished off.
Regan leaned forward and kissed him on his bare stomach. He hardly felt her lips.
A long time passed, or maybe only a few seconds before she rose up over him, her hands and knees on either side of his shoulders and thighs.
“You liked that,” she said, meeting his eyes. “The correct answer is ‘Yes, I liked it.’”
“Yes,” he said with a sigh, “I liked it.”
He laughed at himself, at how much he’d like it. God, he was a whore, wasn’t he? Or was he just a Godwick? Regan wrapped the pearls into a tissue.
“Those are officially the most expensive anal beads in the world,” he said.
“Sir Jack gave them to me,” she said. “He liked me to wear pearls. Tarts, he said, wear diamonds. Ladies wear pearls. I disagreed but didn’t want to argue the point.”
“Why still wear them?”
“Old habits die hard, I suppose. I really can’t tell you how much I enjoyed shoving them up your arse.”
“If only you could have shoved them up his.”
She smiled, almost laughed, and it was the truest, sincerest, most honest smile he’d seen on her face yet. Unguarded, open, happy.
Arthur wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest, kissing her mouth, tasting himself on her tongue. When the kiss stopped, she smiled down at him again.
“Go to sleep,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
One more kiss, then she rose up off of him leaving him on the floor, wet and shivering from the power of the orgasm she’d given him. He heard her in her bathroom, heard her come back to the room, heard the hushed rush of the sheets and the sigh of the mattress as she lay in her bed again.
Arthur said softly, “If Lord Malcolmistrying to play matchmaker, are we going to let him?”
Say yes, he thought. Say yes, say yes, say yes. Please say yes.
After a tense silence, Regan finally answered, “Over my dead body.”
The one small, miserable comfort Arthur took in those words was how unhappy she sounded when she’d said them.
7
Afternoon Tea
Almost a week passed before Regan summoned Arthur again. It felt like the longest week of his life.
He waited for the doorbell all day Tuesday and Wednesday, but it never rang. Eventually, he got stir-crazy. When Charlie didn’t answer his messages, Arthur met up with friends from Sandhurst instead. They lifted weights at the gym until they were almost sick. He continued to tax himself all week, running in Hyde Park in the cold rain. At night, he visited every last one of the Godwicks’ art galleries in Greater London on the pretense of “checking on things” for his parents.
The more time that passed since that strange night with Regan, the more he managed to convince himself what had happened with the book was nothing but a coincidence. Arthur and Regan had been having intense sex. Maybe the walls had rattled, jostling the book from the shelves as the guard had intimated. No denying it was strange that it fell open to a painting of a woman in a pearl necklace, but life was strange sometimes.
And, yes, those “sometimes” often involved Lord Malcolm’s portrait…but still. No need to go mad. Yet.
When he arrived home from his Saturday morning run, he was halfway to the shower when his phone buzzed in his hand. He didn’t recognize the number. Usually, he wouldn’t have answered it. Only the hope it was Regan made him accept the call.
“Hello?”
“Tea at four on my terrace,” Regan said.
Arthur sat down on the second storey landing, sunk down really, so relieved to hear her voice it was humiliating. He’d been aching all week to hear from her. And now she was on the end of the line and he knew he would have waited a year if she’d made him.
