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She continued, “She saw the young soldier Mars and started an affair with him. Vulcan knew she was betraying him so he pretended to leave their home, and when Mars snuck in…he trapped them in bed together.”
“It’s incredible,” he said. “Really incredible, Regan.”
She warmed at his words, but quickly soured. “I didn’t hang this painting here,” she said.
Her blood was cold and she clung to Arthur’s hand, but he didn’t seem troubled at all.
“This must be it,” Arthur said. “Lord Malcolm’s trying to tell you to start painting again. Last night he gave you a vision of yourself painting again, and now this?”
“Why would he care if I painted or not? Or golfed or danced or started a bookshop?”
“Who knows what he knows that we don’t know,” Arthur said. “But even if he’s not telling you that, I am. My parents own over a dozen art galleries. I’ve been to a thousand galleries in my lifetime, seen a million paintings. I know talent. You have it.”
“Hadit.”
“It’s still there. I know it is. God, this is so good. It’s stylized, like that Polish painter, I forgot her name, did those wild Art Deco portraits. Mum loves her work.”
“Tamara de Lempicka?”
“That’s her.”
“She’s one of my favorite artists. Big influence.”
“If you don’t want this, can I have it?”
He meant it. She could tell from the way he looked at her painting he genuinely admired it. It almost made her want to try painting again. Almost. But why bother? It would take years to relearn what she’d forgotten and she didn’t have years. Still…Arthur made her want to try anyway.
She felt something stirring in her heart, something she couldn’t ever remember feeling before there. Something terrifyingly tender, tenderly terrifying. And desire, too. Lust. Need.
“You can have it,” she said, “if you make love to me right now.”
He looked at her like she’d gone mad. “Here? In this bed?”
“Definitely here. Anddefinitelythis bed. I don’t want to be afraid of ghosts anymore—Sir Jack or Lord Malcolm.”
“Tell me what you want,” Arthur said. “Anything you want.”
She told him and his eyes widened.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She was sure. Scared, but sure. He undressed her quickly, and then stripped himself. He pulled her to the bed and tossed the covers back. The sheets were white, pristine, changed weekly by the housekeeper even though they were never slept in.
There had been nights in her marriage she had wanted to tear the bed apart with her bare hands, cut the sheets with knives, set the mattress on fire and watch it burn. Now she wanted the bed to burn with pleasure, to be defiled with her wetness and Arthur’s.
Arthur lifted her up and laid her on the bed. She waited, flat on her back as he looked through the bedside table drawers for what he needed. When he found it, he came back to her, laying on her, both of them naked as Adam and Eve in the Garden.
Even as beholden as she’d felt toward Sir Jack, she had stood her ground and refused him sexual acts she thought she couldn’t bear. She had discovered with Arthur that she not only could bear them, but wanted them as long as it was with him.
Arthur turned her onto her stomach. She braced herself on her elbows, opened her thighs wide to offer all of herself to him. He had lubricant and used it to carefully fill that tightest hole with his fingers. Regan fought every self-protective instinct to pull away, to clench her muscles to force him out. He wanted her love, but she couldn’t give him what she didn’t have. She could give him her body, though—all of it, especially the parts of her she’d refused her husband.
Arthur opened her with one finger, the sensation was a welcome intrusion.
A second finger was uncomfortable, but the tension quickly passed. Soon she was breathing hard as he fucked her slowly and gently with his slick fingers. A third finger was almost too much, but she breathed through it and slowly opened up again.
The bed shifted as Arthur mounted her from behind, and she was certain she’d never wanted a man’s cock in her more in her life. Here. In the bed her husband bought, in the bed where she’d sold herself night after night of their loveless marriage, she was being entered in the arse by a man who would have been her husband’s worst nightmare—a man younger, fitter, more handsome. A future earl. A mere boy he’d have to address as “my lord.”
The tip of Arthur’s thick cock slid into her body easily, and Regan groaned as he entered her by inches.
