AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Bloody hell, I love when you say my name like it’s a benediction you simply can’t contain.” A hot mouth blanketed hers, the taste of Ara like a sip of the most decadent brandy, sweet, tart, and addictive. “Besides, I am the artist, after all, and it’s my prerogative to paint.” A gloved finger danced over the swells of her décolletage. “On my favorite kind of canvas.”
Margot’s eyes shot wide as said tongue licked a hot stripe down her throat.
Oh. Oh.
“Everyone will know what we are doing in here,” she whispered in a scandalized tone, while Ara walked her back until the backs of her knees met the velvet bench at the center. She sat, staring up as Ara removed her gloves with painstaking slowness, the reveal of each slender finger almost an erotic show, because Margot had intimate knowledge of what those clever fingers were capable of. Her mouth went dry at the ravenous, resolute glint in her lover’s eyes even as other parts of her went unspeakably wet.
“Almost everyone has already left, but you can be quiet, can’t you, Margot?” Ara purred, hands going to her silk cravat. “Or will I have to put this over your mouth?”
Margot’s heartbeat thundered between her ears as she gulped. She pressed her thighs together, but there was no hope for it. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that she was going to hold a single thing back. Not now. Not ever.
Her lips tipped up into a wicked smile. “Do your worst, I dare you.”
Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
“Have I told you today how much I idolize you?”
Margot stared fondly at the love of her life, panting in a heap beside her, curls plastered to that beloved face as she stretched fully awake. Morning sunlight from the windows caught Ara’s bronze hair and made it shimmer with wine and cinnamon-colored lights. She was growing it out and those titian curls now kissed her dainty collarbones.
“That’s because I made you come twice in ten minutes.”
“Well, there’s that,” Ara said with a huff. “But you know that only happens so quickly because of the connection we have, don’t you? It isn’t like that for everyone.”
Margot propped herself up to her elbow with a thoughtful look, as though pondering the question. “It isn’t? I thought multiple orgasms were the standard. Perhaps I need a broader basis for comparison.”
“There will be nothing of the sort, you minx,” Ara growled and threw herself over Margot, crushing her to the crumpled sheets. “It absolutely is not the standard and you know it. It’s not my fault I’m utterly weak for you.” She sighed, hair tumbling down as she lowered her head for a kiss. “Or that you’ve dragged me under the spell of Blazing Quim.”
A choked laugh burst out of Margot. “You did not just call me that.”
“I didn’t call you that.” A hand slid between them to brush intimately against her. “I called this that.”
Giving Ara’s bottom lip a playful nip, Margot rolled them over. “Well, if we’re going the route of nicknames, then I find it categorically unfair that you don’t possess one. It’s high time we correct that unacceptable slight.” She kissed her way down Ara’s sternum, pausing to pay homage to each of her brown-tipped perfect breasts, before continuing down her taut, shivering abdomen until she was settled between her thighs. “Now, what have we here?”
She stroked down the dark bronze tuft with her palm, making Ara’s hips jolt. “Responsive Quim? No, much too wordy.” She leaned in, inhaling that sweetly seductive fragrance, and blew gently on the damp flesh from her earlier release. “You always smell like toasted vanilla. Perhaps something along those lines?” She kissed the creases on either side, running her nose over the satiny flesh. “Feels like velvet.”
“Margot.” Her name was a breathless whine.
“Yes, my dove?” Without warning, she licked from the bottom to the top with the tip of her tongue, making Ara start to quiver. Her skin was so impossibly soft, so silken and wet and delicious that Margot simply had to do it again. And again. “Succulent, luscious,” she whispered. “So many adjectives, not enough time.” Margot slid a finger inside and Ara instantly clamped down. “Such a greedy little thing.”
Margot glanced up, meeting Ara’s dilated golden eyes, her face tight with desire and strain as Margot shuttled in and out. “I’m close,” she whimpered. Oh, Margot was aware. She knew Ara’s body as well as she knew her own. She hid her grin and shifted down to press slow kisses down her left thigh to her knee. “Margot, where are you going? I said I was close.”
“I know, but finding the right name takes focus. I can’t have you ruining it my creative process because you have a hair-trigger response.” She stifled a laugh. “Hair-Trigger Quim?”
Ara gave half growl, half giggle. “No. Absolutely not, you wicked, wicked woman. I have half a mind to finish myself off.”
“Do that and face the consequences.” Margot hummed. “I don’t have to remind you of what happened the last time you defied me?” Ara’s body gave a visceral jerk as they both recalled the memory of how Margot had kept her on the edge for what had felt like hours, dragging out her pleasure to such lengths that a sobbing, mindless Ara had soaked the bed linens.
“Fine.” Panting, Ara flung an arm over her face. “Only because I need to be able to actually function today. Some of us have to work, you know.”
“I do so enjoy being a kept woman,” Margot murmured, resuming her journey on the other leg.
As expected, Ara’s fame had only grown following Honoria’s exhibition. From time to time, she held exhibits of her paintings exclusively at the Rawdon Gallery, and Honoria had become her official art dealer. Her work was always in great demand. Margot had converted an entire wing in the house she’d bought in Essex after the sale of the unentailed Mayfair residence, making sure Ara’s studio had the best light. Percy was off on a two-year long Grand Tour and hadn’t any need of it.
Their life wasn’t an easy one. The gossip mill churned relentlessly, speculating about the Marchioness of Waverly’s rapid exit from high society, based mostly on conjecture. She and Ara had giggled at the outlandish theories in the newssheets. One claimed that she had remarried a commoner and couldn’t face her former lofty circles because of her diminished status. Another declared she had absconded with a footman to escape the scandal of ruination. A third said she’d been kidnapped by a former debutante whom she’d given the cut direct and was being held for an enormous ransom.
Her personal favorite, however, was that her son, the marquess, had banished her to the country for being so controlling and trying to marry him off to the highest bidder. As if she could stop Percy from falling stupidly in love every ten minutes with someone new. Broken hearts of all persuasions lay in his handsome and much-too-charming wake.
