Saving Grace: Hot Down Under Read online

  “What happened to that girl?” Grace asked, willing him to recognise her and acknowledge that he had ruined her life. To say he was sorry for it so that …

  She could forgive him.

  “She betrayed me.”

  This was not what she’d expected. Gasping, she stepped back, causing him to drop his hand and say mockingly, “Yes, imagine it! I loved her yet all the while that she pretended to be my ally, urging me to stand up to my mother, promising to protect my most valuable possession, my most dangerous secrets … she was betraying me behind my back.”

  No, no, no … How could you think it? Grace’s voice shook from the effort of reining in her heated denials. “How did she betray you?”

  “I found a photograph—” He swallowed, his twisted mouth pushing out the words as if they were foul and bitter—“of her in circumstances no woman of any decency would allow.”

  Oh God. Grace stumbled against the chair as she put her hands to her face. She knew which photograph. Laurence had forced her to sit for him. Blackmailed her. He’d spent the summer with his aunt and, to while away the dullness of country life, had indulged himself with the latest craze: photography. When he had her alone in the little room Mrs Willowbank allowed him to use as a studio he’d made her remove her clothes and drape herself over the plush chaise longue and then he’d …

  David’s voice was thick was emotion. He drew his hand across his eyes as if the image were still branded on his vision. “I saw what only I had ever hoped to see but here she was parading her body before … before the world.” His voice dropped to a thread of bitter accusation. “It was the last thing I saw.”

  She whispered, “What do you mean … the last thing you saw?”

  David glared, seemingly oblivious to the hand she tentatively lay upon his shoulder. “My cousin invited me to his new photography studio to show me the portraits he’d taken of my mother. Of course it was his intention that I see more. More than just the face of the girl I loved. He told me how much she’d wanted to be admired through the camera’s lens … and more intimately. He told me how smooth and soft she was. How moist her lips were. Of the little mole on her breast.”

  Helplessly, Grace felt his pain as he fisted his hands. “Her betrayal cut through me and I picked up the first thing that came to hand so I could hurl it at him and remove the gloating smirk from his face. A bottle. I had no idea it was acid. Laurence went for me. We fought and the bottle smashed, splashing liquid into my face.”

  Oh my God. Horror made her mute.

  David had been blinded in a fight over her.

  “But she’d already gone by then. The woman I loved. The woman I trusted.” His voice hitched. “Without a word.”

  No, that’s not true, Grace wanted to say but she was helpless in the strange new emotional landscape she inhabited, caught between the urge to tell him everything while knowing the truth would only make things worse.

  She heaved in a breath. “Do you see … nothing?”

  “I’m aware of light and dark. Sometimes I wish I was dead … now that she’s gone.”

  Grace fought to keep her voice steady, tears stinging her lids as she whispered, “Why did she leave?”

  “Mother dismissed her when I went up to Cambridge for my first term.”

  Rage and hurt swept away her sympathy. Here was her chance to ask the question that had haunted her for three years—Why did you do nothing?—but his voice, harsh, bitter, cut in, giving her the brutal answer. “The girl who said she loved me had given herself to someone else. She was pregnant. Mother said her father told Mrs Medley, our housekeeper, that she’d run off to London with the blacksmith’s son. I suppose that’s why she took off her clothes for Laurence. So she could get money.”

  She gasped aloud. Lies! All of them! Well, except for her being pregnant.

  She reined in her emotions. Nothing she said or did would change a thing. It was some comfort David hadn’t stopped loving her, though she forced herself to subdue the ray of hope that breached her hardened heart. Hope always had a bitter lining. In this case it was that the truth of what she’d become was worse than the fiction his mother had created.

  If Grace told David his mother had lied, then what?

  She’d only have to tell him that she’d descended to vice far greater than he could ever imagine.

  No, Grace was not the girl he remembered. He loved the pure, idealistic Grace, full of hope for the future. Not the debased, ground-down whore before him who bartered herself, body and soul, to stop from starving. She might despise what she’d been reduced to but the fact was she was a whore.

  Oh God, a whore who did this with strangers for a living when all she’d ever wanted was to marry David and have his children.

  “Forget the past.” Grace forced the suggestive, sympathetic tone into her voice as she inveigled herself back into his embrace. “And enjoy the present. I can take your mind off your sorrows.”

  She might not have David beyond this evening but for the next hour he would be the lover she might have had if things had been different. It would be a bright memory to mitigate the miserable future which stretched before her.

  Slipping her hands beneath his shirt she ran them up his smooth chest. No longer the chest of the sapling she remembered. Gently she rubbed his nipples, ridiculously gratified by his shivers of reaction. He was putty in her hands and his fascination for her and what she could do for him was growing. What would he think if she tried to entice him further down?

  Dare she?

  The Grace he’d known would never have been so bold and brazen but she was a woman who played on men’s fantasies for a living. A whore who’d never experienced desire in the course of her work. Now, with the young, healthy body of the only man she’d loved showing increasing willingness, she was desperately conscious of her own lustful urges. They frightened her. How little time she had to revel in the intimacies she’d once hoped to enjoy for a lifetime.

  He was highly aroused by the time she slid her hand into the opening of his trousers, his sudden hardening echoing her own need as she felt the rush of warm liquid pooling in her lower belly.

  “Oh God, what are you doing?” he gasped, gripping her shoulders as she knelt in front of him and gently circled the end of his cock with her tongue. Clearly he was caught between pushing her away and keeping her prisoner.

  “I shall disgrace myself!” he warned as she trailed her tongue the length of his shaft before taking him deeply into her mouth, but she ignored him, caught up by her own responses to his growing excitement. She could feel her desire roaring in her ears. His breathing was coming fast and even, his body was tense and his hands clenched in her hair as she moved him deeper into the cavern of her mouth, flicking her tongue over the ridges of his swollen cock, squeezing gently, pushing him back and forth.

  “Oh God!” he cried, convulsing as he came. He could barely speak through his shame. “I’m sorry.”

  Exultant, Grace slithered upright and held him tightly, as if to comfort him, her heart pounding at the simple fact she’d elicited such powerful reactions. That she was responsible for giving her beloved David such pleasure. “A virgin does not have to apologise for the brevity of his first time,” she murmured, her mind whirling, every sense on high alert as she kissed his earlobe, revelling in the intimacy, though he seemed caught up in confusion, not knowing where to put his hands.

  She raised them to her breasts. Again, so brazen. The Grace he’d known would never have done such a thing. The David she’d known would have been repulsed by such behaviour.

  “You can undo me, if you like.” She wriggled invitingly in his embrace and he seemed to gain confidence, his exploring hands fumbling with the row of tiny buttons down the front of her tight-fitting cuirass. Touching her lips to his right ear, she whispered, “There, I’ll help you.”

  The fabric fell away and she quickly divested herself of the outer layer, pushing him down upon the chair and settling herself on his lap so he could feel he
r bare arms and the swell of her breasts above her corset.

  At first tentative but with increasing surety he ran his hands over her skin, myriad responses reflected in his rapt expression. Grace closed her eyes and offered herself to him, her heart engaged like it had never been since she and David had been close.

  “Is this how it’s done?”

  “Seduction?” she murmured as she snuggled against him and toyed with his nipples.

  “Whoring.”

  Deflated, she froze. Whoring. Yes, that’s all it was to him. She was a stranger. A woman off the streets sent to service him for an afternoon.

  “Don’t leave. I’m sorry.” He pulled her back. “I didn’t mean to offend you. You’re very good and I need tutoring.” Unseeing, he groped for her breasts, at first ashamed, then obviously enjoying their size and feel, for he weighed them in his hands as if committing them to memory.

  “Tutoring?” She heard the dullness in her voice. “I thought I was here to indulge you. Your job is easy.”

  He freed her breasts from their confines and the insistent pressure on her nipples as he rolled them gently between his thumb and forefinger sent a rush of feeling to her groin. He paused, his look questioning, as he asked, “Is there only pleasure on the man’s side? You hate this work because a woman cannot enjoy sexual relations?”

  In one fluid movement Grace rose and unclasped her skirt. It festooned to the floor and she kicked it aside. A shabby way to treat a garment which cost her what she’d have to earn through servicing more than two dozen clients.

  “A woman can enjoy sexual pleasure immeasurably if her heart is engaged.” Her voice caught in her throat as she returned to his lap, dressed in only corset and chemise. She draped herself over him. “You are to be married. Do you wish to please your wife?”

  “Miss Lenders is a worthy young lady.” His tone was uncertain as he clasped her waist. “I’m told she’s not unattractive. She’s agreed to the contract, though I daresay I have the better deal.” He gave a short laugh. “The least I can do is learn a thing or two to try to please her so she won’t take a lover in the first year.”

  “You don’t have much faith in a woman’s constancy?”

  “Experience has taught me otherwise.” He tried to speak carelessly. “I like you, though. You feel … nice. Show me how to bring pleasure to a woman. To my wife. Where should I touch you?”

  Unconsciously, his hand was gently trailing up and down the valley of her breasts creating whorls of sensation Grace had not experienced since David last caressed her.

  She whispered, “A woman’s urges are just as strong as a man’s if she desires him. Unlace me and I’ll guide you to her forbidden places.”

  She twisted her head to watch him clumsily work the laces and imagined the way he’d once looked at her. Eyes bright with determination as he vowed that the day he reached his majority and was free of his mother he’d take her on a journey across the world.

  He neared the end of his task, making sounds of growing satisfaction, while Grace studied him, his remembered promise filtering through her growing anticipation. “My annuity won’t be much,” he’d told her—it seemed a lifetime ago, now—“but it’ll be enough for the two of us and I’ll supplement it with my painting. I’ll be a real artist, then.” He’d patted the drawer where he’d hidden the letter upon which he’d pinned his future. Their shared future. The letter from a famous landscape painter in Florence who’d offered to make David his student for a year. The letter that would change both their lives in ways he would never know.

  The past was the past, she tried to remind herself, as she removed the rest of her clothes. No point in tormenting herself with it.

  Now completely naked, Grace returned to his lap. He put his lips to the hollow beneath her shoulderblade as he held her in the way he used to when she’d fly in from the passage with a moment to spare between cleaning the drawing room and making the family’s beds. Her contours would be different now, of course. She was no longer the scrawny servant he’d remember, with hands roughened from scouring pots and scrubbing floors.

  “Are you cold?” he asked, and when she said she was not, he frowned. “Then why are you trembling?”

  She nestled her head beneath his chin. “You have a lover’s touch. See?”

  His pleasure was real when he felt her nipples spring to attention as he gently circled them before bringing down his face and taking first one and then the other into his mouth.

  Grace threw back her head and moaned softly, guiding his hand to her inner thighs. “Feel what you’re doing to me,” she whispered and laughed softly at his surprise when he felt the slippery wetness between her legs.

  “Is … is it—?”

  “It’s called desire,” she whispered in his ear.

  “But how—?” He shook his head, unable to finish.

  “It’s something a woman cannot feign. The physical manifestation of desire comes from within. For a woman, that is,” she added. “Men are different. If their desires were whipped up only by the women they loved there’d be no need for … whores.”

  Though he frowned, he was clearly enthralled by the responses he was eliciting through his increasingly bold exploration of the folds of her sex and the swollen nub at their heart. Excitement was fairly fizzing through Grace’s veins, making her gasp and jerk as her sensitivity grew.

  “You must be enjoying it. You’re so wet,” he marvelled. “Look at the effect it’s having on me, too. I … didn’t think I’d ever feel desire again.”

  Opening lust-heavy eyes, Grace grasped his growing erection, making him wince, his voice hoarse as he whispered, “You are obviously … practised at making a man feel he is your heart’s desire. I hope you will want to come again.”

  Cradling him, Grace laughed softly, avoiding an answer as she murmured suggestively, “I would like to make you come again, but perhaps you’d enjoy it if our pleasure coincided. A woman’s climax is as enjoyable to her as a man’s. You’ve already seen how my pleasure escalates when you touch me here.”

  He laughed and increased the pressure on the exact area between her legs which most excited her while his other arm held her close.

  “Oh, that is very enjoyable,” she whispered, nibbling his earlobes.

  Suddenly both his arms were around her and his mouth was moving against hers, his voice urgent. “I’ve been closeted from the world for three years. I know only a schoolboy’s love.” He added haltingly, “Are you accustomed to what we’re doing now?”

  “Never!” she told him with more sincerity than she had felt in three years, pushing aside the urge to touch her lips to his. “I have never been with a man as tender and willing to please a woman as you.”

  “It’s your job to say that.”

  Before she could answer he added, almost roughly, “Why have you chosen this life?”

  “In a brothel?” Pulling back, she gave a bitter laugh and rose to her feet. She had the strangest feeling she had put him in danger of being singed by her wickedness. “At least it’s better than the life I had.”

  “Which was …?”

  “On the streets.”

  She did not miss the spasm that crossed his face. Revulsion. Yes, he ought to be repulsed. She was.

  “The first time I sold my body was to get medicine for my baby,” she told him, swaying with the force of her anger.

  “You had a baby?” His hand went out to her and she allowed him to pull her back onto his lap.

  “It’s the reason I was dismissed from my position in a grand house.” The familiar grief clawed its way up her gullet. “But the baby died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She could feel his sympathy as his hands roamed over her body, blazing a trail of sensation across her sensitive skin and scoring her vulnerable heart.

  “Sorry that it died or sorry for me that it was born?”

  “Both,” he muttered. “The … father didn’t offer to marry you?”

  She let out her
breath derisively. “The father was a young gentleman visiting the house who believed he was as entitled to pleasuring himself with the servants as he was to the entertainments his hostess laid on for him.”

  He was shocked, clearly. Perhaps sympathetic, though her plight was common enough. He would know that.

  She took a painful breath. “He forced himself upon me and when the housekeeper realised I was pregnant—before I did, myself, for I had no knowledge of these matters—she spoke to the mistress. My mistress dismissed me. Without a character.” She trembled at the injustice, still just as raw. “And a girl without a character has little alternative but to become a prostitute, in case you weren’t aware. So, take all the liberties you like, sir. There’s nothing I haven’t done and nothing that will shock me. Have you really never been with another woman since you lost the girl you loved?”

  He shook his head, his expression bleak, his hands now gently cradling Grace. “I’m sorry for your misfortunes. Mine are in a different league. Yes, I’ve lost my sight but often I think I’d still look towards the future with hope if only all hope hadn’t been killed by bitter betrayal. Do you know, I kissed her for the first time the night before I left for Cambridge.” He looked so sad that Grace had to fight to keep the tears at bay. “The softness of her mouth and the way she breathed my name are the sweetest memories I will ever have.” His tone changed. “And then she gave herself to another.”

  With the greatest self-restraint Grace asked carefully, “You’ve never felt desire since her … betrayal? What about Miss Lenders?”

  “I barely know her, but Mama arranged the match and Miss Lenders will be well compensated for being allied to a useless creature such as myself.”

  “Don’t say that!” Grace cried, fiercely. “You’re kind and handsome and you only need someone who loves you who’ll be your eyes.” She wished she could stop herself from trembling. “When Miss Lenders knows you better she’ll be that person because she’ll see you’re a man who deserves a good woman’s love.” In her agitation Grace leapt to her feet.

  “Please … Miss Fortune!” David pulled her back, holding her tightly, muttering as he buried his face in her hair, “You are very kind to jump to my defence but I do not need championing. I am determined that when I marry I will forge a life independent of the one my mother has mapped out for me. She’s always forced me to bend to her will.”