It was going to be absolute torture for him to taste that bared ivory flesh, with his tongue as well as his lips, and for her to taste him in the same way. So much so that Marcus was not sure he would be able to stop himself from taking that ultimate step of possessing her completely. Something Marcus had promised himself he would not—could not—do unless it was clearly what Julianna wanted too.
She may have asked—demanded—that he teach her, tutor her, in an appreciation of the pleasures of the flesh, but she had not specified whether or not there would be a natural conclusion to all of that lovemaking.
‘Do you have any dos and don’ts for tomorrow, Marcus?’
His gaze felt heavy with desire as it was drawn back to Julianna’s face. She stood across the room looking so vulnerable, and yet so proudly courageous, too. He wished to do nothing more at that moment than go to her and beg her to stay.
Instead, aware that he had to be patient, to tempt and cajole Julianna into loving him, he remained seated behind his desk, his expression deliberately impassive. ‘Do not wear drawers tomorrow, Julianna,’ he instructed coolly. ‘Leaving your thighs naked will aid in my enjoyment,’ he added as her face paled slightly, making those dark grey eyes seem larger than ever.
Her throat moved as she swallowed before answering him. ‘I—I thought touch was for the day after?’
‘It is my intention for you to touch yourself there,’ he stated evenly. ‘How else can you fully appreciate the unique scent of your own arousal unless you bathe your fingers in it?’
‘I—is that really necessary?’
‘Unless you would prefer that I be the one to touch you?’ Marcus questioned boldly.
Even the suggestion of that caused Julianna’s alarm to deepen, as she once again acknowledged the hornet’s nest of emotions and embarrassment she appeared to have opened up for herself by blackmailing Marcus into tutoring her.
Unless he was just deliberately punishing her for having blackmailed him in the first place?
‘And will you also leave off your own undergarments and touch yourself, Marcus?’ she challenged.
A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘Yes.’
So much for Julianna’s childish attempt to beat this man at his own game; she should have known better! ‘Very well.’ She nodded, that nod turning to a curtsey as Marcus’s butler opened the door beside her. ‘Until tomorrow, Your Grace,’ she drawled before following the butler out into the cavernous hallway of Worthing House.
Marcus waited only long enough for Wilkins to close the door behind himself and Julianna before standing up and punching his first through the Japanese screen beside the window.
‘What have you done to your hand, Marcus?’
Exactly what Christian had asked him when the two men met at Jackson’s Boxing Salon yesterday afternoon, when Marcus had also refused any suggestion that the bandage upon his hand prevented him from participating in the sport. Indeed, his turmoil of emotions had still been such that he had felt no pain at all from his bruised hand as he’d bested Christian over the agreed three rounds.
Marcus had removed the bandage earlier for his morning meeting with Julianna, but there was still a certain amount of obvious bruising to his knuckles from his dispute yesterday with the Japanese screen. ‘I assure you, my opponent looks much worse than I do,’ he dismissed unconcernedly, the broken screen having been removed from his study and replaced by a rich, red velvet chaise, which Marcus had yesterday instructed servants to bring in here from his own private parlour.
‘I dined with my brother yesterday evening,’ Julianna came back accusingly. ‘By which time his bruised eye had gone several shades of purple!’
‘Oh?’ Christian had not reacted yesterday to Marcus’s discreet questioning in regard to Julianna’s marriage, but could that only have been for Marcus’s benefit? Had Christian saved his own questions for his sister for later that evening?
‘We always dine together on Tuesday evenings,’ Julianna immediately answered the unspoken question dismissively as she moved farther into his study. Her gown was emerald green today, and perfectly complimented her ivory skin and red-gold curls.
‘Did you do as I instructed and leave off your drawers?’ he asked harshly.
The aching hardness of his arousal, which seemed to have been with Marcus constantly for these past two days and nights, and which now surged up thick and heavy beneath his pantaloons without the benefit of his own restricting drawers, gave an increasingly familiar throb of appreciation for even the idea of Julianna being almost naked beneath her gown.
‘I did. And you?’
‘Yes.’
Julianna felt that now-familiar heat course through her body just thinking of what lay beneath the fine material of his pantaloons. Marcus’s gaze was just as intent upon her, as if he might see through her gown to her nakedness beneath.
A nakedness Julianna had been completely aware of since dressing earlier, her lack of drawers resulting in a sensitivity between her thighs, and a total awareness of the silky abrasion of her chemise against that bared flesh.
A sensitivity that had deepened the moment she’d entered the study and looked at Marcus, and seen that today he had dispensed with his waistcoat as well as his jacket and cravat, enabling her to fully appreciate the muscled width of his shoulders in the loosely flowing white shirt. The fastening at his throat was once again laid bare, revealing even more of his olive-skinned chest than it had yesterday.
Would he dispense with the shirt, too, by tomorrow, the day they were to explore taste and sound together? For surely they would not be able to do so if they both remained fully dressed.
But she was moving ahead of herself again, had yet to get through the ordeal of today’s lesson. For an ordeal it must surely be, if Marcus intended to go through with his instruction of having her touch herself. As she had touched herself yesterday evening after bathing.
Julianna had gazed at herself often in a mirror before her marriage to John Armitage, youthfully pleased with the image reflected back at her, and hoping that her husband would be pleased, too, once she was married. The years of being John’s wife, of his complete indifference to her body or physical pleasure, had resulted in Julianna slowly but surely avoiding looking at her nakedness in a mirror again.
Until yesterday evening.
Marcus’s arousal that morning had shown an appreciation for her body as well as her looks, and had caused Julianna to feel curious enough to see for herself what it was he had found to appreciate.
The reflection in the mirror had shown she was far more slender than she had been at eighteen, but that slenderness only served to emphasize the fullness of sloping breasts tipped with rosy nipples, her waist dipping inwards, with red-gold curls nestled between curvaceous thighs.
Julianna had skimmed her hands along those red-gold curls and up the slenderness of her waist before cupping beneath the fullness of her sensitive breasts. Her eyes had widened at the sensitivity of the rosy nipples at their tips, her knees almost buckling beneath her when she touched them out of curiosity and felt the pleasure of that caress course through the whole of her body before it settled intensely between her thighs. A pleasure Julianna had then touched wonderingly with her fingertips, trembling as she briefly felt the sensitive folds beneath and breathed in her own musky perfume.
Just the thought of having to do that again today, in front of Marcus this time, was enough to weaken her knees all over again.
‘Shall