“Please … Miss Fortune!” David rose and pulled her back into his embrace, 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.”

Didn’t Grace know that to her cost? Mrs Willowbank had determined David’s future the moment he’d been born and studying landscapes with a master in Florence did not feature. It was why David had felt it safest to entrust Grace with Signor Bettoni’s letter the night before he went up to Cambridge in his first term. He planned to visit a sympathetic cousin en route to borrow funds so that when he returned to Barton Hall he’d have all in order.

And Grace would go to Florence with him.

The letter. Oh God, if only there’d been no letter, thought Grace, none of this would have happened.

“I do not intend being an object of pity to my wife,” David went on with growing emotion. “I intend to repay Miss Lenders for taking me on. So show me how I can do that. Show me how to make her desire me.”

“Come with me,” Grace whispered, reaching across to draw back the counterpane of the four-poster bed.

He seemed uncertain when Grace angled herself close and ran her hands down the front of his trousers.

“Let me take them off for you,” she whispered, deftly working the buttons, enjoying the feel of his smooth flanks, resisting the urge to trail kisses from his ankles to his lips. She was too afraid their time would be cut short and she was determined, now, to be possessed by David in the fullest sense. The memory would serve as her protection when she succumbed to the inevitable with each future client. “Now climb onto the mattress. I’ll join you there.”

Almost desperate with need, Grace climbed onto the bed and laid her naked body over his. Instinctively his hands went to her rump, his palms cupping her bottom, sending spirals of heady desire coursing through her veins and making her sex throb with anticipation.

So many men.

She’d had so many men and now, at last …

“I think you feel sorry for me,” he murmured. “That’s why you don’t regard me with the same revulsion you do your other clients.” His breath tickling her ear. “I hope not, because …” He’d transferred his attention to Grace’s inner thighs, where he’d enjoyed her responses earlier. His touch ravaged her with urgent desire.

“Because…why?” she whispered, pressing her cheek to his chest as she moved her body slowly, suggestively, over his. His erection pressed into her belly and she rubbed herself up and down upon it, sighing with the satisfaction of feeling it swell.

“There’s something about you … I can’t explain it. You remind me …”

The thrill Grace felt was truncated as he muttered, “Only it seems wrong to compare you.”

“Because she was pure? And I am not?”

Grace raised her head and studied his face. His heightened colour was his only answer.

Forcing his painful words from her mind, she rose to a sitting position, reaching down to cup his balls. He gasped at the unexpected sensation, hardening instantly, holding his breath and clasping her shoulders as she gently squeezed.

“You like it?” Her voice was husky. Suggestive. The same tone she used on all her clients, yet what was in her heart was so different.

“I shall disgrace myself once more if you continue.” His breathing was laboured. “Stop doing that. I want to feel you.”

She remained sitting, straddled upon him as his hands roamed over her, as if he were committing her to memory. Grace registered his frown, his growing excitement as he contoured her with the concentration of a sculptor exploring the possibilities of his subject.

“I can feel you … like I can see you.”

She breathed deeply and surrendered herself to his touching. How thrilling it was to again be the object of his enjoyment.

He raised his head as if looking for something, then pulled her down so he could kiss her breasts, gently suckling her nipples while he massaged her buttocks.

“I can imagine every part of you,” he marvelled, drawing his head away. “I’m an artist. I can’t paint you but I can … make you. I could make you in clay.” His breath came faster.

So did Grace’s. Electric impulses surged through her, excitement roiled in her lower belly and moisture bubbled between her legs.

“You can be my muse. I can sculpt you. I can.”

Hope clawed at her, just a little more forcefully. Perhaps there really was a shared future for them …

“Tell me everything. Your hopes, your dreams, your disappointments. I need to know you from the inside. It’s the only way I can create you.”

His rising excitement coincided with the crashing of her hopes.

His muse? She’d told him enough, already. “If I tell you everything, sir, you will want nothing more to do with me.”

At the dull resignation in her voice, he checked himself. “Are most whores as honest as you?”

Despite herself she gave a soft laugh. “We quickly learn when we must lie. But I am not lying when I say I want you to make love to me.”

“You really want that?”

Ever so briefly she touched her lips to his mouth before drawing back in sudden alarm as the familiar longing surged through her. It was too dangerous. Before long she must leave him.

Probably forever.

“Yes, I want you.” She heard the almost desperate note in her voice as she rose above him, rubbing her sex over his now rampant erection.

He held her tightly, his breath hot in her ear. “And I want you, too. Oh, God—”

She’d reached down to grasp his shaft which she was sliding the length of her slick entrance and back again. His breath was now coming in convulsive gasps which matched hers as she guided him into her slippery depths—and as he filled her she felt the most heightened sensation of coming home.

“David.” She breathed his name upon the faintest of whispers as he withdrew slightly before thrusting into her again and she felt herself clamp over him as need and joy and pleasure swirled through her.

“Oh God!” he cried again as he re-entered her, his passions ratcheting up with unstoppable force on a journey she shared.

He was still little more than an untutored virgin and she didn’t mind that he came quickly upon a final thrust for she was so ready, shattering around him, her brain whirling, her heartbeat pounding as she collapsed on top of him.

For a long time companionable silence enveloped them. The clock in the passage struck three o’ clock and the sounds of carriage wheels from the street below lent a strange normality to the sensation that nothing and everything was changed.

David was the first to speak. Shifting her against his side so that her head nestled into the crook of his neck, he held her close as he gently stroked her.

He laughed softly. “I hope I can last a little longer the next time.” He paused, then asked awkwardly, “Why did you have no one to turn to?”

Surprised by his interest, she decided to lay herself bare.

“My family refused to have anything to do with me after I … disgraced them. My mam gave me what savings she had and sent me to London, making me promise I’d never contact them again.”

His warmth was comforting, the familiarity taking her back to the days when they could speak of so many things as he sketched or painted her: the many injustices Mrs Medley meted out and David’s troubles concerning his controlling mama.

She snuggled closer and he reached across to pull the covers over her as she went on. “In London I became apprenticed to a milliner until she, too, dismissed me when I could no longer hide my growing belly. I used the last of my money to pay the midwife and was going to take the babe to the foundling home. I had no means of supporting either of us, of course, but the babe became sick and as I nursed it, I grew to love it. I couldn’t let it die so I called a doctor but I couldn’t pay him … or get medicine.”

He frowned, indicating for her to go on. “The doctor suggested … I pay him in kind.” She swallowed painfully. “I had no choice. He took me against the wall in the room where I slept because my baby was screaming on the bed. He came often after that—” She breathed deeply, “—until my baby died.”

She glanced across at him. David’s eyes were dark with sympathy as he lightly caressed her.

“Were you not able to get respectable work?”

“I tried.” Oh God, she wasn’t going to cry, was she? “But I’d been dismissed without a character. No one would employ me so I had to return to the streets until I was procured by Madame Chambon.”

“Is she a good employer?”

“I can’t complain, I suppose, though she knows how to make her money out of us girls. Nevertheless she’s taught me how to hold my own with a duchess. I now speak like a lady, am fully versed in proper etiquette and I can converse on the current affairs of the day in order to entertain the customers. That’s why Madame Chambon charges so much for one of her girls.”

“And that is why you are here.” Carefully he ran gentle fingers over her eyes, cheeks, jawline. “And for once I’m glad of my interfering mama and her high standards.”

Smiling, he moulded her buttocks with the barest pressure. But the pressure she felt inside her was like nothing she’d known before. She’d been drained by the telling of her story but he’d not reacted with revulsion. He still wanted to touch her. The excitement she’d felt during their lovemaking was returning, and with even greater force.

She’d told him everything and it seemed he was ready to repeat the intimacies of earlier.

Now he raised himself, feeling his way over her until his body caged hers. One hand traced her hips. As if committing them to memory he stroked the jutting bones before sliding his hand into the juncture between her legs.

He grinned and murmured, “You really do like it when I touch you there.” He slid his fingers deeper into her heat. They glided through her moisture and she shivered all the more.

He moved his face closer to hers and for a moment she thought he was about to kiss her, then he drew back, perhaps remembering her stricture, despite their earlier passion.

But, oh how she wanted to be seared by the heat of his desire—and it could be ignited by a single kiss, she knew it.

“That is …heaven,” she gasped, opening her eyes to see his glazed with passion.

A great poignant need gripped her heart. She had him in thrall. He was her slave, and how she longed to enjoy him again in the fullest sense. To feel him stretch out his responses. To claim responsibility for tutoring him in how to be the best lover he could be.

She cupped his head and brought his face down to hers.

His response was immediate. Electric. His arms went round her, crushing her to him, his mouth encompassing hers completely. She could feel his heart beating fast and furious as he sucked her lip, burning her with the heat of his passion, his tongue tangling with hers, until she could take no more and thought she would drown of need.

“I want you,” she whispered. “Now! Take me!”

“And I want you!” He felt for her entrance so he could position himself. “I want to show you I can be both willing slave and obliging master,” he breathed with a touch of the old humour she remembered.

Over his shoulder her gaze raked the length of their bodies, so nearly joined as one. Just as she’d dreamed of for so long. He dipped his fingers once more into her silken heat before she felt the swell of his erection begin to breach her entrance.

“Oh!”

They gasped in unison, the sound a catalyst for the cataclysmic reactions that followed as he again sheathed himself fully in her.

“Dear God,” he moaned, twining one hand behind her head to keep her face close to his while the other gripped her bottom. Her skin burned at his touch, her heart beat furiously and she thought she would die of pleasure as she felt his fullness inside her, a testament to his possession and, she could pretend for a brief moment, his love.

“Oh, David,” she whispered on the faintest breath as together they bucked and rode each other to the summit of their pleasure.

With her cheek tucked into the crook of his neck she shuddered with him to the end.

“Oh, dear Lord, that was magnificent!” he crowed, holding her tightly, his breathing still heavy as he gently played his fingers against her sex as if her twitching amused him.

As if wanting to prolong the pleasure of their coupling at the same time as reassuring himself her responses were brought on by him alone.

She brought his face round so she could kiss him lightly, lingeringly on the lips.

He did not stop smiling. Reaching out, he touched her cheek, toyed with her hair.

Grace gazed into his eyes. They could not see, but they still registered the depth of his emotion. Did he feel this was more than the practised arts of a consummate courtesan? She’d certainly never felt this depth of feeling before.

David opened his mouth to speak and Grace tilted her head. This had meant something more to him. If she could feel it, surely he could, too?

Did she have the courage to speak the truth? Would he believe the woman he truly believed had betrayed him? A whore, what’s more?

Resolve ebbed and flowed, deserting her as a loud voice sounded in the passage outside.