Sin. Sharon Page

he stood behind her. She refused to turn, but glanced back out of the corner of her eye. He towered over her. Trapped between his large body and the chair, she couldn’t retreat. He bent until his warm breath whispered along the rim of her ear, exposed by her severe chignon. She lurched back in shock, rewarded by the rasp of his closely shaved jaw along her cheek.

      Despite her skittering nerves, she forced herself not to move. If she turned, her lips might touch his.

      The maddening temptation to tilt her head toward his took her by surprise. She was hot, perspiring beneath her corset and tight-fitting bodice. Tense and wound up like a coiled spring.

      This man had made love to a bound woman! This rogue had lain on a sumptuous bed, suckling the breast of one woman while another took him in her mouth—

      Yes, the earl might look exactly like the sort of fantasy man she created with brush in hand—the gorgeous libertine felled by love—but it was an entirely different matter to have a real rake in possession of such devastating knowledge. And she didn’t think for one moment Trent would be felled by anything.

      He rested her book on the back of the chair. To her astonishment, he flipped it open, turning the pages until he found a plate. “Ah, The Page Turner.”

      She knew the picture by heart, of course. A young man holding a candelabrum and turning the pages while his fetching lady played. The buck’s pants were open, the lady’s breasts freed from her dress, her skirts pooling over her bared thighs. The lady pursed her pink-lipped mouth delicately toward his member. In the shadows beneath the instrument, another man—Trent as the lady’s secret lover—pleasured the lady with his fingers. A silly fantasy really—created because she had hated practicing her pianoforte.

      Now devastating, because it involved him. Even over the crackle of the fire, her quick, shallow breathing seemed to fill the room.

      “Exquisite.” The earl’s smooth rich voice wrapped around her like silk. “But while your style is very similar to your father’s, there are marked differences.”

      “Impossible,” she lied. “Since the drawings are my father’s.”

      “The lady’s hands are playing a chord that corresponds to the music sheet. I know the piece, my sister played it a thousand times—I used to be conscripted to hold her sheets. And in your father’s work, the females are vacuous, simpering, all of a type. But in this book, every woman is different. Distinct.”

      “You look at the ladies’ faces, my lord?”

      “Yes I do, Miss Hamilton,” he murmured by her ear. “Evidence of a lady’s touch, I believe.”

      She kept her attention straight ahead but his scents teased her, enveloped her. A tinge of sandalwood soap. Starch in his shirt collar and cravat, cedar in his clothes, smoke and coffee on his breath. Horse and leather and the lightest hint of his sweat. The earl must be one of those gentlemen who enjoyed a good gallop on the Row at the crack of dawn.

      Despite herself, she breathed deeply. Intrigued. Painted men did not have such alluring smells. She was cloistered in her studio all the time—she never met real gentlemen. To remember his scent would help her be more creative. More inspired.

      His lordship’s hard biceps bumped her shoulders. The sensual brush of his body against hers set her legs trembling. Venetia balled her hands into fists, stiffened her spine. “You must be a true connoisseur of my father’s work, my lord Trent.”

      How else could he have spotted her slight deviations from her father’s style? How likely was it that other gentlemen would?

      “My father was,” he said. “He owned every volume of Rodesson art. He introduced me to it at an early age. I believe I was eight when he gave me my first volume.”

      Eight? Eight was the age of a boy, not a man. Was a boy of that age even able to understand the drawings? To find them arousing?

      If he’d started looking at such pictures at eight, when would he have first made love?

      The instant the shocking thought raced through her head, Venetia found herself picturing the earl at his first sexual experience. With a voluptuous dairymaid or perhaps a bountiful courtesan. Eager. Sweaty. Naked.

      Venetia, good heavens, stop! She took a shaky breath. “Are there other…differences?”

      He turned the pages. “This one.”

      She gaped at the picture framed by his large gloved hands.

      A simple alfresco luncheon scene. This one featured the earl with his back against an ancient oak tree while his mistress rode atop him.

      “This, to me, is a distinct clue your father did not do the work.”

      For the life of her, Venetia could not see why. Her father had in fact done similar pictures.

      “The position of the woman is the telling thing.”

      Mystified, she studied the mistress. The lady’s skirts were up, revealing her plump bottom, and her head was thrown back, eyes closed, lips parted in ecstasy. Venetia had copied the expression from Belzique, the French artist of the last century who drew women in bizarre costumes, wielding whips. Pictures that disturbed her, which she would never wish to copy, but that she found inexplicably intriguing.

      “In your father’s works the women are always lifted,” he explained. “In the upward portion of the stroke—” For the first time, his voice faltered.

      “Yes?” Her query came out as a husky whisper.

      “That position reveals the man’s…equipment.”

      “His equipment,” she repeated.

      “His shaft. It appeals to the male to see the shaft disappearing inside the woman. For a start, they know actual penetration is taking place.”

      His tone was teasing but her chest felt squeezed, as though she’d been laced too tight. She stared at her picture, strangely hurt. “It doesn’t appeal to the male to see the woman seated back, the way she is shown here?”

      So it was more than just differences in style. She’d thought her work tempting, seductive, pleasing. But, as a woman, had she not understood what men desired? Was it more complex than she’d thought?

      Did this mean her career—her key to independence—would fail? Perhaps her book had only sold well because of her father’s name. Perhaps she would never sell another.

      “You look so heartbroken, love,” he murmured. “I can assure you that men enjoy your drawings. Your work is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Far more arousing.”

      He settled his hands on the back of the chair. She was caught between his powerful arms as his breath skimmed the nape of her neck. Tiny loose tendrils of her hair stirred and tickled.

      He bent forward at the exact instant she drew back. Her bottom bumped against a solid ridge. His lordship’s…equipment, hard and jutting against her derriere through her skirts and his trousers.

      He turned to the next page, revealing Two Ladies Painting Watercolors. Two young ladies of the ton sat in a garden with easels in front of them and the statue of a naked god to inspire. Both women had been attempting to sketch the nude man, but had become distracted in their arousal. Skirts and petticoats spilled over smooth thighs and they employed their paintbrushes on themselves in inventive ways.

      And from the shrubbery, the Earl of Trent spied on the pretty girls.

      “Now you see why I am here, Miss Hamilton.” His tone hardened. His jaded amusement was gone. Anger burned beneath his words. “You’ve depicted me as the most promiscuous and perverted man in London. At a time when I put my patronage behind Lady Ravenwood’s charity—a charity to save young women from brothels. Lady Ravenwood—my sister—was horrified when rumors reached her ears that I was doing the very thing she was trying to prevent.”

      Venetia fought panic. There was no point in denying the truth anymore.