by Jen YatesNZ
Sheri pulled his head down to hers, making it clear her passions were fully engaged. He’d take her where they both so desperately wanted to go. He’d simply take her.
Because honor would be satisfied when he married her tomorrow. So he’d calmly take all she offered, with the supreme control of the Master, leaving her no choice but to become his bride, no choice but to be his. Once this was settled between them, to their mutual satisfaction—for that was not in doubt—he’d be able to deal with the rest of her qualms.
There might be a reason why riveting her to his side had become so important, but he told himself it was purely a matter of saving face now.
For too long, his unrequited passion for Jassie had titillated the gossips of the ton. Being jilted by the Ice Queen would cause the scandal of the century.
‘Oh Dom.’
The soft murmur from her lips against his found some unguarded chink in his emotional armor. What was it about Sherida Dearing, that hadn’t touched him all these years, but which now—?
Her hands tangled urgently in his hair and thinking ceased. All his senses were wrapped in Sheri; the soft mass of her hair, now loose and silky under his fingertips; the velvet texture of her skin; the sensuous gardenia scent he always associated with her; the perfect curve of her silk-covered breast beneath his hand.
‘I just want to devour you, Sher, kiss and suckle every inch of your delectable body, show you all the pleasure to be shared between a man and a woman.’
Arching into the teasing of his thumb and finger at her nipple, she cried out softly; a whimper; a plea.
He wanted to taste her there; suckle; watch her lose all semblance of icy control and beg him to take her, show her, fill her. Keeping one hand at her breast he slipped off her slippers then slid one hand under the volume of her skirts to caress up over her knee to the soft skin of her inner thigh above the ribbons securing her stocking.
Her restless movements incited a furor in his blood. She was so responsive, completely open to him, all virginal fears or concerns banished.
‘Dom! Sweet heaven, Dom!’
‘I know, Sher, I know. Sweet and heavenly is exactly what you are,’ he murmured, bending to her mouth once more as his fingers found their goal; the damp, heated core of her. She was so ready for him.
And he was definitely ready for her. Painfully so. Couldn’t wait much longer; didn’t know when he’d last felt so urgent, so desperate to possess a woman. Usually he could last through hours of pleasuring her, reveling in his ability to master her body and its responses, bringing her to a point of helpless surrender and totally abandoned completion—time and time again—before finally slaking his own need. As the Master it was never about his pleasure but that of the women who came seeking his services.
Not only had Sheri not come seeking, he could scarcely wait for her to reach her first peak before plunging deeply, satisfyingly into her velvet heat and losing himself—completely!
Losing control—
His fingers delved deeper, finding the sensitive nubbin and working it urgently so she curled up off the desk, clinging to his shoulders and dropping her head back to cry out.
‘Dom! Oh God! Dom, please!’
‘Please what, my Sher? Tell me what you want!’ he rasped against her lips. He was even losing control of his voice. ‘Tell me you want me, my love.’
Pressing her back to the desk, he forced himself to slow down long enough to appreciate the glory of her, silvery sparks of firelight dancing in her tangled hair, and glowing golden against the creamy skin of her throat. Her beauty was almost painful. Deliciously so.
Keeping his thumb on the pulsing nubbin, he delved deeper with his fingers, stirring even more moans and pleas from her. His other hand ripped frantically at the buttons of his falls, freeing his straining member, which was ready and definitely in control now.
Denial was beyond him. As a wild cry of release erupted from Sheri and echoed about them, the Master of Virgins vanished like smoke into the dim recesses of the fire-lit room, leaving only Dominic Beresford, the man, at the mercy of a desire he’d never known and a euphoric sense of having come home.
Rumpling her skirts up onto her belly, he gripped her thighs and pulled her snug into his groin. Lost to all but the need to possess, he fitted his body to hers and drove forward. A tiny whimper and the brief stiffening of Sheri’s limbs reminded him she was a virgin. Was, his lust-filled brain repeated as he withdrew and thrust again. This time he had the satisfaction of Sheri’s hands clutching his hips and pulling him into her, and her begging whimpers driving him on. The Castle could have collapsed about them and he’d not have noticed.
…
As his harsh, long drawn-out moan of release faded into the air, Dom’s form loomed above her, dark and shadowed against the glow from the fire in the grate.
Dom. In her arms. In possession of her body, and way beyond anything her maidenly imagination could ever have conjured up.
Finally she knew what it was to be loved by Dominic Beresford.
Loved? Don’t fool yourself, Sheri. By his own assertion he didn’t have to be in love in order to—desire a woman, possess her. And he’d just proved it.
And she—had just made it easy for him. Oh God!
‘Sheri!’ he whispered hoarsely against her cheek. ‘I didn’t expect that. Not only will we have a satisfactory marriage, we’ll have a spectacular one.’
For several moments his heated lips continued to caress, taste and soothe her. When their breathing returned to something near normal, he eased up from her, lowered her skirts, buttoned his falls and drew her off the desk to walk on oddly weakened legs to a loveseat before the fireplace. Settling her with a brush of his lips to her forehead, he bent to place more logs on the fire and encourage it to blaze up.
Strangely fractured, the part of her desirous of staying in the wondrous cocoon of sensual fulfilment Dom had given her struggled to remain in ascendance over the rest of her that wanted to protest and rant at her foolish weakness, her painful vulnerability to this man.
Her eyes drank in the strength of the long fingers tossing logs into the fire; the strain of muscle against the stuff of his trousers; the lean length of his body and the breadth of his shoulders blocking out the light as he rose to set a taper to the candles on the mantel.
Twin flames leapt upwards drawing her eyes to an arrangement of five small portraits on the chimney breast above.
Five small portraits so familiar all heat left her cheeks and a vocal protest escaped her lips before she could restrain it.
‘What, Sher?’ Dom asked, as he settled himself at her side, resting his arm along the back of the couch to caress the naked skin of her shoulders. ‘You’re not going to go all virginally modest on me now, are you? Not after you were so much more woman than I could ever have imagined—’
‘Of course not!’
Her pride was stung by his question, and probably her ‘virginal modesty’ as well, she silently admitted, but either was wiped from her mind as she stared at the five reverse views of herself, each one a little more exposed, a little more sensuously aware than the one before it.
Her anonymous buyer was the Duke of Wolverton? She clamped a hand over her mouth, afraid her jaw had dropped in astonished horror, which would likely give her away. He was watching her closely, no doubt expecting some maidenly protest. If she didn’t gather her shattered wits he’d know it was the paintings that occasioned her reaction. Indeed, his eyes, already following her gaze, now rested on the artistic quintuplet on the wall.
‘My lovely maiden upsets you, Sher? She’s simply an exquisite piece of art—well, five pieces,’ he amended with a droll smile. ‘I know you paint. Are they not magnificently executed? The artist obviously has a keen eye for sensuality and an appreciation of the female form—and of innocence and its unveiling. I hope to meet S. P. R. Woods some day. I’m truly enamored of his work. In fact. I think he’d be the artist I’d choose to paint your portrait, Sher.’
> Sheri’s mind was racing. What was she to do? If he realized who S. P. R. Woods was, he’d—he might—he wouldn’t—
Breath backing up in her throat with panic, she tried to rise, to escape the awful realization she’d simply shrivel into an empty husk of misery if he refused to marry her now.
Because now her thoughts were stunningly painful in their clarity. Absolutely nothing could make her deny herself Dominic Beresford as her husband. Not after that initiation into the pleasures he could offer her. No other man had ever tempted her and after tonight that could never change.
She couldn’t drag her petrified eyes from his. Did he realize he’d just now given the artist the understanding necessary to complete the final portrait in the set? The only problem now was finding the opportunity to paint it.
‘She doesn’t matter, Sher, if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s no one I know. They’re just pieces of art I greatly admire.—In fact,’ he continued, his glance swinging back to the chimney breast, ‘she reminds me of you.’
Rising, he crossed to the fireplace to examine the paintings, then pointed to the third in the set.
‘This one in particular. Something in the tilt of her head, the line of her neck. Certainly, the hair is less—meticulously arranged than yours usually is. Although—at the moment you could definitely have been the model.’
His green gaze surveyed the disarray of her hair with a glint of satisfaction.
Sheri’s brain was galloping, and to her relief—which would surely later turn to disgust—she found she had no trouble pretending to an outrage she actually didn’t feel.—For however wrong it was, she needed an excuse to flee his presence.
Rising abruptly to her feet, she whispered, ‘I simply won’t compete with your other women, Dom! I—oh!’
And truly panicked by every possible outcome of this dilemma, she gathered her rumpled skirts and fled. It was only the darkened shadows at the top of the stairs that slowed her. Thankfully a candle burned in a sconce far along the upstairs hallway. Snatching it up she moved as fast as the candle would allow, entering her own suite, closing the door and turning the key in the lock. Crossing to the connecting door to the Duke’s chambers, she checked that one too, taking the added precaution of turning the key sideways in the lock so he couldn’t dislodge it from his side.
As she entered the bedroom with its elegant Chippendale canopied bed draped with a heavy corded silk in rich cream, rose and leaf green, Maggie, who was napping in a rocker by the fireplace, came instantly awake.
‘Ah, there you are, my Lady,’ she murmured, stepping forward to undo the choker of diamonds holding the gown in place. ‘This time tomorrow night I shall be addressing you as Your Grace.’
‘Yes—and you shall curtsey every time I enter the room,’ Sheri teased, hoping to divert her maid from the state of her dishabille.
Which was merely a lesson in futility as she’d known it would be, as Maggie, her eyes now fully open and senses alert, stepped back to survey her mistress from the top of her loose, tangled tresses to the tips of her slipperless toes.
‘You think?’ she murmured, with her dancing red curls tilted to one side, and her knowing, green eyes alight with laughter.
‘Oh, Maggie!’ Sheri blurted, completely ignoring her maid’s levity. ‘It was the Duke! He bought the paintings. They’re lined up on the mantel in his study as if he hadn’t decided where to hang them yet and he said—they reminded him of me! Dear God! I thought he'd know S. P. R. Woods was me, for sure!’
Maggie’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut.
‘Well, praise be he doesn’t know t’is you, my Lady, and after tomorrow there’s naught to be done about it,’ she finished stoutly.
After tonight there was nothing to be done about it, but she couldn’t tell Maggie that.
…
Tempted to follow as she fled his presence, he told himself he didn’t because he’d achieved what he wanted and tomorrow was another night. But in the back of his mind was the damning thought the Master of Virgins had just been annihilated by one whose sensual innocence and pricelessly naïve responses had reversed every truth he’d believed of himself.
Who was this man who’d just made love to Sheri? The question mocked him from all sides at once. Crossing to the fireplace he leant on the mantel and stared down into the flames as if somehow that one word would vanish in smoke up the chimney.
Love. They’d made love. It was not initiation; not responding to a young woman’s need to claim control over her life just once, before losing it to a man and a marriage she’d no desire for. It hadn’t even been just the sating of sexual tensions on a willing body.
He’d convinced himself at the outset he was seducing Sheri with compromise on his mind, determined to ensure that despite any objections she might have to their marriage, she’d not be able to cry off.
And if he analyzed that determination to its source he couldn’t deny it stemmed from a deep inner knowledge Lady Sherida Dearing was his perfect match. His.
He’d once felt that way about Veronica—at eighteen and discovering the painful obsession of a first infatuation and lacking any true discernment beyond the satisfaction of his rampant sexual urges. That had turned out to be lust.
It was how he’d thought he felt about Jassie, believing her bright golden aura would bring light to his jaded spirit. Opposite to him in every way, he’d been blinded by her brightness, believed possessing it would lift him from the darkness inhabiting his inmost being.
Jassie’s light belonged to Windermere.
Kicking at a log threatening to fall from the grate, he considered the phenomenon of Sherida Dearing. She’d been around all his life yet he’d never really seen her; as if he’d turned just as the light fell directly on her.
Now he saw only Sheri, wanted only Sheri and wondered why it had taken so long.
Was he so shallow he’d discard practically overnight what he’d felt for Jassie, and replace it with a desire, a love, that made his passion for Jassie seem little more mature than he’d felt for Veronica at eighteen?
And yet again he loved a woman who responded to him as ardently as he could wish, but didn’t want to marry him.
If it hadn’t been well after midnight he’d have been headed for the stables by now, seeking to outrun this powerful self-denigration with speed and reckless flight. Even then, Sheri was foremost in his mind. Such foolishness could get him killed. Then he’d never be husband to the one woman who was now the only one he wanted.
That he’d forego his favorite form of oblivion when the dark passions were on him, was the final telling evidence. He’d not risk the possibility of never being the man to teach Sheri how to be a woman—his woman.
He’d not forego the opportunity to seduce her to the point of revealing herself to him, of offering him all she was. He’d not risk being unable to woo her, court her, seduce her until she admitted she loved him—as he loved her.
If he’d thought himself heart-sore over Jassinda Carlisle, it was a mere pinprick beside the pain that would engulf him if in this he failed.
Muttering violent oaths, he reached for the tantalus on the credenza and had just tossed the first measure of brandy down his throat when there came a knock on the door.
‘Come,’ he growled, expecting Broughton to appear.
‘Tippling on your own the night before your wedding? I wouldn’t have pegged the Master of Virgins for a nervous bridegroom.’
‘Knight! Why are you wandering the halls at this hour?’
‘I couldn’t seem to settle, so I decided to wander downstairs to see if perchance you were still up and in need of company.’
In the act of pouring himself a second shot of brandy, Dom slanted a glance back over his shoulder at his cousin.
‘And if I’d been entertaining my bride?’
‘You’d not have invited me in.—And thanks, a brandy is exactly what I need to settle whatever is keeping me wakeful.’
Dom snapped hi
s mouth shut. In a battle of words Knightsborough always won. There were none more cynical, more articulate, nor more cutting than Knight.
Nor were there any more honorable, more dependable or—oddly enough, more compassionate.
Bax had once, when much younger and less careful of his hide, called Knight ‘Mother Confessor’. It was a true assessment of the man though no one had dared voice the epithet since. Bax’s scarred jaw was deterrent enough.
Silently he handed his cousin a glass, and with the brandy decanter dangling from his fingers, invited him to share the loveseat before the fire.
‘Cozy,’ Knight said, accepting the glass and tossing back the contents. ‘So why aren’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Entertaining your betrothed? I’d have thought you’d need to get the thaw started if you expect to effect a meltdown on your wedding night.’
Watching the brandy swirl and catch the firelight, Dom was acutely aware of Knight’s dark gaze fixed on him, his silence expectant. But he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Continuing to swirl the small amount of liquor in his glass, he let the moment stretch.
‘Dammit, Wolf! Don’t tell me I’ve lost my Master of Virgins!’
‘You’ve lost your Master of Virgins.’
And if he hadn’t resigned as Master of Virgins, Knight should’ve sacked him. He’d forgotten honor; he’d not allowed Sheri to voice her concerns or complaints; he’d simply taken all control from her, all choices, which made him no better than the fathers or guardians who forced their daughters and wards into marriage with lecherous bastards old enough to be their grandfathers.
He’d finally discovered true love tonight, but couldn’t tell the loved one for she’d surely laugh in his face in disbelief. He was on the verge of marriage with the one woman essential to his happiness—and she probably hated him.
An oath whispered past Knight’s lips as he tipped up his glass, draining the last drops and holding it out for a refill.