Sweet as the Devil

by Susan Johnson

  “So you’ve not lived a life of deprivation.”

  “I suppose in Ernst’s terms we have. But not compared to others.”

  “Have you always wanted to be a painter?”

  “Not seriously at first. I began as a model—yes, yes, I know,” she said with a grin. “How could I do something so scandalous? But it wasn’t scandalous to me or my family. I knew lots of men and women who posed for paintings or for drawing classes. It was perfectly normal.”

  “Do you still pose?” A gently put query.

  “Heaven’s no. Not since my work began to sell. I only modeled because I didn’t want to be dependent on my parents. I wanted to succeed on my own; it was my rebellious phase, you see.”

  He understood perfectly, but he knew better than to say so.

  “You’re very polite.” His reticence was commendable. She knew how the conventional world viewed women who posed nude and rebellious women in general.

  A faint smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I’m trying. You feel good—warm and soft—a notable object of joy, I might add. Like you, I don’t normally feel this way or give voice to such outré emotions. So I have no intention of taking issue with anything you do in your life—including this.”

  She grinned. “I may harangue you with impunity then?”

  “Preferably not. But if you must, I’ve probably heard worse.”

  “I hope you’re not referring to the women in your life,” she said with a petulant sniff.

  “Of course not,” he lied, but he liked her jealousy. It made his own rash impulses less bizarre.

  “Good,” she pithily said. Then she giggled. “This is totally outrageous, isn’t it?”

  “Totally.” He didn’t have to ask her what she meant.

  She slipped her hand between them and gently touched the crest of his erection that lay hard against his flat belly. “Were you going to ask, or would you have let this go to waste?”

  “I probably wouldn’t have asked, since every other man you know does, but,” he said with a lift of his brows, “it wouldn’t have gone to waste either.”

  “Because you’re large and I’m small.”

  “Yes, but I would have been polite.”

  “How polite?”

  “Polite enough that you asked me.”

  A small silence ensued.

  Then he turned her slightly and kissed her gently, a gallant’s kiss, a poet’s kiss, eloquent, lyrical, sweet as sugared violets. And she waited, breath held, when he lifted his mouth and met her wide blue gaze. “Is that polite enough?” he softly queried.

  A smile lit her eyes. “Too polite.”

  He laughed. “More boldness is in order then.”

  His lips touched hers again, less gently this time, but still marked by neither impatience nor urgency—as if he were inured to sexual fervor, immune to the heat coursing through her body, indifferent to the increasingly slippery sensation of her sex rubbing against his thigh.

  As if he could wait indefinitely.

  His kisses probed, tantalized, skillfully asserted his physical dominance with a shameless assurance that whetted her appetite for more than kisses, and soon she was trembling like some blushing tyro at her master’s knee. Although perhaps she was a tyro, those familiar with Jamie might conclude.

  Unaware of his sexual history, however, and indifferent to it in any case with vaulting desire at fever pitch, she leaned into him and opened her mouth to him, wanting him to know he could have anything he wanted, even her heart, although she suspected she must be insane for even thinking so. But insatiable need was coloring her every thought, corrupting reason, giving new meaning to the word desperation. Abruptly pulling back, she looked up, revealing the heat in her eyes, the unwise affection that he wouldn’t care to see, and whispered, “I’m asking now.”

  It was almost anticlimactic. With anyone else it would have been. But there was nothing normal about this night, this woman, his gut-wrenching lust. Sliding his hands through her pale, silken hair, he gathered it gently in his fists, and quietly said, “I’m obsessed with you, dangerously so. You must stop me if I become too violent.” He knew even as he spoke that he should never have said what he said, and he wondered if it was too late to retrieve it. Whether he might utter some glib, flirtatious phrase that would paper over his monstrous mistake.

  “Do anything you please.” She looked him straight in the eye with the boldness he’d come to recognize. “I’m not your voice of reason.” Her eyes were midnight blue and fevered. “You’ve made another conquest. Now hurry.”

  “Are you sure?” A sop to his conscience; the sense of victory infusing his soul something else entirely.

  She smiled. “It’s either you or one of your troopers.”

  He was laughing when he lifted her by the waist, swung her around to face him, and holding her up on her knees with one hand under her bottom, guided the head of his penis into an advantageous position. “By the way, my troopers are off-limits to you,” he quietly said, his gaze steady and suddenly humorless as he relinquished his hold and leaned back in the armchair. “Now show me what you can do.”

  Damn his cool arrogance and bloody insolence! How dare he treat her like some woman in a brothel! For a prolonged moment, Sofia hovered, willful and angry, torn between carnal need and rage. But reason and intellect were defenseless against powerful craving and feeling; as if she were drowning in a whirlpool of insatiable longing, she capitulated. She held his gaze, though, as she slowly lowered herself down his erection, her eyes blazing with an incendiary light that scorched him, challenged him, dared him to reach out and touch her.

  He didn’t. He wouldn’t.

  Arresting her descent with his massive cock only half absorbed, Sofia offered him a cheeky, getting-even kind of smile. “Now what?” she murmured.

  A second passed, two, three—four, the silence strained and viperous.

  Jamie drew in a breath—the small sound barely audible. Exhaling as quietly, he deliberately placed his hands, fingers splayed, on either side of her waist and gradually tightened his grip—as though he were indecisive or reluctant, perhaps for less virtuous reasons. His face was a mask, his gaze shuttered, his intent and motives unclear.

  A second passed, belligerence in the air—the issue joined as it were.

  Then with a twitch of his lips and brute force, Jamie pushed Sofia downward with ruthless dispatch.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as she shuddered under his hands, impaled on his massive cock. “That lacked finesse.”

  “I hate you,” she hissed.

  “That’s too bad,” he said in a distracted way, adjusting his fingers at her waist. “How much more can you take? This much?” He flexed his hips and drove upward. “Or this much?” He pressed deeper and stopped only when she cried out. “Sorry, I’ll be more careful,” he said. But his lazy drawl was without a hint of penitence. Nor did his cool gaze suggest benevolence.

  He disliked his craving for this quarrelsome woman, disliked more his lack of restraint, regarded his inability to walk away before or now as lamentable at best and more likely ruinous. But knowing his antipathies didn’t dispel a scintilla of his lust, and when Sofia didn’t answer, moody and edgy, he said, “Answer me, because I want to know. Am I too deep or not deep enough? Does this feel like Dex? Or one of your other lovers? Are you ready for more?”

  His rancorous queries went unheard.

  Sofia’s entire consciousness was focused on the agonizing pressure, the sweet, agonizing, ripe, consummate, up to the ears, up to the brim, lock, stock, and barrel, prodigal, without restraint glory that was almost, almost too much of a good thing.

  Recognizing that the woman transfixed on his cock was insensible to all but prurient sensation, that she was trembling on the brink of excess because of him, because she wanted him the same way he wanted her, he was chastened and appeased, deeply gratified as well. Taking pity on her or perhaps only raising the stakes, he hoisted her body upward ever so slightly to ease he
r seething, overwrought nerve endings. Then leaning close—no longer vengeful but giving her warning even as he fought to subdue the baffling savagery impelling him—he put his mouth to her ear and whispered, “You must help me.”

  She struggled to open her eyes. His voice was tautly drawn, his hands at her waist biting into her flesh, his broad shoulders rigid under her palms. “I’ll do anything for you,” she whispered, volunteering her answer without restraint. Then opening her eyes fully—an act of considerable will—she reached up, framed his face in her hands, drew his mouth to hers, and kissed him greedily.

  Her impetuous response wasn’t exactly the temperance he sought. On the other hand, Miss Eastleigh was who she was—headstrong, impatient, provocative, and provoking. Whatever restraint was required would be his responsibility.

  He smiled faintly under her frenzied kisses, reminded of her remarkable zest for fucking, of their very agreeable sexual rapport, of the lush heat of her body snugly enveloping his cock. Controlling his brutish impulses would be a tolerable quid pro quo for the notable pleasure she delivered. At which point he mustered the necessary gallantry; he was after all proficient at this game.

  “You decide when too much is too much,” he gently said.

  “It’s entirely up to you.” Loosening his grip, he watched her closely as she descended that small distance more and came to rest on his thighs once again.

  Glancing up through the fringe of her lashes, Sofia whispered, “Almost when.”

  “Your most obedient servant, ma’am,” he whispered in return, penetrating her tight little cunt an exquisite modicum more. Then they both shut their eyes to absorb the shimmering rapture, the balmy, fragrant glory that beggared description, dazzled the imagination, measured joy in degrees of exaltation.

  “Can one die of pleasure?” Sofia whispered moments later, the concept of breathless wonder no longer an abstract concept.

  “As many times as you want, darling.” A practical man at base, he’d found his bearings, his fit of madness overcome.

  “You’re offering me carte blanche?”

  “I am.”

  She wrinkled her nose in a charming little bunny twitch. “I’m jealous of such casual largesse, or I would be if I wasn’t more interested in my own selfish pleasures.”

  “Sensible girl.” He grinned. “Although you’re not the only one intrigued by selfish pleasures. I seem to have a perpetual hard-on with you.”

  She gave him a saucy smile. “Only with me, of course.”

  “Only with you,” he replied, prevarication a responsibility and obligation in the bedchamber. “See how this feels.” And he proceeded to indulge Sofia gladly and often, no longer chafing at her presumption or assertiveness, no longer concerned with who did what to whom, only conscious that she touched him in strange and countless ways. Although she impressed him most with her wild, unbridled passion, her insurgent spirit attuned to his predacious impulse to take her by storm more often than not.

  Until a good time later, having moved to the bed, they were both still heedless of all but the continuing fierce, hysterical delirium. Sofia was frantically, breathlessly, wildly begging for more, and Jamie almost forgot the primary rule in the game of love. He almost forgot to withdraw.

  At the very last second, he wrenched himself free from her arms and legs that were holding him in a death grip and twisted away. Falling on his back, he lay spread-eagle beside her, his semen spewing everywhere, his heart pounding, and gasped, “That was fucking close.”

  “Once wouldn’t—really . . . matter—would it?”

  His head snapped around.

  Her fair skin was pinked from her exertions, her blue gaze still heated, her brows raised faintly in query. “What?”

  “Nothing.” He blew out a breath. It was true. Your life did flash before your eyes.

  “Oh Christ,” she said, suddenly conscious of his distrustful gaze. “Do you think—I’m trying to . . . trap you?”

  It took a moment too long before he said, “No,” and reached for a towel.

  Her downy brows came together. “Do they all want to—trap you?” she incredulously inquired.

  He didn’t answer as he wiped himself dry.

  “My, my, and even then you can’t keep your randy cock from obliging all of them,” she playfully noted, her breathing restored. Rolling closer, she reached out to stroke his glorious, indefatigable erection.

  He flinched.

  She laughed, her hand arrested short of its target. “I suppose it won’t help to say I’m not like all the rest.”

  He abruptly sat up, the conversation not one he cared to prolong. “I need a drink.” He dropped the towel on the floor. “Would you like one?”

  She glanced at the clock.

  His dark brows arched. “Am I keeping you from something?”

  “I’m not sure you’d like my answer.” He might be prickly, but so was she. It boggled the mind that every woman he knew wanted to snare him. Did the silly fools have no identity of their own?

  “Fine. Let me know if you want a drink.” He slid off the bed and walked away. He objected to women who wanted to discuss their feelings or his. It was a subject he always avoided.

  He was standing before the liquor table in the sitting room, pouring himself a healthy bumper of whiskey, debating whether it was time to bring the entertainment to an end, when Sofia called out, “Bring the champagne from dinner.” As if his cock was trained to the sound of her voice, it instantly rose to attention, and he sensibly decided that quarreling was counterproductive when there were hours yet until morning. He was here, she was here, and apparently his cock was calling the shots.

  As if he could have walked away from the audacious little bitch in any case, he understood. Nor could any man in possession of his faculties.

  A sentiment similar to the one Sofia had adopted after only a few moments of selfish contemplation. How could it possibly matter what his other lovers thought, she decided. It would be an act of great foolishness to deprive herself of several more orgasms simply out of spite. “I apologize for teasing you,” she offered as he returned with his whiskey and the half-drunk bottle of champagne. “It makes no difference to me what other women do.” She smiled. “I’ve decided to concentrate on my own pleasure. If you don’t mind being of assistance?”

  He laughed. “Does any man ever say he does to a question like that?”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  “Forgive me. We shall avoid the personal.”

  “With the exception of our particular intimacy.”

  “Yes.” He handed her the bottle. “Would you like a glass?”

  “No, I’d like something else,” she bluntly replied.

  Taking a seat beside her on the bed, Jamie raised his whiskey. “As soon as I finish this.”

  She took a sip of champagne, found it too warm, and set the bottle aside. “How long will it take to finish your drink?” she sweetly inquired.

  An irresistible spur to fucking his brains out, he decided. Draining the liquor in one gulp, he dropped the glass on the carpet and smoothly settled between her legs in a graceful flow of coordinated muscle and athletic agility. “You have my full attention, sweetheart.” His smile was very close and boyishly sweet. “The timing’s up to you. You know the drill; you first, I follow.”

  But he was very much less willing to tempt fate now, less willing as well to accept Sofia’s avowal that she had no interest in trapping him when most women he knew did.

  From that point on, he made love with his intellect fully engaged.

  Not that Sofia noticed. Jamie’s sexual talents were versatile enough to afford her pleasure so tempestuous and stunning that cerebral concerns were entirely deferred. And for the next few hours the suspension of clear-eyed judgment continued while the lovely prisoner and her rutting warder played at love and dazzled their nerve endings in an unremitting celebration of orgasmic fervor.

  Much later that night when passion had been explored in all
its many manifestations—first accommodating her wishes, then his, then theirs—Sofia lay replete in Jamie’s arms, half asleep, her head cushioned on his chest, her small form warm against his body. “Why aren’t you married?” she drowsily queried.

  Jamie’s blood turned to ice in his veins. But his voice when he replied was deliberately mild. “Marriage isn’t practical in my line of work. A wife might soon become a widow.”

  “Have you ever been tempted to marry?”

  She was almost asleep so his panic was manageable; at least this wasn’t a discussion over the breakfast table. “Not really,” he said. “I suppose I haven’t met the right woman.” Women believed in the romantic possibilities. Personally, he preferred to put his trust in the caliber of his handgun.

  “You’ll know it when you do.” Her voice was barely audible, spellbound as she was by gratification so stupifying she wasn’t aware how abnormal her comment. She’d always been averse to romantic sentiment, quick to ridicule the lovesick, spoony muck that passed for polite flirtation.

  “I’m sure I will,” he tactfully replied, recognizing that her breathing had slowed, that she was about to nod off.

  A moment later when she finally fell asleep and his inquisition ended, he relaxed. Not that he was likely to dwell on freakish notions like marriage in any event when serious life-and-death issues confronted him.

  In the quiet of the room his thoughts turned to such issues, and he took the opportunity to systematically review their plans for tomorrow, verifying once again the necessary details to see them safely to their next night’s lodging. With assassins on their trail, every exigency had to be examined and reexamined. Their choices were few and all of them harsh. They couldn’t afford mistakes.

  As the clock struck four, he considered getting up and leaving to sleep in his own bed. If he was sensible, he would. But he didn’t for reasons he chose not to acknowledge. He was damned tired, he rationalized. The lady had exhausted him. He’d have to come back and wake her soon anyway. He might as well stay where he was.