by Thea Devine
"Listen to me ... listen," he growled against her mouth. "Listen, goddess of odalisques, straddle my knees facing front now,
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and hook your legs around mine. Just like that, excellent, Diana. Now put your arms around my neck—as best you can—and dont move. Don't move . . . tilt your head back, just like that, and give me your kisses ... yes . . ."
She gave him her mouth eagerly, arching her back slightly so that she could take the whole of his voracious tongue into her mouth, aware with renewed excitement that she was wholly revealed to him now, her legs splayed, her gown open, her breasts thrust tightly forward, her buttocks nestled firmly against the heat of his long thick hard maleness.
She savored the moment, the sensation, the lush wet kiss of the prelude to the shuddering urgency of the culmination he desired.
She felt his hand move from her chin to her neck and then to her chest, just above the rounded curve of her naked breasts. His hand was hot, hard with experience, experience of her now, his fingers circling the lush contour of her naked breasts, caressing them each, one and the other, without touching her yearning nipples, and then moving downward to part the edges of the gown and bare the rest of her body.
His hand skimmed her belly and moved downward to the thick bush of hair between her legs. And still downward — and her body shimmered in reaction as he touched so tightly her most intimate source.
She could not escape him. She could not move her legs, her hands; she would not. She pushed herself away from his invading fingers and up against the hard rock of his manhood.
"Don't move, Diana." Now he warned her, and he would have his way. His fingers skimmed her secrets again, combing through her hair, testing, seeking her velvet cleft, finding the sweet moist entrance to her deepest secret, and resting there, just at the moment of decision.
"I can't," she moaned against his lips.
"You will," he told her, and he sought a little deeper into her femininity, and a little more as her body eased back and back to bear down on his invasive fingers. "That's right, Diana. You know what to do. Please us both, vestal virgin. Now . . . and now," and he delved back into her mouth as her body began to respond to the stroking of his knowing fingers, began to drive and writhe against
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them, with them, her hips gyrating wildly as sensation upon sensation built up deep within her, feelings, thoughts, glittering spasmic sensations; they climbed and climbed, going somewhere, nowhere, everywhere—his experienced hand would not let her rest from the feelings; her body pumped against his towering erection and suddenly, suddenly erupted into a gush of streaming silver that just flowed through her veins and down to the center of her womanhood.
"Oh no no no," she moaned, tearing her mouth from his.
"Oh yes yes yes," he whispered, "yes. Perfect. Excellent, Diana. Don't move. Don't . . ."
Dear lord, she couldn't, she couldn't. All she could do was focus on the bed, the huge luxurious bed that had stopped her cold when she had first walked into the room and entertained thoughts about the ramification of her bargain with Southam.
And now she was but a step away from sharing it with him, and she wondered at the amusing twist of fate and whether the gods were laughing because all her instincts, all of her sensibility had betrayed her.
Never explain, always attack, make the bargain and come away with something for yourself. . . Therese's voice, eddying away in her mind from the depths of the past into the spangling pleasure of the present.
Why not? Why not? Surely she had already gained more than she had lost: she had acquired experience, she had learned how to maneuver and manipulate, and with every passing night that she entered into the game, she would achieve more and more power.
She saw it so clearly: he wanted to dominate her, and he wanted to bend to her will.
But she didn't know why. He was not obsessed with her, and the farthest from any feeling at all except for his overweaning need to wield the whip hand.
And he had utilized it well today; today he had made her into his compliant slave, and she was still a prisoner of that resonating pleasure and the powerful sense of her body's potency, and its potential to subjugate him.
His hand still worshipped at the altar of her femininity; his free hand tilted her mouth back to his so he could taste the voluptuous
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wet heat of her tongue, and when he had taken it, he moved his hand downward, ever so slowly downward to the tempting thrust of her naked breasts and began fondling and feeling them all over again.
Her body reawakened like a furling flower as he sucked the nectar from her tongue; she shimmied against him, begging those experienced fingers to find her again; she groaned deep in her throat as she bore down on his questing fingers and his ramrod manhood, and his hot hand playing with her breasts finally covered and caressed first one hard succulent nipple and then the other.
The glittering silver sensation poured through her veins again as his fingers played with and squeezed the taut yearning tips of her nipples.
She was ready, she was molten with need, and he—and he was convulsive with his engorged desire for her.
"I want you now." His ragged whisper sent the glittering streams of desire flowing through her. She floated in a molten haze of hot lush voluptuous sensation. She never wanted him to move his hands, his mouth, the towering granite length beneath her buttocks.
She wanted time to stop, just there, so that the feelings would go on and on forever, and she would always be on the verge of that shattering culmination.
"Oh no, Diana, this is not purely for your pleasure," he growled suddenly when she did not respond to his primitive demand-
And he lifted her; he wrapped his one arm around her midriff and just lifted her and carried her to the huge enveloping bed, and he lay her face down on the mattress and climbed onto the bed next to her, ripping off his clothes as he positioned one leg against her two to keep her from bolting.
But she didn't struggle; she felt as if this were as inevitable as the dawn, and that everything she had agreed to had been the prelude to this inescapable point.
Her body was ready for him. She felt keenly the removal of his hand, she felt empty and flushed with the shimmering excitement of wanting and waiting.
Here now he was totally, inexorably, hers, at the mercy of his rampaging manhood. She felt his hands lift the thin gauzy gown
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away from her body and begin caressing and stroking the long line of her back down the saucy curve of her buttocks.
And then she felt him slide his long arm under her belly to lift her and mold her tightly against the stone hard force of his naked male member.
It was like butting up against a rock, and she knew that sensation. The only difference was the feeling of skin against skin, and her dawning recognition that his granite maleness was made of flesh and muscle and towering desire.
And that, whatever the cost, she wanted it. Her body coiled with the voluptuous sense of feeling him naked and hot and hard jammed tightly against her buttocks.
He surrounded her, straddling her whole body and holding her bottom rigidly against his ramrod length.
"This," he growled into her ear, "this is what the goddess of Cyprians worships," and he released her middle so that she lay flat on the bed, and then he turned her so that she lay face up, faced with him, facing her fate.
She saw it first, the symbol of his power and virility, jutting at an angle away from his body from a nest of thick wiry hair. She saw the shape, elemental and proud, fleshy and rigid and thick with coursing passion. She saw its pleasure, the way it was made to fit that lush yearning secret place within her.
And she saw its innocence: the primitive mate seeking its home.
And then she saw him.
In the dying light of the fire, he looked like the very devil, all of him dark, his skin, the sheened muscles of his arms, the black black hair spread like a shield across his chest and trickling down do
wn down to the very root of his secret source.
But in that ineffable moment, when everything was still and understood between them, she knew the real truth: she was his secret source.
She raised herself up on her elbows so that her body was one long erotic line of thrusting invitation from her protruding breasts to her long legs.
She was ready.
But what if she said no?
Oh yes, if she said no, if she denied him, the game would be on
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again, and the thought of delicious capitulation turned into something dark and coiling and sweet, like the thick chocolate taste of his first intentions.
She began then slowly to slide her body upward and away from him, and away from the fascination of his taut muscled body and his tactile inflexible masculinity.
It took but the time of a blink of the eye between her thought and the action; she caught him off guard, and he grabbed at her foot and she wrenched it away and scrambled to the opposite side of the bed as he pounced after her.
"What game is this, Diana? I will not pursue you."
She shrugged carelessly, her eyes narrowing as she regarded him across the expanse of the bed. "I do not wish to accommodate you tonight, my lord."
"Oh really?"
Oh, his voice sounded dark and dangerous indeed. He climbed off the bed and walked slowly around to where she stood in all her haughty glory with her smug smile and those flashing, knowing blue eyes.
He was stark naked, and the ramrod power of his erection had not diminished; it stood tall, angled and voluptuous between them.
"Tell me again, huntress, you don’t wish to what?"
Attack, attack, attack; if she bowed down now, he would crush her with one muscular bare foot.
"I do not wish to accommodate you; that is perfectly plain, my lord." She turned away then, because her breasts, her thrusting taut tipped breasts would betray her, that just looking at him made her nipples stiff with desire, and he would see it, and he would know.
But he had seen; he reached out and he hauled her around to face him. "You lie, huntress. Here is what I taught your body today—here . . ." and he reached out and cupped her naked breasts and moved his thumbs over her rock hard nipples until she felt like swooning from the sensation.
"Your nipples want me," he growled, thrusting his blatant manhood against her body as he fondled the hard taut peaks, "your body is hot and wet and waiting for me, your mouth, did it not talk
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lies, would beg for my kisses, wouldn't it, Diana . . ." he moved in closer still, his manhood like a primitive iron bar between them, "wouldn't it?" and he took her mouth then in a naked, raw display of potency and then he abruptly released her.
"I never wanted a woman so much I would beg, Diana, but I promise you that you will beg; you will beg for my kisses, and my caresses, and you will beg me to suck your nipples, and you will plead for my force of life to enter your body. You will pay for this night, Diana, mark my words."
The fury of his anger shimmered between them. Attack, attack, attack, and come away with something . . . a woman always pays. . .
She drew herself up and away from him. "Not I, my lord. I will never beg, not for your kisses, not for your caresses—never. You called me the huntress and it is apt. I am that, and there are times I would accept your favors, and times I would not. And if you cannot abide by whichever whim moves me, then I will find a hundred other men who would be willing to accept whatever I chose to offer. And you will not be one of them. Or you will be down on your knees in supplication first."
"I will kill the man who touches you."
She smiled then, the killingly smug smile of amusement that he hated. "How would you know, my lord? While you are out carousing and gambling and doing whatever it is that lords do in town— how would you know? If you have such easy access to this house, why cannot another man? One who would be willing to kiss me and caress me and adore me, and take me at my word if I chose not to grant him my favors? Some men are content just to worship a woman from afar . . ."
Oh, she was treading right over the line: she saw it in his face.
"You are a bitch, Diana, and now, I will not fall down and worship your considerable charms. I would rather leave you to the folly of believing some other fool would."
"It is possible. Jeremy, perhaps . . . ?"
She had almost, almost goaded him too far, with her mocking tone of voice, and provocative erotic images of a parade of men kneeling before her and kissing her naked feet, working their way
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slowly slowly up her voluptuous body to her woman-essence and her luscious taut-nippled breasts. Damn her!
His manhood was like a volcano ready to erupt as the picture of her, naked, with a line of men just aching to do whatever she wanted and needed, flooded his mind
"I will kill the man who touches you," he said again, reaching for his clothes, for his sanity. "No one fondles your body until I am finished with you.”
"And are you finished with me for tonight?" she asked insinuatingly, watching his face, playing with his emotion deliberately, hatefully—she didn't know what she felt.
“I dont beg," he said with heavy finality. "You are the one who must sleep alone—tonight."
Ahhh—he had scored the hurt at last: he could ease his lust tonight, anytime, anywhere that he chose.
She felt an irrational fury that he had such a freedom and she had to quell the spiralling erotic feelings within her—alone.
“We will see who begs who for what, my lord," she said testily, coldly watching him throw on his shirt and step into his trousers which, when he had pulled them up, did nothing to disguise the blatant bulge between his legs.
She turned away from him then, because if she didn't, she knew she would attack him. In her mind, she pictured him leaving the house, driving to one of the clubs and upon leaving his carriage, being accosted by a beautiful woman. She envisioned the moment in her imagination: the woman coming forward, immediately aware of the throbbing evidence of his virility, and holding out her hands, begging him to come with her, telling him she wanted his kisses, his caresses, she would do anything for him; she would caress him, running her hands all over the clothed ramrod length of him. She would strip off her clothes for him and lead him, compliant, pleading, to her bed.
She couldn't bear to think of the rest of it. She would make him pay for this indignity.
"Poor lonely goddess. Up on the mountain it gets cold, Diana. Never forget. Especially when you could be warm with kisses and caresses and the heat of your desire—"
"No!" She whirled to face him. "No, my lord. I would rather
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freeze."
"You have only to ask, Diana."
"To beg, you mean. To get on my knees to you and I will never do that."
"So we shall see, bitch. So we shall see." He moved swiftly then to gather the rest of his things and he opened the door.
She said nothing; she looked magnificent, with her naked breasts heaving with emotion, and her lush body outlined against the firelight in the transparent gown that he had had made for her. But there was no appreciation for that either, he thought darkly, and he closed the door against her resistance.
She felt numb and naked in the most soul-searing way; she wanted to shroud herself in the neutrality of darkness and banish the insinuating thoughts of the beautiful submissive woman who awaited him somewhere beyond her door.
You wait, my lord, you just wait, she thought ominously, you will not have it all your own way because you are a man. I will have to teach you, my lord, that the player who holds the winning card does not necessarily win the hand.
Chapter Nine
And the lessons would begin the very next day, she decided, when a very reluctant and exasperated Jeremy Waynflete appeared that afternoon with a parade of his friends whom she had met at the opera.
"Why, it's Lord Griswold, is it not? And my Lords Ottershaw and lavender—of cou
rse I remember you," she said with every evidence of delight and, perhaps, calculation when she saw Jeremy's face darken perceptibly at her ingenuousness.
Nor was he happy with the way she was dressed. Her dark blue cambric muslin dress had a deep vee neckline which Marie had altered considerably to reveal more bosom than should normally be seen in the afternoon, and Jainee had insisted on an edging of rich lace to outline and frame the obvious changes.
It was very effective. Three men crowded around her like little boys, vying for a smile and a kind word.
It was too perfect. Jeremy rang for tea, pumping at the bell-pull like he was ringing a fire alarm, and Lady Waynflete came running, sure something awful was amiss, and was staggered to find Jeremy sitting to one side like a sulking child watching Jainee play lady of the manor with his three best friends, who had turned into salivating idiots.
Of course she must take charge. Jainee ought to have called her to begin with.
"Oh, but I had no idea," Jainee excused herself prettily. "This is my lady's son and his friends, surely to be considered members of the family . . ."
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"I think not," Jeremy said thunderously, and Lady Waynflete quelled him with one telling look.
"Miss Bowman will not make that mistake again when she realizes that at every stage of her career, whether it be in her home or in public, her conduct must be irreproachable,'' Lady Waynflete said, not without irony as she eyed the questionable neckline of Jainee's new gown. "I must infer her intentions were sincere, and of course we know she is accustomed to playing hostess in her own right . . ."
Jainee had the grace to feel a wave of heat flush her cheeks, and then a bolt of anger that Lady Waynflete should refer to her disreputable past so publicly.
But then, she had chosen to toss a sop to Jeremy's sensibilities at the expense of Jainee's image: she had no loyalty to her protegιe whatsoever, except that she wished to indulge Nicholas Carradine, and Jainee could perfectly understand that and still feel that Lady Waynflete had not had the right to chastise her just that way.